Writing Feedback / An IELTS task 2 essay about whether studying history is important [4]

Topic: Some people think studying the past has little value in the modern world. Why do you think it is important to do so? What will be the impacts on children if they are not taught history?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

History to some people could be not very interesting and studying the subject will not help to understand the value of modern world. However, it is generally believed that learning from the past can provide important skills and knowledge that we need for our modern lives and not teaching history to children might cause several negative impacts on them.

To begin with, the most important point of studying the past is that learning about other historical periods gives insights into different ways of life. In particular, we can have some ideas of how people lived in different periods in the past: how they did the agriculture and what forms of transportation which were most common used in different periods.

Next, learning about conflicts in the past can help us to avoid them in future. History texts provide explanations for the situations which caused conflicts in past. Hence, studying history helps to prevent most of the factors that may lead to fights in future. Similarly, if the situations we face today are identical to those happened in the past, we could have explanations and probably solutions for them.

As the final point of the significances of studying past events, it is generally believed that studying history involves investigating and interpreting evidences or information hence critical thinking is developed. As a consequence, if children are not taught history at school, they might have lack of ability to collect and evaluate data and to think logically in order to make good decisions. In addition, if children are not given some interesting assessments like going to a local archaeological site to make a poster about local history, they would have no motivation or interest on doing research in later years of their lives.

To sum up, despite the fact that there are some people might think studying the past is boring and useless as it brings little value to modern life, I strongly think that it is not just important but almost compulsory for us to study history as it helps to develop critical thinking skills and doing research skills which are two very important skills that we need for living and working.