Before I elaborate on my topic I first want to make sure that you are familiar with it. So what is History? History is the acts, ideas, or events that will or can shape the course of the future. The topic is whether or not we should have more history in our schools, I am arguing the affirmative.

One of the main reasons why I feel so strongly about this subject is that I am a student myself. Just like the definition states. I think that every student should have the right to know everything about the past to know more about the present as well as the future. Why do I say this my opponent asks well to answer your question It is a proven fact that in this day in age if you do not know your history you are doomed to repeat it. An example supporting this alarming statistic is slavery. What do you mean you ask? We’ll let me tell you slavery had and has been going on in America for hundreds of years 1619 to be exact. When it was so called abolished in America on December 6, 1885. People went on with their regular lives like nothing ever happened. But trust me something did happened about 4,742 lynchings (a method introduced by British slave owner Willie Lynch) occurred in a time length of 86 years this included blacks and whites. This is just a small portion of the damage done to America’s people. The reason why the school systems don’t teach more history is because they are scared. Scared of what you ask? They are afraid to bring up important events in our past they just skip the bad parts like the lynching stats and go straight to Abraham Lincoln. We’ll if you haven’t noticed there is a big gap in our history lesson and we need to call the dentist.

Another reason that I think that our schools should have more history is that. Our school’s curriculum is so basic all we learn about is George Washington and all the other so called “Founding Fathers.” We need to learn more about prominent figures like Frederick Douglass, Anne Frank, Pancho Villa, Nat Turner, Gandhi and Malcolm X. So we can follow in the footsteps of these great men and women. Believe me I am not trying to do this for one race this is for all races we are the United States of America! But yes, if we had more history we wouldn’t have one black history month every February which is the shortest month of the year). It would be celebrated all year as well as Hispanic month and all the other races we are all one remember the quote written on the Declaration of Independence by are so called great, slave owning, Founding Fathers. “All men are created equal”. While we are on this idea I would also like to point out the alarming statistic that 25% of Americans passed a basic standardized Social Studies assessment in 2008.

The last reason that I chose was that we are missing out on important information. Yes we need to learn more about the past but as you know history occurs everyday so for every class there should be a brief current event discussion. I am going to make this plain and simple for my opponent to understand. If we do not learn these things now when will we. WE are not learning these things in middle school, very little to none in high school and with a percentage of 67.2 of our high school graduates going to college nearly 1/3 of the students will ever get this information. So it is up to us, the students learn as well as encourage others to learn more about history than is given to us in our 15 year old textbooks. That is my argument on history in schools thank you and have a nice day.

“Give Me History Or Give Me Death.”