How can understanding the past, help us to understand our world?

Understanding the past can help us to understand our world through increasing our understanding of people, society's, change, and our own moral sense.


History Helps Us Understand People and Societies


In 1905, George Santayana wrote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." History tends to repeat itself. While we may not be able to completely change the course of modern events, we can look back at the lessons from history and use them to change ourselves and influence our culture. History is the story of where we came from. History connects us with those people and cultures that developed, discovered, and or invented many of the things we rely upon for life today. We can thank our ancestors for our alphabet, our language, our numerical system, religions, and system of government. 
 

History Helps Us Understand Change and How the Society We Live in Came to Be


The past becomes the present, which turns into the future. The study of history helps us to see how people viewed themselves and events during their lifetimes and how those same things are viewed today.  History provides the best source of information to study the way things are in the world. We study history so we can understand why people and places changed and analyze causes of change around us today.  History serves as our laboratory.  Data from the past is our best evidence to figure out why humankind behaves as it does.




History Contributes to Moral Understanding



History is full of examples of good people to imitate and bad ones to learn from their mistakes.  Studying the stories of individuals and situations in the past allows us to create our own moral sense of what is right and wrong, good and evil.  People who have faced difficulties, in real, historical circumstances can provide real inspiration. History can teach by example.  We can study heroes, the great men and women of history who successfully navigated through hardships by making good choices and also ordinary people who provide lessons
in courage, diligence, or made a difference in the world.




In conclusion, history plays a big part in everyone's lives. We use history to predict the the future, everything from the weather to the stock market.  We use history to introduce a new way of doing things, create new products, theories, and discoveries.  Without understanding our past we can not understand our world as it is today.  
       

http://www.wikipedia.org/

http://www.historians.org/pubs/free/whystudyhistory.htm    

http://blessedamongmen.blogspot.com/2007/10/ten-reasons-to-study-world-history.html

Sidney - Blog 2, Social Scientists

With out an Archaeologist we would not know about the past. And with out the past we would not be as advanced as we are to day!

I would choose being an Archaeologist.  Archaeologists work outside an office, digging and searching in strange places all over the world.  Archaeologists lead lives of adventure, traveling to wild places and countries with unusual people.  I love being in the outdoors and don't like sitting in an office or classroom.  I want to be like Indiana Jones in the movies, traveling the globe searching for pieces of ancient history.  I would like to go on an epic mission to discover a lost treasure.

Archaeologists discover information by putting pieces of ancient things together like a puzzle.  They hunt for treasure, discover the past, build dinosaurs, dig out ruins and put together pieces to solve the puzzles of history. Since I enjoy mysteries and finding clues and imagining how things might have been in the past to solve the mystery, I know I would love this job.

Archaeologists can be a part of history when they make a gigantic discovery then write a book and apper on the Discovery Channel or National Geographic.  I remember one show where a group of Archaeologists were going into a cave in Africa  to find prehistoric tools and discover how ancient people lived and why they moved to other places.  They discovered animal bones, child bones and tools and learned that this was a more advanced civilization for the time.  I think it would be interesting to piece together prehistoric lives of cavemen. 

I hope my career can be as interesting and free as I imagine an Archaeologist's life would be.

http://www.palomar.edu/archaeology/horseburial.ht

http://www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/roslyn217/tag/archaeology/

http://www.padfield.com/bible-times/archaeology/

Sidney - Blog Post 1

Hi. I'm Sidney. I go to ISKL Middle School.  I like leadership opportunities, I'm easy to get along with, and am usually pretty flexible and agreeable. I like playing with my friends, swimming, basketball, baseball, paintball, snowboarding, going to the movies and building Lego.  I have good fun playing on the Wii, my PSP, and  my Game boy. I have been to a lot of places in the world for an American Kid.  My favorite candy bar is Butterfingers and my favorite candy is Sugar Daddy.  I love eating macaroni and cheese and cheese pizza, but, an all-American cheeseburger is my favorite.  The only other language that I'm fluent in, besides English, is pig-Latin. I have a brother and a dog.  My dream for my future is to go to Cal Tech and become an electrical engineer.

The last three books that I've read were The Giver, Warriors V, and Airborn.  The author of Warriors V - The Darkest Hour, is Erin Hunter. The mane characters are Fireheat, Bluestar, Tigerstar, and Cinderpelt.  The book is about four clans of cats living in a forest and their conflicts with each other.  Bluestar leads Thunderclan against a pack of angry dogs. The author of Airborn is Kenneth Oppel. The main characters are Matt Cruse, Kate de Vries, Bruce Lunardi, and Capt. Watkins. Matt is a cabin boy on a an airship that is attacked by Pirates and the main characters' struggle for survival.  The author of The Giver is Lois Lowry. The main characters are Jonas, Lily, and The Giver.  Jonas lives in the future and keeps all of the memories for his community but is conflicted when hee sees a friend murdered in the future.

The last movie I saw was The A-Team.  A group of Army commandos are tricked in to stealing U.S. Mint engravings and escape prison to recover the engravings and clear their names.

My academic goal for this year is to get all A's and B's.

A social goal for the year is to be a Malaysian nashonal backstroke U-12 champion.

My favorite vacation memory is when I stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel in Penang.

I would describe myself as athletic, dynnamic, friendly, outgoing, and fun.