08261 history
IELTS Essay: Studying History
谢振礼议论文：历史重要
猫头鹰在线写作实验室
Jeenn Lee Hsieh
真题》Essay Topic:
Some people believe that history matters little or nothing to people. Others think that people must study history to understand the present. Discuss both views and give your opinion. Use specific reasons and include any relevant examples from your knowledge or experience.
范文》Example Writing (Jeenn Lee Hsieh)
Studying history is not a waste of time because an understanding of the past is a useful tool to understand the present. The cliche that history repeats itself makes sense on the ground that humanity remains fundamentally the same. Sometimes it might seem that knowledge of the past matters little or nothing to people, but actually history is to the nation as memory is to the individual.
The significance of the past lies in that it is always a rebuke to the present. It can be realized that history teaches everything including the future. So much we are influenced by what happened before that we cannot escape history for now, nor can we escape the desire to study it for the future. That is to say, history is like a vast early warning system, although the lesson of history is rarely learned by the actors themselves. Therefore, unless we analyze the historical facts, it is hard to enlighten the present and guide our conduct into the future. Indeed, it is a shame to think what we learn from history is that we do not learn anything from history, in view of the repeated registers without end of crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.
Some people prefer not to live in the memory of the past, for some reasons. To them, history is the memory of things said and done, being half truth and half lying. They even go as far as to doubt that history is the invention of historians and that history is often not what really happened but what is recorded as such. As it is, there is a perception that history is no more than gossip well told, giving little or nothing to the contemporary values. It is as if to say that happy is the country that has little history just as the individual who has little memory. An analogy: history is not trustworthy because it is written by the winners, referring ironically to an African proverb that "until lions have their own historians, tales of the hunt will forever glorify the hunters."
Admitting that history is not history unless it is truth, this is exactly why we must study history to search the truth about the past in order to understand the present. Thus, it is appropriate to conclude that the present is the living sum-total of the whole past and that thinking historically does not seem living half in a cemetery. The lesson: each time history repeats itself, the price goes up because apparently no one was listening the first time. (Essay created by Jeenn Lee Hsieh ielts360toefl@hotmail.com )
