Some people find history boring or unnecessary; people hate sitting in a classroom and hearing long lectures about things that happened hundreds of years ago. But history is essential, and I want to help show that through this next semester as a co-editor. History is more than old stories and long lectures. History shows us what there was. If you want to see where you have to go, knowing where you have been is essential.

I love history so much because of the stories that come with it. You can learn a lot from a story. History uses stories to show us a window into the past and how things used to be. We can use history to see how far we have come, how far we have fallen, or even how far we have to go. Some people try to argue that history is unimportant and that we should focus on teaching our kids STEM. But history has its place. Yes, STEM can help create amazing things to help us daily, but we must remember how they should be used. We can use history to look into the past and avoid making the same mistakes. We use history to ensure we learn from our mistakes and can improve. 

There is starting to become the argument that some conservatives use that liberals are using history to try to brainwash the youth. That is not true. The point of teaching history to children is to show the mistakes we have made in our past. Looking back at the history of anything will not necessarily be flattering, but that is not the point. We do not learn history to make ourselves feel better. We learn history to see what those before us did wrong and how we can do things better. The history of the U.S. is not flattering. We committed genocide against the Native Americans and then forced them out of their homes. We enslaved an entire group of people and then built our nation on their backs. We stifled the voices of anybody who was not a white Protestant Anglo-Saxon man. We did so much more that wasn’t very good, so we learned history. That is why we must know history: to prevent those things from happening again. 

Throughout this semester, my co-editor will make sure to remind me of the history of the country and this institution. We will be writing articles looking back through the Weather Vane archives to show what EMU used to be like and how far EMU has come and has yet to go.