There are an ongoing debate over it is important to understand the past in order to handle problems of the present and future. Personally, I disagree with this idea for the following reasons. First, it is not useful because the development of technology is significant. Second, it is a considerable waste of time.
To begin with, advance in technology make the studying of the past impractical. This is because we did not have state-of-the-art implements such as a car and a computer in the past. For example, at the beginning of my first semester in college, I had a problem to solve my assignment in physics because I had to send a e-mail to a professor. In order to solve the problem, I asked my parents since they has lived longer and understood the past better than me. However, they did not know about a computer, not to mention e-mails. Finally, I went through hard time and failed to send e-mail, and thus my grade was so bad. As my experience illustrates, it is not a desirable way to solve problems because we cannot find everything through the past.
In addition, studying the past has a negative impact on time. As society becomes rapidly changing, we have to make more of an effort to keep up with current ideas and fashion. In this context, if we try just to learn the past, we cannot set aside hours to deal with the current issues such as astronomy, a global-warming problem, and cutting-edge science. According to a research conducted by Seoul National University in 2009, more than 70% the respondents answered they studied ancient histories to solve today's problems. Unfortunately, the study pointed out that they lost much of their time to deal with others such as a car, a light bulb. In this sense, learning the past can act as a detergent that keeps people from spend time on others.
In brief, I frimly believe that it is insignificant to learn about past. Not only do people lead to not solving new technology, but people also waste their time. |