▶ Your Answer :
"A
nation that forgets its past has no future."
This
saying emphasizes the importance of history. We cannot overemphasize history
education in this context. Various opinions may exist over the argument that
all university students should be required to take history courses. In case of
Korea, history courses have already been designated as a requirement in high
school and also in university entrance examination but they are not mandatory in
university. However, I think it is also necessary to have history classes to be
required in universities for several reasons which are 1) to learn lessons and
2) to identify ourselves.
To
begin with, people can and should learn from past. People try to analyze the
cause of failure whenever they fail or make mistake to reach goal. This
tendency of people has happened in any field such as sports, business, study
and so on. These analyses come from past actions so, it is important that
people reflect on their past mistakes. Though both Germany and Japan were war
criminals, their movements are completely opposite in the way they deal with
past history. Germany has still apologized sincerely since the end of the
Second World War. Moreover, through a thorough history education, they reflect
on their previous generation’s past and make clear that they will not commit
such a mistake in the future again. On the other hand, Japan has been trying to
shield their past fault far from looking at what they did wrong. They have been
continuing distorting and decreasing history education. Owing to these
attitudes toward their past history, they have been in conflict with various
countries even now. If they keep covering up history, they cannot improve their
level anymore and cannot go into the future.
Another
reason is that history is really important in terms of national identity. In
many countries, colonial nations had not had a history education because
history forms a country’s identity. For example, when Japan had ruled Korea by
colony, Japan implemented a policy to obliterate the Korean nation. Regarding
education policy, Japan banned the education of Hangul – Korean language and
Korean history. Korean were not able to neither learn history nor do research
on history. Japan knew well that a country’s culture including language and history
can set its national identity.
I
think it had better provide for university students the history courses which
make students have various perspectives toward the world as well as on history
whereas it had better provide for students under high school the history
education oriented knowledge. For all there may be differences in method of
education, I believe my explanations above sufficiently prove the advantages of
making history courses compulsory in university. First, we can draw a lesson
from our past and second, we can deeply know our identity from history. Hence,
in order for people to acquire these benefits, making history required in
university undoubtedly is a better decision.
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