▶ Your Answer :
Some people might think that mandatory history classes would negatively affect university students. However, in my opinion, taking compulsory history courses is beneficial. The reasons are that students can be more competitive and they can prevent hazard in the future based on historical viewpoint.
To begin with, knowledge of additional academic field would help students competitive. It is required for people to have a wide variety of knowledge rather than deep knowledge of one specific area. Nowadays, a person with a great amount of knowledge is regarded as 'a personal of intelligence'. On the other hand, those who have no knowledge and interest in various fields might simply be ignored. In order to stand out in this world of endless competition, people ought to learn history. For example, a friend of mine was an aspiring journalist and decided to apply for one of the prestigious broadcasting station. She had to take a writing test that requires the applicants' general interest in various fields. The questions varied from asking about the recent Nobel prize winner to writing about a specific person who greatly influenced the Korean peninsula in 18th century. My friend was puzzled by the question because she was majoring in business management, and had nothing to do with history. As a result, she failed the test and had to take it again. From this anecdote, learning history in university would be of great help.
On top of that, learning history can make people cope with crisis in the future. Everyone is aware that we cannot predict what the future is going to be. However, we can at least refer to what happened in the past and prepare unfavorable consequence in the future. For example, there was a financial crisis in South Korea in 1997. According to a news report that I read recently, I found out that one of the main causes was extravagance of Korean civilians. They tended to spend money excessively on luxury goods just to boast themselves to others. Based on historical approach, experts in economics alerts people not to waste money exorbitantly, as we experienced the crisis before. In this way, students can prepare future crisis of country or their own by looking at the past.
To sum up, people can stand out by learning history. Moreover, students can prepare for the future. In this regard, I strongly believe that mandatory history courses will be of great help for students.
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