If I was asked the question, "Do you think that the study of history is important?" at first I would say no. But If I really got down to thinking about it, I would probably say yes. As much as most people do not like it and find it boring, it does serve an immense purpose.
If we never study history, then we would fall into the same traps we've fallen into in the past. Learning history helps to prevents people from making the same mistakes repeatedly. If everyone just forgot our past, then we could be in another civil war today, and perhaps using nuclear bombs on ourselves. That would be a very dangerous matter.
If we do not study history, we would not have an identity. What would we call ourselves? We couldn't call ourselves Americans due to the fact that we get that name by studying history. We know what it means as a result of our history, how we got the name, and what it means to us as a country.
Although history is great knowledge for what to avoid in the future, we should not let it poison the future. The future is far more important than that of the past.
One thing I do not appreciate about history is the way it is taught in schools. I don't think the memorization of dates help near as much as putting the history into context. History should be taught as a group of connected events and I think it would have much more important to many Americans. The most important thing for history is not to learn dates but to learn what happened and WHY it happened so we can make the future the best as possible.
Without the knowledge of history we would have to relearn discoveries and all tactical warfare methods over and over. Judicial purposes are also important in history for the fact that references to past cases may help decide the verdict of the crime.
Many lives are saved due to history. There can be many discoveries alike that have been tested and people have been killed, so when similar discoveries are found the necessary precautions are taken into mind.