I want to ask you, the reader, a question. Do you personally think you have learned from history? Really think about it. Try to find a specific example that has actively influenced your day-to-day life or how you see the world. Keep that in mind, and try to think more about the world in general. Do you think the lesson you learned is being applied across the world, and how?  

You will find that 9 times out of 10, lessons from history aren’t globally applied. While many countries make very consistent efforts to try and correct past mistakes and make laws or legislation to avoid them in the future, many countries and politicians make the exact same mistakes that are seen in high school history books. 

But why is this? Why does it seem that people who are in power often make the same mistakes that have been historically made, expecting a different outcome? I interviewed Mr. Kibler, the AP US History teacher at Hazelwood West, to find a clarifying answer. 

I started by asking him if he believed we actually learned from history. Kibler responded, “I mean, I think we learned from all events just temporarily… So, we learned from the Great Depression, but in a generation, we’ve forgotten those lessons, and then we started to whittle away at protections.” 

I then asked if he believed that high school history classes were effective at educating students on these events and their impact on the world. Kibler responded, “Not as much as it could be… I think when most of that deeper thought would occur is at a college level, but half of the population does not go to college.” 

My Interview with Kibler was brief but deeply insightful into an educator’s mindset on this complex topic. So why do we keep repeating history? Reflecting what Kibler said, citizens seem to forget how bad something was and have trouble relaying that onto their children or grandchildren often leading to events being downplayed or entire parts of it being forgotten to time. But the United States also has history classes that don’t give that deep insight into history and have students make the connections between history and our current society. 

So, how can the American populace properly educate themselves and others about history? By enhancing our current systems to focus less on the memorization of certain dates and names, we should more closely examine how and why certain events happen. This would enable citizens at a young age to develop a better understanding of the events, see similarities in situations now, and intervene.