One of the great mistakes of our U.S. educational system is not to give more importance to the study of history. The main reason, of course, is there are not many job opportunities, outside the field of education, requiring a serious study of history. Yet one of our finest U.S. leaders, President John F. Kennedy, majored in the field of history, and President Woodrow Wilson was a history scholar, which gave him a vision for advocating the establishment of a League of Nations-a world organization to establish world peace, an idea which the world continues to struggle with in the form of the United Nations.
History should remind us that great events have taken place in the past, and the world may be on the verge of repeating events harmful to the human race. In the 1920s there was a flu epidemic, followed by a stock market crash in 1929 that caused enormous suffering to millions of people. World War II, 1939-1945, resulted in the loss of many lives and ushered in the nuclear age. It left issues between countries still unresolved.
Are our current leaders in Washington D.C. adequately schooled in the field of history? Leaders should be helping prepare us to avoid, oppose and prevent 20th-century-type disasters. The opposite seems to be taking place. If so, where are the uninformed about history taking us?