anti-history+essay

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Dear Fellow Sixth Grader,

Here we are you and I. The sun is shining, the weather is beautiful; but here we sit scribbling endlessly on paper and jabbering away like parrots about ancient Egypt while the world outside passes us by. History and more history, and then books about people in history. //“History is bunk!”// the famous inventor Henry Ford once claimed. What Ford meant to say was that history isn’t really anything important. I completely agree. We should not waste our precious time studying it. Get out in the world. Work out your own ideas. Learn from experience. Do things –

-- give me a minute, let me explain.

You have heard Mrs. Geib explain that scientists claim that some 20,000 years ago our “earth mother” helped to create the agricultural revolution that, more than anything else, kept us homo sapiens from finally starving away like the Neanderthals. The production of wheat and other crops contributed to give us cities, laws, religion, literature – the innovation and specialization of labor that gave us so much human “progress.” The Egyptians then added advances such as the study of medicine, the lunar calendar, papyrus (paper), and many grand architectural landmarks that exist to this day. Hatshepsut and Ramses the Great were famous pharaohs centuries after their deaths. Closer to home, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson helped to win our nation’s independence and then create a stable republic. Abraham Lincoln helped to save the republic in our great civil war. They accomplished great feats, and we rightly still sing their praises.

But what are we doing here? Listening, reading, writing, sitting in our desks – hearing about the past, listening to the teacher go on and on about people dead long ago. If we were ourselves “great,” we would get out of chairs, flee this classroom, and actively do something. If we were great, we would not be in school. We would be doing something worth remembering.

Look at the following statistics from the Centers for Disease Control:
 * Childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and tripled in adolescents in the past 30 years.1, 2
 * The percentage of children aged 6–11 years in the United States who were obese increased from 7% in 1980 to nearly 18% in 2010. Similarly, the percentage of adolescents aged 12–19 years who were obese increased from 5% to 18% over the same period.1, 2
 * In 2010, more than one third of children and adolescents were overweight or obese.1

A major reason why so many young Americans are overweight and unhealthy is because they do not get enough exercise. They sit around hour after hour on their behinds and look at digital pixels on various screens (cell phone, computer monitor, flat screen TVs, etc.) and lead a sedentary life. Isn’t that what we are doing right now? What do we almost always do at school? What occupies a big chunk of our youth, school? Listening, reading, and writing (ie. school). Instead we could go outside and run and play! But we stay inside are told to sit down and be quiet. This is a major cause of obesity that contributes to the diabetes epidemic in America nowadays. Our unhealthy lifestyle leads to heart attacks and a whole host of other often fatal ailments. It might be that we are the first generation of Americans to live shorter and more unhealthy lives than our parents. It goes back to our lifestyle.

Furthermore, our environment is at risk like at no other time in our planet’s history. According to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, average temperatures on our planet have climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit around the world since 1880, much of this in recent decades as our factories and cars bellow exhaust into the atmosphere. Human created pollution is heating up the planet through “global warming” while we bubble in answer sheets and fill out worksheets. And this rate of warming is increasing -- the 20th century's last two decades were the hottest in 400 years and possibly the warmest for several millennia, according to a number of climate studies. Why don’t we go outside and plant a garden, create a compost lot, and recycle trash? Instead we read about cavemen and write about plot cycles. Whole species of animals go extinct and entire countries may perish through climate change, but in school we worry about grades and test scores.

History, and almost everything else we do in school, really is bunk. We should change it all. Or else we should just not go to school anymore.

Sincerely, Joe Student