Who Are You, To Not Know Your History? by Kale

Who Are You, To Not Know Your History? by Kale - October 2016 Scholarship Essay

Socrates once said, “There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.” As someone who appreciates learning, this couldn’t be more true. Well, I enjoy learning about things that interest me, I suppose. I would rather not dedicate a few hours to reading about the applications of drywall. However, if it is in regards to history, I will tear into an article, book, website, or any other medium in which information is spread with an unbridled voracity. It’s safe to say that I’m a history nerd. I suppose it would only be natural that I should teach it.
My father has been a teacher for a large portion of his life. Teaching kids, specifically those in high school, is his passion. He’s always told me that the best way to learn about something is to teach it. It’s a somewhat paradoxical statement. How can you teach something if you have no knowledge of it? If you analyze that statement closely, though, it does have some truths. When your main goal is try and convey a message or concept to someone, you have to boil it down to its very core and ponder it yourself to try and understand it. Once you understand it, you can serve your purpose as a teacher.
Since the best way to learn is to teach, and I’m desperate to learn all there is about the history of human civilization, then what better route to take than that of teaching history? The shameful, unfortunate truth about teachers is that the job they do isn’t deemed worthy enough to be compensated well. In spite of this, it is an invaluable profession nonetheless. The modern world would be lost without its educators. Maybe I should continue to be a teacher. I do want to learn after all. Besides that, the world needs history teachers, in my opinion, more than any other subject. “Why is this so?”, you ask. This is because of one inevitable truth. One simple fact of the human condition. Those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it. So I suppose it’s my duty to teach history, not only as a teacher, but as a “scholarly knight”, of sort. A knight who is fighting for the one good in this world, and battling the one evil. A knight who will stare into the faces of those who perpetrate ignorance and say, “who are you, to not know your history?”