Why Study History? Homework

In my experience, students very rarely sit down to think about why they are learning a particular subject or topic. With this thought in mind, we talked in class today about why history is a required course throughout your K-12 education. There are a number of different justifications for understanding the "beginning and development" of things, but what I am interested in is why YOU are studying history? What new understandings can you gain from interacting with the past?

Peter Stearns of the American Historical Society has written a very good article which describes a number of reasons why studying history is important, fun, and worthwhile.

With his article (also handed out in class), I would like you to do the following things:
1) For each reason given, write 2-3 summary sentences
2) Once you have summarized each reason, please select what you feel are the 3 most important reasons and rank them from first to third. Once you have done this, write a paragraph describing why you think it is important to study history (hint: you can use Stearns' reasons).
DUE THURSDAY, 2/4