There is a concern about history, while some think that it is useless, others believe that this is essential knowledge to understand the present. Although it seems that history does not provide direct solutions to people’s problems, I strongly believe that it helps to understand current political and economical trends.
On the one hand, it is true that history is not practical, because history experts cannot participate in development of technologies. For instance, if the knowledge of math or physics is useful for engineering and manufacturing goods, the opposite is true for historians. Moreover, understanding of history is not complete or objective, but tends to privilege the version of events of those in power. As Winston Churchill said: “History is written by the winners”.
On the other hand, I think that knowledge of history allows people to prevent from repeating mistakes from the past. Because, people’s goals, ambitions and behavior are the same as it was hundreds of years ago. In other words, by observing the rises and falls of the ancient empires we may prognose future political conjunctures of the world. For instance, famous politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, had successfully predicted some upcoming changes in Russian political regime, based on his knowledge of the past and analytical capabilities.
To conclude, some people think that there is nothing to take from the past, as an era has changed a lot, however, I believe that history can be very helpful in understanding the present, because people’s nature often remain stable at any period of time.