In just a few days, I will be starting my second year of college. Two years ago, if you had asked me what I wanted to study in college, I would have told you international business. The truth is, I was still trying to decide. While all of my friends and classmates seemed to have the rest of their lives figured out already, I was still struggling to decide on mine. Eventually, after careful deliberations and more than a few late night discussions with my parents, I decided to study history with a teaching track instead.

History had always been my favorite subject throughout school. While many of my friends merely saw it as another part of the day they had to sit through, I looked forward to it. If I wasn’t watching cartoons, I was most likely watching the History Channel. Half of the books that line the walls of my room have something to do with history. From American to European to Ancient, I just couldn’t seem to get enough history.

So, as a person who has loved history his whole life and has only recently begun to study it in-depth, I would like to say something to people who believe the erasure of history is OK to do. Stop. Stop tearing down monuments. Stop desecrating grave sites. Stop denying the facts. And most importantly, stop brutally scrutinizing anyone who holds an opinion other than your own. If there’s one thing that everyone should take away from the study of history, it's that every individual holds opinions and views unique to themselves. If everyone held the same uniform beliefs, then there wouldn’t be much history to learn about!

While I am not writing this now to hold a debate, I believe that free and open debates are the only way for people to solve disagreements over historical subjects. History is not a cut-and-dry subject like math or science. It is always open to interpretation, open to the input of new viewpoints. This is what makes the subject so unique and amazing. Historical events that have been studied for hundreds of years are still put under the scrutiny of researching eyes. Events once thought fictional can be proved to be fact, and events thought fact can be proved to be fictional.

I believe that history is one of the most, if not the most, subjects to learn about in school. Not necessarily because it will facilitate a person’s entrance into the workforce or help them get into college or anything like that. It is because our history is a part of our lives. Historical events are not just one-dimensional happenings that you read about in a textbook, disconnected from any relevance in modern life. They are the very things that shaped modern life into what it is today. We must continue to strive to learn about and understand our history, the good and the awful parts.

Instead of smashing that memorial to bits why don’t we teach our children about what it is commemorating and why it is worth remembering. Instead of toppling that statue why don’t we teach people about the real human being that it portrays, and not the sugar-coated myth that so many historical figures seem to become. I know this is a worn out cliche by now, but, if history is forgotten, then we risk repeating the same mistakes we’ve already made again.