Topic:Learning about the past has no value for those of us living in the present. Do you agree ordisagree? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer. I disagree wholeheartedly that learning about the past has no value for those of us living in thepresent. In fact, the definition of learning includes the idea of an accumulation of experiencesfrom the past. Learning can only take place if we make an association between things that havehappened in the past or between something in the past and something that we predict will happenin the future. All knowledge that we acquire as we grow is from the past-language, customs,academic subjects, and so on. While it may be helpful sometimes to be able to overlook previousknowledge in order to avoid the constraint conformity, the vast majority of knowledge that welearn is a huge boost-imagine if each of us had to discover by ourselves that 2 + 2 = 4! So, in avery real sense, all learning depends on past events. We are only able to live in this world with our current standard of living because we have learnedfrom the past. We receive knowledge from the past and we are able to use it and improve it. Weexamine our actions in the past and we make judgments about what was right and what waswrong. Then, it is hoped, we will attempt to avoid those same mistakes again. For example, one ofthe great mistakes all over the world has been depriving women and the disempowered classesstatus in society and many industrialized and developing countries all over the world areattempting to avoid such mistakes both in the present and in the future. Furthermore, all of the knowledge that we have today is a result of all the work of ourpredecessors. The ancient Greeks developed geometry, which helped other European scientistsanalyze the solar system, which in turn gave us a new understanding of our place in the universe.The great majority of technology today depends directly on several thousands of years of work ofpast thinkers. To ignore the knowledge of the past would be to throw away five thousand years ofhistory and experience. There is, however, some seemingly small, but important value to ignoring the past. It is often thecase that history or tradition has the effect of constraining our thought in the present and manyimportant philosophical and scientific breakthroughs have only been possible as a direct result ofignoring the past. The past, in a sense, can blind us to the truth, we can become bound bytradition. For example, at one time, leading thinkers in Europe thought that the Earth was at thecenter of the universe and those who disagreed were persecuted as heretics, even Copernicus,who we now know was correct about his heliocentric model of the Solar System. However,scientists were eventually able to break from the past and accept the new model of the universe. In short, learning from and analyzing the past has enormous value for us and life as we know it onEarth today would not be possible without the benefit of thousands of years of history andaccumulated knowledge. It is important, however, to ignore the past so that we can make a stepforward, and such free thinking should be encouraged, although not at the expense of pastknowledge. Learning from the past is something like learning from our parents-in most cases, theirpast helps us have a better future, but there are times when we need to make a break from thepast and make a bold step into an unknown future. belgesi-2740