History is something that is important to study and learn from; this is true for several reasons. one reason is that one should know his own origins if he is to know himself. When Americans learn United States history, they are learning the roots to their identity and culture; the founding fathers of this country are part of that identity. The same is true with Mexico; the Aztecs and the Mexican revolutions are part of the identity of that particular country as well.
A second reason to learn study history is to protect one’s self from misinformation. It so happens that there is a lot of false history that I have run across, and I have also seen several people fall for it. An example of faked history is that Christopher Columbus was the first to say that that world is round; it never happened. There is also the Movie Zeitgeist which is full of demonstrably false historical claims as any research will show. There are other more serious examples which I will detail since there are too many.
A final reason to study history is to learn from the mistakes of the past. Not learning leaves us ignorant and vulnerable to repeating the the past. Some could say that today we have not learned the lessons of the Vietnam War, for example, and that would be why we arguably have made the same mistakes more recently.