Is learning about the past useful

Is learning about the past useful?
Nowadays, someone holds the opinion that learning about the past
has no value for those of us living in the present. This statement is
radically wrong. On the contrary, people living in the present can
learn no more from anywhere else than from the past.
The most valuable things one should learn from the history is
politics, and this is why so many statesmen are familiar with history.
Our society ran and is running in exactly the same way. Those
events, such as great depression, financial crisis, and warfare, will
show
up just as they did before. Recalling the history, one can find
experience as well as lessons, from which one can tell right
countermeasures from wrong ones. Actually, history is the most
vivid textbook; from nowhere other than history can a statesman
living in the present learn more about how to handle.
Not merely for the statesmen is the information from the past useful.
As an ordinary individual, one can also learn many from the past.
Since ones childhood, he/she should have heard about a lot of
anecdotes of celebrities. These interesting stories infused various
characteristics, virtue, integrity, and courage, into the bottom of ones
heart. These stories are much more lively than just interpretations.
There might also be such stories in our daily life, but to a child, an
interesting story happened on a celebrity always seems more
convincible.
It is for these reasons that people study history. History is the best
candidate that can show us right and wrong, true and false, good and
bad. Learn from the past, one can learn more than he has expected.