Blog #27 – Is History True?
“The use of history lies in its capacity for advancing the approach to truth” – Oscar Handlin, Pulitzer-Prize winning historian
One of the biggest questions that we will encounter as amatuer historians in APUSH is how to tackle the changing nature of history. One camp emphasizes an analytical approach to history, looking at truth as objectively as possible. This camp sees truth as absolute and knowable, and that a scientific approach towards writing history is the best way to do it. Wilhelm von Humboldt explained that the historian’s job was “to present what actually happened.” The idea here is that, regardless of the time period that the reader lives in (say in 1950 or 2011), specific events occurred and people lived and did certain things. For instance, we should be able to say with certainty that the Civil War did happen.
Problems come from a historian’s bias and perspective. Attaining objectivity is the ultimate goal – examining history without looking at it from a political bias or sharing opinions on what the facts mean. Depending on an historian’s bias, for instance, he/she can argue that slavery caused the Civil War or economics or states’ rights. To be clear, historians cannot fall under the pressure of government, media, schools, or corporations to steer history to fit a certain mold or predetermined outcome. Revisionist history has been used by dictators to rewrite history that fits their needs and to reinforce their regimes.
“History will be kind to me,for I intend to write it” – Winston Churchill
The other camp feels a bit different about history. It feels that “objective” history is impossible because even when objective historians work at assembling their narrative, they have to choose facts, put them in a certain order, exclude other facts (because you can’t put them all in, can you, or are they all even relevant?), they exercise some kind of bias, no matter how slight or small. Otherwise, the history becomes a catalog of facts, almost like an encyclopedia with little to no interpretation. “In order to become a history, facts have to be put together into a pattern that is understandable and credible; and when that has been achieved, the resulting portrait of the past may become useful as well.”
Creating history, much like living, is like filtering through the multiple input of stimuli that swarm around us. Like a natural scientist, a historian searches for patterns whether they know it or not. If too many facts are included, “useless clutter” will obscure that pattern that the historian sees.
Another criticism of the objective school of history is that much of it has excluded the stories of those who had been marginalized by the march of white male history. This group has included African-American, Latino, Asian, Native-American and women’s stories. Plus, if new evidence is discovered of untold stories (say ship manifests of slave vessels or diaries of important or even average people), what should be done with those new stories? How should they be told? What if new evidence emerges after someone dies, like how a former states’ rights, pro-segregation U.S. Senator (white man) had fathered a child with an African American woman?
Your questions:
1. Which school of history – objective or revisionist – best seems to represent the truth? Why?
2. Which do you think is more important to history – making it relevant to the reader / viewer or getting the facts straight and telling it right? Can you do both? Why or why not?
Minimum of 250 words total for both answers. Due Thursday, Dec. 8 (new date).
1. Which school of history – objective or revisionist – best seems to represent the truth? Why?
The best view of History comes from the objective point of view. The object point of view shows history in a credible way and attempts to make it relevant to the reader. Unlike the revisionist school of history Historians try not to base history of their own personal biases and opinions. Also Historians of the objective school do not right bend the truth to cover up their wrongdoings and mistakes, and make them look good. Also in Revisionist History Important events or facts may be left out or changed to sound more appealing to the historian writing it. But there are also some problems with the objective school of history most of it has been written by Caucasian men. The African American, female, Asian, Native American and Latino point of view has not been recorded. That is changing today as there are many new historians of different race and gender entering the field. Also even through Historians try not to throw their own bias’s in their writing they still tend do because they have to use their own judgment to put facts in an understandable order and make it relevant to the readers. In the school of Objective history, Historians are constantly looking for facts and putting them in patterns knowingly or not. While revisionist historians make patterns that make themselves look good. All and all the objective way of history is the way to go because the Historians try to tell readers what actually happened and when it took place unlike the Revisionist way of History.
2. Which do you think is more important to history – making it relevant to the reader / viewer or getting the facts straight and telling it right? Can you do both? Why or why not?
In History it is more important to give the reader straight facts and tell them what actually happened because readers want what their reading to be correct. Making the reading relevant to ready is also important but in the end the truth matters more. It is possible to make the history relevant and true. Also telling the truth is important because you don’t want to mislead people and have them thinking false information. You can give true information and make it relevant to the reader by showing how certain events or people affect the readers directly or indirectly. For an example you can say that the revolutionary war happened and if it didn’t happen then the United States of America wouldn’t be the great, free, diverse country that it is today. The truth is the way to go also if you try to make it relevant to a ready it might only be relevant to certain people and irrelevant to other people.
To say one side is right would be completely wrong. All of history is important and should be taught at some point or another, and I think that is the responsibility of the school to figure out when we learn something, but remember the school does not have the opportunity to teach all of it, mostly because for more than half of our time at school, we are too young and immature to understand and take in most, if any, of the information. But then the question comes, who decides what we learn in that time we can comprehend what is taught while we are in school? Well, I think it should be the historians. They know the history, so they know what is most important for us to know to make a better future for us and the world, because as we all know, history repeats itself, and it is the job of whoever it is that decides what we learn that that we learn what we need so that history does not happen, that we don’t make the same mistake as our ancestors. That is why I think that it is important to know the untwisted, unfiltered, unbiased, whole truth. Because if we are taught bias, then we become bias, and I think that is going in the opposite direction of how the school system, at least here, wants us to think. So bottom line, it should be a group of historians that chose what we learn and the school system decides when we learn it.
1. I think objectives represent the truth better than revisionists because objectives tell the basic story but just the pretty side of the story. Not the bad and the ugly. Revisionists portray history in a selfish manner, not out of the good of their heart; they want people to remember them and only them in history. Objectives portray history without telling the whole story because they want the future readers to not see their ancestors in a bad light. Which is understandable but in the end everything gets uncovered and I rather that somebody misconstrued history because they want people to have pride in their country not because they want people to see things the way they want people to see things.
2. I think making history relevant to a reader is more important because people like to read about adventures and myths. And people who are into reading and history ca uncover the lies and find out the truth just by having the basic knowledge of historical events. You can make history relevant and get the facts straight if you’re honest with yourself and you have a concern for the people you affect by not having an honest story. But the whole point of history is to discover more and if we knew everything about our ancestors’ past with every single detail history wouldn’t be interesting. I mentioned earlier people like myths and myths wouldn’t exist if everyone who retold history had all the facts straight, kids wouldn’t have an imagination.
1. The school of history that is best for representing the cold, hard facts would be the objective. However, as new facts arise, what recorded history says will have to be changed because of what has arisen. Thus, it is most likely that the revisionist representation of history is the more truthful, for revisionist history is a compilation of ALL histories that exist. For all intents and purposes, United States history will be used as any examples. In American revisionist history, African American, Native American, etc. will be used to create a history as seen from all sides. Despite the use of revisionist history being used by dictators and objective history being very hard to relate to, a combination of both schools would create the best history.
2. The most important thing for history to do is tell the truth, not relate to the reader. However, it is possible for history to relate to the reader of it and tell the cold, hard facts. History is there to be interpreted by the reader so the reader can think as to what could have happened to prevent something bad or a better solution to the one reached. The cold, hard facts allow someone to learn how something happened and prevent it from happening again. Also, if every history would relate to every reader, there would be too many versions of history to find which one is the actual truth. That is because every person is different in at least one way. The perfect account of history would represent the facts and relate to as many readers of it as possible.
1. I feel like objective history best represents what really occurred in the history. The
smaller bias used by objective history writers would make the information they say more true to what really occurred. In the piece it states that “Revisionist history has been used by dictators to rewrite history that fits their needs and to reinforce their regimes”. This quote shows that revisionist history changes what really occurred. You cannot believe something that has been changed to support what somebody thinks. The only way to get a real story is by being told it with little to no bias used in the story telling. In the piece it also states “Attaining objectivity is the ultimate goal – examining history”. The piece supports that fact that history is best truthfully told through objectivity. History wouldn’t be told well because someone may revise it making the history untruthful to what really occurred because if I want to sound good instead of saying the truth “I rear-ended the car because I wasn’t paying attention” you could say a revisionist side which would be like “I rear-ended the car because they cut me off and slowed down”.
2. My opinion is that getting the facts straight and telling it right is the best way to tell history. By changing history you will not inform someone who is trying to learn history what really happened. Even though it makes history more interesting when it is relevant to you interesting doesn’t matter if it isn’t the truth. I think you can tell history the way it happened and make it relevant to the reader by relating history to what is occurring to people now. History tends to repeat itself so there is probably an event similar to what occurred in history to what is happening now. History should be told in a relevant way to the reader but if it can’t be there is no point to lie about history just to make the history relevant, you should get the truth across and then if you can make it relevant to the reader
1. The objective history seems to represent the truth better than the revisionist history. In objective history, people tend to believe that one overall event happened at a certain time or place and that cannot be argued one way or the other. But, every person might have their own interpretation on how that event occurred, what the causes were, and what the effects of the event were. In objective, they include facts, because they believe that once you have all the facts, the real truth behind that certain part of history will rise to the surface. Revisionists, on the other hand, think in a very different way. They believe that in order to learn, or write, about a topic, there is no way you can’t have a bias or an opinion. So, when revisionists write history, they give a bias already built in to their pieces. But, objective forms their bias, or opinion, after they have already gotten all the facts.
2. I think that making history relevant to the reader and getting the facts straight are both very important to history. You need the history to be relevant to the reader because you are trying to keep them interested in what you’re trying to get across. But, getting the facts straight is an aspect that is slightly more important to history than making history relevant. If you don’t have the correct facts then whoever is reading your historical findings is going to get the wrong idea about certain events in history. A great historical source has the facts straight, and keeps the reading interested by making the writing relevant to them.
1. The school of history that I believe foremost represents the truth is objective. The reason I believe this is because history should be told having cold hard facts on what actually happened. Not have the facts be interpreted like the revisionist. The reason are because when your looking up a topic you are not looking for something to have some main facts but not everything. Also when you interpreted information it may not always be faithful. They mix around the truth, so you really don’t have any idea which statements have been mixed around and which statements are the cold hard truth. Also when a historian is bias on a subject, than the reader can start to think like the historian and be bias on the subject as well. Which makes people not believe in there own right judgment. Hence there not getting the truth out of what there reading and getting someones mixed up facts that they have interpreted. Which is contrasting from objective to revisionist because objective does not interrupted any of the facts all they do is take good hard facts, and don’t mix them around so you know that you are getting the truth. Also the objective school is not bias because they use facts to tell history truthfully. No matter what place or time period we are in.
2. What I believe is more essential to history is getting the cold hard facts and telling them right. I believe this because when it comes to history you have to be able to know exactly what happened in order to understand it. And that’s why the cold hard facts need to be given out. Not making it relevant to the reader. Plus even if you do try to make it relevant to the reader not only one person will be reading about history, there will be a assortment of people and you cant make history relevant to everyone. I also believe that you can not have both, and the reason is because the first time you try to make it relevant to someone that’s when your mixing around the facts, therefore defeating the purpose of just giving out straight facts. That’s why I believe that you have to give out straight facts and not make the reading relevant to the reader in history. And Also why you can not have both in the same story when you are talking about history.
I feel that objective history best represents the truth compared to revisionist history because when many people write about history, they allow their own analytical thoughts and perspectives on things and ideas to be shown in their ideas shown in their writing. This may result in the leaning onto one side of a topic and practically doing most of the thinking for the reader. Instead, I believe the audience should be able to interpret the facts and come to their own conclusions on their own so that their thoughts are not influenced by the works that they are reading. Even word choice, organization, and what authors leave in or out of their works can influence the reader’s ideas which may not always be moral or correct to others or even the reader before they read the prose. When an idea is planted in a mind, it is hard to get rid of it- for example, if parents raise a kid with racism present in their thoughts and speech, it is assumed that the child will also have racist thoughts, no matter how big or small. This can be the same with history, so therefore, history should only present the facts to let the readers decide the truth without any other influence.
It is more important that history gets the facts right and “tells it right” compared to making it applicable to the reader’s own time and life because history can be interpreted in many ways, and the reader should be able to independently think for themselves. For example, if a text compares the Trail of Tears to colleges expelling students for plagiarism, the audience will only learn one side of that (terrible) event in history. Had they instead only presented all of the facts which could prompt a reader to make their own connection, one could freely connect this event to the Holocaust in World War II if they pleased. While learning from our past to improve our future is important, we live in a society where people are free to think for themselves, a society where the transcendentalist’s questioning mind is welcome. To both make a piece of history relevant to the reader while getting all of the facts straight is a very hard thing to do if it is even completely possible, but I feel that history texts should prompt the reader to think about a piece of history and apply it and what has been learned from it to his or her life. By intentionally making a prose of history relevant to a reader, a writer may leave out certain facts or accidentally show their own stance on something, which could affect the reader’s interpretation of something; something that is not necessarily wrong, but I feel does not belong when informing a reader on a piece of history.
1. In my opinion, objective school represent the truth in a better way even though it’s not ideal. Objective school emphasizes the importance of stating facts, things that actually happened, and tells us about real people who lived at that particular time. It can’t be totally objective though, because the historian may choose not to include certain facts, or present his story from the view of white male and ignore the facts that may be interpreted differently by minorities. Revisionist school does not seem to represent the truth better than objective school because representatives of this school include their personal opinions in addition to the facts, and often were known as re-writing history based on needs of dictators – to reinforce their political regimen. Even though both schools are not ideal, it seems like sticking to the actual facts tells us better truth then facts mixed with personal opinions.
2. I believe that it is important to learn history based on the straight facts and to let people decide how and if it is relevant to them. While the opinion of the writer is important and may show historical facts from different points of view and perspectives, writers’ opinions may be biased for many reasons. It is possible to learn history both ways – getting the straight facts and getting facts relevant to the reader, but only if both ways are available for learning, and the reader makes his or her own conclusions after studying both.
I think that objective history best represents the truth because there is no bias. The objective school states only the true facts exactly how they happened without the influence of anyone’s personal opinion or prejudice. This means that the readers or viewers can interpret history based on their opinion and beliefs to argue their own point. With revisionist history whoever writes about it will incorporate their opinion and interpretation of what really happened. By doing this they can influence the opinion of the reader or viewer to be closer to their own. The more people who do that, the farther the story gets from what really happened, and the facts become blurred. Objective history is more accurate than revisionist history because it is only facts without the influence of anyone’s personal opinion.
I think that it is more important that history be told right based on facts instead of one side or another of any particular story. That way the viewer or reader can choose which side they think is right. But if the reader or viewer wants to read about how a particular person or group of people saw the events, then they might want to read history from their point of view, instead of just the basic facts. I do think that you can tell the facts while still making it relevant to the reader or viewer. To do so you still need to tell all the important details but only on a specific subject. I think that it is important to get the facts right before anything else, but making it relate to the reader or viewer definitely could not hurt.
1. In my opinion, I feel that the objective school of history best tells the truth with the facts that they have. One part of the blog states that “Revisionist history has been used by dictators to rewrite history that fits their needs and to reinforce their regimes”, which tells me that anybody can come and change the written history to fit their opinion on the event. Objective history states the facts and only the facts with no wavering opinions in between. Objective history lets us formulate our own opinions about the event without the bias opinions used in the revisionist approach to history. In the objective approach, historians try to give all of the facts to show the real ‘Truth’. Their main goal is so rid history of the bias opinions and reveal this so called ‘truth’. Even by leaving some small facts out, I don’t think that will take away from the big picture of the particular event.
2. I think that getting the facts straight is more important that making history relevant to us. After reading the facts we are able to make our own opinions and choose our own sides, making it possible to have both true facts and an opinion, making it relevant to ourselves. Before we can make opinions, however, we do need some true facts without a bias opinion, therefore the facts should be the most important part of history. Making history relevant to the reader may change the story and make the history less ‘true’. People should form their own opinions based on the true facts provided.
1.) In my personal opinion, the objective school of history represents the truth in its thorough entirety. The revisionist view, while credible to some extent, does not fully illustrate the events of the past. The objective historians focus on presenting the facts and the facts alone when writing about history. They feel that the truth is concrete and unchanging. I agree. I think that history should be written as it happened, without bias and opinionated authors, so that then the reader can form their own interpretations and feelings toward the text. A historian’s job is to tell what happened and leave it to the reader to from personal opinions.
2.) I think it is more important to history to get the true facts and telling the stories of the past how they happened. The only way to learn about the past is to get the undeniable facts, events, quotes etc. and then form your own conclusions about what happened. If history were to be written from only one perspective, then it is practically impossible to get the full story. In history, ignorance is far from bliss; in fact, the most devastating occurrence in history and in learning is not getting the full picture.
While I do feel that history ought to be completely unbiased and only contain the facts, I think that this is an utterly unrealistic goal. The truth of the matter is that no matter how skilled or even possibly unbiased a historian is, it is simply human nature to have a personal opinion about something, resulting in a filtration of facts and selective wording. In short, I think that in history’s case, getting the raw facts is more important; however, the attainment of completely unbiased information is, for the most part, completely unrealistic.
1. Which school of history – objective or revisionist – best seems to represent the truth? Why?
Obviously, the objective school of history represents the truth best. Simply because it is the truth. The revisionist school of history molds history around preconceived notions and social biases destroying the true integrity of history and slowly breaking away the true foundation of all that is history. It holds true to its morals, but at the cost of education and knowledge. One can’t talk about history while putting specific groups on a pedestal. Modern Germany–the most stable country in the European Union, possibly the world–holds itself to a high standard, but they also recognize their great failures (namely, both Wars to End All Wars). In schools, they teach about both World Wars in excruciating detail, with the idea of: “How could we as a country let this happen? How could we try to destroy the stability of Africa and Europe using warfare and torture? How could we impose the horror of the third Reich on the world?” If they were to teach history in schools saying, “In 1915, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, we combined with Austria. Blah, blah, blah, and then by 1945, we had a lot of debt to pay off and Germany split up between East and West Germany.” That would be ludicrous! To manipulate history in order to make the past seem like something it isn’t is immoral, egregious, and outright horrible. The idea that there can be a history with absolutely no biases is wrong, that must be conceded; but the idea that you can take history with many sides, is even more wrong. Obviously only the future can show us the truth of the past, but that will only be told in time.
2. Which do you think is more important to history – making it relevant to the reader / viewer or getting the facts straight and telling it right? Can you do both? Why or why not?
Getting the facts straight and telling history correctly is definitely more important to history than making it relevant to the reader/viewer. What is important to a history class in a school is very different than what is good for the actual subject of history as an area of knowledge and learning. In a school, it is more important to make it relevant to the reader so that way the students will learn the material better. But if one focuses too hard on making history relatable and easily learned, important details may be lost and future knowledge will have gaps because of fault on the historian’s part. Depending on who is listening, doing both is possible. One can always do both, but not necessarily successfully. A student who is very interested in history and remembers facts easily probably could do both and succeed. But history does not come easily to all students. So in order for most students to learn the material, history must be presented in a fashion more relevant to them.
1. In my opinion, the revisionist school of history seems to represent the truth. The fact that the objective school rules out stories from minority groups means that we could just be reading about stories from privileged, racist white men who want to make themselves like the good guy. When some stories are taken out, that means we can never know the entirety of the truth. If we lack truth from an objective perspective, then revisionist ideology is what can be considered “truth.”
2. Some parts of history are considered definite. We know when presidents were elected, when important figures were assassinated and so on. At some point, though, history should be able to connect with the reader and tell the truth from many point-of-views. I think history can combine facts and personal stories at times, but most of the time it is centered around what we “really know.” When dealing with history in a class, it is probably most important to get the facts clear and straight, because we will later be tested on them. But, when one gets into an opinionated discussion outside of schooling, it might be important to consider the various views and stories from oppressed groups of people, and to accept bias or different accounts.
1.) I think that the school of revisionist best seems to represent the truth. I think that this school represents the truth because they explain that the only job that a historian has is to “tell what actually happened.” They examine history as how it actually happened without looking from a political bias or sharing their very own ideas about it. In my personal opinion I believe that this school is just more up front about what they are talking about, and they focus on the facts and what actually happened instead of their own opinions on the subject.
2.) I feel that getting the facts straight to the reader is more important when you are learning about history. When you learn about history and how things were back in the day, you want to know what actually happened. There are certain parts of history that are not relevant to people, but they still know it and what it is all about. Yes it is important to make it relevant to the reader, but getting the facts straight is a lot more important. If you get the facts wrong than you are the one to blame. You could change a person’s view on something, based on something that you said that is completely wrong. In most cases I don’t think that you can make it both relevant to the reader and get the facts straight. In some cases you might be able to base on who the reader is, but you can’t make history relevant to every person, and you most certainly can’t control everyone’s thought about the truth
1.The objective school best seems to represent the crooked truth that is our United States history. Even though historians try to be objective, it is their job to choose the facts that they will include, and the ideas that they will dismiss. This makes it quite possible to throw away valuable pieces of information that America will never know. Although staying impartial is critical, there will always be a bit of bias in any historian’s work. Without a certain poetic tone, the piece would read like a dictionary, strictly defining people and events, leaving readers disenchanted with the topic they are presented with. Historians try to paint the pretty picture. Romanticizing the beauty and wonder that no one’s eyes will ever see again, trying to casually shy away from the dreary distant past. History is all up to interpretation, will you be fascinated with the pretty picture, or will you gaze in between the lines?
2. I believe that getting the facts straight and telling history right is more important then making it relevant to the reader. Students spend all this time trying to understand history. They stay up late hoping to understand the struggles of westward expansion, or spend hours reading pages on pages in their books. So what is the point of learning this if it isn’t true? Making history relevant to the reader, once again, leaves places for bias and can leave out crucial details. Telling the facts straight up allows for the reader to draw their own conclusions, and make their own opinions about events, facts, and people; ignoring the historian’s opionions.
1.
I think that the objective school of history best seems to represent the truth. The objective historians see the truth as absolute and knowable. Also they think that the scientific approach towards writing history is the best way to do it. The revisionist school of history rewrites the history so that it fits their needs and reinforces their rules. I don’t think you should be able to rewrite history. If you are rewriting history, then you are excluding information and just using the info that you need to reinforce your rules. The Objective school of history believes that there is only one way to interpret history, by finding the truth. I think they are correct because there shouldn’t be more ways to interpret the history otherwise it wouldn’t be the truth. When people interpret the history in more than one way, and then write about it in another way I think that it is an opinion and is no longer history. The Objective school of history best represents the truth.
2.
I think getting the facts straight and telling it right is more important to history. History is the study of past events. When writing history you are writing about what happened in the past. In order to learn the information correctly you should tell it right. You shouldn’t be able to rewrite and change what happened, just to make it relevant to the reader. When changing the information you are no longer writing about the truth. I think there is a way to do both, tell it right and make it relevant to the reader. You can make it relevant to the reader by adding more information and facts. You can add interesting details and facts that would be related to the reader. When adding more information or facts, it shouldn’t change anything. You would still be writing about the truth just writing more details that are relevant to the reader.
1. The objective school of history seems to best represent the truth. This is because objectivists write history without taking into account any moods or opinions, but does take into account some of the historian’s bias towards certain events. Also, the objectivists take into account the peasants, poor people, soldiers, and other unremarkable people’s accounts of events rather than the great people that the revisionists put more faith in. The revisionist school of history puts more stake into the pressure that historians feel about certain subjects rather than facts and accounts from people. The objectivists believe that all of history can be approached in a scientific manner, which seems to be the biggest advantage into reading objectivist history; there are no people, ethnic groups or countries singled out. This means you are able to get the most perspectives of history, which gives the reader the most information about the subject.
2. I believe that both making history relevant and getting the facts straight are both equally important. The facts of history should always come before making it relevant to the reader, but both need to be done to make history interesting and informative to your audience. I believe this is possible because you can make the history you’re writing about by writing about specific historical events that happened in your audience’s area, but still keeping the facts accurate and true. This makes the audience infinitely more interested in what you’re writing about when you can actually see were these historical events happened in their area.
1. Which school of history – objective or revisionist – best seems to represent the truth? Why?
I think the revisionist view best represents the truth because it isn’t bias. In an objective view, the historians tell history the way they want. They put events in certain order, and leave out certain events. They give their interpretation of what happen, and the interpretation should be left to the reader. In a revisionist view, they present what happened, and let the reader come to their own conclusions. It is impossible to be completely un-bias, but you want as little bias as possible. We might not know the whole truth, so you should leave it to the reader to fill in the wholes. The reader’s ideas might be more accurate than the historians. The revisionist view also involves more stories. Stories are important because they give an accurate account of how life was back then. It puts you in their shoes. For many events, stories are the most accurate account of what happened.
2. Which do you think is more important to history – making it relevant to the reader / viewer or getting the facts straight and telling it right? Can you do both? Why or why not?
I think it is more important to get the facts straight. Giving misinformation or stretching the truth is the worst thing you can do. It is possible to do both though. You should give the information the way it is, and leave it to the reader to determine if they think it is relevant. Some people may think it is relevant, and some might not. You want the reader to find it interesting, but you shouldn’t change history to do so. If you present history accurately, the reader should find it relevant because it is a big part of how we got here, and it may be very helpful in the future. History tends to repeat itself.
I think that the objective school of history best represents the truth because it is important for the true facts and the actual occurrences to be taught in history, instead of biased information. With bias, people can be learning incorrect material and their understanding on certain subjects can change, this leads to potentially biased and ignorant people. History shouldn’t be based on people’s own opinions because every historian has their own opinions and perspectives and they can all be a little bias in their own ways, so one persons interpretation of a historical event can be completely different from another’s. History should be based strictly on fact, bringing in different peoples explanations can confuse the person who is learning it from what actually happened. The objective approach to history is also more probable because it is much more accurate. People don’t want to hear what each side has to say about what actually happened, they want to know the absolute overall truth behind the story. The overall truth gives people a much better understanding on each event that occurred in history.
Getting the facts straight and telling the information right is the more important to history than making the information relevant to the reader because facts are facts and if you try to make the information relevant to each and every reader, the information can become biased and the facts may be slightly changed. History can’t be relevant to every single reader without prejudice and without keeping all of the facts so no, I don’t believe that history can be relevant while having solid facts at the same time. In certain cases, it may be informative to know what each person has to say about a certain event. Through teaching factually correct history, we can pass down accurate information to the next generations instead of history that has been altered through someone’s bias. By making history relevant to the reader, everybody could be learning different and possibly false information on the same event and this promotes ignorance.
Question 1- I think that the revisionist school of history best seems to represent the truth. I think this because even though a historian’s bias and perspective may differ and interfere with the truth, their job is to tell what actually happened regardless of how they feel. Personal opinion and bias must be put aside in order to complete their final goal: to be absolute and knowable. This is exactly what historians do; hide their opinion. Although sometimes in history bias is evident, whether you are an objective historian or a revisionist historian. Unlike the revisionists, the objectives choose specific facts to include and exclude, how do they know which facts to include or exclude? Opinion, they use their opinion to choose whether they are conscious of their actions or not. History cannot be written without any presence of bias or opinion at all, it just isn’t possible.
Question 2-I think that getting the facts straight and telling history right is much more important than making it relevant to the reader/ viewer. Each reader/viewer has different opinions on what interests them, so why spend all of that time writing something that may only appeal to a few students. It just isn’t worth it. While history may be hard to read and understand for some, it is fairly easy for others. History wasn’t exactly written down for fun, it was written down for knowledge and reference. I’m not saying that you can’t get the facts straight and tell it right without making it relevant to the reader. You can do that, but that is the reader’s responsibility, not the historian’s. Doing both would be amazing and it is possible, this is because history doesn’t have to be a bunch of words and facts in a book. No, it can have fun activities incorporated into the text that is more modern and relatable.
Kian Soleimani
11/6/11
2nd hour
AP U.S. History
“Objective” history vs. “Revisionist” history
1. I think that the school of history that best represents the truth is “Objective”. There are several reasons why. One of the reasons are, when you talk about history it’s not supposed to be a statement that is passed on through generations, changed up on its way. It is supposed to be the straight truth no matter if its 1850 or 2011 it should not make a difference. Another reason why objective history represents the truth is, when you compare different parts of history your results are going to be off and you are not getting the true history that took place that exact day. My final reason why objective history represents the truth, is that when you say for example “many Native Americans were treated poorly by the white people.” You want to say that statement strongly without going over the twists and turns along the way.
2. When telling history there is really only one option and that is to tell it straight, and the history in books 50 years ago should be the exact same as in the history books now. However, along the way I think that there should still be a compromise between telling the truth and making it relevant to the reader and the time/period there in. Both are very important, because you do not want to tell a story from 200 years ago to kids today. It would make it very hard for the kids to understand. In that case, you would have to change it in order to meet the requirements of the time in history. As a conclusion yes, I think that you can have straight history while making it relevant to the reader.
The objective school, in my opinion, is the best way to represent the truth, especially in history. The objective tells all the facts and gets everything straight with no bias or opinions. Removing the bias is better when it comes to history because bias is mixing up facts to be something that you want/believe. The revisionist school would seem best because they believe there is no way to write just the facts without bias, and they believe that just stating the facts would lead to “little or no interpretation”. In my mind, history is about learning about the development of the world and the human race’s timeline. If we were to see just some of the facts, there would be gaps in history and history is not supposed to be left to wonder what happened because it is non-fiction, straight to the point and with every fact without bias or opinion, and that is the objective school.
Getting the facts straight and telling it right is more important to history because it tells you everything you made need to know instead of having it relate to myself in some way and leaving out some stuff. In my opinion, you can get the facts straight and make it relevant to the reader because if you get the facts straight and tell it right, the reader is reading something that happened to someone or some people in the past and most likely history has repeated itself and has happened to or around the reader.
1. I believe that there is absolutely no difference in truth value between objective history and revisionist history. Whenever reading about history, the audience must keep in mind that it is impossible to write history, or anything else, without bias. No one can witness something, read about something, or hear something and not develop even the smallest opinion of it. Every human brain, even the most ignorant ones, has the ability to think and form their own beliefs. We can pretend bias can be eliminated and say that objective history is ideal, but in reality it has the exact same accuracy as revisionist history. I feel there shouldn’t be different names for the different ways of recording precedent times, because they aren’t different. History is history. When reading about the past, those studying it must remember that what they are reading is one historian’s opinion, and it is not guaranteed that it was exactly what occurred. Those attempting to learn about history must read accounts of what happened from as many different groups of people, and then form their own opinion.
2. In history getting the facts straight is much more important than making it relevant to the reader. History isn’t about pleasing the reader. You cannot please everyone; It’s impossible. No matter what aspect of history you write about, you’re going to offend someone. Any war fought, law passed, or act of rebellion worth recording into history textbooks is going to make somebody in the world upset. If that’s going to happen, you might as well get the facts straight. The reader is not important. What’s most important is what actually happened.
Kevin Dagenais
Period 2
1. I think that the school of objective best seems to represent the truth because it is more accurate and it does not include any opinions, moods or interpretations about history. But objective history does include some bias information, because otherwise, history would be a bunch of facts and it wouldn’t have any correlation. So there has to be some kind of bias, but it does not contain a lot compared to revisionist history. Another reason why it is more accurate is because it has a scientific approach which is the best way to tell history. On the other side, revisionist history is more opinions based history, and the history is told by the author’s point of view and opinions on the events that happened. This kind of history tends to be less accurate. Also dictators rewrite history books and they write it on what they believe was the cause of something. So most people do not agree, and the history is inaccurate because that is only what one person or a group of people believe. For example: Hitler believed that Jews were the problem in Europe, so according to Hitler the cause World War II is because of the Jews. This is an example of revisionist history, which is not accurate.
2. I think that getting the facts straight and telling it right is the most important to history. This is because it is more accurate and it actually says what happened. If you just make it relevant for the reader, then history will be inaccurate because there will be some bias in it and interpretations based on the author. For example: An American would want to learn history from the point of view of Americans. The history might be completely different from the point of view of French people, or Indians. So getting the facts straight has no point of view and actually tells what happened, and it is the most accurate. I believe that you cannot do both because to tell it right, you cannot incorporate any point of view because bias will be created if doing so. Therefore the information will be inaccurate. So the history is either inaccurate, and is relevant to the reader, or the history is telling it right, by not having a point of view or any bias, and is the most accurate. Therefore, telling it right is the most important.
1.) I think that the objective school of history seems to represent the truth more than the revisionist school of history. Although the revisionist point of view sounds more relatable, the objective point of view is more based on the actual information. But, the revisionist viewpoint seems to be bias and come from only one point of view. That point of view might not be everyone’s view on that subject where as the objective viewpoint tries to bring out only the truth with no biasness. In the past, dictators have been known to twist the truth of history to brainwash the citizens of that country into believing something else about history. But with objective viewpoint, it allows to just focus on the facts and are able to draw their own opinions. The Revisionists were more about getting out their own opinions and didn’t allow for the reader to make their own opinions. When reading history you want to be able to form your own opinions from the facts. So when you give enough facts for the truth to really come out it allows the reader to have their own ideas on the topic of history. Also, you may never know if someone is twisting the truth so much that you really aren’t getting any of the actual information that you want. I feel that the objective point of view gives you everything you need to know and then you can go off and have a conversation without a bias already there. I know it’s really hard to have an objective view on history but it represents the truth the best.
2.) I feel that have the facts straight is more important than having it be relatable. I think that if the information was relatable then the reader will understand it better but I do think it is more important to have the right information. I feel that it is possible to have both. If the writer gives all the facts and acknowledges that it is from his perspective then it can be both relatable and factual. The reader will know that the information is bias. Although it would be better to relate the information only using facts to connect ideas, then all the information is correct and has strong evidence to back it up. Also, the reader will be able to connect the two events by understanding how they relate to each other using just the facts.
1. Objective history seems to represent the truth best, simply because it is exactly what it implies: objective. By definition, an objective judgment is a conclusion drawn without the influence of personal feeling or opinion, and is regarded as a statement of fact or an observation. On the other hand, the ‘revisionalist’ group of historians represent history with a basis on opinion; writing history based on their perception of its relevance. In my opinion, something claiming to be truthful should be entirely fact, and interference of a personal nature in turn makes a source less credible. If aspects of history are being omitted for the sake of ‘clutter,’ how can the information that is given be painting the entire picture? Revisionalists revise—and if history is supposedly fact, there is no room for opinionated change.
2. In regard to history, it is more important to get the facts straight and tell it accurately than to make the information relevant to the reader. If a piece of literature is touted as fact, but isn’t the entire truth, then the basis from which we learn is cracked. However, it is impossible to document history’s entirety while keeping facts concise enough to involve the reader. Since there is so much information out there, there’s no way to make each compilation acute without leaving something out. Furthermore, new material is always being discovered. It’s impossible to compile all of history—if it were, our textbooks would be massive. In conclusion, although objective history is ultimately more truthful, without revisionalistic changes, history would be broader than it already is and often irrelevant to the reader.
1. The school of history that seems to best represent history is the objective view of history. This is because they attempt to put in all of the facts without leaving anything out. The revisionists, however, seem to leave out facts that they don’t think are important, leaving a bias on history. Revisionists leave their own spin on history rather giving us the strait facts like the objective view that allows people to hear the facts and then form their own opinions. If someone that didn’t know any better read the Revisionists view on history, then they might end up picking up the same bias that the Revisionists originally had. This view would end up distorting history that the future generations would learn where the Objectivists’ view on history would just present the facts that cannot be distorted and changed.
2. I believe that getting the facts strait and telling it right is more important to history than making the history relevant to the reader. I believe in most situations, both can be done at the same time, however, you can never expect people that grew up in different generations to see the history of the past completely relevant to them. The way that people lived their lives on the homesteads in the 1800’s is not completely relevant to most people who are living in the 21st century, but the facts are still relevant to the time period that you are studying. You cannot truly learn history if you pick and choose what you look at in a time period just because of the changing thought process of society and because it doesn’t quite apply to the current day.
1. I feel as though the Objective school best represents the truth. The objective is school is a lot more factual. Revionlist say that objective is bias, which is true, but if there were no bias people then history wouldn’t exist. Objective is told in a point of view of someone who has expienced what their talking about first hand. So there adding every single little detail of what happened in that event that took place. Having people who have experienced history gives the reader a better sense of what happened because the stories are in different points of views,so you can see all perspectives of the event that took place. If the revisionists’ history is constantly changing then there is the danger of facts getting twisted into lies so that people believe them. All in all out of the two, objective is much more factual than revisionist, even if it is kind of boring.
2. I feel as though getting the facts straight and telling it right is much more important to history. If you make the history relevent to the reader then some of the facts might end up getting twisted around to make it relevent to that specific reader, so it’s not as reliable. Even though getting the facts straight may be boring it’s at least 100% true and in the long run will educate you better than if the history was relevent to the reader. You might be able to do both if that event in history was able to relate to you and your getting all the facts straight, but it’s not common, and you would be better off just getting the facts because that’s really all you want.
1.) I believe that the objective school of history seems to represent the truth better than the revisionist school of history because it includes all of the facts with no bias. The objective school also shows you what happened on the “winning” and “losing” side of history. In the revisionist school, history is usually told by the victor. You never hear the losing side of the story, and therefore you will never know what truly happened, or what everyone felt. History can’t be true if you’re biased because you may say that the Americans bravely fought the Native Americans off of U.S. land, but, in reality, the Native Americans had been living on U.S. land for a greater time than Americans. The revisionist school of history generally portrays what the “winning” side thought. This generally makes history easier to understand. Even though the revisionist school of history may make history easier to understand, it is definitely not truer than the objective school.
2.) In my opinion, getting the facts straight in history is way more important than making it relevant to the reader. If you know the facts, you know what actually happened. If you’re just making history relevant to the reader, you’re leaving out some facts. If the reader doesn’t know exactly what happened, then history may repeat itself because the reader won’t know what exactly happened. No, it is not possible get all of the facts straight and make history relevant to the reader. The reader is either on one side of history or the other. If you get all of the facts straight, it includes facts about other countries and people that aren’t relevant to the reader.
Which school of history – objective or revisionist – best seems to represent the truth? Why?
The school of history that most appropriately represents the truth is Revisionist History. It’s core point’s state that because of the mass quantity of facts, they have to be chosen to represent history. This in itself disrupts the fine line between history and bias. When choosing certain facts, some are left out. This can eliminate a certain standpoint, and can allow the implementation of a specific fact that is placed out of context, or removed out of an individual context prior to the compilation of the facts. Nothing is objective, because it is impossible to apply enough information that directly correlates and develops a conclusion. If only facts are compiled, it is impossible to state anything about a subject because there will always be facts for both sides, yet no defining statement or guideline. Only Revisionist History points out the flaws of Objective History.
Which do you think is more important to history – making it relevant to the reader / viewer or getting the facts straight and telling it right? Can you do both? Why or why not?
Making it relevant to the reader is more important than telling the reader facts, because facts are facts. Without it becoming relevant to the reader, through a conclusion, or defining statement, facts are useless. They must be applied to their fullest, so the reader can achieve the greatest understanding of a specific subject. This can only be done through both objective and revisionist history- if both are used appropriately. That is, without the bias application of revisionist theory, or the misuse of facts to further corrupt the learner. They must directly link to each other in a way that they don’t reconcile each other’s interpretation. The Revisionist Statement must be a basis for which the majority of facts can further prove.
1. The school of history that best seems to represent the truth is objective. Someone’s opinions can easily determine how that person tells the facts. They can leave information out that they feel isn’t necessary and they can warp the truth to fit their opinions. As a reader, I feel that it is important for me to make my own opinions and feelings on the subjects and not to be influenced by others. I know I have to keep my judgments aside until I learn the whole story and then decide how I feel about the certain subject.
2. I think that getting the facts straight and telling it right is more important to history. I always learned that everyone is titled to his or her own opinion. As a student I want to learn the facts and information about history and analyze it with my own thoughts. I don’t want to be persuaded to think the way of a potential total stranger that happens to be giving the information. I think that both: making the information relevant to the reader and telling the facts right can be very misleading. If you try to push some conclusions more than others and then not have any thoughts on other subjects, it can confuse the reader. The thoughts can persuade the reader to think one way and then after they have to speculate nonbiased information from the conclusions of the previous author. I think that it is very hard not to have an opinion on information, but with history, it is important to have your own opinions.
1) In my opinion, a more objective approach to documenting history is better, simply because I believe that people should be able to evaluate a set of facts and determine their opinions for themselves. The way I see it is a bit like literature; if the author were to be telling you their opinions throughout the story, it would ruin the story. The reader wants to be able to extract their own meaning from the book, not to be told what they should think about it. Granted you can’t have every fact on record, it’s insane to pick and choose what history stays and which goes. History is history, and facts are facts. These should be no where near opinions! I think that an excellent example of this was a couple years back in March of 2010 when a school district in Austin, Texas passed a curriculum change that were a bit more right-wing-leaning. I believe that amongst these changes, Darwinism was rejected to be part of the new curriculum, but I’m not sure if they followed though on that…Anyways, the point is that they excluded a HUGE part of both science and history because they didn’t believe in it…as if it were a fantasy with no evidence, or Darwin just thought of this on his own. It’s infuriating! People can believe whatever the hell they want, but when you start manipulating the facts so that a whole new generation is left with skwed information without even knowing it, you’ve crossed the line.
2) Like I said, I believe that the reader should be given the opportunity to determine their own opinions on history. It’s not the historians place to contaminate history with their personal beliefs, but they can still make it applicable to the reader and present the facts in a more readable fashion. It’s possible to have both, because a presentation of fact is possible without bias. It’s just how you present it.
1.I believe that objective history holds the most truth in theory. While no person can be completely unbiased, attempting to be objective will make sure the truth is told as unbiased as possible. Revisionist history embraces bias and makes sure certain parts of the truth are not told. Although their aim is to get rid of parts that are “unimportant”, who knows what could make a difference in how a situation is interpreted. The more you withhold information, the more of history you are losing. While no one can be completely be without bias, and things still may be left out of objective history, in theory it is more likely to yield the truth.
2. It is more important to accurately give information than making it relevant and interesting to the reader. If only things that were interesting to people live on history would be false and/or incomplete. Saying that wizards are the reason that the US gained its independence, may be interesting, but it is definitely not true. If the truth wasn’t always told as accurately as possible, people would never get the whole picture, blame would be improperly placed, and people would never get the chance to be interested in other things. I believe that it is sometimes possible to both keep the facts straight and be interesting. Sometimes history is interesting and relevant. However, something one person finds interesting or relevant, will be boring to another person. It is impossible to please everyone so it’s not always possible to do both.
1. The revisionist school tells the truth rather than the objective school. No matter what, or how hard a historian try’s he will not fully be able to eliminate bias from their findings and writings. The revisionist school is telling the truth by including some opinions and bias because real history contains opinions and not just facts. Also a dictator and what he does to the people and culture could determine a certain period of history. So I think that everything including bias and opinions should be a part of history.
2. I believe that it is more important for the history to be relatable to the audience’s life. But I also feel as though facts and a relatable connection can both be obtained. I think to obtain both you would start off by giving the facts. Once they understand basic facts like the setting and time period, the only way for the audience to fully understand the topic is relating it to a current day event. It’s hard for one to comprehend something that had occurred many years before they had lived. Once they have some sort of connection to tie into the event then they can get a true understanding. Its often hard to understand the attitudes and objectives of people in different time periods so the best way to step into their shoes is to find a similar modern day affair and then you can automatically understand and see the point of view of people from that period of time.
1.) I personally believe that the truth is better represented in objective school history because, they give you all of the facts and do not leave out the “useless clutter”. Who really decides what the useless clutter? Something useless to one person can change the understanding of another person. So why just cut some things and not others. In large scale perceptive, why only learn half of a story when you could learn all of it? Also the objective school history groups share the points of the minority groups (women, African Americans, Latino, Asian, Native-American, ect) throughout history as opposed to the majority (white males). Again, why only learn one part of a story? I have to believe that white males of 1840 had very different opinions from the Native Americans of 1840. I also think that it is good that different people have different perspectives on history, because if we all had the same idea about, (lets say the civil war) everything would be about how the North was right or how the South was right and should have won. Why just look at something one way? Having different perspectives about history allows us to see the world in many different colors, opposed to a single view and seeing the world in black and white. The main reason I believe that the objective school history better represents the truth is because it looks at history in more than one way and let’s you decide what are the important facts of a story.
2) I think that both tell facts correctly and making the reading relevant to the reader are equally as important because, when telling a story you must correctly include all the details and facts of the story or the reader will be confused. You cannot just twist and re word the facts to your pleasing. And really what is the point of learning something incorrectly? It is very important to the story that the facts are correct. But also I think that it is very important that reader understands what is happening and is following along because if he or she does not then they do not really comprehend it. Do you really expect that all teens will read something that uses ‘shall’ or ‘hither’ or a bunch of words that they need to go look up? Or for them to understand some 100 year old story that has no relevance to their lives and can not understand? No, history is supposed to be fun to learn and read about, and it is not fun to learn about history when you do not understand what is going on. Yes, I do believe that both getting the facts right and making the reading relevant to your reader can be easily be done. It has been done to the Bible, I even own a copy of a Bible written in ‘teenager version’ to help teens better understand it’s teachings. And if it can be done with the Bible, it can be done with any history textbook. I think that it is just as important to get your fact right as it is to comprehend what is going on in a story.
The objective school of history seems to best represent the truth. It tries the hardest to keep away from bias statements about history. Instead of forming bias statements, objective historians state the facts in a way that avoids their personal opinions. By sticking to facts the historian does a favor to the reader, giving them the chance to form their own opinions about history rather than having their opinions and thoughts shaped by the historians own views. If we were to always learn history through a subjective point of view then along with getting facts we would get opinions that may confuse the readers initial thoughts on the history. The best way to retain the truth of history is to pass along facts that tell exactly what happened so we will never forget or mix up our history.
In my opinion, getting the facts straight and telling history right is more important than anything else. If history isn’t told the way it really happened and is mixed up with bias opinions, then history will be lost over time and later generations will never really know the truth of American history. It’s important for people to learn what happened before their time, and exactly the way it happened. That way we can compare it to how our lives are today and how much life has changed. Although being straight forward when telling history is important, I believe that you can also make the history relevant to the reader. Along with writing history in a non-bias form, history can be related to present day life to keep readers interested by adding a relative way that the readers can think about history. Also, history can always be made more interesting for readers as long as the facts are told in an amusing manner by using examples and descriptive stories to help the reader form their own opinions.
1. Which school of history – objective or revisionist – best seems to represent the truth? Why?
With no doubt, the objective school of history best represents the truth. The opposition may state that the objective school of history is actually not objective at all. That when historians are forced to pick and choose the facts that they will state, they are editing history to their bias, and that it is not considered telling the whole truth. However, I argue that the purpose of picking and choosing the facts to expose isn’t creating an angle or an opinion; it’s simply an attempt to evade the “useless clutter” often found in history books. By doing this, historians are making important facts stand out, and avoiding confusion for the reader. Also, if seeing this process through the opposition’s eyes, how is this any worse than the revisionist school of history? The point of the revisionist school of history is to create a perspective and to “brainwash” the readers to believe that certain things are the way that the author believes them to be. Therefore, they can hardly say that the objective school of history is opinionated when all of their work is put towards telling it like it is and avoiding bias.
The revisionist school of history’s works can lead to very serious and wrong outcomes. Their work is basically equivalent to propaganda. Propaganda, although sometimes innocent such as simply promoting a product, is also the cause for terrible things. For example, the Holocaust of the 1940’s across Europe was a result of propaganda and bias writings. People spread hatred throughout the whole continent against many certain peoples such as the Jews, the disabled, the atheists, and the homosexuals through their writing. They started from a young age, writing stories for children and framing the Jews as the “bad guy” in each story. As children grew up, they entered a world where newspapers and pamphlets were filled with bias writing about how terrible Jews are, just because they don’t have the same beliefs as them. It wasn’t long until people started using the Jews as a scapegoat for everything wrong, and decided that they would indeed be better off without them. Not only was there a tenseness and a feeling of hatred throughout Europe, but it this bias writing lead to a mass killing and exile of these innocent people. In conclusion, revisionist writing can have a lot of influence, but sometimes that power isn’t for the better.
2. Which do you think is more important to history – making it relevant to the reader / viewer or getting the facts straight and telling it right? Can you do both? Why or why not?
I think that it is more important to history to make the facts relevant to the reader, rather than getting the facts straight and telling it like it is. Although getting the facts straight and telling it right is still very important, the whole objective of historians and of history class is to teach the students. Teaching the students requires not only imprinting the information into their brains, but also creating a spark of interest and of yearning to know more. This spark can only be acquired through making the subject relevant to the reader of the textbook, or in other words, the student. It’s important to promote a feeling in students of being able to relate to their works, because it will help them to want to learn. It helps them actually desire to learn about their history, because learning about for example, your people’s culture or of who you’re named after can be much more stimulating than learning about a foreign nation in a faraway land that you haven’t even ever heard of. I do believe that both getting the facts straight and making them relevant to the student can be done. This is so, because only the subject should have to be relevant. Not every tiny detail, simply the topic. The facts can still be given to the readers or the students as it happened, the truth of the matter can still be spoken, simply the subject should be chosen with the type of students at hand.
1. I think that the objective school of history best represents the truth. An historian’s job is to tell the events that occurred without changing them in any way. Having a certain viewpoint shown in their writing restricts the reader from taking their own views on the subject. As we can tell from history, people have different opinions. A reader may be swayed to choose a similar viewpoint as the historian, without having a clear understanding of other viewpoints that were not presented. Therefore, when an historian chooses to be bias towards, for example, one group of people in a certain time period, they may present the information in a way that makes this group seem like they had the best intentions and views. However, the facts may show that both sides have pros and cons. Historians should tell history truthfully and without inputting personal opinions.
2. I think it is more important to history to get the facts straight and tell it right. History is not about what we want to make of it and how we interpret it. It is about real events that happened to real people in a certain way. History is not something we can change, otherwise we wouldn’t be telling the story in the way that it really happened. Making history relevant is not the most important thing, but it is possible to both tell the complete truth and also relate to the reader. The actual events that an historian writes about should be factual, but relate to life today so we can visualize the events better and feel more connected to the stories.
1. In my opinion objective history seems to best represent the truth because it is just that: objective. That means that the facts are not affected or manipulated by ones emotions and you are only getting the truth of the event without any of the frills. Revisionist history may not be one hundred percent truthful because it can be slightly bias or opinionated. It’s not right for certain facts or a portion of history to be excluded just because the person recording the history feels like it doesn’t belong. People need to be presented with facts in order to form their own opinions of the subject at hand. If opinions are presented as the solid and factual information what stops someone from then reporting an opinion on said opinion and twisting the history further? You cant change history or what has already happened so it is important to report it accurately and possibly include opinions along the way, only after the truth has been stated clearly.
2. I think the primary responsibility of any historian is to present the facts straight and tell the truth before trying to make the history relevant to the audience. It is still important to engage your readers and present the information in a way that’s interesting or intriguing but frankly, history is useless if it’s not accurate. Otherwise future generations wouldn’t be able to learn from others mistakes or create better systems and techniques to doing things as a response to what has happened in the past. I think it’s possible to do both, but more important to focus on the truthfulness. Presenting it in an interesting way is also important because it makes learning the information more enjoyable and memorable. If a history lecture is given in an interesting way it’s more likely for the information to be remembered by the audience then if it was presented as and unadorned listing of facts.
1. Having looked at both the objective and revisionist schools of history, I believe that the objective school of history best represents the truth. In the school of objective history, the reader is given the strait facts. There is no bias, no opinion, and no exaggeration. It is not seen from a certain perspective, it is simply recorded history. When history is used to pursue certain ends, or go by a bias or opinion, history is no longer just the facts. History will not be useful to everyone, because it will no longer always be the truth. Therefore, in my opinion history is only the truth if told from the objective school of history.
2. Between the two- making history relevant to the reader or telling it right, I would say telling it right to the reader is more important when learning or teaching history. Sure, making history relevant to the reader has its advantages. It can make it more interesting to the reader or help them comprehend the information better than if they were unfamiliar with the information. However, this strategy has many disadvantages that weigh in more than the advantages of this strategy. For instance, would we, as Americans, only want to learn history that is relevant to us? No, that is why we have world history. Maybe we weren’t part of a certain war or event, but we still learn about it so we can learn from others mistakes. This is the point of history. Learning from both relevancy and the strait facts is possible, but I don’t think it is right to mix the two. When telling history from relevancy, beliefs and opinions can get involved, which can create a bias or lead to a complete misunderstanding to the reader. Telling history right is the way to go. Fewer issues will occur when history is stated and proven true. When history is told only from the truth and the strait facts, there is no wrong. Having pure evidence and information of history can help anyone learn.
1. The objective school of history best seems to represent the truth. The main goal in this school of history is to look at historical facts and events without a bias or perspective. This way, teachings and prior beliefs are put aside when trying organize and communicate historical events. It is more truthful than the revisionist school of history because that school needs to bend the truth and change their perspective on events in history to make it more convenient for the historian. For example, dictators and rulers of countries started to use revisionism to “re-write” history that benefits them and their cause. Also, revisionists pick and choose certain things to expose to their followers so they will not be bored with a jumble of meaningless facts and events in history.
2. I think that getting the facts straight and telling history right and making the history relevant to the reader are both important when teaching and comprehending history. Getting the facts straight and telling them correctly would come before the significance of the facts to the reader because every reader will have a different bias and different values than another. You can accomplish both getting the facts right and making it relatable to the reader in certain situations. Certain people will be able to relate to historical events better than others because of their family background or personal experience. Therefore, you can accomplish at least one of these tasks all the time-getting the facts straight and telling them right because the relevancy to the reader depends on what they information they value and can relate to.
1) Objective seems to represent the truth best versus revisionist. It includes all of the historical facts, and can be looked at as a whole as the history. Since revisionist excludes some facts, it leaves out some truth with it.
2) It is more important to get the facts straight and telling it truthfully. If people aren’t told the full truth, they don’t have all of the information. If they have the facts straight, they may be able to make their own opinions and make it relevant to them themselves. In that way, you can do both.
1.) I think that both sides of this history spectrum need editing. Yes, I agree with the objective, that it is best to tell the truth and say exactly what happened. In most cases we weren’t there and we have no real way of knowing what is true and what is not. The fault is that every opinion is bias unless it was a true eye- witnessed fact. It is just human nature, little children do this all of the time, if they get into a fight with their friend and each of them throw mud, and you can almost guarantee each child will say the other started it. They may not be lying, they may truly think that but it is an opinion that you just have to decide to believe or not. Revisionists are also not completely accurate because when choosing which information stays and which is omitted bias opinion can be involved. The parts of history one historian might not find interesting, someone else may think it is the most important part. Leaving out certain important things to make our country seem better is not a good thing because it is not the truth. If both of these ways could be combined it would make a much better system. Choosing which goes in and which does not should be up to the reader, so that they may decide what they believe, but not putting in every single thing that happened is a good thing because things that are irrelevant to the main topic show no purpose. Objective historians just need to make sure they keep themselves out of what happens and be honest and this can be avoided.
2.) The facts are always the most important. If the reader is misinformed than the purpose is lost. I think there is a way to manage both accuracy and ways to keep it entertaining. Everyone grows up in different places and learns things in different ways and it can’t be relatable to everyone. Making it relatable would help the reader understand better it wouldn’t be the truth.
1.I think that objective history is more truthful, because things have not been changed or fitted to fit the desired piece of history. Objective consists of exact information from historians. Even if things may be bias, the history is not affected as much a revisionist history is by dictators or political figures manipulating it. I feel as if Objective is the straight story of what happened, because the people who wrote it knew what happened exactly. Revisionist history is a present day interpretation of history, which may be inaccurately shown and changed. Objective is best because it is a point of view of someone who was actually there, and things aren’t added and assumed live revisionist history. Objective makes a lot more sense, because even though there may be bias, or there are different facts, all information needs to be shown as historians saw it and experienced it.
2. I think history is more about the straight facts, because history cannot be changed to appeal to the reader. No matter how much the reader wants a piece of history to seem more relevant to them, it cannot, because history is about what actually happened. History shouldn’t be changed or shown differently to help people better understand, or interest them more, because that would be twisting the facts. History should not be morphed to fit into a puzzle that appeals to most people. Dictators even used this type of history to help things favor towards him. This proves that things may be exaggerated, made up, or inaccurate. The purpose of history is not to entertain, but to tell the events and facts of the past.
Question #1
Which school of history – objective or revisionist – best seems to represent the truth? Why?
The school of history that best represents the truth is the objectives. The objectives have a tendency to believe that one event happened at a certain time and/or place, also they tell things as facts and not from a bias point of view. The objective historians “sees truth as absolute and knowable, and that a scientific approach towards writing history is the best way to do it.” I agree with them, I do not think that we should be able to pick and choose what history we want to learn or teach just because it seems more relevant. History cannot be taught in black and white like other subjects such as: math and science, but still should not be taught from a bias point of view. History not being black and white allows itself to become twisted tainted and not factual. The objects feel that history should be conceived in a black and white matter of what happened and when it happened. While the revisionist school of history shapes history around predetermined ideas, and their own social biases tainting the truth of the history and making it come across in ways that makes one “side” seem better than the other.
Question #2
Which do you think is more important to history – making it relevant to the reader / viewer or getting the facts straight and telling it right? Can you do both? Why or why not?
Personally I feel that getting the facts straight and telling it right is more important than making it relevant to the reader. Learning is fundamentally built on structure and facts: during the learning process everyone comes across a time or subject that they feel is not relevant to them, but this does not mean that they do not learn the facts about it. When trying to make it relevant to the read if often comes a cross from a bias point of view, from whoever is teaching it. It is very possible to do both: make is straight up with facts and make it relevant to the reader. Instead of trying to make it sound cute and make it super fun to read, history can be taught fact by fact and then those facts can be compared to something that is happening in modern day. By doing this it makes it more relevant to the reader but it still has all the facts in it that they need to learn.
Though both schools have their strong points, I believe that the school of objective tells history in the most accurate and truthful way possible. The school of objective tells the facts as they happened and does not cloud them with their own opinions. Though it is thought an objective look can be boring and encyclopedic like, the revisionist can persuade you to think in their ways and not your own. Revisionist writing is more like a persuasive essay that doesn’t really tell the whole truth of the events that occurred; but only a few key events that make their own points relevant. Objective reasoning can be informative about the events that occurred and will inform the reader of the exact events. It is concerning to read a textbook that focus solely on one side of history and refuses to share the other’s story, so you believe that
2) It is important to make the facts relevant to the reader, but that doesn’t mean you should botch the facts. I believe getting the facts straight is more important than making it relevant to the reader. You should never sacrifice truth for entertainment- if we do then true history will never be known. In Paul Revere’s carving of March 5th, it looks like the British were simply firing into the crowd of harmless villagers. We have been shown and taught this because of where we live is trying to get us to sympathize with the villagers because they are like us in a sense that we don’t want to be kept down by another country. But what it doesn’t show is that after the soldiers came to America they were arregrivaized and taunted by the townspeople, had sticks and stones thrown at them, and were ill-rationed with food with the people who refused to give them any. Many soldiers were simply tired and homesick, and so when there was the first gunshot on that day, they all supposed one of their superiors had given them the go head to kill. But not many people know that because most American history books side with the townsfolk and don’t tell the whole story. If we don’t know all the facts in history, we will never be able to form our own opinions about what happened or whose fault it is. It is important to tell all the facts so the reader can make their own decision and not have it pre-decided by an author.
I may not have understood the blog but it seems like both objective and revisionist schools of history are doing the same thing. The change comes in their ideal way of writing history. While one says objectivity and ultimate truth in history is achievable, the other does not. In my opinion, a word as all-defining (is that a word?) as truth has no hold on history. History cannot tell us the truth of what happened simply because we are not robots, we are not blank slates (atm) and we cannot just have a set of facts plugged in and shoot out an true, immutable answer. Truth’s place remains in things that are unchanging, immutable and immortal. Math is true, facts are true. Humans are not so history cannot possibly be, because regardless of our efforts for keeping history objective, like the revisionist historians say, some bias will always be present. It is up to the individual to see and create the patterns they choose in history, and in order to remain open-minded and to keep learning, it is vital for such an individual to not assimilate his history to the true history. But is it not possible that through learning history, however biased, one can form his own idea on what the basic definition of truth is?
I think that in history, making it relevant to the reader is a way of basically saying that when you know you are writing a history book for teens in a upper-middle class white society, you write in a prejudiced, biased way to fit what you stereotype as their mold or way of thought so as to please them. History cannot be justly made relevant. It is relevant to all humans or it is to none. However we may be programmed in a way to decide that one piece is more relevant to ourselves than another, but that is purely egotistical. I have come to think that history’s main purpose is to learn of the past in order to create future. So does it not make more sense to learn about the past of countries other than the one we are born in, even though it may seem less relevant to us, in order to grow from more than one source? I say this as a direct attack to the system that seems to be in place where we spend 2 trimesters on the history of the world, going through 2000+ years of history in a few weeks to then spend a few years studying 200 years of history. But that’s not really the subject. My point is that history must be about telling the facts as straightly as possible and that entails reviewing history as a whole and not just as what may seem “relevant” to a specific group of people. It seems we are doing both as I assume what we are learning has as little as possible bias yet is vapidly focused on one country with little history. I do not however support this masked dual learning as I do believe that in four years, the curriculum is broad enough to incorporate the history of our world rather that stuffing us with loads of specific facts and dates that apply to only one facet of history. Our understanding of truth is compromised by this fact.
Marie Portes 5th
1. Based on the information provided I believe that objective is the best school of history because it represents the truth more than revisionist. Although objective leaves out important points of view (African-American, Latino, Asian, Native-American and Women’s stories,) they try to keep all the important facts on the evolution of our world. Revisionists however, chose to focus all of their energy on one specific viewpoint, generally the viewpoint that reflects the historian’s bias. A dictator uses this tactic to write history in order to reinforce their regimes and fits their needs. I disagree with this method because it completely excludes everything else from history except the viewpoint of one race/political party. Although I don’t necessarily agree with the objective method of writing history, I think that objective best represents the truth.
2. In history, I think it is important to both make the history and information relevant to the reader and getting the facts straight and telling them right. It is important that students/citizens are interested in what they’re reading, so history in different parts of the world must reflect the country they live in. However, I think that in order for History to be accurate, I this that history also must be written including every viewpoint, so that others might see the difference in the two opinions. I think that it is possible for History to be written including both of these. I realize that for certain countries only their history seems to be important, but if they include even a small sampling of facts that are told right then I think they will get the idea.
1. I think that objective writing seems the represent the truth. Revisionist writing seems the just be giving their opinion on the history they are talking about, which is most likely not the truth. There is only a small chance of the revisionist information being correct because it is what the writer saw, not what happened to everyone. Yes, the objective writers have to choose facts, but with everything you have to choose facts as well. However, I do think that there is a little bit of revisionist writing in the objective writing because you have to put in some of your opinion in order to make it a story. The only thing that is truly factual is the number of people that died. But, objective writing is more truthful because it is not just what the writer thinks history is, it is the facts straight out of the book.
2. I think that making the story relevant to the reader is more important than getting the facts straight. From experience, I have come to a conclusion that if I cannot relate to a story I am reading, it is almost impossible to read. If there is a paper or article that is just all facts, even if they are accurate facts, no one is going to want to read just facts off of a piece of paper. You have to definitely make a balance between relating and stating the facts, which I absolutely think is possible. Any good writer, no matter what he or she is writing is given facts they need to include. However, they never just give straight facts, they always add a story line to make the article or paper more relatable to the reader. Without that, it should not be considered a paper it would just be considered a piece of paper with facts written on it.
Emily S. -5th Hr.