Blog #65 – 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 amateur 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 2014), 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 Tuesday, Sept. 30 by class.
### Part of what is happening nationwide is the current criticism of the new APUSH test and how some groups are reacting to it. See any of the articles below:
http://www.newsweek.com/whats-driving-conservatives-mad-about-new-history-course-264592
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/382400/new-war-over-high-school-us-history-stanley-kurtz
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2014/08/college_board_statement_on_ap.html
Types of History
9/24/14
Colin Jones
1. I believe objective history is the best way to represent the truth. I think this way because people need to fully understand and know all the evidence of a historical event. For people to see why and how a historical event happened they need to see the facts without bias facts and revised information. This also helps prove that events did happen because you have all the facts. If you do not have all the facts then something will not fit together. For example if you leave battles out of the Civil War then it will seem as if the Civil War is only a series of small attacks instead of a war. Then you cannot prove that a historical event occurred. These proven events can help understand the truth behind went on before we were born. While revisionist history is molded and bended to fit the author or historian and what he believes. This causes very bias thoughts and effects the way the future generations sees the past and can make them stick with a certain idea. This method could be used in manipulative ways to change a person’s ideas and facts. A fact change what a person believes and thinks, which is why if you give them all the facts they will have a better understanding of what happened instead of seeing what happened from one side. Objective history gives a better understanding of what happens in history then revisionist history which is a very bias view of history.
2. I believe that giving the facts straight to the reader/ viewer is more important because it gives them a better understanding of the event. The reader/ viewer will usually see two or three sides of the event which are all bias sides. If the reader only researches one side then the information of why it started might be different to other people’s information. This causes conflict especially when debated history. For example if two kids were both doing research on the Vietnam War and each of them got different information. The first kid, Jimmy, found an anti- military blog saying that the war was started to attack Vietnam and take them over. Jimmy’s blog is bias because the blog is only giving the facts that America is in Vietnam fighting and only that information. While the second kid, Nick, finds a government website stating all the facts why America was there. This different website gives the facts including America is there and fighting along with the fact that we are not taking over land but defending our allies. Now when Jimmy and Nick meet to talk about their ideas, Jimmy is very bias against the war while Nick isn’t due to the different type of information they got. Giving the facts straight also helps people come to a concluded answer on a said event. This is because they all have the same information and all of it which lets them sees how every person got to a certain conclusion.
1) The school that best represents the truth about history is revisionist. The revisionists don’t just state facts about history they think about history almost as living life. The objective school has a bias no matter what even if it’s really small. They try not to be bias but they end up saying something about history based on what the historians believe in. Revisionist history might be boring but historians have spent a long time gathering true facts about the historical events. Revisionist history also got the view of many different sides of a story not just a landowners view lets just say. It tells that people take a big part in history, history isn’t just about the event people have a big role and impact in history. The true school is by far the revisionist they state the true facts about history in many views not just one. I believe that is one of the most important elements when learning about the past.
2) In history getting the facts right and telling it right is most important in history. History might not always be relevant to the reader. If you are trying to make history relevant it might not work always because you can’t make something relevant to everyone. In the case that it’s not you have to be able to explain what happened and you need the facts for to do that. Getting what happened in the past right is how to understand and learn. Nobody can relate to the same thing so trying to make history relevant would be pointless. It is better to tell history the way it actually occurred then people learn the truth and know what actually happened. People also are able to know the true background of how they are where they are today. They don’t hear different stories about one event they know the real story. Although getting history right and learning the facts I think that is most important.
1. The revisionist way history is taught to me is the better form truth. I personally feel that the revisionist way is the modern way and the objective way is so much more old fashion. In the blog they said the objective way doesn’t speak much on the races that have been marginalized by the march of the white male history. The objective way is what the schools taught years before now, that the great founders of our land created it to what it is today, the land of the “free” and home of the brave. In reality that’s not what America was, there was mass genocide of the indigenous peoples of America and they enslaved many. The revisionist way broadens your view on AP history more because it shows you the true victors of history and you’re able to make your own bias of what’s being taught. In history you can’t include every bit of information when it’s being taught. The objective way excludes the raw truth. Making history interesting for students isn’t just stating facts and statistics showing both sides perspective in events in history makes it a little more interesting. Even if revisionist history has been influenced by dictators and government pressure you can make a better stance on your outlook because you can tell what’s morally or immorally unjust based on how they tell history.
2. I believe making what you’re teaching relevant to the reader is important just as stating the facts. I can read the textbook to get all the dates and get a full understanding of what happened. It’s the teacher’s job to teach the course and tell us the information but he’s not going to get much out of telling only facts all the students won’t listen. Being told about the historians experience and outlook makes it more interesting and explains more about the history. Like my telling me facts about survival and the holocaust isn’t as interesting as us reading the Diary of Anne Frank, that’s from the perspective of a real person and it gives me much more insight on what it was like.
1. I believe that objective history represents the most truth. It may just be an abundance of facts, but those facts are what actually happened and how these events happened, without an opinion from the historian’s political bias. “Revisionist history has been used by dictators to rewrite history in a way that fits their needs and to reinforce their regimes.” This revisionist history means that a political powerhouse can rewrite the history of the country they represent to change what the people interpret what has happened. Revisionist history allows room for change in how history is told by giving the historians’ perspective, bias, and opinion to the facts in history, but that can lead to history that isn’t factual and is changed to support their perspective.
2. The more important of the two is getting the facts straight. Making it relevant to the reader will intrigue them and give more interest towards the history of their country, but that can be done with false facts to support the perspective of the reader. I think both ways of telling history can be done though. Keeping the facts straight in history and including how it has impacted the reader’s life will keep the history factual, and still intrigue the viewer. This shows the impact and importance historical events have had on a country’s people. The impact of events can be expressed without tampering the things that actually happened through history. History that is written to intrigue the reader often doesn’t tell the history’s full story, but rather how it was seen by their ancestor’s point of view.
1) I think that objective history tells the history more accurately revisionist history. Objective will give you the truth of that actually happened in history, while revisionist will tell you a very dramatic, more intriguing version of the same story that is not as true. Trying to make history revisionist can get all the facts mixed up, and not communicate the correct information to the student or whoever is learning. Objective is the easiest way to make sure you are getting the correct facts. Objective offers an un biased point of view of history. A non biased opinion is the best way to learn if you want inly the facts without altered opinion. If all you read is revisionist history, chances are you have been fed a lot of misinformation.
2)Objective history is the best for a learner. Although objective history can be very boring and not very exciting it is more important to get the actual facts rather than some over exaggerated story. It is the best when you can tell a great revisionist story, while telling the objective truth. For example, the history of the revolution could be completely misinterpreted if you only take one side of the war into consideration. If you learn everything about the war from the British side, you may believe that Britain was correct in everything they did leading up to the revolution. The way revisionist history is taught, you could be giving somebody very very racist, sexist, or biased information. Objective is better because you just get the straight facts. Of course it would be better to make the facts into a more interesting story to appeal to the student more
1. I believe that objective school of history best seems to represent the truth. Although historians would unconsciously be biased about a piece of history we would want the facts and come to our own conclusion whatever it may be. If we get the historians bias opinion, we wouldn’t be hearing both sides of the stories. We would hear the side that the author supported. If history was all based on opinions, we wouldn’t be able to tell what the truth was. They would alter the truth to fit their own opinion and that’s not what history is. History is all about the facts and people; historians should just tell it as it is so we know the facts. The more they give their opinion the less it’s based on facts.
2. I think making history relevant to the reader is as equally as important as getting the facts straight and telling it right. I believe you can do both. You have to make history relevant to the reader or they wouldn’t be interested because it wouldn’t have anything to do with them. You can tell the facts straight but leave out the unimportant things that aren’t irrelevant to the reader. It’s important to tell the facts straight because otherwise it would be revisionist. You would start to get the author’s bias opinion and not the actual facts. But it is equally important to get the reader’s attention or there would be no audience. Without both, history would be like geometry, giving us information that we probably wouldn’t use.
Blog #65
1. Objective history shows the truth of what happened in history. This part of history is a genuine account of what had happened in history. Revisionist history is a different version of version of what actually happened in history according to the author that wrote it. Real factual history can change to being revisionist when writers let their emotions and bias opinions get in the way of their writing and they tend to change history as if they were writing it from a first had experience. Therefore, the conclusion is that history told based on facts and accounts of real events occurring is objective is closer to the truth than twisted history from author’s bias revisionist.
Definitions:
Objective: based on facts rather than feelings or opinions: not influenced by feelings (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/objective).
Revisionist: an advocate of revision, especially of some political or religious doctrine (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/revisionist).
2. Although it is better to tell history from a real historian’s point of view the truth is that it takes it better to tell history in a way that will please all the public around. Sometimes, when the details come out about an event, it could change the approach people use to view the event and even the way people deal with present day situation. It is virtually intolerable to tell history from a viewpoint that will appel to all people while they are telling it with the right facts, unless the event glorifies a nation in a way that all or most people will agree with.
Is History True?
Dylan Sutton Apush 1st hour
1.) I believe that objective history is the most accurate school of history. This is because objective history uses only facts and aligns them in chronological order. There can be no bias here because everything that objective history uses is actual facts of evidence. A criticism of objective history is that groups like African Americans, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans and women have been cut out by white male perspective and their writings. If new facts arose out of history then it is up to the objective historians to add it into their timeline. Objective history is only facts about what happened in the past. It is not like revisionists rewriting history or interpreting history in their own ways. That is why I would choose Objective history over revisionist history.
2.) I think that it is more important to make history a more factual experience then having shifted and molded to the reader understand. If you give the reader cold hard facts then the history that that person is learning is 100% true. By making relevant to reader you can adjust history into what you have to in order to have the reader know what is happening. You can incorporate a little bit of both, but the facts must be the more dominant part and then you can have some interpretation by someone. Without some interpretation most people would not understand if what was going on good or bad in History. That is why I think more factual evidence is more relevant to history.
1)I believe that the objective school of history best represents the truth because it sticks to the facts. Revisionists alter and change how they tell history in order to express a point and that is not how history is meant to be told. History should be expressed how it was expressed during that time period, not a modern take on it. The otherwise can cause readers to loose sight on what really happened and can cause major events to be forgotten.
2)Getting facts straight and telling it right is more important to history than making it relevant to the reader. Some of the things we are taught will not affect our lives at all in the future, yet they are still important in history in the grand scheme of things. Also, making history relevant to the reader may leave out many important events. This causes the reader to only know the half-truth and can cause confusion. I do not believe you can fully do both of these things at once because, for example, if you are teaching a certain war that may be relevant, not every single event of that war may be relevant and if you leave those insignificants out, then you aren’t telling the whole truth.
1. I believe that revisionist best represent the truth of our history because our history isn’t just a long list of facts. Though they may be basis in saying which details they want to include in their teaching, they do however gather different opinions and sides to every story and include the most important pieces that actually capture the main points of the topic. They also offer a look at history on an interpretive level. They present you with the story, facts and opinions and from there you are able to take the story as you see it a develop your own opinions, as opposed to being handed a set of facts and being forced to except them.
2. I think that both making history relatable for the reader, and getting the facts straight and telling them right are equally as important as one another. First of all, the facts are the history, and if you aren’t telling them right as they had occurred then you are feeding your audience information that isn’t even true. It’s just as important to have the facts and topics relatable to the intended audience. If you as a listener aren’t able to find connections from what you’re learning to your own life, then you are mostly likely going to quickly become uninterested. Without the truth, we don’t have a real idea of our history, and without connections to life now, we don’t have a desire to learn it. They are almost coexistent in the way we are taught now.
1) I believe that of the two schools of history objective history is the most accurate because it states the facts of important historical events based only on what we know for sure. Also in objective history there is no bias from what the author of the article or the book has written. The revisionist school of history is defined exactly as it sounds, a form of history that has been changed over time through the eyes of the beholder. Learning history through opinions that could have been changed completely over the past hundred years to better suit an idea or theory is wrong. I say this because if we really want to know what happened years ago so that we will not repeat it, then we need to read statistics and first accounts.
2) I think making the text relevant to the reader and making it factual are the both very important, but in different way. I think making it relevant to the reader is important because then they stay focused on the reading instead zoning in and out like they do when it is date after date. Even though date after date gets boring after a while, it is also very important for the student to understand what happened. These two ideas are basically opposites, but it is very possible to keep the facts but make the reading more relevant to the reader. You can do this by keeping all of the important facts that are needed for full understanding of the subject, but take out things that may not have that same importance.
1. The objective school of history is the best way to represent history truthfully. A historian’s job is to state the facts of history without being bias. Things that happened in history are factual. The blog states, “regardless of the time period that the reader lives in (say in 1950 or 2014), specific events occurred and people lived and did certain things”. This passage explains that every historical event happened a certain way and had specific causes and effects. People are free to interpret these things any way they please, but there should be no interpretation or arguments over what truly happened in history. Objective history, with no intertwined opinions, is the only way to achieve this.
2. I think it is possible and equally important to make history relevant to the reader and still get the facts straight. There are two main reasons why we learn history. We don’t want history to repeat itself and we can use history to solve problems in today’s society. If we don’t want history to repeat, this requires people to learn exactly what happened in history. If we learn why and how things happened, we can make sure they don’t happen again. If we want to use history to solve current problems, we need to make it relevant to today’s world. Making something relevant doesn’t make it biased. If we examine the way people solved problems in the past, we can learn what worked and what didn’t work to solve our current problems in a more efficient way. Learning the truth in history and not making it relevant to today’s society is only half of the equation. By only achieving one of these things, we miss out on so much history has to offer.
1. Although revisionist history tells somewhat of the truth, I think objective history represents the truth in a much better way. Revisionist history seems to tell stories with certain facts to make an author’s bias opinion sound true. It does not tell all the facts, and only focuses on making history appealing to certain readers. In this blog it states, “Revisionist history has been used by dictators to rewrite history that fits their needs and to reinforce their regimes,” and that fact shows how a higher power can piece together facts to make something seem more or less important. Objective history does not hold any favoritism towards one group or another, and tells the story how it is. It represents facts in a neutral and unprejudiced way.
2. I think history should be focusing on getting the facts straight and telling things correctly. Making history relevant to readers should not be the most important thing to historians. There will always be someone who is displeased with the important topics written down in textbooks and documents. Some people don’t like to hear about how the white men stole the Indian land, or how Africans were taken from their homes and treated poorly; but those issues make up almost all of American history, and eventually lead to the independence of America. History cannot be broken down just because some people don’t want to hear about the Boston Tea Party, or the cruel ways lives used to be with all the starvation and diseases spreading, it has to be told straightforward without any sparing details.
1) I feel that objective history is the best way to represent the truth. I think this because history can be seen in many different lights, some true and some not. Interpretation should be left up to the reader. An author can also have biases to a certain topic or event, making that particular information appear different. When the writer also adds their own interpretation / bias, then when the reader makes their interpretation there is bound to be change to fact. The writer should not have the right to be able to revise history even a little, especially if the reader does not have knowledge of this. When just the plain facts are stated how can you get anything else than the truth?
2) I believe that getting all the facts right is the most important part of history. History is all about looking back on the past, we make records of events so future generations can know and learn. We can see that throughout time the views and life styles of people change, so there is bound to be a misinterpretation. I think it is best to get all the facts strait and let the reader make the information relevant for themselves. I think that it is possible to get almost all of the facts straight when there is bias and perspective involved but it is not the best way to learn history. Although making the information relevant dose make it more interesting and easier to comprehend that is not the most important part of history.
I believe that objectivism best represents the truth. This is due to the fact that the outward goal of objectivists is to include the facts, dates, and statistics of the past. The article states, “Attaining objectivity is the ultimate goal..” While, objectivists are not perfectly objective in their fact finding mission, they are attempting to attain perfect objectivity, which is the goal of history. Later in the article, the opposing side says about objectivity, “…even when objective historians work at assembling their narrative, they have to choose facts, put them in a certain order, exclude other facts…” This is a ridiculous point because Revisionists must do the same thing with their precious “interpretation”. Whose interpretation would you use? Is that interpretation objective? Of course not, because the definition of interpretation in this context is individual’s thoughts on a given event of fact. In addition to this, who are modern historians to judge what people meant in their journals 200 years ago? Subtle changes in language and society can and do cause misunderstandings/misreadings. Finally, Revisionists are incredibly inaccurate because, “Revisionist history has been used by dictators to rewrite history that fits their needs and to reinforce their regimes.” This explicitly states that Revisionism has “rewrite”s in it, and thereby cannot possibly be entirely accurate.
The most important part of history is projecting the correct information. All the relevancy in the world would not mean a thing if the information was incorrect. So what if some 10th grader cannot understand what the importance of the Napoleonic Wars? They still happened and are still significant periods. Yes, it is necessary to have a history book that has some design to it and choice events included, rather than all, but that is secondary to having factual information.
Objective history is the best form of history to represent the truth. Objective is much more reliable and credible than revisionist history, stating factual information of history, whereas revisionist has a more bias perspective of history. Although historians have the right to form their own personal opinions on certain events, history cannot be formed off a jumbled “Wikipedia” of ideas and perspectives. Without having the actual credible observations and facts, how can others form their own individual differentiated opinion from others? History has to be primary and a root of actual occurrences in order to have a better composed understanding of the material. Revisionist history has the ability to leave people ignorant to the complete information. Would you rather be given, what may or may not be true, inclinations from another author’s view point of a historical event, or given the actual documented and observed events and facts that has little to non-bias standing? Yes, people are entitled to their opinions about whatever may the scenario or topic be, but there becomes a thin line when separating your own personal emotions and feelings from the historical standpoint. Therefore, in conclusion, objective school history is a more credible and useful form of history opposed to revision, in representing the truth. Aside from objective being the best form of truth for history, I as well believe you are able to combine both objective and revisionist history together to represent both relevant and informational form of text. In any sense, whether objective or revision, you are using a bias. Generally, to stay clear from dry writing, the reader is attracted to opinions and ideas on history. They [the reader] wants to have a form of argument, some taste of juice when they read or else they end up being less intrigued about the topic and uninterested. That being said, the arguments and facts must be credible and reliable and still stay true, or else you’ll be spreading ignorance. Once you reach a full-come balance of both objective and revision, I feel like that’s the true importance of history.
1. The best representation of the truth can be found in objective history. While knowing everyone’s opinions can be helpful in relating to and understanding the viewpoint of the people involved, it can create a largely biased and untrue description of history. It may be true that bias can never be completely removed from history, but when learning the facts and truth, it is best to have as few opinions as possible. The best way to tell the truth of history is by telling the truth-numbers, dates, facts, people, places, and detailed accounts of what happened-not by telling everyone’s personal beliefs and opinions. When telling history, the straight facts should be told and opinions and judgment of morality should be left for the reader/viewer to decide on his or her own, not decided for them by the writer.
2. Overall, stating the truth is the most important thing in history. It is, however, also very beneficial to engage the reader/viewer by making it relevant to them. Although it may be difficult, I believe that it is possible to tell a relevant yet factual version of history. Not telling the facts as they are (or were) would be negating the whole point of recording history. Not telling the reasoning and not giving the stories and relating the facts to the reader, however, would disengage the reader. Without anyone wanting to learn the history, there is no point in it. In order to make people interested in history and making it factual enough to learn from, a delicate balance must be formed between the juicy, action packed, biased, stories that interest people and the dry, straight-forward, unbiased facts.
In my opinion, the objective school of history best represents the truth of what actually happened. They base their knowledge on facts, and certain events in history that led to another. The objective school takes a scientific approach of finding answers. On the other hand, the revisionist school of history looks at history from their point of view, which could be bias. “Revisionist history has been used by dictators to rewrite history that fits their needs and to reinforce their regimens.” In other words, they change history however they want to, in order to keep running their country, (most likely, a dictatorship). The objective school can be bias, because they usually base their facts from a white man’s perspective. But, we have to remember that it’s the truth. The history is based off of what really and actually happened. They base their evidence with facts and reasoning. On the other hand, the revisionist school of history re-imagines history to fit their own needs. The re-envisioned history could, but not necessarily, be totally false.
Personally, I think that making history relevant to the reader is just as important as telling the facts straight and telling them right. If the information that was given to an individual was not relevant to them, then they would most likely not take an interest, and forget it. History has to be something a person can understand, and by making it relevant, a person can understand it on a deeper level because they can relate to it. But, we have to remember that telling the facts correctly is just as important, and almost more important. We can’t give a person false information about history just because it’s relative to them. Historians have to find a happy medium between telling it correctly and relevantly.
Is history true?
I think that the Objective history gives a better idea of what actually happened. Revisionist history has to pick and choose facts because not all of them are relevant. But then again who are they to judge what relevant is. To a white man a small war between two Spanish countries might not seem relevant. The historians have the impossible task to make a judgment on what is important. In order to make this judgment they almost have to have a bias, this is the only way they can make their choice. This is a major flaw because we can’t learn and keep every fact and every story. We also cannot disregard facts because they could be important indirectly or it could be important to other cultures. Objective history makes a story with all the facts which I believe is more interesting to read and more accurate.
I think that getting the facts straight is more important when telling and explain history. If you have the facts you can make your own choice on if its relevant to you. You can’t change history to make it interesting. When historians attempt to make it relevant to the reader valuable information is lost which could change the reader’s opinion. When you give the historian the option to make it relative to the readers you give them the chance to display their own bias. As a historian it is your job to simply display the facts in an organized way. Historians do not have the right to change the history while cutting out important facts.
1. I feel that the revisionist school is the best way to look at history and is the most true to the learner. When you look at history it comes in facts and bits of what happened. If you are like an encyclopedia of history facts that’s great, but I believe that we study and learn history so we can connect it to current day society. A fact is true and that won’t change ever. Knowing why and how that history fact connects to today makes it true to you. Knowing every important history date won’t help you in your life. It’s the truth behind the dates why are they important why is that something you need to know. The bigger picture.
2. It is more important to connect it to the reader if it is irrelevant to the reader it isn’t true to him. It won’t stick to him. He won’t want to put thought into and look deeper into why this connects to him and why is he learning it. When a fact can connect to me. I remember, but not only do I remember it want to know more it becomes interesting it gives a point to the boring facts that your writing in your notebook. So if you cannot connect with the reader what’s the point of putting endless lines of facts it won’t matter to him. Giving the bigger picture and making the reader dive in deeper by choice and learning the facts. Handing people facts won’t teach anyone anything.
1) I believe objective history is better than revisionist history because the facts are true and straight to the point. Even if the history isn’t very understandable, it still is the truth. If a history article changed facts and words around instead of sharing the entire truth, the historical picture would be a fake, the portrait would be drawn differently. People would have a different interpretation. Revisionist may have flow and understanding but what’s the point in understanding something that isn’t fully true. Evidence should be factual and not based on feelings or opinions. The factual evidence needs to come from a source that can be the least bias about the subject.
2) The more important in history to bring the facts straight to the viewer that are correct know matter who is reading it. If history was given to people in a very biased way, people would go on living their lives thinking a lie is the truth of history. Soon or later everyone would have believed something that wasn’t factual evidence. When real hard facts are put on the table, people would know the truth about their history no matter if hurt them or not.
1) I think that objective history best represents the truth in comparison to revisionist history. Objective historians always arrange facts in the way they best seem fit to provide an interpretable pattern of truthful history. Revisionist historians have the ability to revise history as their country pleases, just to make it relatable and to have it fit in with ideals. This biased history does not represent the truth well in my opinion. Objective history does not include any bias, unless something you want in the history is not included, because it is impossible to have every fact in a piece of history included. I feel the side of history with historians actually trying their hardest to record the truth the best they can would best represent truth better.
2) There is nothing more important in history than getting the facts straight and telling it right. That is the ultimate goal when recording history in my opinion. It definitely holds a priority over making it relevant to the reader, because knowing the real facts is more important than having it be relatable to the reader. It is probably possible to do both in history, but a lot of it probably has more to do with the content of the history. If the content is more relatable in general, it will be easier to tell completely factual information while making it relatable to the reader.
The revisionist and objective teaching of history both represent the truth about history, but are good in different ways. The objective teaching of history only highlights heroic persons and events during the course of American history. The revisionist view places “a negative interest on oppressors and exploiters. Although objective teachings are based, for the most part, on facts it really doesn’t give an insight on all the people in America. At least, with the revisionist point of view you can actually learn the story of the individual(s) of any culture, how they lived, how they interacted with others, and how it affects the environment around them. History is supposed to teach us about the significance of human behavior which led us to what we are today. Sure, facts may provide concrete evidence of what the past was like, in the objective point of view, but you can only get so far with that type of education. Students can actually interact with the revisionist education. One glaring problem with revisionist teachings is forming a bias but that can easily be solved if the facts clearly back it up. In conclusion, if I had to choose one, the revisionist teaching of U.S. History is the best form by far.
When trying to state the importance of history, making it relevant and getting facts straight, while telling the truth can be done, but not every time. This method should be used as much as possible. Making the topic more relatable attracts the reader to the story and the facts start to make more sense. Sometimes, flinging nothing but facts at the reader/ viewer is probably all that can be taught from a lesson. That’s not bad either. Relating or simply stating facts work just fine in a history class but together they can become very effective. They’re both very much necessary. Giving perspectives with facts behind it will have better results than any other technique. To wrap it all, we would be best to use relevant topics with straight forward facts.
1. I feel as though an objective school of history best represents the truth. As opposed to the revisionist school of history, the objectives are unbiased. They look at history as scientifically as possible, meaning that they don’t let their own views cloud the matter at hand. While the revisionist school makes history more relevant. I understand that the objective school would only be using facts and information making it sound like a boring encyclopedia. But all said and done that is the source you know you can trust more. Plus if there is new evidence supporting a new side to a story, which is a primary source, which counts as a fact which could be used by the objective school. The only reason the objective school uses stories from white males were because that was most of the history that was documented, or from a primary source. Other groups maybe didn’t have the same amount of stories or were not able to document their own history to the same extent.
2. I think that getting the facts straight and telling it right is more important to history because it helps to learn about certain circumstances. It helps to really learn something without having a completely bias state on it. When it comes to history you can get your facts straight and make it relevant, in fact that’s mostly what history is. You start off with an option and build off of it with facts. I don’t think, however, that is the best way. It’s just how most of history is written. Plus once you have a train of thought on something it’s often hard to change your position, which is why you tend to see the same one sided view of history depending on where you stand.
1) People usually assume that history is true because it’s written in a textbook or said in a documentary. However that’s not necessarily true due to a historian’s personal bias, a desire to tell a more compelling story or inaccurate sources sometimes history is entirely untrue. There are two main types of history objective and revisionist. Objective history is history presented to you with just the facts, none of the historian’s opinions. Revisionist history is taking prerecorded history and finding any inaccuracies in the work then proving the previous work to be false. The school of history that best displays the truth is revisionist history. This is because almost objective history always has the chance if using biased or in some cases in false sources. Revisionist historians are already looking for mistakes so they’d fact check even more and try to make sure what their saying can’t be proven wrong by another revisionist historian.
2) The most important part of history is sticking to the facts and telling the truth, not making it more relevant for the reader, although the two can be intertwined in a way. Many readers may think the truth, the real, factual story, may not relate to them but that just isn’t true. The things that happened in the past, the authentic things, they’re what brought all of us to where we are today. Due to this I believe that the truth is always relevant to any reader as long as said reader is willing to dig a little deeper and meanings in those facts. Every fact, every event in history in some way had an effect on the world that still runs through today. The things that happened in the past change the way we in the present currently act and we must remember that the things we do now will someday affect the future.