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
The revisionist form of history seems to be the best representation of the truth. Instead of simply stating facts and numbers, it states ideas and events and opinions from all sides, filtered to what is decided to be most important. History is about people, and people are not facts and numbers and statistics. They are opinionated and led vastly different lives with vastly different circumstances. This means that the objective “white man’s history” is both inaccurately representing the world and also forgetting large majorities of lives and stories in its scientific attempt to be wholly impartial. Revisionist history is open and allows for all interpretations, whilst objective history allows only numbers and dates to represent an entire world. People are needed to explain people because numbers do not explain people. The combination of making history relevant and getting the facts right is the desired balance between the extremes of cold calculating objectivity and emotional opinion-based retellings however. This is a possible balance to reach, should the historian be open-minded when gathering facts and ideas that appeals to everyone, not just the traditional viewpoint of those in power that is often seen. By gathering information from all possible sources or viewpoints, the documentation of an event can be much more accurate and can be represented as it happens. Once multi-faceted information and multiple viewpoints have been gathered, the objectivity is needed to sort through the information and take out only what is needed to use in retelling an event. Impartiality is important in not favoring one group versus another, especially when retelling a story with many different sides. A balance can be reached, and is a positive thing, so long as one form of history analysis does not outdo the other and the notions of objective versus revisionist history remain in equal parts. This balance can be important, but ultimately it is the revisionist form of history overall that seems to be of the greatest benefit to learning about our past and ourselves as a world.
1. Objective history seems to best represent the truth. This class of history is (to the best ability of the writer) a factual account of what actually happened in history. The definition of objective from Merriam Webster is, “based on facts rather than feelings or opinions : not influenced by feelings” (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/objective). Revisionist history is a revised version of what actually happened, to fit and agree with the author’s points and opinions. According to dictionary.com revisionist means, ” an advocate of revision, especially of some political or religious doctrine,” (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/revisionist). Factual history can quickly turn revisionist if writers allow their emotions/bias get in the way and they “revise” history as if it was their own fictitious invention. Therefore, it is logical to conclude that history told based on facts and accounts of events occurring (objective) is closer to the truth than skewed history from author’s bias (revisionist).
2. Making content as factual as possible is the most important thing when recounting history. History is supposed to be hard facts and accounts of what has happened, not stories based off of real life events like all those “based off a true story” movies (which contain more fiction than fact). However, it is very possible to make true history relevant to the reader as well. You can in fact do both. Real life events can be told in a factual way and still be interesting and connecting to the reader. You can’t change history to try and convince readers of something, or they are misinformed. When opinion gets in the way too much, it isn’t a bad thing, it just is not history. Writing about the accounts of a war is different from writing an essay, that includes factual evidence and opinion, about what caused the war. If textbooks were chocked full of opinions of the historian, then every history class in America would be learning something different. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to have a totally unbiased recount of all events of American history, but I think it is vital that historians try to get it as close to the truth as possible.
1) Objective history best seems to represent the truth because it takes a non-bias stance on history and doesn’t glorify specific events. Objective history solely is based in the truth and isn’t affected or taken over by opinions, or government pressure. Therefore, the better form of history is objective because it solely states the facts and nothing else. The other type of history isn’t as reliable because it’s biased, therefore it’s much easier to strecth the truth and bend history into what history is not.
2) The most important thing historians need to make sure of it’s getting the facts straight and telling them right, instead of making it relevant to the reader. Getting the facts straight is much more important because history is the facts from the past. A historian or author shouldn’t focus on making the story relevant to the reader because no one can relate to everything in history and by trying to make history relevant to the reader the author could attempt to make comparisons that seem rellevant to the reader, however are not nearly the same as what the author is trying to compare. You can’t make history both relevant to the reader and include the facts because history will go on in various countries and different cities and the purpose of history isn’t to make pointless comparisons attempting to make the reader feel relevant in the topic, history has one purpose and that is to tell our human story, our battles, revolutions, and advances in this world.
Is History True???
Andrew Martin APUSH 1st hour
1. I believe that objective history better represents the truth of what really happened in history. Revisionist history is based around bias and as the blog says “Revisionist history has been used by dictators to rewrite history that fits their needs and to reinforce their regimes.” This shows that political powers can change what really happened to make future generations believe they are better than they really are. Objective history is based more on the facts and what really happened at these historical events. People believe that historians have to show bias no matter what method they choose. You might as well choose the side where facts are not tampered with to please the public and make history look nicer.
2. I believe getting the facts straight within history is more important than making it relevant to the reader. History should not be tampered with just to appease people, but you can adjust the topic to present facts that are relevant to the area or social order that people live in today. This is why I believe you can do both. When I live in Michigan I care much more about history that was present in my state rather than history about Argentina. I would not like if the history I am learning about has been tampered with just to make me feel better about where I live. I would rather learn about true facts and getting sides straight in Argentina than false facts about my own state.
1. History is best represented without bias or opinions in the accounts that tell you what happened. Objective history is just that: ignoring all bias, opinion, pressure from Govt. or media and writing down as accurate of an account of what happened in that specific event. The reason the other type of history is not reliable enough to tell the truth, revisionist history, is because it is written from a perspective of the historian’s opinions. For example, if we read an account of the assassination of archduke Franz Ferdinand and it said that the assassination was an inside job done by Germans posing as nationalist Serbians to start a war, and the writer was a Serbian soldier or someone who showed feelings of anger towards the central powers, then we could assume that wouldn’t be completely accurate. However, if an account was written by the perpetrators of the assassination about why he wanted to assassinate the archduke, then we could see the exact truth about the assassination of the archduke, this is an example of objective history.
2. Although it is better for history to tell the truth from a historian’s view point, to the rest of society who probably doesn’t think much of history, it is better to tell history in a way to appease the public. Sometimes, if details come out about a certain event, it could change the way people view the event and even the present day situation. It is nearly impossible to tell history from a viewpoint of appealing to the people and getting the facts right, unless in a case where the event glorifies a nation.
I think that objective history is the best representation of the truth, but it’s not necessarily the best way to learn. Objective history has much less bias than revisionist, and the facts are straightforward and plainly out in the open. However, revisionist history is more realistic, because it gives you a view of other things going on at the time, like opinions and views of political leaders and why certain people did what they did or why certain things happened the way they did, that might otherwise be deemed irrelevant in objective history views. So, to sum it up: objective history is more truthful and straight to the point, but revisionist history is more relatable and relevant to other history and what is happening in our world today.
I think that both objective and revisionist history are important because you shouldn’t have one without the other. Who wants to read list after list of boring facts with no story or meaning behind it? Or who wants to read a story but not be able to really get anything out of it because there are no hard facts to back it up? So, I think that not only can you have both, you need to have both. That’s what history is. You get the facts and the dates, but you also get the opinions and the anger in the riots and the joy of winning a war and the little details that can really make a difference. Because history isn’t about being able to memorize and spew facts all the time. You have to understand what was happening at the time and really be able to understand people’s points of view and why things happened the way they did instead of just knowing that they happened a certain way. History is about feelings. Feelings are what cause a rebellion that leads to a war that leads to a new country which are all relevant to our world today. Without feelings and opinions in history, there would be no point. History is only important when it means something and is the reason something is how it is today. Again, to sum it up: without putting the opinions and stories in history, and just having hard facts, we wouldn’t understand how we got where we are today or why things happened the way they did.
1: I personally believe that the revisionist idea of history is inherently flawed. Bias can be expressed too easily in this specific way of recording history. The history brought forth from this method can be ever so bent by those who wish to use it to gain traction or sympathy to a cause or hatred and discontent to a specific group of people. It has been done before and will most likely continue to happen whether we address it or not. The correct order of facts with no opinion stated afterward id simply the only way to ensure that no one person or group is demonized or turned into the hero because the historian has a bias toward them. The Bias of a historian cannot and should not be intentionally passed down from historian to the reader.
2:Easily, the factual part of history wins out in its importance and impact upon the reader. The absence of a bias that could potentially be expressed through an attempt to conform history to maintain a certain relevance to the reader allows said reader to formulate their own opinion or stance upon the subject without being unjustly or unfairly influenced by an agenda held by a historian. It is possible, however, to maintain correct and precise factual evidence whilst delivering it to the reader in a format that pertains to their current situation, whatever they may be. You can do this by stating the outcomes that have been linked to the event in history and the impact that could potentially be carried out upon the reader’s surrounding area.
1: Between the two schools of history, I believe that that objective history is the best representation of the past. My reasoning behind this is that it accurately represents occasions in history using facts which increase the credibility of that specific account on history. Also, with objective history being solely based on facts, it is not influenced by political or social bias in a way that would alter or change the accounts of history. Objective history is also not frequently revised and changed based on the political and social influence unlike revisionist history. The fact that revisionist history is used to change occurrences and past events in history to further improve political leverage and power shows that it is used in accurately and shows little relevance to actual history, instead being a tool for reinforcement of political standpoint.
2: Relevance and factual information in the text of history are both very important aspects of understanding. Despite these two aspects being from two opposing sides of historical schools, it is very possible for both of these aspects to be utilized in ways meant for better understanding. Keeping history as factual and non-opinionated as possible is a key strategy in improving the understanding level. But, if it is necessary to increase the relevance towards the reader facts can be removed or added to improve the relevance of the text to the reader. Objective history is designed by adding or taking away facts, “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?), and they exercise some kind of bias, no matter how slight or small.” This idea takes both aspects of factual representation and showing relevance of the topic to the reader. If the facts are useless, irrelevant or include a type of bias, they are discarded and not used. This clearly shows the ability of being able to use both relevance and factualness without sacrificing one or the other and increasing comprehension of the reader.
1. The objective school of history seems to best represent the truth. This school of history states what actually happened and shows the order of important events in order to inform the reader of the account of the great mystery we call history. This school of history doesn’t get stuck in the millions of useless secondhand accounts and people’s reactions to the events but, it gets right to the point to inform people. By not including people’s thoughts or emotions you might miss some very small events or happenings, but in the grand scheme of things the very minute details end up not quite mattering as much as the big picture ideals. Although the objective school doesn’t always focus on any other ethnic group other than white males, it kind of makes sense because those are the people who founded our country and have been involved in every piece of our history from day one. And finally, if everyone was using the revisionist school of history, content taught in schools might not always be 100% factual and accurate, which would lead to problems later in life.
2. I believe that in this day and age it is much more important to get the facts right than have it be interesting or engaging for the reader. Although this may be the more boring and time consuming of the two options, it’s what will give you that competitive edge against someone who was engaged by everything they read when competing for a job. Because of the way our society is structured today, unless you are really good at something outside of school such as a sport, you have to go to college and learn as much as you can so one day you have a hope of getting the job that you want or any job at all to have a family and the life that you have always wanted. If everything you ever do in life has to entertain you then you are going to have a hard time applying yourself later in life. And, if people writing the textbooks for schools tried to appeal to everyone to try to get them to learn the material better, the result would be something that would end up being hard for teachers to teach and would make students not want to learn because of all the different ways the concepts are being presented to them. And finally, perhaps the best way in my opinion to learn is from sources that are factual in nature.
1. I think that the best s representation of the truth is the objective side, even though I like ideas from both sides. I think that the objective side is better because of its large base on facts. This makes history unbiased, compared to if it was someone’s opinion. The bad side of the facts is that history is about the people behind us and how they shaped the world to make it what it is today. History isn’t based on the facts themselves but the people that the facts are about. You can’t have a revised version of history because it may not come out accurate to what actually happened. If we want to know about all of the people before us it is probably best to go with the objective way. No matter how small or large a revision is, it still doesn’t give correct details and full explanations if someone who wasn’t there is retelling it based on what they think happened. In my opinion, you can’t really put history into your own words unless it completely agrees with factual evidence. History isn’t a just a model to follow, it is an actual account of events; therefore you may not be able to grasp all of the right concepts by making it your own. Revision can be completely based on emotions instead of actual evidence, which could make readers of revision be brainwashed to think a certain way about a topic, and having someone else’s beliefs planted into their head as opposed to them having their own.
2. In my opinion, getting the facts straight in reading is a little more important than making it relevant to the reader. Changing history by imputing your opinion is not fair to the people who might not agree with you. Our first amendment rights give all people freedom of expression and opinion, so you would be violating those rights by forcing how you feel upon someone who may not feel that way. If you really felt like you needed to share your voice, I think that there could still be a way to, though. AS long as you emphasize the facts and the evidence of what actually happened. You can make a minor mention of your beliefs on the subject, as long as you don’t make people feel obligated to side with you.
1. I believe the “true” type of history revisionist. This is the best way to states history because it doesn’t take the side of something; it is simply based off of pure facts, primary sources, and dates. As boring as learning off of straight facts is, it is the better way because historians have gathered them from multiple sources, combined information, and set them in a time line. Although, objective learning might be more “fun” by learning the relevant information, and information the appeals to the human eye, it is always not the most efficient and correct way of learning history. With objective history one can re-write it, for example, the civil war is thought of to be started by economics amongst the states, or state rights, two totally different ideas, both coming from different standpoints. With revisionist history we are given facts put in a credible order to best represent the past. With objective history, many important stories told from the viewpoints of women, Latinos, and African Americans, etc have been left out only because that kind of history is based off of the white male.
2. When learning and teaching history the most important part is the truth behind the information. History is represented by facts, primary sources, etc. Making the learning relevant to the reader makes the information more fun to learn but it’s not always the best. Learning from facts is the most efficient because of the straight information we are given. Although, I believe history can be relevant to the reader and very informational. History shown through visional ways is extremely relevant to the reader and can include many facts, depending on what you are watching though. History is best learned when the knowledge apples to the learner and helps the person accomplish everyday activities. History should be fun, but when choosing between how relevant the information is and the information itself, I would choose getting facts straight from being told.
1.) Between the two schools of history, objective and revisionist, it seems as though revisionist would better represent the truth. Objective history is attempting to collect all the “unbiased” facts and order them chronologically. I put unbiased in quotes as no one really is unbiased, and the facts are written by that times dominant force, who are definitely biased. Revisionist history is making edits to the already existing objective history as new facts come to light. If we solely stuck to objective history, using only the facts that were around when the history was being written, we would have a very narrow point of view. If new evidence were to be found that undermines the currently established thoughts about a certain topic, changes should be made to reflect that.
2.) The difficulty with history comes with attempting to make the history relevant while still conveying what actually happened. As to which is more important, I would argue that stating the truth is more important, if only because we want the people of the world to understand exactly what happened and to use that as knowledge. However, making history relevant is also an important part of writing history as well. If the people reading the history do not understand and relate to what is being said, they will not want to actually learn about the history itself. I believe a happy medium can be reached between stating the truth and making the history relevant, but it is not the easiest thing to do. For the reader to maintained interested, some fabrication to make the history sound more entertaining would be needed, however what you want is to stay as true to the facts as possible. If you stray too far from what is true to make history sound interesting, you are missing the entire point of history, which is to learn what happened in the past. Not to be entertained by the adventures of people who lived long ago, however that can still happen even when just going off of one hundred percent facts. Overall, collecting and stating the truth is the most important aspect of history, but making it relevant is still a major piece to keep people wanting to learn history.
1. When picking between objective and revisionist history, I personally feel the school of history that is superior in representing the truth is revisionist history. I feel that history shouldn’t necessarily pertain to only factual evidence, but rather a story of previous life. History is the story of our past as humans, and all the events that occurred were based upon emotions and ideals, not just the fact of right and wrong. While objective history can be good when applying it to a factual discussion about the casualties of a certain revolt per say, it wouldn’t show why the people were revolting, their true emotions felt at the time, or the specific causes of the revolt. I personally enjoy history because while it is very factual it also can be experienced through many different perspectives. It’s fascinating to think that even one day could be experienced by unlimited amounts of people and everyone could have their own opinions and thoughts upon that one single moment in time. I don’t believe there is always a truth in history, excluding the hard evidence of casualties or dates and what not. I feel that everyone holds their own truth pertaining to a topic. I don’t feel you can put a label on the emotions that a group of people have at one time. History is a story that multiple people can read and interpret, and there isn’t a solid right/wrong or yes/no factual answer to it.
2. The importance of history stands in getting the facts straight and telling it right, in my opinion. I feel a basis of hard factual evidence should be proposed and then the reader interprets their thoughts and opinions from there. I feel if you change the history and don’t include the proper topics you will misinform the reader of what occurred. While I feel facts and telling the story correctly is important, I also feel you can make the history relevant to the reader. I feel if you are aware of the type of person who would be reading your story, let’s say high school students, rather than writing basically a textbook with nothing but dry facts, you should allow for interpretation by using different styles of writing, literary devices, and a tone in your writing that would cause for a connection between the reader and the story itself. I feel making a connection to the reader is necessary if your objective is to make the reader remember the topic at hand.
1. I believe that of the two schools of thought in history, a revisionist way is a better way of teaching it. Revisionists focus on individual people of all types and not just the facts and numbers of objective history. Also, by including in the thoughts of different types of people, revisionist tends to more accurately tell the tale of everybody, not just the white man. Revisionist history tells the story of people marginalized by society that wouldn’t get talked about in the main points of history even though they are important. Also, by telling everybody’s viewpoint, I think it cuts down on bias because it shows the different beliefs of everyone, not just the white men or other dominant group of people. The old saying that history is written by the victors, therefore making it very bias, is not true in this revisionist sense because everyone is telling the story.
2. I believe that the reader needs to get the correct facts, yet at the same time it needs to be relevant because if people can’t relate to something, they tend to lose interest. However, I think the true facts need to be stressed because people need to know what actually happened. I believe that in trying to make history relevant, people lose focus on the facts and just tell what people want to hear, and end up skipping over important facts and end up telling a not fully true version of history. It ends up turning from a true story to base on a true story, a history that resembles what happens but is not entirely factually true. In conclusion, people need the facts and a relevant view of history just ends up clouding over the facts and not giving people the essential information
1: Which school of history – objective or revisionist – best seems to represent the truth? Why?
I believe the revisionist history best seems to represent the truth because it focuses on what occurred and from different points of view. Objective history is selected history chosen for the purpose of the writer which is bias and the events did occur but are told from the winning side. The APUSH test has recently been updated from an objective history point of view to a revisionist point of view. People who disagree with revisionist points of view are upset because America isn’t always portrayed as the exceptional country we have been taught to believe in. In What’s Driving Conservatives Mad About the New AP Course, an article by Pema Levy this was said: “But Krieger is convinced that the fact that the framework fails to mention most of America’s greatest historical figures by name means that they won’t be on the test and therefore won’t be taught. And he’s aghast that events and themes he always considered part of America’s greatness appear in the framework as, well, not so great.” The gap between objective and revisionist history is made clear as Krieger, a former objective APUSH teacher, is upset about how America is explained from both sides. Yes, America has accomplished a great deal to become its own free country but it also has created many enemies as well as enslaved multiple groups of people. Revisionist history explains the feats as well as the follies of the America. Therefore, I believe revisionist history best represents the truth because in order to tell the truth both sides of history need to be known and evident.
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 my opinion, the point of history is to explain past events. We learn history in order to use previous knowledge to make logical decisions on current to future events. In history, getting the facts straight and telling it right is most important because if you don’t know the facts there is no point. History needs to teach what happened exactly in the time period to give the best results to the present day. I believe you can do both, make history relevant as well as get the facts straight. History isn’t important unless it can apply to you. You can know facts but what is the point if you will never get a chance to apply them?
Revisionist history appears to be the best representation of the truth. This form of history doesn’t only state facts, but explores other points of view from different people. It does not exclude any groups and offers different perspectives, which is the best way to retell important moments in history because each story has multiple sides and viewpoints. The more opinions you see, the better understanding you can have on the events that actually occurred and not just simple statistics. This form of history expels the stories from the “white man’s” view of history and instead included statements, journals, etc. from multiple viewpoints because the many different stories that we hear are what truly make up history.
I believe that it is important to have an equal balance when it comes to stating facts and making history relevant to readers. This can be achieved if historians gather information from many different sources. They can then be retold in a way that allows students or readers to connect and be interested in the subject. One way of doing this is showing different opinions and allowing the reader to choose which one they agree with. Doing this can allow readers to see differing perspectives and gather factual information at the same time. This balance is hard to reach, but not completely impossible. It can also make it more interesting by allowing the students themselves to argue different views and attempt to influence others opinions. This encourages a flow of even more information in an appealing way.
1. The revisionist form of history best represents the truth. This form is about completing the story. The facts we know, and are always taught, about history would have never just happened. It explains that people are the history, not just the actions or events (facts) that happened on a certain date. There may be a bias perspective, but who’s to say that certain things happened for only one reason. Slavery and economics could have both caused the civil war. It does not just have to be one factor. Certain people believe certain events happened, but a revisionist historian will not fall under the influence and change the history for one point. They may choose a certain bias, but always explain the opposing argument as well. History cannot be changed by bias perspective. People lived through these events. Many people have many different stories and that is the history. The history is the different people and how they made the events happen because without them it wouldn’t have occurred at all.
2. I believe it is more important to tell the story right. However, this does not just mean straight facts as in events and what date they happened. Although that is important, I believe that it is even more important to get the peoples story out there. It is crucial for us to know who were the people living during this exciting, tragic or confusing time in the world. I think you can appeal to the reader with the stories you tell about people who were just like them. If they were born a couple centuries earlier it could very much be them. A person can get the facts and the opinions with many different sources or they can find a historian that appeals to both sides. The history becomes relevant based on opinion, it is really up to the reader to find the historian he/she agrees with most.
1. The “objective” school of history best seems to represent the truth. This is because it lists facts and evidence regarding what truly occurred, and looks at history from a scientific standpoint. Objective history focuses only on certain truths, which gives it great credibility, but also restrains it. While I do believe that “objective” history is the best representation of the true history, it is not the most useful. I believe that the “revisionist” school of history has much more practical uses than “objective” history. As stated in the article, “objective” history is held back by an overburden of facts, while “revisionist” history can handpick the best facts to display. This fact makes “revisionist history” history much more practical in everyday conversations and when you want to prove your point. “Revisionist” history allows you to choose not only from undisputed fact, but also from biased and less tangible ides such as thought processes.
2. Getting the facts straight and telling it right is much more important to history than making it relevant to the reader. This is because as long as one has a large pool of true facts is much more advantageous to everyone. Telling lies to try to appeal to readers only makes the populace stupider. It is indeed possible to both make it relevant to the reader and telling the facts correctly, but it does not always occur. This is because interests vary objectively from person to person. If we make history appeal to all of the readers, there would be very little history to be told.
1. The best way to represent the truth is by using objective history. Personal biases tend to get in the way of telling the facts the way they are, and people sometimes bend or exclude facts to make their argument seem correct. People in the past were more than statistics and documents, but using a personal bias to tell the story does not represent what actually happened the best. Being objective and looking at all sides of a story gives the best understanding of what actually happened. If historians used biases, it would be very easy to not look at a different perspective. Being objective is important to make sure that history is accurately represented.
2. Even though history is best represented by being objective, I think that it is important to make history relevant to the reader so that they can fully understand and appreciate why actions lead to others. Getting the facts right is also important, because if you tell a story, it would be very easy for the story to change from each person who tells it. I think that you can do both, by telling the story of history from many different perspectives. For example, if we only looked at events from the victor’s perspective, it would be easy to make the losing side seem weak and irrational. However, if you only look at history from the losing perspective, it would be very easy to demonize whoever won. If you look at both, you can understand why the losing side lost, and what events led up to others, and why certain people acted they way they did.
1. Objective history best seems to represent the truth. History should be the facts, not biased stories based on who is telling it. When learning history someone should learn the facts and create their own judgments and decisions rather than already be reading someone else’s. Revisionist history is exactly that: revised. People should be able to know all of the facts and information and come to conclusions on their own. If people are only learning half of the story, because that is all the revisionist historian decided to write about, how is that really learning? The person is only learning half of the story. Objective history supplies people with all of the facts while revisionist history supplies people with what the historian thought was important even though it may not be the whole truth. Although objective history best represents the truth it may not be the best way to learn.
2. Getting the facts straight and telling it right is much more important to history. If learning about history is boring then don’t do it. It’s much more important for the facts to be correct then for the reader to be entertained. If the facts aren’t correct then what is the point of learning about history at all? Although I do believe you can get the facts straight and make them relevant to the reader; getting the facts correct is still much more important. I believe you can do both, because history is interesting. So much happens in history that it is possible to tell an interesting story with it still being factually correct. If everyone learned different accounts of what happened in history based on the historian’s bias, then everyone would be learning something different. Although opinions are fine they should be drawn by each individual, not by the historian publishing his or her work.
1. I think that objective history is the best representation of the truth. When you strip history down to its bare bones, you see that it is a series of events that occur in a specific order agreed on by historians. While objective history may have its faults with personal bias, its ultimate goal is still complete objectivity. Revisionist history, on the other hand, can have much worse personal bias. In revisionist history, all details on what occurred can be altered and presented in a way that benefits the presenter, even if factual accuracy is scarified in doing so. The authors of revisionist history can even split so far from fact that their accounts of history can begin to sound like historical fiction. I find that when objective history is truly objective it gives us a significantly better idea of what actually happened. When you take the time to learn about some of the atrocities that the American colonists committed during its revolutionary period you begin to have a better understanding of what the revolution must have looked like from both the American and British perspectives. When both perspectives are examined from an objective view you can then conclude why the feelings of each side were as they were during the American Revolution. This is why I think that objective history is better at representing truth than revisionist history.
2. I think that getting the facts straight and telling it right is more important to history than making it relevant to the reader. The reader should be able to take the information that is presented to them and make connections between the information and their lives. If history focused more on relevance it could be slightly more meaningful to the reader, but may leave out some crucial information that may not be directly relevant to the reader. However I think that history can be presented in a way that it is both objective and relevant to the reader. For instance, you could take a major event in the history of the reader’s country that’s impact would be felt by them today, then objectively describe the circumstances before and after the event.
1. Between objective and revisionist history, objective are better at representing the truth. When history is written to fit a certain style or edited to improve understanding, it immediately differs from the truth. While it is easier to understand if some facts are left out, changed, or reorganized, but in doing so the historian has changed some small part of history. If a historian wants to create a record about an event, they must state what they say as somebody who observed the event without taking on a perspective. If and when they take a perspective or side, they are bias in what they write because an act that is wrong to one person is seen as great by a different person. History itself is/should be composed of facts, not opinions, which is difficult to maintain because emotion, being a significant part of human nature, must not be used when recording history. Think about it, if everyone states their own opinion on every event in human history, there would be 7 billion different responses. Everyone has their own unique point of view, where they can share an answer with someone but more than likely not sharing the same reasoning behind the answer. So, if everyone’s opinions are different, then why should revisionists be able to write history based on their opinion? While the objective point of view may not be the 100% absolute truth, it comes quite a bit closer than the revisionist point of view.
2. Getting all the facts correct is more important to history than it being relevant to the reader. That’s the point of learning, knowing the facts then understanding them, not knowing them and then changing them to help you understand. If you change facts you need to learn, you stop learning the facts you needed to learn, and instead you just changed the facts. While changing facts to help you understand them as opposed to changing your perspective to understand the facts is easier, it is not recommended. You can’t do both at the same time, because they contradict each other, one giving you the facts you need and the other giving the facts that aren’t truly facts anymore.
1. I think the objective school of history would represent the most truth. The white man’s history is sad and dull, and you don’t learn anything about other cultures or the discrimination that went on against people of different race or religion. The white man’s history is basically saying women and people of different cultures other than Europeans are not important to history, which I think is completely biased and untrue. The objective school of history is much better because you learn more about history and diversity. You learn about great civilizations other than what the Europeans did and objective history recognizes the importance and influence of it. It also recognizes how many women that changed history which included people like: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anne Frank, and Rosa Parks. Even if you can be disgusted by all the horrible things that the world has done, you feel a lot better knowing what happened and that you can learn from history instead of just saying it is non-important or too biased. I feel as if women and other cultures and civilizations are just as important if not more to history today.
2. I think getting the facts straight and telling the history right is more important than making it relevant to the region a reader lives in. I don’t think you can do both because history is in the past and you can’t change what has already happened in the past. Also being biased about something in your own opinion isn’t bad. It’s just when you tell history saying that only white men contributed to history is when it is bad. You cannot be so biased to fit a reader’s mindset that you change the way history is being told. Like I said before, women and cultures such as the African, Arab, and Native American Empires are just as important to history as white men are. And in a world and especially a country such as the USA, that celebrates the diversity of people and the world, it would be wise to give credit to the so many people other than white men who contributed to history as well.
1. I believe that between objective and revisionist history, I believe that objective history represents the truth best. The definition of objective is “not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts” (dictionary.com). If something is not influenced by feeling or emotions of individuals, you will get the real truth and not something that was changed due to one’s opinions. In objective history, historians gather together as many facts as they can so that they can go through and find the most important facts to put into order as a representation of time years ago. While doing so, some minor facts may be left out because they weren’t as important to the grand scheme of things. I believe that without the feelings or emotions of individuals influencing the real facts of history, you will get an overall, real part of history that wasn’t changed or influenced.
2. I think that it is more important to history to get the facts straight and telling history right. If you try to make history relevant to the reader, then the reader wouldn’t be getting the full effect of the history because they just wanted to hear things relevant to themselves. I believe that you cannot do both – giving the reader only information relevant to themselves and telling/getting the facts straight – because history is made up of all sorts of things so you can’t necessarily give a reader little bits of history just relevant to themselves because you would be leaving out so many pieces. By leaving out those few pieces of history, that one piece could mean so many different things if not with the other information. I believe that you cannot do both because by doing that you would.
The school of history that seems to best represent the truth is objective history. Objectivity is the goal where people look at history from a non political stand point and look to find what the facts mean. Historians cannot let their views get in the way of what the facts are in objective history. Many feel indifferent about history because historians are always going to have some sort of bias on what they think is important in history. They have to choose certain facts and leave others out. Those other facts, however, may not be important to one historian, but may be important to another. There is so much history that often times historians question whether a fact is relevant or not. If the fact is not, they will leave it out of their narrative. Some facts need to be taken out in order for historians to see the patterns in history. Overall, objective history is closer to the real truth because historians try to include everything they can and try not to remove the things they do not agree with. They include as much as they can without losing the pattern of history.
I think that getting the facts straight and telling the story right is more important to history because if people leave out certain facts and information, the reader or viewer is not getting the whole picture. Although the facts and information may not be relevant to the overall story, the reader will not get the whole story. I find that little facts that do not necessarily add to the significance of the event are often the most interesting. I remember that certain event in history, not only for the overall significance, but for the little fact that was interesting to me. You can, however, keep it relevant to the event in history while adding the entire story. I often find that after I read about an event, I want to find more specific information about the event instead of just the vague story of the event that most text books give.
Blog #65
“Is History True?”
1. Which school of history – objective or revisionist – best seems to represent the truth? Why?
Objective history seems to have best represented the truth of events that took place throughout the past. Objective historians look at history in an extremely objective way, analyzing it as a scientist would analyze data. They attempt to portray the actual events of an event in history so that when viewed hundreds of years later, the readers would understand exactly what occurred. Objective history is very hard to obtain, due to human nature. Everyone has opinions and biases, even historians, and they often subtly share their opinions and feelings without noticing. Constantly striving to ignore their biases, objective historians must resist the pressure from outside forces to document false history.
Biases and their personal perspectives affect revisionist historians. They write history how they want it to be viewed, not how it actually happened. All of my history and social studies classes have taught me that history is usually written by the winners and men, in a revisionist style. An example of revisionist history would be the South saying, if they had won the Civil War, that the North had been fighting to destroy the southern lifestyle instead of listing the many reasons why the war was fought. Revisionist history would be like if the villain of your favorite story wrote their perspective. Wouldn’t it be different? That’s why I believe objective history represents the truth better than revisionist history. Objective history attempts to tell the truth, revisionist history shares only one side of the story.
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?
Making history relevant to the reader is more important than getting all the facts straight. If you read a history book, containing all the perfect facts and information, but didn’t relate to it or understand what the facts meant, you wouldn’t really learn anything. Though I think it is very important to have the truth and facts present, sacrificing a few facts would be worth the understanding of the readers. Isn’t history written to be read and related to so we can learn from the past? Without relevance, reading about history has no use. Facts and dates have no meaning, unless we assign meaning. Once we add meaning, we can learn from history. I believe we can do both though, but there are limitations. It is difficult to include all the facts and still have relevance, so a happy medium should be created. History is a lesson, an epic, and facts. To learn all we can about history, we have to find a balance.
1. Objective history represents the truth better. This form of history uses a scientific approach to writing history. This form examines and explains history exactly how it happened, and isn’t influenced by bias opinions. It’s better to have the reader come up with their own opinions based off of the facts, not the writer’s bias opinions. It doesn’t seem logical to explain history to a person based off of one person’s viewpoint. There are many different opinions on what is good and bad in history, so reading bias literature isn’t going to do the reader any good. Readers need to get the hard facts of what did and didn’t happen so they can make a logical opinion by themselves. Objective history won’t deny an event occurred if it did in fact occur. They write history like this so that the reader can have a proper understanding of what truly happened, and what the reader decides after that is up to them.
2. I think that getting the facts straight and telling it right is more important to history. It does no good if everyone has one opinion on how one event occurred. This makes for a lack of diversity, thought-wise. It is also unfair to a reader if they are being fed facts that have been changed /edited by the author. It’s the diversity of thought that makes for more intellectual thinking. When people have different opinions/thoughts, they can bring up ideas that never would have crossed their minds if they didn’t have those different perspectives. The whole point of studying history is to give the reader the solid facts about the world, not to fill their heads with manipulated
1. I believe objective history seems to best represent the truth, though objective historians exclude certain facts; they only exclude the facts that aren’t important or relevant. I think that because there are so many opinions and so much bias, revisionist history can sometimes be changed to fit the historians point of views. Objective historians do not look at history through a political standpoint, but instead have to look at the facts as they are and put them together understandably and credibly. Objective historians do not use bias to help support a point, but instead, present the facts as they actually happened.
2. I believe that making history relevant to the reader, as well as getting the facts straight and telling it right are both very important. I think that it is easily achievable to do both of these things. Having history relevant to the reader makes history more understandable and relatable for the reader themselves. Though, it is very important that by making the history relevant to the reader, the facts are not lost in the process. Telling the facts straight to readers is also very important, because readers should know the facts exactly as they happened, without the historians’ bias getting in the way of it. If history was told in a way that relates to readers without the use of correct facts and with a strong bias, then we would be doomed to repeat it. And sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction, which makes for even more interesting discussion and studying of history.
1) The objective school of history best seems to represent the truth. There will always be a small amount of bias thoughts in everything no matter how hard you try to avoid it. Historians must try and avoid the pull of human nature to become bias or to have pressure put on them by government, schools, or media. Objective history may be more boring than revisionist but it stays strictly to the facts and leaves out the room for interpretation. Objective historians take the facts they receive and treat them as concrete evidence and does not change or tamper with its meaning to the best of their abilities.
2) It is most important to get the facts straight and to tell it write in comparison with making it relevant to the reader. However, if it is strictly facts and information people will get lost in the facts and won’t have a story or plot to put them too. So, even though it is very important to get the facts straight you also need to make it relevant to the reader. The more relevant it is to the reader, the harder it is to keep the facts and avoid being bias. There are people who find history boring and if all you give them is lists of facts and information they will be less likely to retain anything. It is possible to do both, you just need to keep the story from becoming bias and keep it full of facts and information, but not too many that it becomes overcrowded and clustered.
1. I believe revisionist history best represents the truth. Objective history shows strictly facts without bias which is impossible. If not history would only be a list of facts. Revisionist history can be portrayed from both sides of the story, allowing to give greater details from the past. Great portions of Objective history is “White male’s history” therefore not including Latino, African-American, Asian and women’s stories. Without including those people they are not portraying history to its fullest. In like fashion when objective historians find new evidence It might be extremely difficult to do something with the new information they have received. Revisionist history best represents the truth for it shows both sides of all stories in history portraying them in the best way possible.
2. Getting the facts straight and telling it right is more important to history. If there were not any facts and it was only relevant to the reader, history would not be taught properly. History is the study of past events, if the events taught are not factual than it is technically not history. In addition, making history relevant may cause confusion between which facts are real and which are not. However, both giving the facts and making it relevant to the reader is possible and can be very important to the people reading. If you were reading an encyclopedia of facts you may become uninterested in what you were learning, which may cause you to breeze past important parts of history. It is necessary to know the facts, be interested and enjoy what you are reading in order to completely understand and be aware of the importance of history.
1. Objective history seems to best represent the truth of history as it only presents the absolute facts of what happened when told ideally. However, the problem is achieving the ideal way to tell history, as not everything would be included due to how someone may not regard something as significant enough to include. Objective history, however, doesn’t suffer from the threat of revising history to enforce the ideals of a particular body of people. Objective history would present all relevant information, as each source would explain in detail the points they find. Revisionist history has an even greater potential for bias, and could simply remove or add any information and ignore what had happened in those times. By showing exactly what happened, then allowing discussion would be the closest to achieving the truth of history. Simply revising history means that we can’t even be sure that those events actually happened, as someone could just rewrite history, which means that history would be a study of what kind of or almost or maybe happened, which is not how history should be presented, as history is the study of exactly what happened in the past.
2. The most important part of history is to make sure the information given is true, otherwise the connections made from studying history is likely to be false. If an attempt is made to link a historical event to the person studying without fact-checking, the person could end up spouting inaccurate information at people, some of which might believe the false information. It is important to make history relevant to the reader as well, or else there is no point in studying history. However, it is possible to have both correct information, and relevant facts, as to first make sure the information is correct, then to link it to the person examining.
1.The school of history, objective or revisionist, that best seems to represent the truth is the revisionist camp. I say this because the revisionists use the important facts and put them into their work. They say, “In order to become a history, facts have to be put together in a pattern that is understandable and credible…” I agree with this because you can’t just put facts that are related to each other throughout different parts of a book, or story, etc. You have to put the facts in a specific pattern that makes sense to the reader. Revisionists take all the facts still, but just throw away the ones that are not needed or important. Revisionists also include stories of people and their lives, such as those who had been not as significant in the march of white male history. They could find new evidence in these stories, and real recollections of what happened in history, and form a new understanding. Unlike the objective point of view that are only concerned with the major facts and people, not little details that could change history people’s views on history.
2.What I think is more important to history – making it relevant to the reader/viewer or getting the facts straight and telling it right – is both of them. You have to have relatable facts and evidence so the reader can understand and relate to what is going on. But, you also have to have straight up facts that are reliable for people to know what actually happened in history. For example, John Green and the PowerPoint’s we use in class for notes are real evidence that tell us what happened in history, and the real facts. These help me because I need to know the facts of what has happened first, to actually relate to it. The history movies/clips that we watch in class help me with relating to what is happening. Such as, seeing real people going through real situations that I could probably relate to my own life.
Is History True?
The objective school of history best seems to represent the truth because it is solely the facts. Looking at history like an analytical scientist will get you exactly what happened in history and not the bias opinion of the historian. The main goal is to look at history without giving your opinion to the event or your interpretation of it. Even the slightest bias can change the actual history that went down. When it comes to learning you should get the cold hard facts because that is the truth and the truth will provide the most solid form of education, after that you can interpret it however you want, but learning it the objective way will get you the correct information of the history.
I believe revisionist is more important to history by making it relevant to the reader because reading just straight facts can be a bit hard on the reader to put into context and understand. When you are reading sometimes a slight bias could very helpful to develop a certain emotion towards the event. For example when reading about slavery you are going to want the bias of slavery being awful and inhumane. If given only the facts the student or reader might develop the wrong outlook on the topic. In my opinion you cannot do both because you either will be given a list of the facts of the events that actually happened without making you become feel you had to lean to one side because of the text. Or you re given the interpretation of mangled facts from a historian. There is just no way to have both, this is very black and white, you either have facts or opinionated.
1. I feel like revisionist history is best. This is my belief because when you look at how history is told there are going to be problems. Some people have problems telling people what someone has just told them, or what they have just seen. Ever since I was a little kid we played the game telephone where all we have to do is repeat what the first person next to us said and tell the person on the other side of us what we heard. Doesn’t seem to hard right. Well you’d be wrong! It’s very difficult to repeat what someone said especially when they heard it incorrectly from someone else. This is what happens in history and this is how events gets miss represented. This is why I feel revisionist is the best because if someone finds something wrong with how the event is told they should be able to change it. The major problems being that governments and religions can manipulate this to move their own agenda forward. Another problem being that any Joe Schmo can say something and have people believe him whether it is the most ridiculous thing ever. With no evidence behind it he could have millions of followers although what they have to say is widely disregarded and makes no since. This honestly can be good or bad but it seems to have had more bad repercussions over time than good.
2. I think it is more important to history that we get the facts straight and telling it right. I also believe that relatability of the history to the reader is also important. I feel like you can combine both of them. http://national.deseretnews.com/article/1685/why-biblical-and-historical-accuracy-may-keep-faith-based-films-around.html
I found this article to show my point. In this article they are talking about how there are a lot of movies this year that are appealing to Christian audiences which is showing relatability. It also talks about how some people are getting upset that some of the stories they are making movies of are not historically accurate. There are also some movies that are doing a good job of having Christian values that people may not even notice until the end of the movie. This is a good article of showing my point because it discusses the goods and the bads of a part of history. This is why I believe you can combine historical accuracy and reliability. I feel historical accuracy is more important but without relatability who is going to want to listen.
1. I think that an objective history best represents the truth. By providing the facts in an understandable way, the facts are open to interpretation to anyone, not just the historian’s opinion. According to Wilhelm von Humboldt, it is the responsibility of historians “to present what actually happened.” The best way to interpret history is through a non-biased scientific look at the facts. An objective historian’s job is to state the facts; if they let their opinions get the best of them when they are interpreting they aren’t letting anyone else have their own opinion. By stating just the facts, events in history remain the same and don’t get changed over time by people’s opinions. In a revisionist history, history has been altered to what society wanted to hear. Also by just stating the facts, people can learn about history from more than just one society’s perspective. Objective history can tell the story of women, African American, and many other cultures.
2. I think that getting the facts correct and sharing them effectively is more important than making it relevant to the reader/ viewer. I think this because by giving the facts, people have the ability to form their own opinions on the matter with out any other previous speculations by historians. I do believe that you can have factual evidence and make it relevant to the reader / viewer. You can do this by reciting facts in a form of a story as long as there is no bias from the author. If every historian published their opinions with a little bit of facts then people would have learned totally different things about the same topic. If you wanted to write about history and have an opinion that gets in the way of the facts that’s fine it’s just not history, more like historical fiction or personal commentary.
1) Objective school of history seems to represent the truth best because in the reading the author of the article writes, “Attaining objectivity is the ultimate goal – examining history without looking at it from a political bias or sharing opinions on what the facts mean.” The quote states that objectivity is the goal in making history both reliable and not bias. Further in the reading, it is written that objective history is made from facts that had been collected and filtered. The filtering is done primarily by many historians’ opinions. Some may think this fact is irrelevant and another may think it isn’t and won’t include it. History contains facts that had been made by sources that may have left out important key points. The truth in objective school of history is plainly the facts and a brief explanation as to why these facts occurred. Objective school of history, I believe, has less filtering done to the history than revisionist. Because revisionist school of history takes sources that may come later, it has been proven that sources, especially sources that aren’t primary, aren’t always reliable since the author has a more bias approach on the facts and can write a claim and with the sources can prove it to be “correct” in their favor just like dictators have done. Generally truth will always be unclear because there is always more than one view on the event and facts. Objective school of history has been criticized in many perspectives because of the filtering of the sources or facts and etc. but I think because there are so many historians in the world, each individual that believes something important enough should be included in history would do every will to write it down. Objective school of history gives readers a larger range of perspectives they may gain rather than gaining one or two perspectives from revisionist history that was heavily based on the author’s opinion. The truth is therefore better determined by facts in objective history.
2) I think getting the facts straight and telling it right is more important in history than making history relevant to the reader. One of the reasons I think history written in a way to relate to the reader is to get the reader to want to know about it and that it will somehow benefit them. I believe that shouldn’t be the purpose of writing history, history should be purposely written for reference in the future and written for those with interest and learners. Getting the facts straight and telling it right is important for everyone’s benefit because there are varieties of opinions that one can get from a piece of history and if the history is written with unclear facts and told in a bias perspective it limits a person’s viewpoints and makes contradiction. Both can be done to history but it will always be bias. It depends on the writer’s opinion on how it relates to readers that ties to history. However, readers are all different and sometimes cannot relate to the attempted relation of history. Yes, I believe it can be both done but it relies on the writer’s decision to point it out to a specific crowd of individuals and how the writer connects the two without messing with the history’s facts.
The objective school of history best represents the truth. Objective best represent the truth because it focuses on giving facts. Since objective history gives the facts, it gives the truth. Revisionist history focuses on telling the story of what happened. If you exclude facts from a story, you may leave out seemingly useless, but very important facts. If you give the reader all of the facts you can muster, the reader will make their own meaning of the events, and not be swayed by opinions. If you allow opinions to seep into the story, you could accidentally sway the facts without even realizing it. In objective history, at its purest, does not allow any opinions to seep into the facts because it is just facts. The exclusion of facts that could be a result of bias is nonexistent in objective history because all facts are presented.
I think getting the fact straight and telling it right is more important in history than making it relevant to the reader. I think this because when you try to make it relevant to the reader, you could exclude and alienate certain demographics. I think you can do a mix of both in that you could report the facts first, then say what you think about them. This would allow the reader to form their own opinion on the text, before hearing the opinion of somebody more educated on the subject. I think that this is the best way to report history and that it should be instituted in all textbooks.
1. Which school of history – objective or revisionist – best seems to represent the truth? Why?
APUSH does give off a more objective vibe, just stating facts with no interesting way of explaining it. People then find it boring and hard to understand; but, people would have more of an issue if a historian tried to revise history into something it’s not. When the Boston Massacre happened, there was untruthful propaganda that cited events wrongly, creating wrong opinions about the situation. If historians did the same, lying or revising to get the right kind of attention from viewers, not only would we have inaccurate history, but we would also struggle with uneducated band-wagoners who want to be involved, but don’t have the information straight. Ultimately ending with many unnecessary wars and tensions. Therefore, revising a history to make it seem “better for the government” will end up destroying a nation because false information will completely split classes up.
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 important to do both because a reader will get nothing out of what they are hearing in a history book if they cannot connect with the reading. Instead, they will continue to repeat what they hear on TV and magazines, anything that they connect with other than a textbook. I believe you can do both and be successful in both by presenting students with videos, such as Crash Course videos by John Green; also, by presenting them with interesting history novels or events. My personal favorite history events are the Titanic and 9/11. I feel that I would not enjoy learning about them as much as I did if I didn’t read the tabloids or listen to the news. Giving a reader something other than a textbook and saying “Go read that” is not going to get most students interested. So therefore I believe there are plenty of ways to tell it right, and make it appealing to the reader, without revising it to make it false.
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?
I really like the Objective view on history.
Well, first off- there really isn’t any bias. It is very difficult to be biased or support one side when you are just stating facts and what actually freaking happened instead of making up a story and calling it history. Doesn’t this sound familiar? Like… y’know.. every oppressive society since the dawn of time? In a quote summarized by my man Winston Churchill, former prime minister of the United Kingdom, “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it”. This is a super simple explanation of how bias can be formed and directed to completely change what actually happened, while giving a false story to society and using history and its stories to control a human population.
With an Objective take on history (like I mentioned earlier) cold hard facts can be quite hard and almost impossible in some specific instances to change or just lie about. It’s very simple, really; the reason why it’s all the better. History and its stories is too important to change and too easy to confuse or lie to a populus about. It’s extremely dangerous to lie about this type of stuff because so many wars and conflicts have been started over, well, just that.
The people over at Camp Revisionist are just plugging their ears and shouting “But numbers and facts are boring!” or “Actual explanations of what happened provide a more interesting and non-biased learning experience!” Well, sure. Numbers and quotes or piles of evidence about what happened can be quite lame and difficult to comprehend, but the important part that many are forgetting is the dangers present in Revisionist history, such as re-writing to include more bias to directly support a political side or theory while simultaneously lying to a general population. It’s wrong and too hot of a potato to deal with or trust the victors with.
Now, with the second question.
In general I think it is more important to history to use an Objective perspective because of the importance of getting things right and the huge amount of trust in leaders and government sticking to what’s true. Like I mentioned a hundred times already, Revisionism is cool and interesting, but you cannot trust everyone with the right story so therefore, cold hard facts are more important and that is why I support the Objective side.
On the other hand Objectivist history is boring. That’s why Revisionism and Objection history should be taught alongside each other because this makes learning fun and more relevant to the reader. Stories and historical accounts are relatable, paint a journey of failure and success, triumphs and dark times, and wars and religious pilgrimages. I prefer the Objective side to write history and use it as a primary form of telling what really happened, and Revisionist as a cool side story that gives us a relatable learning experience and enriches the curriculum at hand.
Unfortunately, History is Written by the Victors.
Is History True?
Nate Higley APUSH 1st hour
1.) I think the object history represents the most accurate truth. The objective history is mostly facts but these facts are what had actually occurred, so these facts are important. Revisionist history has been used to rewrite history in a way the rewriter wants it to be. One 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. Even though objective history excludes the other stories of the other cultures and women, it is still true unlike revisionist history.
2.) I think that making it relevant to the reader / viewer could be important but getting the facts correct is even more important. Getting the facts straight and telling it right lets the reader know it true. History is facts from the past. When a historian writes they shouldn’t try to relate the topic to the readers because not everything is relateable. If the topic is written relevantly it could be viewed in a different perspective than it was intended to be. When trying to make it relevant, that could possibly cause the author to change some facts and therefor it’s not 100 percent true. Histories main job is to present to the reader what had actually happened in the past, not what was relevant in the past to you, that’s why I think it’s important to get the facts correct instead of making it relevant.
1. Objective history best seems to represent the most truth because it tries to include the most facts in its narrative while still keeping the facts relevant. That being said, not every single fact can be included, it’s almost impossible. Also, revisionist history does not represent as much truth because revisionist historians can leave out some important facts and become slightly bias. Revisionist history interprets more of the history also to say what the person might have been thinking as they did these things, “might have been” being the key words here. Revisionist history is told more like a story and tends to idolize and degrade people in history to sway the reader’s thoughts to be more like that of the historian.
2. I believe getting the facts straight is more important to history because facts are what history relies upon, it cannot be made up or changed to make it relevant. Facts are needed so we can learn from them and don’t repeat the past. I believe you can make it relevant and because getting the facts straight can also be relevant to the reader. Truth does not diminish relevancy. If history is straight forward doesn’t mean it won’t relate to the reader/viewer, it may only limit the chances. While revisionist historians strive to relate to the reader/viewer and sometimes twist the truth, objective historians strive to get the facts straight and try not to show any bias, which can be harder to do. Overall, it is vitally important to get the facts straight if we as a whole want to learn about history and what actually happened.
I believe that the side of the revisionists is what makes the most sense in the telling of history. The main point that stuck out to me was how bias the objective side is. The person writing the documents and perfecting the history books per say can leave out what they want and what they think isn’t important; which could be important to so many other people. On the revisionist side the historians search for pattern and put the facts in an order that is easy to understand. I also don’t agree with how the objective side leaves out stories that speak about different cultural groups. Like said in the article what if new information is found out about them that affects other large-scale events; do they just throw all of that to the side and not even regard possibly useful information? This could be us missing a huge chunk of history and that is why to me revisionists are the most accurate.
I think what is most important is getting the real facts straight because even though the reader may not be interested it is still important to know about certain things that took place in the world before us. Sometimes we just need cold, hard information presented in a way that is easy to follow along and understand. I think you can only do both sometimes because not every piece of history will always be relevant to everyone at every time. But occasionally we can look back and see how events affect our everyday lives today. It is very important to be able to comprehend and know the history of our world fully and clearly so we can know why things take place in the present day and how we can stop or encourage positive techniques of living.
I like the initial idea of objective history, that it has no bias and all sides of a story are explained, but a litany of facts and figures does not make a readable catalog of history. If the objective school of history was truly objective, it would have the accomplishments of PoC and women in bold print on the front page in all capital letters, because PoC and women discovered and/or invented almost everything we use in our lives today. I’m guessing that objective history is what’s taught in our classrooms today, because a quick google search edjucated me more on inventions by people of color than I have learned in ten years of education. http://themilwaukeedrum.com/2012/02/03/black-history-things-invented-by-african-americans/ was the first link that appeared and it lists only lists inventions by African-Americans, not any other non-white people so there is probably a lot more out there to find. So I suppose, though the objective school of history had good intention, that the revisionist best represents the truth because they don’t white wash the accomplishments of the world and I feel that telling the truth in regards to PoC and inventions may be the most important thing we can do in regards to history.
I think getting that facts straight and telling it right are the most important aspect of history. There is clearly a bias in the telling of history, and to be honest we can never be truly 100% unbiased about anything, that’s just how people work. But we can do our best not to be biased and that would be done by stating the facts. It’s not impossible to have both the facts and to make history relevant to the reader. The key to that would be to teach empathy, because with empathy, even a statistic can have a grand emotional effect. Take the barest facts of the Holocaust. 11 million people were systematically killed. At first glance, that is a boring statistic. But if the reader would take a moment and empathize, they can truly comprehend how heartbreaking this fact is. With out this combination of facts and empathy, I feel that important aspects of history will be forgotten. For example , the other day in my Honors American Lit class, my teacher mentioned the Japanese internment camps of World War II and how she didn’t learn about them until she was in college. All but about three people in my class said “wait, what’s that?”. That, that is why we need unbiased accounts of history. In ten years of education we were never told in our history classes the atrocities committed by our own country! I had known because I loved the era of the 1940’s and 1950’s so I researched on my own but not all children should be expected to research on their own to get all sides of a story. To prevent this from happening again on other subjects, I feel we need to be truly objective, while acknowledging that no one can be 100% unbiased. So in a nutshell, I want both the highs and lows of a country to be acknowledged and taught.
1. In my opinion, objective history seems to best represent the truth because it states exactly what happened in history, but I think that revisionist history, if the amount of bias is controlled, is a better way to recount and comprehend what happened in an event. I feel like history should include opinions since there are two sides to an event. I do agree with objective history in that whatever is being supported or challenged should be backed up with exact facts from the event. Because history isn’t just black and white and there are multiple sides to each story, I feel that trying to learn about an event without knowing the bias’ would be less realistic and not as helpful. I don’t think as humans, that we can have no bias, and I don’t think people of colonial america could have no bias either, so why should we learn about an event that doesn’t include bias? While learning of an event, I feel that we, as learners, should try to stay unbiased, just for the sake of hearing both side and the reasonings behind certain events.
2. I feel that the hard facts of an event, and history in general, are important because that’s what history is, but I feel like for most people, they need something to relate to so they can fully understand what is going and still be interested in it. I feel that being taught facts is useless if you can’t make sense of what they mean. Since facts and relativity are both important in understanding a topic, I think that you can definitely use both while teaching an event in history if you are careful to make sure not steer away from the factual meaning.
1. Objective history seems to best represent the truth. I think objective history represents the truth better than revisionist history because revisionist history is rewritten and can be more of an opinion than objective history. Objective history tells more of the whole story while revisionist history might only tell part of the history that the person who changed things wants everyone to know about. I also think that revisionist history is less truthful because it is the opinions of one person so you only know one side of the story.
2. I think getting the facts straight and telling history right is more important to history. I think getting the facts straight is important to history because it tells what actually happened instead one person’s opinion on what happened because everyone could have a different opinion on the same thing in history. If one person sees what happened and they take a side, they will probably tell people what happened based on what their opinion is which may not be the complete truth. If you are told exactly what happened, then you can have your own opinion but then everyone still knows what really happened. I think that you could make history relevant to the reader while still getting the facts right. If you did both, you could tell both sides of the story instead of just one like revisionist history. I think that if you tell one side of the story it will be more bias than if you tell both sides.
Objective history seems to represent the truth because it has a non-bias approach to it. Objective history is all facts and presents what actually happened in history. Objective history tells history without any opinions which although sounds non creative, it is the most truthful way to represent history. When using objective history historians cannot fall pressure to politics, media, schools, or corporations to be persuaded one way or another for an event that happened. Opposed to objective history there is revisionist history. Revisionist history is a type of history that can be biased to one side or another and give history a little extra spice. Even though history IS boring in some ways, being bias or getting pressured into writing about a certain event one way isn’t truthful. In my opinion objective history is the most truthful way to tell history but it does have its problems. If new evidence is founded from someone’s diary from the 1800’s objective historians wouldn’t know how to add this in to pieces of work they’ve already written. Also, objective historians are accused of using slight bias. Revisionist historians say you can’t write about history without bias unless you just listed events of history. I don’t think this is true because of you just tell history straight, it won’t sound like you are listing events off because there are so much details from so many events in history that it could never just sound like you are listing things. In my opinion, the most truthful way of telling history is being objective even though it might seem is has problems.
I think getting the facts straight and telling it right is more important than making history relevant to the reader. Telling the facts straight is more important because you want your audience to know what truthfully happened in history. If you try to make it relevant to the reader they may get mixed up in metaphors writers use in his/her writing and confuse the facts of history. Making history relevant can add in false information in writing about history. Making events in history relevant is important but not if you’re going to lie when doing it. And even if you don’t lie, you may leave out important facts, which will end up eventually messing and mixing up the reader. Even if telling it straight is more important to history, you can both tell it straight and make it relevant to the reader. Stating facts can coincide with making it relevant by making the facts clear and interesting and then relating that to modern times so the reader is interested in the whole passage. If I read a passage of writing that’s just facts it gets boring but if you relate those facts to something relevant to modern day I pay more attention. Overall, when writing about history the most important part should be about getting all the facts straight so you are not lying about anything, but if you need to understand the event a little more that’s when you can make the passage relevant to the reader. I believe that getting the facts straight in history is more important than making it relevant but you can include both when writing.
1. I believe that the revisionist history best represents history and the truth. I think this because the revisionist form of history is more open minded and willing to add information that could change the gravity of a situation. Another issue with objective history is that not everything can be said in a concrete manner like they say. History is the past and the past is accounted for by evidence, and that evidence was made from people. Those people that created that evidence did not just think in black in white, they made the decision they made because of various factors and to say that everything can be explain with a simple cause and effect would be, to a degree, inaccurate. I say this because people are very complex and for the most part they think and act according to their own way of thinking. I digress; the revisionist side of history uses all of the evidence to make up the bigger picture, where objective history is too raw to really transfer the severity and depth of historical accounts into claims.
2. I think objective history is the most important view point in which history and the spread of information is distributed. If the passing down of information was different in history and evidence and actual history was interpreted as it was passed down from generation to generation from whatever source there would be less truth of what actually happened and more of how people interpreted it. For example, long ago stories were told verbally and as the years passed the stories changed because parts were either forgotten or added by the story teller. To relate say that accounts of actual history were written down by someone who was a first source then, someone read that account and thought that they only wanted to included or exercise certain points. But if another historian down the line reads this and again uses it to their own advantage and that information is passed down as truth the real truth would have been smothered and changed to a point of un-recognition.
1. Of the two schools of thought that exist as to how history should be presented, it would seem to me that an objectivist view best represents the “truth.” Unlike a revisionist approach, an objective view of history disposes of, or attempts to dispose of, any political, social, economical, or religious biases, dealing exclusively with the facts and nothing but the facts. On one hand, this does create some issues that could be considered hindering, such as the fact that removing all bias requires every fact, regardless of how minute or insignificant, to be recorded. This creates “useless clutter” that makes it difficult to divine a pattern from the facts, something that historians, like scientists, endeavor to do. Despite this side-effect, an objective view of history also makes history applicable to everyone, regardless of time period or location. In addition to preserving historical accuracy, this ensures that specific governments cannot bend facts to better suit their needs and cast themselves in a better light. And while an objective view of history does display a distinct lack of interpretation of the events, this is irrelevant when discussing “the truth, just the truth, and nothing but the truth,” as the truth leaves interpretation up to those who study it about it.
2. In my opinion, getting the facts straight (“telling it like it is”) is more important to history than making it relevant to the reader (“telling it how it should be”). There are two sayings that are relevant here: “History is written by the victors” and “Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it.” But how can one possibly learn from history if certain “insignificant” or “irrelevant” facts are written out by the victors? This brings to mind a somewhat disturbing piece of information that I recently discovered: apparently, parents and schools are not educating students about the Japanese internment camps that arose in American during the Second World War. A good majority of my peers were unaware that these camps existed, let alone what sort of effect they had on history. This serves as a clear example of how it was within the power of America and its allies to only record the things that cast them in a favorable light, as they had emerged as the “victors” of the global crisis. As such deception cannot in any way serve the common good other than to portray one’s nation as superior to others, it must therefore be an ineffective or downright malign thing to only include certain facts that have been deemed “significant”. An objective approach to history, on the other hand, does away with bias entirely, reporting only the facts so as to keep records of events or people as close to how they were in actuality. By doing away with bias, we preserve history in a form that is the least altered or corrupted that it can possibly be; that is, we preserve the truth. While others may see things differently than I do, the truth is of the utmost important in all things, so why should history be any different?
Blog 65
1. The objective school of history seems to best represent the truth in my opinion. This is because objective history is told with the least amount of political/ social bias possible. Objective history focuses on telling history in cold, hard facts and not focusing on what the facts mean, which in turn would be expressing opinions about said facts. The revisionist history is definitely not a true representation of history because it fits a certain mold or predetermined outcome, expressing the beliefs of one side of history only. Dictators/ corporations make historians fall under the pressure of these powers and use revisionist history in order to fit a mold or bias that supports what is going on in said regime/company and justify what they are doing.
2. I definitely think history can be used in both ways in order to make history relevant to the reader as well as the writer getting the facts straight and telling history right. By making history relevant to the reader, it can offer insight on a specific view that the reader may not have thought of and that he/she would support. Plus, an analysis of the text is not as dry and boring as that of telling specific dry events. On the other hand, telling history right is very important because facts need to be left in order for the reader to know what actually happened. Also, telling history based on facts leaves the story open to interpretation by the reader, allowing free thinking and viewpoints of what happened. The problem with factual objective history is that it has excluded much of the history of those who had been oppressed by whites (Latinos, African Americans). But the revisionist view doesn’t always give the viewpoint of all those involved in history. There is definitely a fine line between truth and analysis.
1. The objective school of history is the most truthful representation of history. It attempts to use “bias free” (it’s impossible to not have a bias) information to tell the tale of history. Although this represents what actually occurred, the reader needs to understand that there is no filter or revision in the objective school of history. They need to understand the original author’s point of view, so they can draw informed conclusions from the evidence. This is what draws the line between objectivist and revisionist. Objectivist gives you all the facts and details in a plain unbiased format, allowing you to interpret the information in any way. Revisionist takes the same information and proceeds to make the conclusions for you, diluting the truth. This method can leave out important information because a historian viewed it as superfluous. The objective school of history is the most truthful way to understand history.
2. The truth of history is more important than the relevance of how it’s told. If history is told to maximize relevance, the reader misses some of the original and basic truths of the information. Even though truth is more important than relevance, both are key to understanding history. Being relevant and truthful when talking about history is necessary to effectively convey crucial details. Truth is needed so that the reader can actually understand what happened. Although relevancy changes the truth, it is necessary. The reader needs to be able to relate to history so that they can gain an understanding of the topic.