History has always been an irreplaceable past in today’s society. We were born in the present, and we are all born in different countries. The history we learn in different countries is naturally different. The history taught in textbooks is not necessarily complete or the most correct. After all, we are not the ones who come over, and we will never know what happened before. In addition, many countries will only choose history that is beneficial to their own country, and hide the bad things or bad deeds that their country has done, so that modern people cannot fully learn history, only know that the government wants them to Things to know. After all, history is an indelible existence, and it is also the most important part of today. I personally think it is a past that cannot be hidden and cannot be changed.

I feel like history is an important part of the thing that we know today and they way we have learned them. A large part of what we know comes form history. We are able to learn and know a lot about the past through the stories about history. One of the main things that I thought about is how different people will all have different points of view on the same situations. Because of this everyone will tell stories from the point of view of what they experienced/ remember, this means that we may hear multiple stories about the same thing that are totally different which can make it very challenging for us to know what is true and what isn’t. I feel like history can be a very reliable source that can provide us with good information so that we can learn from mistakes in the past and not continue to repeat them.

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

—George Santayana

In the previous topic, we were discussing the importance of storytelling. In this case history is humanity past, we see our failures and our enemies, our victories, and our defeats.  As we learn history in schools and universities, it helps give some idea of the domain over which managers actually do have power and influence.  Id we consider history as another Way of Knowledge, It helps you see where you can have an effect. Our history is repeating over centuries, as humankind is developing and growing.  In my opinion, we can trust history as it provides us with facts and proofs. It is a Reliable knowledge.  It is the knowledge that has a high probability of being true as its veracity has been justified by a reliable method. The historian is competent but unfortunately, does not have access to reliable sources of information. This exactly what is discussed in “How Texas Teaches History”. Humanity today,  do not know what has happened, as we haven’t witnessed events in the past.

History is the study of the past. From the point of view of TOK, history is an area of knowledge that studies the recorded past. It is true. Behind the term “history”, it is a field of knowledge, a record and study of past events, like anything that happened before the present moment can be called history, and that has more or less value of its own. Moreover, when people talk about learning history, actually it is true that “studying history also deepens our understanding of human behaviour, as reflecting on the past can help us to make sense of the present”(TOK guide 2015). For example, WW2 is a recognized historical event which has so many first hand information and second hand information (Historical documents) to prove. From this phase of history, we not only learn the destruction of war and knowledge of conflicts, but also know that how to protect peace and how to promote technological progress more effectively and so on, which in a sense to help human civilization progress.

Speaking of historical events like WW2, we can quickly find out that history actually is supported by all kinds of documentary evidence. Naturally, there are some questions: whether the evidence is reliable? How accurate are the historians’ accounts and analyses of historical events? All these questions will directly affect the authenticity of historical events. In fact, we can easily find out that much of history remains to be seen for its accuracy and veracity, especially for ancient history such as Greek civilization. Like we can’t help but wonder if the historical evidence handed down thousands of years ago really reflects the situation, because after all, we didn’t see it for ourselves.

There is properly no history; only biography.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

I agree with it to a certain extent. We can say that history serves mankind, mankind is creating history, writing history. We also can say that only what you see is real, and the authenticity of history can also be judged according to this personal way of thinking. However, everyone is different. They are in different environments, experience differently, and hear and see different things. These all negate the decisiveness and consistency of history to a certain extent, and that’s why there is no proper history. However, a  biography is a detailed description of a person’s life, which can naturally apply for record of history. Think about it another way, biography may be more appropriate for our current textual research on history.

Furthermore, for a recognized history (this is actually happening), it can not be consistent in life for a variety of reasons. In How Texas Teaches History, the question of grammar in the textbooks bring into question the reality of how black people were treated by white people in the context of slavery, although we can learn about the real situation from all kinds of real literature. Here is another example, up to now, many Japanese refuse to admit the crimes committed by their country in the war of aggression against China, including the fact that the education of the new generation of Japanese young people has not made a clear statement on the incident of aggression against China, and even denied the incident in many textbooks. Maybe they just want to base on the quote that “History is written by the winners.—George Orwell” to do some negation.

In conclusion, I think the discussion about proper history is contradictory.

History is not study of past. History is a study of recorded passed. It is not possible to know every event which have happened before now to everyone, everywhere, at any time. What we could know is based on survived evidence such as pass newspapers, documents, articles, videos, etc.

History is not like other social sciences which can do the experiment directly and make conclusion. For example, economist can collect the data like GDP, and to predict future economy. History study is only based on the evidence that left behind from the past because historian cannot take time-travel to see what was happened, and those evidence are very limited.

Furthermore, those evidence which consider to be useful was usually created by authorized man, and because of the censorship. Those survived evidences usually were not complete story, even more, untrue. It only tell us what the “authorized man” thought what was happened or what he want others to think what happened. Therefore, it is hard to tell that what we learn from the history is the facts about the past or the story that the people in the past want to tell us.

Based on what I read and already knew I believe that history is an essential area of knowledge. History is one of the few AOK that is composed a hundred percent by all the ways of knowing. For it to be what it is it has to be formed by language, reason/ logic, emotions and even faith.

“History is an area of knowledge that studies the recorded past. It raises knowledge questions such as whether it is possible to talk meaningfully about a historical fact and what such a fact might be, or how far we can speak with certainty about anything in the past. Studying history also deepens our understanding of human behavior, as reflecting on the past can help us to make sense of the present.”

I believe that history is the most important way of knowing, and telling history are just another way of telling story just with more FACTS and OBJECTIVE, because it helps to shape the personality of the next generation and it also gives them a better view of what is happening on this planet.

In the excerpts published by Jezebel, the Texas textbooks employ all the principles of good, strong, clear writing when talking about the “upside” of slavery. But when writing about the brutality of slavery, the writers use all the tricks of obfuscation.

despite the importance of telling the truth about history, some people are still trying to conceal them by using misleading expression in the text book, which I personally don’t agree with, because history is what people faith in.

We use a textbook to learn history every time. However, when we consider whether history is true, we hardly say yes because I think it is written based on facts but not the truth. History is more like watching a fiction movie. History is the subject that influenced by the author’s perceptions and circumstances, and it is very unclear because there is no way to verify it.

“bias present in the document itself. The reasons for which the record was created. The perceptions of the document’s creator”

“In-depth analysis and interpretation of a historical document is an important step in the genealogical research process, allowing us to distinguish between fact, opinion, and assumption, and explore reliability and potential bias when weighing the evidence it contains”

These are a similar opinion to me which were in the article “Analyzing a Historical Document”. History describes what happened in the past that it becomes uncertain things over time, so we might think there is a problem with history but actually people who recognize history, us, have a problem. I believe it is important to examine history not only from one point of view but from a different perspective. Therefore, history does not exist to have discrimination or bias but to connect it to our present life.  Because of history, many of us hold stereotypes about other countries and even murder is occurring. History is one of an area of knowledge that studies historical fact and can build our knowledge, but we must think what and how do you want to learn from history before we started.

History is a way of knowing that studies the documented past. It also raises questions to understand, for example, whether it is possible to speak in a serious way about an historical fact based on something that has happened and what that fact might consist of, or to what extent we can speak truthfully of anything that has happened in the past. Studying history also deepens our way of understanding human behavior, since everything reflected on the past can help us to understand our present.

History is important. If you don’t know history it is as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything, and you have no way of checking up on it.
— Howard Zinn

History raises many questions, this ones inform us and help us to cope with the present with less possibility of falling into error than in the past, since thanks to history we have the answer to most things. Historical documents that have been collected over time also play an important role in history, leading to questions based on whether or not such information could be considered reliable.

“History is for human self-knowledge… the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.”
― R.G. Collingwood

It is true that historical writing could be subjective, since historians are influenced by the social and historical environment in which they write, and this inevitably affects their selection and interpretation of evidence, but that is inevitable, we are all in a way influenced by society and the times we live in. History teach us many things which, if they were not documented under history, would hinder us in the present, because everything learned from the past through history can help us better understand the world and the human beings. So History must be known as an AOK.

History is one of our most important subjects, because, as George Bernard Shaw said,

  we learn from history that we learn nothing from history.

I interpret this quote as him saying that there have been a lot of wars, mass genocides and other terrible things that happened throughout history,  and yet they keep happening all the time, which shows we haven’t learned anything. We need to look back at things that happened in the past, so that we do not keep making the same mistakes.

I also found the George Orwell quote

history is written by the winners

very interesting. I agree with this, because usually the losers of a war or a conflict have been defeated, so they do not get do decide what goes in the history books.  A lot of the time, the people who committed an atrocity or started a war and won, or something along those lines, change the story a lot when it comes to history.  They do this to put themselves in a better light, and make themselves seem less guilty, especially if they did bad things during the conflict, or are the only people who witnessed what really happened, and no one else actually knows the truth.  Much of what is written in history books, especially stuff from a very long time ago, may have some truth, but may be altered. The only way to really know whether a historical event is accurate, or blown out of proportion, is to see whether other textbooks and documents have the same description as what we read.

There are many different ways that we can learn about history. We can watch documentaries, read eyewitness accounts, or read textbooks. There can also be land deeds, historical artifacts, or memoirs of people who experienced the historical event, like the diary of Anne Frank. All of these methods are pretty trustworthy, because they all have to be approved before being published, or the information has to be verified. The only problem is that people who give eyewitness accounts could change the story to get more attention. This is why it can be hard to know what is accurate about history and what is not. For most of the historical events in our textbook, we were not there or were not alive when they happened, so if the person who writes or tells us about history is lying or making things up, or if they are biased, then we may have an inaccurate view of history.

History is one of the most important disciplines that is considered as a science. This itself, studies events that happen in the past. Every historical event has to do with important things that human beings do. Therefore, it studies the actions and behaviour of past cultures and societies, as well as people who have created a change or have left some knowledge in the development of human beings and then considered as important characters in history. So if history is based on human beings, then it might raise the following questions: Does studying histrory impact our perspective and knowledge on human nature? And to what extent do historians’ way of thinking influence on what they know and teach?

I think that history is important as an AOK because to study history we need to be able to analyze the past in order to understand the present. The study of history makes us wonder about our past and how a single change in these events could have affected our present. Of course historians can influence in the way history is told or written, because what we know about the important events in the past is because someone at that time wrote something about it, but we will never know if the history that we are tought is a 100% true or if it might have been distorted through time.

Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake. —Robert Penn Warren

This quote gives us a different perspective on how we see history. Robert Penn Warren compares history to poetry and tells us how history can be seen as the big myth we all live in. He tell us that like myths are made up by someone and come from their imagination mixed with something that is true, that can be the way history is. And I think that he is right, we do not know for sure if everything in history happened the way people tell us it did, because we do not have prove of it, and therefore we do not believe in everything.

History has been very useful for us as to know what happened in the past and how was it, we can use it to learn about something or for us not to commit the same mistake twice. Everything we know is thanks to history and there is history in everything, maths, biology, everything, and thanks to history we have been able to learn and surpass what we already know. My question is, how do we know that history is true? Of course there are documents that have been registered as time passes that is an evidence on some historic events, but how do we know exactly what happened. When some event happens eventually every person who was present in it will be dead and the only evidence will be what the people that were present there said, but there is always two parts of the story or maybe some things get mixed up as the story keeps passing through generations and that is why I think that maybe history is not completely reliable.

As I think about it, it can be very scary when I think about some event, for example a war, the only thing we know are the documents left of it and what people have been passing through time, but we will never know surely if what we have grown to believe and be taught in school is true or is mixed up a little or is just arranged for it to be what is most convenient for us as a society.

History has always been a very influential part of our lives. It continues to teach us to not repeat the mistakes we have made in the past and how we can learn from those mistakes to better ourselves. History is the storytelling of our past, as people. Our cultures all stemmed from different areas and blossomed and branched out to new areas of the world, creating new history for the future generations coming from those new cultures to learn about and grow from.  A common phrase we hear throughout our life is, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Although this statement by George Santayana is seemingly true, we also learn a lot from new experiences, that have not yet been taught to us.

Unlike other areas of knowledge, history is written then taught. Another AOK such as the arts, is not typically written as it usually comes in the form of self expression through music, visual arts, performance arts, etc. But history is in its own special box. When we are taught history we are typically told that it is reliable because it is written on true events that happened. However, in a quote by Schopenhauer, he states that history can easily be imbedded with lies, “Clio, the muse of history, is as thoroughly infected with lies as a street whore with syphilis.” Although the example he used to compare this with is quite vulgar, it is also straight to the point. Not every area of knowledge is completely pure of lies. Not even history. This means you cannot base your own understanding of something off of just one area of knowledge. All areas of knowledge work together simultaneously no matter what topic you are talking about.

The interesting thing about history is that there is no perfect definition for it. It is always changing. Everyday is a new part of history. In fact, right in this moment we are all experiencing a very important part of history, a global pandemic. Just as the quotation mentioned earlier said, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. We have had multiple global pandemics throughout history and yet we have still managed to repeat how we handle it. We may be influenced by history, but many still do not learn from it.

History is a very biased AOK, we believe what we hear and usually depending on where we are, what we hear is edited to make us the winner.

History is written by the winners.—George Orwell

In history a lot of the information we receive is one sided, and we usually are taught to believe that it’s the only side. A good example of this is the Texas textbooks, the current text books said that they brought “millions of workers” to America. This event was The Atlantic slave trade, but they made it seem as if they employed workers, less than enslaved them. Therefor making if seem like America was still the good side of the event. (How Texas Teaches History by Ellen Bresler Rockmore) This makes me think about the quite by Oscar Wilde.

Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.      —Oscar Wilde

Reading about almost any historical event, you will find that the side writing about it is the “good side.” for example if a citizen taking part of the American revolution was writing about it, they would be the good side, and the government is the bad side. Where as if it were the government talking about it, the government is the good side and the citizens are the bad. I think it is because we don’t we don’t want to admit that we are the bad people and most of the time we truly believe that are reasons are good enough to justify our actions. Although a lot of the time they aren’t. I find we do this personally on a smaller scale. for example if you get in a fight with your parents, a lot of the time we will say “they are mad for no reason” because we think that they are, but from their point of view they have a valid reason. That is how a lot of the information in history is spread around and why it is so biased.

History, a distillation of rumour. —Thomas Carlyle

History without a question is an AOK. We know things because people have used techniques and such to go through life. For example, I know not to stick a key into an outlet because in my history/past, it had a bad outcome when i did it. People learn lessons from making mistakes in history. Of course we know things not only from our history but when we look at something such as storytelling, it is about something that has already happened (if it is true story) because once something is done it is no longer the present, it is in history.

The books play down the horror of slavery and even seem to claim that it had an upside. This upside took the form of a distinctive African-American culture, in which family was central, Christianity provided “hope,” folk tales expressed “joy” and community dances were important social even

From this paragraph we could know that in the textbook for little children they says that slavery which is not good is a kind of normal thing and even have some benefit. My point is this is not a good way for education. Everything happened before we called it history and it is a very serious object without upside, so nobody should being cheat on talking history. However in the Texas they even make slavery which is a wrong thing happened in history convert to a simple easy matter and teach this to they children in the education, when they grow up some of them might go out side of their hometown and here is one thing interesting, the history that they known was totally different, for the easy going person this would not be a matter, what about the person who are really cares about these things. For example if two people their culture were different it’s going to be very easy to have conflict and different culture was due to their different nationality and education. And I think the other state in America probably have different textbook to teaching children so if the people in a same country have a different acknowledge it’s very weird so I think upside history was not a good thing.

History (‘ἱστορία,’ historia, meaning ‘inquiry’ from Greek) is a study of the past. It is considered to be a humanitarian science. Humans study the events of the past recorded in papers and images coming from even before the invention of writing. History is an important part of human species’ as a civilization, humans even have a sector in their brains to record events of the past. Historical writings are a crucial part of historical assessment, however, they are an unreliable source of information individually and must be examined in conjunction and other historical writings covering the same event.

The reliability of the historical records is a question to be answered. Any historical writing is a way to pass the knowledge of the event to further generations and keep it in existence. History is written by people, people who lived through a life and experienced events which have formed and altered their views on the world and certain subjects.

“REPORTER: How will history look back on your decision to drop charges against Flynn? ATTORNEY GENERAL BARR: “Well, history is written by the winners. So it largely depends on who’s writing the history.”

—Interview, CBS News, May 2020”

Every historical event that is or not considered important has different sides that can, should and must be examined. Any historical event is a topic for discussion between people with certain opinions on the subject. For example, Nazism was the right ideology from the standpoint of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party, while USSR considered communism the right ideology. The conflict between Third Reich and USSR is a big topic for discussion which must be looked at from all perspectives and standpoints. It is practically impossible for a writer to cover a topic without having knowledge about the topic, and thus forming an opinion about it. The only way for a historical event to be recorded without any bias, is for every small detail that has happened to be documented by a 3^rd party that does not possess any knowledge about the event, an entity uncapable of forming opinions and emotions – a robot. An artificial mechanism to supervise the event and log all actions, decisions and words as they happen cannot put any bias into the writing because it is not capable of doing anything else other than outputting the events on film or paper. An entity as such is purely hypothetical and cannot exist (at the time of writing) in a physical world, thus, it is not possible for a historical writing to be free from perspective and bias, making History an uncertain Area of Knowledge.

The uncertainty and subjectivity of historical writing raise the question about the reliability of historical records made in the past. The records are essential for analysis and assessment of historical event, which is the main purpose of History.

“Imagination plays too important a role in the writing of history, and what is imagination but the projection of the author’s personality.

—Pieter Geyl”

Events that have happened hundreds of years ago have to be assessed by the records made by the people who have lived through or have first-order knowledge about the events. These people put the bias and their own opinion in the writings, making them subjective, or worse, lied and altered the events on paper. The content is critical to the assessment of the events, altered content may lead to a different result that shows the subject in a better or worse light. The information learned from the writings may be taught to future generations and alter their views as well. Therefore, it is critical for the records to be proven reliable. One way to prove the reliability of a source may be to compare it to other records of the event made in the same time period by different authors. Every author will put their own bias and point of view in their writing, thus by examining different opinions on the subject and finding a common information, we may be able to form a more reliable and objective view of the event.

In conclusion, a historical writing as an individual piece of work done by one author cannot be objective and will always have some perspective on an event that it is covering. The reliability of a historical writing may be assessed by comparing it other works covering the same event made in the same time period. Multiple historical records form a wider and more objective point of view of an event, yet History as Area of Knowledge is uncertain and may never have one exact answer to any question.

After reading the document, in my perspective, the government in Texas change the descriptions of slavery in order to show the kids in school that slavery isn’t that bad, it’s a good way to grow the economy. The government do this may because they don’t want the kids understand the dark of slavery, which might leads them feel bad or don’t even trust their country anymore. They focus on telling how good the slaveholders treat their slave and use some ambiguous word when they arrive the pain that slaves have suffered.

“Families were often broken apart when a family member was sold to another owner.” instead of “Slave owners often broke slave families apart by selling a family member to another owner.”

I don’t think this is a good way of telling history. Even if people learned the upside of slavery when they were a child, if they meet another people which is in another culture, and in that culture his teacher tells the fact of slavery to him. A conflict might occur. Also, if a person were told the world is great, nothing bad will happened, the world is an “Utopia”, What do you want them to think if they see a person was killed in front of him? Or what if they read the fact of slavery in a book which is written by other people objectively? They might feel they have been told a lie and they treat this lie as fact in the past decades years. In my opinion, students should be told the fact of history, even if the villain in the history is their own country. They have the right to know the truth, they have the right to think this questions independently, without any leading. Because the world is never fear, it’s always a cruel world. People should know this even if they are a child.

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.                                                                                            —George Santayana

I have learned, that History help us to understand change and how the society we live in came to be. For me this quotation represents how I see the history. Through it, it allows us to think critically about our present situations to take decisions for our future. understanding history helps us avoid repeating the mistakes over and over again. That’s why for history is necessary to avoid repeating past mistakes, and that’s one reason of why do we learn history. While those who fail to learn from their mistakes of their predecessors are destinated to repeat them. Those who do not know history’s mistakes are doomed to repeat it.

“History is written by the winners.” -George Orwell

Whenever we read an article, a book, or a novel about any historic event, it is very likely that it has been written from the perspective the author favored the most. Read anything about World War 2 written by an American or British author. Odds are that they will portray their own countries as the ones who won the war. The “peacekeepers”. It is true, they did fight and they did suffer. However, the truth is that while the Americans and the British were fighting 20 Nazi divisions, the Soviets were fighting 200. Nevertheless, bias does not have to be a lie. It can be an incomplete truth. There are several articles and books about the Spanish Conquer of Mexico. Most of them say the truth, but not all of it. It is common to read how the Spanish colonizers entered the country and just killed a lot of natives to then rule everywhere, which is completely right, but it only tells half of the story. The Spanish arrived at this new land, allied with any town who were under the tyrannic reign of the Mayans, and then took down their empire. Afterwards, they ruled everywhere. As Arthur Schopenhauer said, “Clio, the muse of history, is as thoroughly infected with lies as a street whore with syphilis”. It is a fact that any historic matter we know is not fully accurate. This is because “History is written by the winners” and therefore we will probably just know a part of the story. King Aethelred described the Danes (Vikings) as “a bunch of merciless raiders and killers”, while the Anglo-Saxons would murder or prosecute the ones who refused to praise god.

Grammar is another possible variable that can affect the veracity of any past event. Ellen B. Rockmore in “How Texas Teaches History” states how the writer’s decision about how to construct sentences, the subject of a passage, and whether the verb will be passive or active, will shape the meaning of a sentence. The use of passive voice and improper nouns can lead to a misinterpretation of a text. It can be used to give less importance to a topic while still technically maintaining the truth. An extract from a history textbook, “Texas United States History” shows a good example. “However, severe treatment was very common. Whippings, brandings, and even worse torture were all part of American slavery.” Here we can see how the use of passive voice makes the sentence sound less powerful, therefore obscuring some parts of it and decreasing its influence on the reader. However, if the passage was written as “Slaves were whipped, branded and tortured” the whole sentence sounds more vigorous therefore truly stating the relevance of the matter.

Altruism is the act of helping someone before yourself. That has always been something that is important for me is to make sure people are happy and then I can be happy after. I like this the best because unless you aren’t caring about yourself at all, then its a true act of kindness to be selfless. An example would be if there was only one hot dog left and 2 people who were hungry. An act of altruism would be giving the other person the hot dog even though you are hungry. Why? Because its a selfless thing to do.

His most disputed work was “The Historian and History” (1964), a witty indictment of American historians. In the book he observed wryly that there were then 15 “trained and presumably productive” people with doctorates in the field for every year of the nation’s history.

That is far more than is necessary, he argued, especially when most were absurdly overspecialized, slavishly addicted to textbooks in their areas and [sic] foolishly pretended to objectivity.

Most highly touted “new interpretations,” he declared, are “often no better than the old, and not infrequently a good deal worse.”

Championing a story-telling approach to historical writing, he argued that “great history has always been narrative history, history with a story to tell that illuminates the truth of the human situation, that lifts spirits and prospects to new potentialities.”

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/29/obituaries/page-smith-77-historian-dies-praised-as-an-appealing-writer.html

While we are thinking about street names, you might be interested in this post I wrote a while back proposing that schools do something similar—especially since DCSZ is opening a new Senior School campus in the coming months.

http://ericmacknight.com/wordpress/?p=557