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How to properly teach history/evaluate historical importance?

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thawkins Space Invader Since: May, 2010
Space Invader
#1: Jan 16th 2011 at 7:36:59 PM

Many political parties, left and right, want to revise/edit history textbooks to reflect their views. Throughout debates on the content that should be taught, many simply replace it with their own, usually w/ no reasons given. How does one go about evaluating the validity of what is and isn't taught?

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Deboss I see the Awesomeness. from Awesomeville Texas Since: Aug, 2009
I see the Awesomeness.
#2: Jan 16th 2011 at 7:45:20 PM

Events are important, and the results of the events are why the event was important. When it happened is important primarily for keeping things in order. How it occurred is the next level of import. People are always trivial to the best of my knowledge.

So I think the proper order isn't "who, what, when, where, how, why" but "what, why, when, how, where... who".

Fight smart, not fair.
BalloonFleet MASTER-DEBATER from Chicago, IL, USA Since: Jun, 2010
MASTER-DEBATER
#3: Jan 16th 2011 at 7:47:32 PM

Leave It To The Historians i'd say. Historians have ENOUGH trouble dealing with the bias from themselves, recognizing their biases, opposing biases from other historians, etc. When you deal with nationalists/patriots/whatever getting involved in things things get inevitably worse (e.g. Poland and Ukraine and Soviet atrocities against them, or the Jews and Nazi Germany)

where and how should be switched, Deboss.

edited 16th Jan '11 7:49:49 PM by BalloonFleet

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Pykrete NOT THE BEES from Viridian Forest Since: Sep, 2009
NOT THE BEES
#4: Jan 16th 2011 at 8:35:52 PM

I'd go more for "where, when, what, how, why...who". Cultural context and background were always the thing that solidified how I processed progressions of events, sort of like they just kind of naturally fell out of what was going on around it.

Deboss I see the Awesomeness. from Awesomeville Texas Since: Aug, 2009
I see the Awesomeness.
#5: Jan 16th 2011 at 8:53:52 PM

I'm ranking by importance, rather than ease of remembering. Although, I'm using broad "where" as in "geographical/national boundaries". The town isn't particularly important. Although I suppose you could say that "why" has two interpretations: why is this important and why did this happen. I'm using "how" for the second.

I'm hesitant to "leave it to the historians" because I've met some who were only interested in one specific area and pretty much just left every other subject/time period twist in the wind so they could talk about their favorite. That's my main concern with it.

Fight smart, not fair.
myrdschaem Since: Dec, 2010
#6: Jan 17th 2011 at 11:19:41 AM

Involve as much direct sources, e.g. speeches, articles, statistics etc. in your textbook.

Tsukubus I Care Not... from [REDACTED] Since: Aug, 2010
I Care Not...
#7: Jan 17th 2011 at 11:22:04 AM

Historical Materialism.

We're done here.

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Deboss I see the Awesomeness. from Awesomeville Texas Since: Aug, 2009
I see the Awesomeness.
#8: Jan 17th 2011 at 1:47:40 PM

Statistics aren't a direct source AFAIK. I would, however, recommend eliminating the others.

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breadloaf Since: Oct, 2010
#9: Jan 17th 2011 at 3:10:36 PM

Typically, the older the history, the easier it is to be objective about it. For instance, these days, I doubt Christians would much mind that we've disproved the whole "lion eating them" phenomena, or that Nero was actually not that bad. Or say, the Gauls are evil bloodthirsty cultureless monsters who sacked our beloved Rome.

So what is it that we have going in ancient history that we think is great?

a) The more accurate the description of event and event chains, the better we like it.

b) The more we can look into the motives, incentives creates a context for which we can understand why different actors made certain decisions.

c) A more complete view of the basic people, their lifestyle, art, home, language and even their under side such as cursing, graffiti, crime, corruption. The culture as it were.

We want a history where the litmus test is, can we craft awesome super accurate tv shows of the events back then? How complete is our picture? What can we learn from it?

The issue of bias comes up when you want something to be true (Action A causes Effect B) but doesn't hold out in history.

silver2195 Since: Jan, 2001
#10: Jan 17th 2011 at 3:12:56 PM

...But Nero was pretty bad.

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Deboss I see the Awesomeness. from Awesomeville Texas Since: Aug, 2009
I see the Awesomeness.
#11: Jan 17th 2011 at 3:38:11 PM

However, people are always trivial when it comes to history. Events are important, particularly technological developments, and people are just what does them. They're not important to the actual subject.

Fight smart, not fair.
breadloaf Since: Oct, 2010
#12: Jan 17th 2011 at 8:09:54 PM

...But Nero was pretty bad.

Not really, he was actually quite a decent (relatively speaking) emperor. Okay maybe not that decent but anyway, not like some super horrible person. Most of the emperors before and after him sucked anyways. Go check up on the latest history on him. The Christians purposely destroyed all favourable historical records of him in order to make him look bad.

Guy paid for the repairs of Rome after the great fire out of his own pocket.

edited 17th Jan '11 8:15:42 PM by breadloaf

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