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Teaching standards that are written by people that make a living writing standards rather than presenting the events that happened and what came next….
Would you also say it depends on what you want to do with your history degree? A teacher/professor should strive to be unbiased. A diplomat/international relations expert may not necessarily be striving for as much an unbiased opinion of historical situations.
All the debate about bias in history confuses the issue. The issue is not bias, it is what are we doing in schools today that makes the average person incapable of making an independent moral judgment?
Unfortunately I think the issue is bias - one man's proud history is written as another man's history of oppression. The practice comes up quite often in the modern approach to history so it's good to get some of these issues out in the open. Certain facts in history can be stated with confidence, but even these can be called into question. How many indigenous peoples died as a result of disease brought to the New World by Europeans? I'm sure many of us have heard some statistics about this or some other issue, but how can we verify whether such a "fact" has a basis in reality? I think that history is ripe for analyses, and these analyses require historians to make certain judgment calls to bridge our collective gaps in knowledge. Some of these may be very useful and intelligent; others may be based on modern-day prejudices and utilitarian thinking. Even if historians don't impart moral judgments on history, I think they might knowingly supply the ammunition to those who do. A historian might "objectively" raise evidence to conclude that figure X from the Renaissance was a homosexual, but it is the journalist who takes this conclusion as fact and uses it to support a larger contemporary issue.I don't know that there's a solution to this broader topic, but it is important IMO to be able to call out egregious bias when we see it.BTW if you want to put hyperlinks in particular words simply highlight the word and click on the globe button in the toolbar. After the "[url" put an equal sign and then the url, so the next line would produce the bottom link like this:
Code:[url url=http://www.westerncivforum.com]Western Civ Forum[/url]I think my signature says it all about my historical philosophy.
“History is what happened, not what we wanted to have happen.”
You can argue points of fact, I take particular offense to historians moralizing in their narratives though.Phid, thanks for the tip on hyperlinks. ;D
Scout,Too bad most of the writers today aren't able to follow your philosophy... major reason we're so ignorant about who we are and how we got here.Cheers,Wally
Ugh, ugh, ugh. Speaking of bias in the history field, I just came across a site which calls itself the “History News Service“. After having browsed through the stories I feel confidence that it could be called “News Network of Historical Topics as Interpreted by Liberals”. Ugh again.
It is my opinion that most of the problems with academia today including the discussion of bias and objectivity inevitably lead back to the post-modern movement that began in the 1940's but really exploded in the 60's. The arts and humanities have been particularly affected by this because they are “soft” to begin with. With “Global Warming” >:( even the so called “hard” sciences are now being affected, or I should say INFECTED, with the postmodern viewpoint.
Yeah, but in a way (and I'm no scientist nor do I have much interest in it) it doesn't seem like science in and of itself is infected, it's when people outside science politicize it.
Yeah, but in a way (and I'm no scientist nor do I have much interest in it) it doesn't seem like science in and of itself is infected, it's when people outside science politicize it.
But are not some of the scientists going along with it's politicization? Else how do you explain the list of scientists claiming we are killing the planet? Everybody wants their 15 mintues.
I did not mean to imply that we should “revel” in bias, For instance, I'm of Irish background so I tend not to see much justification in what the English did to Ireland over 8 centuries. Facts are dead, relying on facts alone will give you a dull and boring list of names, dates and events. It is the intrepetations of an event that lead to the controveries over events. Those controversies are the lifeblood of our discipline. Currently, most students are presented with but one or two options. What I take issue with is that many textbooks at the high school level lack sufficient primary sources and have the narrative of a predictable and grotesquely long delphian prophecy.you cannot just write of a historical person's stance on an issue as "He was for popular sovreignty (Loewen, on Stephen Douglas) without showing why the issue is important.
I did not mean to imply that we should "revel" in bias, For instance, I'm of Irish background so I tend not to see much justification in what the English did to Ireland over 8 centuries.
Well, I don't think being Irish has anything to do with calling it what it is. Britain supressed any freedom movements because of arrogance and imperialism. The Irish wanted independence for well over 200 years before it actually happened. And because of British interference it still is only 2/3 of the island who are truly independent while the other third has been Western Europe's most unstable country until recently. That's not bias, that's fact.
Facts are dead, relying on facts alone will give you a dull and boring list of names, dates and events. It is the intrepetations of an event that lead to the controveries over events.
Agree with this somewhat that it can be boring, but if those facts are presented correctly there should be no controversy (or dryness) about what happened and why. Most controversy I've come across is the result of facts being skewed.
