its very simple. to a historian there is no "history" there are no facts. there never was a civil war fought over slavery won by the north. hitler was not a fascist regime.
History is CONSTRUCTED. You know the saying, that the victors write history? Well not only the victors write history but everyone does. History is not this fact and that fact, but all the different competing theories, it's like a million different stories, some stories are more compelling than others, but all of them are valuable.
That's constructed history. It does semm weird to think that there aren't really any facts in history but we know this in an intuitive way. When we go watch Oliver Stone's version of the kennedy assassination or michael moore's films we know that this is one guy's idea, it's very valuable, and we take what we feel like from his stories that make sense to us.
For a young romantic girl, she will force her boyfriend to go watch the film the titantic, that's yet another version of history, a story constructed from the past. Or how about "Saving Private Ryan"? There are war stories that show the hell of war, war stories that show the beautiful sacrifice of patriotism and even stories that show the muddy fog of war, and these are all movies about the exact same war.
Ok, Bush wants to teach american history in accordance with particular known facts, that is he doesn't want to view history as it is properly taught by historians.
He wants to teach history as the revolution began on such and such a date in 1776, that the flag had such and such amount of stars and stripes, that this guy wrote the declaration of independence, that is history as a big plate of facts, rather than history as big messy tangle of competing ideas.
Teaching history this way is so fucking stupid. Who the fuck likes learning fact after fact. History is much more interesting when you think about the stories involved. Questions like, was the civil war really about slavery or was it about states rights?
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Date: 2006-08-05 10:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-05 11:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-06 03:23 am (UTC)History is CONSTRUCTED. You know the saying, that the victors write history? Well not only the victors write history but everyone does. History is not this fact and that fact, but all the different competing theories, it's like a million different stories, some stories are more compelling than others, but all of them are valuable.
That's constructed history. It does semm weird to think that there aren't really any facts in history but we know this in an intuitive way. When we go watch Oliver Stone's version of the kennedy assassination or michael moore's films we know that this is one guy's idea, it's very valuable, and we take what we feel like from his stories that make sense to us.
For a young romantic girl, she will force her boyfriend to go watch the film the titantic, that's yet another version of history, a story constructed from the past. Or how about "Saving Private Ryan"? There are war stories that show the hell of war, war stories that show the beautiful sacrifice of patriotism and even stories that show the muddy fog of war, and these are all movies about the exact same war.
Ok, Bush wants to teach american history in accordance with particular known facts, that is he doesn't want to view history as it is properly taught by historians.
He wants to teach history as the revolution began on such and such a date in 1776, that the flag had such and such amount of stars and stripes, that this guy wrote the declaration of independence, that is history as a big plate of facts, rather than history as big messy tangle of competing ideas.
Teaching history this way is so fucking stupid. Who the fuck likes learning fact after fact. History is much more interesting when you think about the stories involved. Questions like, was the civil war really about slavery or was it about states rights?