In Memoriam Lee Kuan Yew

This paper deals with ways history can be interpreted and influences different interpretations have on society and individuals. This is explored through

Historians produce knowledge for us to learn from in the form of written documentation showing what people have done in the

She carries the audience through her argument in a logical sequence. First, she makes her claim that student do not know history and explains her reasons (250). She then elaborates on what history students are taught and what exactly is wrong with the methods by which they learn (251). After this, she explains the job of a historian to the reader – how historians confront primary sources to “make some sense of what once happened” (252). To end the article, Simon describes how students can better learn history through exploring primary sources (253). This structuring and organization helps the reader to understand and to believe Simon’s

The museum believes in a pastiche and populist pathway, in which the history of all people is displayed. Its interactive viewpoint allows this museum to convey history in a way that would be more accessible to its audience. For example, patrons are given the opportunity to record their own history. However, academics, such as Keith Windschuttle, assert that the NMA is a “profound intellectual waste”. He argues that although it displays accurate history, it’s purpose of entertaining its audience detracts from its value, thus creating “waste”. Although Windschuttle’s view may be extreme, it demonstrates the considerable extent to which the tension between academic and popular historians exist.

Historians, as we normally perceive bear the responsibility as scholars who record and research about past events and compiled them together in order to benefit the future generations as an authoritative channel for them to understand and study the past of human kind. Nevertheless, these missions were hardly the main

Not all is known and the facts passed down may not reveal the whole truth. History is biased and can easily be manipulated by those with more power, and it is a modern historian’s job to weed through the commonly accepted information, and try to find the truth. If the truth is not found, then they present alternative theories to broaden the world’s knowledge on the possible course of events in the

Typically, I treat seemingly reputable historical analysis as fact, and only when pressed do I ponder the author’s motives and intensions. Even less often, do I question the political perceptions of the organizers of chronicled archives. The sifters, and eventual arbiters of what historical ephemera should live on. How did archives form? They are not compiled by an unemotional artificial intelligence that omnisciently records all global human action. Moreover, to address the specific example provided by Sternhell, it becomes obviously that the victors of various wars and political squabbles possess more sway in how a historical record is remembered. The Union was victorious in the American Civil War, and thus it was the leaders of the Union who got to pose the seemingly apolitical presentation of history, which was obviously political in the very nature of its construction. This information provided by Yael Sternhell, provides a concrete example of what Carr explored in The Historian and His Facts. Carr argued that there was no purely objective history, that instead, it was the historian that chooses to emphasize whatever he deems appropriate to

Historians believe they need to find the truth. They make arguments, write papers, and give lecture on what they are saying is the truth. Historians want to learn what happened. This is important, because history teaches many lessons. Students of history agree or disagree with historian's arguments and what they say happened or what is the cause of some event.

This paper will discuss how certain factors should be analyzed for both written and visual sources in consideration of use as a historical work. It will address the following major points when contemplating using a particular source while researching a topic. When to analyzing a written or visual document, a historian must analyze the author of the document. Historians must also realize that authors make certain choices when creating either visual or written sources, and this serves as another point of analysis. The general public may see written documents or visual sources (photographs in particular) as free of bias, but these documents often convey a particular point of view.

The passage of time continues its long journey as present becomes the past. We, as humans, have always viewed the past as a valuable asset capable of assisting us towards greater heights. We, therefore, strive to preserve our history in order pass it to the next generation, without alterations. To accomplish such a task, our society created monuments—structures that would last for long periods of time and would be able to preserve our memories, understandings and perception of an event and/or a significant personality. Consequently, our country harbors countless monuments and memorials which allow us to understand own history, and comprehend the numerous achievements and sacrifices of those who served the country.

This text analyses the complexities in writing and interpreting history. Mark Damon claims that historians encompass at least three different ways of accessing the past; remembering, recovering, or inventing. The texts states that no history is the full unvarnished truth and that memory is usually what many must result to, making the facts potentially flawed. It also discusses how evidence and artifacts aren’t complete without context and some historians result to fabricating the story behind it. Throughout the text it glances at two very different historians, the Roman Tacitus and the Byzantine Procopius, and shows the range and difficulty inherent in the study of the past.

Monuments set boundaries around who or what should be remembered as significant, noble, and “accurate”. Just as elementary school curriculum codes shared definitions of normalcy, power, and modernity, monuments too are an important part of a manufactured public memory around which certain unquestioned realities are shaped. Their immensity and sterilized isolation of a single event or person can create an immutable singularity of narrative, particularly around events that might destabilize hegemonic narratives. In this way, monuments in America have been used to actively misinform the public, discourage citizen participation in public memory, and sustain colonial legacies while erasing many other marginalized

History is in many ways a pool of gray. It is in this realm of ambiguity the historian can be found in her natural habitat. Of course a creature who lives in a world of gray would herself have a rather ambiguous role. Historians have a duty to the past but must live in the present. This places them in a predicament that has plagued the discipline for at least the last century — the conflict between presentism and ‘pure scholarship’. The historian must reconcile her obligation to be fair to the peoples of the past in presenting and studying their story with her desire to be of service to her contemporaries. The primary role of the historian is to inform the present of the past, both of the highs and the lows, the ugly and the beautiful, the

History may be examined and interpreted in many different ways. This is because there is little evidence that had survived to go by in which historians have to use to study the past. Evidence, written and made by the historical people themselves, include but are not limited to written documents, such as books and letters, and material culture, as in art and architecture. Now, because the original authors or artists are not alive to tell the story, historians have to examine the evidence left behind to make an educated judgment on what had really happened in the past. This judgment or argument is always incomplete and up for revision as more evidence is found as time passes by. Although many conclusions can be generated from one piece of evidence, arguments can be biased, leading to different, possibly incorrect, views of history. In his essay, “The Whig Interpretation of History,” Herbert Butterfield elaborates on the matter that many historians tend to write on the behalf on a Protestant or Whig point of view when researching about history. The argument he has provided in his essay states that the “whig interpretation of history” relates to the act of “abstracting [ideas and events] from their historical context and judging them apart from their context – estimating them and organizing the historical story by a system of direct reference to the present” (Butterfield 30). To Butterfield, studying the past in the eyes of the present is one of the biggest errors a historian

History is alive. With every step taken across this boundless earth where billions have walked before, it is given life. Speak one word, one whisper, and the voice echoes to the roots of the past from the Roman Empire to Greece and even to a tiny town too small to bear a name but vital to the past and to the existence of modern civilization. Each word spoken and each sentence written is echoed with the voices of billions of people dead and forgotten. History is alive. It lives thanks to the hundreds of thousands of students and historians that map our past so people can have a broad perspective of the present and the future. They accomplish this difficult task by using sources, primary and secondary sources, each offering its share of advantages