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Revisionist History

As the Bouie article compellingly argues, your thread title should actually read: "Revisionist" History. Conservatives want nothing but the lily-white, god-ordained, we're always right view of history and liberals want nothing but nasty colonialism, exploitation, degraded, non-secular evils view of history. As usual, the most accurate view is in the middle.
 
94Deac said:
As the Bouie article compellingly argues, your thread title should actually read: "Revisionist" History. Conservatives want nothing but the lily-white, god-ordained, we're always right view of history and liberals want nothing but nasty colonialism, exploitation, degraded, non-secular evils view of history. As usual, the most accurate view is in the middle.
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That is because in today's political climate aided by cable news people are more worried about arguing and gaining talking points against the "enemy" than being accurate.
 
Get history from historians.
 
Not to sidetrack the discussion but it's painfully obvious that one critical negative to a highly-connected/social media culture is that conclusions are made with such little information- either rumor, insinuation, assumptions, or, increasingly less, facts. 20-30 years ago, you had to wait until nightly news to get the story and by then, presumably, information was revealed, facts had come to light, and thought-out perceptions created. Now, someone can read a "breaking news" story and make conclusions based on more presumption than fact. But one country's "fact," however historical it may be, is another country's "revisionist history." Personally, I think American students would do VERY well to not only read American history books- not those espousing "facts" as seen by a bunch of morons like Confederate Sons or whatever they are- as well as books from perceived "enemies" of America. Read American history from a Soviet perspective. Or Cuban. Or Iranian. You can frequently find out more about your history by viewing it from outsiders' eyes.
 
PhDeac said:
Get history from historians.
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Exactly.

In 2010, Virginia gave a new history textbook to its fourth-graders: Our Virginia: Past and Present. Written by Joy Masoff—an author, but not a trained historian
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Are historians/history majors in short supply? Hard to defend a claim that your history book has an agenda when it is not written by a historian.
 
'history from historians' is interesting given that historians sometimes different on emphasis when it comes to cause/effect.

not saying it really applies in this situation, but let's be critical when evaluating any source
 
My ELPS (Economic, Legal and Political Systems) course as a sophomore in high school featured a textbook from the 60s. We were going over "the two main world economic systems: Free Market and Command" and there were two columns, and the Free Market column had a picture of Uncle Sam, smiling, giving a thumbs up with a moneybag in his other hand. Then the "Command" side had a big yellow star with glowing red eyes and fangs, and a hammer and sickle in the background.

Pretty rad.
 
ImTheCaptain said:
'history from historians' is interesting given that historians sometimes different on emphasis when it comes to cause/effect.

not saying it really applies in this situation, but let's be critical when evaluating any source
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Definitely. Just saying that criticism is real easy when politicians are writing or pushing the "history" texts.
 
Politicians and history are often a bad combination. I always cringe when politicians start to explain history. History, properly speaking, involves balance and judgment about long term developments and events long past, while politics is about the here and now, with (preferably) optimistic goals for the future. History and partisan politics mix together about as well as oil and water.

Politicised historians are not much better. They simply jettison their obligation to be judicious and balanced to achieve some immediate partisan purpose, which they no doubt believe is more important than professionalism as historians. Well, then they should go and be politicians and stop masquarading as "historians."
 
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