CHC 2 D 8 Historical Perspective versus Historical

CHC 2 D 8 Historical Perspective versus Historical Evidence

What do others think of history?

Consider the Following: ● When did history ‘begin’? ● Why did it happen? ● What can it tell us today? ● Is all history useful?

More Food for Thought… • Who creates 'history' and why? • What was the impact of a person, idea or event on society/world? • Who gets ignored in 'history' and why? • What are the ways in which we learn history and why is it a problem?

Now Let’s Consider…

Historiography The study of the way History has been Written There a number of different ways to view History

History as Justice

Frontier Thesis

Marxist

Postmodernism

Post-Colonialism

Narrative

Hero – “Great” man

Feminist Historiography

Challenge and Response in History

History from Below

More Consideration Please….

What about the Pattern of History?

Is History Progressive (Moving Forward)

Is History Cyclical? (History Repeats iteself)

Progressing Spirally, combo of first 2

Is History Chaotic? (Too random to measure progress)

So Where Does That Leave Us?

What are the differences between “history” and “the past”? PAST + Order/Meaning = History

Evidence, or a record, has to be created (written, pictorial, archaeological, spoken)

Evidence, or a record, has to be preserved (to what extent will they survive?

Are they biased?

Significance (Who determines what is important and what will survive? )

Whose perspective? A perspective is a viewpoint from which a person sees an event Bias • A perspective is biased if it unfairly prejudices the result in favour of one person or group

Interpretation (Maybe the truth is really NOT out there!) Information disappears. Even the decision to write about something is an act of interpretation! • Why write about A and not B? • Why use school records and not school diaries? • Or gender or marital status of teachers? • Or family status as students? • All things from part of “what happened” in schools in the 21 st century.

Napoleon Crossing the Alps, Paul Delaroche (1850) (1801) Bonaparte Crossing the St. Bernard Pass, Jacques-Louis David

Best Evidence? Eye-Witness accounts = testimony: facts about what happened. • Historians must dig to unearth prejudice (racial profiling), power etc. • They must go beyond the factual questions to ask within a certain context in order to assess meaning.

CSI examines evidence to explain an event using inductive logic, going from specific to general, in order to piece together a narrative that explains what happened. The same process is used by historians to interpret the evidence left behind during a certain time in the past.

Meaningful Narrative makes sense of the evidence and demonstrates the reasonableness and significance of the interpretation.

To summarize: Three steps of Historical Inquiry: Locate Interpret Reconstruct