Wednesday, October 31, 2007

What sorts of knowledge or truths does this subject convey?

The subject I have chosen to do is History, history is basically built up from what has happened in the past and is taught to the future so as not to 'repeat their mistakes'. But what we learn in history is based on what people have seen/done/said because we weren't there at the time, so we can't say whether the history we learn is true or false. We just accept its true and because of how everyone else around us accepts this information as truth, and we cannot question what we are told because for example the fact that Neal Armstrong was the first man on the moon, we just accept that as fact because we weren't there at the time, but have to rely on what others have to say because they were there.

Also when we are taught history there are questions on whether different sources on a certain topic e.g the vietnam war, and whether we think that the sources are reliable or not because a lot of them are based on memories it cannot always be reliable because one person cannot remember something for so long, and not in that much detail. In a way history is like that, based on memories but we assume its based on different memories of the same event, but then there is no wrong answer, just different points of view. History is based on information that was written or made over time until it is finally taught to us. But also we believe that what we are taught is true because to us its basic knowledge, we read books that all say the same thing and the news tell us the same and those around us say the same, so because we are so revealed to hearing things a certain way and that everyone agrees with one version of history we all go along with it.

What I mean by some parts of history being basic knowledge is that before I actually learned about history in a subject I knew that China had a dictator called Chairman Mao because my parents told me about him and I had also heard about him on the news and in books I read. Also I knew about the revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara again because I grew up with my parents talking about him, and I again had read it in books and heard it on the news about how he was first known for the motorcycle diaries and that he was pro-communist so on and then how he was killed. So basic knowledge first comes from our parents or material around us, and once we become accustomed to these versions of history and we learn the same thing in school. We call it the truth on what really happened in history.

1 comment:

Steve Burnett said...

Good Steffi. A good analysis.You seem to be saying that your knowledge of history is largely propositional. Is there any way that it could be anything else?