A History Lesson...

Hello fellow histrophiles!  Today, we are lucky enough to have a special guest writer join us for a post.  As a fellow high schooler, she joins us today to share her incredible wisdom and her amazing intellect.  She writes a captivating food blog, show check her out at thefoodmood7.blogspot.com!  Ladies and gentlemen, here she is, Baby Chip!

When a student reads a history textbook in class, they tend to assume it is the absolute truth.  It is straight up facts, has no bias, and is a fantastic learning tool.  I most definitely fall into this category, for ever since about a few years ago, I assumed that everything in my history textbooks, or any textbooks for that matter, was to be taken as the truth, no questions asked.  However, upon further examination, this does not seem to be the case.

I have now learned that someone must choose what things to include in history textbooks.  Everything that is put into textbooks is put there for a reason, whether it be because it actually was a historically important event, or because the author believed it to be a significant event.  Either way, students must learn to realize this process of deciding which facts to include and which to leave out.

It is often stated that history is told by the "winners."  We learn about Columbus and his "peaceful" voyage and about World War One from the point of view of the Allies.  In this regard, we often don't hear the perspectives of the so called "losers," and miss out on their points of views.  For example, last year in my United States History course, we primarily learned from our textbook, A People and a Nation.  However, when our teacher deemed it necessary, we read chapters from a book entitled A People's History of the United States by author Howard Zinn.  This book claims to tell history from the perspective of the "losers," or those who were taken advantage of, lost wars, or didn't have political dominance.  By reading both of these texts together, I feel that our class had a better, broader understanding of the history of the United States, for we were exposed to multiple authors and multiple perspectives.

Textbook companies are not evil, however, it is important to understand that they are flawed.  In order for anyone to get a better understanding of any historic happenings, we must take into account multiple perspectives.  It would be like only listening to the murderer's, who is pleading guilty, side to a story, and letting him simply go free because of this one perspective.