The Study of History: One Boring Textbook After Another
(Lecture Notes from Mr. Kersey's 8th Grade U.S. History Class)What is History?
- History is the record of the events of the past, but it is also more than that.
- The study of history is not just learning what happened in the past, but also why it happened.
- Historians must figure out what happened and then interpret those events. They analyze the past.
- Different historians come up with different interpretations, or ideas about the past.
Historical Sources
- Historians often get different ideas because they look at different sources. We can call these different sources primary or secondary.
- Primary Sources are original or firsthand sources of information, like a diary or newspaper article.
- Secondary sources are derived from primary sources. Your history book, or a biography are examples.
- If you asked the winning Super Bowl team’s quarterback to talk about the game, you’d get a different story than the losing team’s quarterback.
- It is the job of the historian to critically think about these versions of the past, and find what they think the truth is.
Why Textbooks are Boring
- Many history textbooks are boring because they summarize the story, but don’t give you the chance to think about it differently.
- Most textbooks don’t tell how their information was gained.
- Most textbooks don’t have the room for anything but a summary of the past. Imagine how big your book would be if it had different versions of U.S. History.
- It is our job to use the textbook as just one tool as we learn how to be historians. We will need to use other sources as well.
