Outlines and Research Topic

Organizing information is something I do anyway, no matter what paper I’m writing.  That being said, I’m not sure how useful the note cards proved to be.  Granted in my last minute struggle to finish my outline having the information already written out was helpful, but as that’s not usually the case for me writing note cards and then the outline was a bit repetitive.  I suppose repetition isn’t necessarily a bad thing because that’s how I study, so I guess this makes me more familiar with the material.  I’m not sure how accurate this process is but maybe the note cards were pulling the basic implications of the source and the outline was supposed to contain more detailed arguments and my interpretation.  That way when I use my outline to write my paper I add a little more to it so each level of note taking and writing adds a level in complexity.  While I didn’t do my outline like this the first time around, my redo will certainly be less vague so perhaps if I were to use the note cards and outline like this in the whole process I would find the note cards more useful.

I do however find the outline very useful.  As I said before I organize my material, usually into headed and bulleted lists, before I even think about writing a paper.  The process was definitely different.  I don’t usually make such a structured outline and I usually never put so much information in the outline.  As I said in class I’ve always used outlines as a personal tool for writing so I often left things off that I thought were obvious to me but I really think that the extra detail and the time spent creating and organizing it will pay off.

I’ve put a lot of thought into what I want my topic to be and unfortunately I haven’t come up with much.  A few ideas I’ve had are on crime in the Depression and the changing culture from the twenties to the depression era.  My plan is to look at some basic information on these categories and try to come up with some questions that interest me.

Hidden Interpretation

This exercise was surprising because I’ve had dozens of textbooks over the course of my education and I think students are just led to believe that textbooks are the source of all knowledge when it comes to their subject matter.  After this exercise I can definitely see that textbooks present certain information and do unfortunately leave other information out.  I don’t think textbooks should necessarily come with a warning but educators should definitely be on the lookout for such perspectives so they can get other materials to supplement the book.  For one class I took in high school we got a primary source anthology in addition to our textbook which made it easier to compare information.  In the examples we read in class I felt they had themes more than perspective.  In the examples I read I found that one focused more on the local economic aspects of the depression whereas another focused on the bigger, global aspects.  So I think that rather than teaching students how read textbooks, they should be taught how to identify certain themes and patterns, so they can better identify what can be considered a fact and what can be considered a perspective.

Perspective in History

“Try how we will we can never look at the past except through the spectacles of the present” (Oakeshott 37).  I really like this quote because I think that those who are a historian or those who aspire to be, truly believes that presenting facts is the only way to pass on history.  However as this quote shows, the issue is not whether or not history should be a collection of facts, the issue is that it cannot possibly be.  I think that the overall theme here in all these articles is that history is what we make it.  History does depend on who recorded it as well as who is reading it, teaching it, hearing it, absorbing it, etc.  By that I don’t mean that as future imparters of knowledge we should make up events or embellish stories.  I mean that history is what our experiences let us see it as.

On a larger scale I, like Foner, believe that “all history is contemporary history” (1).  While we as individuals see history as our experiences let us, society as a whole sees history as its experiences let it.  Foner uses the attacks on 9/11 as an example to show that a society that had been changed by the events of that day will look upon history differently on 9/12 than they did on 9/10.

I’m not sure that the word interpretation gets the right meaning across.  I’m not exactly sure what word would be better to use but I just get the wrong idea thinking that history is open to interpretation.  I really like how Jensen says it, “assess factual assertions…weave them together…construct and explanation of how and why things happened” (1).  To me Jensen sounds more concrete, like constructing an explanation is a job to be completed.  I don’t really know how to explain it but interpretation sounds too abstract or something like that to be applied to constructing history.  I do agree though that the teaching of history cannot rely completely on the relaying of facts.  That’s definitely way too boring and doesn’t do any justice to the subject.  History can be fascinating to just about everyone but definitely not if its taught as a compilation of data.

Response to Zinn, Stearns and Becker

All three articles, Zinn, Stearns and Becker, discussed several values of history that I was able to relate to.  In the Zinn article, I agreed a lot with his discussing of teaching from the ‘other’ point of view.  For instance, Zinn uses the Mexican War as an example by saying we are often taught the big battles fought by heroic generals where we should also be focusing on the Mexican soldiers and citizens who took part in and were affected by the Mexican War.  I also really like how Zinn asserted that history not be taught chronologically but taught by continuously jumping back and forth between time periods to make connections.  Making history interactive this way is much easier and much more useful.

Becker’s article was my least favorite but I still found value in a few of the points he made.  I do agree, for the most part, that history is the memory of things said and done.  If there is no memory of things said and done then how can anyone be sure they were said and done in the first place?  I like how he claims that we are all historians in our everyday lives.  I think many people feel history contains too much reading and researching and is far too dense to be worthwhile but when we consider what Becker says, it’s true we do all sorts of historical research every day. 

My favorite of the three, and that which I took the most value from was the Stearns article.  Stearns claims that the greatest value of history is the fact that it acts as experimental data when attempting to understand how and why people and society are the way that they are.  Stearns also says history is a way to understand change.  I really agree with this point because how do you know how far you’ve come if you haven’t got a clue where you began?  One of the most important values Stearns points out, in my opinion, is the skills that can be acquired from studying history.  At the end of the day, no matter how much one argues that history is useful, some people are just not going to like it.  However, just because one doesn’t like history doesn’t mean that that person can’t gain from studying it.  Stearns argues that a student of history can learn to assess evidence, conflicting ideas and examples of change in the past.  These analytical skills can prove useful in any discipline, not just history alone.

First Post

While I would love to get an A in the course I do hope that to improve my writing skills by taking this course.  My last semester, when I took Western Civ, I was able to scrape an A- by doing well on exams, but I received B’s on all my papers and I had no idea why they were getting those marks.  I hope that by taking this class I’ll be able to figure out why my papers went wrong and what I can do to improve them.  I’m also not a big fan of sharing my work with my peers so I’m hoping that over the course of the semester I’ll become more comfortable with that aspect of the class.

I love to study history because it, like a good book, can suck you in.  History gives you the power to jump back as many years as you like and put yourself in another life for a while.  It’s interesting to me because while you’re studying it’s like you have the ability to use your own imagination and find your own interpretations of things that happened so long before you were even thought of.  If I had to pick a type of history I found most interesting I’d probably say military history, but mostly I like the politics behind the battles more than the battle details themselves.