The story of Bernard Cohen makes me think of how any person can make an impact on peoples' lives. I'll be honest, his name won't be a YNTK next semester when we cover Loving v. Virginia, but behind every term/concept/event, there are thousands of people with families, hopes, dreams, sacrifices, doubts - the entire gambit of the human condition. It's nice to be remembered, as this obituary does, of how any of us can make an impact. What do you think? Is history "made" by big/important people? Do history classes, mine included, do a disservice to the discipline by focusing on the "big ideas" and not somehow "regular people"? What's the right balance?
I think that history is definitely shaped by the big and important people, but it's also shaped by the community that it affects, which think is usually emphasized enough in classes. Obviously, the "big ideas" are an extremely important to history class, because the whole point of history class is to apply what we learn from the past to our current situations. The precedents, mistakes, and everything in between teaches us how to approach the future, and I think most history classes cover enough about "regular people", because knowing more about them isn't necessarily as helpful as understanding the big ideas. This doesn't discount "regular people", but if we tried to take everything in account in detail about the past, we would lose a sense of what we're truly learning in my opinion.
ReplyDeletePatrick Mori
ReplyDeleteI believe that history is made by everyone. I think that it is made by people both big and small. They are usually measured based upon the relative importance of their actions, and sometimes it takes a while to realize how important something actually is. I think that certain people of importance do warrant a certain amount of focus because of their achievements. I think that history classes have to focus on some of the bigger events and ideas of those events as well as some smaller things. I don't think that they have enough time to talk about all of the smaller things that are important, but not important enough to teach over some other things. I think that a "right balance" differs from person to person and what they see as important. I would also like to say that people are interested enough in history to do it in college where they would get a more in depth and expansive look at some of the smaller events or people.
I agree with Patrick that history is made by everyone, but I also agree with Meher that some figures are more dominant and leave a more memorable mark in history. When I learn about history the big names always catch my eyes first: Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton, etc... They have achieved things no one else have in the same time period, and I always feel amazed learning about them. But even though they are more eye-catching and are more memorable than an "average person," "average people" shouldn't feel any less significant in shaping history. When you look closely at those more memorable ones, you can see that they were once just an "average person," influenced by the very "average people" around them. In the end, I would say a farmer in America isn't any less human compared to Alexander Hamilton, but Hamilton has had far more influence compared to a farmer and thus is much more memorable.
ReplyDeleteI think that history is made by the big important people and the regular people. The only difference is that the big important people have had a wider scope of impact around the world, whereas regular people may have had a smaller range of impact when it comes to history. In history class, I feel that it is important to focus on learning about the “big” people as there actions have had a lasting impact on the direction of the country or certain ideas that can be seen today. In addition, more regular people are being recognized for their contributions, however they just might not be seen in history class yet. The right balance, is to focus on the major events to gain a better understanding of the bigger picture. If someone is interested in knowing more about the details there are numerous sources and ways to research regular people in a certain time period.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everyone above in the fact that history is shaped by both influential people and regular people. I also agree that it's nice to be remembered, but I don't think that's the point of learning history. We learn history to understand how the present came to be the way it is, and to reference the events of the past to understand what might happen in the future. Because of that, I don't think the "who" matters nearly as much as the "what." The way I see it, the only reason to learn the 'big names' is because without knowing names, it'd be difficult to remember what happened when and why- everything would just be very confusing. Beyond that, like you said, thousands of people have had impacts on the events that we remember, and there's no way to remember all those names. Names are details we really don't need to know, and we know from "Lies My Teacher Told Me" that trying to learn all the details of history doesn't do anything except make it boring, so I don't see the point in trying to learn names unless it's absolutely necessary.
ReplyDeleteI agree that history is made by everyone. Everyone makes their own history every day, whether we study it or not. However, we only study the "important" events or people that have shaped our society today. We need to study the most influential people and their achievements, but also learn what prompted them to do what they did. This means that it's necessary to study the average society at the time as well as the more well known figures because they both influenced each other. Where these influential figures grew up and the community they were surrounded by shaped them as a person and they later impacted their community with their actions. To understand these more important names in history and their accomplishments, we have to also study what made them who they are. Otherwise, we don't have the full picture which can lead to misconceptions and incomplete understanding.
ReplyDeleteI feel that more often than not history is shaped by those who are influential people. There are thousands of normal people changing history but I believe it is much easier to be shaped by people of power. I do feel that all history classes do miss out on the average person's response and ideas throughout history. Most of the time we focus on those making change but little on common person. It is interesting to see in today's world there are so many different people with diverse beliefs, I wonder if that the case back then. With the internet people are able to share their own ideas freely which may have not been possible in the past. People in the past would have to own up to their words because it was them speaking it. Nowadays you can say lots of things and not deal with the consequences. Although this allows everyone a voice, controversial views can occur, which then helps to spread lies and hate towards others while in the past these kinds of views were not seen.
ReplyDeleteEspecially seen with the mixed-marriage case getting passed, there's a whole new people in the world that are multi-racial, including myself, therefore one can see the beautiful effect of when history is being made and the future being changed. For my input, I think that in our high school APUSH class, it is okay to only look at the big YNTKs because as I talked about this with my dad the other day, there are higher level classes that we can take to get the more specified stories and understanding. That doesn't go to say that history is only made by the famous people, no, but looking at the objectives for the class, it isn't to know every little detail of American history as much as that would be appreciated. In conclusion, shoutouts to the little people in history doesn't hurt, and it can help remind ourselves that history has been a ginormous production of various and numerous actors and players.
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