PDP1 - Why Study History?
Author Bio: William H. McNeill was a Canadian-American historian. McNeill’s entire life revolved around history from the day he was born, because his father was a historian and he was born at the end of World War I. Shortly after graduating college in 1939, he was drafted to fight in the U.S. Army during World War II. McNeill did not begin writing books until after he returned from war. After being part of an important historical event McNeill was able to use his experience to convey his opinion of why everyone needs a working knowledge of history.
Date/Context: The piece “Why Study History was written in 1985. This year is known as the International Youth Year, which was a year that was trying to raise awareness of youth and the obstacles they were facing. In 1985 Ronald Reagan started his second term as President of the United States, and Nelson Mandela stood his ground with the South African government. 1985 was just two years after AIDs was discovered and people started to find out the true effects of the disease. Lastly, the world population was at 4 billion people, a little more than half of today’s population of 7 billion.
Summary: “Why Study History?” is about the reasons that children should study history on local, national, and world levels in school. The article focuses on the importance of being able to identify and explain major historical events. McNeill’s opinion is that all schools should be required to educate children about large-scale events, if nothing else. He starts the article by comparing historical knowledge to a person’s memory. McNeill says that that a person’s ability to recognize friends and family members is similar to a person’s ability to use patterns of history to make the correct choices. He brings up a point that is commonly made by people who are against making history classes mandatory in schools, which is that the interpretation of history changes over time as new information comes up. Many people bring up this issue to argue that history can not be taught if it does not stay consistent, however McNeill refutes this by saying that the aspect of change the history provides teaches students to attempt to form their own opinions and hypotheses about history. Overall, McNeill analyzes the benefits to educating young generations about history.
Key Quotation: “Historical knowledge is no more and no less than carefully and critically constructed collective memory.”
Much of the "identifying information" is spread throughout the article. At the end of the page, after the article, there is some information about the author and there is also information about him and when he wrote the article at the top title. The preamble also give key information as to why this article was written and who commissioned it to be written. Overall, Megan did a good job in summarizing the article. She could have added one of McNeil's beginning points that history is important to make smart decisions both personally and globally. He argues that if we can see patterns in history, then we can use this knowledge to make better decisions in the future. Megan does a nice job to point out McNeil's comparison of a person's memory to history. Megan's quote was good, but she could have also used this one, "... ignorance of history--that is, absent or defective collective memory--does deprive us of the best available guide for public action ..."
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