How was the course taught at your school? (1 Viewer)

[frankyd]

Ok so I'm revising all my work for the exam thats in 3 days...

and I come on here and see a section on "historiographical quotes" that includes a range of terminology that we never got taught.

I'm coming first in my school at this subject but I'm not so sure we ever learnt the topics right at the moment.

We learnt Postmodernist vs. Modernist and that was that to the "what is history" debate.

For example the thread suggests Thucydides is "classical scientific" we learnt him as a modernist.
same with Ranke
same with Bede
ranke with Travelyn and Namier
and then the same with evans

then we learnt that these are post modernists
derriada, foccault, white, jenkins

and all my essays etc for half yearlies and trials have been in the format thesis
postmodernist paragraph
modernist paragraph
conclusion

but I come on here and see a whole different variety of methods and teaching and read the marking guidelines and get a completely different idea of what we should have done than what we did.

Comments?

 

[Master Gopher]

OK, well in reference to people saying things are "classic/scientific historians" and also "empiricists" - that translates pretty much to modernism - belief there is some sort of absolute truth, and by careful consideration of evidence you can get to 'what actually happened'. However note that Modernism can't really be said to describe early historians like Bede - even though their methods etc could be called modernist, Bede for example had a definite purpose in showing the religious implications of things in history, and this guided his writing of history probably more than a concrete ideology of hunting down facts from evidence; Ranke was more of a modernist in that he pursued information about the past more for its own sake (albeit with his own biases etc involved).

However it's a bit worrying that you only mention doing modernism/postmodernism - that's definitely a major part of the course and you have a good range of historians, but there are possibly other areas you should look at, such as World histories (The Annales School, Marx) or Feminist histories.

Also I'm not quite sure about your essay structure there, gives the impression that your essays have been very short? Have you been getting high marks? Look at some past questions (especially the ones that are a bit weird and hard to tackle) and do some essay plans to make sure you have enough to construct a thesis; I think even if the way you were taught was different to other people, if you have a good grasp of the material and issues, your ideas should still be relevant and this will be obvious to the markers.

At our school we sort of went through it chronologically, Herodotus --> postmodernists, and we also looked at David Irving, and the Reynolds/Windschuttle debate, so as to have some current issues (if you haven't been doing so it's always good to link your arguments in the essay to things which have happened recently and current debates; it shows the significance of how we think about/write history to 'real life').

 

[frankyd]

Master Gopher thanks for the reply.

Also I'm not quite sure about your essay structure there, gives the impression that your essays have been very short? Have you been getting high marks?

My trial marks were 24 for what is history, 23 for case study so yeah my marks are high and its a selective school so its meant to be decent but what you've learnt seems alot better.

My essays are long... I tend to write heaps in the time, and my essays are generally good because english is my best subject. I'd say 1000-1200 words

The really strange this is we haven't done any of the other schools you mentioned which all seem interesting etc.

And we haven't really covered alot on the role of history in real life as . I don't really know I'm very confused.

So would this structure be better? (giving that I research all these various schools of historical discourse mentioned in that "histriographical quote" thread in the next.. oh i don't know 2 days!!!!!)

thesis

2-4 paragraphs on different "approaches to history", evaluated in terms of stimulus quote

discussion of what history is today

discussion + evaluation of how history should be written

conclusion

I have to say again, I am very confused and angry about this at the moment. hehe

What structure are you using?

 

[Master Gopher]

I don't think I should tell you whether to restructure what you're doing or not, 'cause if you're getting good marks maybe to change it would be a bad idea particularly at this stage...and you might be able to manage perfectly well with what you've learned.

In my half-yearly, there was a stimulus about the notion of relativity through bias, and then it talked about Evans and David Irving. Question was: "With reference to this source and at least TWO other sources, discuss the notion that there is no indisputible truth in history."
I structured it something like this:

Intro
Empiricism/Modernism and Ranke, mentioned his aims (objective truth) and biases despite that
EH Carr's postmodern views
>>Some rambling about postmodern theory (should have left this out, didn't do much for thesis)<<
GR Elton's reaction to Carr, comparing their views, referenced Ranke again
Reynolds/Windshuttle debate as an example of interpretation of evidence
Argument that what ends up as "history" is just what we all agree on
Conclusion that we need to be aware of debates and multiple interpretations in history

The Source was integrated in all this
I got 22, lost some marks because at times I went off on a tangent a bit. So in this question I did only talk about empiricism vs postmodernism, and I think in most questions you can just do that. However I'm studying some other schools as well, mostly to back up my ideas and give examples - for example to show that 'History is about the winners' as John Vincent says (in the source book), I could mention how the Annales school tried to remedy this by focusing on places and social histories rather than politics and power, and give a few examples. But I think you could probably manage without this, unless they ask a really curly question.

PS: Don't panic!!