Tuesday, June 28, 2016
Looking Back On Looking Back
This week, consider your history with history. Identify a moment in which, to perform an analysis (perhaps academically, perhaps in order to make a decision on how to act, perhaps...), you have drawn on both your own personal experience and on your knowledge of history. Which ways of knowing do you employ in applying the lessons of these histories to a present quandary? To go a step further, how was your understanding of the historical event influenced by your perspective as a knower, and how did this contribute to your problem solving? I look forward to reading your perspectives on history by the end of the day on Sunday 3 July.
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This year in IB HL history we studied Hitler. At my previous school I had also taken a course where we studied Stalin, Hitler and Mao. Using ethics I relized that they were bad leaders because they abused and killed their people and using emotion I felt sad and horrified for the people who were subject to their ruling. However when I used reason I was able to see the good things that they did for their country. Hitler was terrible to people but after WWI Germany was in a terrible place and after WWII they were able to regain some of their ecomics and power. I prefer to rely on reason than emotion so I was able to some of the good that came out of a lot of bad that some people might not be able to see because they are so focused on the emotions of how horrible what happened was. I think that it is important to employ these ways of knowing when bad things happen and be able to see the pros and cons of every situation
ReplyDeleteCoco writes:
ReplyDeleteThe first time I came to America, there was a person who accompanied me. Not my parent, but an air attendant. I still remembered I have a clear pocket hanged around my neck, and there was my I20 which I had no idea what that was. After the planed landed in JFK, the passengers need to go to the custom. The air attendant led me there, and took me in front of one custom. They chatted for a while, and the air attendant said I need to go get my suitcase. She told me "show him your I20"; I pulled it out from the pocket, and he checked me all around. Finally I got to go.
It seems as an insipid story, but the action from the air attendant has a great impact on me. Without her, I might stuck at the checkpoint, and did not know how to speak in English anymore. Using my sense perception, I recored every movements from the air attendant. Also, my emotion and reasoning have play two important roles in this event. I saw the air attendant as a person I want to to be in the future: smiling, speaking in fluent English, and be kind, helpful to other. Thus, it simulated my reasoning that following what she was doing is right. Now I have no problem with going through customs, it's just a series of process: smile at camera, fingerprints, I20, questions... Sometimes (rarely) the officer would even smile back at me, or even chat few things. That make me pretty happy from the weary trip.
While studying World War 2 Germany in history class this past year, I was faced with many things about the country and its leader that, through my emotion and reasoning, showed me that the actions of both Hitler and the country itself were cruel and inhumane. But, looking back on what I had learned about and experienced in the modern country of Germany while living there, I realized that the modern country was very different from that which we had learned about in the classroom. This experience taught me not only that people and places can change over time, but also that my perspective as a knower makes a big difference in how I evaluate areas of knowledge and situations related to knowledge.
ReplyDeleteMeredith writes:
ReplyDeleteIn US history class, we studied slavery and the Underground Railroad. Some of my ancestors were a part of the underground railroad which is a part of my family history that I am very proud of. I believe that my understanding and appreciation of the Underground Railroad was heightened due to the personal connection that I share. I used several ways of knowing while learning about the Underground Railroad in history class 2 years ago. Memory, emotion, sense perception and language were a few. I used memory to compare and contrast the material that I was learning in class to the information that I had learned at home about my own family. I used emotion while learning about the horrors that the slaves had to deal with, and had an emotional response of shock and anger. Lastly, I used sense perception to understand what the teacher was teaching and language to input my own opinions and ideas. My personal connection to the Underground Railroad certainly helped and influenced my interpretation of the material we learned during history class.
During IB History this year we studied authoritative leaders, including Castro and Hitler. When going over the United States' relationship with Cuba, we talked about the military coup in Argentina in the 70's, and we had an assignment where we had to research this. Both of my parents were alive for this military coup, therefore my understanding of this military coup was a more personal one, which was bias by both of my parents perspectives. Because of these perspectives and thoughts that my parents had and passed on to me, I came to the conclusion that the military coup in Argentina was truly a bad time, and that the United States could have done much more to help out Argentina, but because Argentina was not communist, and this military coup enforced this, the United States would not interfere. To come up with these conclusions I used sense perception to listen to my parents perspective as well as to understand what we were learning in class, and memory to remember that my parents were alive during this "dirty war".
ReplyDeleteThis year in IB SL history, one of the books that we used was about the authoritative leaders. The book talked about four leaders and Mao was one of them. When I saw this I was really surprised, because the book was arguing that he was a really bad leader. I used memory to remember things I learned about him back in China, which were both bad and good. I learned that he made a lot of wrong decisions and did some bad things such as the culture revolution. However, I was also taught that he was the one that built the "new China". I used my reasoning to understand why Mao was considered as an authoritarian leader: first, he was basically controlling his people's life during the culture revolution; second, he was a member of the extreme left wing, which was disliked by Europe ( therefore their perspectives are different with ours).
ReplyDeleteIn IB History HL we discussed Hitler's and Castro's use of media to aid in their rise to power. In Germany, there were filtered radios that only discussed Nazi ideology and beliefs that the citizens should follow. In Cuba, Castro used media as well to spread his belief about how under his ruling, Cuba would change for the better. Today, the presidential elections are occurring and candidates use media such as commercials and social platforms to promote themselves as a suitable candidate. It is evident that language, memory, and reason is essential because language allows said person to persuasively explain the validity of their perspective, memory allows people to recall the candidates beliefs and understand their perspective, and reason allows individuals to agree with those perspectives based on how they correspond with an individuals belief. From these ways of knowing, it is also evident from what we read in class that media is highly used to spread one's message as we can still witness today. Communication through language is a vital way of gaining support and understanding one's perspective.
ReplyDeleteThis year I researched about the Korean war for my winter term final project for my history class. On the process of research, I learned how countries like the US, the Soviet Union, and Japan were trying to get the peninsula for their own sake. During the negotiation, none of the countries thought about the lives of people who lived in Korea. From this historical event, I learned the importance to consider about things by different perspectives. So that people can avoid hurting each other. When I studied about this event, I used my emotion and imagination as a way of knowing the most. I felt anger by knowing how countries treated Korea and by imagining Korean people’s lives there. Emotion and imagination helped me to think the historical event from different perspectives.
ReplyDeleteFor my IA in HL History, I chose to research the Armenian genocide. From my own history, I used what I had been taught in my Turkish history classes about the genocide or according to what I learned, lack there of, in addition to what I learned from my research in class, in order to determine the many reasons as to why the government decided to deny the genocide.
ReplyDeleteFrom this moment I used emotion, language, and reason. I had to come to terms with what my country had done, and also get into the head of the Turkish leaders at the time, and try to sympathize in order to understand their reasoning. I used language in both my research and analysis, as I found that many documents translated by Europeans could also be translated a different way. Changing the meaning of quite a few statements made by both leaders and soldiers. I used my reasoning to put pieces of the puzzle together and find my answer as to why the Turkish government so adamantly denies the genocide up to recent times.
My understanding of this historical event was influenced greatly by both my emotions and language. It was difficult to sort through my pride as a Turkish person, and my up bringing in America. However, this allowed me to look at the issue from a very global perspective, and be able to understand all facets of the argument.
A few weeks after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, my mother and I boarded a plane to Chicago to visit some of her family. At this time, I was about two years old and I have no memory of understand the attack in Manhattan, New York at the time, but my mom has told me many times a story that even blows me away. As the flight took off, my mother has the memory of my breaking out in prayer aloud in the aircraft, but it was not only for those who had fallen due to the attack but it was also to the religion and the people who felt compelled to do the attack. It was so loud and innocent that afterwards the entire aircraft applauded and said a jointed “Amen”. When I think about this story and how innocent I was to this situation, I feel sorry for the children of today who are not given the opportunity to have such innocence towards that incident because of the way the media portrayed the events of that day. The Muslims as a whole are now seen as criminals in the media and no one tries to see how the attack affected them. The way of knowing that I use to apply the lesson of appreciating and acknowledging the pain of both sides of the story is emotion. Because I was such a young age and no one in my family was directly affected, that was the only way of knowing that felt comfortable for me to apply to sympathize with everyone else. Although I do not remember this moment in my life, I am consistently reminded of it by my mother; I guess to show me how thoughtful an innocent mind can be in times of tragedy.
ReplyDeleteAnny writes:
ReplyDeleteIn history I've learned about a lot of successful leaders. And I found that all of those successful leaders like Lincoln, Martin Luther King and Mao have one thing in common---they all think about their people when they make a decision. They fight for their followers or supporter's rights. And all of these bad leaders in the history, they see their leadership as an authority, they fight for themselves, not for people that support them. Therefore in the end they were overthrown by their followers. I learned from these leaders that a successful and leader should listen to their supporters and try to help them solve their problem, instead of abuse the leadership as a special rights they have.
Therefore I used this lesson I learned while I ran for the head of academics. I knew that before being a leader, I need to be a support for the student body, and try my best to solve their academic problems.
I used language, memory, emotion and reasoning while I was analyzing those historic leaders, and applied the conclusion to my action.
My historical knowledge plays a key role in the level to which I choose to display or hide my Jewish heritage. I have grown up with some elements of Jewish culture, such as various religious holiday that we observe such as Passover or Chanukah, but I was not raised Jewish. These pieces of Jewish culture made their way into our family from my father's side. All his family and extended family are Jewish, with our particular family line supposedly claiming Erin, the brother of Moses and the high priest, as our ancestor. Evan ‘Katz’ means high priest. However, since I myself was not specially indoctrinated into this religion I now had a choice before me of how much to incorporating my Jewish heritage into people's perception of me. In thinking of this I was very conscious about the history surrounding the Jewish culture; antisemitism and the resulting discrimination, persecution, exile and even murder have plagued Jews for centuries, long before Hitler made his considerable contribution to the tale of woe. In knowing this my emotion became involved as I become empathetic towards the pain my people have suffered in the past. As I began to ruminate more on the issue, my reason also became involved as I deduced that hiding this part of my heritage would not only be dishonoring my people but feeding the cycle of disparaging the nature of being Jewish. In this way my historical knowledge of my people’s past, through reason and emotion, influenced my everyday behavior in refusing to hide this part of my heritage.
ReplyDeleteLiving in Taiwan, I studied a lot of its history. A constant that I noticed was that all of its powerful leaders had been men; last year, Tsai Ing-wen, a woman, was elected president. Although I am not Taiwanese, I shared the pride with my local friends that a woman, for the first time in Taiwan's history, was elected president. This event was surrounded by my memory, which served to contrast the historical male leaders of Taiwan, to the present which was that a woman had changed the course of Taiwan's history. Fast-forwarding to my move to Stoneleigh Burnham, I have adapted a stronger feminist lens, which has been predominately developed in English class; many of the novels we read and the discussions we have revolve around women's fight for equality around the world. This has allowed me to link our discussions to my environment in the US; given that a woman, Hilary Clinton, has been elected for the democratic party, illustrates how far women have come. These examples, of many, have developed my feminist lens, which has shaped my ways and uses of knowing.
ReplyDeleteWhen reading about the principles of molecular cloning one fateful day in the lab, I wondered how people went from believing in spontaneous generation as the beginning of life, to being able to insert genes of interest into an organism by replicating it through another. The fact is that each discovery built on the next, and with each new discovery, scientists had more knowledge to draw upon when answering the next questions. This led to an exponential increase in the knowledge that is available to a scientist, all one has to do is search through publications and use the shared knowledge present in those papers.
ReplyDeleteThe specific situation which comes to mind is recent history: in April 2003, the human genome was sequenced, however, this breakthrough would not have been possible if not for Rosalind Franklin’s images of the double helix, or if not for Fred Sanger sequencing the first full genome ever, of bacteriophage φX174. This realization has a direct connection to my own research, in two ways. One way being that I know that my research means much more than just the publication of a highly field specific paper; I am creating shared knowledge edge that others can use to create even more. The other way is that I know that I can use other people’s experiments to troubleshoot my own. So now i look through other people’s lab notebooks more often for ideas.