Linking Question- Should historians make moral judgments about the past?
Unit question- Who makes history and who controls it?
This page is dedicated to answering the: unit questions, linking questions, "to know" vocab section and the "bigwig " section.
Winston Churchill once said, "History is written by the victors." The victors, the conquerors, and the rulers dictate how history is controlled. They are the ones in power.
Everyone makes history, every is a part of history. The events lived today will be the history of tomorrow. Despite this, not everyone's voice is heard. The ones who are remembered in history are the powerful rulers who's actions, and decisions are remembered.
It is not the historians place to make moral judgments regarding the past. The historians main job is to discover, and recall the information as accurately as possible, and as bias-free as possible.
Each era of history had a different moral system, and making moral judgement regarding a certain time period cannot be justified. Things were different then, and although the historian may not understand something, it is not their role to judge the events that took place.
Our history class had a debate on whether or not Lincoln was a racist, using a variety of secondary and primary sources. At the end of the debate we determined that although Lincoln could be considered a raciest by "today standards" he was not by the standards of the time. We cannot judge whether or not someone is a racist based on the criteria of today. Our society has different morals than previous times, and it is not fair to judge people of the past with today's moral criteria.
Ken Burns was born on July 29, 1953 and is an American director and producer. He created a style of using photographs as footage for his documentaries which have been nominated for Academy Awards and have won Emmy Awards. Burns is known for giving "life" to photographs by zooming on one side of the photograph to another, or zooming into a particular object. His technique has become the "Ken Burns effect" and is very well known in modern editing software. Check out this link for an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNTiyRDhlRY
The view that leaders possess special traits that set them apart from others and that these traits are responsible for their assuming positions of power and authority.
Bigwigs- Ken Burns
To know- Great person or great man theory