What is History?

[chuckiecheese]

Share historians

[Son of Thatcher]

Share historians

With the half-yearlies either in progress or coming right up, I thought I would honour that request!

At my school, although we studied many historians (like seriously a lot), we were taught very specifically the main ones we would need to know for an exam. Of course this is all dependant on the source that is given during the exam, one would need to identify which historian's ideas corroborate/conflict with the source most strongly and write about them.

Classical Historians
Greek
Herodotus
Thucydides

Roman
Polybius
Livy
Tacitus

Christian Historians
Bede

Enlightenment Historians
Gibbon
MacCaulay

Empiricist Historians
Von Ranke
Evans
Windshuttle

Relativist Historians
Carr
 

[matilda_woody]

Ok, so I must admit, I'm very much dying in HIX.  We have a class of three people, a teacher who's learning how to teach it, and one that just doesn't suit my learning style, you know? The major work and the AOS is fine. What I struggle with is this topic. I get that we need to look at:
1. Who are the historians?
2. What are the aims and purposes of history?
3. How has history been constructed and recorded over time?
4. Why have approaches to history changed over time?
But how do I have that continuous argument of sorts that allows for the debate? How do we remember it all to be able to do that under timed conditions? I don't know about you guys but I literally got handed 6 massive source booklets and just got told to read and annotate all of them. Then write an essay.

Any ideas from anyone? 

[Son of Thatcher]

Ok, so I must admit, I'm very much dying in HIX.  We have a class of three people, a teacher who's learning how to teach it, and one that just doesn't suit my learning style, you know? The major work and the AOS is fine. What I struggle with is this topic. I get that we need to look at:
1. Who are the historians?
2. What are the aims and purposes of history?
3. How has history been constructed and recorded over time?
4. Why have approaches to history changed over time?
But how do I have that continuous argument of sorts that allows for the debate? How do we remember it all to be able to do that under timed conditions? I don't know about you guys but I literally got handed 6 massive source booklets and just got told to read and annotate all of them. Then write an essay.

Any ideas from anyone? 

I know the feeling. Although I am super relieved that my class (with a grand total of 2 people) is blessed with such an experienced and dedicated teacher. But I think it is important to remember that this *is* and extension course, if it were as easy as any old 2 unit course then what fun would that be!? 

While I don't claim to be any sort of erudite or expert on the subject, I can say that in my experience the 'What is History' topic is probably the hardest to get your head around, simply because it is the most abstract kind of topic you will ever study.

The best advice I can give you is to have a look at some past papers and perhaps have a crack at one yourself. See the kind of stimuli used and try to make a plan of attack. Nothing beats experience and I would wait to see how you go on the half-yearly. Don't be disheartened! My teacher said that he has never had anyone in his classes achieve an E4-type mark for the first task and we were no different! The aim is of course to be really on the spot in the trials and HSC and you're sweet!

Good luck!

[cmbarnes]

It's true that this topic is probably the hardest, I found that discussing historiography rather than history was especially difficult when we first started out. However it has actually helped me to improve in my other subjects, such as Modern History, as I'm now used to undergoing more independent research and including the perspectives of other historians, etc. If you really focus on knowing the perspective of each historian and then applying that to essay questions/stimulus (use past papers), then you should be able to do well in timed conditions.

[jelin_queen]

what case studies has everyone learnt about?

[sudodds]

what case studies has everyone learnt about?

We did Western Imperialism, which was super interesting! What about you?

[chuckiecheese]

Convict Women in Early NSW