From: "Tomasz Wegrzanowski"
On Wed, Oct 22, 2003 at 04:59:59PM -0700, Daniel
Ehrenberg wrote:
> > NPOV is not impossible for textbooks. Why should it
> > be? It's the
> > easiest thing in the world. I don't agree with
> > Alex's comments on
> > history being necessarily POV at all -- I think that
> > his comment
> > misunderstands the social evolution of consensus
> > embodied in an NPOV
> > policy.
> >
> OK, I guess NPOV is possible for *some* textbooks,
> namely the ones that couldn't have a POV (like
> programming languages) or ones with minimal
> disagreement (such as physics ....
I agree with that too, these subjects are based upon actual
knowledge and information. There is little disagreeent
on what a law of physics is or even those theories that
are theoretical; generally physicists will explain and
present theories they don't personally agree with..
> or literature), ...
I a not so sure about literature. A textbook writer may
have a theory of literature that they are pushing
through their textbook; once again this is entering
the area of intepretive knowledge that is often based
upon a POV. It is not the simple NPOV dispute we
often see on Wikipedia, X happened, not Y. Or X
happened because A felt it meant B.
But the more complex "X happened because of facts A, B, C, ...
resulting in Z. The reason this happened is because
Prop(1), Prop(2), Prop(3) are true." Then the second
POV is "X happened because of facts B, E, F, ... resulting
in Z. The reason this happened is because Prop (11),
Prop(12), Prop(13), Prop(1) are true." With further POVs
that can reach a large number of POVs. My understandin
of NPOV is to include all of them, but if there are
hundreds of such theories the article is no longer about
X but about the various interpretations of X, a different
subject, really but about the history of interpretations
of what people believe about X happening. This is
called historiography, and because of this the study
of history is never simple and based upon an evolvling
social consensus. History is all about the point of view
of the historian that is constructing the historical model.
> but for
> things like Israeli history ... there is widespread
> disagreement about basic underlying facts, not to
> mention people's motives, both of which are essential
> to creating a good textbook. ....
This is what I am talking about. Underlying facts are not
necessarily known; certain high profile facts may be known,
but the underlying facts are the sources of history that
remain hidden from view. But even if they are known there
is still the same problem.
History is exactly where good NPOV textbooks are
needed most.
In most countries history textbooks are little more than propaganda,
I would agree with the statement that many countries use grammer school
and high school history textbooks as tools of propaganda, is, but what do
historians do? They write their own textbooks and when students get to
university then they begin to understand how the study of history is
often captured by state controlled institutions for political reasons. Does
this process occur in democracies where there is freedom of speech?
Yes, but as most people do not understand how sophisticated
propaganda can be in these lower schools so there is little political will
to make the study of history more inclusive. Some would also argue that
younger students would not really understand the levels of interpretation
that go on in contstructing models of history and that often these
political histories are not wrong in themselves, just generalizations that
cannot be more sophisticated because they are for an audience that
could not understand how relative history may be. The history of a
country is often tied in with a sense of nationalism and the reason
people are willing to serve their country. If one puts all that into
question, the basic rationale for the nation-state may begin to
fall apart so history serves some kind of state function and that
is why it is often propaganda in some schools.
by both choice of material (ever noticed that they are
mostly about
history of
the government of the country, with relatively little
information about
other
areas like economy, culture etc. ?) and very strong
bias in describing it.
This is the whole point, history is always written from the point of view
of some theory, there is no inclusive theory of history. It may be written
from a political point of view or from a economic point of view or from a
cultural point of view. The proponents of these different views do not agree
about the relevant facts (it would be impossible to have a history textbook
that has all the facts of the past, just as it is impossible that Wikipedia
have
a page on every person who ever lived). Thus, each POV has to have an
underlying methodology, the historians of each approach study different
sets of primary sources (where history comes from) and analytically
construct
a theory based upon that set of sources. They may butrice those primary
sources with secondary sources (these are already interpretations but may
have some value). Are we talking about there being differences about basic
facts? Sometimes yes, because the historical record may have been created
out of secondary sources and a return to the primary sources may not verify
what had been believed to be true. Sometimes the basic facts are not in
dispute, but that does not make it any easier as those basic facts can be
interpreted in a variety of ways, all possibly reasonable interpretations of
those underlying "facts".
In particular, if people in Israel had good NPOV
information instead of
being
fed by propaganda by both sides all the time, it would
be much easier for
them
to solve their problems.
This is not really about history. First what is "NPOV information"? When it
comes to history historians, I think, would say that there is no trivial
answer
to this question. Would they call their differing interpretations of history
"propaganda? I don't think so. It is those who use the work of historians
that
make it propaganda. If you study the French Revolution from the point of
view
of one historian you may be looking at the evolution of economic forces in
France, the effects of crop yields, migration patterns of peasant families,
etc.
you, as a historian, has certain perspectives on the forces of history;
these
forces were what caused the Revolution, not the rhetoric of certain
revolutionary
notables that happened to be in the right place at the right time. Another
historian may see the French Revolution as being just the development of
ideological
forces at work in Paris and the activities of the metropolitan elites
resulting in the
breakdown of the ancien regime beaucratic infrastructure. What caused such
a breakdown for this second historian? It may be the acts of a small number
of revolutionaries that were given general support by the municipal
population of Paris and the ripple effect that occurred throughout
France was what caused the French Revolution.
So we have dozens, if not hundreds of theories about the French Revolution.
How do you put them all into an NPOV textbook? That is my question. If
the textbook is being used by a historian who has a political approach to
history they want their students to understand the various models that
historians
from that point of view have presented (in other words, even within
different
schools of history there are disagreements about the causes of events).
Will that historian want her/his textbook to mention other approaches from
different schools of history, and not just differing opinions within one
model?
Yes, possibly, but to really put them all together in the same textbook?
I doubt it, because doing so would make it very difficult (if not
impossible)
for the reader to understand the approach of the differing models within
one particular school of historical analysis. A textbook looking at
particular
perspectives on a particular set of historical events or periods may not be
able to cover all approaches and all histories.
Certainly a book can be written about the history of history (we call this
historiography) and such a book should be written from a NPOV. This is the
place for NPOV in history, but on the level of the approaches of individual
historians? In a way, constantly injecting the approaches of other schools
of history into a textbook written from a particular point of view would be
very disruptive to that particular approach to history. When I have read or
discussed history from historians one pays due regard for the historical
approach before criticizing it or decontructing it. Of course one can always
incorporate footnotes as references to the historiography literature that
may
be linked to a particular historical contraversy, but to put it all together
in a single
text? I have never seen a history textbook that did not have a particular
point
of view about history, propaganda or not. If one were to create such a
textbook, first it would be a daunting task, that would require individuals
who
understood all the different approaches to a specific historical period (and
remember that history is not a general subject, a book has to be written for
each period of history, each geographical region, each political division
and
for each of these historians are only operating in specific areas, those
studying
French Revolutionary history are not the same historians who are studying
modern French history, so each period of history and place that has a
history
will have different historians who take different points of view.
Alex756