History is generally taught through the eyes and experiences of “Great Men” and “Leaders” as opposed to considering the average citizen’s experiences. What are the possible impacts and implications of this process of teaching and studying history?
Since we mostly see history through the eyes of “Great Leaders”, the resulting effect can be quite disastrous. It is not the common soldiers who plans and hopes for war, but the leader of a country and thus we learn history through the calculated eyes of men who move wooden armies on maps, never once themselves on the actual battle field. While in the older days, leaders such as Napoleon, where at the actual front, nowadays, and during World War I, most leaders sit safely in their commanding posts. Thus the whole horror of such a war is greatly buffered.
In this way we actually see history through the eyes of the minority, since only few actual documents from the common folk reach or survive the different centuries. What does this make history? It seems thus that many of the facts we have gathered with such revere are actually only scratching the surface. What the great leader deemed as fit, his folk may have seen quite differently. A great way this is displayed is in All Quiet on the Western Front. “A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends. At some table a document is signed by some persons whom none of us know, and then for years together that very crime on which formerly the world’s condemnation and severest penalty fall, become our highest aim.” (Remarque 193)
And it is quite true that the world still works this way to this day forward. However what do we learn through history this way? Nothing. A war seems like a simple declaration, a seal upon a paper and nothing more. Within dusty old textbooks, the war seems like a clean, sterile, and perfectly organized field, with glorified battles, and perfect victories. But through the eyes of the common folk it was not so.
If we look at the wars today, in Afghanistan or more recently in Libya, when do the news reporters interview the mothers, the children? What about the wounded soldiers? We can imagine the horrors but it does not reach us because all we get is the final report from the NATO in a very clean conference room. What happens is that when we learn history through the men who started it all, it is quiet clear we will never hear from the victims.
“But what I would like to know is whether there would not have been a war if the Kaiser had said no.” (Remarque 203) That is probably the question we all ask when we read a history textbook.
Bibliography:
Brainy Quote. 2011. 22 July 2011<http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/ history.html>.
Eksteins, Modris. Rites of Spring. New Tork: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1989.
Remarque, Erich M. All Quiet on the Western Front. Trans. A.W. Wheen. New York:
Ballantine Books, 1928.
I totally agree with your first paragraph especially with this sentence: "Thus the whole horror of such a war is greatly buffered." The reason why I agree with this quote is because for example if we look at the World War II we can see that not a lot of people actually knew about the horrors in Nazism camps except the people that were in it, no one has mentioned them in newspapers or/and TV or/and radios, you could only see Great Man, in this case it would be Hitler talking about what they will do, why it started and he would talk like it is every German persons point of view.This is a quote of Adolf Hitler in 14th October 1933 for World War II but not about Nazi camps:"I speak in the name of the entire German people when I assure the world that we all share the honest wish to eliminate the enmity that brings far more costs than any possible benefits... It would be a wonderful thing for all of humanity if both peoples would renounce force against each other forever. The German people are ready to make such a pledge."
ReplyDeleteHowever I don’t agree with your third paragraph because I believe that we can actually learn things from Great Man's point of views not the horrible things but still, they usually talk about the general things of the war: like why the war has started, how they did do a right thing by choosing to go to war and this is useful as well maybe not as much as the general people because the general people would talk more about the affects of war on the people just like the narrator in All Quiet On The Western Font that tells us on page 168: "It is I of course that have changed in the interval. There lies a gulf between that time and to-day. At that time I still knew nothing about the war, we had only been in quite sectors. But now I see that I have been crushed without knowing it. I find I do not belong here any more, it is a foreign world.”