As a follow up to the class discussion on the different textbook accounts of the Declaration of Independence…

I asked my students if it mattered that three fairly standard textbooks had entirely different explanations for the D of I.  Are there implications for us as learners?

The conversation rapidly became one about bias, as I had figured would happen.

One girl replied that she had always assumed that textbooks were relatively un-biased, and this led to a brief discussion of whether a non-biased book was possible.  It’s not of course, but they had to think that one through. 

So my question changed to—if bias is impossible to erase, what are we supposed to do about the existence of consciously or subconsciously manipulated narratives?  (This is not actually how I talk in class, by the way…I’m reasonably sure I use the word “stuff” fairly often).

And one kid says—“we write our own!”  Which sounds facile, but on further thought, that’s already happening, right?  Could a consensus account of the American Revolution be written between 22 kids, or 66?  I know some teachers have students write Wikipedia entries, but in this case, I’m less interested in research and writing than in the debate about how “common knowledge” is created, and what goes in the decision to include or erase information.  And of course the recent debate in Texas is never far from my mind…

And as if by magic, because everything that has existed, exists, or might possibly exist, is on the internet, I get linked to this story by James Bridle:

On Wikipedia, Cultural Patrimony, and Historiography

Here’s the key section, for me:

In a world obsessed with “facts”, a more nuanced comprehension of historical process would enable us to better weigh truth, whether it concerns the evidence for going to war, the proliferation of damaging conspiracy theories, the polarisation of debate on climate change, or so many other issues. This sounds utopian, and it is. But I do believe that we’re building systems that allow us to do this better, and one of our responsibilities should be to design and architect those systems to make this explicit, and to educate.

One of the ways to do this might be to talk more not only about history, but about historiography. History not as a set of facts, but as a process, and one in which, whether we agree or not with the writers, our own opinions and biases are always to be challenged.

 

Which, by the way, is an excellent counterargument to those who forbid kids to use Wikipedia, but also speaks to what a liberal arts education is supposed to do, was always supposed to be about: 

 
how do we think, and how do we express those thoughts, about the things that really matter.