Week 1:Daily Blog Post Day 2 - Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Daily Blog Day 2 – Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Question: Don't our traditional forms of information communication, notably "the book" and especially "the textbook" contribute to our belief in linear history?

            Traditionally in history, people learned about history by reading what people wrote in books and text books. Most if not all of these people’s book formatted history as linear history. Linear history is the idea about history that is expressed on a time line. You can look at it from the past forward or from the present backwards, but it all expresses the same thing.  Basically, linear history is the belief that all things happened in sequential order and that history has a beginning and an end with no real patterns. If this is true, we start to wonder if these two things, being linear history and the traditionally way of learning about history, textbooks and books, are connected. I bet the book and the textbook’s traditionally way of learning contribute to our belief in linear history. These books are formatted in a way that strictly promotes only linear history learning.  We are in a way are brainwashed in our early childhood schooling years and made to think that there is only one way to look at things and that is through linear history. Without us even knowing, teachers and other people make linear history the main idea in our mind when we look at history. Human nature is to do what we are taught as well as what we see, hear, and observe around us. If linear history is used in most textbooks, which it is, that is what we will apply to our life. Therefore, traditional forms of communication for sure will contribute to our beliefs in linear history for better or for worse.