Why Study History?

(1998)
By Peter N. Stearns

Studying history is important because it allows us to understand our past, which in turn allows us
to understand our present. If we want to know how and why our world is the way it is today, we have
to look to history for answers. People often say that “history repeats itself,” but if we study the successes
and failures of the past, we may, ideally, be able to learn from our mistakes and avoid repeating them
in the future. Studying history can provide us with insight into our cultures of origin as well as cultures
with which we might be less familiar, thereby increasing cross-cultural awareness and understanding.

1. History Helps Us Understand People and Societies

In the first place, history offers a storehouse of information about how people and
societies behave. Understanding the operations of people and societies is difficult, though a
number of disciplines make the attempt. An exclusive reliance on current data would needlessly
handicap our efforts. How can we evaluate war if the nation is at peace—unless we use
historical materials? How can we understand genius, the influence of technological innovation,
or the role that beliefs play in shaping family life, if we don't use what we know about
experiences in the past? Some social scientists attempt to formulate laws or theories about
human behavior. But even these recourses depend on historical information, except for in
limited, often artificial cases in which experiments can be devised to determine how people
act. Major aspects of a society's operation, like mass elections, missionary activities, or military
alliances, cannot be set up as precise experiments. Consequently, history must serve, however
imperfectly, as our laboratory, and data from the past must serve as our most vital evidence in
the unavoidable quest to figure out why our complex species behaves as it does in societal
settings. This, fundamentally, is why we cannot stay away from history: it offers the only extensive
evidential base for the contemplation and analysis of how societies function, and people need
to have some sense of how societies function simply to run their own lives.

2. History Helps Us Understand Change and How the Society We Live in Came to Be
The second reason history is inescapable as a subject of serious study follows closely on
the first. The past causes the present, and so the future. Any time we try to know why something
happened—whether a shift in political party dominance in the American Congress, a major
change in the teenage suicide rate, or a war in the Balkans or the Middle East—we have to look
for factors that took shape earlier. Sometimes fairly recent history will suffice to explain a major
development, but often we need to look further back to identify the causes of change. Only
through studying history can we grasp how things change; only through history can we begin
to comprehend the factors that cause change; and only through history can we understand
what elements of an institution or a society persist despite change.

3. History Contributes to Moral Understanding

History also provides a terrain for moral contemplation. Studying the stories of individuals
and situations in the past allows a student of history to test his or her own moral sense, to hone it
against some of the real complexities individuals have faced in difficult settings. People who
have weathered adversity not just in some work of fiction, but in real, historical circumstances
can provide inspiration. "History teaching by example" is one phrase that describes this use of a
study of the past—a study not only of certifiable heroes, the great men and women of history
who successfully worked through moral dilemmas, but also of more ordinary people who
provide lessons in courage, diligence, or constructive protest.

4. History Provides Identity

 History also helps provide identity, and this is unquestionably one of the reasons all
modern nations encourage its teaching in some form. Historical data include evidence about
how families, groups, institutions and whole countries were formed and about how they have
evolved while retaining cohesion. For many Americans, studying the history of one's own family
is the most obvious use of history, for it provides facts about genealogy and (at a slightly more
complex level) a basis for understanding how the family has interacted with larger historical
change. Family identity is established and confirmed. Many institutions, businesses, communities,
and social units, such as ethnic groups in the United States, use history for similar identity
purposes. Merely defining the group in the present pales against the possibility of forming an
identity based on a rich past. And of course nations use identity history as well—and sometimes
abuse it. Histories that tell the national story, emphasizing distinctive features of the national
experience, are meant to drive home an understanding of national values and a commitment
to national loyalty.

5. Studying History Is Essential for Good Citizenship

A study of history is essential for good citizenship. This is the most common justification for
the place of history in school curricula. Sometimes advocates of citizenship history hope merely
to promote national identity and loyalty through a history spiced by vivid stories and lessons in
individual success and morality. But the importance of history for citizenship goes beyond this
narrow goal and can even challenge it at some points.
History that lays the foundation for genuine citizenship returns, in one sense, to the
essential uses of the study of the past. History provides data about the emergence of national
institutions, problems, and values—it's the only significant storehouse of such data available. It
offers evidence also about how nations have interacted with other societies, providing
international and comparative perspectives essential for responsible citizenship. Further,
studying history helps us understand how recent, current, and prospective changes that affect
the lives of citizens are emerging or may emerge and what causes are involved. More important,
studying history encourages habits of mind that are vital for responsible public behavior, whether
as a national or community leader, an informed voter, a petitioner, or a simple observer.

DISTINCTION BETWEEN PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SOURCES

PRIMARY SOURCES

 Were either created during the time period being studied or were created at a later date by a
participant in the event being studied.
 Primary sources are the historical documents used by historians as evidence.

Example:

1. Diaries
2. Personal Journals
3. Government Records
4. Newspaper Article
5. Military Reports

SECONDARY SOURCES

 Is a work that interprets or analyzes an historical events or phenomenon.

 Secondary sources is typical history book which may discuss a person’s event or other historical
topic.

Example:
 1. Scholarly
2. Popular Books
3. Articles
4. Textbooks

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

 The key to determining whether an item may be considered to be a primary source is to ask
how soon after the event was the information recorded
 This can be a problem with an autobiography, memior, reminiscence, etc.
 If the author is working several years with only the memory of what happen, your history professor
will disallow most or all of these as primary sources

REPOSITORIES OF PRIMARY SOURCES

1. The National Archive of the Philippines

 The home of about 60 million documents from the centuries of Spanish rule in the Philippines, the
American and Japanese occupations, as well as the years of the Republic. It is also the final
repository for the voluminous notarized documents of the country.

Filipino: Pambansang Sinupan ng Pilipinas

Abbreviation: NAP
Address: Velco Centre, Roberto Oca St, Port Area, Maynila Kalakhang Maynila
Formed: May 21, 2007
Annual Budget: P85,146,000 (2012)
Agency Executive: Victorino Manalo, Director
Key Document: Republic Act 9470

2. The National Library of the Philippines

 The national library of the Philippines. It is under the jurisdiction of the National Commission for
Culture and the Arts (NCCA). The library is notable for being the home of the original copies of
the defining works of José Rizal: Noli Me Tangere, El Filibusterismo and Mi último adiós.

Filipino: Pambansang Aklatan ng Pilipinas o Aklatang Pambansa ng Pilipinas

Abbreviation: NLP
Address: Rizal Park, Kalaw Avenue, Eermita, Manila
Collections: 1,678,950
Established: August 12, 1887
Budget: P120.6 million (2013)
Director: Cesar Gilbert Q. Adriano
Key Document: Act No. 96 of the Philippine Commission

3. The National Historical Commission of the Philippines

  is a government agency of the Philippines. Its mission is "the promotion of Philippine history and
cultural heritage through research, dissemination, conservation, sites management and
heraldry works." As such, it "aims to inculcate awareness and appreciation of the noble deeds
and ideals of our heroes and other illustrious Filipinos, to instill pride in the Filipino people and to
rekindle the Filipino spirit through the lessons of history.

Filipino: Pambansang Komisyong Pangkasaysayan ng Pilipinas

Abbreviation: NHCP
Address: Cawit, Cavite
Formed: 1933
Executive Director: Ludovico Badoy

4. The National Museum of the Philippines

 is a government institution in the Philippines and serves as an educational, scientific and cultural
institution in preserving the various permanent national collections featuring the ethnographic,
anthropological, archaeological and visual artistry of the Philippines. Since 1998, the National
museum has been the regulatory and enforcement agency of the National Government.

Filipino: Pambansang Museo ng Pilipinas

Address: Padre Burgos Ave, Ermita, Manila, Mero Manila
Formed: October 29, 1901
Annual Budget: P521.87 million (2018)
Agency Executive: Jeremy R. Barns, Director

EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL CRITICISMS

External criticism

• Also called as ‘’lower criticism’’

• Establishes the validity by determining the authenticity of the document.

• It is a preliminary & preparatory step, providing data to be used in the second phase known as
internal criticism.

• External criticism primarily deals with relating to form & appearances rather than meaning of
contents.

According to Mouly

‘’ the purpose of external criticism is not so much,, negative (the detection of fraud) as it is the ,,
establishment of historical truth’’.

Internal criticism

 Also called as ‘’ higher criticism ‘’

  Value and worth of its contents, its literal meaning and the reliability of the statements
themselves.

 The meaning and trustworthiness of the contents of the documents.

 May be carried on positively or negatively criticism.

Positive criticism

 When the researchers seeks to discover the literal and the real meaning of the text.

Negative criticism

 When the researcher tries to seek every possible reason for disbelieving the statement made,
questioning critically the competence, truthfulness or accuracy and honesty of the author.

Both are essential in historical research but the researcher should not go so far as to be cynical and
hypercritical.

DIFFERENT KINDS OF PRIMARY SOURCES

1. LITERARY OR CULTURAL SOURCES

Novels, Plays, Poems (both published and in manuscripts form)

Television shows, Movies or Videos
Painting or Photographs

2. ACCOUNTS THAT DESCRIBES EVENTS, PEOPLE OR IDEAS

Newspaper, Chronicles or Historical Accounts, Essays, and Speech, Memoirs, Diaries,

and Letters, Philosophical Treatises or Manifesto.

3. FINDING INFORMATION ABOUT PEOPLE

Census Records, Obituaries, Newspaper Articles, and Biographies.

4. FINDING INFORMATION ABOUT A PLACE

Maps and Atlases, Census Information, Statistics, Photographs, City Directories, The
Local Library or Historical Society.