I have started a new blog entitled "The Historian's Craft".
I always hear people telling me that to do well for history, you just need to memorize. Unfortunately, history, is not what most of you believe it is, its not about memorizing. Of course, you do need to know what happened in the past, but that's not the main idea. History is very much misunderstood. Indeed, even many students of history at a university level do not understand the discipline in which they were majoring—its purpose, its questions, or its heritage.
To resolve those issues, we must first begin by asking the big but basic questions: What is history (as a discipline) and what do historians do? Where does the discipline sit among the other subjects? What element or elements drive history forward—is it free human choice and will, or a passionate lust for power and money. Could it be a great chain of previous events, economic conditions and conditioning? Or could it be by divine guidance, or pure dumb luck, to name a few. What kind of beings are we humans—political, rational, spiritual, economic, passion-filled and lustful, willful, or just plain lucky?
History attempts to answer these questions. And that's what we're going to do in these history classes. We are going to answer the big question of "HOW DID WE ARRIVE HERE???"
So, stay tuned, and pay attention to this class and this blog... i'll be updating more soon.
Take care,
Mr Goh
