# How can we be for sure about history? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 25, 2014, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-be-for-sure-about-history/686924 "2014-04-25T04:14:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![The\_Piranha\_Brothers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/aca169/32.png) [@The\_Piranha\_Brothers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Piranha_Brothers)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2014, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-be-for-sure-about-history/686924/41 "2014-04-27T19:46:28Z")
A few points from a Ma. in history: - If there are no written sources it’s not history but archaeology. Now there is a field with epistemological problems! - There is a difference between common / popular knowledge of history and serious (or the latest) research. - Historians (if they’ve been to a decent university) are aware of the problems mentioned above, like biased sources, and take them into account. Of course if there’s only one source about an event, the temptation exists to use that anyway. In fact historical epistemology was one of the most interesting, if difficult, classes in college. - That said, even in the latter field, some myths stay on a long time after they should have been debunked. But isn’t that true of every discipline? Vices like confirmation bias can strike everywhere (not just in every science but in daily life as well). - Meanwhile, I wouldn’t assume the US or UK are totally immune. I once spoke to a kid who had been taught that the US only left Vietnam under pressure of the leftie liberal media, not because they had been defeated or anything. Ignoring unwelcome subjects works too: In the UK, you hear awfully little about the Boer Wars and the British use of concentration camps… I also imagine both countries stress their own WWII contributions or perhaps each others, far above the Russian war effort. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2014, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-be-for-sure-about-history/686924/42 "2014-04-27T21:06:46Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > There is a great deal of history that is kept hidden from you, because it is not in the best interests of the powers that be in your country (for example. the USA) for certain facts to be general knowledge. Go and read (Wiki will do) about why there are no trolleys in most big cities, or how Hawaii came to be American territory. > > History is known, but most people are sheltered from parts of it, in order to have a docile, obedient citizenry… The way that Hawaii was “acquired” by the U.S. was taught openly in my high school history class around fifty years ago. The General Motors Streetcar Conspiracy is less well known, but is also less relevant than Conspiracy Theorists would have us believe. (In the home of GM, the Detroit Street Railway, for example, abandoned trolleys for buses for the more typical reasons that the U.S. is heavily tilted in favor of the automobile and revenues from fixed route trolleys could not sustain the operation as the population moved into the suburbs.) GM and its associated corporations were publicly taken to court for their actions, with a split decision regarding which laws had been broken. Neither of these “examples” have anything to do with maintaining a docile, obedient citizenry. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2014, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-be-for-sure-about-history/686924/43 "2014-04-27T21:18:59Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > I haven’t been in first grade for a long time, but I bet the Pastor Weems version of Washington’s cherry tree is still being taught. Along with throwing a dollar across the Potomac and standing up in a boat. The cherry tree story is only told as a joke. Most kids have never heard anything about Washington throwing coins and don’t understand jokes their elders take based on that story. It is more frequent that Washington is (jokingly) criticized for standing up in a boat, although, as **Bridget Burke** noted, a single painting is hardly a good source of history, to begin with. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-be-for-sure-about-history/686924/44 "2014-04-28T02:30:50Z")
Well to be fair in any given history textbook their is only so much space and they have to cover alot of material. So its usually only the basics plus things certain groups throw in. Ex. they insist that a certain number of images have to be women or minorities. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-be-for-sure-about-history/686924/45 "2014-04-28T04:47:14Z")
Our OP should read [_Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong_ and other books by James Loewen](http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=lies+that+my+teacher+told+me&tag=googhydr-20&index=aps&hvadid=31540238957&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=1039168961801153279&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_6q8tpu92x2_b). Loewen would like to tell you about all the stuff _they_ don’t want you to know! Good reads. ETA: BTW: That cherry tree guy was [Parson Weems](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parson_Weems) (as he was commonly known), not Pastor Weems. ---
**Author:** ![boozilu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4da419/32.png) [@boozilu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/boozilu)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-be-for-sure-about-history/686924/46 "2014-04-28T15:08:05Z")
There are three kinds of history: What really happened, What people think really happened, What the people in charge want us to think really happened. Rarely, if ever, are they the same thing. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-be-for-sure-about-history/686924/47 "2014-04-28T15:16:31Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > The cherry tree story is only told as a joke. > Most kids have never heard anything about Washington throwing coins and don’t understand jokes their elders take based on that story. > It is more frequent that Washington is (jokingly) criticized for standing up in a boat, although, as **Bridget Burke** noted, a single painting is hardly a good source of history, to begin with. The Cherry Tree Principle - _“It’s easy to tell the truth when you are the one holding the axe.”_ ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-be-for-sure-about-history/686924/48 "2014-04-28T15:37:12Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > This is not a question of history, so much as epistemology. I vote that it’s a question of historiography. Seriosuly, there’s a whole discipline pretty much dedicated to the OP. > **[Historiography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography)** > > Historiography is the study of the methods used by historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension, the term historiography is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians have studied that topic by using particular sources, techniques of research, and theoretical approaches to the interpretation of documentary sources. Scholars discuss historiography by topic—such as the historiography of the Unit... ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-be-for-sure-about-history/686924/49 "2014-04-28T20:16:22Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > The way that Hawaii was “acquired” by the U.S. was taught openly in my high school history class around fifty years ago. > The General Motors Streetcar Conspiracy is less well known, but is also less relevant than Conspiracy Theorists would have us believe. (In the home of GM, the Detroit Street Railway, for example, abandoned trolleys for buses for the more typical reasons that the U.S. is heavily tilted in favor of the automobile and revenues from fixed route trolleys could not sustain the operation as the population moved into the suburbs.) GM and its associated corporations were publicly taken to court for their actions, with a split decision regarding which laws had been broken. > > Neither of these “examples” have anything to do with maintaining a docile, obedient citizenry. Judging from the history books my kids used in high school, writers fall all over themselves in acknowledging our previous misdeeds. Even if the Hawaii story was left out, it was from lack of space, not from a cover up. I bet this gets covered real well in the state history sections in Hawaii. I don’t remember if I learned this in high school, but we used The Growth of the American Republic by Henry Steele Commager for post-Civil War history, so I doubt he covered up anything. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-be-for-sure-about-history/686924.md?page=2)