Quote Originally Posted by Sabin Rene Figaro View Post
What do you think is the best way to learn about history? what you read out of school books or what you're exposed to in the museums and battlefields all over the place and why do you think so?
What do you mean by school books? Do you mean analytical monographs that one would encounter in a high level undergraduate or graduate level university course or textbooks that present history as a series of facts? If you're referring to the latter, then my answer is neither. Both the aforementioned and museums/other forms of public history are awful ways to "learn" history.

I don't want to complicate this by asking the inevitable yet unanswerable "what is history" question, but it's hard to avoid. There is no good or bad history in a black and white sense, but rather, there are histories that are reflective and those that are not. Reflective histories are self referential; they see themselves as interpretations and as such are mindful of their limitations, their biases and their relation to the rest of the relevant historiography. This kind of history is more a dialogue between academics than a means by which to "teach" history. Many readers of popular history (museums, documentaries, certain authors, etc) would often look at this history not as history at all, but rather as philosophy. In a sense, it is: it's a reflective look at the philosophy behind the history of a given topic and history in general. These works are the best way to "learn" history as they make clear what history is: history (as an academic discipline) is not what happened in the past, but rather, a collection of interpretations of what happened in the past.

Text book and popular history, on the other hand, present history as fact. This is probably the worst way to "learn" history as one becomes bound by whichever author/idea happened to be the most vocal. This history does not reflect upon itself and therefore does not engage with, nor is cognizant, of its affiliations, its biases and, worst of all, its position as an interpretation. And yes, I am absolutely a postmodernist and have my own biases when it comes to this. It is certainly acceptable (though I disagree) to believe that one can "know" history as 100% fact, but if one's history does not even reflect on the idea, it is a shallow venture at best.

Museums and displays are the absolute worst places to get a balanced view of history. They are meant either to make money, prop up an idea (nationalism, a minority, a government, etc) or both. Regarding going to the source to take in history first hand, it is indeed important, but museums and national areas do not provide first hand information. They provide information as they desire to present it.

I always do this, but it's late, so I feel the need: please forgive any nonsensical passages in this post. It's late and I'm tired. This may not even make sense. Fingers crossed.