Category: pragmatic historian

history pragmatic historian

History’s Hierarchy of Purpose – Critical Thinking & Context

By Mary | by Mary

The Google definition of critical thinking is “the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment.” (If you enter “define critical thinking” into Google Chrome, this is the definition that pops up on top of the page.) We seem to have a shortage of critical thinking in society today. There are plenty of judgments flying around, but they are based more on emotion, propaganda and tribalisim than objective analysis and…

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history pragmatic historian

The Skills History Teaches

By Mary | by Mary

As I’ve been working through History’s Hierarchy of Purpose, I’ve been thinking more deeply about all the skills that practicing history can teach us. As I continue to unpack that, I’ve come across a couple of articles that mention some of those skills. Fernande Raine discusses some of these skills in her Medium article, “Why History is Good for You [https://medium.com/@fernande/why-history-is-good-for-you-353d393776df].” I wholeheartedly agree with her assessment that history is cool, but that it suffers…

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history pragmatic historian

Challenge – What Would You Have Done as Hitler Rose to Power?

By Mary | by Mary

This is a post I’ve been waiting to write for a couple of weeks, ever since I saw Amy Siskind’s smack-in-the-face tweet: When I was studying the Holocaust as part of a World War I & II class in high school, this is exactly the thought that kept going through my mind. What would I have done? Would I have gone along with the Third Reich’s activities and had to live with my cowardice and…

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