The BBC News article "What Japanese history lessons leave out" (2013) reports that Japanese people always don't understand what happened exactly between World War II and what made neighboring countries harbor a rancor over events during those time. Nonetheless, Teaching Japanese history is wanted to alter by Japan's new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, so that their children can be contented with their past and is considering about Japan's 1993 apology over the comfort women topic.
Since I was 15 year-old, history, not only Thai history but also World history, is make me feel interested a lot.So this article catches my attention so much. According to the BBC news, Nowadays Japanese people barely study about their history in 20th century. Only 1 sentence for each incident in the text book. It means that they will hardly in each event that happened such as,comfort women - a prostitute group that controlled by the army of Japan, Rape of Nanjing - the war rape and mass murder in Nanjing. This news also makes me feel a bit worried about Japanese,as well as,Thailand. Studying history also makes us proud about who we are and understands more between countries to countries. For those who don't study this subject or hardly study it, they might feel a bit curious why some countries such as Japan and China don't like each other. As I studied about both history, Thai and World history, I know adequately what really happened in the past.
In remote parts of my country, there aren't enough stuff to study efficiently. So they may not know about their history that much and somehow may not realize how much important it is. Less eagerness to know more about many things. It's one part that make them easier to be convinced by other people who might have more shrewd or wiser. I'm also worried about what will happen next with these people. If they are still not zealous about what they have in their head, they will be under other people forever for 100% sure. Consequently, they will definitely have low life quality and low salary. It's tough enough for their life. This piece of papers also makes me think about having education. Let's compare between people who have high education and low education, who are more success? I think everyone will answer that mostly are people with high education as same as me. In the other hand, a large number of people with low education are also success such as Steve Jobs - the CEO of Apple inc. , Abraham Lincoln - 16th president of the United states.
Thanks to modern technology that make us know more about little things that we want to know immediately for example Google and Yahoo. History is made us know who we are,what make us be proud in our nation and what actually occured in the past. Also reading is the most important skill that shape our experience to be us today. As Jane Fonda - an actress, writer, activist - said "No pain, no gain"
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I am fascinated about the history of countries or successful people. Because I can learn from them. However, sometimes I get confused if there are the same topic, but different supporting details. So, it will be useful to learn from the reliable source.
ReplyDeleteTo give a specific example of my previous response, when I was young I was assigned to read about where Thai people came from. And I was very confused since there were a lot of sources stating where Thais came from. Some said that we were from the North and other said from the South. However, if the topic becomes more serious and very controversial, it will be better to find out from the reliable sources.
ReplyDeleteI think Peace gives us a good example of why free speech is so essential to having an opinion of any worth on a topic: if, for example, it was not allowed to say one side of the argument about where Thais came from, then everyone's opinion would have to be based on ignorance and be worthless because even if the truth was the opposite to what everyone was forced to say and think, those ideas could never be corrected.
DeleteI don't think free speech guarantees that our opinions are right, but at least it makes knowledge possible, which is of course why academics care so strongly for free speech and oppose all censorship of ideas, especially censorship of ideas that are unpopular.
And of course, free speech is also necessary for any healthy democracy, since opinion on any topic can not be well-founded under censorship of that topic.
And now I've made two comments giving hints that people thinking about essay questions 1 or 2 might find useful, so I think I've filled my daily response writing quota.
I think we should learn our from the past in order not to make the same mistake. Learning each own nation history is a necessary for the new generation ;for example, they will know what happened in the past, the origin of the ancestor, how the ancestor struggle to survive and protect their country. These remind their descendants to love and to cherish their country more. However, you should not only study their own country history,but also study their counterpart one to get both sides of information.
ReplyDeleteIn history classes, all country often wrote their history by putting themself to be a right side and they put some reasons to support the incidents.
ReplyDeleteSo, there is no surprise that many neighborhoods usually have misunderstand about their neighborhood history, for example, Thailand and Myanmar histories, If the history is written by Thai people, the writers usually argue that Myanmar invaded Thailand firstly. On the other hand, the Burmese writers also wrote their history that Thailand invaded them firstly. That is why some people might think them were in the right side and feels proud themselves, although there is none evident to prove whether they were right or not.
I like to read histories of my country that focus on the bad things that we have done, not just to the native aboriginals, but how Australian governments have abused Australian citizens and so on. Not only does this help us avoid repeating the same mistakes (though I'm not very sure about this), but it gives us a more honest and deeper understanding of where we came from and who we are.
DeleteIt's childish fantasy to pretend everything must have been wonderful and the leaders all perfectly good people. If we made mistakes, and Australia certainly has, then we should admit that and look at the consequences, which we might be able to make better with an honest understanding of the background.
Wow, this article reminds my bad memories such as the Nanjing Massacre, comfort women and what Japanese had done to Chinese in the past in high school history class. When I saw those documents and photos, it was so heart broken. I hope there is no war never and ever, because the power of war can let human becomes a beast. Can you imagine a photo that there was a 1 year old boy with bunch of died people and debris, and Japanese soldiers still killing surrounding him? I can not, but it happened, and it printed on my history textbook.
ReplyDeleteBut I think one good thing about history is people can learn from it and prevent it. Learn from the past is one of the way to get better and better.
I like reading history book because I believe I can more understand people if I knows them history, but when I was a high school student at that time I found out that any teacher had a very conservative and traditional way to teach students, or less in high technology to help us to have fun to learn; finally seem almost nobody love reading history except when they need to do exam only. At that time it seems not important to know but now I discovered whenever I know more about what they did in the past or what was concept to do somethings at those day,obviously,I more understand nowadays though.
ReplyDeleteSome of history books are pretty huge!(I mean in terms of contents and informations.) But I like reading them too when I studied. And when I want to know more about histories. Going to museums always sounds interesting to me. I think there are informal learning environments. Time period boards and items, for example, are about education which I can learn in a visual way.
ReplyDeleteWe study history to understand the past and do not do the same mistakes again. However, historical events were often written by the winner, or it was adjusted when the loser took it down. We have many sources telling the same event in a completely different way. Although history does not tell us the true happened story, it teaches us to find the best one that we should believe in. I think the most important reason that we study history is to make us logically think before believe something.
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