Do University's in general teach a bias view point of history?

>>327350
All history is biased. "Unbiased" history is impossible. The "truth" doesn't exist. Only the documentary record of the past, and what historians have written based on that, exists.

It varies. I've had lecturers who are pretty much proto-fascists, and some who are two inches away from being the next Lenin.

I'm doing a module on European colonisation in Africa right now and I don't know what to tell you. I mean - we all basically agree that the Europeans were pretty bad, but just saying that isn't enough, so it goes into quite a bit of detail and nuance. But if you want some professor that white people diddun do nuffin go read Niall Ferguson or some shit.

>>327367
>>327410
I want someone who can acknowledge the bads of Europeans but also realize the incredible inventions and technologies they also brought. If that's even possible

There is no such thing as unbiased history

>>327440
Like the railroads that existed to move resources to the coast and shipped out to Europe?

>>327454
Yea, like from sailboats to enormous steamers that traveled the world, that brought trade and medicine

>>327350
>I feel that anything from a Uni would be painted in a lefty POC favoured way.
>>327367
>Universities are leftist factories, take everything you're told with a grain of salt.

I see people post this all the time, but they never provide examples or so much as explain what they mean. Smells like bullshit.

>incoming ad homs and appeals to common sense

>>327550
>There's no way that there's this thought going around all the time and it's just a meme.
That's pretty much the definition of a meme.

>>327377
Lenin was pretty right wing, mate. Believed the proletariat was incapable of more than a trade union consciousness, viewed the party as substituting for the class in a "workers' state." Viewed the state forms of a workers state as just being a red bureaucracy.

>>327478
It's because "the left" is a boogeyman. It doesn't actually mean anything and if you would ask people like the OP what they mean by it they would probably lists things that have nothing to do with a left political view.

>>327478
Have you spent any time at a university?

>>327369
Nope, there is Truth, relativistic blockhead.

>>327634
>implying that comment was espousing relativism

>>327634
Publish and win your nobel.

>>327350
It's almost impossible to learn 'unbiased' history

Over all I think a uni would teach about imperialism pretty well, the only thing they gloss over is the large amount of infrastructure and development brought to Africa (even though it was mostly just for exploitation) After all Europeans did bring things like modern medicine to Africa. I know that the Germans, while their colonial rule was often harsh, were actually interested in the development of their colonies like Togo and Tanzania, and they built schools to teach locals German, hospitals, etc.

>>327618
>no examples
>no explanation

Read the post you quoted again.

>>327350
No history is unbiased, so what you want is your flavour of bias. A good lecturer will explain various schools of thought and points of view, as well as their own briefly so you can analyse the content you are getting.

I wonder if a misunderstanding of Marxism leads to the conclusion that academic historians are all leftists, when Marxism in a historiological context simply meant a move away from the strictly big man history that preceded it to a more realistic study of finance, society, populations etc.

In addition it seems that the student body is both the least political and most conservative it has been for a long time, though stupidity is by no means exclusive to the left but positively correlates to student politics in general, the president of the student conservative party wing at my uni was against book exchanges because they are apparently socialist, for example.

>>327671
>>327811
How close to being absolutely unbiased can we come?

>>328062
You can't approach an impossible thing. There are valid and invalid readings.

>>328080
>you can't approach an impossible thing
I guess that means freezers don't work because they approach 0 K?

>>328080
>You can't approach an impossible thing.
I'm sure you could asymptote towards it.

>>328062

I don't know. We can getc closer to being un-biased, but we will never be all the way there.

>>328062
Well you can be objective about well sourced chronologies, but in high school we moved away from a simple parroting of dates and events even before senior school.

You have to interpret sources and come to a conclusion based on evidence, if you understand the potential bias of sources, and know your own opinions and understand that they are not objective, unlike many of the posters here it seems, you will go some way to having good output.

>>327634
>There is truth concerning history

Maybe in terms of basic facts, but thats about as far as it goes. If you want to look at historic trends, things get complicated, and its impossible not to run into biases, overlook certain events, emphasise some things over others, etc.

If you seriously think that you can look at a collection of period writings and some archeological evidence and then accurately deduce the entire causal chain of events in the history of man, you're crazy.

>>328126
Ever see udef on a graph?

>>327618
>>328526
>only retorts are appeals to common sense
Looks like >>327478 was right

>>327634
There's history and there's History. The latter is a collection of narratives and explanations for ideology and indoctrination purposes.

>>328691
Okay, it's not so much the "le libtard" profs it's the fucking PC police, feminazi and, victim POC you hear about. I just graduated high school in Canada and all my teachers were certainly left leaning, but pretty chill, open to debate, talk about different view points and such. I'm not sure if it's just Neocon fear mongering that paints profs as dickheads who "agree with my Marxist manifesto or fail lol", so that's basically my only fear holding me back to go on and study a course.

>>328817
So basically you are just parroting memes and have no first hand experience at university?

>>328908
I'm asking if theres any basis in this "memes" and yes

>>328933
Out of my department of 70 I'm the only Marxist.

>>328937
Of my department, the closest we have to a Marxist is one guy with a boner for the CCP, and one lady with a ladyboner for the SDP.

But neither of them actually apply Marxist methodologies, or claim to be communists so...

>>328933
The vast majority of the student body will likely be largely disinterested in student politics. Student politics of all spectra attracts spastics, not just the pinkos.

>>327350
>University's
>'s

>>328062
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

Run down this list and think about how many of these are virtually inevitable in history.

There's a lot we flat out don't have a complete picture of, and bias even within primary sources. Even your selection of material engenders bias. Working from there will always net you a picture that is biased somehow, even if your biased version happens to coincide with the truth.

>>330315
Probably not esl oriented, m8...

>>330428
Either way they are retarded.
>ESL likely Eastern European stupid enough to get suckered by the ebin meems about tertiary education and the West in general that they are fed
>EFL absolute retard that both can't write English and is stupid enough to get suckered by the ebin meems about tertiary education and the West in general that they are fed

>>327350
Depends on the university in question and within the uni it could depend on the teacher. I had teachers from both ends of the spectrum but most somewhere in the middle, wouldn't want to have it any other way. A uni that is strictly one thing isn't academic.

>>327466
That statement is highly retarded. In the case of aboroginal Americans they had medicine, many which are studied by pharmaceutical companies to this day. Europeans brought disease

>>328146
>understand the potential bias of sources, and know your own opinions and understand that they are not objective
Exactly what I was going to say. This is pretty basic stuff (I was taught this in school when I was about 13).

Unfortunately, with the rise of the internet echo-chambers it seems like fewer people are interested in objectivity and are more concerned with finding one-sided evidence to support their preconceptions. We're all guilty of it on some level, and recognising and challenging our own bias takes a rare amount of intellectual honesty and courage.

It's a breath of fresh air when I can find real, thoughtful debate on the internet nowadays, as opposed to isolated communities shunning (and in many cases, outright banning) any dissenting point of view as "offensive" or "subversive." Anyone genuinely interested in the truth will quickly see that this kind of wilful ignorance is unhealthy.

One of the reasons I love 4chan is that ideas are generally presented in their own context. Even the most stubbornly close-minded believer can find themselves cheerfully agreeing with the exact same person that they were vehemently denouncing as "the out group" just a minute before.

>>327478
>>327618
This. Communications textbook made all sorts of unsourced assertions about how advantageous it is to be white and that all past societies were patriarchal in the past. Also one of the big lessons was "communicating in a non-threatening manner."

>>330767
>Communications
lololol
I generally don't like to get engaged in the kind of pissing contests that students seem to love, but communications? A course literally invented to squeeze more money out of potential students in an unregulated education sector. A catchment for students unable to study languages, international studies, politics, hell almost anything at university has at least a component improving communications ability. A dumping ground for teaching staff on contracts that the university doesn't want to have to pay severance for. You might as well cite McDonald's as everything wrong with fine dining. I don't want to rub it in but how badly did you fuck up that you ended up in communications? Christ.

>>327634
There is truth but there is no way to know for certain what that is outside of living history.

>>330886
You think I picked it? Fuck off. It's a required course.

>>327350
all history is opinion based of what the records and evidance tells us so wether or not you view what happened at any given even as good or bad is based you your subjective opinions

>>327410
Name one great empire that isn't guilty of some atrocity. The problem is that these keks spend a disproportionate amount of time whinging about Europe's past, rarely if ever applying the same moral bullshit to the rest of the world.

>>332612
proofs?

>>332625
What proofs? Your own posts hint of the same kind of attitude.

>>330440
>Europeans brought disease
>Europeans literally had to wait centuries before colonizing Africa because they kept dying of African diseases

>>332612
>Name one great empire that isn't guilty of some atrocity.
Well yeah, empires are bad. I've read Tacitus, you reactionary cunt.

>>327350
>I want to learn something in an unbiased fashion
>but they have to teach me in a way that I, who admitted to being ignorant, agree with already

>>332831

>If you take an interested position within academia, you're inevitably a leftist, because you generally think that the laypeople are stupid and you can think of a "better way" of running things and think society needs some sort of radical change

Making random assumptions that you cannot prove or make no attempt to. What the fuck are you even talking about

>>327350
If you're intelligent enough, even getting a biased teacher you will learn. What he teaches at class is not important, except for passing your tests. What's important is he books he is gonna recommend or at least mention, and he's gonna mention all the important ones if you enter a good university. Even if you end up liking the writers he attacks, you will know them thanks to him.

Of course, you can discover all this by yourself, but it's harder. And it's not like you cannot combine what the university gives to you and your own research.

>>330440
sounds like we wuz kingz nonsense. please stop. western medicine is by far the superior to everything. anybody who says otherwise is a new age shill who shouldnt be trusted

>>332831
Excellent, you've started explaining what you mean.

Now if you provide examples to back up your claims, I'll believe you.

>>330440
Holy fuck you're stupid.

>>332978
Really though, Western medicine was largely unscientific rubbish until surprisingly late. One could also easily make the case that vaccination was an incremental development on inoculation which was an eastern innovation.

>>333317
Not that anon, but he isn't 100% wrong. The natives had "remedies" for diseases they already were exposed to. They just didn't have any kind of smallpox etc. Disease is not a monolithic block, it's a massive variety of things.

I thought they'd established that universities are incredibly left biased.

>>333817
Who is "they"?

>>327671
I haven't gone to uni yet, but I know that the education system is highly biased here in Norway at least.

Certain things you learn:
>white people enslaved black people
>white people extorted resources from black people
>Christianity killed innocent Muslims during crusade
>Hitler's right wing ideology killed millions of people in Europe, especially Jews, and is the definition of the devil
>the dark middle ages, witch burning, oppression by Church and monarchs

Things we don't learn:
>Muslim enslavement of blacks
>Muslim conquest in Europe
>cultural and technological development in Europe during the Middle ages
>the Church preservation of Ancient Greek and Roman books and texts, including the translation from Latin to the different European languages
>Allied atrocities during ww2
>economical reasons behind ww2
>black people selling their own enslaved people to Europeans and Muslims in exchange for profit
>Muslim enslavement of millions of white people (Slavic people)

I simplified this, but it's basically the impression I'm left with after finishing high school. My point is that I believe the education system wishes you to think in the way that the first bullet points are formulated and then disregard anything mentioned in the last bullet points.

Is it the same for universities, but at a higher level of knowledge? Or is it more "objective" with individual research giving you the ability to bring in new information to form another perspective?

>>330537
This, 100%. The only thing I'm missing is anons providing more sources.

>>333364
hmm, vaccination already caught on in the 1800s. napoleon innoculated all his soldiers for small pox for example. quinine made malaria a non-issue in the nineteenth century, western eye surgery was the best of its kind as early as the 1700s iirc, public health made strides in the late 19th century.

i'd say post war western medicine was definitely superior, but even before that the west had some good shit. but thinking how Calvin Coolidge's son died of a blister from tennis in the 1920s rofl, yeah i guess your right.

>>330767
Have you considered reading a different textbook then?

>>336311
>economical reasons behind ww2
maybe on the allied side, but nazi germany subordinated economics to their ideology, so no. rest of the things i agree with generally.

>>336311
>we are taught a load of bias
>we should be taught this other load of bias instead
no

>>336562
Quinine is an interesting one. Quecha used it as a muscle relaxant used to threat chill shivers and it was sent back to Europe by returning Jesuits who figured it might be able to treat fever chills. They lucked out as it was an effective anti-malarial though the logical reasoning behind its trial wasn't entirely sound.

>>336590
Quechua*

>>336311
What kind of school did you go to? My history teacher debunked of all that shit when I was in school.

>>336590
yeah true, it wasn't till the 19th century that people actually came to realize its full potential though. before that the knowledge of it was very limited. your probably know, but to educate other people here, but tonic water is made from quinine, which is why the british drank gin and tonic in india

>>328933
It depends, where I live the hunanities' department is basically tumblr.
Then again a lot of the population here is Californian tier.

>>336579
>we can't be 100% objective
>fuck it why bother at all lol

>>336579
How about a combination of both in order to create an accurate conclusion based on two contrasting, biased, perspectives.

>>336754
I live in Norway. It's a perfect correlation here between our educational and political development. Correlation =/= causation, but yeah who knows.

>>336577
Yeah precisely.
>creating an individual banking system
>Autarky
>anti-industrial/pro-agricultural economy besides the militaristic aspects of it
It was a reactionary economic system with many contrasts to both capitalism and communism.

>>327350
Yes and no
In general the history professors I've had we're very knowledgeable in their field (and okay at general history) not to mention they were very open about their bias

Where the bias gets gross is in the classes in which history has to be employed at some level
I'm talking lit classes cultural anthropology classes etc
Pretty much the people who have no idea what they're talking about and still go on and on about shit like orientalism

>>327350
Reenactments are a great resource. Although it depends on what aspect you're interested in in particular

>>327582
He wasn't right wing. You're just so far down the scale that even this seems right wing to you.

If you get the opportunity, you should kill yourself.

>>327350
No one is going to outright falsify somethiing in a professional setting and educators are rarely even allowed to give their own opinions, but they might be selective in the material that they teach or use questionable sources or choose not to teach specific things/subjects.
It's 'unbiased' in that they're almost never outright lying to you. But if you lack good critical thinking skills or don't put in the effort to do a bit of fact checking, then you are very very likely to be manipulated into believing something whether it's true or not.
This is the case with education in general though. Real study is hard work and it's easy to let other people just convince you or lead you to believe that something is a certain way when it might not be.

>>327350
I do law, so I only do some minimal history as far as it relates to the shaping of the law itself so you can understand the social context of the decisions but I feel my lecturers give as much as an unbiased summary as they can. When it comes to legal opinions though, that unbiasedness flies right out the window

>>338469
I eagerly await the day you come to a consciousness of your class position.

>>327350
>>327350
I wanted to believe it didn't, until I heard the word 'androcentrism' in my former college's archaeology class.

>>327350
What ever they do teach, clearly they don't teach the use of apostrophes.

>university's
Thick cunt.

>>336311

University education is definitely more nuanced though you don't seem to actually be seeking nuance.

>take History 1500-present
>first day, professor tells us to not worry, he won't put stupid bullshit about feminists in tests or anything like that
>the goddamn final has a question on a literally who feminist

>>327466
You should try Global History.
It's a quite new branch of history that focuses on globalization and international dynamics.
For example, I read a paper last week about the contributions of colonies to pharmaceutical and bothanical advancement in the 17th-18th century.

>>343047
Does it relate to global history, trade, and conquest?

>>340951
>Use an apostrophe to put universites in a possessive contex
>People complaining about finite grammar on a Burmese message board

Absolutely kek'd m'M8

>>343673
It was not possessive, you moron.

File: 1416218173313.jpg (6KB, 251x246px) Image search: [Google]

6KB, 251x246px

>bias view