Why are people SO obsessed with dusty museum artefacts when REAL history is being created by us everyday?

Question

It seems to me that at school, we only learnt about history from one perspective. Surely, history is about what normal people did, not just the actions of governments and kings? Just a thought!

Answer 1

Because those who learn nothing from history are destined to repeat it.

And yes, history is about what everyone does, not just kings and governments. But the broad sweep of history rather precludes learning abot the past lives of billions of individuals whose impact on wider history was negligable. It simply depends on what you are trying to discover.

If you are learning about what happened to your nation, finding out how a mason or a ploughman lived is little help. If you are studying the history of building or farming, its essential.

Answer 2

You have a question dealing with the love of antiquities, then you go on to explain that you believe that history is taught from one perspective. Then you show interest in the actions of ordinary people.

My guess is that you should explore sociology. It is a fascinating field which explores why groups of people are the way they are. Very little emphasis on history, heavy emphasis on the human factor. Also, there are books available discussing what life was like for the ordinary person throughout historical periods. They would be found either in the anthropology section or the sociology section of your library or book store.

Have fun with your exploration!

Answer 3

I'm history student at uni, and believe me it's not all about dusty museums and Kings and Queens. My programme of study has been very wide ranging, I've studied Indian, American, European and British history, I've also studied Histories of Education, English football and Film. Admittedly the theoretical stuff is very boring (What is History?), apart from that the course that I am on has been great..

Answer 4

"History doesn't really repeat itself, but it does have a nasty habit of rhyming." - Mark Twain

There are many lessons from history that are relevant to today's workd. One example is that James Polk's war against Mexico and Bush's was against Iraq have many similarities. If you know what happened in the past, you can better understand what is happening now.

I sure agree that the history of governments is pretty boring. I used to work at a living history museum. It was great to see school groups come in and get interested in history. I wish that other historical topics were taught in schools, like the history of culture, history of everyday life, or the history of technology.

No matter what you want to know about, you will understand it better if you know its history. Kids who get turned off to history by their schools are not being well served.

Answer 5

Hi

Totally agree with your point. The recent project by www.historymatters.org.uk showed that our daily lives are going to be examined by future generations with much scrutiny.

The Museum of London announced last week that it was to launch a new website called www.mapmylondon.com which invites members of the public to upload their impressions of the city, in order to create a collective emotional memory bank.

The website is available in the new 20th Century gallery and embodies the Museum’s commitment to make history relevant to all London’s communities. As part of the launch, eBay is auctioning the opportunity for someone to have their own mini-display of their personal memories of London set up in the Museum.

The launch of the website marks the final push in the Museum’s drive to fund a major redevelopment to provide a permanent place for it to display its 20th century collection for the first time. To underline the idea that the Museum wants to forge stronger ties with the city’s communities and show how history can be relevant and inspiring to all Londoners today, events are being held across the capital to return items from the Museum’s collections to the places were they were originally found.

This includes an incendiary bomb dropped on the Royal Exchange in the first Zeppelin raid in 1915; suffragette chains to the House of Commons and Henry Cooper’s boxing gloves to Wembley Stadium.

The “Map My London” website is the first time that a world class Museum has set out to make emotions and memories as relevant to telling the story of a city as physical artefacts. People are invited to upload their thoughts about the city onto the Map My London site under headings including “Love and Loss”, “Beauty and Horror” and “Fate and Coincidence”.

The site supports contributions in the form of text, digital photographs, video and sound recordings. People can also bring documents and photos into the Museum to be loaded onto the site.

This kind of gesture from one of London's oldest museums is surely a sign that we now view ourselves as being the main focus of tomorrow's history?

Answer 6

I love dusty museum artefact's and to learn how we evolved and lived in days gone by, There is no reason why the technology and ways of living today should not go hand in hand or is your brain not able to absorb more than one subject at a time.

Answer 7

Some of those "dusty museum artifacts" are evidence of what average people did. And it helps to know what the influences on them were. That would include the actions of their governments and kings. For example, the pyramids had a great impact on "normal people." They were built as tombs for their pharoahs, whom they revered as gods. They were also a "public works" project, because it was considered a sacred duty of the people to work on it, usually when the Nile flooded and they couldn't work their farms. That would mean it was also an additional source of income/food/housing for them.

Also, in times of war, there are thousands of personal stories. For example, I had an ancestor who served throughout the Revolutionary War. When he and his buddies heard about Lexington and Concord, they stripped and did an Indian war dance on the courthouse lawn. He was at Valley Forge, and George Washington himself said that he and his friends would do more harm to the British if they were on the British side! If I didn't know about the Revolutionary War and its generals and other events, that would mean absoutely nothing to me. But since I do, I can put my own family history in context.

Answer 8

One has to learn from history, and it is those historical events represented by certain artefacts that have major influence on us in the present day. Everyday events encountered by us as individuals usually have little influence on the majority of people in the future.

Answer 9

Where I live in Tower Hamlets, there are lots of community projects which look to local neighbourhoods in history archiving projects.

I applaud the museum of london for its map my london campaign which shows people that today's memories will end up writing tomorrow's history books.

Answer 10

"My guess is that you should explore sociology. It is a fascinating field which explores why groups of people are the way they are. Very little emphasis on history, heavy emphasis on the human factor."

I believe from his question he is interested in history but disagrees with the way it's taught. If you want to examine the lives of the average people in the past you should look to archaeology, not sociology. The focus on literary sources, which primarily deal with global events, is greatly reduced.