Daily Blog 3

Konnor Drewen

1/26/011

Don't our traditional forms of information communication, notably "the book" and especially "the textbook" contribute to our belief in linear history?

            Yes, that is true. In most textbooks they show history in a more linear fashion. Most of the history textbooks I have used through my life had a timeline of some sort. Also when-ever I had to do a project for history that involved either tracking a person through time or just researching the person I would have to make a timeline to show some of my research. In most books it describes history as a straight line that only goes two directions, forward and backward. It seems that because of this linear history is the most widely known for form of history. I would think that most kids around the country would say that they don’t even know what the other three forms of observing history are or even that there were three other forms of observing history. It is not only in books that we use a linear form of history. On television programs they most of the time use a linear form of observing history. When showing history it is worldly seen as a straight line past on the left present/future on the right. To test this I decided to ask my parents to see how they think history is represented and if they knew of other forms. As I thought my hypothesis was correct and both my parents thought of history as a straight line although my father did know of the other forms.