“And The Rest Is History” — Leann Rimes (The Rest Is History)
What is history? Who creates it? Should we even study it? Is it relevant? Why there are even people who still want or have interest to talk or learn about it? Like come on, as if they can even change it. Wherein fact most people tends to remember boring classes, memorizing important dates, and falling asleep while listening to a lecture. It is the study of past events leading up to the present day. It is also a research, narratives, or accounts of past events and developments that are commonly related to a person, an institution or a place.
Of course, you can’t hear nor have information about rumors- I mean history without sources. When I said sources, yes those things that give you informations about a certain topic you are studying, or interested in. Thay can be seen or read. You know, artifacts, paintings, books or letters. There are two kinds of sources, the accurate or fake. You can’t trust any information you receive, sometimes they end up not being true or just fiction. Kidding aside, there are primary and secondary sources. When we talk about Primary Sources, those are the firsthand evidences or testimonies that created during the time of the event. It includes diaries, speeches, letters, interviews, poems, photographs, paintings and the likes. While Secondary Sources talks about analyzing a scholarly question and often use primary sources as evidence. These things are created after an event happened. For examples, textbooks, articles, magazines, encyclopedia and such. They usually have bibliographies that can lead you to the primary source or another secondary source.
Most researchers uses both primary and secondary sources. They complement each other to assist you construct a persuading argument. The only difference is primary sources are more solid to be an evidence, making new discoveries and grant definitive data approximately your topic while secondary sources show how your work relates to existing research, support or differentiate your contentions with other researchers’ ideas and gather data from essential sources simply can’t get to specifically (e.g. private letters or physical archives found somewhere else).
On the side note, you need to use primary sources or else your work will be considered as unreliable. Also, remember to cite your sources correctly to avoid plagiarism.
As corny as this sounds, history is a really important subject to be teach. It is more than just a classroom lesson, it allows us to look back, see the good and bad stuff, it allows us to learn from our mistakes and deter the future from making those mistakes.
Additionally, it really does have a way of repeating itself. It is indeed up to individuals like us, the country’s future leaders, to determine if the good or the bad things are the ones which might repeat themselves.
