I was a high school history teacher before I became a writer. I am a fan of books, movies, and all things historical.
I am of the opinion that our education system needs to have courses in history so that people can better understand the events that have happened in the past, and the effects they have had on people. I would like to offer a few suggestions for this that I hope will help in giving students of history the best tools to understand the past.
History is a great tool for understanding the past because through it we can examine what has happened through the lens of history. For example, if I am researching a particular event, I can compare the details of the event with what other people have said, and come to a conclusion. This is similar to a computer program analyzing a document.
Another example of history being used by historians is the use of eyewitnesses. A lot of historical events, like the Salem Witch Hunt, happened without witnesses. This gives historians the ability to examine what is a little more difficult, that is if there are no eyewitnesses.
In the past, historians have used eyewitness evidence to make an investigation. This is because people don’t remember what they did right after the event. They have to rely on what others have said about what happened, which is not always accurate. By using history as a primary source, historians can then go back in time and see how the events unfolded. This allows them to make an investigation independent of the eyewitnesses.
Even though we can use history as a primary source for an investigation, we can’t use it to prove an incident. There are other more reliable sources out there, like witnesses, but we don’t have those. The other problem is that eyewitnesses are often unreliable. They may be biased or manipulated by the person they’re testifying for, so it’s hard to say if they are biased or not.
Even in the case of the mysterious island where everyone died, everyone had a clear and present danger. We did not have witnesses to any deaths on the island and we cant prove whether or not they were indeed accidents.
There are few things in life where you can feel so confident, no matter what the evidence says. We might have some eyewitnesses to the island’s strange events, but it’s unlikely we’d have any direct witnesses who saw anything. In the case of the island, the evidence is so clear that anyone who saw anything would have to be so incredibly lucky that they were the only one who saw the event. So it’s unlikely we can find anyone who was witness to any deaths on the island.
But we need witnesses to prove that there were deaths on the island. You can have people that are on the island, but that doesn’t mean they were there. It also doesn’t mean they were the only ones there. So there definitely needs to be people who can attest to something.