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How to explain what history is to senior high school students?
Category: Life/Fashion >> Raising children

Analysis:

I remember the first time I saw the term "history", when I was in the third and fourth grades of primary school, I read a book "The Historical Story of China", which was earlier than the previous history class. At that time, I didn't pay attention to who wrote this book, but I thought it was so interesting that I could still remember the general content after so many years. In junior high school, history was already one of my favorite courses. Although it never occurred to me at that time that the research and teaching of history would become my future career. It's almost 20 years since I got my doctorate in history, but I still hesitate to talk about what history is. I ask myself again and again: What is history? I don't know. Perhaps because of this, I have the same interest as watching China's historical stories.

The origin of history

Speaking of history, it seems to be a well-known concept that everyone can use. For example, we will mention the history of the world and China. For example, we will say "our own history is written by ourselves", or "we have written a new chapter in history", "this has become history" and so on. Probably no one will get to the bottom of it: "What does' history' mean?"

To this question, I think, in the simplest sentence, history refers not only to the past facts themselves, but also to people's conscious and selective records of the past facts. The discipline that specializes in history is history, or historiography for short. It includes not only history itself, but also studying and summarizing the laws of historical development on the basis of historical facts, as well as summarizing the methods and theories of studying history.

My view on historical novels

Confucius said, "I often encounter omissions in historical records." It can be seen that the omissions in Historical Records have a long history. If you are not a scholar with extensive knowledge and incisive opinions, how can you make up for the omissions and losses of historical materials? Precious fur robes are sewn from the armpits of many foxes, and high-rise buildings are made of various building materials. Since ancient times, people who explore the mysteries of history and are determined to write are not always asking for different opinions and collecting a large number of records, and then they can form unique opinions and leave immortal works that will be told through the ages.

In recent years, there has been a craze for historical novels in the literary world. At one time, everyone was arguing that Luoyang paper was expensive. Yao's Li Zicheng was the earliest, followed by Kang Yong's February River, Zeng Guofan and Zhang Zhidong's Tang Dynasty. In fact, literature and history are two different things. Writing novels and biographies are completely different and cannot be equated. Writing a novel is to boldly imagine fiction, because historical records are limited after all, and there are some contradictions that even historians can't agree with. If you write according to a small amount of reliable historical materials, I'm afraid you can't even make up the minimum plot, and even if you write it, it won't look good. In fact, how many of Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin are historical facts of the Three Kingdoms and the Northern Song Dynasty? But this does not prevent them from becoming masterpieces of China's classical novels (not history books).

Jin Yong once described that Emperor Qianlong was actually the son of Chen Yuanlong, a bachelor of cabinet and a native of Haining, Zhejiang Province, and was born on the same day as Yongzheng's daughter. Yongzheng exchanged two babies in order to increase the bargaining chip with other princes for the throne. After Qianlong became emperor, he visited Jiangnan several times to investigate his life experience. The novel also fictionalizes that Qianlong and Chen Jialuo, the chief helmsman of the Heaven and Earth Society, are brothers to increase the drama conflict. In fact, this statement was widely circulated in the late Qing Dynasty, but it is by no means a historical fact. The strongest evidence is that Qianlong is the fourth son of Yongzheng. According to the fifth revision of Chen Family Tree in Haining, Bohai Sea by Oriental Library, there are two women and one man. The youngest son was born in the thirty-fourth year of Kangxi (1695), older than Qianlong 17 years old, not to mention the two eldest daughters. It can be seen that this legend is sheer nonsense. Even if they really have this blood relationship, they have long been separated by political relations. This kind of legend is just to satisfy the communicator's low-level curiosity and get a false psychological satisfaction of Ah Q style. It seems that in this way, the Qing world has become * * *.

Why do you want to know about history? This is not a problem for historians, researchers and students majoring in history. But for others, it is inevitable to ask such questions. Why spend time and energy on learning and understanding history? Is history really useful to us?

Draw lessons from past achievements

Until today, we still attach importance to historical works, such as Zi Tongzhi Sword. One of the important reasons is that they not only provide people with historical facts, but also clearly express the author's views on history and his historical experience, which can be used today. Of course, the "making the past serve the present" we often discuss today should be far more extensive than Sima Guang's era, and it is no longer limited to politics, but includes economy, culture, education, science and technology, military and other aspects.

Walk out of Lushan Mountain

Su Dongpo has a poem: "Looking horizontally, the ridge side becomes a peak, and the distance is different." I don't know the true face of Lushan Mountain, but I am only on this mountain. "Because people are in the mountains and have limited vision, they will get different impressions because of their different positions and observation angles. The same is true of history. Keeping a certain distance between time and space can get rid of the constraints of utilitarianism and politics and the limitation of vision, and observe and evaluate history from a broader, deeper and more detached perspective. To study history, we should have a broad vision. From a vertical perspective, we should have the concept of historical development; From a horizontal perspective, it is necessary to examine the history of a small scope on a large scale and the history of China on a global scale.

The wisdom of history

The wisdom of history means that we can learn from it. For example, if we want to build a dam, we need to know the historical record of the flood, so as to determine various parameters of the dam. Now it is often mentioned to build a dam that can resist the once-in-a-century flood. Some people may wonder why it can't be designed to resist the once-in-a-century flood. However, if the design is upgraded to a higher level, the cost will increase greatly, so it is necessary to find a balance between cost and standard. On what basis do designers determine these standards? That depends on history.

Cultivation of spirit

People need spiritual life besides material life. With the development of today's society, manual labor is more replaced by machines. Relatively speaking, there are more and more leisure time, and the status of spiritual life in people's lives is further improved. The so-called poverty in the future is partly spiritual poverty. History can gather the best things of mankind so far for people to appreciate and use. If you want to know the taste of China literati, you can't find it at all among contemporary literati. Without the records in Shi Shuo Xin Yu, you can't understand the demeanor of Wei and Jin Dynasties. I don't know how many times I am happier to read these words than to confine my eyes to my own city.

How to study and study history

Understanding history is the most basic requirement for studying and studying history, but it is not so easy to fully understand history. Because everyone's understanding of history is a small fragment in the middle of history, or an overview. History will not repeat itself. Even if there is a so-called "time tunnel" in the future, we can see the past objectively, but what people observe is only small fragments.

To understand history, the first step is to read historical materials. For historical materials, reading the text is of course very important. Such a bright line is at the foot of my bed. Li Bai's famous sentence "Thinking about a Quiet Night" is suspected of underground frost. Looking up, I found it was moonlight, sinking again, and I suddenly remembered home. "The word" bed "in the poem used to be used as" sleeping bed ",but how can you" look up "and" bow your head "when sleeping in bed? Obviously, this statement is unreasonable. In fact, beds in ancient times didn't just refer to bedding. Shuo Wen Jie Zi says that a bed is a "sitting person", which can also refer to a stool chair. "Hu Chuang" was a kind of stool introduced into the Central Plains from the Western Regions in the Eastern Han Dynasty.

Understanding history is not just a matter of reading a history book. Most of the truth of history can't be seen directly from history books, but we need to see the truth of history through these words, and sometimes we need to conduct on-the-spot investigations. When I first read Historical Records and Hanshu, I always had doubts about whether the western regions were divided into 36 countries or 48 countries. Most countries only have thousands or hundreds of people. Why are you divided into so many countries? Later, I went to Xinjiang, took a small plane from Urumqi to cross the Tianshan Mountains and flew to Kashgar in southern Xinjiang. Looking down from the plane, Xinjiang is like a huge sand table, with large and small oases scattered sparsely in the khaki desert. Later, I came back by car and drove for eight or nine hours in a row before an oasis appeared. Today, there are mechanical means of transportation, such as cars. In ancient times, only manpower and animal power were used as means of transportation. How could people in one oasis rule another oasis? For these countries at that time, it was meaningless to unite into a larger political entity or unify into a country unless they were invaded by foreign enemies for protection.

Sima Qian once said: "When we study the relationship between heaven and man, we can learn from the changes of ancient and modern times and become a family statement." Taking history as the direction of efforts is a shortcut for people to understand things and reason.