LESSON 2

History and the Historian

Lesson Objectives
By the end of this lesson, the students will be able to:
 examine the historian's role in the production of historical knowledge;
 consider the challenges that confront historians in the conduct of their job;
 differentiate history as a profession vis-à-vis other meanings of history; and
 identify how historical interpretation is affected by factors like bias and subjectivity.

Key Concepts
Historian. Primary responsible for the production of historical knowledge through continuous research and
rethinking of history.
Historical interpretation. Making sense of given primary sources and historical documents through content
and contextual analyses.
Bias/subjectivity. A disposition brought together by one's context that influences a historian's historical
interest and selection of sources and methodology.

Lesson Introduction
In this lesson, we will discuss the role and the task of the historian as primarily responsible for the
production of historical knowledge. Specific questions will be addressed: Who qualifies as 'a historian? What is
the relationship between the historian and historical facts? How can a historian be objective in dealing with
historical sources and evidence? Is it possible for the historian to be totally objective in interpreting historical
evidence and weaving historical narrative?

Who Qualifies as a Historian?

For most people, history is something that is taught and studied in schools; thus, teachers are
commonly regarded as “experts” of history. It may come as a surprise that some people actually take history
as a full-time and serious profession. The historian is an obscure and strange image for those who did not have
the chance to have a closer study of history. Nevertheless, all of the historical knowledge that we study and
utilize at present are products of meticulous research done by historians who dedicated their intellect and
skills in writing history.

But what makes someone a historian? Can-someone who has a fascination about the past and has
done their share of reading some historical texts be considered as one? Can anyone who has experienced
historical education and has done some historical thinking become a historian? As mentioned in the previous
lesson, history started growing as an established academic discipline since the nineteenth century. This growth
was accompanied by the professionalization of the discipline and with more people taking up the study of
history as a full-time career.

A historian is someone who continuously pursues historical knowledge. History, as the study of the
past based on existing pieces of historical evidence, is a dynamic and continually evolving discipline. Thus,
historians are expected to keep up with changes and developments in historical knowledge in light of new
evidence. What then is the difference between a historian and a student of history? On the one hand, the
student of history gains historical knowledge based on what history teachers and history books say. On the
other hand, the historian produces historical knowledge through the continuous and constant pursuit of
historical knowledge by answering questions about the past through gathering and interpreting historical
evidence. While students and enthusiasts of history revel in amazement about our fascinating past, the
historian is occupied with asking relevant historical questions and answering them through rigorous historical
perspective and method to fulfill the uses of history discussed in Lesson 1.

Activity: Know Your Historian.

Choose a Filipino historian. Read about their life and works. Analyze how their context or background
influenced the way they wrote history. Write a short essay about the historian and prepare to share it in class.

Tasks of Historians
We acquire historical knowledge through historical sources. Some would say that it is impossible to
come up with a complete and exact historical truth because we only have access to representations of the
past through sources that survived through time. Historical sources cannot speak for themselves. Historians
are needed to examine and interpret them through the skills they acquired in training for historical research
and methodology. It is the historian's task to convert historical sources to historical knowledge.

This task is not easy. After all, the past is a vast subject to study. History accumulates every day. More
than the difficulty of interpreting historical sources, it is also the historian's task to determine what is
historical. The historical fact is different from a fact from the past. A fact from the past is anything that
happened in the past. Say, for example, it is a fact of the past that you had a newborn niece the other day, or
that you spent your last week reading a book, or that you used to take a school bus going to your elementary
school. But not everything that happened in the past, whether or not it is true, counts as a historical fact. This
notion leads us to the question: what then counts as a historical fact? British historian Edward Hallett Carr
states that a historical fact is something that is determined by the historian. For example, a diary of a
schoolgirl who lived during the American period in the Philippines is just something kept in an old drawer
cabinet until historians gets their hands on it a hundred years later and decides to use it to write a history of
student life in the Philippines under the U.S. colonial education system.

The historian decides what part of the past makes it to the canon of history. But this leads us to even
more complicated questions like, how does a historian determine what part of the past can be included' in the
historical narrative? More importantly, where do we source historical questions that push historians to pursue
historical facts? More often than not, historical questions are brought about by issues at present that demand
historical explanation. Traditionally, historians are interested in political history because they perceived that
political events like war, revolutions, and regimes are the only part of the past that has implications in the
present. However, when certain conditions led to the rise of the call for gender equality or economic equality,
history started giving birth to subdisciplines like women's history and social history.

This discussion leads us to an assertion that historians and the historical knowledge that they produce
have significantly influenced their respective contexts. The historian's interests and life's work are inevitably
influenced by various factors such as nationality, political ideology, religion, educational background, and
overall experiences. These reasons make us understand why most historians specializing in women's history
are women, and local histories are written by historians who were born and raised in those particular
localities.

Activity: Think, Pair, Share.

Based on the discussion of the tasks of the historian, think about the three most important attributes
that you think a historian should have. Share it with a partner and prepare to discuss it in class.

The Objectivity of the Historian

 If historians are the ones who determine which parts of the past are to include in historical knowledge,
and their respective contexts influence historians' ways of selecting facts and interpreting evidence, is it then
possible to come up with absolute historical truth? Is history an objective discipline? If it is not, is it still
worthwhile to study history? These questions have haunted historians for many generations. Indeed, an exact
and accurate account of the past is impossible for the straightforward reason that we cannot go back to the
past. We cannot access the past directly as our subject matter. Historians only get to access a representation
of the past through historical sources and evidence.

Besides seeking historical facts and evidence, it is also the historian's job to interpret these facts. “Facts
cannot speak for themselves." It is the historian's job to give meaning to these facts and organize them into a
timeline, establish causes, and write history. Meanwhile, the historian is not a blank paper who mechanically
interprets and analyzes present historical facts. Similar to how historians' contexts lead them to certain
interests and make them ask particular questions, their interpretation of the historical fact is also affected by
their backgrounds and circumstances. Their subjectivity will inevitably influence the process of their historical
research and their reading. If subjectivities always play a role in the way historians produce history, can history
still be considered an academic and scientific inquiry?

Historical research requires rigor. Even though historians cannot ascertain absolute objectivity, the
study of history remains scientific because of the rigor of research and methodology that historians employ.
Historical methodology consists of certain techniques and rules that historians follow to properly collect and
select sources and historical evidence. Certain rules apply in cases of conflicting accounts in different sources
and on how to properly treat eyewitness accounts and oral sources as valid historical evidence.

In doing so, the historians' claims and arguments, while may be influenced by their inclinations, can still
be validated by using reliable evidence and by employing a rigorous and meticulous historical methodology.
For example, if a historian chooses to use an oral account as primary data in studying the ethnic history of the
Ifugaos in the Cordilleras during the American Occupation, it is necessary to validate the informant's claims by
comparing and corroborating them with written sources. Therefore, while bias is inevitable, historians can
balance this by relying on legitimate historical evidence that backs up their claim. In this sense, historians need
not let their bias blind their judgment. Bias is only acceptable if they paid attention to precision and rigor as a
researcher.

Moreover, because history is a professional academic discipline, historians are always subjected to
scrutiny by their peers. Indeed, a historical claim made by one historian would not be recognized as part of
historical knowledge unless other historians accepted it. This practice is similar to how studies done by
scientists are only deemed legitimate if it has undergone evaluation by their peers. Academic disciplines have
their ways of ensuring that the integrity of their field is maintained.

Historians, therefore, are central to the creation of historical knowledge. They ask questions that lead
them to the pursuit of historical research. They collect and select the facts and evidence that are significant for
historical research. They interpret facts through meticulous investigation and weave them into a coherent
narrative. Ultimately, historians make history. Edward Hallett Carr is correct in saying that “[History] is a
continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the
present and the past.”

Activity: Interpretation.
The class is divided into groups with five members each. Each group will reenact a popular scene in any
popular movie through a tableau. Other groups will interpret the tableau and guess the movie title. The first
group to name the movie correctly gets a point. The group with most correct answers wins.
Lesson Summary
 Historians produce historical knowledge through rigorous historical research that involves finding and
interpreting historical sources and evidence.
 Historians are inevitably influenced by context and circumstances. Their context may inform the way
that they conduct historical research.
 Despite the inherent subjectivity of the historian, historical knowledge can still be scientific by adhering
to rigorous historical methodology and through collaboration with peers in the discipline.

Lesson Assessment
Short-response questions. Based on the discussions in this lesson, answer the following questions. Limit your
answers to one to three sentences.

1.What are the role and characteristics of a historian?

2. Is objective historical knowledge possible? How should historians deal with their personal biases and
subjectivity?
3. What is historical interpretation?