Changing values, changing nation - Saint Ignatius' Moodle Community

Resource sheet 1
The voice of values in history
Voice 1: Facts and interpretation
Life is lived in the present without the benefit of the grand
narrator. It is the historian who enjoys the advantage of
hindsight to select particular events and arrange them into a
coherent pattern. Facts do not exist prior to the interpretation
that establishes their significance. Rather, historical
research involves a continuous dialogue between the two.
Macintyre, Stuart & Clark, Anna 2003, The History Wars, Melbourne
University Press, pp 29–30
Voice 2: Keeping watch
The historian is not God, but a fallible human being,
taught by his training to be on the watch for his, and other
people’s fallibility in giving an account of the past. What
he writes is what he has to say after reflection on both the
sources and on the state of the argument among historians.
Its value will depend not only on the thoroughness of his
study, not only – though largely – on the agility of his mind.
It will also depend on the quality of his imagination.
Crawford, RM 1985, in RM Crawford et al. Making History, McPhee
Gribble/Penguin Books, Melbourne, p 51
Voice 3: The historian’s duties
If it is a fundamental duty of the historian to tell the truth,
then that scarcely exhausts the obligations that arise
when we work with the past. The choice of subject, the
engagement with the sources, respect for the evidence,
fair dealing with the work of others, attention to context,
humility in the exercise of judgement and recognition
of what cannot be known – these are just some of the
responsibilities a researcher incurs. The mediation between
past and present is a profoundly moral activity.
Macintyre, Stuart (ed) 2004, The Historian’s Conscience – Australian
Historians on the Ethics of History, Melbourne University Press, pp 4–5
Voice 4: Understanding ourselves and others
The ethics involved in writing history requires capturing and
understanding this moving feast through analysis without
losing empathy for the motives, intentions, experiences and
the subjectivity of historical actors. This includes an analysis
of emotions in history and how these have been played out
in acts of memory … Without this analysis we are left with
little or no sense of ethics or history and no understanding
of the treacherous acts of war, of our world or of ourselves.
Damousi, Joy 2004, in The Historian’s Conscience – Australian Historians
on the Ethics of History, Stuart Macintyre (ed), Melbourne University Press,
pp 37–38
Voice 5: Teaching things that matter
The historian is like an actor on a revolving stage. He has
a brief time in which to recite his words. He’s got to hold
the audience. He must also hope that he has used the
time on stage to teach and write about things that really
matter. He mustn’t trivialise the human scene, he mustn’t
sneer, he mustn’t mock. He must also hope that what he
has seen and what he talks about will stir up a response in
his audience, that they will say – and this is the only test
– ‘Yes, that’s us’.
Clark, Manning 1985, in Making History, RM Crawford et al., McPhee
Gribble/Penguin Books, Melbourne, pp 66–67
Voice 6: Avoiding the idea of absolute values
The emergence of a particular value or ideal at a given time
or place is explained by historical conditions of place and
time … The serious historian is the one who recognises
the historically conditioned character of all values, not the
one who claims for his values an objectivity beyond history.
The beliefs that we hold and the standards of judgement
which we set up are part of history and are as much subject
to historical investigation as any other aspect of human
behaviour.
Carr, EH, RW Davies (ed), What is History?, 1990. Reproduced with
permission of Palgrave Macmillan.
Voice 7: Values and truth
The argument (by critics of objectivity) is: selection [of
evidence] is determined by importance and importance is
determined by values; hence selection must be determined
by values … While in many cases, this may happen to be
true, it is not necessarily so ... one of the most common
experiences of historians is that the evidence they find
forces them, often reluctantly, to change the position they
originally intended to take … The obligation historians have
is to try to shake off their own values and pursue the truth.
Windschuttle, Keith 1994, The Killing of History, Macleay Press,
Sydney, p 231
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Values for Australian Schooling – Teaching and Learning Units ©Commonwealth of Australia
Later adolescence – Changing values, changing nation