LETTERS: A SHALLOW VIEW OF HISTORY

To the editor:

Laura Johnston's shallow view of history in her Feb. 24 column is a perfect example of politically correct teaching when she says, "The professor didn't make us remember dates and places."

I have a hunch that her professor was too eager to be liked, perhaps thinking of himself as her employee.

Ms. Johnston's comment about "entertaining stories that are true" is naivete personified.

Historical veracity or obliquity depend on the political, economic and personal prejudice of the writer. IN fact, most history is written by the victors, since most history is war.

Three examples come to mind:

-- The Greeks and Romans patterned their historical writings on the Jewish idea of history as a continuous biography of a people. But with the decline of Greece and the fall of Rome, the writing of objective history disappeared for nearly a thousand years.

-- The contradictions between certain portions of Stewart Udall's "The Myths of August" and Phillippe Burrin's "France Under the Germans."

-- The confusion of terms for the 18th century: Enlightenment, Age of Reason, Acien Regime.

Finally, dates give us a point of departure, and geography is history.

Without a chronological framework, there is little sense of continuity. History is not just a macedoine of entertaining vignettes.

JIM McFARLAND

Cape Girardeau