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en-Whatis22historicalthinking22-HistorianJimGrossmaninINTsENLIGHTENMENTMINUTES..txt

Historians have something different to say about public events from journalists, political scientists. And this is not because of what we know, it's because of how we think. There's something called historical thinking, which is what we teach our majors in college, and which we supposedly are very good at. And it's what we can contribute to public culture. When we talk about historical thinking, we're usually looking at the kinds of questions historians answer. For example, when we teach history, whether at the high school level or the college level. One of the things we tell students is that it's much harder to ask Good question then to find the answer. And that's because asking a good question means thinking about context. It means trying to figure out what's important and why it's important. The classic graduate orals question, for example, after somebody goes through 15 minutes of narrating something or a question that's often asked. And dissertation defense is so odd. And it's combining the exciting narrative that narrative that people find interesting about history with that. So what question and what we say when we talk about historical thinking, we talk about asking that. So what question in terms of context, in terms of change? The other thing that historical thinking emphasizes is understanding how change happens, why change happens, or why it doesn't. So any question. Any aspect of public culture can benefit from these kinds of questions, from asking, how did we get here? Why did it turn out this way instead of that way? These are always historical questions.