Reading Comprehension

PT133 · S4 · P4 · Q26 Historical Objectivity

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Passage A Central to the historian’s profession and scholarship has been the ideal of objectivity.

Topic

The ideal of objectivity in historical scholarship—what it means and how historians should embody it.

Framework

Present Debate

Main Point

The two passages present different perspectives on the nature and requirements of objectivity for historians: Passage A describes traditional objectivity as neutrality, detachment, and insulation from bias, while Passage B criticizes equating objectivity with neutrality and argues that genuine objectivity involves strong, well-argued positions that fully consider opposing viewpoints. - The "Most Valuable Sentence" in Passage A is: (P3) - The "Most Valuable Sentence" in Passage B is: (P2)

P1 (A): Foundations of the Objectivity Ideal

Here the author describes traditional beliefs about historical objectivity: historians are supposed to stay committed to what really happened in the past, keep fact separate from value judgments, and keep history distinct from fiction.

P2 (A): Facts vs. Interpretation

The passage expands on the ideal: facts should come before any interpretation, and if an interpretation doesn’t fit the facts, it should be ditched. Just because historians disagree about interpretations doesn’t mean the facts themselves are up for grabs.

P3 (A): Historian as Neutral Judge

This paragraph says objective historians should act like neutral judges—no advocacy, no propaganda, no bias, and no political involvement. Their main loyalty should be to historical truth and to others who value that same truth.

26.

Both passages mention propaganda primarily in order to

refute a claim made by
Out of scope: rival proponents
Neither passage is combating proponents. They are just talking to us, the reader, explaining that history isn’t supposed to be propaganda.
4% picked this
suggest that scholars in fields
Unknown Comparison: other fields
Neither of the references to propaganda has anything to do with scholars in other fields. Both authors would presumably think that a propagandist is not a scholar (or at least when they’re doing propaganda, they’re not doing scholarly work).
3% picked this
point to a type of
Out of Scope: recently discredited
The sentences that say propaganda are simply saying, “Historians don’t want to be guilty of propaganda (i.e. brainwashing people with a certain dubious narrative)”. There isn’t any reference to recent scholarship that has been discredited.
3% picked this
Correct
identify one extreme to which
Why this is right
This is a weird correct answer. We wanted something like, "identify what history is not supposed to be". In the sense that this is calling propaganda an extreme version of history (extremes are usually bad), we can kind of see what we wanted here. This answer makes it sounds as though propaganda lies on the same continuum as more serious, respectable history. The way Passage A says that "objective historians see their role as ... one who must never become an advocate, or worse propagandist" does seem to place history on a slippery slope that leads towards advocacy and then propaganda. You go from just trying to report on what happened, to then trying to suggest to people (advocate) how to think about what happened, to then trying to advance an artificial narrative (propaganda) that is a totally unfair reflection of reality. The way Passage B says "the very possibility of historical scholarship as an enterprise distinct from propaganda requires X". That phrasing suggests that historical scholarship and propaganda are in danger of being the same enterprise. To even possibly de-couple them, you need to be able to abandon wishful thinking, assimilate bad news, and resist pleasing interpretations that aren't really well supported or reasoned. So both authors are referring to propaganda as a potential danger that historians can slip into if they're not careful .... or an extreme to which they may tend if they don't stay true to the objective history goal.
Skill tested: Local Purpose · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.
75% picked this
draw contrasts with other kinds
Out of Scope: persuasive writing
What we were looking for was “the author brought up propaganda to clarify that historians are not trying to write propaganda”, so this answer is conveying that idea of contrasting propaganda with actual history writing. Is history writing persuasive writing, though? Well, according to Passage B it is. That author is clarifying for us that history writing isn’t neutral. It argues a point of view, but it attains its objectivity by fairly and sensitively considering opposing points of view. But Passage A doesn’t seem to argue that history is persuasive writing. In fact, Passage A is stressing utter objectivity and neutrality. It should be like a judge's ruling, which we do no think of as "persuasive writing". Passage A does contrast propaganda with advocacy, and advocacy is definitely a form of persuasive writing, but the reason Passage A brought up propaganda was not to contrast it with advocacy (but rather to say that the historian is trying to avoid being a propagandist).
16% picked this

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