Alternative Perspectives

From since I can remember, I have always been taught to be aware of bias. An easy way to avoid bias is to diversify your sources; so of course gaining an additional perspective is important for truly understanding history.

In fact, when I entered middle school I began to really love my history class because we learned not only what was happening in Europe during the middle ages, but what was going on in Africa and the Middle East and how they all eventually worked with each other beginning the Renaissance. No longer was history a flat, one dimensional plot. It was a web. I could see Europe from the Middle East's and China's far away perspectives, not just Europe from a European perspective.

I do think it is important to find different perspectives of history, but I think there's so many that knowing ALL perspectives is an unattainable ideal. Each different perspective adds to ones knowledge of the world's history, but the effect of each small story is negligible in the whole scheme of things.

Also, in the end we just take the basics and add our own perspectives anyway. I had a class where we read nothing but primary "alternative perspectives" sources for half a year and I can't say they really impacted my view of history. A small few, like the historical but fictitious "the kite runner" really impacted my view of Afghanistan.