Historicity
This boil has been festering for about ten years now. It came to a head in the past year or so.
Over the last twelve months, I've been looking with professional curiosity at how people put together histories of local events. Some of it is engrossing, immensely readable stuff, with verifiable facts jostling with human perspectives and journalistic reporting on the significance of various key events. That kind of stuff is pretty good; I read a glossy book which took as its subject matter the rather morbid history of the SARS epidemic in Singapore (2003) and made it into a tale of intrepid doctors and the triumph of the human spirit, and it was really inspiring.
Some of it is terrible. Trying to analyse the history of Singapore's education system, one runs up against account after account of data wrenched into some kind of shape indicating progress. Yes, the numbers increase, and the progression is good. But what does it mean? And why are there so many lacunae? How come former Education Minister Goh had so many bad things to say about the Ministry he led? How come they acted so slowly and ineffectively on some of his ideas and so quickly and ruthlessly on others? We do not know, and at this stage, with Goh descending into the fate of all mortals, we might never be able to tell that kind of story.
We know that many things achieved in this small nation-state are good. They are highly competitive, world-class achievements. But in some ways, the stories that are concealed, that are left untold, that are selectively told, these make a history that is incomplete, that is sometimes like mythology or hagiography or some other kind of narrative that is not history.
Recently, I read an account purporting to be a historical narrative concerning a famed educational institution. It was the second edition of an earlier account. The discrepancies between the two were alarming; although one should not judge a book by its cover, the second edition in garish gold was a far cry from the sedate dark blue of the original. The claims within were correspondingly magnified in a few areas as well. The said institution was originally honest in reporting that it had won a particular award only 'five times in six years' – in the second edition, this had become 'every year since its inception'. Blatant untruth, and deliberately crafted as such – and if not, surely a sign of shattering arrogance or ignorance or both.
What is worse is that future hagiographers, having adopted the gilded lily as canon, will certainly gild the lily further, thus creating a lump of gold which no longer possesses the aesthetic beauty of the original truth. Is this what we expect from 'history' these days? Are we yet so cynical, so arbitraged and leveraged and impoverished, that we must accept this?
No, I say. And perhaps the enterprising young men who flung the book into the trash were right, and there is yet hope for the past in the future.
Over the last twelve months, I've been looking with professional curiosity at how people put together histories of local events. Some of it is engrossing, immensely readable stuff, with verifiable facts jostling with human perspectives and journalistic reporting on the significance of various key events. That kind of stuff is pretty good; I read a glossy book which took as its subject matter the rather morbid history of the SARS epidemic in Singapore (2003) and made it into a tale of intrepid doctors and the triumph of the human spirit, and it was really inspiring.
Some of it is terrible. Trying to analyse the history of Singapore's education system, one runs up against account after account of data wrenched into some kind of shape indicating progress. Yes, the numbers increase, and the progression is good. But what does it mean? And why are there so many lacunae? How come former Education Minister Goh had so many bad things to say about the Ministry he led? How come they acted so slowly and ineffectively on some of his ideas and so quickly and ruthlessly on others? We do not know, and at this stage, with Goh descending into the fate of all mortals, we might never be able to tell that kind of story.
We know that many things achieved in this small nation-state are good. They are highly competitive, world-class achievements. But in some ways, the stories that are concealed, that are left untold, that are selectively told, these make a history that is incomplete, that is sometimes like mythology or hagiography or some other kind of narrative that is not history.
Recently, I read an account purporting to be a historical narrative concerning a famed educational institution. It was the second edition of an earlier account. The discrepancies between the two were alarming; although one should not judge a book by its cover, the second edition in garish gold was a far cry from the sedate dark blue of the original. The claims within were correspondingly magnified in a few areas as well. The said institution was originally honest in reporting that it had won a particular award only 'five times in six years' – in the second edition, this had become 'every year since its inception'. Blatant untruth, and deliberately crafted as such – and if not, surely a sign of shattering arrogance or ignorance or both.
What is worse is that future hagiographers, having adopted the gilded lily as canon, will certainly gild the lily further, thus creating a lump of gold which no longer possesses the aesthetic beauty of the original truth. Is this what we expect from 'history' these days? Are we yet so cynical, so arbitraged and leveraged and impoverished, that we must accept this?
No, I say. And perhaps the enterprising young men who flung the book into the trash were right, and there is yet hope for the past in the future.
Labels: Education, Historical Veracity, Reflection, Research
etched with acid at 8:45:00 pm
2 Comments:
I hear you.
- k.
I have to agree with your point(s) about the 'garish gold' and 'the sedate dark blue. Have always wanted to write something about it but decided not to.
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