#this isn't exclusive to history though - any subject in humanities works

[telleroftime]

To the people who study or research humanities: how do you get your information? Better yet, where do you find it? Is it through books? If so, how do you know which books to read? Is there like a big database of it somewhere? Or is it more trial and error until you find the source you needed?

[chuunijianghuyuri]

When They Cry and perhaps every 07th Expansion work where Ryukishi07 is the main writer/director is fundamentally against the concept of fate. One of it's core messages is that anything can be overcome with enough collective and individual effort. Anything can be overcome proportional to the amount of individual and/or collective effort that it requires, i.e. overcoming capitalism and its woes is going to take more collective and individual effort from more people than overcoming one person's drug addiction. The combined efforts of each individual trying their hardest becomes a greater collective effort with the more people there are putting their minds and bodies towards one goal.

Let's start with the most explicit example that most directly handles the subject. The fragments of Higurashi is a metaphor for the infinite or near infinite number of possibilities that humanity has and the directions that it can take. In the original 8 episodes of Higurashi we fittingly only go through 8 of them, but Furude Rika has went through 100 years of them. She tries her best to save Houjou Satoko and her other friends from their tragedies but even when she tries to get help ends up failing numerous times. It's only one she truly relies on her friends and believes and trusts them does she get somewhere and achieves her goal with the help of everyone around her. It's only the collective efforts of not only her friends but the entire village and then some does she save Satoko and break free from the tragedy. It's only through the active choices that each of them makes is it possible to choose a path that doesn't result in the deaths of many. It took the efforts of a village and then some to overcome what was becoming seemingly inevitable in Rika's jaded mind, but their choices DID matter and it WAS possible all along.

Umineko doesn't focus on the subject directly as much but that doesn't mean it isn't a fundamental part of it. With every instance of something that is wrong or goes wrong just like in Higurashi, it is clear that with different decisions with varying amounts of effort and varying amounts of steps backward in time that these things not only could have been avoided but could have been made better or alleviated after the fact. The most explicit example of this of course is in Ep 7 where Bernkastel finds a rare fragment where Yasuda Sayo is loved and cared for by Ushiromiya Natsuhi despite her troubles and misgivings at least partially caused by Ushiromiya Kinzo, creating a person rather named Ushiromiya Lion with near none of the trauma that their far more common fragments have. It's just another example of showing how nothing is fated, how all can go different directions and be avoided with different actions. Nothing in history has ever been set in stone until it has already happened and been written. Even still this doesn't stop Kinzo from doing THAT to his daughter, but there are surely fragments where he treats her like the daughter he should have and could have lived alongside her siblings.

And though I know little about the exclusive manga Ep 9, Confessions of the Golden Witch (because I actively refuse to read it and want to figure out the entire mystery myself on the second read rather than it all being told to me), I do know that Yasuda Sayo spills their guts out about how it was impossible in any fragment for them to be loved for who they truly are in their fullest context. This shouldn't be taken at face value however, as this is through the unreliable lense of someone who literally cannot see or believe that they themselves can be loved. Someone blind to the color of the ocean shouldn't be trusted with color theory. It is likely that they are blind to or in denial of the possibility of them ever being loved due to their trauma and self hatred and would tear it down with what seems obvious and logical to them. I'm firmly under the belief that if they sought help from the siblings, or even just Ushiromiya Jessica, something could have worked out for the better and that maybe there could have been steps made to integrate them into the family and perhaps finally begin to heal past woes and cruelties.

I can't say much about Ciconia given the much unfinished state that it's in but I have no doubt in my mind that it'll handle the subject as well. When They Cry is all about putting your best efforts in what you seek to achieve for the betterment of yourself and those around you and that anything can be achieved with enough collective effort. Anything is possible, all wounds can be healed at least partially with due time, and that the strongest thing one can have is a community that stands by and helps one another. When They Cry is fundamentally about love, overcoming trauma, and social solidarity among many, many other things that gives one reasons to keep on living and have hope and love this world and all living things on it.

[warsofasoiaf]

Hiya! I liked your answer to the last ask. I'm a substitute teacher so it's cool to see someone stand up for the kiddos. I gotta say I think you're right on two counts. 1: that science isn't exciting enough when you're young to instill a lifelong love it and 2: rote memorization doesn't benefit a lot of students in the thing it's trying to do or in getting them to enjoy their studies. We have a history teacher where I teach and many of the students complain that he only shows them PowerPoints and movies; he was actually my teacher and even though I loved him, it was more because he's a very nice man and I absorb learning pretty well from most any method. I don't often get to teach because teachers often don't leave lesson plans or really anything else for me to work with; I love when I get the opportunity though. My method is planned lectures because im very passionate my memory serves me well if I make even a loose structure, and because that's what I loved and benefitted from the most. I'm a humanities guy btw, I studied psychology and political science though history and philosophy are also special interests. What I'm saying is I can't speak for education in traditional STEM subjects very well.

And I guess I'd like to ask what you think we could do better? I know long winded lectures dont work for everyone either but im like also not allowed to just show movies or read off powerpoints. I also know theres tons of research on this, but hearing the opinion of someone who cares about this issue is important too I think. I love my job and even teaching a trivial fact is a pleasure, not to mention the joy of helping a student connect the dots in their mind.

Thanks!

(BTW I teach high school almost exclusively so I'm not like suggesting my mind numbing lectures for 3rd graders)

For history, we should be teaching it as a story. It's all well and good to teach the US Civil War, but devoting time to teaching about what people were thinking and feeling makes it closer to home. Bonus points by using local heroes - schools in Wyoming might have a good time talking about Nate Champion's stand against the cattlemen to talk about the industrialization of the West, someone from Massachusetts might take joy in following where a particular Massachusetts troop marched rather than dryly stating the dates and times for the battles of the US Army of the Potomac.

For science, we have to actually have the students *do* more. Having 3rd grade kids watch as a marshmallow turns to goo from a Bunsen burner so you can discuss phase transitions like melting is far more engaging than abstractly talking about ice melting in a beaker. Now, this does run into a problem particularly with underfunded schools - school budgets are a direct result of property taxes, after all. I can't say I have all the answers.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[hapigairu]

What gets me is that there are so many examples of this kind of thing happening throughout history. Like, the US should have plenty of reminders everywhere on this subject to see that Edel's rhetoric is iffy at best. Between what happened in mainland US, Hawai'i, and many more.

When you see what that "manifest destiny" brought to Hawai'i, it's certainly not civilisation or progress, but rather oppression and generalised destruction. Like, in Hawai'i, most of the sugar plantation owners were either missionaries or sons of missionaries, which had an enormous impact on how the Hawaiian commoners were treated. The commoners weren't too keen on overworking for the benefit of patronising, wealthy foreigners (let's call them haole since that's the name used for foreigners of European ancestry) and some outright refused these job offers, preferring working for their own sustenance. The haole's solution for this "despicable idleness"? Well, they thought that an English Medieval law could be appropriate for this situation. ("“Justice of the peace would set the annual wages and productivity to be expected from each worker: "We can take the medium of work to be performed in the given time of work, and establish it as a law. . . .In the event of non-performance of work, wages would be withheld.""). But it was all in the name of civilising these poor, non-christian Hawaiian simpletons, you guys.

But then, too many Hawaiians were dying of illness (and we all know why), so the haole began to "import" workers from China and then Japan (1885 for Japan even though about 150 Japanese went to work in Hawai'i in 1868 but it was such a fiasco Japan noped out of sending any more workers to Hawai'i for years). And, of course, these two groups would suffer from more and more racist practices over time because how dare they want to be treated as human beings and not mere commodities?

And I’ll just leave you this quote (by someone from the subcommittee that rejected the planters' demand of making Hawai'i an exception wrt the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 following the annexation to the US.): “introducing a "corrupting and deadly fly into the otherwise pure ointment of a Christian and progressive civilization." (1902... I think)

(That is not to say that the Hawaiian leaders were completely innocent though, but that's a whole other can of worms)

That's just one example, of course, but the situation in Hawai'i at the time shows how much of this supposed will to 'civilise' certain populations is simply a way of grabbing land (Hawai'i is, after all, an important strategic location) and resources that is deeply rooted in backward thinking.)

Then again, general education about what one's country did wrong seems to be rather... lacking. So maybe that's why there isn't as much awareness about this line of thinking as there should be?

Supreme Leader: Faerghus is regressive and needs to reform.

Also Supreme Leader: Teams up with the western nobles, the very people who prevented Faerghus from reforming.

Gee, I wonder where people get the idea that it's all a lie and an excuse for a land grab.

Lol

Whenever someone says they need to conquer a land to civilise its people, I mean, bring them "reforms", it's always (or maybe 99,9% of chances for it to be the case) an excuse to grab land/ressources.

Also, given how Supreme Leader's reforms, just like her dad, were all about cntering power on the Emperor... I think it speaks a lot about what the "reforms brought" to Faerghus are supposed to mean - like, the reform is "stop listening to your king and listen to me instead" ?