HST195 - Week 5 Reminder Hello students, Important announcement. Please read. MIDTERM EXAM NEXT WEEK You will take your midterm exams next week, week 6. Your midterm exam covers the materials assigned in weeks one through five. In short, that is chapters 1-5 of the Herring textbook, DVD episodes 1 through 5, and the web videos, forum materials, and maps. You should definitely be spending your time with this week's materials and in studying for your midterm exams next week. A midterm study list has already been posted in Moodle to help you focus your studies. ASSIGNMENT 1 I have "returned" your Assignment 1 papers in Moodle. They are PDF files with my written comments. Make sure you've seen the list of instructor abbreviations in Moodle to help decipher what "pt" and "gra" mean, but if there is anything else you can't read, be sure to ask. FORUMS I have finished scoring your posts and replies for Forum 2, and the grade in the Moodle grade book now reflects your scores for ALL of the online work you've completed for the first half of this course. The grade you see in Moodle is your current grade in the class. Remember that this class uses weighted grades. Your current completed work represents 25% of your grade weight. The upcoming midterm exam next week will be worth 25% of your grade all by itself. First, some words about the forum subject matter. SUBJECT MATTER I'm glad to see so many of you grapple with the problems that multiple sources, especially ones which contain conflicting historical claims, can bring to an already controversial subject, such as the Vietnam War. But a careful analysis of the sources, even biased sources, can reveal even more historical truth than relying on a single source. Before I began teaching this course in 2000, the PBS series and an accompanying PBS guide were the ONLY materials students had to work with. The course was only 3 credits, LCC did not have Moodle, and the students independently studied at home while watching the PBS episodes on cable TV. The class did not meet in a traditional classroom. Can you imagine that? More importantly, can you imagine what a disservice was done to those students and the historical "knowledge" they received (or failed to receive) for their tuition dollars? So I decided that a history class needed textbooks by historians, not journalists or film editors. George Herring http://www.uky.edu/PattersonSchool/faculty.htm Christian Appy http://www.umass.edu/history/faculty/appy.html As many of you have concluded, the Herring textbook is the best "factual" reference for the events that occurred during the war. It is footnoted, indexed, and has an extensive list of citations and suggestions for further reading, all of which have been read and analyzed by Herring. Some of you are enjoying the stories in the Appy book, but you must be careful and NOT make any grand conclusions about the war after reading just a single compelling or emotion-filled story. Everyone likes stories, but you must strive to keep them in their limited realm and avoid making sweeping claims. For example, I personally know someone, who served in Vietnam. Should I just take what he said he experienced as the "truth" for all soldiers who served? Of course not. In addition, my own uncle served in the war, but has not shared ANY information with me about his time in country. What about his experiences? Should they be ignored or remain "out" of the official record of the experiences of war, simply because he refuses to talk about this difficult experience? More importantly, if you read the preface (pages xxv-xxvii) in the Appy book, as I said in your Assignment 1 instructions, what about those people who refused to speak with him? And what about the other "voices" he experienced as a foreign writer who had to get permission from the Vietnam's communist government leaders before conducting interviews with people they "approved" for interviews? And let's not forget the fact that this book contains less than half of the interviews he collected. If you were editing the book, wouldn't you include the most compelling, eye-opening, jaw-dropping, disturbing, or exemplary stories, and leave the mundane, the rest, on the "cutting room floor"? Even with a warning from me after Forum 1, some students unfortunately come to the inaccurate conclusion to simply dismiss the AIM rebuttal video. Speaking of cutting room floor, by watching the AIM presentation, some of you discovered that the original 780 minute, 13 episode series by PBS has been cut down to 660 minutes in 11 episodes in its most recent 2004 edition. What happened? The answer involves a number of issues. Since 1983, when the series was first released, a worldwide event occurred with Communism's collapse and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Some of the claims in the last episode were dated (China and Vietnam were still at war with each other in 1983, but they are not now) and many historical details were not available to historians or the public within those 10 short years after the U.S evacuation in 1973. (On a happy note, just a few students referenced these AIM and PBS production dates being so close to the end of the war itself that they seemed raw, emotional, forceful, or defensive. Good job. Others pointed out that without the internet, only television documentaries and rebuttals were the only way outside of print media to discuss these issues with a wider public audience. Again, good insight.) Other edits to the PBS series were made based on the shortcomings and problems exposed by the AIM program and its historians. On a more problematic note, the presence of "political correctness" emerged when original PBS interviews were edited for content that may have been considered offensive. (In particular, I remember an interview where the soldier used the derogatory term "gook" to refer to a VietCong. You will not hear this part of the interview in your newer, shorter, DVD series. This is a shame actually. If we desire historical truth, then allowing viewers to hear the terminology, even if it is racist, is important. In our own country's history, we are all aware that some Americans have used the "n" word, right? Even respected authors such as Mark Twain have used the term, but as adult readers, we certainly don't censor his books, do we? Why did they have to remove this "truth" from the PBS series?) Over the years I've taught this course, MANY students dislike the tone of the AIM program, but as I hinted to you in my last announcement, it is a rebuttal. That was its purpose. Some felt they didn't back up their claims, but that was also a "given". This one hour rebuttal simply didn't have the time to explain every fact in great detail. The problems they had with the PBS series were presented by IDENTIFIED historians and experts. In the 1980's, if you wanted to fact check them, you'd go to the library. Today, students can use the internet, but no students in the forum pointed out any of those experts as frauds. Only the narrator Charlton Heston, and his conservatism and later involvement as head of the National Rifle Association is ever discussed by students. CERTAINLY the choice for narrator can be argued. I have no doubt that his well-known and largely favorable reputation at that time would hopefully have added some credibility to the AIM production. (Or, he could have been just like any other narrator and simply have been reading the lines he was hired to read. Again, my hint about the "oddity" of seeing then narrator on screen is definitely not the style we are accustomed to today. Narrators are usually only heard and not seen, today.) On a special note, I hope that all students would "know" that as your instructor, I would not simply waste your time in this course asking you to read/view any materials that worthless. The one-hour AIM program cannot match the effect an 11 hour documentary will have on a student. After the 4 or 5 hours you've seen so far, the PBS series can feel more like a friend, like a valuable source of information. And it is. I would not waste your time by requiring you to watch 11 hours of it if it was nothing but fiction and historical inaccuracies. But being aware of its bias is key to learning the history of this war. The same holds true for the AIM program. In the PBS series, we mainly hear the voice of the narrator, who is telling us a story, written by someone else or a team of others. The AIM video also had a narrator, but its main voices were historians, who have studied their history and have specific sources and facts to support their claims. It should not be easy to dismiss someone's claims if they have given you historical evidence. (more on this below) This is why I ask you to cite your sources, by using quotes from the textbook and videos, in your forum posts and written assignments. It makes for much more compelling, and historically accurate work when you do this. As some of you concluded, everyone "feels" entitled to their own opinions. In this class, those historical opinions must been "informed" opinions, based on evidence. If you are presented with data, and then make a claim contrary to that data, you had better be able to show support for it. The New York Times article, which I directed students to read "carefully", was ignored by a majority of students, mentioned (but nothing was stated in the post or reply that clearly indicated that it was read or understood), or simply was not analyzed well enough. Besides the 2nd half of the AIM video, this article should have served as a main topic of discussion this last week. I'd like to draw your attention to some pretty AMAZING parts of that article. My comments that follow the article quotes are in parentheses. "Nonetheless, during the … program - … in the rebuttal produced by AIM … intelligent criticisms are offered: The series makes Ho Chi Minh into a nationalist rather than a Communist; it ignores the role of the South Vietnamese Army; it minimizes the brutal treatment of American prisoners of war; it slights the actual conduct of military operations. At no point, however, do the producers of "Vietnam: A Television History" give an inch. They confuse their series with Holy Writ." (NYTimes article, page 2) (Holy Writ? WOW, what a term to use !!! The PBS producers mistakenly believe their series is the Holy Bible of the Vietnam War. That is NOT a compliment from the New York Times. It goes on.) "In 1983, this critic called the Vietnam series "a landmark in television journalism," a judgment I still hold. Its great strength was that it offered room for many points of view. The paradox now is that the members of the public television community who deplore the AIM rebuttal rule out all points of view except their own. Or, as one of them says on the program tonight, the only reason to broadcast the rebuttal is "to show people what bad propaganda is like." He misses the point; actually, he misses all the points. For one, the rebuttal is not bad propaganda. This becomes evident at the conclusion of the program. Vietnam experts and other interested parties, including Reed Irvine, the chairman of Accuracy in Media, debate the merits of the rebuttal. No one, in fact, can find much wrong with it." (NYTimes article) (No one found much wrong with what the historians in the AIM program had claimed !!! You may not have liked the tone, but you were hearing actual evidence from the AIM historians. The final blow, AGAINST the PBS program and its producers is this.) "No new interpretation of history is allowed. The (PBS) opposition to broadcasting the AIM program suggests that the producers of the (PBS) Vietnam series and their supporters feel this way about history too. It cannot be reinterpreted unless the reinterpretation has their (PBS) approval." (That is definitely a problem. Conform to the PBS interpretation, or else. If you didn't carefully read this article, then you could have missed these very important points. If you did read and understand it, did you ignore it because it didn't support your own position or biases in favor or PBS? The New York Times is NOT a conservative leaning newspaper, so to print a story like this one was revealing. Two sources from opposite sides of the political spectrum, NYTimes and AIM, both criticizing the PBS series.) CONCLUSION I hope you find at least some of this mini-lecture to be informative. For those of you who actively participated throughout the last two weeks of forums (addressing the issues, citing your sources, and analyzing the materials), I hope your scores reflect that work. As always, please feel free do contact me with any questions you may have. Good luck with your studies as you prepare for your midterm exams.