The History Textbook as a Virtual Space

The history textbook attempts to create a uniform reality or one understanding of how the human race has existed and functioned throughout time. It is in this way that the textbook functions as a virtual space. Students learn the same facts, presented in the same way. The reader understands history and the world in the way it is presented and is therefore limited and controlled by an external force. (Often, the textbook provides a student's primary understanding of history leaving the individual vulnerable to the choices of editors) The reader is left with a predetermined, manufactuctered notion of reality.

The textbook offers an omniscient, authoritative summary of the human race. It does not encourage questions or critical discussion. This relates to Plato's concept of the cave in the sense that the history student (in a traditional public school) is confined to a very narrow idea of what is real and how we have evolved. This formulation of what is true and real is accepted without question or verification. "For, tell me, do you think our prisoners could see anything of themselves or their fellows except the shadows thrown by the fire on the wall of the cave opposite them?" Like Plato's primitive man confined to the cave where he is only able to see controlled images projected on a wall, the history student sees and digests what is put in front of him/her. He/she is given rigid guidlines is blinded by the views of others. The primitive man and the student depend on these images in the same way and cannot be intellectually self-reliant.

One could argue that there is no escape from this virtual space. One can never experience the past from an authentic perspective. Therefore, one must always rely on the assumptions and findings of others. The most realistic, achievable red pill, or method of escape from this virtual space would be to stop relying on the textbook as our primary foundation for understanding the past and introduce texts from various authors, offering varied perspectives. Perhaps the most reliable and effective texts would be primary sources since they offer first hand accounts and are most indicative of a period.