fundamental issues

"Of the subjects in the secular curriculum, it [history] is the best at teaching those virtues once reserved for theology-humility in the face of our limited ability to know, and awe in the face of the expanse of human history.

On his journey from China to India, the Venetian traveler Marco Polo ventured into Basman, believed to be Sumatra, where he chanced upon a species he had never before seen: the rhinoceros. But Polo did not see it that way. As his diary records, he saw instead

unicorns, which are scarcely smaller than elephants. They have the hair of a buffalo...[and] a single large, black horn in the middle of the forehead. They do not attack with their horn, but only with their tongue and their knees; for their tongues are furnished with long, sharp spines... They are very ugly brutes to look at... not at all such as we describe them when... they let themselves be captured by virgins.

Our encounter with history presents us with a choice: to learn about rhinoceroses or to learn about unicorns. We naturally incline toward unicorns-they are prettier and more tame. But it is the rhinoceros that can teach us far more than we could ever imagine."

(Wineburg Samuel, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts, 2001 24)