Self-study
Historian: Support A democracy's citizens must know some history if the democracy is to meet its challenges. ████████ ███████ ██████████ █████████ ██ ██████████ ██████████ ███ ████ ██████ █████ ███████ ███████ ███████ ██████████ ████ ███████ ████████ ████████ ██ ████████ ████ █ ███ ██████ ██████ ███ █████████ ████████ ████ ██████ ███ ██ ████████
Summary
The historian concludes that popular historical awareness will always be distorted. The basis for this conclusion is that:
1) most people learn history through popular narratives
2) these popular narratives keep readers interested by implying that several famous heroes and villains have shaped all of history.
Notable Assumptions
First, the historian doesn’t provide any evidence that these popular narratives are wrong. Perhaps it is true that a few famous heroes and villains have shaped all of history — unless the passage tells us, we don’t know.
Second, even if we assume that the popular narratives are wrong, the historian doesn’t provide evidence that historical awareness is distorted because popular narratives imply something incorrect. Maybe people recognize that popular narratives sustain readers’ interest by making these implications.
8.
The historian's argument depends on ████████ █████ ███ ██ ███ ██████████
a
Historical awareness is █████████ ██ ███ ████ ████ █████ ████ ████ ████ █ ███ ██████ ██████ ██ █████████ █████████
The historian argues that historical awareness is distorted based on how much the heroes and villains have shaped history — not the specific number of them. If (A) is true, and there are 50 instead of 10, that still doesn’t say anything about how much they have shaped history.
b
History cast in ███ █████████ ██████ ██████████ ████████ ██████████ ████████
This is a broader assumption than necessary. For the argument to be true, we only need a subset of narratives, those that imply a few heroes and villains have shaped all of history, to distort history. If (B) is true, it helps the argument — but it isn’t necessary.
c
Most historical narratives ███████ ████████ ██ ████████ ████ █ ███ ██████ ██████ ███ █████████ ████████ ████ ██████ ███ ██ ████████
We know, from the stimulus, that most people learn history through narratives that make this implication. So it could be that only one narrative does this, but it’s a very popular narrative that everybody learns history from.
d
Only narratives written ███ █ ███████ █████ ████ ██████████ ████████ ████████ ███ ██████ ██ ███████████ █████████ ██ ████████
We don’t know for what purpose the popular narratives were written. We know they sustain interest by making certain implications, but we don’t know that this is their main purpose.
e
The implication that █ ███ ██████ ██████ ███ █████████ ████████ ████ ██████ ███ ██ ███████ ████████ ████████
We know that people learn history through narratives that make this implication, and the author concludes that historical awareness is thus inherently distorted. Without (E), it could be that this implication is accurate. (E) is necessary to know that it distorts history.