How to grasp the scientific method of evaluating historical figures

1. Take the development and progress of human historical civilization as the main line, and pay attention to the representativeness of historical figures and their combination with historical development stages.

In the long river of human history, countless historical figures have emerged. From a vertical perspective, the development of different social forms such as ancient society, feudal society, capitalist society and socialist society has figures; Geographically, there are not only representatives in the historical development of a nation, a region and a country, but also differences in the collection of historical figures between China and foreign countries; Horizontally, in the development process of the same social form, there are also political, economic, military, cultural, scientific and technological representatives. This has led to various complicated situations in the field of historical figures. In this case, grasping the typicality, representativeness and temporal and spatial distribution of historical figures has become two important yardsticks for selecting people.

The so-called typicality and representativeness refer to the representative figures of a historical era. In the process of historical development, they are either the symbols of a historical era, a nation and a country, or they have had an important and far-reaching impact on historical development. In order to realize the typicality and representativeness of the selected historical figures, and considering that the selected objects span thousands of years and across China and foreign countries, we first make a basic subdivision and historical orientation with reference to the usual historical stages, and on this basis, we briefly classify the historical figures in six aspects, forming six small topics under the general research topic of Chinese and foreign historical figures, namely, China ancient politicians, eastern and western philosophers, and outstanding figures in the bourgeois revolutionary era in Europe and America. And the "Asian Awakening" based on these six aspects or six small topics, which is seen in the comment module of Chinese and foreign historical figures through repeated comparison and careful selection, namely, Qin Shihuang, Emperor Taizong, Kangxi and other ancient China politicians; Confucius, Plato, Aristotle and other eastern and western sages, Cromwell, Washington, Napoleon and other European and American bourgeois revolutionaries, Sun Yat-sen, Gandhi, Kemal and other pioneers of the "Asian Awakening", proletarian revolutionaries such as Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, and outstanding scientists such as Li Shizhen, Zhan Tianyou, Li Siguang, Newton and Einstein. The selected figures are politicians, military strategists, thinkers and scientists.

From a certain aspect they represent, the selected historical figures are self-evident. They not only represent an era, but also play a decisive role in the social development process of their contemporaries, and also strongly influence the development direction of later history. For example, in ancient China, the unified Qin Empire established by Qin Shihuang had a far-reaching impact on the history of China, both in terms of system creation and territory planning-abolishing the enfeoffment system, establishing counties, unifying the weights and measures of writing and currency and even establishing autocratic centralization, which affected the social development of China for more than 2,000 years. As the founder and founder of this system, Qin Shihuang is an unavoidable figure in our study and exploration of the ancient history of China. Another example is Washington, who led the American Revolution and won the first president of the United States of America. Every major event in the history of the founding of the United States is related to it, so he is praised by Americans as "the father of the country" and "the founding father". The American democratic system and the principle of founding the country, which he participated in leading, had a far-reaching and great influence on the bourgeois revolution in Europe and the subsequent development of world history. At the same time, Washington's personality charm also makes future generations feel infinite admiration. Another example is that after the history of Turkey's "father of the country" Kemal entered the 20th century, with the upsurge of the national liberation movement in Asia, Africa and Latin America, how to embark on the road of modernization is the primary task faced by many countries in these areas. To accomplish this task, the first step must be to strive for national independence and establish a nation-state. The second step is to carry out comprehensive reforms and promote the transformation from traditional society to modern society. On the whole, the national democratic movement in most countries at that time did not achieve substantial victory, while Turkey, under the leadership of Kemal, gained national independence through the national revolutionary war, and further carried out secular reforms on this basis, and established the Republic of * * *, which largely completed the transformation from a traditional agricultural country to a modern industrial country and began to embark on the road of modernization. Therefore, the Kemal Revolution in Turkey has become a representative event to create the modernization model of backward countries.

Curriculum standards adhere to the principles of importance and representativeness, and also pay attention to the specific selection of figures-China historical figures account for about 45% and foreign figures account for about 65%. This is basically consistent with the curriculum objectives in the history curriculum standards and the proportion of Chinese and foreign content structures in the curriculum standards, which embodies the idea of paying equal attention to the unity and diversity of understanding of China's national conditions and the development of human society. At the same time, in order to broaden students' historical horizons as much as possible, further cultivate students' scientific spirit of advocating science and truth from a historical perspective, and promote students' individualized development, we also pay attention to selecting historical figures in ideology, culture, science and technology. China has Li Shizhen, Zhan Tianyou and Li Siguang in history, and Newton and Einstein in world history. If only from the far-reaching impact on human society, Chinese and foreign scientists can not be mentioned in the same breath, but from the representative and time distribution of historical figures, they have their own characteristics.

In short, it is impossible to comment on historical figures, and this practice must be avoided in practical study, which requires us to pay attention to the careful selection of historical figures. Therefore, it is an important principle to grasp the typicality, representativeness and time distribution of historical figures.

2. Pay attention to the learning process and the methods of evaluating historical figures, and avoid covering everything.

Because of the infinite inclusiveness and extensiveness of historical knowledge, we can never know all historical figures, and we can only choose representative historical figures as models and demonstrations. By understanding and analyzing their activities, students' interest in learning history can be stimulated, so that they can truly feel the relationship between historical figures and the times and understand the characteristics of the times emanating from historical figures, thus cultivating students' study habits of independent thinking and thinking judgment ability. This kind of learning is more about pursuing a process than a simple result. This process is not only a process of feeling history, understanding the inner world of historical figures and having a spiritual dialogue with them, but also a process of re-examining the activities and behaviors of historical figures from a brand-new perspective. Therefore, when evaluating important historical figures, we should try to avoid indoctrinating students with that unique and arbitrary conclusion. Judging from determining the module of commenting on historical figures, it is by no means to exhaust all historical figures through this module, so that students can become a "dictionary of historical figures", and it is not just to let students master all the details of their lives, deeds and personal life. Instead, through the study and inquiry process of limited historical figures and their main activities, students are trained in basic methods and abilities, so that students can initially master some basic methods of scientific evaluation of historical figures.

3. Pay attention to the connection and deepening of compulsory courses to avoid simple repetition at the same level.

The purpose of setting up elective content in history course in senior high school is to further stimulate students' interest in learning history, broaden their historical horizons and promote their personalized development. Generally speaking, it is a course offered on the basis of compulsory courses, with richer content for students to choose from, more obvious hierarchy and more concern for students' interest in learning. However, because it is based on compulsory courses, how to deal with and grasp the relationship with the content of compulsory courses is a very critical issue. In this regard, our principle is that we should not only pay attention to the connection with compulsory courses, but also pay attention to the cognitive level and the basic goal of curriculum reform achieved by students after learning the contents of compulsory history courses, so as to achieve a smooth transition and smooth connection between compulsory and elective contents; We should also pay attention to the moderate deepening of elective courses in content and methods, and strive to avoid simple repetition at the same level or the content is too difficult and complicated.

Specifically, the selection of historical figures in this module refers to the contents of previous teaching documents, such as high school history syllabus, junior high school history curriculum standards, and high school history curriculum standard compulsory courses. On the basis of following the principle of representation of historical figures and their combination with historical period distribution, we try to avoid adding brand-new historical figures information to reduce the difficulty for teachers to accept the content of curriculum standards. The added contents mainly include the analysis of important links in the growth process of historical figures, the introduction of important activities, the discussion of the interactive relationship with major historical events, the analysis of historical influence and gains and losses, and the introduction of various viewpoints and opinions on the evaluation of historical figures, so that students can correctly understand the relationship between historical figures and their times in the process of understanding their main activities, initially master some basic methods of scientific evaluation of historical figures, and improve their ability to find and analyze problems. This is not only an appropriate extension of the learning content of compulsory courses, but also a major feature of the evaluation module of Chinese and foreign historical figures.

2) Describe the learning objectives of this module.

The last paragraph of Review of Chinese and Foreign Historical Figures specifies the learning objectives of this module from three dimensions: knowledge and ability, process and method, emotional attitude and values.

First of all, the knowledge objectives of this module are described and stipulated in the relevant content standards in the form of behavioral verbs, such as "brief description", "enumeration", "understanding", "telling", "summary" and "comment". These descriptions and regulations are aimed at specific historical figures and their activities. In the historical development of human society, historical figures are the dynamic content that future generations are most interested in. This is not only because any major historical events and activities are inseparable from the participation of all kinds of people, but also because these people are all flesh and blood creatures, and their personality characteristics, thinking patterns, behaviors and even living habits directly or indirectly affect the occurrence, development and results of historical events, which has become the focus of people's research, thinking and evaluation. The distribution of historical figures in different periods and fields determines the hierarchy and diversity of historical figures, and the characteristics of each historical figure in turn determine its overall richness and complexity. Therefore, as far as the specific knowledge objectives are concerned, there is no fixed format between the subjects and predicates in the curriculum standards, and there are certain different requirements between them-the curriculum standards are basically based on the activity characteristics of various historical figures or the objective requirements of an important aspect of knowledge. Generally speaking, the expression form of curriculum standard content is: the knowledge goal of historical figures is closely related to the ability requirement of understanding and applying relevant knowledge, with the knowledge goal ahead and the specific ability goal behind. For example, the learning requirement for Confucius, a historical figure, is "to understand Confucius' life, basic ideas and political opinions, and to explore Confucius' position and influence in the history of China and world thought." For Washington, it is "an overview of Washington's main activities in the American War of Independence and the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, and an evaluation of its historical contribution". Here, the curriculum standard defines Confucius as a thinker and a cultural philosopher. Understanding his life, main ideas and political opinions is the proper meaning in the title of curriculum standard. Without understanding the basic situation of Confucius, it is impossible to explore the history of Confucius and Confucius being respected in the history of China, the history of their thoughts being constantly diffracted and spread, and the influence of Confucius in the history of China and the world's ideology and culture. Similarly, Washington's main and outstanding contribution lies in his actions during his leadership of the American War of Independence and his inauguration as the founding president. In other words, it was the American War of Independence and the historical storms before and after the founding of the People's Republic that shaped such a great man as Washington. If you don't know anything about the relevant historical facts, it will be futile to make a so-called character evaluation.

This naturally involves the relationship between ability and knowledge, skills and skills. Knowledge is an important content and carrier of history education. Without knowledge, history education will become a cook without rice, and various educational goals such as ability, attitude and emotional personality cannot be achieved. The acquisition of knowledge is not the only goal and ultimate goal of learning. One of the purposes of learning knowledge is to reproduce, understand and apply this knowledge, that is, to reproduce and further acquire knowledge and skills by using known knowledge and methods, and to improve the ability to understand and solve problems. The relationship between knowledge and ability is unity of opposites, as the famous psychologist of the former Soviet Union, Crouther Tszky, said: "The close and inseparable relationship between ability and knowledge, skill and skill should be emphasized. On the one hand, ability depends on knowledge, skills and skills-ability is developed in the process of acquiring knowledge, skills and skills. On the other hand, knowledge, skills and skills depend on ability-the process of acquiring knowledge, skills and skills, together with other conditions (such as teaching quality), also depends on students' individual psychological characteristics. With the ability, we can master the corresponding knowledge, skills and skills quickly, easily, firmly and profoundly. " The close connection and intersection of knowledge and ability requires us to avoid separating the relationship between them when discussing the historical learning objectives, which is also a problem that teachers should pay attention to in the teaching process.

Secondly, the curriculum standard also puts forward the ability requirements of correctly understanding the relationship between historical figures and their times and scientifically evaluating historical figures. This is "through learning, we can know that the major activities of historical figures are not only influenced and restricted by the historical environment, but also closely related to their personal subjective factors;" Master some basic methods of scientific evaluation of historical figures, put historical figures under specific historical conditions, analyze them in detail, pay special attention to the role played by individuals in the process of historical development, and correctly understand the relationship between individuals and society and between individuals and nature. "

Correctly understanding the relationship between historical figures and their times is essentially how to correctly treat the inevitability and contingency of history and their relationship. Inevitability is actually the embodiment of the general trend and regularity of historical development, and historical inevitability is always expressed through historical contingency. As Engels pointed out when analyzing the history of the French Revolution: "Here we will talk about the so-called great people. It happened that a great man appeared in a certain country at a certain time. Of course, it was purely accidental. However, if we get rid of this person, then we need another person to replace him, and this representative will appear-good or bad, but it will always appear with the passage of time. It happened that Napoleon, a Corsican, became the military dictator needed by France, which was exhausted by the war-this is an accidental phenomenon. However, if Napoleon never existed, his role would be played by someone else. This can be proved by the fact that whenever such a person is needed, he will appear: Caesar, Augustus, Cromwell and so on. " On the other hand, contingency, as a supplement to inevitability, plays a role in accelerating or delaying the realization of historical inevitability. As Marx said, "If' contingency' does not play any role, then world history will have a very mysterious nature." There are many examples in history that show that a great man's ability, personality and behavior pattern directly affect the external characteristics of events and strongly promote the development process of events. In the history of science, individual innovations and discoveries have played an important role in promoting human society, such as Newton and Einstein.

Emphasizing the inevitability and contingency of history actually contains the criteria for judging the value of historical figures. The development of history is extremely complicated and changeable. It has a triumphant progressive era and a dark period of echo reversal. Scientific evaluation of a historical figure is to see whether he conforms to the trend of historical progress, whether he embodies the inevitable trend of historical development, and whether he undertakes the responsibility of starting and promoting the realization in order to conform to this trend. At the same time, in this evaluation system, we should also scientifically distinguish the differences between mainstream and tributary, political activities and personal life, and avoid the cognitive deviation of covering the whole with personal moral standards instead of historical progress standards. This actually constitutes an important part of the cultivation of historical thinking and historical consciousness.

Third, the goal of emotional attitude and values. In fact, this is the same as the relationship between knowledge and ability. The cultivation of emotional attitude and values in history education runs through the whole process of history learning. Without knowledge and ability, emotional attitudes and values will become castles in the air, but in the process of mastering knowledge and improving ability, emotional attitudes and values will not be harvested, and history education is also a failed education. We are in an era of knowledge growth mode transformation. The process of knowledge form from cumulative growth to critical growth, from proposition-centered to problem-centered, from pure rational process to appealing to learners' whole spiritual life. This "process of appealing to the whole spiritual life of learners" is also a process of emotional experience, cultivation and edification. Therefore, through the study of this module, students should gain more life experience and wisdom, enhance their ability to resist setbacks and adapt to social living environment, and establish a positive, enterprising and innovative attitude towards life.

1) Ancient politicians in China

In the history of world civilization, Chinese civilization is famous for its long history. In the process of the formation and development of Chinese civilization, the establishment of a unified country in the Qin Dynasty, the prosperity of the Tang Dynasty and "prosperous times" are the key stages of the inheritance and prosperity of Chinese civilization. Although there are many social and historical reasons for the formation and appearance of these three prosperous times, the role played by three historical figures, Qin Shihuang, Emperor Taizong and Kangxi, is undeniable. On them, the characteristics of the times are concentrated. With their intelligence and determination, they strongly promoted the "inevitable" process of China's historical development and became the representatives of the times in the ancient history of China.

To evaluate the ancient historical figures in China, we need to know the main activities of their lives, grasp the main context of their political activities, and observe their transcendence over predecessors and their influence on the history of later generations, so as to reveal the law of this historical figure's political activities throughout his life until an objective and appropriate evaluation is made. Qin Shihuang annexed six countries, ending the long-term separatist regime and establishing the first unified dynasty in China history, which started from the sea in the east, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in the west, Lingnan in the south and Hetao, Yinshan and Liaodong in the north, creating an early autocratic centralization model including emperor system, county system and bureaucracy system, which had a far-reaching influence on later feudal dynasties. In addition to the organizational system, Qin Shihuang also sent troops to the northern expedition to the Xiongnu, immigrated to the real border, and built the Great Wall of Wan Li; After running southwest, I built a "five-foot road"; Respect legalists, burn books and bury Confucianism; Strict military conversion and military service system, etc. In order to meet the needs of this unified country, Qin Shihuang's system creation and its strict laws have become the focus of future generations.

Compared with Qin Shihuang, Emperor Taizong is another typical historical figure. During the turmoil at the end of Sui Dynasty, he urged his father Li Yuan to raise troops, adopt various appropriate policies, conform to the historical trend of national unity, and become the real founder of the Tang Empire, and his talents were initially revealed. After Emperor Taizong ascended the throne, he adopted various policies to develop production, reduce the burden on the people and promote economic recovery and even prosperity. At the same time, Emperor Taizong's crusade against Turks, reopening the Silk Road, appeasing all ethnic groups in the border areas and perfecting the imperial examination system all became the important contents of the "Zhenguan rule" that later generations talked about, thus laying a solid economic and political foundation for the "Kaiyuan Prosperity" of the Tang Dynasty and its national strength. And its outstanding advantages in teaching and employing people, especially its sober reflection ability and self-criticism spirit, have become the model and model of ancient feudal emperors.

The Kanggan period was the "last glory" of ancient China society. During the sixty years of Kangxi, San Francisco was pacified and Taiwan Province Province was unified. Pacify the Zhungeer department and unify the headquarters; Strengthen the management of Tibet; It has curbed Russia's expansion and effectively promoted the consolidation and development of a unified multi-ethnic country.

When discussing the characteristics and historical influence of the above-mentioned historical figures' activities, we should pay full attention to creating a democratic, vivid and harmonious discussion atmosphere, make this discussion move from the original closed to the open, attach importance to students' subjectivity and participation, and encourage students to explore the figures boldly and independently and express their opinions; Attention should be paid to guiding students to grasp the characteristics of social change in combination with objective material life and production conditions, and to grasp the relationship between historical figures and the times, the relationship with the development and evolution of Chinese civilization, and the essential characteristics of major activities of historical figures; Through the comparative analysis of different historical materials, we can guide students to learn how to use historical materials scientifically and try to avoid the so-called "historical analysis" which is vague, one-sided, subjective and mechanical, so as to achieve the purpose of exploring and evaluating historical figures scientifically, comprehensively and objectively.