Reflection Blog Post

 Describe a specific example from any area of knowledge (AOK) where you feel that deception may be necessary to knowing. The example may or may not relate to your direct personal experience, but make your views as a knower clear; it may be the case that person(s) involved in the example you relate have a different perspective on truth and deception than you do.

      Of all the Areas of Knowing, there is one group where deception may be necessary- history. History is a subjective matter, as well as current social events. Where math is very straight forward, history is not. Instead, the professor must build off of what the historians, primary documents and society says about it. They may leave things out, or like the packet suggests, teach things that are lies told by people to them, such as those very historians. Like in chemistry, any equation has a certain amount of uncertainty, and in history, where everything is judged by the current opinion, uncertainty is at it's greatest. Sometimes, when telling history, it is necessary to elaborate, such as in World War I when the president said the Luisitania was sunk by the Germans, when in fact it was sunk after many warnings, and after cooperating with British ships, and carrying illegal cargo. My belief is that deception is wrong, but in cases like these, where the public has a hard time understanding the gravity of these Great Wars, it is necessary to describe events as much as possible and stir up the nationalism of a country. The deception is an altruistic one, not one sparked my self-indulgence, but by the fact deceit is necessary because people do not understand until they are put into such a situation. Therefore a teacher may exaggerate a story to attempt to sway their views to views similar to theirs. However, history is not something learned from one source, after multiple sources are found, you glean the information and come with your idea, hence leaving out or disregarding important factors. This deceit comes with the practice, the swaying of views should not, yet it appears quite often. All in all, history is the one area of knowing where deceit can be accepted.