Discuss the roles of language and reason in history.

I just started this, and I want to make sure I'm on the right track with this. It has to be 1200-1600 words.

Outline for first paragraph:

- Language manipulates a persons reasoning when they are taught history
- How events are described differently in varying countries, so no one knows the exact truth
- War- When learning about wars, our history books glorify America and seem to
be biased as to what truly happened. We seem to justify our actions.
- Cold War- We justified our actions to the American people by making the
Soviets look like the bad guys, while the Soviets justified their actions to their people by making
the American look like the bad guys. It manipulates reason because you only get one side of
the story.

Paragraph (not finished)

Language manipulates a person's reasoning when they are taught history, altering one's perspective of the truth of events in our history. Language has skewed our historical viewpoint based solely on which country we live in. Every country has a different story of what happened, each one glorifying said country in order to excuse them from any guilt or embarrassment of their bad actions. The history taught in American is different from the history taught in Russia, which is different from the history taught in Great Britain. While the world agrees on the time line of events and the existence of the events, we all diverge when it comes to the reasons that justify the actions made. Countries want to glorify their actions to their people, which they do by altering the facts in their favor. This fabrication of the truth manipulates one's reason because everyone's truth is different. People do now know what exactly happened, so they reason that their truth is correct and disregard the idea that what we've been taught could be fabricated. The whole thing is a blame game, where every country points there finger at someone else and says "he made me do it," just because it would be easier to spread lies than tell the truth. The manipulation of history affects our reason because people want to believe that their country is not flawed and has always been a positive impact on the world.

Does this even make sense? I'm not sure where to go with this essay. Please help!

I think it's not they are justifying their actions.What important about history is,historians in a country/nation is making analysis on why their country is making such decision (not justifying so that they look good) A fair historian point out a bad strategy in their history.

hope this helps!

Yes,it makes sense! You write very well, too. Is this a research assignment? Are you supposed to use books and articles?

That "outline" for the intro paragraph looks like it is a paragraph already.

Never use an outline too strictly. Just find great sources, and write what you learn from them. Share what you learn, 1 or 2 paragraphs for each book/article. Try to keep a theme that unites them all.

If you get stuck, you need to just get a new article and start a new paragraph.

When you have written a lot of paragraphs about articles, go back to that introduction and revise it to suit the theme that developed while you were enjoying those articles.

:-)