2025 RI Y6 GP T1 P2 Assignment History 2008 Cam INSERT.pdf

Raffles Institution 2025 Year 6 Term 1 Paper 2 Assignment Adapted from 2008 Cambridge Paper 2 General Certificate of Education Advanced Level Higher 1 GENERAL PAPER 8881/02 Paper 2 INSERT 1 hour 30 minutes READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST This Insert contains the passages for comprehension. This document consists of 4 printed pages

2 THE PAST Passage 1. Lee Min Yen takes the view that the study of the past is pointless. 1 Most people know two things about Henry Ford. He built the first mass -produced popular car and famously wrote in 1916: 'History is more or less bunk...we want to live in the present...'. Though they would probably say 'rubbish' instead of the slang word of Ford's time, his sentiments would be echoed by generations of bored schoolchildren stuffed with dates and 'sources' and 'consider-the-causes-and-effects-of’ essays. 5 2 Historians often claim that they look backward in order to show the rest of us the way forward. Bunk! Paradoxically, the only lesson to be learnt from history is that there are no lessons to be learnt from history. The daily interactions of the billions of people on our planet – not to speak of the equally unpredictable natural happenings on and over its surface – produce an infinitely complex web of causes and effects which are wholly unrepeatable. You often hear it said that we should keep alive the memor y of former conflicts and atrocities to prevent them happening again. I don't think so. The descendants of former aggressors and victims happily visit each other's countries with no feelings of guilt or resentment about their ancestors' history. As someone said: 'The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.' 10 15 3 The history of the very word 'history' is revealing. It originally referred to myths and legends but it gradually changed to refer to a person’s perspective of actual happenings. However, if the intention is to refer solely to fiction in today’s context , the word ‘story’ will be more apt. But is there really any difference? The further we get from the past, the more historians have to speculate and fill the gaps with probabilities, theories, rhetoric and pure invention. It's entertaining stuff but let's not pretend that history is anything more than stories based on facts. Even the details of events occurring within living memory, such as the tragic deaths of Princess Diana and President Kennedy, are still hotly disputed, despite the mass of evidence that has accumulated around them, and these facts are subject to different interpretations according to the prejudice of the commentator. 20 25 4 All history is biased. Eve