In the first American Studies test, we were asked to address the Origin and the Purpose, and assess the Value and the Limitation of two texts: David Walker’s Appeal and Dred Scott’s Case by Roger (aka OPVL). Although it was very easy to provide the Origin, the Purpose, and the Value, it was difficult for me to give two examples of Limitations for each source. I think this was the case because these texts were sort of challenging to interpret. Just by looking at the documents, I was not able to identify factual inaccuracies or omissions, because in my opinion, they were being as honest as possible, and there were no reasons for omissions. Next, I could not find anything that we could NOT learn from the document, other than what the founding fathers actually meant when they wrote “all men”, in the Declaration of Independence. Lastly, I could not recognize what the author left out of the story. Quite frankly, these two were pretty challenging texts to analyze and OPVL, especially the limitation, other than them not putting themselves in the others’ shoes. It would have been way easier if I had prior knowledge about the appeal written by Walker and Dred Scott’s Decision.
I agree with you Daeho. I found that coming up with limitations for those two documents was a cumbersome process. I think that the point of limitations is address at what point does the document cease to become useful. I think that if we were given a fake position such as a historian who specializes in education it would be much easier to produce limitations of a document. Overall, I really enjoyed reading your thoughts since it was presented well and you typed about something unique that I don't think many people have addressed on their blogs.
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