Which view of history is the author criticising in the last sentence?
We usually say that a monument remembers. This is half true. A monument also tells the living what they are expected to remember, and, by the same gesture, what they may forget. When a town raises a statue to a founder, it does not simply preserve him; it selects him from the crowd of people who made the town, and the selection is a judgment made by whoever held the money and the authority to make it. That is why the removal of a statue so often causes more anger than the statue ever did. The quarrel is not about bronze. It is about who gets to decide what the common memory contains. A society that cannot argue about its monuments, and adjust them, has not preserved its past: it has frozen the opinions of one earlier generation and called them history.
Answer and explanation
Correct answer: A. History as the fixed opinions of one earlier generation
- Step 1: The final sentence says a society that cannot argue has 'frozen the opinions of one earlier generation'. Step 2. That is the view being criticised. Answer: frozen opinions. Why not the others: teaching, new documents and archives are not criticised.
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