Overview of our First Socratic Circle

The Socratic Circle's main goal was to make people understand by asking questions to collectively seek a deeper understanding of complex ideas. From these conversations I learned a great deal about the concept of an 'unbiased textbook' and how the Texas History Curriculum has a very conservative textbook--making it biased and non-informative to the reader. I learned that even though the history curriculum is biased towards something, I learned that the bias is a view, an opinion that we should respect because after all every view is different and unique in their own way. Both of the articles presented were mostly informative of the mixing of views around how history is taught, how it should be taught, and how we learn from history. My group accomplished three main points: (1) History is never accurate since it is a collection of knowledge of the past that the present has not been through or witnessed (2) History teaches us to not repeat itself, but after 9/11, the war in Iraq, and new President Obama (who brought a surge of democratic or liberal views to the US)-people in areas like Texas wanted to create a resurgence of conservative views in their children's education. This being my opinion that history does repeat itself. (3) No matter how many documentaries there are from the past or even the present, the creator's opinion or view will always be a key component to their recollection of that time. The same goes with famous people like Mother Teresa, who devoted herself to civilian volunteer work, but still to this day, the Nobel Prize board members have not decided whether Mother Teresa should be declared a priest or not. Some people believe that living voluntarily throughout harsh times with people who had leprosy for 35 years is not enough to pronounce Mother Teresa into the priesthood while others think that she is more than qualified. 
All of these points pertained to George Orwell's 1984 in that these main points reflected the many themes that Winston and O'Brien go through. From the dangers to totalitarianism to the dangers of psychological manipulation, physical control, technology, history, and information/language; Orwell sculpted a world that only happens everyday-however subtle.