M2: Historical Criticism Learning Activity 3

Acquiring skills of critical examination of information. Assess yourself with the following
cases. What would you think or do if presented with the following situations?
a. A person selling a bar of gold approached you. The person says it is pure gold
and showed you a shining, gold-colored metal bar. He gave you a price and will
turn over to you the gold bar if you would give him the money.

If I am the one in the situation and I am interested in buying gold bars, I

would first check if the person selling it is really trustworthy. I will give him questions
where is it came from, why is he selling the gold bar and observe how he really
knows about the item. Buying a gold bar isn’t something we should think carelessly
because it is not cheap, I would examine it and research well about the real gold
bar and test it out on the item he/she is trying to offer. But if I am someone who
isn’t really interested in buying a gold bar I would refuse immediately because it is
suspicious to see someone selling it and approached people, also it is not easy to
identify fake from original if I don’t really have the interest I would not try besides if
something is suspicious it is prone to being a scam.

b. A person tells you that a member of your family met an accident and asks you to
meet him with a certain amount of money as down payment for the hospital bill.

In this situation, I will ask him questions about the identity of the member of
the family he/she is talking about. If I am still not convinced of the answer, he/she
is giving me I will try to contact that certain member of my family to see if someone
is going to answer. I will also first go to the hospital he/she said to clarify if it is true
that my family member is there.

c. Somebody came out in the media accusing another person to be a crook.

If I saw it in the media, I won’t believe it without proof that the person is
crook. There are a lot of false accusation in the media and we shouldn’t believe
everything that we see without verification of what really happened. We should first
look at the intention of the person who are accusing another person. Maybe he/she
is doing it to benefit himself or he/she is a known person who likes to accuse
others.