I remember one class I was in where we were given excerpts from four different textbooks, two American and two British. It was about the Boston Massacre.
All four told a slightly different version of the events, and they could not agree on who fired first and whether it was an accidental discharge of a firearm or if someone fired at the enemy. We even looked at how they used different words to describe things, often giving a different connotation about what happened: revolutionaries or rebels; loyalists or traitors; etc.
With history, you can't believe a single source because it always has its own perspectives and bias. The best history classes teach things from multiple perspectives, not one, and teach the students to think for themselves rather than blindly accepting someone's narrative.
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narratives #
education #
teaching
