The best education you can give someone is to teach them how to come to their own conclusions, how verify facts and "consider the source" and use information they know is true to evaluate new information.

Nietzsche explored this topic very fully and thoughtfully in the 19th Century. I think leaving him out makes this article a bit weak.

After completing my student teaching in history, I realized I made a big mistake in selecting history teacher as a career!

Of course teaching and reporting on historical events is subjective. It's human nature to put your own spin on events and issues - that's part of teaching history...and how you can teach kids to learn to think for themselves and question where the information in the textbook, website, article, etc. is from. You can use a lousy textbook and still teach the skills of research, analysis, and the rest of Bloom's Taxonomy. This is especially made easier with the web and excellent librarians to help explain primary and secondary sources.

Unfortunately, not many students, teachers, administrators or parents get that and they focus on memorizing dates and names (necessary to some degree, but not as important as the big picture issues like critical thinking, etc.).

The emphasis on memorizing historical events and dates, as well as the realization that I didn't like HS students and they didn't like me, led to my speedy exit of that career!

Two books I will recommend are: The User Illusion and The Sociopath Next Door. The first is a very heavy scientific and philosophical book that makes the case that human consciousness is always a construction of the mind that is formed at least one half second in time after actual reality is occurring. The resulting awareness is thus not strictly a picture of reality because it is both information from the senses as well as anything that the individual needs or wants to see that forms the picture. The second book makes the controversial case that there are at least two entirely different kinds of consciousness within the human species, the small minority being the sociopath who operates entirely without emotions or conscience but is instinctively equipped to mimic these qualities and manipulate those with "normal" consciousness. I put those two ideas together and see that since the motivations and intent are entirely different in the two taxons, and historians are always trying to make sense based on the motivations of "normal" consciousness, that history can never be accurately explained until it becomes accepted that there are more than one kind of human nature.

The first thing I tell my students in HIS 100 (and HIS 101) is that history is a science. Historians will often spend their careers researching and writing about periods in history, presenting their theories and hypotheses to the greater academic community, supported by the facts contained in their research. This evidence is weighed by their peers and commented upon one way or the other. This commentary, based on the theories proposed by the historian, may last for decades, as new generations of historians approach these theories in an ever-changing realm of historical inquiry.

Interpretations of historical events rarely withstands the test of time unscathed. New approaches to ideas bring about new avenues of research into historical events that can potentially clarify old historical ideas. They can also shed old biases, expose poorly interpreted sources or question the validity of source materials altogether.

Which leaves the question: What does all this mean to the canon of history? It means that it is up to the historical inquirer, whether they be scholar or layman, to be vigilant in their work. A good historian applies rigorous critical analysis to any field of historical study. They weigh the validity of interpretive analysis based on the source material and how the historian used that material in their work.

When I teach my students, I always tell them who is responsible for the interpretive history I am teaching. With ancient Greece, I often cite Herodotus as a source for the history I am teaching. Do I acknoweldge his biases? Aboslutely. Do I acknowledge the flaws in his writings? Absolutely. But I also acknowledge that Herodotus was a pioneer in the recording and interpretation of ancient history. Right or wrong, he still contributed a great deal to the origins of historical inquiry and that deserves recognition.

Ultimately, I think the thesis of MacMillan's book is overly dramatic. Interpretation of historical events will always be in dispute, now and forever. As with theories in chemistry, physics, and biology, critical inquiry into historical theory must and always be subject to scrutiny in order for the advancement of history itself to continue.

Our histories are also fabrications, to varying degrees. We reshape our stories to suit our needs. If Diogenes were still alive, he'd still be looking for an honest man.

Didn't we all attend a liberal arts university? I thought the limitations of written history were pretty widely known.

especially in our "culture wars." Most people have no idea of the real history of marriage but firmly believe that they know it all -- and thus repeatedly and passionately make completely unfounded assertions about the institution as reasons to deny same-sex couples marriage equality.

So we live in a strange world where about the only people who know what civil marriage really is today and how marriage has evolved throughout human history are gay people -- who aren't allowed to marry. Sigh.

The kilts and the wedding customs are really very different than the spinning of history. The former are rather harmless constructions, what my ancestors would have called "blarney" (of course, "blarney" might be made up too); the latter is dangerous and deceitful, the mother of all lies.

Come and read the dry scientific treatises of Gary, Greensie-Weensie, Joan, the pink girl, etc and you will know the truth, nothing buth the truth, the unvarnished truth about consEVILervatives and libeGOODerals

I went to college in a buccolic town in Minnesota. One of its claims to fame was that Jesse James, the legendary bank robber, had been apprehended there. This event is commemorated annually on a Sunday in September by a "Jesse James Day" street fair. Yet archival research conducted in the 1970s revealed JJ had actually been apprehended a few towns over. What to do? Well, nothing since this was already part of the town's identity.

When this happens at a national level, however, it enables governments to invoke past incidents of heroism or victimization to mobilize public support to address problems and security issues in the way the present-day leadership wants to tackle them.