History Teachers

In November 1630, John Baker was “whipped for shooteing att fowle on the Sabboth day”; and in June 1631, it was ordered that Phillip Ratliffe should be whipped, have his ears cut off, and be banished “for vttering mallitious and scandulous speeches against the goumt. & the church of Salem.

The inattention paid in the official record to women or indigenous land compels us to force open gaps and bring alternative narratives to light. Without this work, John Winthrop’s will be the only story told in textbooks about this country’s colonial history.

The Puritan freemen may have the loudest voices in the archive, but theirs are not the only narratives being told.

This raises the question: If historians can’t remember these things, why do we require 18- year-olds to know them? These tests stress small bits of information that are impossible to remember in the long term. Historians know something deeper. They know how to evaluate historical documents, how to look at conflicting sources and come to a reasoned judgment—in other words, how to be a citizen in a cacophonous democracy. That is the value-added of studying history and that is what we give short shrift to in our high school history classes.

The knowledge-based economy doesn’t require students to be walking encyclopedias who can recall a piece of information. It requires the ability to sort through conflicting information and come to a reasoned conclusion. We need tests that help us do that.

What are we to think of history? when in less than 40 years, such diversities appear in the memories of living persons, who were witnesses?”[2]