A bit on History.

While I think it is important to learn from History, I'm not quite sure I trust it. For all I know, none of it ever happened and the day I was born the Earth was put in motion and given a backstory and animals and people and trees....Okay, so I don't really believe that, but I can't prove that's not the case either.

I find it strange when a school brags about getting new History books because they're more accurate.  You'd think the older ones would be better because they're closer in time to the actual events.

In high school I remember being taught by boring teachers.  History is a collection of great stories, why do some of the most boring people go into that?  Get a great storyteller to teach the damn class.  Hire some Irish pub regulars or something.

Anyway, in high school I remember learning about the Salem Witch Trials (should they all be capped like that?).  We were told about how the religious nuts thought these people were practicing witch craft and went into a panic and killed the "witches".  When I got to college, I was told that crying "witch" was a convenient way of getting the people's support but really the largest factors were socioeconomic between two areas.  The people that were killed were from the wealthier side and those that were killing were angry and jealous.  

My question is, why wasn't I taught the second story in high school?  Isn't that kind of important to know that people were labeled "witch" as an easy way of disposing of political enemies?  Why teach the Disney version at all?  What are we getting out of History if we're not told the whole story?  

They say we never learn from History, but you kind of have to be taught it properly first, wouldn't you think?