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Originally Posted by Halx
If that was easy enough to accept, consider that even bigger things in history, like the story of your country's independance, your religion, someone else's religion, the rise and fall of past nations, the causes of wars and such... have all undergone a bit of airbrushing to make them more appealing and acceptable. There some things that historians cannot touch, but we still take what they say for granted.
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I'm a Social Studies teacher and I don't sugarcoat history. I let the students know where I think textbooks are failing them, and I try to bring in different perspectives of all events. I always talk about what we can know, can't know, and how we can tell the difference. That is how history should be taught: as a fluid subject that has been altered by time and politics. History is more about how it affects us as a sort of mythology than whether it is true or not - this is scary, but the more you confront that mythology, the more critical thinking and investigation happens... and hopefully that leads to better citizens in the process.