Historiography

What is historiography and why is important?

Most of us don't think much of historiography or can even spell it.  After all, history is not what happened. History is what someone says happened.

However, students enjoy our classes much more if they have a grasp of "the study of history" or how to make sense of historical events. For example, students enjoy learning the whys of history much more than they enjoy memorizing facts and dates. They learn to use what they know combined with real situations to examine what they are told with a skeptical eye.

A fantstic example is the change in textbooks over the past 50 years. When I was in school, they only had papyrus rolls! But in the 1950s and 1960s most popular history books described few African Americans and Native Americans except in an occasional box on the side of a page. The curriculum focused on the exploits and accomplishments of white men, and left out in any meaningful way the accomplishments of most women, ethnic groups, and non-white, American born people. If you are looking for ways to make your curriculum more accurate, see James W Loewen's Teaching What Really Happened: How to Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited About Doing History.