Does the Evidence Support Your Ideas?

One of the most important skills we can build in history class is the skill of testing our ideas.

It’s easy to think of school as a place where we’re supposed to “get it right.” Like there’s a set of correct answers, and your job is to say them out loud or reproduce them in an essay. But that’s not really what learning is about. Especially in history.

Real learning — the kind that lasts — happens when we challenge ourselves. When we put our ideas on the table and ask, Does the evidence back this up? It happens when we take an informed guess, or build a theory, and then go back to the documents, the facts, the context — and see if it holds up.

That process takes guts. It means being willing to be wrong. It means realizing that the first idea you had might not be the strongest one. And that’s not failure — that’s growth.

I train my students to think like historians. That means working with incomplete evidence, asking tough questions, forming arguments, and always — always — being willing to test what we think against what the sources actually say.

A note to my students…

Some days, you’ll make a claim and someone else will disagree. Good! Now we’ve got a real discussion. Now we can dig into the material and figure out what’s really going on. That’s not an argument — that’s collaboration. That’s how we build knowledge.

It’s also how you grow into a better thinker. The more you test your ideas, the stronger they become. Or — and this is just as important — you might realize they need to be revised. Either way, you’re doing real intellectual work.

So, here’s my challenge to you: don’t aim to be perfect. Aim to be engaged. Curious. Courageous. Test your ideas. Be willing to adjust.

That’s how real learning happens.

With compliments,

Keith