I did an exercise similar like this before and I never had realized how much text books put a "spin" on things until I completed the exercise. Each text book author or group of authors has a perspective about the topic in history, which leads the students who doesn't know about the different perspectives and interpretations to believe whatever they read. Like Nick said in his post, students should be taught young that everything in life is going to have a certain perspective and interpretation so "that are not ignorant to the idea that everything they have ever been shown has its own perspectives, interpretations, and sometimes overwhelmingly present biases". With this being said, I also don't think that students should have to learn from one text book while they are in high school. I think that they teacher should have a variety of text books for the students to look at so they get different perspectives for each piece of history. Every text book presents the facts correctly, but the reader needs to ask the question of what piece of the story is missing. I think Peter had a point when he said, "Now I find myself second guessing a lot of writing in the sense that I know there must be some sort of other side." After doing this exercise, I know for now on that I am going to always be asking questions about what the author could have possibly left out.
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