Holy shit. That's a hell of an assignment for 14 year olds. Military historians and experts today debate the efficacy of the nuclear strikes and the jury is still out on if they were better than not.

[–] Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social 10 points 7 months ago

I had a really great teacher. She was very much about us learning from original sources and thinking critically about the historical context of them.

My 11th grade history teacher, on the other hand, showed us Monty Python and the Holy Grail as part of our study of the medieval period.

[–] Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip 3 points 7 months ago

im not too suprised, had the same topic for debate back in highschool in 11th grade. Thuradays were debate days which was always themed on what part of history the class was on. the debates werent about what what you believed in, but was used as a tool to get students to study the reasoning on both sides.

ill put a disclaimer that it was a very demanding and difficult class (id argue harder than half of my college classes), but people went into it because of two things, it prepared any student for college, and it had the highest AP passing score at the school, so it was a tried and true method.