I feel like this is pretty good exposition for a closing chapter.

I feel like this is pretty good exposition for a closing chapter.

From “Six Essential Techniques for the Indispensable Tutor” by Professor Ara Dalaasia

History lends a veneer of inevitability to the past. Education is a large part of this, as we are taught in a context of getting answers correct, memorizing key facts that mattered about the outcome, and naming influential figures. As I prepare young minds for politics, I present history across two sides; what could have happened, and what did, in the end, occur. I feel it is critical for the minds that will shape our future to understand that the swirling mass of successes and failures upon which decisive events rest could have produced other outcomes that would seem equally unavoidable. I teach them to distrust certainty, interrogate inevitability, and consider alternatives. Only then can the news of the day connect with interpretation of the past—only through the diaphanous veil of ‘what could have been.’