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There is no shortage of controversial periods, especially in American history,that provide big challenges to history teachers. How do we discuss the religiousintolerance in the Salem Witch Trials, for example, without offending Christiansensibilities? Then there is our over-200-year experience with African slaverythat tore our country apart in a four-year blood bath of the Civil War and itslegacy of Jim Crow and the Civil Rights era. And don't forget our shameful historyof maltreatment, broken treaties and cultural extinction of Native Americantribes.

Take the three foregoing examples, here are some suggested teaching approachesthat might help students adopt an impartial view (or at least a contextualunderstanding) of historical events. The goal is to get the students to suspendjudgment without compromising principle. The empowerment comes throughunderstanding, learning history's lessons and absorbing the legacy of it all.

THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS

Christians today might have difficulty fathoming the superstition and firm beliefof the role of Satan in everyday Puritan lives of 17th-Century Massachusetts. TheSalem Witch Trials of 1692 were those beliefs writ large. The resulting suspicion,hysteria, and unbelievable victimization of innocent people provide a fantastic

lesson, and one that was learned by the founders of our country: the benefits ofseparating Church and state. Everyone can agree that that was a lesson worthlearning and is still applicable today.

SLAVERY AND THE CIVIL WAR

Students today wonder how Thomas Jeffferson could believe All men are createdequal, but own slaves. Also, how could anyone stomach allowing states to counttheir slaves as 3/5 of a person for the purpose of representation. Descendants ofslaves today can justifiably feel victimized and angry over their ancestors'bondage and exclusion from America's charters: The Declaration of Independence andour Constitution.

What lessons of empowerment can we get from slavery? Had our founders not agreedto accept slavery, and, in fact, not even discuss it, there would have been noUnited States. Slavery was the first of many compromises that formed our country,but would undo our unity when the compromises unraveled. That unraveling was theCivil War, and the Civil War came because our founders refused to address slavery.So slavery is the profound underpinning of our country's history. Knowing that isa tremendously empowering thing that connects all Americans in a country far moreunited today.

NATIVE AMERICANS AND THE DEBT WE OWE

There are a number of empowering lessons we can draw from the unhappy experiencesof Native Americans. First, they were victims of an ever-expanding and unstoppable

westward movement of our country. The Civil War settled the question of where therailroads would go (North) and whether or not slavery would follow settlement (itwould not). By the end of the Civil War, Native Americans had been pushed as faras they were willing to go. To make a long, sad story short, they were rounded up,placed on reservations, and encouraged to integrate into white society. All thisoccurred after they had secured treaties and promises from our government thatNative lands would be protected and guaranteed.

The empowerment of knowing and recognizing this mistreatment lies in recognizingthe fallibility of conventional wisdom. The notion was that the Native Americanswere people who needed to be civilized and incorporated into white society. The

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pictures of the sad faces of native children forcibly enrolled in boarding schoolsin the East and forbidden to speak their native language are telling reminders ofthose misguided efforts.

THE EMPOWERMENT OF KNOWING THE TRUTH

The old saying that everyone is entitled to their opinion, but not their ownfacts, is as true in teaching history as anything else. Our history is a

conglomeration of documents, illustrations and writings of historiographers, whohave sometimes injected opinion and bias into the facts. Today's publicist couldbe yesterday's history writer. We need to teach our students one simple fact thatAbraham Lincoln recognized. It is this: People tend to behave in a way that makesperfect sense to themselves. The job of learning the truth is finding out why thebehavior of long-dead people made sense to themselves and their followers.