But changing the past is exactly what historians (and journalists and celebrities and movies and politicians) do. The past is not a monolithic, unchangeable set of facts. Everyone has their own past, even when they share experiences. Putting these facts together to support interpretations isn’t just an activity of historians – we all do it in our own lives as part of sense-making. Every reinterpretation of the past changes it.<\/p>\n
2. People in the past were less knowledgeable than we are and things were less convenient\/hygenic\/beautiful than now. 3. History is the story of progress.<\/strong><\/p>\n Even apart from the idea that not everyone believes in the Judeo-Christian idea of progress, if you study long-term historical trends, you start to notice a pattern of steps forward followed by steps back, then steps forward again. This is true whether you are of a liberal, radical or conservative bent – sometimes things get “better”, but then worse again. Women’s role in society is a great example. More actively public in the 1910s and 1920s, less in the 1930s, more in the 1940s, less in the 1950s, etc. Similarly, with every “advance” there is something lost. To stay on the birth control topic, the advent of the pill made contraception easier, but as hormonal contraception because cheaper and more popular women lost the knowledge of their anatomy, which had been necessary with other methods.<\/p>\n I not only share these perspectives with students, but use them myself. Perhaps that’s what makes me skeptical of new technologies, and attached to some old ones (not out of nostalgia, but because they are more useful).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Students of history come to class with many preconceptions, as evidenced by the popularity of books revealing the lies they were told in K-12 classrooms. Here are three of the most popular, and why they are myths. 1. You can’t change the past But changing the past is exactly what historians (and journalists and celebrities […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"pessarysheath\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/pessarysheath.jpg?resize=63%2C250&ssl=1\")
\n<\/strong>
\nThis is called presentism<\/em> – assuming that what’s in the present represents the best of all possible worlds, the result of millennia of progress. I have an ad from the turn of the 20th century for a “pessary sheath”. Made of rubber, this contraceptive device was 2-in-one. Rolled down it was a condom, and rolled up it was a cervical cap. Washing with soap made it hygenic, cost effective, and reusable. Today I’d need to buy a pack of expensive condoms and get fitted by a doctor for a cap not covered my insurance. Food tasted better before synthetic chemical fertilizer. Medical knowledge from long ago is continually being revived – consider\u00a0herbal medicines, midwifery, and electricity therapy. Not convinced? Watch the sales of Oscillococcinum when the next flu epidemic hits.<\/p>\n