This is primarily for Mary.

My father was a university history professor and a department head for many years. He was one damned fine teacher, and he built a department of damned fine teachers (who then taught me, so I know this to be true). This was his policy, as best I can articulate it:

Teach about trends, movements, cultures, and principles; abjure memorization. Make sure that your students understand what happened; why it happened; to whom it happened; and how it interacted with what else happened -- earlier, at the same time, and later. Don't waste your time or your students' time requiring them to memorize facts that they could easily look up in a book -- just make sure they know how to use a library (and, these days, the Internet) and that they can tell a reliable source from a dubious one.

Your teacher is probably now resident in the same circle of hell as the one who told my very dyslexic husband (when, as a junior in high school, he finally mastered enough reading skills to develop a love for the poetry of Robert Browning and proudly announced this to said teacher) that "a liking for Browning is a sure sign of a second-rate mind."

Claire