If this is how historians all write-- using subjective/ambiguous statements/evidence with emphatic value judgments attached, I mean-- then I think that DD is probably doomed in this class. I also begin to see very clearly why physical scientists regard this kind of "scholarly activity" with such ill-concealed disdain.
Good historians do NOT write this way. History resembles the hard sciences in some important ways, in that you have to gather data and provide evidence to support your conclusions. Many writers follow this process. Like the sciences, people can distort the facts or cherry-pick among them to make fraudulent points.
Is the teacher a historian or an educator?
Again, the stuff I've read here sounds like arbitrary edumacator babble. I think you need to write to this guy's boss. He CANNOT hold different students to different standards while handing out the same grades in the same class.
