Thank God I had a good AP History teacher in HS that introduced me to The People's History of the United States!
Or "Lies My Teacher Told Me."
I had one teacher who would bring copies of newspapers from the period were were studying. We would read the text book, then read the various nations' major newspapers before and after the event. The newspapers in 1914 Europe were a great example. So were those from 1939. He also brought diarists' excerpts. We read the high level summary in the textbook then looked at source material.
The last two weeks of the class, he brought in two historical essays on the same topic. They were diametrically opposed. One essay was pretty glossy and well-documented and looked pretty fab. He broke us into two groups and we had to go look up the citations. The fab essay was totally fabricated. The other essay was totally right on its cites. We then had to go out and find independent sources for the assertions in each essay. Turns out, the fabricated essay was right after all.
