It’s not news that for over 100 years, history has been taught as little more than a callous exercise in regurgitation and rote memorization, with teachers rewarding how much information students can cram into their already stuffed heads. But as we go farther into the 21st century, with changes almost too numerous to fathom, I find it mindboggling that any teacher would still treat history class as boring preparation for a quiz show. This is no way to make learning about the past relevant and engaging. It really never was.

For deeper insight, I recently reached out to renowned history teacher Bruce Lesh, whose long list of accomplishments includes co-founding the Center for History Education at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, serving as a vice-chair for the National Council for History Education, and being recognized as the 2008 pre-collegiate Teacher of the Year by the Organization of American Historians. At Franklin High School in Reisterstown, Maryland, Lesh champions historical inquiry and the way historians themselves study history. This approach de-emphasizes memorizing mountains of data.

“It’s lecture, textbook, and coverage,” Lesh tells me, characterizing the current state of history instruction. “I think there are islands of innovation and people who are seeing history as a discipline with a particular body of literacy skills and thinking skills embedded in it. But I think the vast majority say copy this down, fill in the blank—that sort of thing.”

In Lesh’s book, Why Won’t You Just Tell Us the Answer?: Teaching Historical Thinking in Grades 7-12, he offers an array of lessons and case studies, like how to introduce historical thinking through Nat Turner’s Rebellion, chronological thinking and causality through the Railroad Strike of 1877, and historical empathy through the Truman-MacArthur Debate. Throughout, Lesh places a premium not on one’s ability to recall cold facts (which most will eventually forget, anyway), but on whether students can read critically, reference appropriate sources, and support an argument with evidence.

“I'm not preparing you to go work in the archives,” Lesh says, noting that in his 21 years in the classroom, he’s taught only one student who went on to earn a Ph.D. in history. “I’m preparing you to make a presentation to a client as to why your proposal to build their building is the best one. My job is to teach you how to make arguments. Arguments are based on the application of evidence, and evidence is gained through analysis of information. That's what we do. We look at historical problems. We build arguments about the questions that we created. We teach you ways to use evidence to support your argument.”