My history professor shut down a debate over a simple number

Last semester in my US History 201 class, I brought up that only about 25% of colonists actually supported the American Revolution, and the rest were neutral or loyalist. The professor cut me off and said that statistic was 'revisionist' and not appropriate for class discussion. I found that number in a book called 'A People's History of the American Revolution' by Ray Raphael, which cites data from historian John Shy. She told me to stick to the textbook, which barely mentioned loyalists at all. It felt like she was more interested in protecting a certain story than letting us explore the full picture. Has anyone else run into a professor who just refused to let you mention a specific fact or figure?

2 comments

2 Comments

jake19123d ago

Hang on though, that 25% figure is a bit off from what I've seen. John Shy actually estimated about 20% of white male colonists were active patriots, with another 20% as loyalists and the rest trying to stay out of it. So it's not that the professor was totally wrong to push back, but she definitely handled it badly by just shutting you down instead of talking about how historians disagree on those numbers. A good teacher would have welcomed the chance to show how even basic facts get debated, not told you to shut up and stick with the textbook. That textbook probably skips all the messy parts because it wants to tell a clean story about brave patriots vs evil redcoats, which is exactly why we need people like Shy who dig into the real dirt.

jordancoleman23d ago

Yeah but 20% versus 25% isn't really that big of a deal when you think about it. We're arguing over 5% of people from 250 years ago based on guesses from old records that probably missed half the story anyway. And honestly who cares if the textbook simplified things a bit? Most people just want to know the basic outline of what happened not get bogged down in all the messy details about who sat on the fence. Like yeah it would be cool if the teacher was more open but she probably had a lesson plan to get through and didn't want to spend 20 minutes debating random numbers from one guy's research.