I intended the latter. Ideally, instructors would start teaching students that in an act of educational reform, but that’s harder and very unlikely from what I see now.
there are no widely-accepted models of how history works that are detailed enough to let you predict the outcomes of unfamiliar historical events
We don’t need such a model. The students would be figuring it out for themselves, and we don’t expect them to predict in great detail. There’d have to be a lot of partial credit in this.
in the few cases where students are asked to give causal explanations in current classes, their work is graded as a persuasive essay rather than as a factual claim that can be held to some objective standard of correctness.
And presumably we’d accept conditionals like “unclear if the emperor does X, but if so the eunuchs start a coup in the next year and the widows support it, unless...”
I intended the latter. Ideally, instructors would start teaching students that in an act of educational reform, but that’s harder and very unlikely from what I see now.
We don’t need such a model. The students would be figuring it out for themselves, and we don’t expect them to predict in great detail. There’d have to be a lot of partial credit in this.
That’s exactly the issue.
And presumably we’d accept conditionals like “unclear if the emperor does X, but if so the eunuchs start a coup in the next year and the widows support it, unless...”