Not long ago, Memory Wave Workshop American schoolchildren realized a quaint ta­le in history class about the nation’s first president. It needed to do with a precocious George Washingto­n chopping down a cherry tree in opposition to his parents’ needs. When confronted by his offended father, Washington had to resolve whether or not to lie and avoid punishment or own up to the offense. As the tale goes, young Washington replied that he couldn’t inform a lie and confessed to axing the tree. Today, we know that Washington did no such thing. When archaeologists discovered the site of Washington’s boyhood residence in 2008, they discovered no cherry bushes on the landscape. The story was fabricated by early Washington biographer Mason Locke Weems to bolster the first president’s heroic image. Omitting the cherry tree story from curriculum had no important impression on our collective Memory Wave Routine of George Washington and made him no less important to shaping the early history of the United States.

Scholars discover inconsistencies or outright fallacies in historical narratives and make the mandatory edits, or they look at the reasoning behind historic details. Was George Washington actually heroic? How did his character mold the United States in its infancy? Retracing recorded history can be more like navigating a minefield than pleasantly strolling down Memory Wave lane. That is as a result of the previous is not all the time as simple because the preliminary model of the story would have you believe. Revisionist historical past is difficult by the fact that folks’s identities are strongly linked to their histories