Combining history with critical thinking

Have historians overemphasized the slavery issue as a cause of the Civil War?

That’s the question posed to four Cheney High School students in instructor Steve Arensmeyer’s AP U.S. History class on Friday, Jan. 20 — two tasked with defending the argument and two opposing it in a debate in front of the class.

And that isn’t the only debate topic Arensmeyer has presented his students. Among 31 total subjects, students can pick things like “Was the Confederacy defeated because of its ‘Loss of Will?’” or “Did the Bank War cause the Panic of 1837?” or perhaps “Was the Mexican War an exercise in imp...