Every human society, past and present, has its own values and ways of thinking, and they are often very different from our own. Avoiding anachronism means understanding the past on its own terms. Exercising critical judgment about what you read and hear. Rather, it means that you should always weigh and consider the validity of what you have been told, in light of the source's possible biases and the strength of its argument. The historian, like a judge, has to weigh and consider his or her sources and decide whether they are reliable.
History is imagination disciplined by evidence.
Historians want to know not only what happened in the past, but why it happened and what its consequences were. Historical sources are the building blocks of historical explanation, but they must be interpreted. If your high-school history classes involved nothing more than reading the textbook, listening to the teacher, memorizing names and dates, and regurgitating these facts in papers and tests, you are in for a surprise. History is much more interesting than that. Your goals for the course You have just read my goals for the course.