It took me a good two years as a homeschooling teacher to define my plan for teaching history. During that time my children received lessons in history, just not as coherently or completely as I would have liked.
My problem centered around competing methodologies for presenting the tremendous timeline of human events.
One perspective says to teach history chronologically, reviewing and adding detail as the student progresses through school.
Another says to start with the established biblical history and teach out from there.
Another says to start with the history of your community, then expand to your state, then your country and then to the world.
Another says to teach several different eras at the same time and leave it to the child to sort out what happened when.
I think there were a couple more variations on all these themes that I dismissed because they were too convoluted for me to decipher.
In the end, I chose the chronological method with occasional forays into American history as it seemed necessary, i.e. American Revolution, Geo. Washington, et al once we approached the Fourth of July or the Pilgrims as we got closer to Thanksgiving.
It seems to be working and the best part, to me, is that I'm less likely to leave any gaps. It's hard to avoid the history of, say, Africa when you have to contemplate the ancient Egyptians, early Christians, the rise of Islam, or the impact of black slavery on the New World following Columbus' expeditions.
The same goes for the history of pretty much any place else because, as I've learned, the histories of all the countries are intertwined to such an extent that we really can't teach about one or the other in isolation. I maintain the same is true for any group of people, i.e. Black History Month or Hispanic History Month.
Why can't the schools simply teach history warts and all and weave back together the incredible story of our species' time on earth? I think too many kids come away with a fragmented and possibly inaccurate understanding of how one culture impacted another and how those eventually impacted a third and so on. I know I did and after 12 years of public school and another 4.5 of college I still had a hard time placing major events and key figures in their proper order. I also lacked a deeper understanding of the consequences and their effects.
Context is everything, and unless or until we start teaching all children the circumstances in which historical figures lived and worked and created, until we tell the rich and colorful stories behind the people who made history, we're simply stuffing our kids full of trivia.
It might win them some money on a game show someday, but it won't do much to help them think intelligently about the deeper issues so desperately in need of thoughtful examination.
I'll post a list of my all-time favorite history resources for school-age students in an upcoming 'blog entry. Prepare to be thrilled!
2 comments:
I have also struggled with how to teach history; I chose a similar approach. Sometimes I feel like I'm missing something or maybe get ahead of myself too quickly. What do you use, if you don't mind sharing?
Hi Sarah!! I'm actually tackling history with a rather eclectic assortment of stuff.
First, since we're slogging through ancient stuff (starting with Greece)we're doing a lot of lapbooking. My girls just finished up a one-folder kit I made myself on four notable ancient Greek astronomers. They are also using the Evan-Moor Publishers History Pockets -- Ancient Greece. In conjunction with that we have the two comprehensive Usborne Books encyclopedias on Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome plus a gazillion books on everything from Socrates to the lost city of Atlantis. I also have a cool set from Memoria Press that uses the beautiful book of Greek/Roman myths by Edgar and Ingri d'Aulaire. I use it with my oldest and my younger student sits in for the story only. I've just recently completed for sale my own 57-page notebooking page set based on Jeanne Bendick's book, "Archimedes and the Door of Science," a great read with LOTS of ancient Greek history, science, and more. I loved it so much I decided to make the notebooking set to go with it! My two oldest are also finishing up Vol. 1 of Story of the World but they are taught this by another mom in our homeschool co-op. It moves a lot faster through the ancients than we do at home. :o)
I've discovered the most interesting way to teach history of any era is to find good books about it -- I've yet to find a formal textbook that rocks my world and believe me, I've looked.
Thanks again for reading my 'blog.
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