History

I have recently had some disagreements with a family in the Resource Center over how American History should be taught. I thought it might be able to start a new thought-provoking thread here -- or at least an opportunity to stop talking about math! :-)

Here are 3 opposing ideas for how history should be taught. Your choice:

1. Politically Correct History. The idea here is that it is necessary to stress the contributions made by minorities and women, because these have been ignored in the past.

As the mother of two daughters, I consider this important. Written history has shorted the contributions of women and minorities. Fortunately, there is some excellent research and writing being done on the roles of the historically under-represented.

As a woman, I can relate, for example, to the hardships of women who were trying to keep the family farm afloat while the men were off fighting. Or to the specific difficulties of preparing for childbirth on the American frontier.

2. Patriotic History. The idea here is that everything about America must be presented in the best possible light.

Well, I think patriotic history is also important. I think it's important to present the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, to connect my children with the ongoing struggle for freedom and fairness that is at the base of the American ideal. And I think that patriotic history can walk hand in hand with the contributions of women and minorities. Certainly Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman, Prudence Crandall, Margaret Sanger and many, many others were working from a deeply moral, deeply American set of values.

3. Honest History. The idea here is that the most important thing is to be absolutely honest about everything: both good and bad are seen without trying to hide or cover-up anything, or place undue stress on less important things.

All history is biased and edited. One can attempt to be fair, to try to present a balanced view of history. I would think that most people would attempt to do so. However, history is told by the people who survived, by the ones who could write, by those who won the wars. And we filter the history through our own biases. I'd like to shift here from the idea of what to teach about history to the idea of which sources are good for learning history. History was one of my great loves as an adolescent and I've developed some ideas about how best to go about learning it.

First of all, history books, even at the college level, are generally hopeless. You might want to have one or two around simply for the timeline, but they tend to be dull, watered down and full of insipidity.

Various sorts of historical novels can be both fascinating and accurate. What's more, the writers are often concerned with the details of how people lived and dressed in previous times. Good historical fiction is well researched. There is a huge amount of historical fiction available for children. Morganne already loves it.

Biographies are a really good way to get closely acquainted with historical figures. Reading several different biographies on the same individual can give you an idea of how historical bias works. There are some wonderful children's biographies.

Every once in a while, you can pick up an original source. Diaries, explorer's logbooks, etc. These are truly fascinating because they were written at the time and clearly show the biases of the time. It's interesting how explorer's logbooks dwell on things such as food, chilblains, boils, prickly pears, mosquitoes and so forth. The maps in some of these original sources are fascinating as well.

There's also a genre of books that are essentially research papers. I have one on the history of knitting in America, one on 17th century women in Britain, one on the history of childbirth in America and a few others.

Old newspapers and magazines can also be fascinating.

My essential approach to history is to welcome an eclectic mix of books, maps, stories and ideas into our lives and to let the children steep in them as much as they like.