History: What Works?

We have spent a great deal of time on what methods and materials should comprise a quality history curriculum. Should it be taught with biographies or historical fiction? Does it require a text? Are texts really trustworthy? Are texts boring? There are many points of view. We chose the materials that best suited our four basic curriculum requirements: content, quality, ease of use, and cost. We will try to explain our course in terms of what we did not choose, what we did, and why.

THE PROBLEM WITH HISTORICAL FICTION
First, we do not believe in teaching with historical fiction. Fiction is not real, and a history student has no idea how much of what he reads is history and how much is fiction. Hence, his ideas of history will be based on many misconceptions that were only fiction in the first place.

THE PROBLEM WITH BIOGRAPHIES
At first glance, biographies seem like a very reasonable medium through which to gain historical knowledge. But, having read and evaluated many biographies over the last twenty years, we still have precious few in our catalog. We have found that the vast majority of biographies often depict the person, place and time that the author wishes the reader to see, rather than offering the less appetizing reality. Often, they simply reflect the author’s personal agenda. The biography becomes a "factual" medium to promote the author’s philosophies. Most biographies we have seen written for children might as well be fiction. Many read more like adventure stories, usually contain minimal facts, and often amend those. A young student, being a blank slate, could easily gain more wrong ideas about history than correct ones.

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES ARE AT LEAST BETTER
We like to read things written by historical figures themselves. Knowing something about who they are helps us know how accurate their biographers are being. The most reliable source, by far, is the writings of the actual person. From them we get the best idea of who a person is. We can also learn many things about the time in which the person lived, but what will we know of the course of history through these little excerpts?

CONTINUITY
History should have some continuity. It provides a certain balance to the student which helps put things in perspective. Using any of these three methods, one might need to read hundreds of those little "pockets" of history to get a sense of the whole. So, though they may certainly become interesting supplements, we feel that it is unlikely that they can effectively replace a solid history text.

WHAT ABOUT HISTORICAL ACCURACY?
Historical accuracy is very important, and, thus we wondered if we could get that from history textbooks. Unfortunately, from many we could not. We found one modern text that was so biased it actually taught that President Reagan was a mean man that hated children because he abolished the hot lunch program—a program that created so much slush money that some teachers were receiving a signing bonus per child!

We really wanted a text that stuck primarily to basic facts, and did not lean wrongly in any direction, if possible. Some texts totally over-christianize the story of our nation’s beginnings and the men involved. We feel that parents endanger their credibility with their children to use such texts. The children may later come across other factual research materials, or read the writings of the actual personages, themselves, and, in the light of such misrepresentation, wonder what other falsehoods they have been taught.

RESULTS
We looked at current materials. We looked at older materials. We considered producing materials. We finally decided on Bob Jones texts for several reasons. They are straightforward and factual, and do not really embellish or christianize people. We were pleased to find the texts to be clear about such things as the fact that the Civil War was over secession, and had nothing to do with slavery. We liked the fact that they were straightforward about who and what the founding founders were. There is even an explanation of what a deist is, and what a Unitarian is.

Also, they incorporate geography, culture and economics with the history. This feature tied history into these other subjects, making one text serve several subjects, and, we felt, gave the child a better feel for events and why they took place. This is a nice feature because, especially in a home school environment, and especially in non-foundational subjects, time is a big factor.