Teaching History
No caring parents want their children to enter adulthood without having at least heard of the pyramids of Egypt or the Himalaya Mountains. After all, a good history or geography curriculum has no such gaps, does it? When it comes to teaching history and geography, many parents have a sense that a complete programme (such as one purchased from a K – 12 curriculum producer) will mean ‘no gaps’, so is the safest way to go.
The fact is, however, that with only one lifetime to live, none of us can do much more than touch on some of what has occurred in human history and learn about some of the magnificent and varied parts of our world. Countless months watching the National Geographic and History channels with Foxtel 24 hours a day still wouldn’t deliver all there is to know.
Charlotte Mason, the English nineteenth century educator, recognised the impossibility of this task. I have found three of her comments particularly helpful for approaching the development of our history and geography curriculum.
1) “Education is the science of relations”
2) Concerning geography: “Let [a child] be at home in a single
region.”
3) Concerning history: “Let [a child] linger pleasantly over the
history of a single man, a short period, until…he is at home in
the ways of that period.”
I would like to explain exactly how these comments recorded here have helped me to jump out of the curricular box into what has been a faster-moving, more invigorating stream of ideas.
Think of what an exciting experience it is when you are introduced to someone you didn’t know before, and before long you realise that this person is someone who has expertise in an area you had always wanted to know about. Perhaps you have visited a new church, or a home schooling group, or are at a party that you were obliged to attend. You were hoping for something more than idle chitchat to pass the time, and experienced a little trepidation as to whether you would enjoy yourself much. Your host or hostess introduces you to a few people and tells just enough about each to enable you to begin a conversation. Before long, you fall into deep conversation with this person whom you hadn’t known before. Your host has long since moved on and your benefactor seems willing to take further time to tell you more about what he knows – about fine art, or archaeology, or WW1 artefacts, or flying. You exchange phone numbers with this new acquaintance and plan to meet again at another time so he can show you his lifelong collection of books or inventions. A relationship which didn’t exist before has begun, and you are enriched by it.
This is what Charlotte Mason said education was all about. It was about parents or teachers introducing their children to all manner of interesting, thoughtful people, both in life and in books, helping them begin the conversation, whetting their appetites in some way, then stepping aside to let the relationship grow. That doesn’t exclude stepping back in again at some point to redirect the conversation or bring it to an end, but it does mean giving a child some time to get to know the person they are reading about without hurrying them along and interrupting with interminable questioning. Charlotte Mason went on to say that “fullness of living and joy in life, depend, far more than we know upon the establishment of these relations.”