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Welcome to the March Newsletter. We had plenty of response back for last month's topic, 'Educational Materials', so this newsletter includes some of those letters. We have also received a lot of links recently to sites about home education and other alternatives to school, so they are all included at the bottom of the page, if you would like to take a look at them.

This month's topic is another very interesting one: History. Of all things to study it is, I find, one of the most fascinating, because through it one can learn so much. 

But of course it all depends on how it is studied - when it comes to history, learning can easily become brainwashing! History books are often so biased, it is hard to find out the truth of what something was really like.
I have found that the best way to study history, is to firstly begin when one is old enough to question what one reads, rather than just accept it; secondly to not just rely on modern accounts, but to go to the sources, because even if these older books are biased, they have such an out of date view, one is not swayed by it; and thirdly, to study history from all around the world.
In every country, the history of that particular country is studied in the most detail, and made out to be the most important. Every country thinks or has thought that every other country is inhabited by barbarians! And every country believes or has believed that the life of one of their countrymen is more important than anyone else's! When one studies a lot of histories one realises that not every place can be the most important, and it becomes clear to see that human beings are essentially the same. Nobody is a savage, nobody is a barbarian, nobody is inferior, everyone is equally important.

So I hope you enjoy the article below, as well the Jamboree updates. There is a story from history, about the life of Michelangelo, a traditional story from Brittany, which all the family is sure to love, and how to make little boats from cork that can be sailed in the water. You can read about the updates on the homepage of the Jamboree website.

Wishing you a happy March - without too much cold weather!

Wendy

History

I used to assume that history was one of the easiest of all subjects to teach: you simply had to read history books with children, and they would soon learn everything that there was to be known. Fifteen years of teaching my own children at home has made me think again: surprisingly few of the accepted notions about the past stand up to the rigorous questioning commonly applied by growing children, and if one is not careful, one can find oneself being drawn into the uncomfortable position of telling a child that such-and-such is true because everyone says so, rather than because you really believe it to be true.

If your child is working towards an examination, you may find yourself in the even worse position of having to tell them that even though what they are learning does not make sense, they still have to learn it in order to pass their exams.

The problem seems to originate – as is the case with so many aspects of our education system – in the subject being introduced to children at too young an age. If one is discussing history with university professors, or with anyone else that has given the subject serious thought, they will agree that there is hardly any such thing as an established historical fact: every event and every incident is open to different interpretations, depending upon the viewpoint of the person making the observation. This is not, however, an idea that makes sense to young children: if you tell them something, they tend to believe it, and, as a result, any formal attempt to teach history to them is not far removed from brainwashing if started at too young an age.

In the past, it was not customary to burden children with many of the ideas that we now associate with history – dates, battles, ideologies, Kings & Queens, descriptions of chronological events, etc.: instead, the past was presented to them in the form of stories which described the deeds of heroes and heroines, illustrated human strengths and weaknesses and gave an impression of life in different times and places. These stories did not require children to accept a rigid ideas about history, but did allow them to develop an understanding about life and how it was lived in the past.

The sort of things traditionally included in this approach include:

• Stories relating to a child’s own family: The most interesting stories of all to a child are stories relating to their parent’s own childhood: a parent’s reminiscences therefore provide the perfect introduction to a child’s study of the past. If you can link your own early memories to stories that your parents told you about their childhood, and perhaps also to stories that they told about their own parents, then you will also be able to give your children an idea of how life has changed over the past decades.

• Folk tales: Including folk tales in a study of history does tend to incite some historians to fury - because they consider the veracity of these tales to be unproven - but children love to hear stories of folk heroes such as Robin Hood, William Tell, etc., and there is no reason why traditional stories handed down from generation to generation should be given less credence than modern historical ideas.

• Mythology: There is an overlap between folk tales and mythology: figures such as King Arthur and Herakles, for example, feature in both. As with folk tales, myths tend to be discounted by historians because they are not supported by archaeological or written proof, but the fact that they have managed to survive for so long is due to the fact that they have found a resonance with countless people over thousands of years, something that will almost certainly not be the case with the material that makes up the bulk of the modern history curriculum.

• Fairy stories: Fairy stories are not, strictly speaking, historical, but they do paint a picture of how life was lived in the past, and this provides reference material which is useful to a child when they are older and start to think about history for themselves. In most fairy stories, the heroes and heroines are preoccupied with basic tasks such as spinning and weaving, woodcutting, milking the cow, etc.; it is easy to forget that these were the activities which made up the rhythm of daily life, especially when one starts to read dry historical tomes which focus on politics and war. Fairy stories also have the courage to confront moral issues that are of great interest to children but which are often skirted around in the modern school curriculum.

• Stories from history: You can recount stories from history according to your own understanding of them, and in response to your children’s questions. Your version may not correspond exactly with the official version, but this does not matter too much, the important thing is to give your child a chance to start thinking about history and asking themselves questions. In the long run it might be a good thing that they get an early introduction to the way in which historical stories are altered when they pass from one person to another, as this will help to give them the confidence to question the versions that they come across in printed books.

It is difficult to say at what exact age it is appropriate for a child to move on from this oral study of history; it depends upon when they want to start reading history books for themselves and when they are able to start questioning the material that they read to see whether or not it stands up to logical examination. For some children, this might be when they are eleven or twelve years old, for others, when they are older, and for some perhaps when they are younger.

When I started studying history with my children I was already well aware of the danger of presenting the subject in such a way as to lead them to believe that one country, one race, or one set of religious beliefs was inherently better than any other. However, as we spent more time looking into the subject, I realised that even worse than this is the assumption that pervades not only the way history is taught in schools, but also the way in which the media reports life in general, and this is the assumption that we are steadily progressing and therefore inherently superior to people who lived in the past.

Many people are unaware that this idea of progress is itself relatively new – most cultures throughout history have believed the opposite i.e. that people in a bygone age possessed wisdom and understanding superior to themselves. It is difficult to determine from what time exactly this idea of continual progress dates: it seems to have started to gain credence about a hundred and fifty years ago, and to have gathered momentum in the wake of the of technological innovations that changed daily life during the twentieth century. This is not simply an academic question, it has implications in almost every area of life. If history represents an uninterrupted line of progress then we, as modern people, have very little to learn from those who went before us, but if it does not, then we would be mad if we did not take their experiences into account. This is, therefore, the issue that history teaching ought to address before it moves on to any specific detail.

The way that history is taught can be broadly summarised as follows:

• Up until a few thousand years ago people lived in caves and were little better than beasts.

• The development of farming and the growth of cities represented a slight change for the better and there were then brief flashes of a slightly civilised way of life in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome.

• People have only started to really reach their full potential, over the last two hundred of years or so, since they started to invent more complex machines.

Of course, no expert in the subject would ever agree that this was an accurate portrayal of human history, but it is typical of the sort of picture of history that children pick up in school.

This is why it preferable for children to gain some knowledge of other subjects before embarking upon a formal study of history: they have to have sufficient knowledge of the world to be able to decide for themselves whether there really has been steady and significant progress in every field of human endeavour since the beginning of recorded history. For example, they could ask themselves whether or not modern art is better than the work done be the old masters; or whether the popular music of today is better than the popular works composed by people such as Mozart in previous centuries; or whether modern popular drama (such as the soap operas on the television) is really superior to the work of popular dramatists of the past such as Shakespeare or Euripides; or whether they believe that people will be interested in visiting the remains of modern cities in a few hundred years time in the same way that people now want to visit the remains of ancient Athens or ancient Rome.

The conclusion that they are likely to draw from making these sorts of comparisons is that there has been a rapid development in technology over recent years, but there has been no discernable change in any other area of human activity: people today are no cleverer than people in the past, no wiser, no better at doing the most important things in life, and in fact that they are seriously handicapped by a false sense of superiority that prevents them from learning from the past.

When confronted by the problems of modern life – problems such as a breakdown in family life; a threat of terrorism; a sense of inequality and injustice; power falling into the hands of madmen; etc. – people’s lack of understanding of history prevents them from looking to the past to see how other people have dealt with similar difficulties. Instead, a misunderstanding of the nature of progress leads them to believe that these are new problems and that no one in the past has ever had to deal with them before.

Understanding that the people who lived in previous times were essentially the same as ourselves, automatically transforms history into the most interesting and absorbing of all subjects; it also removes the need to try to reduce it to a series of consecutive events culminating in the modern world. It allows the student to study each incident in history on its own merit – i.e. as human beings trying their best to deal with the situation in which they find themselves.

When viewed in this way, the story of history can be picked up and left off whatever manner suits the interests of the student: if they wish, they can move from reading about European history to studying African history, or from Chinese history, to the history of North America.

Instead of trying to trace a thread of events that represents ‘human progress’ the student can try to understand how different people in different times and different places have dealt with issues that are essentially the same. Through this it is possible to develop an intuitive understanding of life and how, at times, there have been communities that have managed to live in peace and prosperity, and at other times, there have been communities that have embarked upon courses of action that have lead to war, famine, and misery.

This raises the question of what the purpose of studying history really is. If you follow the above approach, you would probably have difficulty in passing an exam in the subject – not because you didn’t know what the examiners wanted, but because you would not want to provide those answers - but on the other hand, your studies would give you an insight into the nature and purpose of human life, in the way that a proper study of history would lead us to suppose to have been the purpose of education in times of old.

Gareth Lewis

Letters

I thoroughly enjoyed your article about textbooks. I was just complaining to a friend about the poor quality of the textbooks I've been considering for my 10-year-old son. I'm frequently asked which textbooks we use, and when I explain that we use real books, the response is usually sceptical. Hence my perusal of textbooks to see what we've been missing. Nothing of value!

Your article served as reinforcement - we're on the right track! Thank you.

Hi Gareth - Once again an interesting and informative newsletter.  Thanks to you and Wendy for doing this, your effort is appreciated.

SHARON

Hi Wendy,

I'm a home-ed mum of three and also a freelance writer and journalist. I am running an eight module correspondence course (post/email) in freelance journalism to home-educated children and a similar course in writing your first novel.

If anyone is interested, perhaps you could email me at deborahdurbin@fsmail.net

With thanks and all best wishes,

Deborah

Oh how we all agree with you about the school textbooks. When I mention school books my children cringe and bellow, "Oxford Workbooks"! Actually in my school-fogged mind I quite liked the Oxford Workbooks at the time but I've never had any thanks for using them. I used to peruse school book catalogues and then send for inspection copies. The reading books are some of the most "dumbed down" books I've every seen.

I have an old reading book of mine here - one of the Beacon Readers series, and it's so grown up in comparison. An old school book of my grandmother's was a really informative and compact geography book, giving more practical information than I ever remember in grammar school geography. And an old school book of my father's is full of extracts from famous books and classical poetry, such as the one about Sennacherib whose title escapes me at the moment.

Your letters and comments are welcome. You can send them to Gareth Lewis at the following address, or to me at the address beneath:
gareth.lewis@freedom-in-education.co.uk

wendy@freedom-in-education.co.uk