Posted in Teaching Thoughts

Those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it.  Those who teach history are admonished to re-live it.  Those who discuss history are doomed to repeat themselves. 

I was recently involved in an online conversation about a specific book often used to teach elementary history.  During the conversation, I repeated many of the comments I'd made in my blog post of May 11. In that post, I pointed out that one needs to impart their own values to their children before exposing them to materials that may cause them to question these same values.

This conversation, however, brought up a few new points that merited further discussion.

Almost any book of history is written with a bias of some type.  Academic history usually can be categorized into one of many ideologies, including socialism, Marxism, feminism, or imperialism (among many others). 

And, while we'd like to think that history books written for children are "just the facts," the reality is that they exhibit bias as well. 

The reason is two-fold.  First, with all of the stories to be told of human history, how does one choose which ones to relate?  Using a "lens" of some sort, either an ideology or theory, to help filter what to tell vs. what to leave out helps narrow the field immensely.

Secondly, every author has his or her own bias.  Many authors writing for history texts for children in the late 19th and early 20th century were Christian and understood that their readers were likely Christian household.  Thus, their histories show Christianity in a favorable way and make the assumption that their readers are reasonably familiar with Biblical precepts and stories.

The important point, however, is that books have power.  They are sources and symbols of authority, especially for children.  Especially in the early elementary years, I think, children are unable to disassociate the written word about "real life" with real life to some extent. 

We tell them that this is history, a true re-telling of the events that came in the many centuries before they were born.   We want them to view books as sources of knowledge and information that can be trusted.

Children hear us say that books are important and can tell us about the past.  This understanding, however, leads to a facile form of trust within the reader as well.  It's easy for them to think, "It's a true book, so what Mr. _____ says is also true."

Early elementary students aren't at the age to question something they've just read, nor do they have the foundation to do so.  (Granted, some of the college students I've taught can't do this either....) 

Which leads to my other line of thought.

One of the major advantages to homeschooling is that we can allow our children to disagree with the books.  Sounds simple, but try doing this in a public school classroom.  We've found "errors" in various books - especially when we've read multiple books on a topic. 

Assuming that a public school student has the luxury to explore a topic through multiple books outside of a textbook, few students are going to be comfortable challenging information that they believe to be inaccurrate or incorrect.  And the teacher would probably be concerned about confusing students too much to discuss such things.

The homeschool setting is a safe place for children to question what they read on all fronts. 

Can we use these books to teach our students if they don't fit our worldview?  Most decidedly yes.  But, we have to also help them to see the bias, instruct them in our views, and keep the dialogue going.