Now that three of my children are mostly done with their homeschooling, I'm so thankful that I still have Joy to homeschool. It gives me a chance to do all the things I learned with the first three and, hopefully, do it even better this time around. Just recently, I've been realizing again how important it is to make history come alive for Joy. Schools and curricula focus on the facts and faces of history, which are important to know, but it is the stories of history that I want Joy to remember. She may forget facts, but she won't forget the stories of men, women, boys, girls, and events that have changed history and that shape our lives even today. Let me just share a couple of thoughts that are on my mind about history.

 

I always come back to biblical history first because it lays the foundation for understanding all of life, and the limited time we have on this earth. Adam and Eve made wrong choices that have affected all people for all times. The history of Abraham gives me a picture of how God chooses people. As he followed God to a new land, he is also an example of how to live a life of faith and adventure. The stories of Joseph, Moses, David, Esther, Mary and Joseph, Jesus, and Peter all help me understand the foundations of my faith. I want Joy, and all my children, to understand that their faith is built on the lives of real people who had to make real choices of how to be stewards of their lives and of their time. The Bible is not just a history book, but is filled with stories of those who believed in God, and who served Him, loved Him, and worshipped Him by the way they lived each day. Their stories are patterns for the stories I want my life to be, and my children's lives.

 

In the same way that the faithful in Scripture had to display courage, reject peer pressure to conform, wait for years to see their dreams and hopes fulfilled, and live for righteousness and for God, I find in them a pattern for my own life, and for my children. I think we all need heroes to give us patterns for work, sacrifice, courage, compassion, nobility, and faith. When I leave biblical history, then, I want to find the same kinds of stories in world and American history. Joy loves stories of people like Florence Nightingale, or Clara Barton, because she can see in those lives what courage and a pioneering life of serving others really looks like. When we read about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, she sees how the ideas of liberty and democracy inspired those men to risk their lives to benefit all of us who would come after them. Marco Polo is an example of adventure and taking risks. St. Patrick is a living picture of compassion and courage in the face of opposition, and the threat of death at the risk of sharing his faith. History also provides good examples of bad character. As I studied the lives of the English Monarchs and European history with my children, they were confronted with selfish motives that corrupted not only individuals and families, but also nations and history. The study of biography, the stories of great people, gets to the human heart of history. These stories grab the imagination of my children, and give then a model to dream about and follow.

 

Contemporary culture offers poor substitutes for the great men and women of history--sports figures, film and television celebrities, fictional and non-fictional anti-heroes, and even fantasy characters.  These "American idols" more often than not are self-absorbed, embarrassingly wealthy, pleasure-seeking, sensual, irreligious, and materialistic. Children who are allowed to spend too much time with these modern "heroes" will find them infecting their values as they fill up the "hero void" in their hearts. As I see that happening all around me in culture, it is a reminder of how hard I need to work to make sure my children are following real heroes of history.

 

I always kept a wardrobe of capes, pretend swords, long dresses of every type, plastic armor, hats, and more so that my own young-and-future heroes could pretend and act out the stories that they learned about in their books. I wanted their hearts and values to be shaped by patterns of truly great people, so that they could better perceive a calling by God on their own lives. How would my children be stewards of their time and resources in this world? How would they leave their mark? One big influence would be that they would learn by reading about real heroes, imagining their stories, pretending to be them, taking them into their own heart. It's important to teach the important facts of history, but don't let that become a substitute for giving the them the heart and soul of history, the stories of real heroes that will change their lives.

 

This is a long post, I know, but you should just get used to it. Once I get writing, it just goes until it's done.