Teaching history to homeschool students can be a daunting task for many parents. What do I teach? What dates, periods, and people are important? What will my child be expected to know in college? The fact that so many parents had negative experiences studying history in high school exacerbates the problem.
Most educational programs teach a subject referred to as “Social Studies” in grades K-6, and often through eighth grade. Social Studies is difficult to define, but generally is a combination of history, geography, political science, sociology, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, and other associated liberal arts. In some ways, particularly when dealing with natural phenomena in the study of geography, Social Studies overlaps natural science.
Typically, in the primary grades, the focus of Social Studies begins by focusing on the child and familiarizing him or her with the surrounding environment. An easy way to understand this might be by listening to the Sesame Street song “People in Your Neighborhood.” Children are introduced to the various people with whom they may come into contact—police officers, teachers, bus drivers, store clerks, and the like. As children develop, they are introduced to geographical concepts, such as map reading. However, in the typical U.S. classroom, this involves looking at hypothetical neighborhood maps, rather than “real” maps. Using such maps, students learn basic concepts like the cardinal directions (north, south, east, west) and scale (e.g., one inch on a map correlates to one foot in reality).
While many K-6 educational programs incorporate history into the curriculum incidentally (for example, by reading a story on the life of Harriet Tubman, students learn a bit about the period of slavery in the United States), studying history as we commonly understand “History” does not begin until middle school/junior high (grades 6-8 or 7-8). It is at this point that a student is commonly handed a textbook with a title such as “World History” that includes text describing major historical events in chronological order. The various branches of Social Studies are still taught (e.g., geography is learned by studying the way a map of an area changes over time), but the focus is on learning about important historical events in the order in which they occurred.
The problem that might not really be a problem? Many parents of schoolchildren complain that their fifth- or sixth-grader doesn’t know who wrote the Declaration of Independence (Thomas Jefferson), the date it was signed (July 4, 1776), etc. It is easy to see this as a failing of the educational system. However, the reality is that this information simply hasn’t been covered yet. From an educator’s perspective, it’s a bit like complaining that a cooking novice, who has only just been taught to boil an egg correctly, doesn’t know how to prepare Eggs Benedict.
The problem that might actually be a problem? With each passing year, more and more events are added to the study of history. For example, in the United States of 1900, World War I, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, etc., simply hadn’t happened yet. Teachers and students had much less content to cover. Additionally, in courses covering the history of the world, many cultures and areas simply weren’t studied. In today’s world, however, there is simply more historical content to cover, and more parts of the globe that we, as a society, have learned it is worthwhile to pay attention to.
Why can’t we fix this problem by teaching “History” to younger kids? To some extent, we can. Younger children can be mature enough to deal with many historical topics, including the Declaration of Independence example given above. And it is probably wise for parent-educators (and classroom teachers) to introduce more historical people and events into Social Studies and other lessons in order to broaden students’ background knowledge. Regardless of how many names, dates, and events are taught to younger children, however, the fact remains that many historical events are a bit advanced for young kids. To put it simply, it is completely inappropriate to teach a second-grader details about mass exterminations during the Holocaust, the Rape of Nanking during World War II, the genocide in Rwanda, etc. Some historical topics simply need to wait until a child is emotionally mature enough to handle them.
And so, when the typical child enters a junior or senior high school classroom, the child might find that he or she is expected to learn “World History”—theoretically, the entire history of the world—in a one-year course that lasts 180 or so days. This is a daunting challenge to classroom teachers who possess degrees in the field, and therefore can be a much more formidable task for parents who might not be particularly familiar with the material.
This situation leads many homeschool parents to use a standard textbook approach when teaching History to their children. The idea seems to be, “If I use the book, I won’t have to worry about missing any important events.” All too often, the parent then inadvertently does precisely what his/her own high school teacher did that made high school History so boring for the parent—he or she tells the kids to “read the section and answer the questions.”
To solve this problem, many teachers and parents, including ourselves, advocate a more eclectic approach to teaching History to homeschoolers. Parents are still free to use textbooks (in order to maintain proper historical sequence), but are encouraged to branch out of the textbook to broaden their children’s knowledge base and allow for more engaging, student-directed learning experiences (that is, to broaden their scope). For example, students might visit a museum, read a biography, read a fictional book set or written during a certain time period, construct historical clothing (period costumes), or conduct research on a related topic of the student’s choice. In this way, students not only learn more, but they enjoy the learning experience.
Our free History teaching materials (covering both World History and American History courses) are designed with an eclectic approach in mind. For example,
World History is divided into 52 total units—27 units for prehistory through the 1700s, and 25 units for the history of the modern world. The content of these units is based on the standard two-year World History course taught in most U.S. states. Units are essentially in chronological order, and cover what high school courses are expected to cover (and what universities expect incoming students to have learned).
One unit is dedicated to the
Industrial Revolution. Included in this unit are worksheets, puzzles, readings, video recommendations (with corresponding worksheets), and the like. Are you obligated to use each and every item? Are you forbidden from using outside items? Of course not. As the educator, you (and your child) are free to pick and choose from among the offerings. And we readily admit that some units are weaker (in terms of materials available from us) than other units. We have added what we have, and work diligently to create new materials consistently. All the same, even if we were to have a thousand educational items within every unit, as professional educators, we would never be so brazen as to declare that you need look nowhere else. And after all, most of us know, based on common sense, that any person or organization claiming to have all of the answers is probably full of it.
What we have strived to create is an outline for classroom and home education. The parent can see that he or she left off the first year of World History with a look at the
rise of parliamentary democracy in England, and that the second year begins by studying the
Scientific Revolution. There is a
Scientific Revolution PowerPoint, as well as various
worksheets on the Scientific Revolution. There is even a
Galileo Galilei image gallery. Our idea is not that a parent must use each and every item, and that doing so will instill every important idea into a student's head. More logically, a student (or parent) would read the overview provided by a textbook, then work on those educational items which the parent (and student) feel will be most useful for reinforcing or expanding upon the material.
Our advice for teaching History to homeschoolers, in short...
- Teaching History to a high school student can be a formidable task, but with a bit of effort, it can be rewarding for both the educator and student.
- Try to incorporate historical facts, people, and events as much as possible into K-6 learning so that students have a lot of background knowledge when it comes time (in junior and senior high school) to truly delve into these things.
- Once students begin formal History study, use a textbook section outline (or our outline) to make certain that you cover all of the major topics and events that you are expected to cover.
- We strongly recommend using an eclectic approach, drawing upon a wide variety of educational tools, learning strategies, experiences, etc., to fully engage and interest your young learner with the subject matter.
Most importantly...have fun! History is a thrilling topic.
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