In discussing history with my older kids, I always try to hammer home the following point: when someone tells you that this or that issue is perfectly simple, then that person is either stupid or lying.
Here’s a satisfying case in point: a recent Salon article (h/t to Kevin James) reminds us that, despite what renowned scholar Dan “I know how to type” Brown tells us, it wasn’t the mean old misogynistic Church who led those infamous European witch hunts. More reliable sources show that women were accused of, tortured and killed for witchcraft because of “squabbles among neighbors, resentments within families, disagreeable local characters, the machinations of small-time politicians and the creepy psychosexual fixations of magistrates and clerics.”
So there’s a good lesson there: when something really big and awful goes on for 300 years, you can’t sum up its cause or significance in a single sentence (unless that sentence is “It’s a fallen world”). Nothing is that simple.
For younger kids, though, I am in favor of teaching the simple, mythologized version of history first, and then refining it later (as long as you don’t get your myths from a dumbbell like Dan Brown). Kids should understand the basic truth of what happened, and then discover the details when their minds become more subtle.
Thus, we teach the little ones that Columbus was a hero, Lincoln strode into battle to free the slaves, and God made the world in seven days. All of this is true. The details are more subtle, but the basic myth tells you something important that the details can’t convey.
Modern history books for children will have none of this fairytale foolishness. They want to paint a truer, fuller picture of history by debunking myths — but they do this by oversimplifying in the other direction, and they end up telling an equally false story. By insisting on the deary, mitigating details, they teach children that no one ever fights to the death for justice, and that no one is really courageous, that nothing is noble. What a terrible lesson — what a lie!
So now school children kids believe that Thomas Jefferson was, above all, a famous racist; that Columbus’ main goal was to find some peaceful natives to slaughter; and that the liberated Israelites merely trudged after Moses through a swampy area during low tide.
I don’t lie to my kids. Soon enough, children learn that there are details, there are complications. But I know they haven’t lived long enough to understand that sin and weakness go along with courage and nobility — that they can exist in the same man. This subtle understanding is something they will need to have eventually. But trying to teach it prematurely doesn’t give you educated students, it gives you ignorant cynics.
When you’re building a fire, you have to start with a little blaze. Sure, the fire is more useful and productive when the flames have died down. You can get some even and steady heat then, and glowing coals are easier to control and maintain than the leaping, unpredictable tongues of flame when kindling catches fire.
But you can’t just skip to the steady heat stage. That’s what these myths about history are–they’re a little blaze to get things going. You have to start with the blaze.
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(cross-posted at I have to sit down)
Amen and Amen and Amen. I am constantly dismayed and discouraged by the persistent necessity of saying that the great men and women of the past were really bad people at heart and nothing has ever been good at any time. I am even more dismayed and discouraged by the suggestion that today’s generation of socialist “leaders” will fix what those bad people of history broke.
The message of the Bible is that there are no perfect people, but imperfect people who commit themselves to God’s work are real heroes worthy of our admiration, not our worship. The fact of their imperfection is encouraging because if those imperfect people achieved great things, then maybe we can, too.
I just repeat AMEN.
The University of London Orientalist, John Wansbrough, wrote of a contest between History as Science and History as Literature. History may contain real memories of the past but underlying it is the question of why somebody thought the event important enough to make the effort to preserve its memory. History is an interpretation of events and is always subject to re-interpretation.
It is the same with Myth. Though the contemporary meaning of the word is “Falsehood,” the purpose of mythology is to make statements of who we are as a people or who we’d like to be. Take the story of George Washington cutting down the cherry tree. Whether it actually happened is unimportant. The story sets us as an example, a man of unquestioned integrity to make a statement about being an American. The message is ‘Americans should not lie, because the father of our country did not lie.”
Good post. As I mentioned in a comment yesterday, I’ve been hunting for a good history curriculum for years and this is one of the reasons I’m never satisfied with anything. It is so hard to find resources that I’m convinced are truthful or accurate.
I agree with you that as the children grow there will be time enough to share with them the wrinkles and warts on historical characters. Hmmm, maybe they’re ready around the time they start noticing OUR character flaws and have to process that mom and dad are just flawed vessels too.
Awesome article!
“I know they haven’t lived long enough to understand that sin and weakness go along with courage and nobility — that they can exist in the same man. ”
Killer quote.
The danger is that what we learn first as children is what we hold on to as truth. So learn that Jefferson was a racist slave owner, and it will be hard to ever shake that knowledge. I think the Left knows this which is why it fights to get homosexual parents in the early texts that kids use in learning to read.
I grew up reading a lot of books from the early 20th and late 19th century. My grandmother was a garage-saler who liked older books. I still remember a story about a man who “lost” his country due to the crime of treason – it was a terrible tale that has stayed with me all these years. I think it must have had some part in building a basic patriotism in me.
Simcha,
Have you seen the lectures offered by the Kahn Academy? They seem to be mostly math and science, but they could fill in some areas for homeschoolers.
http://www.khanacademy.org/
BTW, it sounds like you are doing a good job on history.
There were no witch hunts in Spain. Why? The Inquisition. The Inquisition priests (who were mostly lawyers as well as priests) would go and ride circuit in the countryside and investigate witch accusations. “I saw her eat a baby!” “Whose baby?” “I don’t know.” “Is there a baby missing?” “Uhhh…” (Looks at shoes.)
According to the Inquisition archives, they were convinced fairly early on that there were no witches—or at least none in Spain.
They often blamed ignorant, illiterate village priests for manipulating and teaching false doctrine to their flocks (as well as ordering them to shut up when the Inquisitors came into town.)
All this and more on the real, as opposed to mythical Inquisition, in Henry Kamen’s history of it…
http://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Inquisition-Historical-Revision/dp/0300078803/
what it doesn’t mention is that witchcraft beliefs are characteristic of all societies except modern industrial ones and certain hunting and gathering ones.
And many of them have witch hunts.
Very nice post. I like it Mrs. Fisher. In fact, I’ve generally enjoyed your blogging here of late. Good show.
Oh, and I particularly hate the “Sometimes the Red Sea just happened to dry up myth.” My religion teacher told us that in 9th Grade and I almost kicked over my desk.
Hear! Hear!
The modern conceit is that no people are good. Reality is that people are bad in many respects — but are capable of doing great things, some of them VERY great things. These people are even greater, in fact, because of the general propensity to be bad. And by bad I mean small, selfish, and mean. It takes a great deal of effort to be REALLY bad. But many history books today make everyone out to have been awful.