History is a subject near and dear to my heart. I’ve always enjoyed it, and I majored in it in college. Hence, I’ve given quite a bit of thought to how best to approach and study it with my children. So far, I don’t feel that I’ve found an approach that seems ideal - and perhaps there isn’t one - but it is something I want to continue to ponder.

The neoclassical model has you go through all of history three times, each time delving deeper in and studying events in more depth. This approach has some merits, namely in how it gives the student a firm grounding in what is happening all over the world at the same chronological time period, and how it suits the child’s growing intellectual capacity by covering more in depth as the child becomes more capable. However, I have to wonder if the program would start to seem a little repetive if not carefully managed. It could also be a little hard to pull off when you’re trying to homeschool more than one or two children. (Although if you manage to have them all four years apart, you’d be set!)

The classical approach as outlined by Andrew Campell has you spend a great deal of time on American history and the history of the English speaking world’s contact with the rest of the world. There is also a great deal of study of the ancient Greek and Romans (as befits the name, I suppose!).  I like this approach in that it isn’t quite so repetitive and also because it would give the student a very strong grounding in the origins of our society and the best our country’s history and present has to offer. It could also help a student understand our strengths and our limitations in our own actions and our interactions with the rest of the world. However, it also runs the risk of creating or perpetuating a rather myopic and US/English-centric view of the world.  It seems like this could be tempered by a judicious use of first and second person accounts describing events from other perspectives, but even this could be rather limiting in that it doesn’t give much opportunity to show how those narrations fit into the overall history of that place.  There are, of course, time limitations to take into consideration as well! I am also concerned that it could be easy to get too caught up in the emotions of an issue this way, and to give too much weight to one person’s account at the expense of the overall historical context and events.  First person accounts are obviously extremely important, but if they are not tempered by the big picture they can end up being high in emotional content, but very low in analytical content.

In my college classes, we had the benefit of being much more narrowly focused on a particular period or even aspect of a period.  This gave us the ability to use a few secondary sources as a spine along with our primary sources in an attempt to create some balance to what we were learning.  The challenge in figuring out a primary school history education is the expectation that we’re supposed to somehow cover everything.  This, of course, is impossible, so how do you best cover the scope of history around the globe so that your children don’t end up being blithering idiots, untethered from historical context and doomed to wallow in what C.S. Lewis described as “chronological snobbery”?   It is quite an interesting question, and while I think the chances are slim that my children will end up blithering idiots in the historical knowledge and understanding department, I still would like to do the best job I can.

I came across this idea on Darwin’s blog for a new program he and some of his family have started.  The Humanities Program, as they’ve named it, looks interesting and I’ve spent some time reading and thinking about their approach.  One thing I like in particular is how they break up the historical periods.   Darwin recently posted an interesting thought on his blog for the program, and I think it is a promising idea.

The general approach seems to be to do everything three times. So for instance, you go through world history one time each at a grammar, logic and rhetoric level.

Now, repetition is often good when learning things, but I wonder if this rule of three is actually the way to go. Part of me wonders if the logic stage would lend itself well to a number of 1-3 month intensive unit studies which dug into how exactly particular events or trends came to be, and what their results were. If you’ve already laid down a good chronological foundation in the grade 1-4 level, you should be able to do a lot of unit studies at the grade 5-8 level (and perhaps a year of strictly American History) and then come back at the high school level to put it all together with another four year run through world history, this time focusing on primary source material.

At this point my primary concern with this approach is regarding that chronological foundation that is created in first through forth grades.  I’m concerned that if a student studies the ancients in age six in first grade, they aren’t going to be in a place to remember very much about it when it comes time to work on some unit studies when they are ten or twelve.  I suppose they can always consult their timelines and do a little review (which will probably be necessary no matter how much or little time has elapsed) and then jump into the project…  but even so, how much will they really be building off of that chronological foundation.  Students who have younger siblings will have an advantage here, because they would be overhearing the four years over again and perhaps that could also help to keep the material fresh in their minds.  I am also somewhat concerned about focusing on primary sources in the high school years, mainly because I’m not sure the student would have the ability to treat the primary sources with the distance and analytical nature primary sources require if they are not to be blown out of porportion.  If they can read enough primary sources I think they might be in a good position to put together a good overall picture, but I’m concerned that they’d have trouble seeing the forest through the trees.  If they are able to read enough though, it would be an excellent opportunity to practice their logic and rhetoric skills as they piece together a workable narrative.

This is something I plan on thinking about a great deal over the next year or so, and you will most likely be hearing more about it from my in the future!