How important is that history should be studied 'chronologically'?

[Linda (Australia)]

Ok, ok. So, I've always agreed that history is best studies chronologically. Makes sense, after all - told as a story, knowing how certain events relate to others, knowing who lived when, and so forth.

 

And just when you have it all 'sorted', you read an article, book or post that makes you wonder.......

 

But how important is it, really? Why not just jump in and study the 20th century, or the Middle Ages, as your interests take you? I would think it would be important to use a timeline, though - so one can 'see' where things fit in history.

 

From an adult's point of view, it all makes sense - but what about to a young child? Does it really matter?

 

Do you or don't you study history chronologically, and why?

[Garga]

I've read arguments for both ways.

 

Wait. I don't have an answer to your question. All I know is that I've read arguments for both ways. So, why am I posting? :001_huh:

 

I've always wondered, too, so I guess this is a bump.

[Haiku]

but what about to a young child? Does it really matter?

 

 

Having once been a child who learned history in the haphazard public school way, my answer is that it probably doesn't matter in the grammar stage but it does matter in the logic and rhetoric stages. Imo, you can't see the sweep of history and how it's all connected if you don't study chronologically.

 

And, to me, it makes sense to start little kids with ancients because, having just finished up ancients with my kids, I can attest to the fact that ancient cultures are fascinating.

 

Tara

[patchfire]

Having once been a child who learned history in the haphazard public school way, my answer is that it probably doesn't matter in the grammar stage but it does matter in the logic and rhetoric stages. Imo, you can't see the sweep of history and how it's all connected if you don't study chronologically.

 

:iagree:

 

I don't think that grammar stage kids need it chronologically, as such, but since it's important with logic & rhetoric stage, it makes it easier from an organizational standpoint (and also a teaching-more-than-one-kid standpoint) to do history chronologically in grammar stage as well.

[stripe]

I think it's probably valuable to have a mental chronology. It's therefore easier if it's taught in a way that reinforces that. Does everything have to be taught chronological? Maybe not. But at some point, having a knowledge of "what came first" is important. Maybe if someone has a clear timeline in his/her head, then it's easy to file things away in the related "slot" instead of having it taught in order.

 

The trouble with the haphazard approach, as I see it, is that some things are overemphasized (American history over and over and over again) and big things are skipped or presented only in parts.

[8filltheheart]

I'm in the non-chronological camp b/c I don't believe it is possible to study "real" history chronologically.

 

History is one of the topics that when you read a book, it is completely biased. It is automatically biased by what the author chooses to include or not include, by the perspective of the person/culture that the information is being presented from, by which culture is being favored (or not.) (For example, reading about the Crusades.......are they being presented from a Catholic perspective, Islamic perspective, aethistic perspective, Protestant perspective??? I can absolutely guarantee you that every single one of those views will give you a completely different set of information and relevant facts of that time period.)

 

There is far too much going on around the world simultaneously for any "chronological" study to be comprehensive. Some information is automatically left out in order to make the amt manageable.

 

Our approach to history is somewhat different from most peoples'. Whatever time period we are studying, we read multiple books from different perspectives just to see what they have to offer. It doesn't mean that ultimately we are unbiased, b/c we completely are! We often judge what we see as the "right" or "wrong" side on a particular issue. It is just that if you only read from a textbook and follow its general path, even if you throw in additional books that simply expound on that "ideological perspective," you have created a history timeline of specific details. I view history more as a really large puzzle and somehow all the different pieces fit together......but it isn't neat and straight. It is a jumble of pieces that somehow go together to the view of all the cultures involved.

 

It hasn't seemed to hurt my kids too much!! ;) Though it has created skeptics on "factual details." LOL!

[Lori D.]

We're ending up doing 2 cycles of history, one each way, and it's working great here:

 

- 6 years (elementary) done chronologically

- 1 year off (middle school) for a world cultures/geography/comparative religions focus

- 4 years (high school) done non-chronologically to follow interests

 

(Yes, I know that only adds up to 11 years -- we started homeschooling when older DS was 2nd grade, so he gets 11 years; younger DS was 1st grade, so his 12th year will be whatever history/lit. needed to fill in.)

 

 

The first round they got it more in order to get the big picture -- the major historical "pegs" to build onto. Now in high school we're going into depth, adding on. And by referring to a timeline, it's quite simple to understand the connections. I think it would have been just as fine doing it the other way, too. The main thing is, whether older or younger grades, if you're going to skip around, try and do the entire year in that time period (ex: early American history; the ancients; 20th century world; etc.) so you can really make connections within the time period. Then when you skip to another time frame, refer to the time period you've already covered to show connections.

 

Example of having studied a more recent history first: "Remember when we studied modern history last year, and we saw how the religion and politics of Middle Eastern countries is intertwined? Well today, in our Medieval history, we're going to see the roots of that -- how that came about..."

 

Or, example of an older to a more recent history, skipping time in between: "Remember when we studied ancient China and read about the first emperor to unify the country? Today, we're going to learn about the very last Chinese emperor 2000 years later, and what happened to the country of China after that..."

[PeterPan]

According to my dd, it doesn't matter at all. She reads ancients while we do american, american when we do the middle ages. To a kid, it's just a ton of great stories all jumbled up, making pegs. MP even had an interesting article by that very title: History is not Chronological. It's fine to study chronologically, and sooner or later you ought to. But I definitely think you can cover the material in another order and get to the same place with littles. It just happens to be neater to do it chrono. That doesn't necessarily convey the same VALUE or importance you place on certain subjects or time periods, as in what you want to emphasize, which is why some people (like me, like MP) don't do it that in mere 4 year rotations. A basic 4 year rotation, done over and over, covering all of world history, conveys that ALL of that history was valuable or of equal weight and import, which is not what I want to convey. All history is not equally valuable, and we can select or ignore things, as we wish, to focus on time periods, characteristics, whatever we want. MP puts it as a focus on the good. VP does it by focusing on Western history in their rotation and pretty much ignoring all the other continents. You're still rotating, but with a different shaped egg, haha.

[nuttman]

I try to teach it in the order things happen when I am teaching my middle and high school kids. I think it is especially important when teaching the history of England and America.

[Suzannah]

We've always done it chronologically. In fact, back before kids when I knew I wanted to homeschool but didn't know how to start, this was one point I had already decided to do. That was partly what drew me to WTM.

 

However, IF for some reason we didn't study history chronologically, the only other way I might consider doing it would be by region or civilization, then chronologically. For instance, I might do European History chronologically, then the history of the Middle East, then the history of China. This would address the PP's concern too many things are happening all over the world at the same time to truly study history in order.

 

But I do think it's very important to follow events to their conclusions and to keep things in perspective. Sure, we should have a strong knowledge and understanding of U.S. History. It's where we live and for the last few hundred years the U.S. has been a major player in world events. But you can't really appreciate where we are or how we have affected the rest of the world if you don't study what came before. And you can't fully appreciate the possibilities of the future without studying the past.

 

And I appreciate the argument that it is most important that logic and rhetoric stage students have this and that young children may not be ready to fully appreciate the grand sweep of history. But they don't go straight from grammar to logic. It's a process. There's a transition period somewhere in the middle. You may not know exactly where that transition will begin or end. If it's important for a 5th grader to understand the chronology, why not for a 4th grader? If it's important for 4th grade, why not 3rd? Why wouldn't you want to begin at the beginning?

 

Now the 4-year cycle laid-out in the WTM makes loads of sense to me, but I think it is a matter of personal preference. You could do 2 years of geography or Bible history before beginning chronological history. You could do a 3-year, 6-year or 12-year history cycle. Or you could do a 6-year cycle followed by two 3-year cycles. But keeping things in chronological perspective is very important to understanding anything in the world, whether the causes of WWI, the current situation in the Middle East, or why grandma always cut the ends off of her ham before putting it in the oven. ;)

[amtmcm]

I attended a Classical High School and I always swore when I grew up I'd teach my kids backwards instead of chronologically.

 

When I was in High School Princess Diana married Prince Charles and that was really exciting and relevant. And I remember thinking how much more interesting it would be to create a family tree of the English monarchy starting with the current royal family and working backwards. After my children were born I even saved a magazine with Prince William & Prince Harry on the cover because I thought when my girls are teenagers they will be able to relate to that and then we can start discussing their family tree.

 

All that said, I think the reason I hated Chronological history was because I came out of public school with a jumbled mess of history and had no idea why I should care about Greeks & Romans. So if a child has those grammar pegs the chronological history will be more interesting.

 

I tend to agree with Lori D.'s statements about making the connections between historical events. Those lightbulb moments make the history memorable.

 

I also like the methodology of Classical Conversations where they introduce Shakespeare and English Literature to get the kids used to reading Old English before having them read the Greek Classics in their "senior" year. That makes sense to me.

 

Here's our planned cycle for the next few years:

US History & Government (both my DD's need this foundation right now)

Geography & Cultures

Ancient to Renaissance

Exploration to Modern

Survey of World History (something like Trisms History Makers to make all the connections for the pegs they've learned)

 

A little more than 2 cents there...... :)

[Karen sn]

I suppose it depends on the person.

But for us - it is very important to do it chronologically.

How else can you know where you are if you don't know where you came from and how you got here?

 

Everything in modern history relates to something in the past.

I want to understand the past before I discuss the present or the future.

 

I personally LOVE history now that we are using SOTW Ancients.

It gives me a perspective I never had. I never liked history before in my life and now I am fascinated with it.

Our library has a TON of books that go along with our studies and it is working well for us.

 

Down the road after we have gone through all of world history, I am not opposed to studying things out of order.

[Suzannah]

I attended a Classical High School and I always swore when I grew up I'd teach my kids backwards instead of chronologically.

 

 

 

LOL

 

Well o.k., that would be another interesting way to do it. I could get on board with that. :)

[Greta]

Non-chronological here. Which is funny for me to say since we do use SOTW. And though we are still using and loving it, I have changed my approach to history based on Charlotte Mason's recommendations, and on LCC recommendations.

 

We are making a CM-style "Book of Centuries" so that my dd has a visual representation of what happened when. And I try to make sure that we chat about "while such-and-such was happening in Rome, what was happening in England?"

 

But I didn't want to wait until our fourth year of studying history to cover any US history. And I also feel that Classical Studies (LCC) are important enough to cover every year. Furthermore, Mason's recommendation of using biographies and letting the child really get immersed in one person/place/time in history really makes sense to me. I like the idea of studying a few things deeply more than scanning many topics shallowly.

[siloam]

Ok, ok. So, I've always agreed that history is best studies chronologically. Makes sense, after all - told as a story, knowing how certain events relate to others, knowing who lived when, and so forth.

 

And just when you have it all 'sorted', you read an article, book or post that makes you wonder.......

 

But how important is it, really? Why not just jump in and study the 20th century, or the Middle Ages, as your interests take you? I would think it would be important to use a timeline, though - so one can 'see' where things fit in history.

 

From an adult's point of view, it all makes sense - but what about to a young child? Does it really matter?

 

Do you or don't you study history chronologically, and why?

 

Linda,

 

In my opinion doing history chronologically is for us adults, not for the kids. They can study history in any order.

 

I also don't bother with a timeline till 5th grade. Time is more of an abstract concept that is best left for logic level kids. The little one's will put it together later, and figure out where each figure and even belong in relation to one another. They don't need to have that right off.

 

But for ME we use TOG. Because I like to see how everything relates, and I prefer history chronologically. My oldest loves history and would study anything, and the younger 3 really don't care about history at all, so I get what I want. :D

 

With Science, on the other hand, my kids are very opinionated, so we are on our 3 year of animal studies. :blink: Did I mention I have 2 kids that want to be vets? Still I would like a break....

 

Heather

 

[swimmermom3]

Thanks Linda for posting the thread. This question is the one that has me beating my head against my desk:banghead: The practical application escapes me when I approach history strictly from a chronological order.

 

I have 3 years to cover world history plus some American history with my youngest. He has no prior world history except what is provided in SL 5. Using SOTW 1 (42 chaps.) and part of SOTW 2 (14 chaps.) for 6th grade, I will cover 1-2 chapter per week. Simple enough. So chronological looks something like this:

 

Week 1: Earliest People, Egyptians on the Nile

Week 2: First Writing, Old Kingdom of Egypt

Week 3: First Sumerian Dictator, The Jewish People

Week 4: Hammurabi, The Assyrians

 

We start with Egypt, move to Mesopotamia, then to India, China, and Africa before we return to Egypt. If you have 5 books, one History Pocket, and a model of a pyramid to build for Egypt, do you split it up between week 2 and say, weeks 7 & 8. Chronological order makes sense to me, theoretically. In practice, I'm inclined to start with 2 weeks in Mesopotamia up to Hammurabi, spend 3-4 weeks in Egypt and go from there. I'm still missing how you can do an in-depth study of an area while jumping around. Does this make sense to anyone?

[Sahamamama]

I think that, especially for the youngest students (4-7 years old), just hearing "the stories" is enough. These children are hearing the stories for the first time, so the telling should be EXCITING! For them, it's more important to simply enjoy the myths, fables, tall tales, songs, poems, narratives, biographies, maps, recipes, costumes, and historical fiction that go along with whatever time period they are studying that year than it is for them to "make connections." ;)

 

I also think that the youngest students learn best through repetition, so it might be best to go slowly and steadily -- and repeatedly -- through the selected stories and historical material that you most want them to learn by heart. [For us at this point and for the next few years: Bible stories, Bible memory work, parables of Jesus, USA holidays/symbols/historical stories, continents songs, folk songs, and (not really history) -- nursery rhymes, nursery tales, Aesop's fables, Greek myths, American tall tales].

 

We are not going to do history chronologically in the primary grades (K-2) because I have 1 + 2 (twins). If I begin "Ancient History" with the oldest in 1st (2011), my twins will only be 4/5 that year and learning to read.... So I'd rather wait until they are all solidly reading, then begin "Official, Chronological History." I think it can wait. Along the way, we'll focus on Read Alouds coming from the list above. That's enough for the littles, IMO.

 

But somewhere in the middle grammar years, say maybe 8-9 years old, students seem to want to learn the "order" of the stories, even if you don't yet use a time line. Whenever this chronology question comes up, I think back to Sunday School. :confused: It was so unnecessarily confusing... One week, we'd learn about the bronze laver and the golden lampstand in the temple. :confused: The NEXT WEEK, because it was Palm Sunday, we'd get a story about Jesus entering Jerusalem on the donkey, the palm branches, shouts of "Hosanna..." The NEXT WEEK, of course, we'd hear about the crucifixion and resurrection. Then we would jump back to the Old Testament and learn about David or Elijah or Nehemiah... such a jumbled bunch of stories.

 

We heard the same stories over and over and OVER AGAIN... year after wearying year, without anyone ever understanding that we'd HEARD THIS BEFORE and really needed something beyond the basic story. I think around 9 or 10, I was ready for MORE, for the Big Picture, the maps, the background, the chronology, acting it out, putting it on a timeline, or even just reading the story from an actual Bible, instead of just the lesson book. What we did learn was so dull and completely unorganized. From years of THIS kind of Sunday School, I gained absolutely NO OVERVIEW of the Bible, who wrote what/when/how/in what genre/to whom/from where/to where/for what purpose, or any larger grasp of "the stories," other than the stories themselves. And it became a joke with us, to fall asleep in class and wake up with the (always) tri-fold answer:

 

Father, Son, Holy Spirit!

 

Pray, Give, Go!

 

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob!

 

Peter, James, John!

 

So, in the beginning, the stories themselves are enough, but as students progress, teaching history chronologically actually MAKES the study more interesting, because then you really can begin to (1) master the timeline, (2) dig deeper, (3) be more hands-on, and (4) see connections, even in 3rd or 4th grade. HTH.

[stripe]

One thing that always bugged me about school was that I rarely finished the book. I think it's important that US History not end murkily somewhere around the 1940s.

[Matryoshka]

I don't think it's all that important to start at the "beginning" ie ancients or prehistory and work forward from there, but I think wherever/whenever you start, it should continue chronologically for at least long enough for you to get a sense of things.

 

SOTW actually skips around a bit too much for me in location - I'd stay longer on one civilization, but within that, go chronologically.

 

I think without the chronological aspect, it's all just random bits of information. I just don't think there's just one way, or a "right" way to do history chronologically.

 

But helicopter history - that's pointless. Well, after, say K or 1st grade or so. (Ooo, Egyptians! Oh, Geroge Washington! Look, it's the Gold Rush! Over there, it's Ancient Greece! Hey, the Civil War! Cool, Knights and Castles!)

[Peela]

I like chronological because it makes sense to me, its a nice way of ordering things, and i think it probably does help in keeping it all together in one's mind. However, I dont think its the be all and end all. Studying a lot of history in itself is unusual- the public schools here dont, and there is a huge focus on Australian history when they do. Just the fact that one spends one's childhood studying a fair amount of history is a great thing. Sometimes I would like to take time off to study more geography or Australian History, but I am kind of hooked on the chronological stuff and it seems to work for us. But its not a hill I would die on if I felt drawn to doing something else for some practical reason. I just havent felt to change what we are doing.

I have done Australian history as a parallel stream to World History and that has worked. I cant seem to fit in as much as I would like though and it has fallen completely off the schedule this year.