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History study = "I'm so depressed" (your experiences)


Sahamamama
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My husband and I were talking and the subject of history came up. He says he never really learned much history, HATED the subject in school, was never taught any of it chronologically, has NO timeline in his head, and what little bit of it he did do in school left him too depressed to want more of the same. He remembers his study of history as bleak, gray (grey), and profoundly depressing. :001_huh:

 

I can't stop thinking about this perspective, because in all honesty, that's how I felt about studying history, too, when I was in school. And so many classical homeschoolers make history the CENTRAL subject -- I'm not arguing with that, per se -- but I haven't heard much discussion about the depressing side of studying history.

 

For those farther down the road than we are, what have your experiences been with your students? Is there a "line" that gets crossed (in terms of a date) at which your students simply burn out with how bleak some of it is?

 

What do you do then? :bigear:

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I think it is a shame that the focus is all too often on politcal history -- who ruled what land when, or the lists of kings or dynasties. History is that, but it is sooo much more. There is also cultural history that would cover food, sports, clothing, theater, music or art and that is how we chose to frame history in our house with a large dose of the history of science, too.

 

Because we didn't just focus on the wars and diseases, it wasn't depressing, but fascinating. I'm thinking of the middle school and high school years, here. Waaaaay back when I started homeschooling there was no Story of the World, so in the elementary years we learned history through reading Greek, Roman, Norse, Celtic and other myths. I included lots of historical fiction in our read alouds, and we watched every science or engineering program on the building of the pyramids or Roman engineering and such. We had a globe out to find places, colored lots of maps and had fun. My kids learned so much modern history through their fascination with airplanes and space ships. Instead of me dumping the horrors of WWI in their unsuspecting laps when they were in high school, they already had an idea of it because of the cool biplanes at the local aerospace museum. They learned of the Cold War by learning about the space program.

 

Most recently, in the high school years, my oldest ds studied modern American history through the lens of theater. For my younger ds last year I used the book The History of the World in Six Glasses as the basis of his world history course. My younger ds and I have really enjoyed Bill Bryson's books A Short History of Nearly Everything, a history of science and scientists, and the new At Home, a history of personal life. Those are books he has read for fun, yet they are excellent history books as they show all the wonderful connections between the most random things.

 

And they learned through literature, whether it was Shakespeare or Sherlock Holmes or Huck Finn. And through art when we've visited museums.

 

So no. History should NOT be depressing or dry but an integral part of every subject. Perhaps you can think of it as the core of homeschooling but not necessarily a primary subject of its own.

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I don't think it seems bleak when you're studying it in the context of the entire world. There's always a war going on somewhere; and atrocities going on somewhere, that's as true today as throughout recorded history. But there are also tremendous and wonderful things going on elsewhere..... And if you're balancing your study, then I don't think you need burn anyone out....

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I don't have the long-term perspective of the other vets, but you did ask on the elementary board, so I'm going for it ....

 

My two oldest both listed History as their favorite "school" subject right now. Making it 'come alive' using SOTW & living books really appeals to them.

 

I have two men in my life who have a great grasp of history and find it fascinating. My husband knows everything I'm learning right along with the kids and more. He's always full of tidbits when the kids are talking about what they've learned today. He also will pull some book out of nowhere and read a section to the kids that ties in or adds onto what we've learned.

 

My older brother was a history major and integrates his knowledge into everything - including the whole "not doomed to repeat it" mantra.

 

I disliked history and dumped the information I learned as fast as I could after each test/semester. It never came alive for me like science did. But, it makes more sense to me now and I think part of that is having the 'whole picture' of starting from the beginning. I never studied ancient history like my kids have.

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I think it is a shame that the focus is all too often on politcal history -- who ruled what land when, or the lists of kings or dynasties. History is that, but it is sooo much more. There is also cultural history that would cover food, sports, clothing, theater, music or art and that is how we chose to frame history in our house with a large dose of the history of science, too.

 

Because we didn't just focus on the wars and diseases, it wasn't depressing, but fascinating. I'm thinking of the middle school and high school years, here. Waaaaay back when I started homeschooling there was no Story of the World, so in the elementary years we learned history through reading Greek, Roman, Norse, Celtic and other myths. I included lots of historical fiction in our read alouds, and we watched every science or engineering program on the building of the pyramids or Roman engineering and such. We had a globe out to find places, colored lots of maps and had fun. My kids learned so much modern history through their fascination with airplanes and space ships. Instead of me dumping the horrors of WWI in their unsuspecting laps when they were in high school, they already had an idea of it because of the cool biplanes at the local aerospace museum. They learned of the Cold War by learning about the space program.

 

Most recently, in the high school years, my oldest ds studied modern American history through the lens of theater. For my younger ds last year I used the book The History of the World in Six Glasses as the basis of his world history course. My younger ds and I have really enjoyed Bill Bryson's books A Short History of Nearly Everything, a history of science and scientists, and the new At Home, a history of personal life. Those are books he has read for fun, yet they are excellent history books as they show all the wonderful connections between the most random things.

 

And they learned through literature, whether it was Shakespeare or Sherlock Holmes or Huck Finn. And through art when we've visited museums.

 

So no. History should NOT be depressing or dry but an integral part of every subject. Perhaps you can think of it as the core of homeschooling but not necessarily a primary subject of its own.

 

Wow! Thank you so much for that insight. I agree that so much of the "history" my husband and I studied in school was exactly that depressing, boring mixture you mentioned -- the political aspect only. It really was dreary, in retrospect.

 

I love your ideas! I'm taking notes.

 

Sincerely,

A Grateful Newbie :D

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We are really enjoying SOTW, I read it aloud and my 3 yr old daughter often comes and listens. Then we do the coloring sheet from the activity guide (dd joins with that too) Then we work on the map, which my son LOVES. Then usually instead of the narration and questions from the book, I have him tell his Dad about he learnt in history during dinner.

 

For fun, we are reading Horrible Histories. If you have not tried these, they might change your view of boring history. We get DVD's from netflix and watch those. I also try and do field trips. We live in Oregon, so we did an Oregon Trail themed road trip this summer with my in-laws. We walked in the wagon ruts, all of us enjoyed that.

 

Try and find the fun in history. Watch night at the museum 1 and 2. Ask who they are more interested in learning more about. My son became fascinated about Teddy Roosevelt from that movie.

 

We were visiting my mom in New York, so we went to the museum of natural history. Then during our road trip to Mystic Ct, we stopped at Yale and looked at their visitor center. Did you know that the Frisbee was invented at Yale? It is the make of a pie tin company, and they started tossing it around and yelling Frisbee to warn people it was flying.

 

Hope that helps!

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History is an excuse to dress up and eat good food. Studying the Romans? Time to wear togas, give an oratory trying to convince the audience about why you should get a new toy, and then eat a feast of olives, Feta, gyros and pomegranates. Or how about the Victorians? They get to wear garb like Victorian children and have a real tea party, complete with angel food cake and cucumber sandwiches. We plant an English herb garden of our own, and tour the Biltmore Estate for a day.

 

For us, history also means going to Civil War Reenactments, SCA Events, and so on -- here's a list of the various reenactment groups that exist around the world, with links to their websites so you can locate regional events.

 

We roleplay a lot. When studying the Founding Fathers, a child might be assigned one of the more obscure figures to research and then prepare for a debate on the issue that was most important to that legislator. If we were studying Little Women, we might make Pickwick periodicals of our own and give a live performance from a favorite exchange in the book. If we were studying Greek history, we might go to a local Greek restaurant to hear firsthand from the owners what their country is like, and maybe learn a few Greek words while we're at it. We watch fun programs like The Worst Jobs in History (link to the Discovery page, plus a link to YouTube where several of the episodes have been uploaded).

 

We do memorize important dates and people, and we talk about war and disease quite a bit. Taken as a whole, though, history is an adventure -- and although it is sometimes tedious and other times a bit scary, the journey is a compelling one. When you think about it, what could be more engaging than the story of humanity? It just has to be told the right way.

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History is just life that already happened. Anything you enjoy about life can be found in history studies. I find that as we go through history ds is very fascinated by developments in technology and science though the ages. Dd, on the other hand, is drawn in by descriptions of everyday family life--what did they wear, what did they eat, where did they go to the bathroom (I know, but she's 8 and found the toilets in the Indus Valley to be the most fascinating thing we learned). Ds likes to learn about the political structure, whereas dd is more interested in their religious life. We all read and talk about these things together, but what they choose to write about, and what they choose to focus on in their independent reading can branch out in very different directions. Keep hanging out here, and you'll find lots of suggestions to make history fun and interesting. It really isn't all bleak and depressing--that's just how some people thought we ought to be taught back then, I think. They did the same dreadful thing to literature where I went to school--all the beauty, and nobility, and courage, and character, and eloquence that can be found in literature, and they went and assigned only books where everybody hates and abuses everyone else, and then they die.

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Man, maybe you should just free yourself up to study the aspects of history that INTEREST you??? I hate history too, but that doesn't mean it's bleak. Glen Beck, now that's bleak. He leaves me worried sick over the past, present, and future, all in one show! But with your history time *you* get to pick who tells the story and what they focus on. You can find people to focus on character, fascinating stories, religious views, all sorts of things. You can even narrow down and follow family lines (like my dd does). Or stick with good kiddie lit like the COFA's (Childhood of Famous Americans). There's just no reason this has to be bleak.

 

Hate it if you want, no problem with you there. But find a different viewpoint and it least it won't be bleak.

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Jenn and I do almost exactly the same things in history, even with the same books (we're both tremendous Bryson fans).

 

One other note you might find helpful, as I did. My mother was a doom-and-gloom history reader, always so upset at what was happening in the world, and she was passing this attitude on to dd. I read in one of David Albert's books about doing specific searches for things, people, events, etc. to counter this. I looked for stories of people, including kids, who resisted oppression and racism -- there are some great books including stories of young white women who opened schools to teach ex-slaves to read; tons of stories about peace-making efforts around the world; Greg Mortensen and his school building; my best friend is working in Cambodia raising money for wells, chicken farms, and water purification systems; people are working all the time on eradicating microbes and developing alternative energy sources. The idea is that for every war or potentially distressing event you come across, there are people dedicated to good things, to helping others, to selflessness.

 

Like Jenn, I also find that straight political history depressing, so history at our house tends to center on themes such as the history of theater and the role of art during times of crisis (right now we're learning about musicals and Astaire/Rogers films during the Great Depression, for instance); trade (fascinating stuff about the British sending spies to steal tea plants from China to break the Chinese monopoly on tea production); building and technology; transportation. I have a dd, but she's an Aspie and has that Aspie fascination with technology and transportation -- which incidentally is becoming the focus of more and more reconsiderations of forces that shaped the US during the 19th century in particular.

 

Ask magazine when dd was younger, and later on, Muse, have been our favorite sources of off-beat history and science topics. Usually the articles are written by authors of new books on the subject and are wonderful lead-ins to further investigation. The latest issue of Muse introduced us to the late 18th-century teenaged forger of Shakespeare; we chased down the full-length book to find out answers to some questions we had about the article.

 

It seems jumbled at times, but this kind of investigation exists side-by-side with more focused, chronological study, mainly through DVDs and bookstore books rather than textbooks. We keep a timeline as our main tool for organizing the knowledge we pick up.

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The idea is that for every war or potentially distressing event you come across, there are people dedicated to good things, to helping others, to selflessness.

 

Yes! This is great to keep in mind for the future, thank you.

 

Our children are only 4, 4, and 6 years old -- and we are studying Geography instead of History in 2011 -- so this isn't really about them at this point. Rather, my husband was simply telling me that he didn't understand how people can say they are "fascinated" with history, when his experience of studying it was so depressing.... he really hated it. :confused:

 

While I agree that I felt that way in high school, I don't experience history study that way as an adult, especially as a Christian. I enjoy seeing that redemptive theme revealed through time, culture, and place. I agree with the poster who mentioned the advantage we can give our children of starting at the beginning and moving along the "storyline" chronologically. We never had that big picture.

 

But I do think that certain periods of history are especially bleak for young students -- I'm thinking WWI in particular (why that? I don't know). And when students delve into the lives of famous authors and artists and composers, there is often a tragic story there (e.g., Vincent van Gogh). Has anyone had a student become "depressed" from the piling up of history's sadness?

 

KarenAnne, I think you do have the antidote to the tragedy, the potential bleakness of studying human history -- to find the positive side of history, to look for and teach the stories of hope and justice. Perhaps these stories might help our children to see that, in spite of history's many injustices, there are people who do right and make a difference. Thank you for that insight.

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Guest Cheryl in SoCal
My husband and I were talking and the subject of history came up. He says he never really learned much history, HATED the subject in school, was never taught any of it chronologically, has NO timeline in his head, and what little bit of it he did do in school left him too depressed to want more of the same. He remembers his study of history as bleak, gray (grey), and profoundly depressing. :001_huh:

 

I can't stop thinking about this perspective, because in all honesty, that's how I felt about studying history, too, when I was in school. And so many classical homeschoolers make history the CENTRAL subject -- I'm not arguing with that, per se -- but I haven't heard much discussion about the depressing side of studying history.

 

For those farther down the road than we are, what have your experiences been with your students? Is there a "line" that gets crossed (in terms of a date) at which your students simply burn out with how bleak some of it is?

 

What do you do then? :bigear:

I suggest that you read "More Than Dates & Dead People." It's pretty short and well worth the time invested! I used to think like you and your dh but now history is one of my favorite subjects!!

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We found the ancients to be exciting but once we got to the middle ages, it seems like a lot of curriculum just focus on the wars and death. So we found a history curriculum that focuses on culture and building up of civilization. That way it isn't too dark and depressing, instead it is fun and exciting. By the way I use Oak Meadow but I am sure you could do this sort of history studies with just lapbooks or something else. None of the "popular" chronological history curriculum seems to have a positive focus though.:001_smile:

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We found the ancients to be exciting but once we got to the middle ages, it seems like a lot of curriculum just focus on the wars and death. So we found a history curriculum that focuses on culture and building up of civilization. That way it isn't too dark and depressing, instead it is fun and exciting. By the way I use Oak Meadow but I am sure you could do this sort of history studies with just lapbooks or something else. None of the "popular" chronological history curriculum seems to have a positive focus though.:001_smile:

 

What curriculum did you use that focuses on culture etc.? I think I'd be interested in something like that.

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But I do think that certain periods of history are especially bleak for young students -- I'm thinking WWI in particular (why that? I don't know). And when students delve into the lives of famous authors and artists and composers, there is often a tragic story there (e.g., Vincent van Gogh). Has anyone had a student become "depressed" from the piling up of history's sadness?

 

 

My dd was an extremely sensitive child (she once wept when I used weed killer and kept the weed's "corpse"!), so throughout elementary school I avoided nearly all wars. She asked about World War II, having come across references to it at some point, so when we did a study we used the American Girl Molly books, with their emphasis on the Home Front.

 

It's only this year, with dd in 9th grade, that she has begun asking about World War I. While we have covered the general time period, we've done so through social, not military and political history (although she knows her grandfather was gassed at the Somme and invalided to Kenya, where her father was born). Now she's ready, and now we have a bunch of resources for the other side -- the acts of domestic and social valor, people working to help immigrants, etc.

 

One further resource that my dd has discovered on her own that makes history joyful to her is satire and spoof. We recently watched "The Producers," with its incredibly brazen musical spoof of Hitler (which is over-the-top offensive to just about any group). I had a long discussion with dd about how Mel Brooks is Jewish, much of the Broadway audience he is also playing with is Jewish, and how astonishing it is that he could do this a mere forty years after the war had ended. We talked about what sorts of things couldn't be satirized or spoofed, even now. We listened to Tom Lehrer's song "We'll all go simultaneous" about nuclear war. She's old enough now that we can begin to read and have discussions about the role of the arts, including comedy, in times of social crisis.

 

This is DEFINITELY not the approach for everyone!!! But it's an approach, as I said, that dd has discovered, via Monty Python, Mark Twain, Jonathan Swift, and others, that is her personal take.

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My boys have really enjoyed studying ancient history through the Civil War. My oldest, 5th grade, is doing US History with K12 and really enjoys it. My 3rd & 1rst were "supposed" to do SOTW 4 this year, but I didn't think it was appropriate for their age so we went back to year 1. It is one of their favorite subjects.

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One book that occurred to me that your dh might enjoy -- either reading or listening to -- is Bill Bryson's new book At Home. He uses his old house in England as a departure point to investigate how domestic things we take for granted are connected to historical developments: architectural inventions, landscapers and their philosophy, technology of cement and brick-making and sheet glass, everything from mattresses to mousetraps. Along the way you run into references to wars, etc., but they are very much a backdrop to the kinds of things that are happening internally in Victorian and early modern Britain. It's absolutely fascinating.

 

Another book I read recently about the same time period is The Map That Changed the World by Simon Winchester. This chronicles the efforts and general science history of geology: how earth layers were mapped by miners, how canals dug through sections of Britain gave new insight into the way the layers were disseminated over the countryside, marine fossils found in mid-England, etc. There's a lot about class, as the man on whom the story focuses was not from the leisured gentry, which was used to thinking of itself as exclusively the font of science.

 

A book I also enjoyed was The World in Six Glasses, a historical survey through the lens of what beverages were becoming important in different parts of the world: beer, wine, gin, tea, coffee, Coke/soda.

 

If you can get your dh to read one or two of these types of books, I think you could convince him that history can indeed be fascinating and not at all depressing. As my dd moves into high school, books like these are forming her reading list.

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