How is SOTW 1 more religious than the others?

[Sarah0000]

I have read on old threads that SOTW1 was harder to secularize than the other three books. Can anyone give some details on exactly how the first one differs from the others? We just started SOTW2 and are enjoying it. Yes, religion is discussed but its been in historical context so far. And cultural stories are explicitly described as an old story from a particular group of people. Is that not the same in SOTW1?

Just wondering if its worth it to read SOTW1 as well...

[Angie in VA]

Can you see samples at the Well Trained Press site? 

All I know is that poor SOTW has been criticized for being too religious by some and for not being "Christian enough" by others. 

[mamaraby]

SOTW1 presents the ancient myths differently with an emphasis on the Christian myths being presented in very much the same way as the historical text whereas the other ancient myths are typeset differently. SWB is a Christian so of course she’s done that.

It’s an easy solution - we never read those parts or really any of the myths as she presents them in the book. I found alternate sources and tried to even out the percentage of time spent on different myths. On the whole, though, it’s fine for what it is and less problematic than other resources.

[HomeAgain]

We are secular.

We balanced SOTW 1 with stories from other cultures that were often similar to the Christian stories that were written as narratives in the book. We also balanced out the language in vol. 2, especially when my son picked up on the negative language in the Islamic Invasion chapter and the positive/neutral language when talking about the Spread Of Christianity.  So, yeah, the first two volumes do need a bit of work to minimize the bias.  BTW, we also skipped much of chapter 33 of vol. 2 because the language doesn't reflect historical accuracy.  No immediate source shows Montezuma thinking Cortes was a god, and very little can even be traced to that except for a codex written much later and the myth has been traced to its own history that is fascinating.  In fact, we end up dropping vol. 2 by the chapter about Columbus and do library books for the last part of the volume.  While we can touch back into it as a source, it's just easier for us to follow the same timeline with different books.

[Sarah0000]

Thank you. I was guessing it was something like that. My son likes to read the book himself after I've read it out loud so I'll stick with my original plan of skipping the first one. There are tons of other fun resources for ancient history anyway.

[Sarah0000]

Thank you Home Again. I'll keep that in mind when we get there in SOTW2.

[Seeking Squirrels]

Yeah, all of the other myths start out like a fairy tale saying it's a story these ancient people once believed and it reads as fiction. Then the christian stories are told as fact. I remedied it by starting out those stories the same as the others and editing the precise wording on the fly. We also address christian mythology separately and read about religions and how they came about so they can put it into context that way. It's the main reason I've been reading SOTW aloud instead of listening to the audiobook which I would prefer. 

[kiwik]

I think later editions made this less of a problem.

[Farrar]

The nice thing is that it's still usable if you take out those chapters about the history of the Jews. It's not like you're missing much if you do - most world histories wouldn't spend that long on the history of the Jews in a text for young elementary schoolers. The stories she tells - which are basically the foundational myths that the Jews tell about themselves (that, if you're a secular historian, you know may have some basis in some historical people, but are mostly just myths) are definitely stories one needs to be historically literate - certainly to understand modern Middle Eastern politics. But you can read it with a lot of warnings, or find other sources, or just save it for a later pass of history. And the bias against the Muslims that was mentioned above in SOTW2 seemed to be mostly limited to that one chapter (I thought the ones about the Crusades was better, IIRC...). And then SOTW3 and SOTW4 are completely secular. I didn't see any bias. Plus, they do a better job of covering non-Western history than most Western-centric world histories.

[mamaraby]

9 hours ago, Paradox5 said:

Just as an FYI, according to Pandia Press, they are going to release a new version of Hist. Ody. Level 1 with a new spine written by one of the Pandia authors in time for this fall. It is under the "When are more RSO or HO courses going to be available?" in the link below. I am very keen to see this new series and how Pandia reworks the Level 1 plans. I hope they remove both CHOW and SOTW in favor of this ONE new narrative spine. 

https://www.pandiapress.com/faqs/

 

I am looking forward to this, albeit somewhat sadly since I suspect my kids will be too old by the time they’re out. The author is the one who put their American history curriculum together. I listened to her talk during the fall SEA Homeschoolers online conference and appreciated her perspective and approach to history. It’s pretty exciting. I’m hoping the level two ones will be up for a redo after level one, but again, it will probably be too late for us.

[RootAnn]

4 hours ago, Farrar said:

 And then SOTW3 and SOTW4 are completely secular. I didn't see any bias.

There is a definite anti-Catholic bias in SOTW2 & 3. Definitely biased.

But I agree with your other points. I skip chapters or use other resources for some of them. 

[Farrar]

2 minutes ago, RootAnn said:

There is a definite anti-Catholic bias in SOTW2 & 3. Definitely biased.

But I agree with your other points. I skip chapters or use other resources for some of them. 

Interesting. Can you say where? I'd be curious to know. I have to admit, it's been awhile since we used them and I didn't end up using all of SOTW3 or 4... by then, I was frustrated with other aspects, so we probably only read about half of them in all. I remember I was really on the lookout after the thing mentioned above because it struck me too how clearly the chapter about that battle made it clear that Europe had been "saved" from the "bad" Muslims invading. But then after that, I felt like the only biases were the ones that are basically explicit to the series. Which is to say - it's a history of "great men" not the masses at all, and old texts always take precedence over any other evidence, which is frustrating because if one dude says, "We won!" in a famous old book, but all the other historical evidence, like, say the mass grave of dead soldiers at the site, suggests that was propaganda, then it's in SOTW that they won.

[mamaraby]

1 hour ago, Farrar said:

Interesting. Can you say where? I'd be curious to know. I have to admit, it's been awhile since we used them and I didn't end up using all of SOTW3 or 4... by then, I was frustrated with other aspects, so we probably only read about half of them in all. I remember I was really on the lookout after the thing mentioned above because it struck me too how clearly the chapter about that battle made it clear that Europe had been "saved" from the "bad" Muslims invading.

I’m not Catholic or even Christian, but it seems to be in the way SWB presents Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth in the first chapter of vol 3. I would imagine any discussion of the Stuarts/Scotland would also fit in there. There’s a discussion thread here that goes into more detail - http://4real.thenetsmith.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=1188&KW

I have go say, we have sort of movd past SOTW a bit even though my youngest is only at the tail end of second grade. She’s been tagging along now for awhile and we’re finding we’re using them less which isn’t to say that the OP shouldn’t use them.

[EKS]

I didn't have a problem with SOTW1 since I figured that knowing about bible stories is a part of cultural literacy.  I did find SOTW2 to be too Christian, but then I realized that the reason that it seemed that way was because Christianity was a thing at that time.  I didn't like how the Inquisition was glossed over though, and it did seem to me that the attitude was that "of course" Christianity became the dominant religion because, the implication was, that it was "true."  Of course, that could just be my own bias reading that in.

If SOTW doesn't do it for you, the K12 K-4 history courses are actually pretty wonderful.

[Farrar]

2 minutes ago, mamaraby said:

I’m not Catholic or even Christian, but it seems to be in the way SWB presents Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth in the first chapter of vol 3. I would imagine any discussion of the Stuarts/Scotland would also fit in there. There’s a discussion thread here that goes into more detail - http://4real.thenetsmith.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=1188&KW

Huh. Yeah, I'm not Catholic so I know I don't think much about this. But I probably should...

Mary really does get a bad rap in our glorification of Elizabeth, though she was a powerful and important monarch who deserves some good credit. Like, *both* of them persecuted their religious foes. Neither of them was great on that front. I can't remember how it's done in the book, though I'm pretty sure we did read that section. I think it must be very tricky to not make something seem anti-Catholic in talking about the Reformation since the history is the way it is. I mean, there's a reason people were dissatisfied with the Catholic church at that time. The Catholic church itself had to go through some massive changes in response. I'm not totally sure why Charles V would be someone's historical hero though. He was an emperor of a mess. I guess he did his best? And the Catholics in America... I mean, it's a mixed story at best. You had some people, like De las Casas, advocating for indigenous peoples, but you also had a lot of the church complicit or outright participants in genocide. Which is not to say that Protestants were any better. They were just as bad. But SOTW doesn't really deal with most of that. It sidesteps it as much as possible. Just like it sidesteps the Inquisition and a lot of the bigger questions about the Crusades and a lot of violence generally before you hit SOTW4, when there's suddenly nowhere left to go.

[mamaraby]

18 minutes ago, Farrar said:

Huh. Yeah, I'm not Catholic so I know I don't think much about this. But I probably should...

Mary really does get a bad rap in our glorification of Elizabeth, though she was a powerful and important monarch who deserves some good credit. Like, *both* of them persecuted their religious foes. Neither of them was great on that front. I can't remember how it's done in the book, though I'm pretty sure we did read that section. I think it must be very tricky to not make something seem anti-Catholic in talking about the Reformation since the history is the way it is. I mean, there's a reason people were dissatisfied with the Catholic church at that time. The Catholic church itself had to go through some massive changes in response. I'm not totally sure why Charles V would be someone's historical hero though. He was an emperor of a mess. I guess he did his best? And the Catholics in America... I mean, it's a mixed story at best. You had some people, like De las Casas, advocating for indigenous peoples, but you also had a lot of the church complicit or outright participants in genocide. Which is not to say that Protestants were any better. They were just as bad. But SOTW doesn't really deal with most of that. It sidesteps it as much as possible. Just like it sidesteps the Inquisition and a lot of the bigger questions about the Crusades and a lot of violence generally before you hit SOTW4, when there's suddenly nowhere left to go.

Well, yeah. Having grown up Protestsnt, I mostly don’t notice it, but I do wonder where/how to thread that needle in parenting what are so far non-religious children. Do I need to correct for that bias? Is there a non-biased or more balanced way to present it? I felt like we mostly accomplished here with the Crusades, but I’m also not Muslim so perhaps not. I probably didn’t do that enough with the Protestant/Catholic side because I didn’t notice it.

I know you’ve talked a lot about that tension between SOTW and the great men of history perspective. It can be overwhelming with grammar stage kiddos (which is what SOTW was written for) to try and account for all of it when really exposure helps create future categories for future thinking, but my tension has always been wrt representation because representation matters. I have always tried to at least correct a little for that slant so that those categories were broader and more inclusive of a wider range of people.

I am hopeful that Lisa Hawkins will be better able to thread that needle with the HO rewrite. It’s only speculation on my part sonce they haven’t released anything yet.

 

[Farrar]

Ditto. I grew up Protestant. My mom was a minister and in the midst of church history in Div school when I was a kid. I didn't even know any Catholics really until college. Many of the early conversations dh and I had about religion (he was raised Catholic) made me think he was from a different planet. It's maybe harder when your personal bias is just mildly anti-established religion generally. They all did a lot of bad. And some good too. But when anything says a religion did bad, I'm like, yeah, that's legit.

To me, the great men issue is as much about representation as anything else. I think it's really about assuming that the most important thing must be the most famous thing. And I get why when you're talking about a series for young children. But I also don't necessarily agree. You can't put off representation. You have to deal with this stuff. And maybe building a framework that includes stories that aren't just "famous men" is a good thing to do. But I think it's the historical perspective that's at the root of this. Like I don't think SWB sat down and thought, I'm going to be sure to hit the famous white men because they matter more. I think she said, I'm going to be sure to name the important people and stories. In cultures like China, where you have copious written histories, we also get names (though not on the level that Chinese history buffs like). Except, what do we judge as important? Who decides? What makes someone important? She's coming from a super old fashioned perspective on this. So, of course I'm going to have a different view.

[mamaraby]

Oh, for sure. I have absolutely no doubt that it was an unconcious choice on SWB’s part coupled with the constraints of writing a world (!) history book for elementary school children. I was listening to a podcast where Ed Ayers was discussing somewhat along these lines. There are certainly people for whom there is no written history and a perspective on the part of an author who places a priority on some sources over others.

Ayers touched a bit on fiction as a mechanism for telling those broader stories, imperfect as that may be. I, obviously, agree since we’ve often utilized fiction as a way to reconstruct those representations along with biographical resources. There are some really great resources out there in picture book form for the elementary set. HO in particular skipped whole sections of SOTW and attempted to do the same with their suggested resources/book list. I can’t speak to how they handled Catholicism since, again, it just did not register with me.