Does MOH 1 get better?

[Curious_Papaya]

I started Mystery of History volume 1 with my 1st grader. I only intended to read the stories and maybe use some library books in addition. I'm having a baby this year so I'm trying to keep it easy for myself.

Here's my problem: I really don't like how the author treats things that happened "in the beginning". I am a Christian and I believe that God did create the world, the flood  really happened, etc. and I was raised a "young earth creationist" but I REALLY don't like the certainty that the author uses when describing things that happened. instead of presenting them as theories or possibilities, she just says "this is what happened and how it happened". No one was there! We can't know with certainty how it all went down. A lot of scientists who are a lot smarter than me have a lot of different theories about these things, and I don't trust my own knowledge of the topic enough to even be able to recognize when something is "off" regarding that topic.  It makes me question how MOH will treat the rest of history (a topic that I personally don't know well). Makes me nervous that she'll just throw in a bunch of her opinions but present them as straight up fact. I don't want to present history to my kids that way (even if they are only 6 & 4, and probably won't retain all that much from this year). I know history is all colored by bias and you have to take a lot of what happened with a grain of salt, depending on who tells the story, so maybe history won't be an "easy" subject to teach because of that (I'm willing to accept that).

I guess my question goes a little deeper than one curriculum. How do you teach history? Do you just pick a curriculum that best fits your own values & ideas and teach that?! Do we value truth, or are we just looking to validate our own opinions?

Any thoughts? Does MOH get better as it goes along? 

I really want to do Ancient history this year, and I like that Biblical events and people are included in MOH, but I'm just not sure if this is the author's bias is the one I want to teach.

[Momto6inIN]

MOH's author is opinionated pretty much throughout the curriculum. Her tone bothered me too, but I modified on the fly as I read it aloud and we talked about how this is one way that God might have created everything. It actually made for some pretty good discussions, even with my younger kids, so it wasn't a complete loss. We did enjoy the series, but on my 2nd time around teaching grammar stage history we moved on to use Story of the World instead. It was easier to add in our beliefs about how/when the world was created than to modify MOH author's.

[HomeAgain]

3 hours ago, Curious_Papaya said:

I guess my question goes a little deeper than one curriculum. How do you teach history? Do you just pick a curriculum that best fits your own values & ideas and teach that?! Do we value truth, or are we just looking to validate our own opinions?

 

I'm not going to answer on MOH, because we haven't used that, but you raise an interesting question.  I do value truth, but I also know that what is presented as truth is often opinion or wishful thinking without hard facts.  For example, The Good And The Beautiful teach that the Tower Of Babel fell and overnight Pangea broke and the continents moved to their current locations.  This is not true.  There is not a shred of evidence to support this, and a lot of evidence against the possibility of such a thing happening. 
FWIW, I teach history in stages.
Stage 1: presentation.  This is just a "getting to know" stories and culture portion of history, a first run-through.  I really like that Story Of The World vol. 1 starts off with a chapter on archaeology and we loop back to that often. "Here's what we have from these cultures and people and how we have interpreted that."

Stage 2: the grey area: this is when history starts being less black and white and we begin focusing more on primary sources, personal stories (usually historical fiction to identify with a child from that time), and talk more about how nothing is all good or all bad, but perspective makes everything change.  Of course the stories about the Crusades from the Holy Roman Empire are going to justify them.  Let's also look at Turkish or Moorish documents about the same battles.  Let's read about the Civil War with the Google newspaper archive and see what a paper in Georgia and one in Massachusetts has on their front pages.  Let's create a timeline with what is without a doubt true fact, without opinion.

Stage 3: the research period.  Read a text, find some unasked questions and hunt down the information.  We use Teaching What Really Happened as a guide for how to approach this.

Since I don't really find a curriculum to do this, I cobble.  We did SOTW 1-3 for stage 1.  We skipped 4 because of its dense structure, and I think we've settled into a routine of American-centered history for the year.  Next go around we'll use OUP Ancients and Medieval along with task cards for starting stage 2, with Jackdaws for Early Modern and Modern.  Stage 3, if I continue with this last kid, will be a timeline, the internet, and Jackdaws.


I figure it this way, if a curriculum is adamant that they are truth and don't cite sources, then they're not going to be what I'm looking for.  If they fall back on "it's in the bible" without delving into the archaeology that goes with it, it's not what I want.  If they cannot scientifically account for something they claim happened in the natural world, it's not going to stand the test of time.  I'm not interested in any of their opinions, and even SOTW has its moments of disregard from me where we bring in other sources to go with.

[...................]

Honestly, I tried MOH twice back in the day and was unimpressed both times. I did not enjoy the tone or the writing style.

We LOVED Story of the World 🙂

[Janeway]

On 10/2/2019 at 9:14 AM, Curious_Papaya said:

 

I guess my question goes a little deeper than one curriculum. How do you teach history? Do you just pick a curriculum that best fits your own values & ideas and teach that?! Do we value truth, or are we just looking to validate our own opinions?

 

When it comes to children, when they are young, you should teach your values first. So go with a program that fits your beliefs. Also, truth is ambiguous. If it is your opinion, then it is the truth to you. Another person believes in a different truth, but again, that is his/her opinion.  Even if five people stand in a room and witness the same thing, all five will have a different opinions of what the truth is of what happened. So, in my opinions, teach according to your beliefs and opinions. I would assume whatever you are teaching, it is based on your opinion of what the truth is. And you already sought the truth, and formed your opinion of the truth based on this. After you teach according to your beliefs, then let them seek the truth, when they are older and developmentally ready to debate the differences in opinions.  When they are young, everything is concrete and black and white. When they are teens and older, they are ready to seek the truth for themselves. 

[Garga]

I felt the same way as you, Curious_Papaya when I used MOH1 and 2.  I ended up ditching it.  

We’d used Story of the World first and loved, loved, loved it.  But we read the entire SOTW series twice and I wanted to try something new, so I bought MOH.  

I ended up finding a couple of things in MOH2 that I thought were flat out wrong but it’s been so long I don’t remember the specifics.  I stopped using it immediately.  And I also got really tired of her, “I think this is great!  Don’t you?” tone.  I mean, part of me loves a friendly style of writing, but it was just too much even for me who normally likes that kind of thing.

If you decide to ditch it, then know that Story of the World is a great option.  

P.S. I found that the MOH activities came across as busywork to me.  I think the activities in SOTW were much better and more meaningful to learn from.

Edited October 7, 2019 by Garga

[Curious_Papaya]

On 10/2/2019 at 1:18 PM, HomeAgain said:

I figure it this way, if a curriculum is adamant that they are truth and don't cite sources, then they're not going to be what I'm looking for.  If they fall back on "it's in the bible" without delving into the archaeology that goes with it, it's not what I want.  If they cannot scientifically account for something they claim happened in the natural world, it's not going to stand the test of time. 

To the quoted: That is how I feel about it, too!

Thank you, HomeAgain! Your method really resonates with me, and I like how you laid it all out. That is what I want to do with my kids, but I just haven't known exactly how to go about it. Plus, I haven't had the time or energy to put into planning it all out for this year. 

I'll check out SOTW from the library and see what I think. I know this initial run thru of history is just for "exposure" but I want to do that in a way that values truth, and leaves things open for further information and investigation later down the road.

Thank you all for your responses.

[Janeway]

2 hours ago, square_25 said:

That’s a remarkably unscientific way of looking at truth... I’d say that at the heart of science is the idea that the world (and the truth about it) is knowable. 

Of course, we can’t know for sure what happened in the past, but throwing up our hands and saying it’s all opinion seems like a bad way to study history.

There is a reason history is called a humanity subject. Any book you read on the subject, textbook or otherwise, will have a different opinion. I have not read MOH, but I have read many books that conflict and we have to decide what we think is right and convey that. If history books only kept to the proven facts, they would be very thin.