History At Our House

2009-10 American and Ancient History Registration (July 1-7)

July 1st, 2009 by mrpowell2

Registration for the American and Ancient history programs for the 2009-10 school year is now open via the registration page.

Two levels of American history instruction are available in the coming year:

• Lower Elementary (for students age 6-8)
• combined Upper Elementary / Junior High (for students age 9-13).

Three levels of Ancient history instruction are available in the coming year:

• Lower Elementary (for students age 6-8)
• Upper Elementary (for students age 9-11).
• Junior High (for students age 12-15).

Since both American and Ancient history are offered exclusively as recorded podcasts this year, they are available at the low price of only $20/month.

Please note: this year, registration will be open in the first week of every month only.  If you miss the July registration period (July 1-7), your next chance to register will be August 1-7.

Posted in Homeschooling Curriculum, Homeschooling, Secular homeschooling, History Curriculum | No Comments »

HistoryAtOurHouse European History Curriculum Summary

June 23rd, 2009 by mrpowell2

The Rise of Europe

Our first important theme this year will be the rise of Europe.  It is the rise of a new culture out of the ashes of the Roman Empire, so we will begin by recapping the story of the fall of Rome.  It will be very important for us to look at the conflicts in Rome between its traditional beliefs and the rising presence of a religion based on the teachings of Jesus.  Some Roman Emperors, such as Diocletian, saw the rise of this new religion as a grave threat and suppressed it.  Others, such as Constantine, embraced it.  Gradually, the Roman gods gave way to the system of one Christian god, and Christianity became a part of the Roman Empire’s identity.  Then it survived as the dominant remnant of Roman culture that Europe’s barbarians would adopt after Rome’s fall.

But before “Christendom” could arise, the Europeans within and without the dying Empire would have to work together to deflect the terrifying invasion of the Mongolian warrior-king, Attila the Hun.  Attila’s nomadic warriors would almost destroy Europe before it began.  However, his defeat paved the way for a new culture to form.

This culture was led by the Franks, a Germanic people who would repel the invasion of yet another wave of would-be conquerors, this time the followers of Mohammed, c.732.  The Muslims were forced to settle on the conquest of Spain (which they held in part until 1492), while the Christian Franks would go on to forge a vast new Europe, under their leader Charlemagne.

The Frankish Empire was barely formed, when it began to fall apart.  The Dark Ages were destined to continue with the ever-present threat of the Vikings disrupting the nascent European order for centuries.  Slowly, the great nations that would eventually dominate the map were formed.  In the constant war that was life in these terrible times these embryonic nations were dominated by great lords, who controlled their land by virtue of military might.  The common people were forced to seek refuge with these strong men and to trade their freedom for protection, becoming near slaves, or “serfs.”  Feudalism, the social system that would characterize Europe during the Middle Ages, was born.

Europe during the Middle Ages

Gradually, kings came to dominate the lords themselves, and a delicate order was maintained within each nation between rulers, the nobility, and the people.  France, England, and the Holy Roman Empire (Germany) emerged from this context, each with its own relative balance of power within the government.  Each had a distinct national culture.  Each was also connected in some crucial way to the other dominant institution in European life: the Catholic Church.  The popes in Rome established their own system of power in the name of their spiritual code, at times even controlling the most powerful monarchs.  This power enabled the popes to launch religious crusades to try to reclaim the Holy Land from the Muslims—a project that would continually drain Europe’s energies during the 12th and 13th centuries.  The “Reconquista” (reconquest) of Spain and the Hundred Years’ War (between France and England) also deeply affectedthe medieval mind during this time. However, even more momentous changes in the European world were to come!

In 1415, the Portuguese, led by Prince Henry “the Navigator,” initiated the “Age of Discovery,” by beginning a gradual expansion into and around Africa.  This was followed by the discovery of America by Columbus in 1492, and the circumnavigation of the world by Magellan and del Cano in 1522. Within the span of a century, an entirely new world was opened up.  European culture began to spread throughout the globe. Colonialism and contest for empire, however, merely exacerbated Europe’s internal strife.

While the great expansion of Western culture was underway, its religious framework suffered a massive upheaval during the Reformation, starting in 1517.  Martin Luther in Germany, Henry VIII in England, and John Calvin in Switzerland, each enacted major disruptions in the Catholic system of beliefs and its state-supported infrastructure.  The result was a period of religious wars that combined with the ongoing international conflicts spawned by the major powers’ imperial designs.

Although religious strife gradually faded into the background, and European culture became increasingly secular, this shift did  not signal the  end of  European wars.  As if to announce a new era of bloodshed, Louis XIV of France, the “Sun King,” attempted to extend his power over the rest of Europe, starting in 1689.  Each of the absolutist monarchs of this time claimed a “divine right” to power and attempted to redraw the map of Europe.  The cost of their wars, however, would be measured in more than just money.

Louis’s great-great grandchild, Louis XVI would be the first continental monarch to learn of a rising tide against monarchy, let loose in part by the formation of a new republic across the Atlantic.  In 1789, the French Revolution would begin a stage of European risings culminating in a broad overthrow of the old Europe by 1871.  Before its end,  the  revolutionary period would see  the rise and fall of Napoleon, and the reactionary system of Austrian prince Metternich. Each scarred the cultural landscape with his  own brand of  repression,  and the  result  was  a  great revolt against the established way of life that had made Europe what it was for the greater part of its history.

Modern Europe

Democracy replaced monarchy. The new Europe was governed by its people.  But the will of the people itself became oppressive under the influence of new political outlooks, such as the Communism of Karl Marx, and the national socialism of Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and later Adolph Hitler.  The history of Europe as it traversed the “long twentieth century” would be its greatest ordeal.  First Germany, unified in 1871, would begin a program of aggressive imperialism in retribution for French domination during the Napoleonic period.  The Franco-Prussian War was but the first step towards World War I.  This massive conflict signaled the emergence of America as a military arbiter in Europe’s affairs.

To complicate matters, further, the sleeping giant on Europe’s eastern frontier, Russia, traded its oppressive monarchy for an even more tyrannical regime in the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Soon American military might would be brought to bear a second time, as Germany refused to accept its assigned place in the new political order of Europe, and the freer Western nations were nearly overrun.  Communist Russia was locked in an intractable struggle with Nazi Germany until America’s involvement tipped the scales.  Europe then struggled to come to grips with the atrocities of Nazism, and its confidence as a civilization was shattered.  It retreated into a submissive role as two new powers emerged to vie for supremacy: the United States and the Soviet Union.

Europe could hardly find solace in its new, secondary role.  Its very identity was cleft in two by an “iron curtain.”  The Cold War made the prospect of total destruction terrifyingly real, as the two superpowers aimed their arsenals across the fields once trampled by Attila’s cavalry, sowed by Europe’s serfs, and contested time and again by its various rulers.  A torturous evolution over 1500 years, all too well known by Europe’s leaders, had brought them to a impasse.  The age-old model of the “balance of power” spoke to them no more.  The new European idea required the adoption of a common vision.

The new ideal of its leaders, that of a “European Union,” remains a work in progress.  It represents the latest model for a cultural continent that has moved the world, and which hopes to guide its progress once again.  The unfolding story of Europe—a rich pageantry of growth and conflict culminating in this latest era—will be the focus of our intellectual adventure this year!

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Registration for the HistoryAtOurHouse European History program for 2009-10 (including live classes for students at every level) will be open from August 1-7.  Ancient and American history are also available this year. See the registration page for details.  For exclusive advanced registration, and other important registration notices, please join the HistoryAtOurHouse mailing list.

Posted in Homeschooling Curriculum, History, History for High School Students, Homeschooling, European History, Secular homeschooling, History At Our House, History Curriculum | No Comments »

The HistoryAtOurHouse Three-Year History Rotation

June 18th, 2009 by mrpowell2

This is part 3 in a series of four essays I’ve sent to mailing list members exclusively.  I’m posting part 3 as an enticement for those of you who are not mailing list members to join the list.

As I discussed in Part 2 of this series (sent out mailing list members only) and in my article Why History? (available at Secular Homeschooling Magazine), the proper aim of a history program is to help students achieve historical-mindedness.

To be historically-minded means not just to know many facts about the past, but to see how the past is connected to the present, and to be able to use the past as an intellectual resource for living more productively in the present.

Given the state of history education today, fewer and fewer people are developing this trait.  Kids aren’t taught history when they are young.  Then most learn to hate it in high school.  The few who bother with it in college find it to be a completely esoteric subject–which a handful embrace, and the vast majority discard for good.

The only way to reverse this cultural trend is to re-instate systematic history education in the curriculum–for children.  As I discuss in my article “Kids Need History Early,” young minds are ready for history by age seven. To deny them the unique intellectual stimulus that history can provide at that age is to sabotage their chance of ever becoming historically-minded.  (It prevents them from developing the “history habit” early in life, which significantly lessens their chance of ever developing it.)

One of the key issues I discuss in my follow-up piece entitled “How Much History Do Kids Need?” is the need to continue feeding the growth of young minds by a systematic presentation of history over the course of their education, until they graduate from high school.  Given the state of college history education, high school is really the last chance kids have to grasp the value of history and commit to incorporating it into their intellectual lives.

(There is one exception to this.  Rarely, adults actually develop an interest in history on their own.  Unfortunately, without systematic instruction, it’s virtually impossible to make up for lost time once you are older.  I teach bright, motivated adult students history, and I’ve observed first-hand the tremendous handicap of starting late. It’s just not possible to put the time aside, let alone dedicate the intellectual resources, to master history once you’re entangled in your web of family and professional responsibilities.)

Assuming you start your children on history at age seven, and they graduate at eighteen, that means you’ve got twelve years to help them become historically-minded. That may seem like a long time, but it’s not.  There’s 5000 years worth of stories from five major cultural continents to cram into those twelve years!  Furthermore, as everybody knows full well, you can’t teach children something just once, and then expect it to stick for good.  The truth is you’ve got to teach them the same history repeatedly over the course of those twelve years.  And this isn’t just so they will retain it; it’s so their understanding and appreciation will evolve as their context of knowledge grows.  Over the course of their early life and during their teen years children change rapidly. They need to be taught history in a manner that reflects and enhances this growth.

About a hundred years ago, when people were actually being educated in that way we now call “classical,” it was easier to rotate through history’s fewer stories.  One could study Ancient history (Greece and Rome) one year, European history (especially Britain and France, America’s parent civilizations) the next, and America in the third year.  Then one repeated the cycle.  At the time there was really only about 3000 years worth of material (because ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia remained largely undiscovered) and the story was naturally structured in a linear progression of cultures that made up the core political narrative of Western civilization.  There really wasn’t any reason to study anything else.

Then a number of factors caused this approach to be modified, and in some cases abandoned.  With the advent of Egyptology and Assyriology, the background story to Western civilization became 2000 years longer. Then, because of accelerated globalization in the twentieth century, it became evident that understanding the forces that would shape the lives of everyday Americans meant accounting for threads of historical development outside of the traditional Western narrative.  Even if there hadn’t been ideological forces at work–all the “isms” of the twentieth century, from Marxism to multiculturalism, redefining what history should be–it would have been necessary to change the way history was taught, just to account for the objective fact that the Middle East and East Asia were having a greater and greater impact on the course of world events.

As a reflection of the ever expanding range of available and relevant historical information and also the changing pedagogical values in the culture, it is now common to hear people talking about four-year–and even six-year!–history rotations.  These longer rotations arise because of an almost indiscriminate attempt to cover it all, from the Sun King to the Sumo wrestlers, from California to Calcutta.

The first problem that arises from this expansion of the curriculum is that the presentation of the past becomes less essentialized and hence less cohesive.  When different stories about different civilizations are presented just because they are different, the sum inevitably reflects this disparity.  Every civilization has its own essential lines of development; for instance, the progress of Ancient Greece towards democracy, and the emergence of Confucianism during the Zhou dynasty in China.  Each of these themes is unique and historically incommensurable.  They cannot be woven into a single coherent narrative because they happened thousands of miles apart, in radically different contexts, in civilizations that had no contact with each other.  The same can be said of the stories of ancient pharaonic Egypt and the Harrapan culture of early India, even thought these were nearer to each other.

If you commit to teaching any two (or three, or more) such disparate narratives, there are two ways of dealing with the incongruity.  The first is essentially to ignore it, and tell the multiple stories in parallel, i.e. jumping back and forth between them.   Regardless of what adults wish to be the case, the disparity between the narratives is not lost on students, who find this method confusing and unproductive.  The second approach is to tell one story in full, and then the other, and so on. Regardless of whether the stories are told in parallel or in series, if you choose to tell as many as you can, you either have to rush through them, or drag it out endlessly.
Each of these approaches has an insurmountable pitfall.  If you want to move through all of the possible choices quickly, i.e. try to fit all the stories into, say, four years, you have to curtail each of them, rendering the treatment superficial and less satisfying.  If you want to give each story a full treatment, then it can take you all of six years.  The problem with this approach is that students don’t get to return to the same material often enough as they grow to reinforce their previous learning.  If they finally get back to material they learned six years before to learn more, they’ve inevitably forgotten it and have no lasting knowledge to build upon.

Either way, students can never gain a command over what they are studying.  This means that the intellectual maturation they should be experiencing through ever more intensive studies of the same material cannot occur. Where they would have been in a position to study history with intellectual penetration in high school, they cannot. They are not ready.  And because they are not ready, high school cannot serve them as it should.  Students thus fail to emerge as  historically-minded adults.
The solution is to find a pedagogical approach that allows students to gain command over the right material before high school, so that they can become historical-minded adults in high school.

The solution is to determine what is the most essential material that students need to learn, present it properly, repeatedly, at higher and higher levels of abstraction, until students know  history inside out and can readily leverage its constituent facts in meaningful thinking.

That material is the integrated progression of Ancient, European, and American history taught in a straightforward three-year rotation, used in HistoryAtOurHouse.

This approach delivers the power of essentialization.  Out of the plethora of historical options, this approach delivers a narrative that is tightly woven, with the story progressing from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome in the first year, to the Dark Ages and the formation of modern Europe in the second year, through the Age of Discovery to the story of America in the third.  The essence of this story is the development of Western civilization as an inheritance of the Ancient world, an amalgam of European influences, and a culmination in the American Epoch that is the world today.

This compact narrative is highly cohesive.  There are direct causal links that bind the component parts of the story together–from the conquest of Egypt by the Persians, to the conquest of the Roman Empire by the Germanic barbarians, to the conquest of the Americas by the Europeans.  This narrative also illustrates universal themes that are not found elsewhere, such as the development of democratic, republican, and socialist forms of government, as well as the feudal and monarchical and theocratic forms so common everywhere else.  In addition, from Solon and the ancient Athenian debt slavery crisis to Lincoln and America’s own modern struggle against slavery, it is full of individuals and events that shaped the world around us.

This approach also delivers the power of repetition. Presenting this more delimited story over a three-year cycle allows students to return to the same material often enough to allow them to gradually learn it better and better. Importantly, this doesn’t just mean one additional exposure compared to a four-year cycle, or two more exposures compared to a six-year cycle.  (Nominally: 12 yrs / 6 year cycle = 2 exposures; 12 yrs / 4 year cycle = 3 exposures; 12 yrs / 3 year cycle = 4 exposures.)  It actually means repeating the same material 20-50 more times!  Although I’ve never kept an exact count of how many times I discuss the same key facts over the course of one academic year, it easily is more than 20 times.  It may even be more than 50 times.  That means that over the course of twelve school years with a three-year rotation, students will revisit the same facts 80-200 times! Each distinct exposure helps students better understand and better remember, especially when they are encouraged to recall and interpret the meaning of these facts by me through targeted Q&A sessions in class.  Each time they revisit the same material with their growing context of knowledge the experience is more rewarding because they can better grasp its significance by seeing how it fits in the “big picture.”

It is only when they are armed with a strong grasp of this “big picture” that students entering high school are ready to do the intellectual work that their more mature minds can be and need to be doing.  A high school student should not be focused on learning basic historical facts, such as the dates of the Thirty Years’ War, the names of the major Roman Emperors, or the specific amendments of the Bill of Rights.  He should already know these things.  Then, based on this knowledge, he can learn how to investigate what underlies those facts, to uncover the causes of history, including and especially the intellectual underpinnings of the major upheavals in civilization, such as the rise and fall of the Roman Republic, the Reformation, and the American and French Revolutions.  To grasp how certain intellectual paradigms have dominated the progress of history, one cannot get hung up on grasping what that progress is, one must already know it.  Only with this foundational knowledge already acquired is a student’s mind freed to do the more significant thinking that will allow them to fully grasp how and why history matters.

Returning to the key point I made at the outset, it is this more significant thinking that is the real aim of history.  The point of learning history isn’t just to know facts, it’s to leverage those facts as an intellectual tool for living.

The choice when designing a history curriculum is whether to take the goal of historical-mindedness seriously or not.  The choice is whether to embrace a more essentialized, cohesive, causal, and intellectually productive narrative, and to do it well; or to scatter one’s focus, and cover a lot of material less productively.  Using a four or six year rotation inevitably comes from choosing to present too much material, which degrades the key values that history has to offer. By contrast, the tightly-woven, iterative approach used in HistoryAtOurHouse delivers an inspiring, instructive narrative that can propel students to achieve an unmatched degree of historical-mindedness.

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So what about China and the Middle East?  Don’t kids need to learn about them?  The answer is: it depends.  Joiin the mailing list to learn how HistoryAtOurHouse will be offering the history of East Asia (China and Japan) and the history of the Middle East as optional programs in its curriculum starting in 2011-12.  This exclusive preview–coming this summer–will be available for mailing list members only!  Also coming soon for mailing list members only: Part 4 of this series on “the HistoryAtOurHouse difference” on the crucial importance of high school history: how to get ready for it, and why you shouldn’t accept any substitute for the HistoryAtOurHouse high school program!

Posted in Homeschooling Curriculum, Education, Homeschooling, Secular homeschooling, History At Our House, History Curriculum | No Comments »

Thank You For Another Great Year of History At Our House!

June 16th, 2009 by mrpowell2

With the year winding down, I wanted to take a moment to say “thank you” to all the homeschooling parents and students who made 2008-09  such a great year.  Next year, I don’t think the class picture of students participating in the live classes will even fit on a 16 x 20!

Posted in Secular homeschooling, History At Our House, History Curriculum | No Comments »

Inspirational Image of the Week for Homeschoolers

June 6th, 2009 by mrpowell2

A Pupil Learning His Lesson, by Jean-Baptiste Greuze

Posted in History, Art, Homeschooling | No Comments »

Ancient History Still Matters

June 2nd, 2009 by mrpowell2

As a historian and homeschool teacher I’m often asked, “What’s your favorite period?”  It’s a question I can never seem to answer definitively, because every time I turn to a new part of history, I become thoroughly engrossed by it.  That said, some material always inspires me on a special level, and I think that my students can tell how I light up when I’m presenting it, which is definitely the case when it comes to “the Ancients.”

Ancient history may be about civilizations long gone, and it may not seem to have the same bearing on our lives as American history, but to know Ancient history is to love it, and to see how–without a doubt–it still matters.

To find out my “Top 5″ reasons why Ancient history should figure prominently in any homeschooling history curriculum, read the full article in this month’s Home Educator’s Directory Newsletter.

Posted in Homeschooling Curriculum, Homeschooling, Ancient History | No Comments »

2009-10 American History Registration Now Open

June 1st, 2009 by mrpowell2

Registration for the American History program for the 2009-10 school year is now open via the American history registration page.

Two levels of American history instruction are available in the coming year:

• Lower Elementary (for students age 6-8)
• combined Upper Elementary / Junior High (for students age 9-13).

Please note: this year, registration will be open in the first week of every month only.  If you miss American history registration from June 1-7, your next chance to register will be July 1-7.

Posted in Homeschooling Curriculum, American History, History Homeschooling, Homeschooling, Secular homeschooling | No Comments »

2009-10 American History Registration Opens Today

June 1st, 2009 by mrpowell2

2009-10 school year registration for the American history program at HistoryAtOurHouse opens today at Noon Eastern for mailing list members. General registration opens at 4:00 PM Eastern.  Two levels of American history instruction are available: Lower Elementary (for students age 6-8) and a combined Upper Elementary / Junior High (for students age 9-13).

For an overview of the American history curriculum, please view this on-line curriculum summary.

Please note: this year, registration will be open in the first week of every month only.  If you miss American history registration from June 1-7, your next chance to register will be July 1-7.

For more information on registration for the Ancient and European history programs which open later this summer–including live classes and the new High School program!–see the most recent posts on this blog.

Posted in Homeschooling Curriculum, American History, History, History Homeschooling, Homeschooling, Secular homeschooling | No Comments »

Registration Schedule for the 2009-10 School Year with HistoryAtOurHouse

May 21st, 2009 by mrpowell2

HistoryAtOurHouse will be accepting new enrollments for the 2009-10 academic year on the following staggered schedule.

• American history, starting June 1st.

• Ancient history, starting July 1st.

• European history, including registration for live classes, starting August 1st.

Mark your calendars, and get ready for another great year of history!

Posted in Homeschooling Curriculum, American History, History, History Homeschooling, History for High School Students, Homeschooling, European History, Ancient History, Secular homeschooling | No Comments »

2008-09 Registration Closed

May 16th, 2009 by mrpowell2

In preparation for the 2009-10 school year, automated late registration for the 2008-09 school year with HistoryAtOurHouse is now closed.

Parents wishing to begin the HistoryAtOurHouse program with their children during the summer should contact Mr. Powell directly at: mrpowell@historyatourhouse.com.

Posted in Homeschooling | No Comments »