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MrsM
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| Posted: Sept 18 2009 at 2:03pm | IP Logged
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Has anyone got experience with this book? It's British history, and I'm wondering if it's got an anti-Catholic alant at all.
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Lynn in California
Homeschooling dd13, dd11, ds10, and ds8
Mom to Miracle Baby ds3
Mom to darling Elizabeth and Francis, held in Mary's arms and always in my heart
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SuzanneG
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| Posted: Sept 18 2009 at 2:25pm | IP Logged
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Lynn~ I'm pretty sure I've seen an answer about this on the Mater Amabilis website, but I can't find it right now. (And, after doing all this, I did actually find it...it's on the old MA site here.). I did find this answer from Kathryn from the archives of the MA yahoo group in response to this question:
Quote:
When I looked at the two core books for history, I
first acknowledged that they are truly living books that would keep me dc's attention, but I was bothered by some evident anti-catholic statements. For example in one chapters it tells about these poor prosecuted French
Protestants who left France to come to NC (our own state). The author was very harsh about the Catholic behavior against the Protestants. How do you deal with this kind of twisted information when dealing with young minds like those in level 1 and 2? |
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Kathryn wrote:
We didn't choose these two H.E.Marshall books lightly and we were well aware that this would be a concern. We batted the issue around within our planning
committee, and eventually decided in favour of including the books. I'll try to explain why.
The main reason we chose the books was that they are living books. This is CM herself on teaching history to the younger forms: "The child of six in 1B has, not stories from English History, but a definite quantity of consecutive reading, say, forty pages in a term, from a well-written, well-considered, large volume which is also well-illustrated.
Children cannot of course themselves read a book which is by no means written down to the 'child's level' so the teacher reads and the children 'tell' paragraph by paragraph, passage by passage."
To put into practice CM's method - a slow, steady, thorough reading of a substantial history book - we needed living, thorough, narrative history texts.
These are few and far between. If there were Catholic equivalents of these two books we would use them, but there simply aren't. I can't deny that H.E.Marshall's books are flawed. To be honest, no historical text for children (or even adults) will be 100% accurate. Historical knowledge is constantly changing, historical writing is influenced by the perspective of the writer, and huge chunks of history have to be covered in a short space so are covered highly selectively. To try to summarise the entire history of the US or Britain is a
massive task and H.E.Marshall made a pretty good stab at it. She made mistakes, but considering the magnitude of the task and that she was writing the best part of a century ago, surprisingly few.
A while ago I came across a historian's research assistant who was trying to find out more about H.E.Marshall for her employer, whose initial interest in
history had been sparked by her books. This lady hadn't been able to definitely confirm her identification, but was fairly positive that HEM was born into a moderately prosperous family in the Scottish borders. This would suggest herreligious background was probably Church of Scotland. From my reading of Our Island Story I am pretty certain she was a moderate Protestant who made a genuine, though not always successful, attempt to avoid bias. I'm convinced she was non-Catholic rather than anti-Catholic - a critical distinction, in my book.
I've been through Our Island Story and made notes on any sections I think are "red-flag" areas for Catholics. Where HEM made errors they appear to have been the result of misconceptions rather than any deliberate anti-Catholic bias. At the moment my notes are just scruffy bits of paper, but I will be typing them up
more coherently and putting them on the website as a brief set of "teachers' notes". You will be able to use these to explain or edit errors as they arise.
I can't do the same for This Country of Ours, because I'm afraid I'm lamentably ignorant of American history. I know Michele commented on one particular chapter
that appeared anti-Catholic, but was so far as she could tell factually true. I would expect that HEM did the same with TCOO as she did with OIS - simply wrote
the truth as she understood it, rather than following any anti-Catholic agenda. I'm certain she will have made errors here too, and we will need to rely on those of you with a historical bent to point them out (with supporting evidence, please!) or to offer counter-balancing information from a Catholic perspective.
We hope to build up a similar set of "teacher's notes" for TCOO in the future.
Overall, we feel that the benefits of using TCOO and OIS outweigh the disadvantages, which can be offset by discussion and judicious editing. To add a Catholic perspective, we are including some additional reading. For the UK, I'm working on writing a history of Catholicism in England for children. For the US we have provisionally listed a Seton book, The Catholic Faith Comes to the Americas, which is a collection of biographies. Neither Michele nor the US members of the planning committee have been able to get hold of a copy of this to preview, but neither could we come up with an alternative book. If any knows this book and has any comments, or can suggest an alternative, please shout! |
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HTH,
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Suzanne in ID
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Mom of 7 (Girls - 14, 12, 11, 9, 7 and Boys - 4, 1)
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MrsM
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| Posted: Sept 18 2009 at 2:49pm | IP Logged
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That's tremendously helpful--thank you!  I planned to download the book from Librivox to my dd's mp3 player, but I'm glad I asked here first. I'll have to do a little previewing.
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Lynn in California
Homeschooling dd13, dd11, ds10, and ds8
Mom to Miracle Baby ds3
Mom to darling Elizabeth and Francis, held in Mary's arms and always in my heart
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doris
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| Posted: Sept 18 2009 at 3:07pm | IP Logged
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That's really useful info.
After two years of more or less weekly readings, we're finally nearing the end! It's worth it but the book is certainly dense.
I haven't time now to go back and revisit the 'offending' chapters but I tended to either leave out contentious bits, which were in any case few and far between, or to add my own gloss. Actually it's a useful little starter lesson in bias!
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Home educating in London, UK with dd (2000) ds (2002), dd (2004), ds (2008) and dd (2011).
Frabjous Days
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4Real Forums : Across Time and Place
Topic: Our Island Story slant?
