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1Bookworm
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| Posted: June 20 2005 at 8:05am | IP Logged
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Good morning,
I'm trying to plan out my 7th grader's history year. We are going to be using the method in the new CHC middle school plans.
I tend to be kind of picky about history books. I don't want to see a lot of anti Catholic bias (or other bias, for that matter). OTOH, I also don't want to see every individual Catholic sinner's behaviors glossed over just because they are Catholic. I'm equally picky about the whole "providential viewpoint" and won't use books with that flavor, either.
CHC recommends these two texts as research tools for the 7th (American) and 8th (world) grades, along with historical fiction and living history books. They don't read the texts chapter to chapter...they just look up the topic for that week in these books.
I've heard really mixed reviews about these books, bias wise, and I don't know anyone I can borrow them from to preread. I'd appreciate some reviews and perspectives from those who have used these books already.
Can you help me?
Blessings,
Bookswithtea
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ALmom
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| Posted: June 20 2005 at 2:57pm | IP Logged
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We have both of the texts and used Christ the King, Lord of History for 10th grade (our dd was enrolled in Seton at the time). They were Catholic, but tended to gloss over the less than glorious aspects of individual Catholics and events. I really enjoyed them as an easy read when I had been steeped in secular history (history major at an in-name only Catholic college)and they did a good job stimulating a bit of "gee, I wonder if all that stuff I was taught in ps and college is really true." It never gave enough information to really answer this but it did serve to make me more aware to search out an alternative point of view.
My dd, who had a thouroughly Catholic formation, despised them. She found many statements which were poorly supported or the reasons given were lame - ie, at one point Anne Carrol came across like she was saying that everyone was doing it and the Catholics weren't doing it to the same horrible extent. This was on torture during the period of the inquisition. Our dd 's point was that just because everyone is doing it, that doesn't make it right. We also found it very difficult to follow in terms of sequence because the book sticks more to themes (apologetic in nature) and skips around forward and backward in time, sometimes by hundreds of years.
Some of our dd frustration with the book have to do with how quickly Seton expected us to get through it - there wasn't any time for the real learning and you basically had to memorize the text to survive. However, I still do have a number of criticisms of it which I will summarize as follows:
It was somewhat unbalanced - glossing over negative events and time periods and not really addressing them at all. The Catholics, in general, come across as saints or almost saints, and the only negatives mentioned are done in a defensive manner.
The book was not sequential which makes it a poor textbook for history. I strongly believe that the reason for having a history spine is to give the overall picture in a reasonably sequential order to tie together all the other biographies and histories you read to flesh it out. The book was not sequential, except in an extremely loose way. The only way we could manage was to use an encyclopedia for dates and put things on a timeline. Often we referred to a secular text just to get the sequence.
When negative aspects of Catholic individuals or events related to the church were mentioned, the defense was often weak and my dd came away from the text assuming that things Anne Carrol said must not have been true even when they were because of the weakness of her arguements.
In general, world history texts try to cover too much and so you end up with a string of events without any meat at all. Christ the King was not any different here. One advantage to it was that in picking events to mention, there were things mentioned that I have not seen in any other textbooks.
I do not know if you are aware that CHC now uses a new textbook called All Ye Lands for World History in either the 5th or 6th grade and then has their own in the lesson plans for the middle years.
Personally, I'm glad to have Anne Carrol's books but would not use them as a spine, but as one more source for information. It is an easier read and does give you the idea that there are many ways of looking at the same event. We used Anne Carrol's book alongside an older secular textbook and basically concluded that where they agreed, you probably had the way it happened and where they disagreed, more research was needed for any conclusions. We discussed the bias of each textbook author and tried to find definitive answers from other sources.
I hope this helps some.
Janet
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1Bookworm
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| Posted: June 20 2005 at 4:00pm | IP Logged
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Hi Janet,
*** Our dd 's point was that just because everyone is doing it, that doesn't make it right. ***
Ahhh, I can see how a teen could make that conclusion, regarding the inquisition and the protestant equivalents (Salem Witch Trials/Calvin's Geneva). It wasn't till I studied history that I started to understand the Catholic idea of "doctrinal development." :-)
***We also found it very difficult to follow in terms of sequence because the book sticks more to themes (apologetic in nature) and skips around forward and backward in time, sometimes by hundreds of years.***
Now thats something I didn't know. Maybe thats why CHC recommends using it only as a research tool? I have the new middle years lesson plans. They have chosen a topic every week for the child to research. The points you mentioned seem pretty significant to me. CHC uses the Catholic Textbook Project books for 5th adn 6th grades. They are probably more balanced and definitely more colorful than the other books, but neither of them cover the 20th century. I can't decide if I should use them instead and a secular text for the 20th c. Or I suppose we could use AYL/FSTSS up to the 20th C. and then Christ the King/Christ and the Americas only for the 20th century.
Do you think that the worst of the bias is during the middle ages where there is so much defensiveness?
I'm kind of looking forward to seeing the textbooks that the Catholic Textbook Project have in production, once they are released. Finding a spine for history at this age is really difficult. I was also considering SOTW III and IV (I already have I and II) but I read a review somewhere here that led me to believe III has the typical tired old anti Catholic bias, and I already know that II does. Sigh...
Thank you for responding. I appreciate the help.
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Elizabeth
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ALmom wrote:
My dd, who had a thouroughly Catholic formation, despised them. She found many statements which were poorly supported or the reasons given were lame - ... We also found it very difficult to follow in terms of sequence because the book sticks more to themes (apologetic in nature) and skips around forward and backward in time, sometimes by hundreds of years.
...It was somewhat unbalanced - glossing over negative events and time periods and not really addressing them at all. The Catholics, in general, come across as saints or almost saints, and the only negatives mentioned are done in a defensive manner.
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This was exactly what my ds thought of the books.
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Elizabeth Foss is no longer a member of this forum. Discussions now reflect the current management & are not necessarily expressions of her book, *Real Learning*, her current work, or her philosophy. (posted by E. Foss, Jan 2011)
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JennGM
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| Posted: June 21 2005 at 4:32pm | IP Logged
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Very interesting analysis of Anne Carroll's books. I used Seton in high school when I was being homeschooled back in the early 80s. I also ended up in VA at Seton School in her classes my senior year. My siblings all went to high school there, also. Her style of teaching is narrative, making history come alive to the students, but I do have to agree that there are definite weaknesses to these texts. I would not use them as a spine when the time comes, but merely as an easy companion read. I almost think I would encourage my child to challenge her text and find proof from other sources to back up her findings.
I do know that she and her husband traveled all over to get to original sources, but it does astound me that she doesn't strive to create a more scholarly work. I'm not saying she has to have the approval of Harvard or anything, but footnotes and bibliography and a more detailed index would be a great beginning.
I took American History during my homeschool. The Christ in the Americas was an earlier edition with no index, no bibliography and very little information. But her opinions of the founding fathers and the lack of religion in our government made me feel despairing for our nation...a heavy load for a Junior in hs to feel. Looking back now, I realize how she carries a Catholic bias -- if you're not Catholic, it's no good. Even some presentation of the "natural good" would have helped my morale. 
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Anne Marie M
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| Posted: June 21 2005 at 8:52pm | IP Logged
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So, what would you all recommend for a spine for American History or World History?
Anne Marie
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Anne Marie M
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I should clarify - I'm looking for books for a high school level course.
Anne Marie
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ALmom
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| Posted: June 22 2005 at 11:38am | IP Logged
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Kolbe sells lesson plans for an 8th grade secular American History text. We have used it for our high -schooler. It's OK and is giving us a decent introduction, and does go up to more recent history. It is very brief but as a spine it would probably be OK. (They also have plans for Christ and the Americas in the same grade level but since both are high school level textbooks, it isn't really a big stretch to make it high school, especially if you are supplementing with additional reading).
It was the best we could find in the time alloted but we are looking to see if someone else has found something better as we have an 8th grader who will be doing American History next year.
Janet
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1Bookworm
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| Posted: June 22 2005 at 12:40pm | IP Logged
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Oh my goodness. Thank you all so much for your responses. I'm still stumped as to what would be the best thing to use. I was just thinking maybe that I could get away with Christ and the Americas since it probably doesn't cover the Inquisition, Crusades, or any of the other hot button topics.
But after reading what someone said about the Founding Fathers and our government, I am concerned again.
Can anyone give me a head's up as to what subjects I should watch out for?
And I guess I will head on over to the Kolbe web site to see what secular text they are recommending for 8th grade...
Thank you all for your input.
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ALmom
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In American History, you will find differing opinions on Lincoln, FDR and Wilson. From what I have gathered from Seton - they despise them and debunk a lot of the assumptions about the founding fathers. A secular text, depending on how old or new it is, may downplay religion entirely (even if it was a more deist view) and generally see Lincoln as the freer of the slaves and one of the best Presidents.
Liberals, in general, love Wilson and FDR, and might downplay some of the controversies surrounding how FDR pushed his New Deal through or how Wilson provoked the Germans and did a real hatchet job on Europe after WWI. You won't see them asking questions like - "WW II began presumably over Poland's self rule. Why then, after the war, did the allies basically give Eastern Europe, including Poland, to the Soviets and seem unconcerned with the Soviet dominance of the country and forcibly repatriate refugees back to an almost certain death.
You also won't see a whole lot on the persecution of Catholics in early America, but it generally is at least mentioned somewhat. There is generally an emphasis on things like the Salem Witch Trials and the Scopes Trial and UN (as a great step forward). The issues of slavery are emphasized while state's rights are generally downplayed in discussions about the Civil War. In general, a secular text will go into more detail on the specifics of battles, and political intrigue while downplaying religion.
I don't think there are quite as many hot buttons in American History.(IMO)
Janet
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1Bookworm
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| Posted: June 23 2005 at 4:34pm | IP Logged
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Janet, what an awesome post. But you know what??? Even though I love history and am familiar with some of the controversies you've mentioned, I'm not always sure what side of the debate I even agree with! :P That frustrates me immensely when I am trying to choose books. I took AP Am. History in high school and had a fabulous teacher...still remember a whole lot from that class. After the AP exam was over, he actually spent a month teaching us about how the US used propaganda to motivate the people to support the WWII war effort. We also watched Eyes on the Prize, a very long documentary on the Civil Rights Movement. But I was also a jr. in high school when I took the AP exam. I'm not sure I would have even understood the subtleties of whether FDR ended the Depression or WWII ended it. Or whether the Civil War was about freeing the slaves or state rights.
I'm looking right now at teaching a child who is technically a 7th grader, but growth and age wise, is more of a 6th and a half grader. :-) For instance, he is NEVER ready to switch to a new math text before January, rather than in the traditional September. Because I love history so much, I tend to expect too much understanding out of him. What do you think is "enough* for this age range? And if I'm not going to teach all the complexities at this age, then I'm stuck with the question of "what" bias I want to take (Patriotic versus Catholic, etc).
Thank you for your help (and others, too!). I really appreciate it. This is my oldest child, so I'm short on experience with teaching this age group.
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Leonie
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My older sons disliked CTKLOH - they felt it was rather "dumbed down" and disliked the heavy Catholic bias. Yes, we are Catholic but we also don't want things to be "glossed over."
That said, my fourth son, Jonathon, is reading CTKLOH right now. He is not using it as a spine. He is not studying it for History. He is just reading it, as one of many books he is reading this year, to "round out" his education. Jonathon is 16.
And Jonathon likes CTKLOH! Yes, he sees the bias and the simplistic text - but he is enjoying it as a story. The same way he enjoyed Hillyer's A Child's History of the World when he was younger. (That was biased, too!)
So, perhaps the value of the book depends on usage and on the reader? It didn't work for us as a spine or reference book. It *is working as a "story" read. 
Leonie in Sydney
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Willa
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Leonie wrote:
| And Jonathon likes CTKLOH! Yes, he sees the bias and the simplistic text - but he is enjoying it as a story. So, perhaps the value of the book depends on usage and on the reader? It didn't work for us as a spine or reference book. It *is working as a "story" read. |
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That was what my son Brendan did when he was 14. In fact, he read it more than once. To him, it was a good story and a nice counter-balance to the Kingfisher and Usborne history books he also was reading at the time.
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ALmom
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Leonie,
That's exactly how I read both of Anne Carrol's books and liked them. It does take a little background in history to follow though.
1Bookworm - don't worry that you haven't decided on the answers yet. That is the beauty of history. The historians even disagree on many of the issues. After all we are trying to get a little better picture of what actually happened and why but none of us can ever know for sure someone elses motives, and many documents from those periods were actually destroyed by war. Some of the real information is only now coming out as it was secret(both war secrets and in Soviet government archives which only became available after the demise of communism). As Catholics, we have the advantage, because we do know that truth exists and we want to find it and we can analyze possibilities, evidence and recognize that men's free will can bring great advancement and great suffering. We are not without hope in even the most seemingly hopeless times in history. We want to recognize the positive contributions our country has made, but do not have to be blindly engulfed in patriotism (do not read that as patriotic in the better sense of the word). We are able to pick the good from whatever source it comes, etc., etc.
Use whichever book you feel best as a spine, but compare the other texts too and good biography and primary sources and scholarly works (the scholarly works are the ones that are footnoted so you can go and verify their sources). A real historian looks pretty wearily on all these history textbooks because no one is really able to verify what they say - they make sweeping claims and assumptions but you cannot go back and look at their sources because they don't tell you what they are.
We chose the secular text mostly because our dd was bitter towards the Anne Carrol text and the secular text was better sequentially, but we do plan to read Anne Carrols book and many others. We had to make a prudent judgement, as I generally prefer Catholic texts that we can then flesh out. However, in this case, we felt we were running the danger of making this particular dd feel like the Catholics were trying to hide something. (I suspect the American history text won't be as bad here - but will identify the deist leanings of the founding fathers and more of the negatives than a protestant text that sees America as divinely established to promote democracy throughout the world. A lot of the readings you find for the younger readers will counter this and make the founding fathers into unequivocal heroes.
I don't know which route we'll go with dd #2 as she is more of a self-directed learner in history. I may actually use the Anne Carrol just to trigger conversations between the 2 dd. CHC has some really neat lesson plans that use Christ and the Americas as a reference - so I probably use their plans and all my books and TB as references, depending on what she gravitates toward.
For a spine, I really like something sequential, but you can counter the tendency in Anne Carrol's books by doing a timeline. Our oldest dd just had a horrible time with history sequencing and that is why I lean to sequential texts with her. Another child might not have the same difficulty. When we were doing the Seton history, we compared the secular and the Catholic text on hot spot issues. We got the secular text through Seton - it was an old one with typical biases but was not as bad as many I have seen. There were many things that the secular text confirmed, others they were in disagreement and it was OK to honestly tell our daughter that deciding on where the truth was would take much greater research. Had she had more time we might have pursued some of that - not even sure where we were going.
Textbooks are never going to be adequate. You can look at things like when it was written, who wrote it and for whom and get an idea of the bias that might be there. Some of the early Catholic history textbooks on American History sound a lot like Protestant texts - Catholics were still trying to prove that we were good Americans at the time they were written and all the founding fathers were heroes, every war the U.S. entered was a just war and see how much Catholics contributed to the founding of this great country. Anne Carrol's texts, seem to be written primarily to debunk the secular criticisms of Catholicism and are a great narrative read for fun and do stimulate thought.
For what it's worth - don't wait for a perfect text. I tried to do that with science and my oldest dd is woefully lacking in science. We finally decided to go with the best we could find given our limited time and resources, admit it's limitations and recognize our own.
Be honest with your children about the limitations of a textbook - after all that is why you are doing all the extra reading and researching, and try to look at other points of view.
Hope this helps
Janet
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1Bookworm
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| Posted: June 23 2005 at 8:45pm | IP Logged
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Thank you. I guess I just needed a confirmation to keep on keeping on with the style I've been using for ages...have 3 or 4 different books on my shelves of varying points of view, and suggest to ds that he use more than one. :-)
The CHC plans for the 7th grade are *exactly* what I am planning on using this year! LOL Thats what prompted my question about Christ and the Americas. I'm trying to avoid using the encyclopedia, because thats what always made history boring to me, as a child.
I've got the first two SOTW books (and will get the second two if necessary), and both the old and new Hillyer books in case we need them. I've ordered From Sea to Shining Sea because it looks very readable and understandable, and not overly biased toward Catholicism. I think we'll use that as the main research tool (with lots of historical fiction) until we get to the 20th century (FSTSS does not cover the 20th century). Then I may buy the Peter Jennings 20th century book as well as Christ and the Americas for the last quarter of the year. By then he will be almost a whole year older and perhaps a bit more ready for them. Plus, that gives me some time to read the Christ and the Americas for myself! LOL
Thank you so much for your advice. I really needed a sounding board. This History forum is great!
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ALmom
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1bookworm,
My 2nd dd is going into 8th grade but we will be doing CHC 7th grade history so that I have all my older children doing American History. My 11 yo son will be using From Sea to Shining Sea but I suspect he will jump on with our dd and she will probably use his text some. Since I was a history major in college (long ago and far away!!), I do have a bunch of texts lying around so at least I don't have to buy anything else other than literature. My children really liked The Long Road to Gettysburg by Jim Murphy. There were lots of pictures but it was recommended by a Catholic historian. Some of the pictures are gory so I don't know about the 6yo, our 8 yo didn't have any trouble with it.
Perhaps our children can correspond at some point or we can share good book finds. I don't know about you, but I really have a hard time finding stuff I want at the library. Bethlehem books have some good reading for the time period for the 6th/7th grader. The Winged Watchmen would be great for all ages (there are a few places of conflict that we did not have trouble with because the way it was handled, but where other families we knew were hesitant. I.E. where the boy deceives his mother to hide an allied pilot, but he goes to confession and the priest tells him never to keep anything from his mother or where the mother equivocates with the truth to conceal the identity of the Jewish baby.) Even our 5/6 yo enjoyed it as a read aloud. It showed the occupation of Holland from a young boys perspective so it was not too violent but was quite faithful to the suffering of the Dutch people and the reality of the persecution of the Jews and others. It was overall very positive and not depressing like most things about that time period.
I really know what you mean about uncertainty with the oldest. They're our great guinea pigs and its scary for both student and parent. Our oldest will be a 12th grader and I really stress over her stuff more than anyones. I also worried a lot more about what I would let her read. The 8th grader has read a lot more - because she is a natural reader, and because her sister's stuff is around and because I just haven't had the time to do as much screening. What I've found is that she has been very good about regulating her own reading. Hopefully we have found the right balance with her.
I'm glad anything I said helped you - It helped me to think aloud as we were going through the same exercise with what book to use with our 8th grader.
I don't know if I said anything about how much to expect. I don't know - depends on her interest. The scholarly works might be a bit much right now except to show her the difference between a popular summary and a more serious source - or I use them if she really wants to know which textbook is correct. Most of the time, I start by showing the potential bias of both text books and what they both agree on then demonstrate looking up in a scholarly work - pointing out footnotes that we could research further if we had time and interest- to try and get more clarification. We still may not come to any certain decisions but may have a hunch from the conglomeration of what we have read and come to an I suspect kind of conclusion. We can drop it at that point or follow it further depending on time and interest. As long as dd knows that I would have to get a hold of his sources to really follow up on this, we have at least exposed her to the process some and she knows to listen to her own gut instinct and follow with research rather than trusting blindly to whatever the textbook says. I would express my opinion and clearly state it as my opinion based on x, y, z reasons. This is what historians do, they just take a lifetime to focus in -depth on one little part of history to the point of becoming an expert. I think the most important part is to realize that we draw conclusions from available evidence, but we do try to find better information or evidence when sources disagree and you have to weigh the sources. It's good for them to know that historians don't always agree and they love reasoned arguement.
Janet
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4Real Forums : Across Time and Place
Topic: Christ the King/Christ and the Americas??
