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Donna Marie
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| Posted: July 06 2007 at 4:49pm | IP Logged
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The kids and I went to the Edison Museum in Menlo Park in Edison, NJ. While there, they got a good dose of historical information and information about where the books go wrong when it comes to writing about this colorful character in our history....Thomas Edison. (We blogged about it.)
The kids want to know if there is a book that they can read (or I can read to them) umm..how do I ask this correctly... that explains a bit about how to look critically at history and how to find historical inaccuracies. ...but still makes the reading of said book a pleasurable experience. The children interested are between (almost 7) on up to the 13.5 yr old twins
I mean, I know we just got a living lesson on the subject but they want the lesson to go further...This has been a great conversation starter! They just don't want to go around thinking inaccurate things about history like the misconceptions many non-catholics have about the church....pretty mature of them, don't cha think??
I thought this was a very interesting request on their part and they asked me to question this outstanding deposit of resources (aka 4Real) for the answers they seek.... if you know what I mean 
God love you!
Donna Marie from NJ
hs momma to 7dc 
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God love you!
Donna Marie from NJ
hs momma to 9dc!!
Finding Elegant Simplicity
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folklaur
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| Posted: July 06 2007 at 9:00pm | IP Logged
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Do you mean something like The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History?. This is the same author who wrote How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization..
Or Lies My Teacher Told Me?
I have only read a little of the "...Western Civilization" one, so can't comment on how good the other ones actually are....
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Bookswithtea
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| Posted: July 06 2007 at 9:06pm | IP Logged
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I read Lies My Teacher Told Me. Definitely high school to adult level, and at times, terribly politically liberal. But I still enjoyed it.
I'd LOVE to hear about the politically incorrect guide to American History. My curiosity is peaked!
Donna Marie, your kids are kind of young for a book about inaccuracies. But they are not too young to learn the concept! What I do is to pick a topic and scout out books from different perspectives and then read all to them. Its easy to target common inaccuracies (Christopher Columbus, Martin Luther, Reformation, the Crusades, etc). Some topics are not as appropriate for young ones as others, but still... I covered inaccuracies on the Spanish missions in CA with a 9 yr old without too many problems.
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Blessings,
~Books
mothering ds'93 dd'97 dd'99 dd'02 ds'05 ds'07 and  due 9/10
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ALmom
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| Posted: July 09 2007 at 12:06am | IP Logged
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Sounds like your children are interested in historography - but too young for a formal course. However, doing a bit of research yourself and talking about different reasons people write a book (even original sources) can teach them a few basic things like always looking at the author and what they know about the authors biases, the time period and the hot button topics that might not be able to be handled with the same level of distance/ critical evaluation as others. A Student's Guide to History written by Jules R. Benjamin might be a good read for you. I have several different editions of this - some from the 70s and some from the 90s. Something written in the midst of Vietnam or the cold war, may have very useful and helpful information but it may not have the same perspective aas something written later after emotions die down a bit or say, after the fall of communism and some of the espionage documents have corrobarated some of the accusations that were believed to be just McCarthy scare tactics. If you read a primary account of the civil war from the confederacy and from the union, I guarantee they'll have a different flavor. You want to get them to think some about the author of the book and what you know about them. Knowing someone's potential biases and blindspots helps you read a bit more critically and then you can be careful to look at quite a few sources. Knowing when something is written helps too. (Catholic school textbooks from say the 1900s can tend to have a certain agenda to show Catholics as good citizens and it is helpful to know that about the period. It would be nice to know if you are reading a known historians work or popular history (attention to detail may be different in each). What particular qualifications does the author have in writing this. It is nice to know if the author is heavily influenced by Marxian social economic policy which was very, very popular in the 1970s. Does the material give information about the source of information with footnotes or at least a bibliography - then if something seems different or you are not sure you agree with an author, you certainly look up their sources and read as many as you can (some may be in other languages) and decide if you agree. You can even read one historians criticisms of another historians works.
It helps to know trends as well - a post modernist historian generally doesn't like to come to any conclusions, Greek historians don't have a linear view of history, etc. Some of this is way above littles - but they can certainly begin to ask questions about who the author is, when they wrote and what were some of the popular opinions/hot topics of that time period. If looking at a textbook, look at things like - a woman in the U.S. said - is that a real source. One newspaper reporter claimed is another generic untraceable claim. What about books that want to tell you that this ancient civilization was remarkable and built buildings taller than the Empire State building - well if the civilization left no written records and there are no remains, you may want to ask what reliable basis the author has for this information. It is quite an exercise to go through textbooks and point out the plethora of these kinds of meaningless appeals to "experts" as it is a very real problem with textbooks in general and allows textbook authors to push their agenda without having to have too much support. If you are reading textbooks about the civil war - pick one from the south and one from the north. I guarantee they'll stress different issues! Why? Look at textbooks - they are generally written by a committee so it is hard to know the bias/agenda outright unless you know the fad of the schools of the time period as one possible clue. Look at hot spots - and compare older and newer texts or books. The politically correct guide will give some ideas on some of the hot spots of today as will your own knowledge of relativistic moral trends. Learn as much as you can learn about any author as this will help you discern.
I don't know of anything written for a younger child to guide this process, but this might be a fun rabbit trail to continue making comparisons. Look at older Catholic texts and newer ones, texts/books written for the 1950s and now and ones say written for the late 1800 or early 1900s if you can. Look at some of your older biographies of Christopher Columbus and what is available now on the shelf at your local library. You could make some charts noting common differences and similarities. If historians agree century after century on something even as agendas and hot issues change, then that says something. It is also important to know what the claims are based on.
We picked up a book from the library book sale for 25 cents before we had a chance to preview. Well it turned out to be a reader that was very, very obviously nothing more than a piece of propaganda. The first thing we did after our fits of laughter at how ridiculous the story line, was to look at the date of publication. Well it was a reader published right in the middle of WWII and every line extolled the American way, etc. It was clear that the entire project was driven by promoting "patriotic" fever at all costs. That was a great lesson on critical reading - then we chucked the book. I remember watching some propaganda films when I was in school - upper middle school, I believe. They were obvious and we saw films from all sides in the Propaganda war. I also have a letter from the Soviet embassy - I did a paper on Kwajalein and the trusteeship arrangement and wanted to get another side to the issue and asked for information since they were members of the UN Security council. These were the most ludricous things I ever read - but it sure revealed how an agenda can cause folks to skewer the facts. Sometimes it is easier to see something at first when the agenda is fairly obvious and then move to more subtle things.
Good luck. It is a lot of fun to do this.
Janet
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Kelly
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| Posted: July 24 2007 at 10:41pm | IP Logged
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This is an interesting topic. Loved Janet's ideas about reading older and more recent books on the same topic to compare notes. Here in Florida, Andrew Jackson used to be "the Man", but now he has been all but villified---in the past, it was a big honor to represent Old Hickory in the Springtime Parade, and he always lead the parade to great cheers. Now, I'm not sure he's even IN the parade anymore! They even changed the name of our local bank, Andrew Jackson Bank, to another name. Meanwhile, in Nashville, Andrew Jackson is everywhere, on shirts, on posters, on streets. He's still very revered. Pondering such situations has been interesting to my children, too. By taking old and new kids books and comparing them---or even, old and new Encyclopedic entries, you would be sure to have some interesting juxtopositon!
Quite by accident, my kids and I did something like this with Columbus. We used a Jackdaw history packet on Columbus (very pc) and James Leek's chapters on Columbus in "Evangelization of the New World". Whoa! Two vastly different pictures. "Evangelizaton" and the Jr. Jackdaw were both at about a 6th grade level. Very enlightening.
As for a more formal study, I'l make another shameless plug for the first History Links Unit study, by Wooley Lamb Publishers, on how to study history. This is an excellent resource, applicable to all ages. The authors' premise is that history should be studied like navigation: not just from one perspective (as in using a single history text) but from several angles---primary documents, history texts, archaeology/geology/geography & what our Church teaches on the subject. I have found this little unit study to be superb, and I often allude to it when we run up against sticky or conflicting historical questions. I highly recommend it---well worth the $15 or so dollars, even if you only do a handful of the activities. Definitely makes your children (and YOU ) think!
Kelly in FL
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4Real Forums : Across Time and Place
Topic: Ok...here is an unusual question...
