Teaching History Chronologically.
I am a great advocate of teaching history chronologically. Even before I began homeschooling, it just seemed like common sense to me. I was fortunate in my first year of homeschooling to happen upon Greenleaf Press, who advocate teaching history in this manner. I will not try to reiterate here the benefits of teaching history chronologically
when Greenleaf Press has already done such a wonderful job of explaining it. If you are in doubt as to the
value, I refer you to their catalog or their website on the Internet, both of which are listed in the bibliography.
But I will share a few of the advantages I have noticed in my own children from teaching history this way. The first has to do with the continuity and flow of history. When we have begun at the beginning and worked our way from there, the children have had a foundation to build upon. The society and customs and prevalent thought of the period currently under study is linked in their minds to the period previously studied, and those links provide a framework to build new information upon as well as a pathway to progress upon. History, for them, is not only a series of disjointed facts and places and persons to be remembered, but a series of relationships that make sense.
The fact that historical periods are closely linked relationships leads to the second advantage that I have noticed in my children: increased understanding of the hows and whys of historical events. The undercurrent of thought behind the American Revolution becomes clearer because they have already studied the undercurrent of thought behind the society of the Ancient Greeks. The undercurrent of thought behind the American Civil War becomes clearer because they have already studied the undercurrent of thought behind the Roman Empire. They begin to see that there would not have been an Age of Exploration if there hadn’t been a Renaissance and a Reformation. The big picture comes within their grasp.
The final advantage I have noticed (and I am sure there are more) is that the children learn that history is truly His Story—the story of the Lord’s dealings with mankind, universally and individually. They see a Master Plan as events and epochs unfold before them. They see promises made in the beginning of time brought to fruition, the hand of the Lord guiding His creation. The fear of the Lord impresses them on one hand as they witness His judgment and nations that reap the consequences of their choices, and the lovingkindness of the Lord impresses them on the other hand as they see the Almighty again and again choose to stretch out His hand to accomplish His good purpose. The saturation in His Story frees them from our overbalanced American culture and worldview, to give them eyes that see beyond our borders, beyond our media’s presentation of life and the world, beyond their years..
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