Christine has been writing a series over at A Little Perspective on the history of our English Bibles. The debate in academic circles continues to rage about the most accurate English translation, that is, the most true to the original autographs of Scripture, and what, even, those original autographs are. In order to answer this question, she has had to go back to those original autographs and the various claims made about them. In the end, the serpent in the Garden continues to ask the same question he has always asked: “Did God really say?”
Hendrick Willem Van Loon on History for Children
This is why we teach history, first of all, instead of modern social studies, and why we teach it with living books!
From the Forward to Hendrik Willem Van Loon’s History with a Match: Being an Account of the Earliest Navigators and the Discovery of America:
TO ALL GROWN-UPS:
This little book is an historical appetizer. It does not intend to give children all the facts about all the events of all the earliest discoveries of Greenland and Iceland and America. It merely says,
Dear Children: History is the most fascinating and entertaining and instructive of arts. It tells us of men of great courage and people who knew how to die for their convictions. It shows us how very difficult it is to achieve anything in this world and how we have to work for everything we want to accomplish. And it teaches us that our own little worries are mere trifles compared to the discouragement which other men and women have suffered and have overcome without assistance from the outside.
Once the child understands that history does not consist of the heterogeneous dates and the stereotyped patriotic deeds of the average textbook he may take to reading history for the fun of it. He may acquire a taste for a pastime as valuable as playing the piano or studying poetry. There is nothing practical about history, and the new school of pedagogues who expect to distill culture out of plumbing and boilermaking may succeed in excluding history from the school curriculum. A great many historians help this process along by turning history into a sacred substance administered to the masses in large but indigestible doses.
On teaching writing
“The practice of writing, that is, of composing, depends on previous reading, and example.”
– Jacob Bryant, English historian and author | 1715-1804
From A New System, or an Analysis of Antient Mythology, Volume IV, p. 158.
This is why we focus, in the elementary years, on a glut of reading, and copying, with spelling and grammar work, before beginning on a formal course of composition instruction and practice in the secondary years.
Quotes from Famous Americans
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