Books For A Real Education - History

 

"Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it." (attributed to George Santayana)

I didn't enjoy history in school. We used textbooks that gave you information that they wanted you to learn and at the end of the sections you had to answer the questions. It wasn't hard it just was...boring.

As I became an adult I began to read biographies, and historical fiction and that lead me to an interest and love of history.  Its one I've tried to pass on to my kids. 

Over the many years that I have been a home educator, we have used many books for history. But we did not use traditional textbooks.  We used living books (ones that were written by someone who lived through the 'history'), biographies, autobiographies, historical fiction, and some other enjoyable histories.

Some of my favorites have been the books written by Genevieve Foster, and my Richard Mayberry. 

Genevieve Foster teaches history through a specific time period such as 'The World of Columbus and Sons,' 'George Washington's World,' 'Caesar August's World,' and several others.  She touches on history happening around the world through the time period of Washington or Caesar's lifetime.  It's really interesting.

The books by Richard Mayberry have been more challenging for me personally.  The idea that we should not be involved in foreign wars was well, foreign to me. Mayberry is not anti-military, he is for a strong domestic defense, as the preamble to the constitution says, "Provide for the common defense."  What he is against is our involvement in Europe's long standing and continual wars with each other, and so was George Washington. 

The interesting thing we learned from Foster's books is how tied together the royal families of Europe are. They all intermarried their children to each other.  For instance did you know that Catherine of Aragon, King Henry the VIII's first wife, was the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain? Her Spanish name is Catalina. Catherine was first married very young to Arthur, the Prince of Wales at age 15. He died the next year, and several years later married Henry. 

Catherine's siblings were married to other royals as were the Dutch royals, German royals and more. Queen Victoria married Prince Albert who was her first cousin. Their parents were siblings. Victoria and Albert married their children into all the royal houses of Europe, too.  World War I ended up being a war between cousins.

  

King George V

Kaiser Wilhelm II

Tsar Nicholas II

History can be rather interesting, and challenging.  We have long wondered here in our family, how our nation could even lean toward socialism and communism after the failures of these types of governments all around the world.

It's happened because of the education system moving away from teaching history, and teaching social studies instead.

Because after all, if people don't know history, they'll be doomed to repeat it.  This goes for the histories of all nations.  No nation is perfect or without its bad choices.  We should look governments in the eyes and demand better of them.

For a good read on what the founders did for us with having the US be a Republic, Eric Metaxas' book, 'If You Can Keep It' is excellent!

I'm just going to finish with this tidbit. DJT is the first president in a very long time, who did not participate in any wars, he actually brought our troops home from many countries. I appreciate that.