Archive for September, 2007

American Pageant: 1000 pages!

Friday, September 28th, 2007

Why on earth is a textbook designed to introduce American history to high school students 1000 pages long?!  (I’m sorry, but that’s just ridiculous!) The reason is a failure of selectivity. As the authors themselves explain: “This edition…contains new ‘Makers of America’ essays, on the Loyalists during the Revolution, the pioneers of the old Northwest, [...]

Posted in American History, Education, History Homeschooling, History for High School Students, Pedagogy | 1 Comment »

American Pageant: What’s in a Preface?

Thursday, September 27th, 2007

Readers of this series may be asking themselves why I’m into my fourth post on the topic of American textbooks, and I still haven’t gotten out of the preface to the textbook American Pageant, which is itself only three pages long. (The textbook is over 1000 pages!) The answer is: there’s no better guide to [...]

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American Pageant: What a Real Context Would Look Like

Wednesday, September 26th, 2007

In its preface, American Pageant promises at once to introduce students to “unfamiliar material” and offer them “varying viewpoints” about historical controversies. In my previous post, I explained that the first of these is of course a laudable goal, but one which must necessarily be undermined by the simultaneous attempt of the authors to discuss [...]

Posted in American History, Education, History Homeschooling, History for High School Students | 1 Comment »

American Pageant, Preface (Part 1): Promises I Hope They Won’t Keep!

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007

Every American history textbook begins with an array of abstract promises. It’s the “talk” that historians never actually seem to “walk.” Unfortunately, The American Pageant begins with very troubling “talk”–the kind I hope they don’t “walk.” As you’d expect, the American Pageant promises to make history “appealing and useful,” which ends are apparently to be [...]

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Dissecting Textbook History, An Introduction

Monday, September 24th, 2007

This is the first blog post in an ongoing series that I am undertaking to evaluate American textbooks for homeschoolers.  The “spine” of this study will be the Houghton Mifflin textbook, American Pageant, which I intend to look at in depth.  Along the way, I will also compare this work with Harper Collins’ America and [...]

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Finally, a College for Homeschoolers!

Monday, September 3rd, 2007

This post is no longer available.  Thank you, Scott Powell.

Posted in Education, History | 2 Comments »

Free “History Through Art” Seminar Now On-line

Sunday, September 2nd, 2007

In this free recorded teleseminar, Scott Powell, historian and creator of the HistoryAtOurHouse program, explains the place of the History Through Art program in the overall curriculum. Mr. Powell presents some of the important examples of visual art that he will be using during the course, and guides parents through the visual and historical art-appreciation [...]

Posted in Art, Education, History Homeschooling, Homeschooling Curriculum, Pedagogy | No Comments »