READING HISTORY BOOKS YIELDS MORE THAN BARGAINED FOR

Reading history books is about more than validating the opinion you already have.

George Washington, first president and father of our country, chopped a cherry tree down and confessed because he would never lie?

Honest Abe Lincoln never told a lie?

No one questioned their honesty?

Reading history books could answer those sort of questions, and more, which is why reading more helps.

Does it help when Ford’s Theater where Lincoln was shot does history?

Is it helpful when the U.S. National Parks Service does wood chopping history?

In 1861, on his way to his inauguration in Washington, D.C., newly-elected president Abraham Lincoln stopped to speak at the New Jersey Senate. He told them he had read a number of books growing up that taught him basic life lessons, Pilgrim’s Progress, Aesop’s Fables, and Lessons in Elocution, to name just a few. But it was The Life of George Washington, he continued, that really sparked his imagination and showed “there must have been something more than common” in Washington and what he had stood for.  

For Weems’ book and story to have a good message (i.e. don’t lie) and for it to have made such an impression on someone as equally influential as Lincoln, who are we to protest?

Chop away, Mr. Washington!

Chopping Through History

History happens fast in 2022.

We hear something, see something, and we file it away as fact.

It’s hard to change minds when they’re full of ‘facts’ learned from an online source with no other credibility than calling “Bullshit” on the times, the eras, and the movements that don’t fit into the picture they’ve created after ‘doing their own research.’

Instead of breaking down history bit by bit and pulling those pieces together for a cohesive, reasonable, series of events that work to explain the ‘Big Picture’, too many take the easy way out and quit reading.

Why?

“Because my opinion is just as valid as anyone else’s.”

Let’s let that roll one more time:

Your opinion is just a valid as anyone else’s?

For the sake of validity when you are confronted by people enamored of their opinion, ask three questions after a polite period of listening and paying attention.

Who won the 2020 election?

Was Jan. 6 at the Capitol just a regular tour group?

Will a covid vaccine turn you into a magnet, make you sterile, and change your mind about racist designations, sexist attitudes, and the American Way?

These are history questions, the sort of questions that will be on history tests in the future:

What was ‘The Big Lie?’

Who promoted the attack on the Capitol?

Where did anti-vaxx people infected with covid seek medical attention?

History Classes To The Rescue

In the past history was taught on the heroic standard of influential people and dates.

A big shot did something on a particular date and changed the course of everyone and everything forever after.

And that was that, until someone noticed other people besides the rich and powerful and high ranking also participated in life recorded by historians.

A history class works to pull the rug out from under students who feel they know all they need to know.

If the rug gets pulled too early it fills students with doubt. They go home and talk about what teacher said to parents who’ve also done ‘their own research.’

If you grew up in household of ‘free thinkers’, flat-earther’s, and science skeptics, you’ve got plenty of work to do.

Start with human rights before the Civil War.

Expand your American history reading to discover which states embraced slavery the most.

Too many folks with too many gaps in their scholarship muddy history.

This happens when an uncomfortable truth upsets a preconceived notion.

Modern History Book Expansion

Instead of a memory exercise of dates and names, another approach works like this:

Assign reading from a book compiled of many authors writing about the same event.

In addition, assign a monograph, one book, covering the same event.

Finally, assign a novel written at the same time as the event being studied.

Too much reading? Not if you want to cover a topic, event, or era

Too little reading leaves more room for additional information from unreliable sources.

A parent once told me they had to answer every question their kids asked. Why? Because if they didn’t supply an answer, the kids made up their own.

What passes today as opinion too often sounds like they were raised by parents who didn’t answer questions, who sent their kids to their rooms for even asking, and sent letters to teachers and school boards complaining that education was making their kids too smart.

Is that how you grew up, how you’re planning to raise your kids?

You can do better. Start with reading history books.

Or right here. Give it a click.

My history degree comes from Portland State University along with twenty years of work in a history museum

Boomerpdx has 74 pages loaded with history searches right here.

Class begins now.