Regine Pernoud closes her book on the middle ages with a chapter titled Simple Remarks on the Teaching of History. Combined with my own teaching experience and now a familiarity with the approach of Charlotte Mason the suggestions seem better than ever. Here is her advice for teaching young children:
"Why not teach history in small classes through the use of anecdotes, solely through anecdotes, destined to leave great names in the memory and unimaginable facts in the imagination, as only history can furnish, well beyond any fictitious legend. And do so, of course, without any concern for chronology: everyone knows that up until the age of nine or ten years, even later for many children, succession in time means nothing; it is thus completely useless up until that age to encumber the memory with dates, quite as useless as to persist, as was done for so long a time, in making it do "analysis" at a stage when intelligence is precisely incapable of analyzing. On the other hand, there is not a child, no matter how young, who does not love stories, especially when they are "true". Now at an age when what is recounted takes root for the whole of one's life, it would be of first importance to fill minds with a historical repertory whose human interest is inexhaustible."
Wow! What an inspiring quote! We should do more of this.
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