Playing the Slow Game

“Mom? No offense, but I don’t really like history. It’s kind of…boring.”

“Oh, that’s ok. You don’t have to be like me. But hey, we’re still going to learn about some of this, ok?”

“Ok.”

Five years have passed since this was said.
We’ve done the museums,
the living books,
the hands-on things.
We’ve visited the sites, watched the shows and documentaries, visited the re-enactments.

They didn’t use a formal curriculum or take a single test, and five years later, they are some of the most historically-literate kids I know.
They have their favorite eras.
They fact-check and research on their own.
And we aren’t done yet.
Not even close.
I’m in this for the long haul,
and I’m playing the slow game.

Because, friends, an interest in history can’t be taught. It can’t be forced.

It doesn’t come from pages and pages and pages of reading, from memorizing tedious facts and dates (just to forget them after a test), or from checking every box in a curriculum.

And—for the love of all things holy—it absolutely does not come from busy work.

It’s a lot simpler than all of that.

It begins with a stirring.
An invitation.
A curiosity.
A posture towards the past.

Positioning students towards things of the past, stimulating their curiosity from living history components, feeding their curiosity with narratives, and putting a human element INTO the massive, beautiful, detailed web of history—students will have the desire to teach themselves to care.

I am absolutely, 100% convinced of this.

And while not everyone will become a historian, if the past is presented to children and teenagers like the INCREDIBLE story that it is—one that we are all a part of— the reading will eventually make sense.
The cold, dry facts and dates will organize themselves into fibers of flesh and blood.
Needless details will fade away (you don’t need those anyway).
They will notice the past all around them.
They will see ghosts along every street, memories in every window, and a story in every photo.
They will begin to see themselves as a small part of a tapestry of humanity stretching all the way back to the beginning.

It’s deliberate and slow.
Sometimes VERY slow.
But we aren’t done yet.
Not even close.