The Wonder of History...

History is a truly fascinating subject! Stories, a million stories of those who have gone before us... But we need a reason to care. What does it matter when such and such battle was fought, why it was fought, who fought it, where they fought it, and who won, if we don't care? Why will we remember any of these details, if we have nothing to connect them too in our mind? They're meaningless, if the only emotion they inspire is boredom!

Think of a time when you've read a good novel or short story. What's one of your favorite books on the planet? Why did you read it? Probably, because the story interested you! You cared about the characters, you kept turning pages in order to find out what they do, and what happens to them. Honestly, I can list all the battles fought in Middle Earth, Narnia, Alleble, Amara, and other works of fiction better than I can list them from our own world. I cared about the characters. I knew what struggles went on in their hearts, what hopes and dreams they had, what goals they were pursuing, and what stood in their way. The pages turned rapidly - I had to know more!

There are millions of historical facts and events which may look boring if you flip through a textbook, but in reality they are stories of people, people as alive and interesting as any character of fiction! And the plots of their tales, their stories, the history of our wold - it is all just as interesting as any fiction, too! More interesting, perhaps, because this is real. And this is ours. OURS. It belongs to us. It is our history. This is what befell our ancestors. These are the stories played out in our world.

One of the ways to bring history alive is to read historical fiction books. I assume everyone knows what historical fiction is, but I'll define it just in case. Wikipedia words it: "Historical fiction tells a story that is set in the past. That setting is usually real and drawn from history, and often contains actual historical persons, but the main characters tend to be fictional. Writers of stories in this genre, while penning fiction, attempt to capture the manners and social conditions of the persons or time(s) presented in the story, with due attention paid to period detail and fidelity."

Ah, how I love historical fiction! I've read many such stories over the years, but not as many as I would like to have. I'm working on that now. ;) Back when I was in high school, my history class was as boring as they get... The curriculum was dry and dull, and the teacher was no help at all. But I enjoyed World History a little bit, because it strung a timeline in my mind, connecting all the historical fiction books I'd read! I would often be saying to myself, "Oh, I know who that is! I know what this is about! I know what's going on here! Wow, this is amazing! It's like reading a brief summary of the outline from these great books."

You can read historical fiction out loud to younger students, (more about reading aloud in another post) and older students can read it themselves (more about inspiring a love of reading in another post). 

This is just one idea for bringing history to life. There are many, many more!