The Importance of Teaching Our Children History

In this conversation, Katy McKinney, founder of Lafayette Academy, shares her journey into the world of history education, sparked by a profound lecture she experienced on American history. She discusses the importance of teaching history in schools on a daily basis, emphasizing its role if we want to cultivate informed, free-thinking citizens. McKinney highlights the value of experiential learning through field trips, which enhance students' appreciation for history. She believes that understanding history fosters family unity and civic responsibility, ultimately contributing to the preservation of the Republic.

For more information about Lafayette Academy, A Classical School please visit https://lafayetteacademy.org/

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Transcript

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All right, welcome back. Katie M, founder and head of school for Laet Academy in Lake St. Louis, Missouri. Gosh, I think it was 2012, 2013. Gosh, no, it was before that, maybe 2010. And in any case, my husband and I attended a little lecture about American history. And we both were like, oh, this will be interesting. And we go, and it was fascinating. It was beyond interesting. It was fabulous. It was inspiring, and it was a lot about our founding fathers, many of which we didn't know much about. And at the end, a couple things happened. One, I looked to my husband, I'm like, did you know any of this? And he's like, no. And I'm thinking, Where in my education did I not get this history, this amazing, rich, inspiring history? Um, and then on the heels of that, I was thinking, you know, we're, at that point we had two children, and I'm thinking, gosh, I want our children to know this. Um, that kind of helped spur on homeschooling to make sure that they would know this. And then, um, actually it was on the, I guess our third child before he arrived on the scene, as he, as he was in the incubator, I like to say. Um, the idea came was, let's name him after one of our founding fathers. And so, um, Harrison, uh, was one of the signers of the, um, Declaration of Independence. So his middle name is Harrison, and then his first name is Payne after Thomas Payne. So, our third son kind of got the brunt of our, our new found, uh, love with history. But all that to say, that really took our homeschooling in a, in a wonderful new world, and we were able to dive in. Our first lesson was on the ancients, the Romans, the Greeks and the Romans, and we just had a ball. Anyway, Now that we fast forward now to our school, history is right up there, um, with literacy and mathematics in terms of its level of importance. Everything, I will say, in a liberal arts education is important. Everything has its place, and everything, and it, not only has a place, it is, um, it is steeped in importance. Okay, all that to say, History is taught every day in kindergarten, in first grade, third grade, wherever, all the way up to 12th grade. It's taught every single day. It gets ample time. Our kindergarten focuses on American symbols, the Eagle, we go through every president on Mount Rushmore. Um, we talk about, you know, the eagle on the coins and what that represents. We, we hit Abraham Lincoln, some of our, you know, transformative leaders of our country. In any case, then when they hit first grade, they jump deep into history. We talk about the three pillars of religion with, with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The because those really, you know, help form a lot of what happens in history, of course, and and defines culture. And so they need to know those three pillars. But that starts in first grade, and then it sets the stage, and then every year, the last, I guess every year through uh, first grade through, I'll say through sixth grade, they get about two months or eight weeks of a sliver of American history. So it's kind of world history, and then the last two months is something American focused. And then in seventh and eighth grade, we spend just two solid years on American history from basically the pilgrims all the way through modern time. And then in high school, now we kind of segment down, and we focus just a one whole year on the ancients for freshman year. The medieval time period is then sophomore year, and then junior and senior year getting more into the modern history section. But okay, why? Why do we spend so much time on history? Allows our citizens, our students to become more informed citizens. Obviously, if they know history, if they know why things happened, they have better context. They are now enable to make better decisions. If you think about it, just to put it in very simplistic terms, if you were to walk into a conversation, be it, you know, as a student, say with your family, and maybe they're making a major decision, and you walk in in the middle of that conversation, and they're making all these decisions that are going to affect you, You might go, wait, hold on, time out, why are you making this this decision? And they start to then tell you the context, and it may stretch back, you know, maybe years in the making as to why they're making this decision. That context is really important. It helps formulate in your own mind why that decision is important, how it might affect you, and then frankly, how you might then make other decisions based on what's happening to you at that moment. Well, that's the same with this history. We need to know what happened 2,500 years ago, because some of those decisions that they made, a lot of them were best practices to help bring out the best in humanity. That is still a major part of our world today, and and our students need to know that so that we don't either retrograde or have to go back and remake those same mistakes, and, um, we can just frankly, go up higher and faster because we're building on on the lessons learned from previous civilizations. It also allows our children to appreciate our culture, our Western tradition. So, how do we do that? We obviously teach it through our books and everything, but really, one of my most favorite ways of teaching history is through the field trips that we take. This started in homeschooling, like I mentioned that we started teaching our children about the Romans, um, the Greeks and the Romans, and it came to me as we were homeschooling, wouldn't it be fun if we could take our kids to Rome? So, as we were talking about that with some of our family members, they got excited and they said, yes, let's do this. So we made it a family affair. We spent a week in Rome, went down to Pompei. But what we did was we spent about eight weeks prior to that studying everything. So when you got there, I mean, it just came to life. It was awesome. Another time in in homeschooling, and this is all going to come back to our school, but another time in homeschooling, we studied everything to do with the Revolutionary War, and then we took our kids, and at that time they were much younger, um, we took them to Independence Hall. We took them to Trenton, New Jersey, where, um, the Hessians and the Patriots fought on Christmas Eve. That's a whole another story. Um, we took them to the Liberty Bell. That was, that was moving. We we studied, and we read all these phenomenal children stories about the Liberty Bell, and how it was protected during the Revolutionary War, um, at that time, uh, a lot of the British were trying to, uh, basically steal all the bells from all the churches because they could melt them down and then turn them into bullets. So it was incredibly important that they that the Patriots protect these bells. Well, the Liberty Bell was one that was very highly coveted and sought after, and the way they protected it and hid it, and there's it's just such a fascinating story. Anyway, we go to the Liberty Bell. It gives me goosebumps even just talking about it. We go to the Liberty Bell, and it's the way they structured it. It's just basically a big long hall, and the Liberty Bell's at the end of the hall, but you can't see it as you're walking towards it. They have all these little little, uh, I don't know, informational like museum kiosks in front of it. So you kind of have to weave your way like like a snake kind of going through. And so we're reading everything about it, and we come up to the Liberty Bell, and at the time, I guess my kids were like eight and six and two. And, uh, they come upon it, and it was very moving, but they see it and, uh, their jaws drop, and they go, is that it? And I said, yes, that's it. And they they looked at the bell, and they looked at me. I, um, I wrote about it actually, because it was what I felt like it was it's cultivating American citizens who value and appreciate liberty. And they recognize the sacrifice that was made to protect it so that frankly, they could see it 200 plus years later in its authenticity, in its it's glory. And so then we stood there, and it was so interesting because you jux topose their reaction to the adults and the teenagers and everybody else who was around us. And they were just kind of like, oh, that's the Liberty Bell. Great, good to see it, you know? They had no idea the history behind it. And, our kids did because they they had the knowledge. They had studied the history. And so we of course took a beautiful picture. It turned out to be our Christmas card that year. I just it hit me as a parent like, that's the importance of history. That's knowing and appreciating and valuing, and then they can go and protect it moving forward. It was it was very wonderful. And we've had many moments like that. Now we do this, okay, so come full circle. That's what we do at our school. We look to teach our children the history, and then we take these amazing field trips. We we've gone to World War I Museum in Kansas City. We've gone to Gettysburg. We've taken our kids to the Freedom Trail, Freedom Trail in Boston. There's just so many little stories I could tell you, but when these kids study it, and then when they go and see it, their appreciation skyrockets, and the beautiful part is we bring our parents along with us on these journeys, and the parents get to witness, though they may not have gotten through the whole academic journey that their child has gone through, they get to witness their child's aha moments, and, um, that unifies the family, it strengthens the family, it strengthens our country. And this is how we're fighting for our country. This is how I'm fighting for my country. It's uh, it's an active thing, and I believe it's a responsibility for each one of us to do what we can to support the preservation of this Republic through our active sense of self-governance, and part of that is learning, learning your history, and then going and protecting it, defending it, and loving it.