The Story of the World series serves as the core of Providence’s 1st-4th grade history curricula. Its best-selling author, Dr. Susan Wise Bauer, writes in Comment magazine a few weeks ago: “All of history is an argument. Even when it claims to be ‘unbiased,’ history always has a thesis statement at its centre. So what argument should shape the history we teach our youngest learners?”
Should we give our students “just the facts” when teaching history? Or should we give them a version shaped by our own beliefs and assumptions? Is there a compromise?
For more of Bauer’s reflections on this teaching dilemma, read on.
