Heather Schwarz and Scott Powell are co-founders of the online school Knowable World.
Embark on a journey through time with Scott Powell and Heather Schwartz as we unravel how a deep understanding of history can illuminate the complexities of today's world. Scott, with his books "The History of Now" and "The History of Tomorrow," deftly challenges the notion of present centrism, while Heather's Knowable World curriculum seeks to arm the younger generation with the historical context needed to navigate modern global events. Together, we dissect the integration of history and social studies, pondering how we can transform education to help students grasp the underpinnings of current world affairs and become well-informed citizens.
Throughout our conversation, we address the challenges educators face in creating curriculums that are both comprehensive and relevant. The traditional approach to teaching history often leaves students adrift in a sea of disconnected facts, but through the lens of present centrism, we propose a more structured methodology. We discuss the idea of a three-year rotating curriculum covering major cultural blocks and delve into the delicate balance between celebrating multicultural narratives and understanding the weight of pivotal historical events.
As we pull back the curtain on various educational approaches, we spotlight the importance of instilling a strong historical foundation from a young age. From the influence of Ancient Greece to the significance of China, we explore how these rich cultural histories shape our understanding of the world. In closing, we underscore the need for empowering curricula that encourage critical thinking and provide third graders through to twelfth graders with the tools to interpret their world. Discover how history, when taught with a present-centric view, can lead to a more interconnected and insightful perspective on the world we share.
Heather Schwarz and Scott Powell are co-founders of the online school Knowable World.
Embark on a journey through time with Scott Powell and Heather Schwartz as we unravel how a deep understanding of history can illuminate the complexities of today's world. Scott, with his books "The History of Now" and "The History of Tomorrow," deftly challenges the notion of present centrism, while Heather's Knowable World curriculum seeks to arm the younger generation with the historical context needed to navigate modern global events. Together, we dissect the integration of history and social studies, pondering how we can transform education to help students grasp the underpinnings of current world affairs and become well-informed citizens.
Throughout our conversation, we address the challenges educators face in creating curriculums that are both comprehensive and relevant. The traditional approach to teaching history often leaves students adrift in a sea of disconnected facts, but through the lens of present centrism, we propose a more structured methodology. We discuss the idea of a three-year rotating curriculum covering major cultural blocks and delve into the delicate balance between celebrating multicultural narratives and understanding the weight of pivotal historical events.
As we pull back the curtain on various educational approaches, we spotlight the importance of instilling a strong historical foundation from a young age. From the influence of Ancient Greece to the significance of China, we explore how these rich cultural histories shape our understanding of the world. In closing, we underscore the need for empowering curricula that encourage critical thinking and provide third graders through to twelfth graders with the tools to interpret their world. Discover how history, when taught with a present-centric view, can lead to a more interconnected and insightful perspective on the world we share.
Welcome everybody to the Troubadour channel. My name is Kirk, I have Scott Powell, heather Schwartz, and we're going to talk to you about history and specifically, we're going to talk about what history is, why history matters, why you should be studying and understanding history, whether you're a four-year-old or a 144-year-old. I mean, maybe one day we'll get there, and that it's an important endeavor for all of us on some points in our lives to understand. I think, with the chaos of the world, what's going on in Israel? What's going on in Ukraine, russia, what's going on in Taiwan, china? There's all these things that seem disintegrated, doesn't make sense. We're confused and we're like why is this happening? The first war in Europe in how many years? All these types of things are happening and it's a messed up world. It seems like things are happening in the Middle East. What is going on, and can history, study of history, help us? So welcome, scott and Heather. Thank you. Now you two have and this is a joint venture knowable world. Is that correct? I just want to make sure I get that.
Speaker 1:That's right, yes, OK, so you two are doing a project. It's curriculum, it's for homeschoolers or for anyone interested in studying history from basically the early years in pre-K. Do you start pre-K?
Speaker 2:Well, brown Kindergarten, yeah, our earliest program is for four to six year olds, so whenever you feel like your kid is ready to start kindergarten, that's when we come in.
Speaker 1:Oh, good point. Yeah, so basically around four to six years old till high school level, at the end, high school seniors. And then you also have Scott Powell. You have a book coming out called the History of Tomorrow and there's a book called the History of Now that's already currently out on Amazon a new kind of history. Ok, I just want to make sure we get all that. So go to knowableworldcom everybody to learn a little bit more about this curriculum. And then let's dig into a little bit of what history is and why it matters. And that's to me so.
Speaker 1:I was a teacher for a while and I still do some form of teaching today with my literary canon club, although it's focused on literature. But I have been interested in this pedagogy question why do we study history? Where does it come from? What does it matter? And I was reading through what you were writing. I read some of the first chapter of your book, scott, and I'm just curious about your philosophy of history, like what it is as a subject, like it's not just oh look, we read something last week that happened in Ukraine. So that's history and that's all. It's just some event, some building got bombed. I mean, what's the difference between something we read you know what I'm saying this idea of just facts that happened in the past, versus a study, a systematic study of history.
Speaker 3:Good question, and I know that this is a primarily literature-focused podcast, and I hope that the minute you mentioned history, we didn't already lose half your audience, because most people will, you know, instantly have a kind of a version to the subject of history which I fully understand. And that's because we have been taught this version of history, which is basically this sterile and, quite frankly, useless subject that is the study of the past. And when I first became a history teacher, I hadn't quite seen past that version and found myself presenting the subject to students of various ages and struggling with whether or not I was delivering something that was actually worth learning and finally came through to an understanding which I considered to be new. And so that's really what I'm trying to relay in my writing and in my teaching now, which is something I call present centrism, and so you can kind of get a flavor of that in the title of the book the History of Now. And so what does that mean exactly?
Speaker 3:Well, the goal of the History of Now is to help readers in this case adult readers to see history in a new light, to realize oh, it doesn't have to be that dry academic subject that we tend to associate with the word history, but rather than it can be and here's my formulation present centrism. The goal of present centrism is to show you history as a revelation and explanation of the world we live in. So the hope there is really that it's a much more compelling subject than just studying other people that lived a long time ago somewhere else.
Speaker 1:And Heather, what's your part of the project of Noble World, and is it related to history of now, history of tomorrow or something different?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I came into this because my kids are students of Scott, so I've been homeschooling them since before they were born in a sense, getting ready to do that, because I knew a long time ago that I wasn't happy with my education, and I've been spending all of my time ever since trying to figure out how it could have been better and what we could have done differently or what we can do differently for our kids. And for me, homeschooling has been a big part of that. And so, for history, for homeschooling, I started learning myself from Scott I don't know more than a decade ago, and so that, to me, is the approach that I wanted to take with my kids for sure, and my kids have been learning from Scott. And so we started Noble World out of wanting to start even earlier For my kids.
Speaker 2:I found that when they started learning from Scott in the life classes in about third grade, it was still difficult for them and there were still things that I wish that we could have done earlier, and I found that there wasn't a curriculum out there that gave me any guidance to do that. And so we started this curriculum so that parents who want to start teaching their kids history in this integrated way, in this way, that is all about the world that we live in and helping your kids understand the world that they live in and how it came to be this way. We wanted to make a resource for parents who want to do that even earlier.
Speaker 1:So this present-centrism philosophy can I call it that like a pedagogy, this approach to history, do you see this as the primary aim of teaching history in schools? Is that it should be focused on from what I understand hearing you and reading this first chapter looking at a present situation and then using that as a kind of integrating factor to teaching K through 12 school history in particular. Is that a correct way to approach or to think about it?
Speaker 3:The only thing that I would change about that formulation is that it's not focused on situations, it's focused on the entirety of the world that we live in, so the goal is a fully integrated awareness of past and present. So yeah, of course, naturally, if there is a very prominent war, let's say the Russia-Ukraine war, that's going to feature in how we want to discuss history and it's going to give us motivation, because naturally, the kinds of questions that arise are well, how did we get here? Why is this happening? When I teach history, kids of all ages, of course, are concerned in some sense with the presence of war in history and troubled by it, and sometimes it just seems like a constant stream of war, and so we discuss that quite a bit. In fact, we talk about how well human beings would much rather live in peace. We all profess that, and it seems like we don't succeed. So why is that? And that, of course, leads to some really interesting philosophical discussions with kids. And so, yeah, history in the present-centric approach is all about meeting the needs of kids.
Speaker 3:The kids have a curiosity about the world that they live in, and so they want a subject that's going to answer the questions that they have about the world, and so that's the goal. And when Heather brought the noble world idea to me because I was teaching high school students I was teaching elementary, junior high kids at the time I was really compelled by her idea because it's amazing and I think we unfortunately underestimate kids too much. But it's quite amazing how early kids are ready to start asking certain kinds of questions about the world, and that's why we built. Knowable is that we're trying to answer those questions. We're trying to get them to see themselves as part of a bigger world, and then there's an invitation to history there which consists of showing them that there's a story, there's an explanation, and then they can see that there are answers to the kinds of questions that they have that really only history can provide.
Speaker 1:So, ok, I'm going to push back a little bit. I'm curious about something. So do you know Richard Mitchell, underground grammarian? Have you heard it? He wrote less than words can say Heather. You said, you said.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I read the Graves of Academy, I think.
Speaker 1:Graves of Academy and, I think, the gift of fire, so he's one of my favorite professors to read from the past. I guess he was a literary professor from the 70s. But one of the things he points out that I really have begun to agree with is and maybe I'm misunderstanding, so this is why I'm bringing it up and I want you to help me clarify One of the things he points out is that we bombard kids in school with too much of the outside world too, like fears of environmental catastrophe, fears of nuclear war, all these outside things. And his argument was that schools should be somewhere where we're really isolating kids to focus on how to develop their minds so that when they go out in the world they're able to apply their minds to all the chaos of the world. But because of all this chaos that they're getting from the outside world, we should actually kind of as teachers and parents and we should actually kind of insulate them from this, and I kind of agree with that.
Speaker 1:I think there's a growing anxiety among children. I think I always think of, like the Greta Thunbergs of the world who I think she's the arc example of this, but I think it's common. I remember feeling this as a child. I remember and I don't freak out, I'm a pretty calm person, even as a kid but I remember freaking out about stuff all the time the end of the world. I remember going to bed with just like terrors of we're all going to die, because it's something my teacher taught me today and like it was just crazy to me.
Speaker 1:And so when I hear you talk about like bringing it to the now and we hear about there's wars and again, I'm just trying to put this like anxiety aspect into it because I think it's important as teachers and we have, especially now with TikTok and social media and just the amount, the array of World War III type terminology which is coming up more and more of a last year or two. I don't know if you guys are aware of that, but the idea of World War III is, and so it's like. So really, what I'm seeing is a huge expansion of this I don't know what to call it, but a pressure on children to be aware of the world and to me, in a time in their life when they shouldn't be focused too much on the outside world, they should be focused primarily on the development of their minds. What do you think about that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, all right. Well, so there's a few few things that need to be said about that. The first would be that I think what you're describing and where I would agree with you is a problem, is what is typically referred to as social studies. So Social studies is not history, and and in social studies, if I can, you know, do a little bit of history here, yeah, so station that is social studies, came about Because there was, about a hundred years ago, a little bit more, about a hundred years ago, there was a movement against history, because there there was this premise, which I, by view, is correct, that history is about the past and it's not really relevant to, you know, life as we experienced it today.
Speaker 3:And so the educational thinkers out there said about rectifying that, their answer was to teach civics and to teach all these various Topics that that pertain to the world around us. Now I agree with you that the consequence of that, the way that it has been done, in the consequence of that, has indeed been to increase anxiety, to increase a sense of, of impending doom and all kinds of really, really, you know, troubling outcomes for kids. But that is precisely because Social studies treats the present as an isolated fact and therefore it does not teach kids to understand Causality, doesn't teach kids to integrate across time, it doesn't teach them in to use you know the phrase that you brought up to use their minds. What it does is it teaches them to react in the moment, to the moment, and largely to emote and to share their feelings and to do all those kinds of things, which really is no intellectual consequence whatsoever. And so you know, I can speak to a little bit.
Speaker 3:I think we've all been in some sort of social study setting, but you know, if I can remember, for instance, doing model United Nations in social studies, right. And so you would ask, as a, as a young child, pick a country and represent that country, and you know, and basically parade around as a mock adult and and try to share your opinions about things. But really that would be done in the absence of any context, in the absence of really understanding how Anything that you're discussing came about. And so you know, kids learn to share, they learn to Perhaps to communicate and even to debate, but they really aren't, I agree with you, they really aren't. If it's the present, in the absence of context and without the Explanatory framework that is made possible by history, then they aren't really learning to expand their thinking and use their minds in a new way.
Speaker 1:So so yeah, I would agree about social studies being that way.
Speaker 3:You know, present centrism is all about integrating the past and the present other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if I can add to that a little, and I Know exactly what you mean as far as the anxiety goes, and I remember feeling that way in school too, and we were always being taught about all these disasters that were about to happen.
Speaker 2:And you know, it's a very different from the approach that's being taken here, for one thing it's it's more acknowledging the things that they already know and putting them into a wider context, and so you know, the typical way of doing it in school is they're kind of bombarded with all these disasters or possible disasters, and it's thing after thing, like that credit the credit their perks sort of phenomenon, where we're gonna focus on these really Terrible things that are happening and make the kids feel like they're responsible for fixing it and it's just awful, whereas this is more taking things like the kids, they, they know right, they hear from various places, they overhear adults talking, they hear something on the radio in the car.
Speaker 2:They know that these things are happening in the world and I think it's it's good to Acknowledge what they already know and to place it in a context for them and in the wider context of this is still a great world and there's still so much positive and still so much they can do. You know, even scott's Live classes like they're not all focused on the wars and things. The next, the next unit that he's doing with the kids is all about Technology and progress, and so it's that's part of the context too. So, yeah, I agree with you like kids need to be protected from these anxiety Provoking things, but I do think that being given the tools to think about them properly and in a context is a big part of them not feeling anxiety about that. Oh, so okay.
Speaker 1:Let help me clarify the difference between history and social studies as a an approach, because it's not just what you're studying but how you're studying it. Right, because often I would imagine in social studies like I mean, we had a unit on Rome was probably like two weeks in junior high or something that you know we it's not like they didn't cover it the way. I remember learning social studies throughout my K through 12, especially up until like 10th, 11th grade, you know, up until that moment was so one. I don't remember it much, if anything, except just the wide array of Random topics. Right, that's how I remember. Like one thing I remember clearly I don't have a much memory of my K through 12 education in general, which is why I'm also interested in it, because I think it is important and we're not it's done, probably the worst that it could be done, if it's done at all, rather than just not doing it, like I think it has a negative, you know, opposite, effect of what it's trying to do. But you know, I remember, like the the, something about Rockefeller's. You know they had like a big image of him with the hat, of all the different Integrated. That like that's one thing I remember. And and then there was something about Alexander the great a couple weeks later, like that's, that's literally how it was right. It was like that kind of like what you know, I at the time I didn't think about it, but just looking back and like I don't understand what I was taught or what was going on. So, you know, it seems like the issue here is a difference between not just what's Content is being taught, because there's a lot of content, in the sense there's an infinite array of historical content to choose from.
Speaker 1:The question is how do you methodologically Integrated into something that's a cohesive whole, what's your unifying factor of integration? So for them it seemed to be Whatever was fancying the board and the teacher and Whatever that's it. Like they were interested in Rockefeller, let's do rock. I don't know, like I don't know what else was integrating them, or like maybe was the whims of the kids and there was something there's a cool TV show on right now, so let's do rock about it, because they're they're doing that.
Speaker 1:So whatever whims the kids were on, which is, you know again, kind of what I'm curious about how you're approaching this, because to me there is a danger of using the outside world as the. You know an integrating factor, right that that's part of what I'm asking you about it, you know. So there's a war there. Well, maybe that's not something we talk about. Even if it's motivationally helpful, it's not relevant to the, the integrating approach we're trying to take here. So you know broad like to boil this down into a question of what's the integrating approach that you saw with social studies. That's different with your present-centric history of now, history of tomorrow, noble world approach of history as a study.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean the first answer is that there is no Integrating approach to social studies social studies is a grab bag, which is exactly what you described.
Speaker 3:If you can go from Rockefeller to Alexander the Great in, you know and you're not, it's nonsense. And in fact, if you add, if you ask kids what they are studying in social studies, they cannot tell you yeah, so, so, so that that says it all right. If you, if you ask my students what we are studying, okay, they can tell you that right now we're studying the history of Western civilization and I'm trying to teach them how there's a family of cultural blocks that have certain cultural roots and that Exhibit certain similarities and affinities, and they're able to formulate that and they're able to tell you well, this is how the world came to be the way that it is, and these are the, the different cultural blocks that exist and and how that helps them to relate to what they're seeing around the world. Now, I think that one of the there's so many issues here, but I think that one of the concerns that I'm hearing from you and that I would I would expect to hear it and, because it is, it made its way into pedagogy and into historiography by by way of philosophy is that if you are Using what's going on right now, let's say, as a starting point, or the term I use is anchor point or anchor fact for studying the past, then aren't you running a risk that you are, you know, going to be slanting though the way that you approach history, or that you're going to be? No, perhaps Taking on something that's not really as important as it really ultimately is going to be, and that you're going to be looking at it from a certain perspective and therefore you're going to be missing out on on Some wider meaning or something to that effect.
Speaker 3:And so that that's been a concern of historians for a long time now, probably, you know, quite a strong concern, ever since the mid 19th century, when they became really, really hyper, focused on trying to mimic the success of, of physical scientists and not having bias and not having any predispositions coming into the study of history. But but so so what they did then in order to correct or try to correct for the, the potential For bias to sneak in or for the history to be slanted in such a way, you know, because you're coming at it from your present perspective and that might cloud your judgment or prevent you from seeing the past for what it really was Effectively, was the way they thought of it. Then what they said was well, we have to basically be as self-effacing as possible In order to get at the facts, much like the scientists, would you know, try to be, basically, you know, try not to have any predispositions or prejudices when, when looking at the facts, be empirical, be open-minded and not, you know, try to try to impose any, any subjective perspective on the facts. So historians went about creating a version of history that was, that was devoid of that bias or devoid of subjectivity. The consequence of that, however, was they created a subject which is mind-bogglingly boring, and so they basically they basically created an encyclopedia of facts, which which has no actual relevance and it's not compelling, and so, but that doesn't so.
Speaker 3:So that still leaves us with, once we have, it feels like the, the false. Basically, the false alternative that social studies versus history gives us is either we're dealing with a random grab bag of things primarily focused on what's going on in the world today, or we're dealing with a random grab bag of things primarily having to deal with the world as it once was, and so, either way, it's not organized, it's not integrated, it's experienced by the young person that is being asked to consider that material. It's experienced as a plethora and so it's an overwhelming over abundance of information and there's no way to hold it, there is no way to Integrate it. The experience is very frustrating and you don't remember it and you know it's demoralizing across the board. So present center is Is designed to address that, and the way to do it Is, first of all, the challenge of present interest as well to approach the present, first of all, in an integrated manner. Right, we got its great big world. It's complicated. How do we, how do we take that and render it into an intelligible whole in the first place? And then, if we can succeed at that and You've read the first chapter of the history of now that's exactly what I strive to do there is to show the reader what the world is as a sum and then, once you've achieved that, then you can go into the past knowing the present as a whole, as an integrated whole, and then you can summon history to help make sense of how that came about. So that's the approach that I take.
Speaker 3:As far as curriculum design goes, let's say, in in a noble world, what I teach is a three-year rotation that allows us to cover All of the major cultural blocks of the world. So there, there really aren't any gaps there, but there is an emphasis on that which is most important, and that is something that can be objectively determined. It's not, in fact, even that difficult to do. It's not hard to propose to you know, anybody, that the United States of America that exhibits, you know, primacy among all the nations of the world deserves more attention, that then Equatorial Guinea or Uruguay, right, so it's. Like you know, this is rather straightforward, it's. It's quite straightforward that countries like China and Russia are deserving of attention, and whereas Bhutan and Uganda perhaps not as much. Right, and so it's. It's not saying that these, you know, that the people living in those places aren't nice people.
Speaker 3:It's saying that there is such a thing as historical importance and there is a way to focus on the world In such a way that you get the maximum benefit out of it cognitively, in other words, literally and and very strictly speaking, so that you can understand the world you live in.
Speaker 1:Okay. So I'm still trying to, I guess, formulate simply the integrating factor that you're Because, yeah, I can understand that social studies integrating factor is nothing, or I think the best way is probably whatever you feel like as the teacher, students, like, it's just whim, it's just whatever kind of comes into your worldview or your multiple idea. And the other thing I would think is part of the interesting thing about social studies and how history is taught in general education, even up into college, is multiculturalism, which is opposed to what you're saying. So what you're saying is that there are certain cultures that are more worthy of study. They're saying the complete opposite, which is why you might get a kind of segment on some obscure African tribe or something right, and skip out on the French Revolution.
Speaker 1:So that's kind of what they would do, is they would? And I think that would be seriously. I don't think I learned about the French Revolution, maybe like a couple chapter or a couple sessions in the middle of ninth grade or so, who knows, I don't remember. But like that kind of approach, though, is that, oh, we have this little tribe of you know, say there's a cannibal tribe in, let's study them for three or four weeks instead of that to me is like something that a social studies class would actually do, and they have no reason not to, based on their standards based on their standards of like everyone.
Speaker 1:All cultures are exactly the same, All cultures are exactly relevant in the same way, and there's no such thing as a superior in any way, including cultural relevance culture. So we will just study all of them or anyone that we want to, and the reality is you can't.
Speaker 3:And if you want briefly to address the issue specifically, I mean, the French Revolution is so overwhelmingly significant as a historical event and just to articulate what the fundamental importance of it is, is that if you read the Declaration of the Rights of man and Citizen, what you find in there articulated is essentially a theory of rights and that was previously stated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau which I discuss in the history of now and even more so in the history of tomorrow which is the theory that rights are not in fact natural and inalienable, as the founding fathers of the United States asserted, but rather that they are the product of the social contract and of the general will. And if you want to find a more important idea, I challenge you to try, okay, because literally today, what are all of the social topics of the day? They all pertain to the fact that you get some kind of faction in society asserting that it has a right, that rights are subjective and they are the product of the social contract. So all we do is argue about what kinds of rights which, strictly, if we really say what they are, they're entitlements, what kind of things we're going to entitle different groups of people to today. So if you want to understand the world today, there's literally no more important reference point than the French Revolution, because that is the origin of all of these ideas which have permeated Western civilization.
Speaker 3:The United States has a better base in the form of the natural theory of rights of the founding fathers, but it didn't last, unfortunately. It was flawed. I discussed that to a significant extent in the history of tomorrow and it was gradually replaced and there's a little bit of it left. But the social theory of rights is by far the dominant theory throughout Western civilization. So base and by extension throughout the world. Because if you look at Japan, which was westernized in the 19th century and more so under American occupation after World War II, if you look at China, which adopted communism secondhand through Russia, if you look at India, which became a democracy after being under British tutelary imperialism, if you look at the rest of the world, basically every government out there in the world to a significant extent today now embodies the social theory of rights.
Speaker 1:And so basically the French.
Speaker 3:Revolution has taken over the world, so if you want to understand the world we live in, you can't study a more important topic than that, and so by contrast. I mean, imagine the aborigines of Australia or, as you were saying, like some tribe in the heart of Africa. I mean, of what significance is that to the world we live in? It's no, it's literally nothing. And so again, it's not an issue of good or bad, it's an issue of significance, historical significance.
Speaker 1:Scott, I saw. Okay. I have a question about the rotating. You mentioned rotating curriculum. Did you develop that at Vandam Academy? Was that because, like well, yes and no?
Speaker 3:because prior to creating noble world currently we're in the process of rebranding somewhat here, so I have the curriculum that I offer is currently called History at Our House, but Heather and I are going to turn that into noble world. Essentially, prior to developing History at Our House, I think I was under the influence of my prior teaching experience. I was operating under what you would call a classical kind of an approach to history which teaches the ancient world and then teaches medieval times and then teaches modern history. So that would be a three year rotation, and I've since completely set that aside. And now what I do is I teach.
Speaker 3:I still have a three year rotation, but I teach a course called America and the World we Live In, and in that course it's obviously America centric, but it also contains a unit on Western civilization. Then I teach a course called Asia, africa and the World we Live In, so all of the major cultures of that block and then I teach a course called Europe, russia and the World we Live In, which, and so when you go across the spectrum of all the cultural blocks, they all get covered. European history I also teach ancient Greece and Rome, because of course there are some really fundamental developments there, that without which European history doesn't make any sense, and so, basically, when we're done in the three year rotation, everything has been covered.
Speaker 1:Okay. So it's, the reason I bring that up is because I've always used I never taught it Van Dam, but I did teach at La Porte. But I've always used the Van Dam, that cycle, as like the model of what I think is the best approach to history. And I would even, you know, I've always tried to argue for an even broader integration where it integrates really all the humanities, like I would even say that I think history, like I'm a literature person history and literature should be kind of combined in a sense where you should be, you know, even in the earlier grades, helping integrate all those things so that people are, you know, the kids are kind of when they're studying ancient Greece, they're studying the mythology, they're studying the history there's, you know mythology and literature class, and they're studying certain facts about, you know, athens or the, you know Peloponnesian or Persian wars, depending on where they are, or you know all the different subjects. But I always thought that that cycle so here's my understanding of it is you would even start in like first grade, right, it'd be like first grade, so like the whole school would be, for this K through eight school would be, would basically have the banner of the theme of ancient Greece the first year, and then the second year would be Rome, like you're saying, I think, and then the. I think that's how they and they might do Greece and Rome at the same time. But I thought they did Greece, rome and then, like you're saying, medieval, and maybe they did one, but I get, and then they would like, but the. The interesting thing to me was they would do that first, second excuse me, they would do Greece for the whole school one year and then the next year the whole school would do Rome, and then you know medieval times and then fourth year they would go back to Greece. And to me that's what made it interesting, so that you're then getting this whole holistic, integrated but then layered development. So by the time you're in, you know seventh, eighth grade, and you're doing Greece again, or you're doing your final year of Greece and eighth. You're like actually reading Homer with the full context of understanding all these, if you were in it from first grade, all this context. And to me, the thing that I liked about that was the integrate, the, the integrating factor, which I'm still I'm honest, I'm a little bit struggling with what your integrating factor is in terms of the, of the curriculum. You know, is it because it does? It sounds like you're saying it's not exactly present stuff, but that's, that's part of what's motivating, or the motivational factor. But the integrating factor to me was how do you like is is developing?
Speaker 1:For this other approach is developing a method for the students to understand. Okay, I can study ancient Greece this way, by learning about the wars, by learning about the major figures, by learning about certain documents and even certain speeches, so on and so forth, year after year after year, so that I am a really good knowledge of how to approach studying ancient Greece. Therefore, afterwards, if I want to specialize in somewhere, I could take that approach, that methodological approach, and now apply it to the American revolution, which we didn't study maybe. Maybe we didn't study by the time of 15 or 16, but you studied how to study it, which to me is the more important thing, and that's that's where I'm coming from. So I'd like to still kind of dig into this idea. I'm very interested. I don't I would say I'm not 100% settled because I haven't actually taught history much, but I'd be. I'm very curious about your, your thoughts on that.
Speaker 3:Right. Well, the rotation and the let's call it the spiral approach, right, to go back to right, to the same material repeatedly at a more complex, more advanced level as you go. It is certainly one that I employ, and so, but a few differences. One is that my approach culminates in 12th grade, not in eighth grade. So that is a big difference and it's terribly important because the curriculum, you know, pedagogically, the approach that I take in that now is going to extend all the way back to kindergarten with Knowable World. It's all designed to help kids understand the world we live in and what it does is, yes, certainly, when you're starting into the, the, the main part of the curriculum, and you're doing China once and then you're going to do China again, and then you're going to do China again later on, right, you are definitely getting more complex material.
Speaker 3:When I, when I get into, you know, high school, for American history, I offer an American government class because that needs to be an extra layer and so so, certainly, the spiraling and the revisiting of the material is important and I, you know, I certainly don't have a problem with, and I used to do, you know, literature myself, and so combining literature and history has, you know, create some fascinating synergies, no doubt about it, and so, but it's really important to me, for instance, what I found is that, look, if you do ancient Greece and Rome, and then you do the medieval world, and then you do modern America, wow, what haven't you done is a lot. And so, you know, china is far more important to the world that we live in now than it once was. And the realization that hit me when, I you know, realized, wow, I don't really know anything about Asia, that was something about 15 years ago. Let's say, wow, china is a big deal now. And how come I don't know anything? And I went about, of course, teaching myself that, and kids need to know. And the same goes for other cultures around the world.
Speaker 3:So, you know, we live in an interconnected world, and so, if you're going to be a fully functioning and confident and capable adult, it's not just about whether or not you were able to, you know, make sense of Homer in the context of Greek history. Nothing wrong with that, that's good but you need to understand the world that you're living in right now. This is 2024 and it's a big deal, and, you know, it would be strange and even perverse. This was one of the things that pushed me in the direction of present centrism. It would be strange if you had, you know, this great knowledge, let's say, of some isolated topic like ancient Greece, as wonderful as it is, one of my favorite cultures of all time.
Speaker 3:But it would be strange if you had a knowledge of that but then found yourself unable to interpret everything that's going on around you, because the complexity of the way the world arose today is not answered by studying ancient Greece and unfortunately, there is no method or and I've been teaching history for over 20 years now there's no way to translate what you might learn from the Peloponnesian wars into some sort of understanding of how you know the world that we live in came about. So that's the challenge and that's what present centrism is designed to address. Now it's still early days, so we have a lot of work to do, and Heather, you know, is helping me with Knowable World as a mom, as a homeschooler, and we certainly still have work to do. But that's our approach. That's our goal is to show that history can be more than just the study of the past. It can be a revelation, an explanation of the world we live in.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'll go ahead, heather.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I was just going to bring it back to what you said about.
Speaker 2:If you study ancient Greece and America, these few topics, in this spiral way into this certain depth, then you're teaching them how to study history and they can then apply that to other time and I would say that that's exactly what we're. That's not integrated, that is a disintegrated study of history, because you're choosing just one piece and you're getting some clarity on that, but you don't see how it fits into the whole context. And that is what we want to be teaching the children is to see history as a whole, the world that we live in now, as a whole, that has an integrated explanation, and so we don't want to teach them just these one-off, isolated, sort of compartmentalized topics. We want to be teaching them the whole thing and then, if they get to the end of that and they want to explore some specific topic because it has some relevance to them, not only do they know how to dive into that topic, but they also know how to integrate it with all of the other things that they know in a total context.
Speaker 1:Well, it definitely sounds like there's overlap and, in terms of, you have this spiral theory I like that term, of course which I think we probably get from Dr Leonard Peacoff, I would imagine, who was Ein Rans intellectual heir and wrote a lot about this, or he spoke a lot about and taught a lot about pedagogy, and he has a course called the philosophy of education, which I really like, and that's how I got interested in the subject, actually a long time ago, and so it seems like you have this spiral theory.
Speaker 1:That's the same. The big difference is, as you're pointing out, that you're trying to use and again correct me if I'm not phrasing this the right way but you're using the modern, the world we live in today and the things going on in the world as a chief integrating factor for choosing the kinds of I think you call them blocks of cultures that you will study throughout this spiral, and that includes, as you mentioned, russia, china, as well as America, europe, and it won't be necessarily sub-Saharan Africa, but it'll be certain cultures like that. Is that a good way of encapsulating what you're doing?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it is the president is somewhat of a moving target and that's important and that's fine in the sense that now I definitely teach more about Asia than I would have said in the past. But imagine if we went back to, if you could imagine teaching present-centrically around the time of World War II. Of course, you couldn't deny that what you would need to be focusing on at the time would be Germany and Japan. You'd have to be teaching about the history of these cultures. But if you told me today that you should be teaching Germany and Japan instead of, say, russia and China, well then I would say that you're making a mistake, because some of these cultures have a greater role to play in how the world that we live in is unfolding, and that's what we need to know now. So it is definitely. It is definitely an evolving topic and history, in my view, has to be responsive to the way that the world is unfolding and provide for the needs of the students that live currently in the world that we currently live in.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I first off, we spent more time than I had planned on the curriculum because I find it fascinating and so, but I do want to pivot and get into, dig into a little bit of concrete and I want to compare because I'm a little bit more knowledgeable about ancient Greece versus, like what you're talking about with the China study. And I want to because I want to have these two different approaches that I'm digging into as I learn about what you're doing, because I'm still a little on the fence, or not 100% convinced, that the present centric is the best way to do this for general education. So I'm really trying to honestly just assess how to approach this. Now I get what you're saying, heather. You said you know what did you say? You said something like, or you said something about the getting the context, and by context you're meaning the things happening in the world today.
Speaker 2:But no, not exactly. I would say that, I mean the whole context of the world, both as it is and how it came to be that way. So the context is the story, the one story that we are sitting at the, you know, the bleeding edge of right now. That's one thing. That is the context for anything that you could learn in history, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I agree with that approach. So I again, let me be clear I totally agree that we in the world, we live like we're human beings. We look out in the world, we see things and then we we read the news and we have all these events and these things going on and we have no idea how we got here. How did we get here in the Middle East? I think Israel and Palestine is a really good example of what is exactly the history of that conflict, such that we can understand why both sides are where they are. But then you need, I think, even broader context to try to make certain kinds of moral evaluations, which is why you know, when I hear the word context, I'm a little bit thrown in terms of having the whole context, because you can't do that. You have to isolate in order for you to study and investigate something, and the point of a context is to figure out. What you should be isolating based on is my understanding of context versus like trying to get everything where, again, it's just too much and you have to, you have to narrow your focus for the purposes of study. So going, so going back to this China, ancient Greece thing, I think this might be a good approach to figuring out how. How does, what does it actually look like to have the kind of curriculum you're talking about, versus a somewhat imaginary one that I'm thinking of? So there's, there's, you know, I think it is taught this way in a few places, but not many, and I think the same with what you're doing. It's very rare. Either way, and let me just say for the record that I think both approaches, even if I have certain disagreements along the edges, both approaches are amazing, like I think they are far superior to anything else. Even if I just like just so anybody listening makes sense Like, even if I do end up disagreeing with a little bit of the present centric which I don't know that I do yet I still think it's vastly superior than anything else out there, because it is taking a conscious choice to be integrated. That it's, you know. I like the spiral theory because, even because, again, you're going to get facts in different ways, you're going to get the same era in different ways, so that'll, that'll settle into the mind of even the most passive students as they're getting in the air, as it's everywhere around them. It'll just kind of get into their heads a little bit and then the more active ones will get even more out of it. So, again, I think that approach is phenomenal. So I just I'm coming at this right now as like a nuanced curriculum discussion, I guess because I'm a little bit interested in this.
Speaker 1:So the ancient Greece, china situation. So when I think of studying for kids, not as adults, so adults is different to me right, like when I want to study ancient Greece, I may have different approach. I actually think there's a different purpose behind K through 12 general education, when you have these tabula rasa students and I don't know if you agree with the tabula rasa philosophy and you're trying to teach a methodology is my view of education. I don't know if you agree with that, but you're essentially trying to X book, like get across. Here's the method you should be approaching history with when you go out in the world and try to understand the world. So when I think of it, go ahead, heather, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know to push back, I guess.
Speaker 1:Yeah, push back please.
Speaker 2:That we teach them to use a certain method in K to 12, but then, when they're adults, you don't use that. Then you use something else.
Speaker 1:No, you should use that, but it's you have to be taught it properly first, right, so that I think we all agree on that. I assume we all agree on that, yeah, so, yeah, I think we agree on that. So when I think about ancient Greece and why we should study ancient Greece, it's not actually primarily because of its merits and its influence today although I think ancient Greece is probably the most influential society in the history of the world but it's, I think there's that part of it that it is the influential part, but also there's a I don't know. I guess the best way I could put it is there's a holistic history that we can study there, that we can see a beginning, middle and end, in a sense of that world, where we can investigate what occurred, what gave rise to this kind of culture at this time, in a way that's actually disconnected from 100% today. So it's like we could take a Petri dish of this human culture and look at it and investigate it and kind of say like, take it apart, analyze what happened during the Mycenaean era. What led to the different for Homer? How did that lead to a rising culture in the Golden Age of Greece? How did Alexander come about and his father. What's his father's name? What's his father's? What's Alexander's name? Philip, oh, macedon, yeah, what gave rise to that? And those types of situations so that you can have how did we get philosophy? Why did all those types of things? And it's because it's such a unique culture in a lot of ways, but there's also a lot written about it and there's a lot of ancient texts written about it. Plus, not to mention, there's Herodotus and Thucydides, who are you could actually study how history came about as a subject, which is a good example of thinking about history. It's like here's two different approaches. That's how. So it seems like you could study ancient Greece for all of K through 12 in a sense, and you know, and then you can come out of that of like, okay, I know how to you know what kinds of books I should be looking for when I'm listening to a history person lecturing on ancient Greece. What kinds of things are they focusing on? I'll just give you an example of one of the best lessons I ever learned in college, which I didn't think I learned a lot in college myself, but this is a good one from a history of history of Greece.
Speaker 1:My history of Greece professor, history of ancient Greece. He gave us two textbooks, or he gave us the chapter for one textbook written in 1950, and he gave us the book we were going to read for our textbook in this class. And the first question he asked when we, after we had read that, was what's the difference between these two approaches? And I, you know, I was the I think I was a little bit older than everybody saw. I don't know if or I had objectivism training a little bit, but I was the only one to raise my hand. Everyone else was like no, I had no idea. And so I raised my hand and he called on me and I said well, the 1950s version is reverential to ancient Greece and the 2011 or 2010 version seems to disdain ancient Greece and its tone.
Speaker 1:Its tone was like here's a cruddy, you know, racist, misogynistic culture that, yeah, it got you know, it helped us with philosophy and literature and democracy and history and all these other bunch of you know misogynist or whatever. And to me, that, you know, just blew my mind. I guess the point I'm trying to get at is you can have wrong approaches to how you look at history. That isn't just to me, not together with this context of what's happening right now in ancient Greece or in Greece. Like what's going on in Greece is not relevant to the study of ancient Greece, but ancient Greece has the building blocks of what's going on today, and so there's a value of studying that in its own context, in other words, from 1100 BC to 323 BC or, yeah, bc, some of that or even going into the Roman era. So that's how I look about ancient Greece. I'd be curious about your argument and the pushback of like, okay, so add in China, because it's relevant today. That's what I'm hearing from you. Is that there's this context of today that's important.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, there's so much. There's so much there, and I appreciate that you are trying to formulate, even to try to formulate the challenge involved, because there is a challenge.
Speaker 3:I have to fully acknowledge that there is and here I'm speaking somewhat speculatively because I mean I've studied the history of ancient Greek philosophy. I took a course in college on pre-Socratic philosophy. I've done a whole bunch of that kind of work and it was always fascinating and I enjoyed it very much. And so there are certainly aspects of ancient Greek culture in particular which is such a spectacular flourishing of culture that you're going to have enormous benefits if you're going to be focusing on the cultural output of that particular culture during those centuries. Absolutely, you're going to be seeing the mind opening up for the first time, essentially in all of human history.
Speaker 3:So that's spectacular. And if you were going to make a mistake and only study the past at the expense of the present, then, yes, please go study ancient Greek. That's what I would say. If you're going to do it wrong, study the Greeks, okay.
Speaker 3:Now so the other part of the challenge is that present centrosism is certainly a new approach, and I can't possibly claim to have all the answers when it comes to even how necessarily to contrast it or to demonstrate what the outcomes are that would be different in relation to other subjects. Because if you're talking about ancient Greece, you have the opportunity, as you correctly pointed out. You have the opportunity to bring in literature, you have the opportunity to bring in philosophy, you have the opportunity to bring in natural science, you have the opportunity to bring in history and so many different topics and show the interrelation of those things, and that's fantastic. So, yes, what you're doing there, potentially I would say that what you're talking about is really only possible at a college level and an adult context. But if you can do that, then, yeah, you're starting to build what I would refer to, strictly speaking, as a construct of what a culture is and what it's different components and how they fit together and how they interrelate, and that is a fascinating topic in and of itself.
Speaker 2:So certainly, history is not the only subject.
Speaker 3:So perhaps one of the tricky things that we're dealing with here is that, okay, what is it and how does it fit not in this, you know, in a general education and how does it? You know, per, what is its relationship to other subjects? And that is its own particular challenge. And so, yeah, I would say that that's part of what's difficult about this. But again, taking it back to where we are in terms of the history of now and in terms of knowable world for kids, the proposition that those things need to be emphasized is a problem because it definitely creates a world apart and it's, you know, if it worked, it would have worked. So, in other words, social studies would never have happened Because we were actually doing that. Classical education existed.
Speaker 3:And it was tried generation after generation, and what it produced was this dry material that didn't have any relevance and did not translate into what I think you're hoping would happen, which would be this kind of methodological maturity that would accrue to the student over time and would allow them to become, you know, educated, shall we say, and be able to then live a lifelong learning process, which is certainly what I think we should all be striving for. It didn't pan out, it didn't work, and that's exactly why social studies came about, in order to try to address the fact that it didn't work. And so there's that problem. But in addition, I think just to just return to present censorism, the idea is, the idea that we are striving for is indeed a very ambitious one.
Speaker 3:The thesis of present-centrism is, as Heather stated, that it is possible to integrate the entire thing and that, ultimately I agree with Heather on this that's the context.
Speaker 3:So a context can be. I think you're right that the context is two different things. A context is the sum of cognitive items conditioning an item of knowledge. Okay, well, sometimes what you do is you restrict your focus on some particular segment of what you know, but you cannot validate and you cannot, and you never stop. You can't validate the outcome or particular inquiry in some area without reference to everything else, literally everything else that you know. That's another point that Landau-Piekow definitely made. Ultimately, the context is the whole, it is everything, and that's what present-centrism proposes to offer is literally the entirety of history, as astounding as that might seem, because to most people it seems like an inaccessible plethora, but when integrated properly, it is an accessible whole, and then that allows you to see everything, whether it is you're studying ancient Greece, which is a great idea, but whatever it is that you're studying, you're seeing it in its full and proper context.
Speaker 1:So can you give me an example, using China as how that would look versus you know how to do the verses? But just based on what we've talked about in terms of these differences of approach? Because the thing that I'm hearing the most is in the present-centrism and again I do want to stress that with the this idea of present-centrism that you have, the thing that I've always tried to apply in the best way that I can when teaching anything in the humanities or approaching anything in humanities, is making it relevant from a motivational standpoint. So that's how I've always looked at and I agree 100% that even when I'm teaching literature, it's always about trying to make it relevant to your actual life, rather than some kind of duty-bound reason of what you're. You know what you're studying, right, where it's like you study it because you're supposed to be, to be a good working member of society, like that's why you're studying this, and I don't think that's the right approach. I think so. I again, I want to stress that I think there's a lot of overlapping agreement here, but it sounds like there's some, you know, slight little differences in the approach that I think are interesting and we don't. Honestly, I don't know that any of us have the right answer, yet I think we're all kind of circling around it. That's my view. Maybe you think you have the right answer. I still think there's a lot of like you're saying, or maybe the better way to put it is there's a lot of work to be done and actually getting the system down and understanding it, and I think it's very important work. And, again, I think we're all coming at it from different sides, different angles from the same basic philosophy, trying to figure it out about the best way to do it.
Speaker 1:So I like the approach and I, you know, I don't think there's anything fundamental. I don't know that there's anything fundamental that's different in it Other than this. I guess the issue of context is kind of nagging at me a little bit. So that's something I'm going to have to think about more of like what is the context, like why? So it's a good, it's a good subject for people to think about who are watching this, watching this now. But I want going back. I would like, from maybe both of you if you'd like, the China example of how you approach teaching China. Let's just focus on that, because it's not what I'm used to studying. How are you honing in on the right kinds of facts to take into account. What are students teaching learning in first grade versus fifth grade, versus eighth versus 12th? Right With China in particular?
Speaker 1:Well we can get into that.
Speaker 3:I'm willing. We've been at it for quite a while, so I would propose that there's different things that we can do. We can do that, and China would probably be a pretty decent example to go with, but perhaps it would be something to take up another time. I'm sensing that there's more to be.
Speaker 3:There's a long discussion here, there's a long and fruitful discussion to be had, and I'd be more than happy to come back and try and work, give you a chance to absorb what we've talked about and perhaps give you a chance to do some more reading in the history of now and see what you think of the later chapters of the book.
Speaker 3:And that's what I'm hoping to offer this new round of adult students is the chance to see what it looks like to actually grasp human history as a whole.
Speaker 3:That's what the book offers, and so it certainly is a thesis in the sense that it's not. I don't have a lot of students that Heather's one of my top ones that can actually recall the material that I've taught and explain it in a pretty good way. So there aren't a lot of students that have been through a present-centric history education. It's still very much under development, but that's what we're here to offer as an option, as a way of thinking about it, and so we've got something here for kindergarten kids, we've got something here for high school students and we've got something for adults which in the form of the history of now. So there certainly is so much more to be said about it. So I think perhaps that's where we should end for today, and then we could come to return for another round. If you're willing and if your audience is interested. You'll have to see what the viewing stats are on a Troubadour podcast about.
Speaker 1:Well, history curriculum. I think we focused on curriculum and what it is. Yeah, I mean can you give like so we can agree that it's a great topic. So it's a very big audience.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, I think there's going to definitely be some interest. Is there a way because I do have access, like I think a lot of people are homeschoolers, parents, young individuals interested in this subject. But I'm curious if you can end perhaps with just one example. It doesn't have to be the whole segment, but just so people can walk away with like a counter example from what I was trying to say about the studying each of Greece as its own thing, Just like what's a broad level overview, and if you don't want to do China, that's fine, but just a broad level overview of your particular approach.
Speaker 1:So you know, for studying ancient Greece and different levels like I was saying it's going to be, you know, first grade you're going to get some very base level examples of mythology as one example, Like that's that's, so you get, you know what is it, Dolores is or what's the one I was forget the title because I never taught it, but I know they taught it. Yeah, yeah, like Greek myth, like just something real. So you have some like here's the Greek gods, like that's one thing, and then like I in my home school I read that with my kids.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean, but. But I consider that a separate thing from our study of history. And of course you know we can borrow here and there, you know, for talking about history. They can say, oh, you know, that's the temple of whoever, because I know, and I know about that from mythology, so things like that. Or if we read about something in mythology they can say, oh, I heard something about that in history, but there, but they we don't, you know, overlap the topics to that extent that that I would be reading the myths in history class.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's, that's fair and OK. Yeah, so I just, if we could, it doesn't have to be the whole thing, but just a broad overview so we could close out with this. And again, if you don't want to do China, if you want to do America, whatever, that's fine too, but just you know again. So people have a contrast briefly in their heads. You have this ancient Greek study, what's like you maybe do first grade be like I said, mythology. Maybe in fourth grade when they come back to it, they'd have a little bit of the Mycenaean era and a very broad overview of what's going on during the time of home. And then in the eighth grade or something, they would have something along classical Greece. I'm just making that up off the top of my head, but just so people have like who are listening broad overview. That's one approach, just focusing on Greece. Can you give us a?
Speaker 3:synopsis approach is quite simply this the world we live in is an interconnected agglomeration of nearly 200 countries, organized into 10 major cultural blocks, predominated by five cardinal cultures, among which the United States has primacy. That's the starting point. So it is a fully integrated picture of the world. And then we leap and we never let go of that as we go back and study history and we are always bringing it back to that. So that's what we're trying to make sense of.
Speaker 1:So just as a again so first grade, you would be doing something like your second grade is what Heather?
Speaker 2:could tell you that what Scott just said, and she knows what it means, Right? So we're starting with.
Speaker 1:Oh, you start with the whole thing. So that's, I did not understand that. Okay, I thought that was just your philosophical approach and then you would focus it in. But you're saying, you, you start with this whole concept of.
Speaker 3:Not, not for, not for a kindergarten student, but for a third grader. Yes, okay. So the kids are able to absorb that formulation and they're able to make sense of it and they understand why it's so critical to view the world that way, through that lens, and how empowering it is to do so. So, yeah, it's right there from the third grade and it empowers us all the way through to 12th grade.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I find that very interesting, like I said, so I do hope we figure out a time to do this again. Maybe you can give me some of the curriculum to look at and we can. We could talk about it because I'm interested in it and I have a lot of questions, as you can see, more questions than answers. For sure, although it's, I think it's an important topic. So make sure you check out knowableworldcom, everybody and the history of now, a new kind of history, is available on Kindle and it is paperback as well. Yeah, paperback as well. Scott Powell, two T's, two L's. So thank you everybody and thank you Heather, thank you Scott.
Speaker 3:Thanks, kurt, nice talking to you.
Speaker 1:New test.