February 26, 2021
Do your kids think of history as some dusty, fusty, irrelevant stories that have no connection with their lives? Maybe you feel like that, too. It’s a feeling that has been promulgated in schools, most particularly public schools, for a number of years now. When I was in the lower grades I hated history. I thought it was so-o-o boring! Until I had a history teacher who didn’t feel she had to sneeze from the collection of dust every time she brought the book out. She made
history live again. She made the people of an earlier time live in our minds so that we could understand them better. Let me give an example.
In the days when Teddy Roosevelt was president of the United States, measles was a serious, life-threatening disease. There was no vaccine at that time to prevent it. It didn’t even become a “nationally notifiable disease” until 1912. In the ten years following that order, the deaths from measles averaged 6,000 per year.
It was in 1903 that Teddy Roosevelt’s nine-year-old son, Archie, contracted the disease. His father loved his son very much, but he had important things to do as President. Archie’s mother must have been distraught. Archie’s little five-year-old brother, Quentin, missed playing with him. Finally, Archie started to improve. He was well enough to tell Quentin that he really missed his Shetland pony, Algonquin, and wished he could ride him, but he wasn’t permitted to leave the house. Quentin had an idea.
Imagine the little five-year-old possibly tugging on the coat sleeve of a footman, and whispering his idea in his ear. I’m sure the footman would have grinned, and the possibility of getting in trouble faded into the background as he thought of how ingenious Quentin was. Quentin pulled and the footman pushed, and eventually they got Algonquin to move into the White House elevator. It is said that the pony began to adjust to the idea of riding an elevator when he saw himself in a mirror in it. Up they went to the second floor and down the hall to Archie’s bedroom. Can you picture the surprised look on his face when he saw his pony? It even made the New York Times where it stated, “this is the first time that a horse had ridden in a White House elevator.”
Another telling of the story says that it was the footman’s idea to take Algonquin up to visit Archie, but I don’t think that’s nearly as endearing. One report also told that when the pony got into the bedroom, something startled him. He slipped on the bedroom floor, which was probably slick hardwood, and all 350 pounds of him went down with a crash. Can’t you just see all five of Archie’s siblings doubled over laughing?
Okay, I admit all history isn’t that much fun. But these were real people dealing with real problems. Some of those problems were different from those we face today, but some of them were quite similar. Remember the saying, “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it”? How are our children learning history? Are they being taught the truth, warts and all, about what happened, why it happened, and how it was dealt with? Or are they learning some twisted version to promote a currently fashionable ideology?
God said it was the responsibility of parents to teach their children about the love of God. Because history revisionism is now often taught in schools, it is similarly important for parents to teach them history, the love of our founders for this new country, and how it applies to their lives today. But why not start with something fun? It worked for me. It might work for your kids, too.