(2024-04-05) Hendrickson Spiral History

Brandon Hendrickson: on Spiral history. 1. A problem. Because stories are the One Tool to Rule Them All, the story of the whole world is the backbone of an Egan education. It connects everything, and helps give everything its flavor. The other backbone of an Egan education, of course, is the different ways of understanding that we gradually build

2. Basic plan

In elementary school, excite kids with the epic span of the whole world with simple stories

In middle school, start over with a new cycle. Starting in grade 5,2 follow the same rough division of history to develop the story of the world

Then in high school (ninth grade), start over for one final cycle. This time, introduce abstractions (the big ideas that academics chew on, digest, and poop out) to connect what they’ve learned

3. What you might see

4. Why?

The usual “scope and sequence” of social studies — at least in America — only makes sense if you understand that it’s a century-old compromise from a particularly nasty divorce.

The first seven years went to the Educational Progressivists. They were excited to make use of an idea from developmental psychology which was then in vogue: that children can best make sense of the world if they start with themselves, and only slowly move outwards —

That was one half of the settlement. The final six years went to the Educational Traditionalists, who basically said, “to hell with modern psychology — let’s just put the most important stuff into kids’ heads” —

As a lover of American history who loves to teach American history and has a degree in American history, I’ve gotta say: American history isn’t THIS important. And if you don’t understand the context in which American (and Western) history sits, you’ll never really understand it at all.

Worst of all, this “let’s waste time then rush” approach seems guaranteed to raise kids who don’t like history! We’re throwing away the early years, when kids enjoy learning through simple stories.

5. Egan’s insight

Who hasn’t had the experience of re-watching a beloved childhood film (or re-reading a beloved childhood novel) as an adult, only to discover it was totally different than we’d first found it?

It would be too blithe to say we use 🧙‍♂️SIMPLE STORIES in elementary school, 🦹‍♂️COMPLEX STORIES in middle school, and 👩‍🔬METANARRATIVES in high school, but that wouldn’t be a terrible place to start

6. This might be especially useful for…

7. Critical questions

how could this sort of education handle kids who transfer into Egan education in the later years?

I think that kids who transfer into an Egan middle school or high school might get a quick review. If a school is extra demanding, it might even give prospective applicants study materials, and proctor a test.

9. Who else is doing this?

THANK YOU THANK YOU SUSAN WISE BAUER.

Susan Wise Bauer6 is the person who put classical education on the homeschooling map with her book The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home in 1999.

At the center of her curriculum is a spiraling scope and sequence of history

An attentive reader might note some small differences here

The biggest difference, though, is what powers the cycles. Bauer is a proponent of the Trivium, which takes as its model the educational approach of ancient Roman aristocrats: grammar, logic, and rhetoric.

You might remember in my ACX book review of Egan’s Educated Mind some sections that were REALLY LONG LISTS OF COOL-SOUNDING HISTORY THINGS. ((2023-08-21) Hendrickson Book Review The Educated Mind)

The world does not lack for stories of oppression and liberation that can capture the attention of a six-year-old.

It’s that last line that gives Egan’s notion for how to organize the scope and sequence of history in the early grades: pick one binary per year (like oppression/liberation), and tell as many stories as possible, pulling from every time and every culture. Do the same thing the next year except with a different binary — danger/security for grade 2, and ignorance/knowledge for grade 3.

I remember driving up from Seattle to Simon Fraser University back in 2012. “Nervous” doesn’t begin to describe my state. After discovering one of Egan’s books in an academic library, I had fallen in love with his ideas, and had gotten to meet him briefly after he happened to give a local talk.

I began to describe my proposal for Big Spiral History. His eyebrows began to animate. He took my printed copy of the proposal and began to speed-read it, wolfing it down, nodding excitedly, barely even listening to me

I ended up not being able to be his PhD student — he had, it turned out, just announced his intention to retire — but he invited me to present Big Spiral History officially at a conference he was organizing

we can start listing — in the comments section below — books and YouTube channels and other places we can lean on to help us create this. I’ll start by suggesting two of my favorite sources

Susan Wise Bauer’s The Story of the World: History for Classical Child. This is a four-book series; each chapter is a short story.

Larry Gonick — the masters-in-math-from-MIT-turned-cartoonist polymath — has a series of comic books which tell the story of the entire Universe.8 They start with the three-volume and III, and end with The Cartoon History of the Modern World Part 1 and Part 2. They’re just FANTASTIC

10. Related patterns

Spiral History° completes Big History° (hence the not-so-profound name “Big Spiral History”), telling us when to teach what, and which tools to use. The first two cycles should be explored through Epic Stories°; I suspect the final cycle should be explored through Metaknowledge°. We can keep all this stuff straight — and help relate it to each other — through Nested Timelines° (June 19) and Geography by Heart° (May 1).

this also allows even young kids to start to ask big questions about life, the Universe, and Everything — thus supporting Philosophy Everywhere°, and allowing them to start wondering about the deep story behind their Learning in Depth° topic.