History

To Enable Our Students to Learn from the Past for the Adventures of Today and Tomorrow

"Not to know what took place before you were born is to remain forever a child." –Cicero, Ancient Roman statesman

At LePort Schools, we teach the exciting subject of history at each grade level, in all of our classrooms—so that the knowledge of yesterday can contribute to our enjoyment of today.

In order to learn from our mistakes and successes in our own lives, it's necessary to pay close attention to what happened in our own past. A child who touches a hot stove learns "Ouch, that hurt!", and will not make that mistake again. A teenager who lies to a loved one, and consequently feels miserable discovers, “Ahh! It’s not worth it.” An adult who works a few incredibly long and hard weekends to finish an important project learns an important lesson: "Wow! this is what accomplishment and success feel like!" Much practical knowledge can be gained from our own past experiences. At the same time, this knowledge is of necessity limited to the time and place of our individual lives. Would that we could learn from the past of others. Of course, we can—through a study of history.

At LePort, we make history come alive, so that our students can learn, vicariously, through the men and women who lived and died in centuries past. Students discover the essential features of human experience throughout history, from our caveman ancestors to modern-day millionaires; from those who monotonously toiled in Ancient Egypt four millennia ago to those who joyously danced in New York City during the Roaring Twenties.

Our students are immersed in colorful historical worlds, which we make come alive for them. We provide students with the essential people, events, ideas and characteristics of each period, and guide them to observe carefully and to identify the local cause-and-effect relationships of historical events. This foundation of historical knowledge and the practice of identifying cause-and-effect on a small scale allows our students to later grasp and apply deeper conceptual causes in their own lives, and in their more advanced history classes in high school and college.

History as valuable lesson for today: How should America respond to Somali Pirates? A very nice example on how our students apply what they learn about the past to today's issues happened in a history class taught as Somali pirates were holding an American merchant ship hostage. One of our students had a clear answer: "America should learn from history! She should NOT pay the Somali pirates the 'Danegeld' because," and here with glowing pride our student quoted a Rudyard Kipling poem , "that once you have paid them the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane!"

Danegeld literally means "gold for the Danes", Danes being Viking raiders from Denmark. The modern equivalent is "ransom" or "bribe", basically protection money. LePort students learn that medieval leaders paid the Danegeld in exchange for the promise to be left alone—only to have the Vikings visit again soon, and demanding higher payments. LePort students learn about this history in a vivid, personalized way, through an approach that engages their emotions and their minds. Because they are engaged, they remember. And because we tie literature to history, our students can relate poetry to history to make a powerful observation.

A Chronological and Experiential Approach: Cause-and-Effect Progression of History—Tied to Our Students' Context of Experiences

"We want to serve history only to the extent that history serves life." —Nietzsche, 19th Century German philosopher

At LePort Schools, we teach history with the student in mind, with a focus on both how he learns and what he loves. There are many ways in which we make history accessible to students' growing minds and appealing to their ever-changing interests, but the combination of the following two pedagogical approaches is what lies at the core of our success:

• Chronological approach: teaching the cause-and-effect progression of history. Students at LePort learn about man's history chronologically; that is, from his earliest beginnings (e.g., Prehistory, in 4th grade) to the modern era (e.g., American government, in 8th grade).
  
  Because of this sequential presentation of material, students experience the past as a logical and gripping story: Students are with man on his earliest farms in Mesopotamia, as he domesticates animals and thus sheds his old hunter-gatherer ways; they ride alongside him in Ancient Rome, as he perfects the engineering of roads and thus reaches the farthest corners of his known world; they dine with him in the inns of 17th-century England and 18th-century New England, as he develops the idea of Natural Rights and thus builds the intellectual foundation of American government.
  
  By taking this chronological journey through the past—always witnessing what came before and sometimes, as a result, being able to predict what will come next—students excitedly unearth the happenings of history and joyously discover the answers to many of its "Hows?" and "Whys?" (e.g., How did Rome fall? Why do we have the Supreme Court?).

• Experiential approach: teaching the connections between man's history and students' experiences. Students at other schools often view history as irrelevant: "History is just a bunch of boring names and dates that don't have anything to do with my life, that don't seem to matter." While many schools therefore abandon history in favor of "social studies", at LePort we embrace the challenge of making history, with all its richness, exciting and relevant. We are committed to ensuring that such complaints are non-existent at our school.
  
  Learning about historical peoples, places, events should be engaging and exciting, relevant to today. At LePort, it is. We accomplish this by having our students "experience" history: We connect man's past to each student's context today. For instance, when Sparta lays siege to Athens in the late 5th century BC, our 5th graders are asked to answer (in both speech and writing), "What would it be like if your home were attacked, your possessions destroyed, your friends ransomed (or even worse, killed)?" As a result, when presented with a Barbarian attack on a Roman town in the 5th century AD or a Viking raid on a medieval village in the 11th century or a British occupation of a colonial city in the 18th century, students not only learn the facts of these events—they also "experience" them! Because of this experiential approach, history comes alive for students—and this unique connection to what they value today enables them to remember what they learned about yesterday, about history!

At LePort, we teach history chronologically and experientially so that students are able to fully understand, and truly enjoy studying, the past.

History as similar to a movie: no spoilers, please! In every history class at LePort there's a bookshelf loaded with historical books that students can read. One day during the last fifteen minutes of history class, Mr. McCarthy had each student choose a book to read silently. He eventually noticed that none of the students had chosen to read any of the books on Rome. He was a little perplexed by this—after all, the students were really into Rome. So right before he released them for homework period, he asked why nobody read any of the books on Rome. A few of the students' hands shot up immediately, and one response was unanimously agreed upon: "Because we don't want the future to be given away!" The students did not want to read any books on Rome because they didn't want to ruin the ending. They view the often-challenging study of history in a similar way that they view a movie: It's fun!

The Most Important Historical Periods and Civilizations, and Their Essential Characteristics

"Life is too short, time too valuable, to spend it in telling what is useless." —Voltaire, French Enlightenment writer

At LePort, history is an exciting story told from beginning to end, and made real to each child—so that he's able to "remember history and to avoid repeating it." We do not substitute a grab bag of "social studies" for history, nor present history as a dry and boring collection of facts to be memorized so children can allegedly "fully participate in society" without truly understanding where that society came from.

At LePort, we make you and your child a promise at the start of every school year: "We will never teach your child anything unimportant, anything useless." History, by definition, is literally everything that occurred in the past; and therefore any teaching of the subject must be selective, lest it turn into a never-ending list of dull dates, names, events, places.

We have reviewed dozens of respected history texts, and hundreds of books covering specific historical periods. We did not find one integrated program that met our criteria—that history be taught as a cause-and-effect progression of human actions over time, and that it be made real to today's students by connecting it to their experiences, enabling them to understand what happened and why it matters.

We have thus created our own proprietary history curriculum, combining the best elements from the many books we studied. Through their chronological study of history, from the earliest beginnings (e.g., Prehistory, in 4th grade) to the modern era (e.g., American government, in 8th grade), our students learn and remember the key features that characterize the most important historical periods and cultures.

LePort students learn what questions to ask when studying a historical period, to draw out its essential characteristics. We do not obsess over specific dates, battles, or names of historical rulers. Instead, we enable our students to understand, in essentials, what differentiated one civilization from the next. Select topics we cover in each history unit include:

We present the essential elements of each historical period, so that students see the big picture and retain what they learn. We guide our students to observe carefully and argue logically from the concrete historical evidence to broader conclusions. Some of the periods studied are listed below.

A student becomes fascinated with historical figures, and then teaches her own parents about them. During spring break, a student named Sydney went to Italy with her family. When she returned to school, her mother told an entertaining history-related story about their trip: While visiting Pisa, Sydney very excitedly ran across the main plaza to a statue. When her mother joined her, Sydney pointed at the statue and said excitedly, "Look, mom, it's Romulus and Remus!!!" Her mom then asked sheepishly, "Syd, who are they?" Sydney could not believe it: Her mom didn't know Romulus and Remus—the mythical founders of Rome?!?

Through her studies of history at LePort, Rome's mythical founders had become so real, so important to Sydney that it was almost beyond belief that her mom (a "grownup") would not recognize the classic statue of Romulus and Remus as babies. (Just for context, the image of Romulus and Remus to which Sydney pointed would have been as familiar to Ancient Romans as the image of George Washington on the dollar bill is to Americans today.)

A Love of History–and an Ability to Apply Historical Knowledge and Thinking Skills to Live Fuller Lives

"The teachers at LePort are phenomenal in both education and their relationship with kids. My son who absolutely hated history form the first day he was introduced to it, is now saying it's his favorite subject. I did not think this was possible, as I hated this subject as well." —Anonymous parent from GreatSchools.net

Students at LePort Schools love history—and gain tremendously by studying it! As they eagerly progress through the curriculum, students learn how to be independent historical "scientists", analyzing and interpreting the facts of the past. They learn how to identify causes and their effects, discovering which aspects of the world today result from the world of yesterday. They learn how to distinguish fact from opinion, surveying available evidence to support or dispute statements of historical figures. They learn how to draw principles from concrete events, gaining valuable lessons from the wealth of historical facts they accumulate.

LePort students not only learn what happened in man's past, but also grasp why. History is thus transformed for them from empty and dull memorization of dry facts, into a purposeful and engaging study of the real individuals and the lively happenings of mankind's exciting past.

Here are some examples of what students gain from their study of history at LePort:

• A fuller understanding and appreciation of the world they live in. Our students "see" more around them: they notice things in the world around them that escape others—and gain tremendous pleasure from understanding connections that escape even many grown-ups. For example, after studying Ancient Greece and Rome the LePort way, students begin to see their influence all around us. They notice street names originating in the language of Rome (via means "road" in Latin); they notice American buildings modeled on Greek and Roman architecture (e.g., the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials in Washington D.C.); they notice months born from the Roman gods (e.g., January for Janus, god of doorways, and March for Mars, god of war).

 

• A real understanding of government—and the impact, for good and bad, that governments have on people's lives. Most high school students will be able to define political terms such as theocracy, democracy, republic, and monarchy. But do they really know them? LePort students do!
  
  LePort students know what a theocracy is—because in 4th grade they were immersed in a civilization under theocratic rule: Ancient Egypt. They know what a democracy and a republic are—because in 5th grade they thoroughly studied both political systems in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome (respectively). They know what a monarchy is—because in 6th grade they encountered many during the tumultuous Middle Ages and in 7th grade they met the extravagant King Louis XIV ("the Sun King") and the infamous George III. Because LePort students "experience" life under different political systems, terms like theocracy, democracy, republic, and monarchy are not merely hollow words. They are meaningful concepts that elicit in students their earned wealth of knowledge about Egyptian pharaohs, Greek assemblies, the Roman Senate, barbarian kings, and pompous European monarchs.
  
  
• Amazing retention—and a storehouse of historical knowledge to call upon in the future. Just as memories of our own personal experiences stay with us long after they've occurred, the history content students learn while at LePort truly sticks. LePort history tests are notoriously long, filled with questions covering months of material (and there are no multiple-choice questions). Not only do students perform incredibly well on these demanding tests—they can actually recall the content years later! Because the story of history is presented sequentially, and because we do regular reviews, history "sticks" for LePort students.
  
  
• An admiration for man and his achievements—and an expanded view of a student's own possibilities in life. Because we present history in a sequential manner, our students never see it as "just a bunch of facts"; they see it as a progression of events, of peoples, of civilization. When a LePort graduate gazes up at a skyscraper in New York City, she is able to see in her mind the progression from the invention of the mud-brick four thousand years ago to the steel and glass and concrete of today. (And it helps that she learns in science class about advances in materials science.) As she creates her own path in life, she will be inspired by the heights to which man has climbed over the centuries—and can draw upon her broad perspective to gain the conviction, perseverance, and mental strength she will need to make her own contribution to the future.
  
  
• Academic and practical skills critical for success in advanced classes in high school and college—including clarity and confidence of expression.
Our students spend a lot of time writing and speaking in history class. We do not use multiple-choice questions because they often don't provide valid feedback on what a student actually knows, and surely don't develop his thinking and writing skills. Instead, we often use history questions as writing assignments, thus integrating further our history study with Language Arts. This approach also enables our students to gain considerable practice in rhetoric, the art and science of expressing one's knowledge clearly and concisely, both in writing and in speaking—and prepares them for more advanced courses in their later schooling.

Learning to speak in public through practice and with the help of inspiring historical role models. Occasionally, students find speaking in front of the class to be nerve racking. At LePort, through a thought-out process, we work to build students' confidence in the essential skill of public speaking. For example, during his first year at LePort, one student, shaking and stuttering, had to excuse himself in the middle of a history presentation, so strong was his fear of speaking in front of an audience, even one as benign as his peers. This student, a very capable and knowledgeable young man, became a nervous wreck when required to do a formal presentation. Through a step-by-step process of confidence building in history and in other classes, he overcame his fear: We coached him to give a talk in front of his parents, then in front of only a few friends, then in front of only a few peers, then in front of his whole history class. We helped him by introducing historical figures who overcome their own limitations—for example, we shared the story of Demosthenes, a famous Greek orator who stuttered as a kid but overcame his limitations by putting pebbles in his mouth and practiced speaking in front of the shores of Greece. The change in this young man is almost too dramatic to believe. Only two years later, he is now a master of oratory. He has the knowledge of history, and the practice speaking, to clearly and confidently express himself in front of any audience—a skill that will serve him well in high school, college, and life.