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Upper Elementary & Junior High History
Not to know what took place before you were born is to remain forever a child. -- Cicero
In order to understand, evaluate, and better ourselves and our society, we must know our past. But sadly the subject of history is usually presented without a clear idea of what this means, and therefore students (and adults) often end up “knowing” history merely as a heap of disconnected and lifeless facts—names, dates, events, etc.—and lack any real idea as to how these myriad facts are connected or why they are even worth knowing. In our chronological study at LePort Schools, however, students actually understand the cause and effect relationship among those facts as well as their importance to the enjoyment of our lives today.
In history class, students learn how to be independent, historical “scientists” who analyze and interpret the facts of the past, comparing their own life-experiences with what they learn from class lectures, discussions, projects and reports, as well as from texts and supplemental materials. Students learn the power of ideas in shaping history; how to identify causes and their effects; how to distinguish fact from opinion; and how to draw principles from concrete events (i.e., from the cold, hard facts of history). In the end, our students grasp not only what happened, but why; and as a result history is transformed from the empty and dull memorization of dry facts as a goal in itself, to a purposeful and engaging study of the real individuals and the lively happenings that make up mankind’s exciting past.
Sample Historical Periods Taught at LePort
Prehistory, before c.3000 BC
Food, clothing, shelter
Prehistory is the time before history, or before writing was invented.
The Cradle of Civilization: Mesopotamia, c.3000 BC
“Sustenance is in a plough.” -- Sumerian Farmer’s Almanac (c.2000 B.C.)
Ancient Egypt, 3100 - 30 BC
“There seem to be more gods than men in Egypt.” -- Herodotus, 5th century Greek historian and Father of History
“Egyptian coffins are so handsome they almost invite men to die.” -- Will Durant, 20th century historian
Ancient Greece, c.2000 - 30 BC
“Wondrous are the wonders of the world, but none more wonderful than man.” -- Sophocles, 5th century Greek playwright
Ancient Rome, 753 BC - AD 476
“The fall and ruin of the world will soon take place, but it seems that nothing of the kind is to be feared as long as the city of Rome stands intact. But when the capital of the world has fallen…who can doubt that the end will have come for the affairs of men and for the whole world. It is that city which sustains all things.” -- Lactantius, 3rd - 4th century Christian writer
The Dark and Middle Ages, 476 - 1300s
Life was “poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” -- Thomas Hobbes, a 17th century philosopher
(Hobbes is not referring to the Dark Ages in this quote; nonetheless, it is an apt description of life during this period.)
The Renaissance, 1300s - 1600s
“I have twenty-six little lead soldiers with which I shall conquer the world.” Unknown, speaking about both the worldwide impact of Guttenberg’s printing press (invented c.1450) and the power of ideas to change the world
The Protestant Reformation, 1517
“The monk had excommunicated the pope.” -- Will Durant on Martin Luther, who in 1517 published his Ninety-five Theses, the paper that eventually caused Christianity to split forever
Age of Discovery/Exploration, 1400s - 1600s
“Fit me up a fleet and the spiceries [spices] are yours.” -- Ferdinand Magellan, captained the first voyage to circumnavigate the world (1519-1522), although sadly he himself was killed before its completion
“Ambition leads me not only farther than other men have been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go.” -- James Cook, an 18th century, post-Age of Discovery explorer
Colonial America, 1600s - 1700s
“He that will not work shall not eat.” -- John Smith, leader and hero of the Jamestown colony in Virginia (founded in 1607)
Man’s Rights and the Revolutionary War, 1775 - 1783
“Give me liberty or give me death!” -- Patrick Henry, outspoken critic of the “divine right” of kings and one of the earliest defenders of American independence
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” -- Preamble to the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson
Slavery and the Civil War, 1861-65
"Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it." -- Abraham Lincoln, president during the Civil War
“You’ll be free or die.” “There was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive.” -- Harriet Tubman
“War is hell.” -- William Tecumseh Sherman, Union general during the Civil War
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