How I nearly built a zombie curriculum

And how I’m fixing it

Around the world, social studies is a soulless, shambling zombie. There are many curriculums, many approaches, but they’re all zombies. Virtually no one loves it — social studies is famously the part of the curriculum kids enjoy least. They can’t tell you why they’re spending time on it, and, if we extrapolate from the smaller and smaller amount of time spent on social studies, neither can most teachers.

Since fixing this is key to rehumanizing education, Kieran Egan spilled a lot of ink diagnosing where social studies had gone wrong — arguments that I’ve repeated in the book review and developed in some of our patterns (especially Epic Stories°, Big History°, and Spiral History°).

I care about this a lot: I majored in history and cut my teeth as a history teacher. But this week, I nearly gave birth to another zombie history curriculum.

I’d like to share the mistake I made, and what I learned.

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1. Stories

I’ve been working on a brand-spanking new approach to history — part of the brand-spanking new approach to the whole elementary homeschooling curriculum. I’ll be presenting this in a series of workshops this July & August; you can pre-sign up for it (and get a discount):

To keep this short, I won’t talk about most of this new approach to history. I won’t, for example, tell you about the maps, or the art, or the limericks, or how you can turn your whole home into a memory palace.

I will, however, talk about the beating heart of the curriculum, which is 120 short, gripping stories. They’re designed to stick in your mind, built around conflict, stakes, values, and surprise. They’re made to connect with young kids as well as adults. Each zooms into the life of a specific historical character (think Confucius, Joan of Arc, Blackbeard the pirate) and tries to bring you inside of a particular choice they made.¹

Is this as exciting to you as it is to me? I hope so. But then I shared it with Alessandro, and he pointed out it was missing the most crucial thing of all.

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2. Deeper

I think sometimes that I haven’t done a good job painting a picture of Alessandro. So let me do this right: Alessandro Gelmi is a rising educational superstar. He’s a brilliant scholar who’s deeply conversant in Montessori and Reggio Emilia who’s dedicated his life to expanding Egan’s approach. For years, he’s worked closely with Italian schoolteachers to help them bring the joy of Imaginative Education (that’s what Egan dubbed his paradigm) into their classrooms. He’s developed a method to teaching teachers that seems to actually work.

And as of last week, he’s a freshly-minted PhD from the University of Bolzen-Bolzano in northeastern Italy. In fact, let me introduce Doctor Alessandro Gelmi! (Both Mark Fettes and Gillian Judson, who worked closely with Kieran for many years, flew out to Italy to play their parts on his committee.)

Alessandro and I have been working closely for two years now; a highlight of every week is meeting over Zoom for a happy argument about how we can move the Egan revolution forward. So it was surprising when I met with him, showed him a sample of the history curriculum I was making, and he told me I was missing the most important part of history. Why, he asked, would kids want to invest themselves in this?

I replied that the answer is obvious: stories! Kids love good stories! Everyone loves good stories! A lust for stories is a human universal; our minds seem to have co-evolved with the information forms that stories are made up of: characters, conflicts, stakes, values, and surprises.

Sure, Alessandro answered, that’s what makes history enjoyable. But what makes it matter?

History matters, I said. It’s the glue that holds the rest of the curriculum together. More: nearly everything kids learn in school is history — it’s the re-discovery of what others have discovered. (I’ll never tire of quoting the great Susan Wise Bauer, fairy godmother of classical homeschooling: “History is not a subject; history is the subject.”)

But now you’re instrumentalizing your history curriculum, Alessandro responded. It needs to also have to matter in itself. And it can’t just matter for you — it has to matter for the kids. If you pause a lesson and ask a kid “why does this matter?” they should be able to give an honest answer, or tell you that it doesn’t.

(You probably don’t need me to say it, but the reason it matters shouldn’t just be about external rewards or punishments: “you’re going to grade me on my participation, and my parents will yell at me if I get a ‘D’”.)

Is this too high of a bar? Maybe. If your goal for teaching is just that kids

1. learn a lot, and

2. enjoy it,

then you don’t need to make everything matter. But if you want to help them become history freaks who are addicted to seeing reality clearly and working to help mend the world, well, you need to help them experience history as mattering.

And it’s not like this was my first introduction to the topic. I’ve written about mattering on this blog. In fact, it was the substack’s first substantive post:

I’ve identified mattering as the secret core of Egan education, the goal which all of Egan’s other ideas serve, but which he didn’t clearly identify. And Alessandro pointed out that when I’m teaching science, I have no trouble triggering this. So it was a little jarring to realize that I had totally forgotten this while creating, of all things, a history curriculum.

Okay, I asked him, how can we make history matter?

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3.

To think through this, Alessandro and I looked at the drafts of one of the stories that both of us knew: Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon River. (I know about this because I’m a fairly well-read student of history. Alessandro knows about it because he is, too, and because the Rubicon is, like him, in northeastern Italy.²)

You can take a skim:

Julius Caesar (/ˈju.li.əs ˈkae.sar/) stops at the edge of a shallow river. His horse shifts under him, and cold water glitters in the moonlight. Behind him stand thousands of soldiers, waiting. They say nothing. On the other side of the river lies Rome. The law says that no army may cross the river. But he grips the reins tighter and mutters, Alea iacta est  (/ˈa.lɛ.a ˈjak.ta ɛst/) — “The die is cast.” Then, boldly, he rides down into the water.

He had been born into a family who had once been rich, but who had fallen from power. But Caesar climbed — through speeches, battles, and bold promises. In his battles, he won glory. His stories of how his troops conquered new lands for Rome had been read by many, and had made Caesar into a hero. But now the Senate tells him to come home alone. They say he must face trial. They hope to end him. He sees their trick. He sees their fear. He has power now — and he must choose: obey the law, or break it forever.

The river is shallow. His soldiers splash in behind him. A red banner flaps in the wind. The hoofbeats echo off the stones. Caesar’s face is calm, but his jaw is tight. He does not look back. He knows this is the moment — the one no one can undo. By crossing this stream, he has chosen war. The Republic may not survive it.

And it won’t. The choice he makes here will end hundreds of years of Roman law. He will march on Rome. He will win. In place of elected leaders, Caesar will become dictator. Then, five years later, he will be stabbed in the Senate by men who once praised him. But the world will never forget his name. The leaders that follow him will name themselves emperors.

This story, I think, is acceptable. Compared to what passes for storytelling in many school history books, it might even be called “pretty good”. But Alessandro was right: it doesn’t engage much that matters to kids (and adults) who aren’t already interested in history.

So how can we fix that? What inside this story matters, and how can we bring it out?

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4. Philosophy for Children

Alessandro suggested that while you could find lots of things that matter in this historical event (are there choices that can’t be unmade? is destiny real?), the lowest-hanging fruit is probably morality:

• Is it okay to undo a society in pursuit of a noble idea?

• How do you know if your beliefs are really noble, and not mere egoism?

“Have you heard of Philosophy for Children?” I asked Alessandro. He paused, and looked at me a little funny. He said slowly: “Do you know that I’m the director of an Italian organization called ‘Philosophy with Children’, which was organized 15 years ago to spread and critique, Philosophy for Children?”

The things you learn about your friends!

I’ve written about Philosophy for Children in our pattern Philosophy Everywhere°…

…so I won’t repeat much here. Suffice to say, Philosophy for Children (the cool kids call it “P4C”, the very cool kids call it “p4c”) is a tried-and-true methodology to bring big questions into the classroom. To oversimplify, you read simple stories with kids (the Frog and Toad books are a perennial favorite) and then ask big questions. I’m a deep fan, and when P4C works, it’s great — it lets you talk with a seven-year-old about what “friendship” really is, or ask a five-year-old when it’s right to break rules.

The trouble is that it often doesn’t work. There are some kids who take naturally to this sort of abstract philosophizing… but many don’t. Alessandro pointed out that this is because P4C only uses a few of the tools that Egan identified: 🧙‍♂️STORIES, and then a lot of advanced PHILOSOPHIC (👩‍🔬) and IRONIC (😏) tools.

Like so many great ideas in education, it works for Ravenclaws, but not for many others. To spread the joy of philosophy to kids (even very young ones) we need to use all the tools we can.

Insofar as our history stories can actually be gripping — and insofar as we can bring in paintings and poems and the other things that can commandeer our imaginations — we think they could be the perfect foundation to support philosophic reasoning. History and P4C: lovers destined to be together.

And once we see this, it’s clear how we can improve the Caesar story: center it on the morality.

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5. A new(er) version

Take a skim of a newer version:

Julius Caesar (/ˈju.li.əs ˈkae.sar/) holds his horse’s reins and looks hard at the Rubicon River. The water is shallow — but it’s the border of Rome, and no army is allowed to cross it. Behind him his soldiers stand still, their red cloaks covered in frost. They know what the stream means. But no one walks away. Caesar tells them again that Rome is broken — rich men in the Senate have taken too much and hurt the poor. But he also thinks of himself. He has won battles and written books. People say he is great. The Senate — the leaders in Rome — want him gone. He stares at the river and feels his heart beat. What kind of man he will become?

He hadn’t always been this bold. Long ago, Rome threw off its kings and become a republic — a government of the people. But when Caesar was young, he watched rich men in Rome cheat and lie. They paid for votes. They made laws that helped only themselves. People went hungry. Caesar climbed his way up by speaking up for the poor. He helped others — but he helped himself, too. Then he left for Gaul (/ɡɔl/), the vast area to the north of Rome. He fought battles there for ten years. His soldiers learned to trust him totally. He became so popular with them that the Senate — the leaders in Rome — began to fear that, if he returned, he could take over the country. Rome was a republic — a place where no king ruled, and the people were supposed to have a say. But now the system was broken. The men in charge cared more about keeping power than helping others. Those leaders had just sent a messenger to remind Caesar of the law: if Caesar enters with his army, he will be a criminal, and he and all his men will be killed. If, however, he leaves his army at the river and returns alone, they say they will welcome him back as a hero.

His horse takes one step. The hoof splashes into the river. The water ripples out. His men say nothing. They do not blink. One by one, they follow. Caesar rides in without stopping. “Alea iacta est” (/ˈa.lɛ.a ˈjak.ta ɛst/), he says — “the die is cast.” In that moment, everything changes. Behind him is safety and law. Ahead is civil war — and, if he wins, the power to remake Rome. His friends say he’s saving the country; his enemies say he’s power-hungry. The news spreads ahead of his army. Doors slam. Shops close. Senators pack their silver to escape. Caesar marches forward.

Soon, the old laws will be gone. The republic will break. One man will rule. Caesar will take power, and he will not give it back. He will say he is helping the people. He will pass new laws. He will bring food and games. But the people will no longer choose their leaders. The men who loved the republic will try to stop him. They will kill him in the Senate. But it will be too late. After Caesar, Rome will be ruled by another man, and after him, another, and another. The door he opened cannot be closed. From now on, Rome will belong to emperors.

See what we did there? Now the story focuses on the (moral) choice. This expands the scope of the story — it allows us to bring in more facts about Rome (it was a republic that had thrown off its kings, it’s about to descend into another form of monarchy, the conflicting ways people will look at Caesar’s intentions…) without muddying up the focus.

I’m not a classical historian, and I’m sure I (and ChatGPT, which I spent a couple hours with to help me write this) got some things wrong — please let me know them in the comments. But I think this is a much better told story… and it still only takes 2 to 4 minutes to read aloud.

Now that we’ve restructured the story, what questions feel natural to pose?

1. Was Caesar a hero, or a villain?

2. If someone declares, “only I can fix this”, are they being brave, or selfish? How could you tell?

3. When should you fix a broken system by breaking the rules?

4. If someone says “I’m doing this for you,” how do you know if it’s true?

I’ll admit that the questions above still don’t feel perfectly natural; frankly, I’ve never found discussion questions that do. Emphatically, parents (and teachers) should not simply ask these, rat-a-tat-tat, to students. Rather, they’re potential inspirations for how you might use the story to spark a conversation. A suggestion might be for a parents and kids to pick one together, and then post it in a public place for people to scribble on over a week, almost as if it were a BOSS QUESTION°.

A trouble with P4C questions (in my experience) is that they’re only sort of rooted in a story, and the story is frequently one that neither the teacher nor the kids particularly care about. Because of that, they can feel forced. Again, if you have the combination of the right kids and the right adults [cough cough Ravenclaws cough] the whole process can work… but there’s reason to hope that telling engaging stories will work better.

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6. Where does this take us?

With luck feedback from the community, toward a history curriculum that actually matters, objectively and subjectively, to both adults and kids, an approach to learning about the world that feels vivid and alive, that no one would call a “zombie”.

But, of course, this is really just the start — for this to make full sense, I’ll have to present the rest of the plan for the history curriculum, and for the other parts of the curriculum. (Then someone will need to make a draft of it — if anyone would like to help me make our first ever Kickstarter campaign, let me know.)

In the meantime, I’ll look forward to answering your questions in the comments!

1. Well, not all the stories are about specific characters — the stories from the Pleistocene, the Jurassic, and the period of cosmic expansion, for example, approach this a different way.

2. Alessandro wants me to add that the Rubicon isn’t in northeastern Italy as much as Bolzano is. “I know it’s a tiny detail on your scale, but in our world, it’s a meaningful distinction.”