Learning History/Civics

[fabrisse]

Siderea posted last week asking how people learned the basics of the Constitution/U.S. Government and at what age. I followed up with an email.

Now I went to 5th grade, for the second time, at a Catholic School in Arlington. We weren't Catholic, so my folks asked if Sis and I could be excused from those classes. I was allowed to go the library, and I found a series of biographies aimed at 8-12 year olds. I could read one in an hour and a half. As I got older, I realized they were mostly fiction, but based around typical things a child-teenager would do in that time frame, for their gender, for their economic status. Some things were reasonably accurate to the person, especially if they'd written an autobiography, but it was mostly best guess fiction to get kids interested in history.

Being me, I looked on Amazon to see if the series was still printed. It is. Some of the ones I read are no longer for sale except as antiques (one was going for $139), mostly the ones around the Confederacy. Many new ones have been written. There are two that I'm not certain if I read them: Jim Thorpe and Helen Keller. I know I read something about Jim Thorpe before I was in 7th grade, but I'm not certain it was this series. I know I read The Story of My Life by Helen Keller in either 5th or 6th grade, but I'm uncertain if the reason I read it was because I'd read the Childhood of Famous Americans book about her first.

I've marked people of color with an asterisk. There are more men than women, but the range of women was pretty wide.

When possible, my parents would reinforce something I'd read. For instance, they took me to see Clara Barton's house just outside of DC. Our trip to Philadelphia when I was 11-ish may have been because I'd read about so many of the participants of the Second Continental Congress.

Most of the Confederate ones seem to have quietly fallen off the modern list (Thank $deity). But there's still Robert E. Lee.



Four that I know I read, but couldn't find either as part of the current series or among the available antiques:
Maria Mitchell, about the astronomer. Girls could do science, too.
Liliuakalani *
Stonewall Jackson
Ulysses S. Grant
There may also have been a Nathan Hale one.


Ones that are definitely still available:
Men:
Robert E. Lee
Merriweather Lewis (never did read anything about Clark)
John Adams
Thomas Edison
Wilbur and Orville Wright
Abraham Lincoln
Geronimo *
Buffalo Bill
Andrew Jackson
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Frederick Douglass *
Davy Crockett
Sitting Bull *
Crazy Horse *
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Franklin
George Washington
Crispus Attucks *

Women:
Harriet Tubman *
Sacagewa *
Betsy Ross
Amelia Earhart
Abigail Adams
Pocahontas *
Annie Oakley
Elizabeth Blackwell
Eleanor Roosevelt
Molly Pitcher
Martha Washington
Clara Barton

Only available as used copies:
Men:
Benjamin West
George Dewey
Robert Fulton
George M. Cohan
John Marshall
James Oglethorpe
Sam Houston
Myles Standish
Samuel Morse
P.T. Barnum
Dan Webster
Daniel Boone
Stephen Foster
Patrick Henry
Herbert Hoover
George Washington Carver *
William Penn
Sequoyah *
Francis Scott Key
Francis Marion
John Quincy Adams
Tecumsah *
JEB Stuart
Eli Whitney
James Monroe

Women:
Juliette Low
Jane Addams
Lotta Crabtree
Dolly Madison
Katharine Lee Bates

The one I read about John Paul Jones was part of a different series.

I read these in 5th and 6th grades. I think the only one I owned was William Penn, though Dolly Madison may have been one, too.