Stuff We Like :: 5.24.19

home school life secular homeschool magazine

One of the most challenging things about writing a U.S. history curriculum was learning how to rethink the language I’d grown up on for U.S. history completely. For instance, the word “settlers” is one that gets used all the times for Europeans coming to North America and for citizens of the new United States as they moved beyond the country’s western borders. But it’s not really an accurate word — it’s a word that whitewashes what was basically an invasion of lands that belonged to several different Native American nations. Finding meaningful ways to talk about the history of the United States in a way that includes people who aren’t just straight white men required me to think more carefully about all the history vocabulary I grew up with — and to deal with some of the not-so-shiny parts of U.S. history in a respectful and thoughtful way.

WHAT’S HAPPENING AT HOME/SCHOOL/LIFE

LINKS I LIKED

  • I quite enjoyed this NYT homage to the joys of the 1990s. (I totally remember getting phone ear from talking too long on the telephone, but I’m sad there was nothing about the literary pleasures of those long notes — with complicated folding — that you would write your best friend for hours after you finished your homework.)

  • We do tend to focus on dystopias (and especially right now), but literary utopias can be revealing, too.

THINGS I DIDN’T KNOW BUT NOW I DO

BOOKS ADDED TO MY TBR LIST THIS WEEK

WHAT’S MAKING ME HAPPY


Amy Sharony

Amy Sharony is the founder and editor-in-chief of home | school | life magazine. She's a pretty nice person until someone starts pluralizing things with apostrophes, but then all bets are off.

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Stuff We Like :: 5.31.19

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Curriculum Review: The Critical Thinking Company's Vocabulary Virtuoso