Looking back, I wonder about the reason American history was taught exclusively in my elementary years. To me, world history provides essential context for understanding and appreciating the significantly more ‘recent’ history of the United States of America.

With the Olympics in Beijing in full swing, I am reminded of the amazing diversity of our world’s peoples and am encouraged by the stories of sacrifice and persistence of athletes to make it to the Olympics, an ancient sporting event with its own history. I am also reminded of a Chinese culture much older than ours, with so much more ‘history’ than the United States of America. I am also keenly aware of the amazingly global impact the world’s countries have on each other’s environments, economies, culture and stability. Shouldn’t children learn as much as possible about the world as soon as possible? After all, technology has erased physical isolation and has given power and wealth to those countries who embraced it.

Americans have been ethnocentric for too long, and ignoring the rest of the world in place of several hundred years of history does disservice to a child even more than in generations past. By this, I mean, teach children world history first with lessons that build appreciation and understanding of the great world cultures through history, including those that shaped the United States of America. Our children need to learn from the past to live in the present and plan for the future, not as a nation, but as a world.

We use many different resources to study world history, but one of our key resources is the ‘Story of the World’ series.

Story of the World, Vol. 1