Why History Matters....by Rick Boyer

A young man who worked for me once asked, "Why should I care about things that happened before I was born?"

I was so stunned by the silliness of the question that I was momentarily at a loss for an answer. But later I explained to him that the universe did not revolve around his short life span and that the reason earlier things mattered was that things that happened long ago have a huge impact on what's happening today. In fact, I told him, if certain things hadn't happened before he was born, he never would have been born.

His question has been asked before. Unfortunately, young people in recent decades have displayed not only a disturbing lack of interest in history, but an outright contempt for it. That is a good indication of their ignorance of history's importance.

If you don't know enough about Thomas Jefferson, you might believe the liberal drivel about the First Amendment protecting government from religion. If you understand Jefferson, you know that he and the other Founders meant it to protect religion from government. Jefferson, as president, signed legislation making treaties with three different Indian tribes, including funding to send Christian missionaries to the tribes. He also, while president of the Washington, DC school board, decreed that the two main reading texts for the schools should be the Bible and the doctrine-rich Watts Hymnal.

People who don't know their American history will believe their leaders when they say that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms applies only to the militia and that the militia is now the National Guard. Those who are better informed know that Section 10 of the US code defines the militia as "every able-bodied male between the ages of seventeen and forty-five." The will also know that the Founders unequivocally believed that every man has a right to arm himself to protect his home and family.

I once sat in a college classroom and heard the professor ask the class how many of us knew who Nathan Hale was. Since I grew up in a time when we still learned about "heroes" instead of "role models," I was surprised to see that only about half the class raised their hands. That was thirty years ago and I'm sure that very few hands indeed would go up were that question asked in college now.

The teaching of history is being systematically eased out of public schooling in America. That's because education is in the control of people whose political opinions are radically different from those of the men who made this country. Of course they don't want us to know that America was viewed by her national patriarchs as having been raised up specially by God to be a city on a hill to the whole world. If we did, we might hold our leaders accountable to the same Biblical values in government that our Founders held.

As home schoolers, we have the ability to design a curriculum that honors true American history. We should fill our homes with the great old books that tell the truth, the ones that were written before Political Correctness robbed us of our godly national heritage. We at The Learning Parent are working on a number of new projects to bring the old books back to American homes. We're gearing up to do our part. I hope we can help you do yours. The children are counting on us.

~Rick Boyer