I have two boys that my wife and I have homeschooled for some time. My oldest child is at the 7th grade level and i am looking for hints on reliable American history textbooks. Especially the period between the revolution and the civil war. The library is hopeless. It seems every chapter has to put some focus on the "role of the African-American in history". Any thoughts would be helpful.

I have two boys that my wife and I have homeschooled for some time. My oldest child is at the 7th grade level and i am looking for hints on reliable American history textbooks. Especially the period between the revolution and the civil war. The library is hopeless. It seems every chapter has to put some focus on the "role of the African-American in history". Any thoughts would be helpful.

You might find some stuff here:

http://www.white-history.com/

You live in MEXICO?

If you live in the USA, volunteer to work in your public library's "Friends" program. They take in donated books and sell them at an annual book sale - you will have access to all sorts of old textbooks, politically incorrect history books, political pamphlets, maybe old encyclopedias etc.

Lots of this stuff gets thrown away, especially racial material, and you can have it for free.

I have two boys that my wife and I have homeschooled for some time. My oldest child is at the 7th grade level and i am looking for hints on reliable American history textbooks. Especially the period between the revolution and the civil war. The library is hopeless. It seems every chapter has to put some focus on the "role of the African-American in history". Any thoughts would be helpful.

History is made up of 2 parts. Facts-- dates, names, etc-- and concepts.

Facts are the easy part of US history to get started on. You could work on this as the basis of the US history part.

Concepts should be focused more on a World or Western history class. The foundation is Herodotus' work "The Pelopenessian War." There are tons of simplified versions of this work in the libraries. They need to learn about 4 themes that can keep you busy for years. Here they are. Write this down and dont forget it:

1) Greece as a confederation of small independent cities ( the basis for all later successful European federalisms and confederations)

2) Athens v Greece as democracy/free trade/ liberalism vs aristocracy/autarky/ tradition.

3) Greece vs Persia as a later template for West vs East, White vs World.

4) the writing of history is affected by the outcome of wars

If they learn those 4 themes, they will ready to INTERPRET US history and the facts that they have already learned.

You cant have good history without both good facts, and good concepts. Today, schools teach few facts and bad concepts. You can hardly do worse at home!

You can order homeschooling materials/books on-line. The only downfall is that you cannot preview them in advance. I am lucky to live near a city with a very large homeschooling network. We have an entire bookstore, co-op program, etc. One thing that you can do is to use a History book and then supplement it with things. For example, if you are concerned that the book is very anti-slavery, pro-black then you can supplement it with materials that show the other view. Give your child the facts of the time and the facts surrouding it. Explain that there are several viewpoints surrounding these facts and the one presented in the book is only one of these view points. My daughter is studying this exact same time period in History, but she is only in 3rd grade, so her text book wouldn't be very helpful. The problem I have is that most homeschool materials are Christian oriented and we are not of this religious faith. Here are some links to order things on the web:

http://www.bbhomeschoolcatalog.com/unit_studies.html

https://www.homeschoolingbooks.com/pages/categoryresults.asp?Topic=Elementary%20History

If you don't mind a short drive for materials, you can visit the homeschooling bookstore that I go to. It is in San Antonio, just a couple of hours from you if you are in the Rio Grande Valley. You could call or e-mail ahead of time and ask about what they may or may not have for your son's grade level in this time period, and then drive up and review the materials for yourself. They also have a used bookstore you can browse through that they do not have inventoried. You may find what you want in there, but they won't be able to tell you over the phone what is there or not. Here is there web site:

http://www.homeschoolfeast.com/

What's this USA bullshit? MEXICO is where the mexicans are, hence you live in MEXICO also, Abzug Hoffman.

Yeah, right. And race is just a imaginary social construct in our heads.