Why History?

History orients us. Do you know that we are part of a conversation that has been going for thousands of years? C.S. Lewis describes how: 

"If you join at eleven o’clock a conversation which began at eight you will often not see the real bearing of what is said." 

To make sense of our time and culture, our society and civilisation, to really understand why we believe what we believe today, it is essential for us first to understand where we have come from in the ages past. 

When we cut ourselves off from our shared memory, our history, we find ourselves in a world that has lost its own identity, filled with that confused and prideful individualism that can't recognise those very things that give it meaning.

History not only teaches us about the world in which we live, but it also teaches us about ourselves, our identity, and what it is to be human. While the ages of the world continue to pass, human nature endures unchanging. 

It's for this reason that the questions and cares of our time, from a domestic to metaphysical level, can be found reflected in the surviving fragments of the ancient past. History also requires the cultivation of humility, because we are forced to come to face to face with the mistakes as well as the triumphs of our past, and to ask ourselves what these things can teach us about the present and the future. 

If we study history so as to learn from it, rather than to deconstruct it, we inherit a invaluable trove of wisdom and truth, an identity and an orienting point.

Rudyard Kipling, the author of the much loved The Jungle Book, once said:

"If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten." 

Our students will be immersed in the story of our world. Throughout their years at Newman College they will embark on a journey from Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome and Israel, through the middle ages, into the Enlightenment and today. They will also learn our own Australian History. 

Children have a natural curiosity about the past, and when they are taught history as the exciting story it is, they love learning it. History does not have be just stale facts and dates. It can, and should, be taught in a way that invites children into that great story and conversation. In the primary years, this is done best through the things children love - dressing up and stories, games and crafts, using their imagination to understand and in some ways inhabit a civilisation and time so distant from our own.