The Men Who Built America

As a kid in primary school, I didn’t really care too much about history.  History was barely focused on, as everyone focused more on math, reading and writing. It was sort of an extra portion for literature. Why do I say that? Because a large portion of what was taught ended up being fiction (who was the first people to discover America? Not Columbus, much to my surprise. Paul Revere did not say “The British are coming” – he never even finished the ride. John Hanson, and not George Washington, was the first president of the United States.)

In middle school, many of the fallacies I had learned in primary were either corrected or reinforced. I found some of it absolutely fascinating. As it progressed, sixth grade through eighth grade, history classes became more interesting.

My absolutely favorite year for history was ninth grade in high school. I took history in later years as well, but my ninth grade teacher was absolutely brilliant. One time we found the whole class gathered outside the door when the bell rang. Inside the darkened classroom we could barely make out the strange positioning of the desks. We could here gunshots going off inside the room. The teacher came to the door, opened it up just enough for one person to get through, put his arm out at desk height, and told us to get in and stay down. While the other students looked on confused, I swung my backpack, filled with all my very large books for all of my classes, due to the fact my locker was on the other side of school, to my front, and dove in. We were reenacting WWII, crawling through the trenches. They’ve released the mustard gas! We pulled our shirts up to cover our mouths and noses to simulate gas masks. We crawled in on our hands and knees through the makeshift trenches, head down, half smothered under our hands and shirts, in the din and gloom of our classroom. History was rarely so exciting.

But there had been times, in years previous and years after, when classes could also be interesting. There were projects, simulations, parties – if you had the luck to get a teacher who was truly interested and involved in history class, history became alive for you. I was lucky enough to get such teachers.

Some of my favorite lessons in high school were about Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Edison, Nobel, Ford, and essentially all the big names from the late 1800s through the early 1900s. Before the civil war, history seemed to move slowly. Afterwards, people seemed to trip over their own feet in the pursuit of Progress.

The History channel, in the fall of 2012, made an eight-hour, four-part miniseries focusing on these very people, on the big names of that favorite era of mine, called The Men Who Built America. Full of drama, intrigue, power struggles, back room deals, invention, innovation, civil unrest and more, people interested in learning about that part of history that pushed America to the place it is today (okay, so the recent decades weren’t that great, but we’re still a major power, right?) Tonight, coming home from work quite exhausted, I was delighted to see it was on again. Naturally I had to sit down and watch.

For people who home school, as I did in my last years of high school – a decision arrived at due to my increased, and frankly debilitating, migraines – history can sometimes be almost boring. For people in school, if your teachers weren’t at a level that knew how to make history exciting, trying to learn history could be more of a chore. I find that to be a shame. One should be able to love learning about history. Shows like The Men Who Built America, fact-based, full of drama, guaranteed to keep your attention, are a wonderful supplement to that part of one’s education.

If you are planning on or know someone who is homeschooling, need help learning history for your own betterment, or need a refresher to help your kids with that part of their education, consider looking into The Men Who Built America. At the very least, you will be entertained.

~ by cerridwyn eldritch on July 4, 2013.