Going off on a Tangent as I write about Education being the Science of Relationships
The whole concept of education being the science of relationship means that you have to care.
I’ve been putting my thoughts together for Chapter 5 of the read along of For the Children’s Sake. This chapter is titled, Education: A Science of Relationships, but when I read this article on ‘Faux History’ at The School of the Unconformed last night, it made me pause and take a little detour…especially when I read this:
The whole concept of education being the science of relationship means that you have to care. To have any sort of meaningful relationship requires caring and truth.
In their excellent article, Ruth & Peco discuss the importance of curating your own home library and they have a list of suggested history books. These are some books we have collected and used; not in any particular order:
The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – I first read this when I was 19 and it has stuck with me ever since.
Life & Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng – an inspiring autobiography and an excellent book. There are so many parallels to our present age with the push to be politically correct, changing the names of streets, destruction of culture etc. as well as the Marxist influence in many university courses.
The Red Guards debated whether to reverse the system of traffic lights, as they thought Red should mean Go and not Stop. In the meantime, traffic lights stopped operating.
Killing Fields, Living Fields by Don Cormack – a difficult book content-wise but beautifully written account by a former missionary in Cambodia. Pol Pot and his inner circle studied in Paris and picked up their Communist ideology there.
Winston Churchill’s The Second World War & The History of the English-Speaking Peoples
The Bielski Brothers by Peter Duffy - for two and a half years three brothers in the dense forests of Western Belarus not only evaded the Nazis but waged a guerilla war against their enemies whilst caring for the very young and elderly members of their community. They established workshops and a school, providing a 'Jerusalem in the woods' for other Jews fleeing from persecution. This was the largest World War II rescue of Jews by fellow Jews.
War on the West by Douglas Murray –published in 2022, Murray, a British author and journalist, describes “Western” societies as European countries or countries descended from European civilization. He wrote this book to address the one-sided view of the West that has come from ‘politicians, academics, historians, and activists who are saying things that are not simply incorrect or injudicious but flat-out false.’
''In order to be able to judge the West, you would have to know at least some of the history of the rest. The only thing modern western populations are more ignorant about than their own history is the history of other people outside the West. Yet such knowledge is surely a prerequisite to being able to arrive at any moral judgements.”
The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman –concentrates on the first month of World War I
Books by Albert Marrin – we used a few of his books during the highschool years
The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang – a very emotional read. I cried through this horrific account of Japanese atrocities in what is now Nanjing. Between December 1937 and January 1938, in a period of only six weeks, the Japanese Imperial Army carried out one of the most brutal massacres in the history of war. It is estimated that the number of Chinese killed in this massacre could have been more than 300,000. It has been called the ‘Asian holocaust,’ but unlike the repatriation made by the German government, this episode was basically forgotten and there has been no formal apology from the Japanese.
In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park – a young girl’s escape from North Korea; a moving memoir & a warning to those of us in the West about the dangers of authoritarianism and restrictions on freedom of speech.
The House I left Behind by Daniel Shayesteh - the best book I've ever read on Islamic culture. The author looks at Persian culture and its origins - the reigns of the great kings of old, Cyrus and Darius, the Indo-European roots of their language, their love of music and poetry and their customs - and then he tells his story. While studying in Tehran, he became involved in the Iranian Revolution and later in politics and saw the ousting of the Shah of Iran and the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini. He and his family were able to escape from Iran and eventually made their way to Australia. I heard the author speak a few years ago and was inspired to buy this book and a few of his others. I read this one aloud to my four youngest aged 7 up to 17 (with some editing for the youngest).
We never knew the mullahs would start with pro-democratic attitudes but demand absolute allegiance in the name of Islam later. We just did not see it coming. We did not know that they would hate Iranian culture and would enforce ancient Saudi Arabian culture to dominate the lives of Iranians.
White Coolies by Betty Jeffrey - a record secretly kept by an Australian Army nursing sister during three years as a prisoner of the Japanese after the fall of Singapore in 1942. A wonderful read written matter-of-factly and with, believe it or not, a good dash of Aussie humour.
The Works of Josephus (A.D. 37-c.100) - one of the few histories written in ancient times, this is an original source document of the history of the Jewish nation from earliest times. Josephus was considered to be a very reliable historian.
Gods, Graves & Scholars: The Story of Archaeology by C.W. Ceram – I used this book with students around the age of 15 years. This is what the Folio Society said about this book:
'From Pompeii to the Rosetta Stone and from Nineveh to Chichén-Itzá, this hugely influential book was the first to tell the story of archaeology. First published in German in 1949, it was translated into 26 languages and became an international bestseller. More than any other book, it helped stoke a passion for archaeology in the imagination of the post-war world, and remains one of the world’s most widely read books on the subject...’
The Riddle of the Rosetta Stone by James Cross Giblin – about age 12 years and up
Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh – my Mum’s stepfather was born in what is now Pakistan and moved to Scotland after his family lost their land as a result of Partition. I decided to read this book to get an idea of what happened then and although this is not a history, as such, the author chose a true-to-life work of fiction to tell his story. Every character in the story was modelled on a real person that passed through Khushwant Singh's own life. He was about 32 years of age at the time of Partition and witnessed firsthand the atrocities committed by Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, and records them without taking sides or showing favour. He and his family were forced to flee from Lahore in 1947, leaving behind his home, his belongings and his closest friends. I wrote about it eight years ago on my blog & these are some final thoughts I wrote there:
This was a brutal, gross, and at times crude novel. It's not the sort of book you'd leave sitting on your coffee table and I don't recommend it unconditionally, but it was a heartfelt, candid and literary account written by an excellent author. I learnt more from this one book of fiction than I would have gleaned from a shelf-full of political or historical titles. It was a powerful and awful account. Although there wasn't a political theme to the book, I couldn't help imbibing the political atmosphere of those days. Mano Majra was a miniature India that mirrored the whole nation. It also mirrored humanity in its portrayal of the fluidity of human reasoning - we can justify anything we decide to do. We are so readily manipulated by the opinions of others and the voices of those who stir and agitate.
The photography in this edition of the book is the work of Margaret Bourke-White who lived and travelled in India during 1946 and 1947. She was sent by Life magazine to cover the emerging nations of India and Pakistan after spending four years in Europe during World War II where she witnessed the Nazi concentration camps.
If anyone can recommend a good general history of this time period I’d appreciate it.
What an interesting and intriguing group of books to read, and all Living History Books. I like the sound of "The House I Left Behind" and will search it out. Thank you for the tangent.
I'm also just wondering if there will ever be enough time to read all the books I'd like to read!! Thankyou for sharing all these here.