Your history

When you adopt a child as a teenager from a foreign country they come already knowing a good deal. One of the things they know is history. However, their history and your history may not quite agree.

For instance one of the "facts" of history that we had to deal with our Russians was that Stalin was considered a hero. Obviously, our history and theirs seems to differ in that assessment. Also, our Chinese daughter had been taught that the US wasn't in WWII.

It has been said that history belongs to the winners. I think these examples bare that out.

However, it makes you wonder what we have been taught in our history classes that may not be as true as we think.

Our homeschooling curriculum contains a number of original sources. I remember reading Stonewall Jackson's biography and reading his reasons for going to war for the South. I realized how much the history I had been taught was based on the fact that the North won and thus controlled the writing of history. There was more reason for the South going to war than simply to protect their owenership of slaves. Whether they were right or not, is not the issue. This side was never presented in our history books.

I wonder what else we haven't been told.