Poor Mr. Richardson is probably dead by now, considering how ancient he was as my high school world history teacher an eon ago. Not to mention that I alone probably stole a decade of his life.

I was a good student…until I hit high school. I had gone to Christian school or been home schooled up until that point, but neither of those options were feasible anymore, so it was public school for me. I didn’t mind at the time. I had delusions of Saved by the Bell being a plausible scenario for real-life high school, and couldn’t wait to meet my crew.

But high school didn’t turn out like Saved by the Bell.  I quickly realized that it was a giant babysitting organization, and with the exception of my super-hot Spanish teacher, Mr. Atkisson, and my super-eccentric physics teacher, Mr. Veri, almost all my teachers simply showed up for their paltry paychecks, bitter that after 15 or 20 years in education, they were still driving a beat up Civic and hadn’t inspired their students to stand on their desks even once, quoting, “Oh Captain, my Captain…”  Their “sacrifices” as teachers just hadn’t paid off.

The forerunner of all old and bitter teachers was Mr. Richardson.  Mr. Richardson managed to take a most fascinating subject involving tales of Greek gods, goddesses and heroes, medieval kings and legends, brutal wars, extraordinary inventions, bizarre religious practices and the tales of the great explorers, and make it painfully boring.  He never once told a story, read an excerpt from an explorer’s journal or engaged us in any kind of dialogue.  Instead, he passed out copies of hand-written sentences with blanks in them.  Next to the blanks was a page number from our history book.  All we had to do was sit at our desks, turn to that page, find the sentence he’d hand-written on our papers, and fill in the blank.  Every. single. day.  Not to mention that Mr. Richardson himself was cold, unsmiling and literally refused to learn our names.

But he learned mine.  I made sure of it.  There was no way I was going to attend that class everyday, fill in blanks on a paper in five minutes and just sit quietly at my desk for the remaining 45 minutes.  So in that vacuum of learning, I became class clown.  At first, I tried to be nice about it.  While Mr. R. sat at his desk reading the newspaper and the other kids were taking naps, I’d ask Mr. R. a question from the paper’s headlines, “So, Mr. Richardson, how did the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks go? Did Arafat get his bike back?”  Mr. Richardson grunted.  On sunny days, I’d pester Mr. Richardson to at least let us take our world history naps outside.  As the year wore on and Mr. Richardson was determined to be mentally absent from class, I figured he didn’t care if we were present for class, so I would hide his roll book in obscure places around the classroom.  One day, I even dared to lock the door behind me before he arrived, and no one dared to unlock it.  By the end of the semester, I’d simply turn in my worksheet and leave class, without a word from Mr. Richardson.

That was my education in World History.  As well as the next semester, when Mr. Richardson “taught” geography, using the same fill in the blanks method.  I got an “A” in both classes though.

So it’s no wonder how I thought that Columbus landed on Plymouth Rock (rather than San Salvador) in 1492 (all I knew was that he’d discovered America, and that I learned in second grade).  Or why I thought that the crash of 1929 had something to do with a potato famine in Ireland.  History was just one big, befuddled mess to me.  I’d heard lots of interesting historic tales from various sources, but I’d never had any kind of context to put those stories in, no timeline and ultimately, no real accuracy whatsoever.

But I do love a good story.  And true history has the best stories.  So when my mother-in-law gave me a book about the classical method of education several years ago (since I was tinkering with the idea of homeschooling at the time) it was like having a big, clearly defined map laid out in front of me, a wanderer who’d been blindfolded and dropped into the wilderness without a compass.

The concept?  Start at the very beginning.  A certain musical nun thought that a very good place to start, and I agree.  Why on earth would I learn state history, then U.S. history, then European history with maybe some Asian and African history thrown in there?  Starting toward the end of a story, and bouncing all around the chapters makes for a very confusing plot.  A story begins at the beginning, and so does history.  And history is broken up into four parts: Ancient (10,000 BC – 500 AD), Medieval (500 – 1400), Renaissance to pre-Modern (1400 – 1850), and Modern to Post-Modern (1850 – Present).

Not only is chronology part of the classical method of learning, but also the reading of “living books”, meaning no reading text books or history books!  Instead, one reads the literature written from that time.  No reading about Aristotle, just read Aristotle, his own writings.  Don’t read about the battle of Troy, read the Iliad.  The reading of living books almost feels like one is being told the story by a real-life observer, or as if one is engaged in a dialogue that spans across time, paying no heed to death, because the words of the dead live on.  It’s a far cry from a textbook and a fill in the blank worksheet.

So I’ve compiled a list of over 400 “great” works of literature throughout history.  I know there’s plenty more, but if I manage to read a book a week, it will take me about eight years to finish as it is.  I figure by then, I’ll have a firm enough foundation in history that I can pick up another random classic and not get all fuzzy headed about when and where it’s contents took place.

So Mr. Richardson, if you’re still alive, I want you to know that you’ve committed a crime against your students.  As punishment, you will be sentenced to fill in worksheets handwritten by my four year old on any topic that she chooses.  You will not be given any page numbers.  And I still have your car keys.

This is what you should have had us reading: Elle’s Anthology of Ancient Literature