Secular Charlotte Mason

As I was proofreading my son's homework for his history class I realized that he is writing his essays in CM narration form. The key components of this style of narration is that:

1. there is some summarizing information (but not a straight-up summary) given

2. the learner's opinion

3. an example or statement from the chapter/class discussion supporting why the learner has that opinion. 

This is a narrative response for chapter 8 in A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horwitz.   If you are using your narrations for teaching writing mechanics be sure to do it on a separate day than the day you had them write it as a history lesson. For example, I will be saving this and I will use it to show how he needs to have stronger paragraph structure; specifically a topic sentence, body and concluding sentence since those are inconsistent or nonexistent in this assignment. After discussing these factors he will rewrite the narration with a focus on having better paragraph structure. 

Chapter 8 Response

This is the first chapter where I felt the personal anecdotes added to the book by getting the opinions of people he meets. For example; the part about the modern southerner reaction to someone effectively telling them that the history they learned was wrong. I find that the author was making such comparisons between new Colombia vs. old Colombia in a previous chapter. I am unsure what prompted this revelation, as there are far less parallels to the old south than the new south.

In the chapter itself, the author finds a nice balance between his own retelling of his trip to the south and the historical tale he was telling. The only exception to this is the time he spent telling us how uncomfortable conquistador armor is. It was distracting and takes up too much space when he comments on the discomfort of it. Other than this single infraction I cannot think of a noticeable, off-topic tangent in this chapter.

I also found his treatment of De Soto pleasantly balanced. Despite the author showing more of his un-knightly deeds he also gives time to show that De Soto was not a mindless butcher, merely a ruthless conquistador. I myself find this very refreshing in an increasingly polarized media atmosphere. If one's argument cannot stand on its own then it should not be made, or at least it should be better constructed. Far too many historical interpretations are tainted by horribly slanted viewpoints limiting one aspect of a man's character and mentioning the bare minimum of anything else. It is important that authors remain balanced when they give a portrayal of a person when retelling a historical event.

After reading this chapter I found myself thinking about the justifications used by advanced nations to exploit more primitive groups. To demonstrate my thoughts on the subject, in a hypothetical scenario when one group is more technologically advanced than the first and requires a resource that the more primitive group controls in order to survive, the primitive group has to retain enough control of the resources to maintain their group. Often, the more technologically advanced group decides to take the resource, by violent or non-violent means, and thus deprive the primitive group of the resource. The primitives, for whatever hypothetical reason, cannot make any meaningful attempt to take the resource back. The advanced group lives long enough to establish a community and survive. The primitive group dies out with a number of members joining the advanced group. The surviving primitives are assimilated into the advanced group and loose their traditions to time.

In the end, the advanced and primitive groups join together to survive and will likely be larger than either group was at the start. The primitive survivors have access to the resources of the advanced group and may share native skills with the advanced group. The primitives will also have to adapt to an alien environment and will be a minority while losing their cultural identity. As far as I can tell, this is the least racist way to rationalize the subjugation of a primitive culture.