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Getting kids into history

History is one long story, or really, a lot of stories of competing narratives, about the people who shaped the world we live in.

Family history can give people a sense of history that is much more personal than hearing about far‑off events about strangers. Telling your family history is a great way for the younger members of your family to learn some history and really understand and connect with it.

For example, it’s much more meaningful to discover that the Great Depression meant that your grandparents didn’t taste butter until they were in their teens than to hear an abstract fact that the Great Depression meant rationing. You feel much more connected to a story about your uncle’s experience of living in France than a book about it.

Telling stories of people that you knew or ancestors whose stories you know is a powerful way to help young people feel a connection to those who came before them, family and otherwise, linking the stories of the past to their own experience of the present and imaginings of the future.

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