Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

Mike Farris:
Sherrie Payne is an author and retired homeschooling mom—in fact she’s the only person I know who homeschooled her own mother! She joins me this week to talk about the concept of teaching geography and history—for every continent of the world. Sherrie, welcome to the program!

Sherrie Payne:
Thank you, Mike.

Mike:
Sherrie, several years ago, you wrote a curriculum for studying world history and cultures called Around the World in 180 Days. That sounds like a fascinating topic—what prompted you to create your own world history course?

Sherrie:
The bottom line answer, Mike, was that I thought the traditional world history textbooks were absolutely boring! I have six children, I’ve been homeschooling since 1983, so we’d been through the world history study two or three times.

We live in Crawfordsville, Indiana, where Wabash College is located; and that particular summer, we volunteered to be a community friend to an international student coming in as a freshman. And we were told that our student was from Malaysia. When I heard that, questions started flying through my mind like, “What was his religion? What kinds of food does he eat? What’s their standard of living?” And when I got to the question, “Where in the world was Malaysia?” I realized that my kids, as well as myself, needed a world history course that went beyond a typical history of Western Civilization.

Mike:
Sherrie, thanks for joining me today. We’re going to talk more next time. I’m Mike Farris.