Harcourt Horizons: World History
| Publisher: Harcourt School Publishers Review last updated: June 2010 |
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Harcourt is one of the larger publishers of textbooks for traditional classrooms. I’m generally unenthusiastic about most of their offerings. However, when Harcourt purchased the Saxon line of products, they started taking a stronger interest in home education… or at least that is how it looks from my perspective. One part of that interest has resulted in homeschool packages for some of their courses, sold through the Saxon Homeschool division.
Harcourt Horizons Social Studies series is available in homeschool packages for each level of grades one through six that include the two-volume teacher’s edition, student textbook on CD-ROM, and an Assessment Program book. The series takes a broad social studies approach for the lower grade levels but becomes more concentrated on history at upper levels.
The Teacher’s Editions are essential to this program since they include all sorts of expanded activities to teach to different learning styles as well as across the curriculum. Students are directed to outside research, writing activities, creation of timelines, art projects, critical thinking, discussions, journaling, work with graphic organizers (provided in the TE), games, role playing, and much more. Some activities clearly rely on at least two or more students working together. Homeschool lesson plans are in the works; these should be available by September 2010 on the publisher's website. These will identify which activities are essential and which are optional along with alternative presentation methods that might work better for home educators. Even if all activities are not practical, it really shouldn't matter since there are far more than you will be able to use.
Teacher’s Editions include extras at the back that might be quite useful. Blackline masters of maps, organizers, journal outlines, timeline formats and other pages are critical for some units. Optional Holiday Activities such as recipes, crafts, songs, etc., tie in with other cultures and historical events. And reproducible, double-sided flashcards help students master vocabulary for each unit. It does take some time to become familiar with the TE and sort out the various options you might use. Once that’s done, it should be fairly easy to teach the lessons. Students should do some independent work, but discussion and interaction will also be needed.
I requested the World History course for sixth grade level for review since the homeschool marketplace seems to have only a few interesting choices for World History at that level outside unit study programs. Those choices are even fewer for those who prefer a non-sectarian presentation. Harcourt Horizons is definitely non-sectarian, yet it does include some respectful coverage of religions including a discussion about studies regarding religious freedom in recent years. In World History, it does begin with discussion of “modern humans” living in eastern and southern Africa more than 100,000 years ago. But it doesn't discuss evolution directly or present a chain of human development from non-humans. The overall political tone leans “gently” toward a conservative view by, for example, pointing out Stalin’s purges and other evils of Communism and actually giving Ronald Reagan credit for positive events. Beyond the historical content, which includes broad coverage of both eastern and western civilizations, this text also includes basic coverage of geography. Much of this is presented in a unit on map and globe skills at the beginning of the book.
The student text pages--which students view on the computer, are almost a cross between the presentation style of DK and Usborne type books and traditional texts. They are full of color and illustrations with lots of boxes and insets that make them visually engaging. Most of the text (words) students need to read still runs in traditional columns, but there’s less of it than in many other texts. Lest you conclude that students will learn less, recall the plethora of extended activities from the Teacher’s Edition. The CD-ROM has it’s own easy-to-use interface so it is easy for the student to get to the correct chapter. The CD also includes printable worksheets that correlate with lessons. I have one primary criticism regarding the CD-ROM version of the textbook: on many pages, the text fonts lack the clarity they have on other pages, which means it takes a bit more effort to read those pages. Note that there are alternative viewing options such as selecting a larger font that can help deal with this issue. I personally would rather have the TE on CD-ROM (with worksheets printable from the TE CD) and the student text in printed version rather than the reverse as is done with these packages, but that’s only my personal preference.
The Assessment Program book presents tools for different forms of assessment: informal evaluation, self-evaluation, performance assessment, portfolios, standard tests, and performance tasks. The first four types are presented as general methods to be used. The standard tests and performance tasks are specific to each unit of the text. Performance tasks generally include individual projects, group projects, and/or student presentations. You are welcome to choose any or none of these as you wish. Answer keys (when appropriate) are included at the back of the Assessment Program book.
Overall, I think Harcourt Horizons World History might be a good choice for many home educators, but the cost might be the biggest barrier.
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