📺 HISTORICAL DOCUMENTARIES for Your Homeschool Summer

Although student learning happens all year round, during the summer many homeschoolers follow a somewhat lighter schedule. One of the easiest and most constructive ways to spend your summer educational time (in the evening or when it’s too hot to go out) is to watch good quality documentaries together and discuss them as a family.

Here are eleven video documentary masterpieces and one great audio series that you can share with your homeschool students this summer over a period of days or weeks or months as you choose. I have embedded the first episode of each of the video series here; subsequent episodes are usually linked from the first.

❡ Note: These links have all been tested and are working as of today’s posting date, but online video links are notoriously ephemeral and some of them may eventually fail. A few may also display brief ads at the beginning; that’s just the nature of online video sharing.

The best educational approach to follow is not simply to watch these documentaries, but to discuss them. Students develop intellectually when they have to make mental effort under questioning. What did you think was the most interesting part of this episode? (Why was that part interesting to you?) What surprised you the most? (What were you expecting instead?) What was the most confusing part of the presentation? (How could they have explained that better?) What are you skeptical about? (“I wonder if that’s really correct?”) What would you like to know more about? (Write that down and we can look it up at the library next week.)

Don’t worry too much if your students’ attention is imperfect or if they are playing with legos while watching. In every case they will be absorbing names and dates and vocabulary and images that they will file away now and have ready for use at a later time. (Old-time educators used to call it “furnishing the mind.”)

The documentaries are listed here by date of production, and they are all suitable for high school students in my judgement. Some of them address difficult topics of course and so may not be appropriate for younger children. If your students were to watch and discuss all of these documentaries in a homeschool setting over the course of their high school years, they would almost certainly end up with a better understanding of history than most college students have today.

➢ Civilisation: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark — 13 episodes, 1969. A pioneering series on the art, architecture, and history of Europe. This series was the model for many others that followed. (Series and episode descriptions. Episode 1: The Skin of Our Teeth.)

➢ The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski — 13 episodes, 1973. A magnificent series on the history of science and civilization from ancient times to the present, conceived initially as a response to Clark’s history of art. (Series and episode descriptions. Episode 1: Lower than the Angels.)

➢ The World at War from the BBC — 26 episodes, 1973. One of the most significant documentary series ever made, covering the entire history of World War II. (Series and episode descriptions. Episode 1: A New Germany.)

➢ In Search of the Trojan War by Michael Wood — 6 episodes, 1985. Myth, history, and archeology come together in this excellent documentary on ancient Greece and the Trojan War. (Series and episode descriptions. Episode 1: The Age of Heroes. Internet Archive: Complete series.)

➢ The Civil War by Ken Burns — 9 episodes, 1990. A pioneering and visually captivating history of the American Civil War. Perhaps the best American history documentary ever made. (Series and episode descriptions. Episode 1: The Cause.)

➢ A Brief History of Time by Errol Morris — 80-minute film, 1991. A quirky biographical documentary on the life and work of physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking (1942–2018). (Film description.)

➢ Liberty! The American Revolution from PBS — 6 episodes, 1997. An excellent documentary history of the American Revolution. The 250th anniversary of the beginning of the Revolution is coming up in 2025–2026; this series will give your students a good understanding of what we’ll all be commemorating. (Series and episode descriptions. Episode 1: The Reluctant Revolutionaries.)

➢ Thomas Jefferson by Ken Burns — 2-part film, 1997. A documentary portrait of America’s most enigmatic founder. (Film description.)

➢ Monarchy by David Starkey — 17 episodes, 2004–2007. A visually compelling history of the British monarchy from the Middle Ages through the twentieth century. (Series and episode descriptions. Episode 1: A Nation State.)

➢ Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism by Joshua Muravchik — 3 episodes, 2005. A comprehensive history of the idea of socialism across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. (Series and episode descriptions. Internet Archive: Complete series.)

➢ Thomas Sowell: Common Sense in a Senseless World by Jason Riley — 55-minute film, 2021. A biographical profile of the great American economist and social philosopher Thomas Sowell. (Film description.)

In addition to the video documentaries above, this audio documentary series developed by American singer Thomas Hampson, one of the world’s leading classical baritones, makes for excellent homeschool listening throughout the summer (or at any time of year).

➢ Song of America by Thomas Hampson — 13 episodes, 2011. A wonderful series of radio programs on the history of American classical song. Each episode focuses on a composer or on a poet whose work has been set to music: Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Robert Frost, Stephen Foster, and many more. (About the series. Listen online.)

What historical epochs and momentous events are you and your students studying in your homeschool this Hercules Term? 🌞

❡ America 250: One of the best dramatized documentaries on the American Revolutionary period is the seven-part HBO series John Adams (2008). I wasn’t able to find a free copy online and so didn’t include it among the documentaries listed above, but it’s very much worth tracking down a copy, either at your local library, on Amazon.com, or via another streaming service of your choice. 🇺🇸

❡ Come, here’s the map: History and geography go hand in hand. As you watch the documentaries above, be sure to have your homeschool atlas by your side and open. 🌎

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