Teaching History: Volume I, by Roy Wilkinson

The History curriculum for fifth and sixth grades in a Waldorf school follows the thread of development of cultures through Ancient India, Persia, Egypt and Chaldea, Greece, and Rome. This provides a picture of the changing human consciousness from ancient clairvoyance to the loss of spiritual vision and, with it, the awakening of independent ego awareness and materialism. The teacher is guided to a deeper understanding of the spiritual significance of mythologies and great epics, and shows how the ancient world points the way to the future.

Contents:

• Ancient India-The Ramayana, Krishna, Buddha
• Ancient Persia-Zarathustra
• Egypt and Babylon-Isis and Osiris, Gilgamesh
• Greece-The Iliad, Theseus, Demeter and Persephone, The Odyssey, The Argonauts, Hercules, Prometheus, City-states, Biographies
• Rome-Political development, Development of Christianity, Conquests and collapse, Biographies

(For source material on the Middle Ages, usually also covered in sixth grade, see the author's Teaching History Volume II.)

Roy Wilkinson was an indefatigable teacher of children, lecturer, author, and inspirer of many people in the Waldorf movement in the UK and abroad, right up to his death at the age of 90 in 2007.