History is about telling different sides of a story
There are lots of reasons to learn about history. There are also lots of arguments about the reasons that we learn history. One of the reasons we at Deliberate Travel Kids believe it’s important for children to learn history is about understanding different stories. Whether you’re learning about another culture or a completely different historical period within your own country, history gives us an opportunity to think about the different ways that people can live and understand things, while still drawing a line to our own lives and experiences.
That’s why we came up with our Story Maze exercise in our latest Mexico workbook. We needed a way to talk about the occupation of Mexico by Spain and the defeat of the Aztec Empire. Such a complicated story has multiple perspectives, rather than just one story. So instead of trying to find a single story, we decided to combine multiple.
The background
Hernan Cortés
The colonization of the Aztec Empire was a fascinating, if terrible, period. Hernan Cortés, a Spanish politician, rebel and conquistador landed from Cuba in 1531 and proceeded to rapidly bring down the Aztec Empire. He was helped in his endeavours by Malinche, a local Nahuatl woman, who spoke various Aztec languages and was able to translate for Cortés as he sought audiences with various Aztec leaders. Malinche has been portrayed in many ways since, as the betrayer of Mexico, a helpless victim, the mother of Mexicans and has even been identified with La Llorona - the legend of the ghost woman who cries for her lost children. Malinche and Cortés eventually had a child together, who is considered one of the first mestizos of Mexico.
Moctezuma’s Headdress
Malinche and Cortés are not alone in this story. Moctezuma II, the Tlatoani (ruler or emperor) of Aztec Mexico is often seen as a weak or tragic figure. He initially welcomed Cortés and Malinche, giving them gold and riches to pacify them. However he quickly met with a sticky end, leaving Aztec Mexico open to Spanish colonization.
How we approached it
We decided to use a Story Maze - a puzzle of our own invention which we’ve used before. It’s a variation on a comprehension exercise, although instead of asking kids to read a text and answer questions on it, they’re asked to trace a path (or multiple paths) through the Story Maze using information they’ve gleaned from reading.
This type of puzzle takes a more active learning approach, is more visually stimulating, and makes kids feel more like they’re playing a game than doing work.
The Story Maze
Here’s the Story Maze which kids have to navigate through…
It takes the reader through all the key life moments of each of the three historical figures - Moctezuma, Malinche and Cortes - whose paths meet at various points throughout the puzzle. To make this very clear we ask kids to trace the paths with different coloured pencils, to avoid complications.
Talking about Difficult History
You can read our blog post here
We’ve written a little bit before about our approach to teaching Difficult History - how children are capable of understanding pretty complex ideas and histories, so long as they’re talked or written about in age appropriate language. Although we mention the colonisation of Mexico (and the rest of the so-called New World) a little in this workbook, we decided to focus the majority of our efforts on talking about multiple narratives, and how different historical actors had different motives for behaving how they did. We hope this approach will stimulate questions for kids, such as ‘Why did Malinche help Cortes invade her country?’ or ‘Could Moctezuma have done anything differently?’.
As always, our workbooks aren’t the be all and end all of knowledge or learning about Mexico, rather a jumping off point to get kids curious and excited about learning more and doing some of their own research. We hope it worked.
