Pathway to Liberty History Curriculum {Review}

by Sally Matheny

Recently, we sampled a portion of Pathway to Liberty’s U.S. History Year 3/Level 3, part of Pathway to Liberty’s History Curriculum, from Pathway to Liberty Homeschool Curriculum.

Pathway to Liberty states their curriculum offers a biblical worldview, puts Christian history in terms of world events, and helps students understand the principles America was founded upon originally. They cover four areas of history: Universal History, Middle Ages, U.S. History, and World History.

The 26-week curriculum is designed to help home educators teach multiple grade levels at one time. We only had one, eighth-grade student for this review.

Pathway to Liberty offers physical products as well as digital downloads. We received these physical products: U.S. History Year 3/Level 3 Students’ Guide and the correlating Teacher’s Guide, The Chain of Liberty book, and The Chain of Liberty Study Guide.

Five Weeks to Evaluate

We had five weeks to use the Pathway to Liberty curriculum before this review was due. That’s too short to evaluate the entire curriculum! Remember, I’m only critiquing the areas we were able to cover during the period given, which were the lessons for weeks 1 – 5.

However, if you check out the link at the bottom of this review, you will find where my fellow Homeschool Review Crew members reviewed different components of this curriculum.

What is Pathway to Liberty?

Jayme Maccullough, a homeschool mom, said she was dissatisfied with the history curriculum she had been using with her five sons. She said she re-educated herself in American history by attending seminars and workshops. Then, she developed her own history curriculum and founded Pathway to Liberty.

In 2016, Maccullough wrote a 167-page paperback book, The Chain of Liberty, which she included as part of the required reading for the history curriculum we reviewed. There is a 97-page paperback study guide book that goes along with it, which is also required reading. The book is a result of a seminar she has taught to parents and students.

The Chain of Liberty Book & Study Guide

In our five weeks of study, we covered chapters 1 – 10 in The Chain of Liberty. I’m not sure how to classify the genre of this book. It’s not a textbook, but it does contain information about certain historical events, such as the Mayflower Compact. It’s not a Bible study, but the accompanying “Studyguide” has the components of one. Plus, the study guide provides questions for the students to answer about certain topics of history. 

The author inserts several of her personal viewpoints in the book and a specific call to action at the end.

I like reading about American history and about Christian history. I love reading the Bible and things written with a Christian worldview. However, this book was a bit overbearing in places, or perhaps it was just the odd placement of the questions within the text.

I asked my student to answer The Chain of Liberty study guide questions out loud to me, rather than answer them in the book on his own. The reason for this was to engage in a discussion about some of the content.

We talked about how to discern between fact and opinion passages. We reasoned that while it is often possible for a person to judge the character of another person, ultimately only God can judge the soul.

Checking the endnote citations, we also discussed the importance of researching a book’s sources. We talked about how primary sources and proper citation of sources add value and credibility, especially when writing about historical events.

Additional Reading Books Needed

In addition to The Chain of Liberty, students using the U.S. History Year 3 curriculum need to acquire six-nine more specific reading books for the year. An additional, expanded list of reading books is given, but those books are not required.

Families may have several of the required reading books on hand or be able to find them in the library. You can also buy the required books through the Amazon affiliate links on Pathway to Liberty’s website. During our review period, we only needed two additional books. We were able to access those online for free. They were Noah Webster’s 1828 Dictionary and The Story of Liberty by Charles Coffin.

U.S. History Year 3/Level 3 Student & Teacher Book

The student book is identical to the teacher’s book. However, the teacher’s book contains answers to most of the questions. Although, quite often it does give the phrase, “answers will vary,” so teachers may have to read or watch some of the required portions of the material to evaluate the answers.

How the Lesson Plans Work in Pathway to Liberty

Each week contains four history lessons. The book says they take between twenty and sixty minutes, but they took us longer than that. There were questions to answer in the student guide after reading in each book. Wherever you see the word, “studyguide,” in the photo above, means students will need to answer additional questions. As you can see, a great deal of writing is required.

However, Pathway to Liberty continually gives you the freedom to break it down and find what works for your students. After the first week, we had to slow things down a little and alter a few of the writing assignments due to the time involved.

Each lesson begins with a “Weekly Overview” which tells the students in each grade level what to expect.

Following that are the “Teaching Objectives” listed in a short, bulleted list.

Each week has a featured scripture, principle, and leading idea. Students are asked to write these out in their Pathway to Liberty student guide notebooks.

Specific Lesson Layout – Pathway to Liberty

Each week’s lesson plan varies, but Week 3 and Week 4 were similar in format, so I’ll go over those.

The first colonies, Roanoke, Jamestown, Puritans, Separatists, and the Plimouth [Plymouth] Colony were the topics addressed.

After the scripture, we read The Chain of Liberty, followed by work in the corresponding study guide.

The lesson plans for the second day included a reading from one of the other required reading books, answering questions, and working on a new word study.

The other book my son had to read excerpts from was The Story of Liberty by Charles Carleton Coffin, a book written in 1879. We found it available for free online. He found it intriguing and enjoyed learning things that are not typically found in more current history books.

Following his reading, there were questions to answer in the student guide about what he read. He answered these orally because I was interested to hear about what he read.

The final lesson of the week included a writing assignment after viewing another YouTube video.

YouTube Videos

YouTube videos are a big component of this curriculum. The first one was interesting, but I think my son almost panicked thinking they were all going to be lectures by men in suits!

But they were not! There were a variety of styles—lectures, documentaries, animations, and more.

At first, we had a difficult time finding the YouTube videos for Pathway to Liberty. But after contacting the company, they were quick to reply with assistance.

After subscribing to their YouTube channel, it was much easier to locate all the videos they assigned students to watch.

Based on the look of their brand’s playlist, I thought Pathway to Liberty had made special videos to go with their curriculum.

However, like the reading books, they’ve simply curated the content into one place for the educator, which is nice.

Homeschool educators could spend hours searching the internet for kid-appropriate, instructional videos, but Maccullough has put in the time and already done that for them.

A Few Things Need Updating

Still, a few things need updating. Since my son enjoyed the videos, I thought I’d scan through and see what other YouTube videos Pathway to Liberty offered. I was disappointed to see that some of the videos did not have titles or credits listed. Most of the ones I checked were okay, but I did notice a few broken links. Also, PBS had pulled some of their content for copyright purposes.

Knowing that anyone can manipulate a YouTube video, just like they can edit a document in Wikipedia, makes me a little leery of viewing videos not showing any documentation. If for some reason, no documentation was available, then I would have liked to have seen a statement from the company saying so, and, that to the best of their knowledge the video has not been edited in any way.

It would be nice to have all of the YouTube videos listed on Pathway to Liberty’s YouTube channel listed under their original titles and creators. For safety and for credibility reasons, I think the titles and the credits are essential in the inclusion of each video whenever possible.

Also, a list in the teacher’s guide of the videos and their sources would be helpful.

I appreciate the work Pathway to Liberty has done gathering some great YouTube videos from the History Channel, Coldwater Media’s Drive Thru History, and others. It is nice to have them all in one place when studying American history. 

The YouTube videos have been one my student’s favorite aspects of this curriculum–probably because he’s not a big fan of writing!

Optional Writing Assignments & Word Studies

There were four writing options. For our grade level, the assignments were from two to twelve paragraphs and based on the students’ reading topics. We chose to opt out of the writing assignments due to limited time and the writing requirements of our other homeschool curriculum.

Another key component of this curriculum are the in-depth word studies. An example of the directions:

1. Write out the definition using Webster’s 1828 Dictionary. Underline two – three key words in the definition.
2. Define key words from the definitions using short sentences. Relevant scriptures are recorded.
3. Find the word in the Bible’s concordance. Look up 2 – 3 relevant scriptures and write those down.
4. Write a definition for the word using your own thoughts and words.
5. Write out how it relates to your life personally, educationally, and governmentally.

The word to study is found in each week’s overview section. The words we had were: foundation, self-government, character, and compact.

Overall Opinion

My overall opinion of the Pathway to Liberty U.S. History Year 3/Level 3 curriculum is it needs to direct students to more primary sources so the students can research and make discoveries for themselves.

The curriculum was not the best fit for our family. It was too heavy in writing assignments for my student and a little heavy in how it presented specific viewpoints. However, we’ll continue researching through Pathway to Liberty’s suggested reading, and the online YouTube links they provide, to see what new things we might discover.

Read more reviews by the Homeschool Review Crew on Pathway to Liberty History Curriculum by clicking on the link below: http://schoolhousereviewcrew.com/universal-history-the-middle-ages-us-history-world-history-curriculum-pathway-to-liberty-homeschool-curriculum-reviews/