- Currently the program has the following years: 1) Pre-history through Greece 2) Rome through Charlemagne 3) 800 - 1600 4) 1600 - present. Should we keep this up, or should we tackle the prodigious task of compressing the ancient period down into a single year? On thing that strikes me as interesting is trying to get up to 33AD in the first year, and then going through 1000 in the second year.
- Any ideas on interests areas, banding, unit studies, etc. that might help to get the supplemental/read aloud lists a bit more under control?
Thursday, March 8, 2007
High School Program: Structural Questions
Okay, some high level structural questions on the High School version of the program:
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Okay, so here are the first unit study ideas that spring to mind:
Heretics - not just Arians and Monophysites, but all major religious splits--East/West schism, Albigensian Crusade, Reformation, etc. Could even be sketched to include Akhenaten and the splits in Islam.
Crusades - which would include a basic introduction to Islamic culture/philsophy/history.
Matter of Britain - an obvious one. Tons of material.
The Legend of Rome - the Roman empire as ideal/legend, and the ways it's been used by various people throughout history.
Christians vs. Pagans - how Christianity took over the Roman Empire. Could be stretched to include conversion of the rest of Europe.
Athens vs. Jerusalm - how Greek/Roman philosophy was assimilated into Christianity--okay, that one's pretty advanced. (But it could be senior year.)
Barbarians - the various "barbarian" peoples of Europe--Celts, vikings, etc--their history and culture, and how they settled down.
Empires - look at Persians, Romans, Egyptians, Byzantines and Holy Roman Empire. How they rise/fall/are organized. Uh, come to think of it, there's that whole British Empire thing. Might want to split this into ancient and modern versions.
Mythology - comparative look at all relevant mythologies (starting with Sumerian/Babylonian). Alternately, look at the use of mythology in literature.
Dynasties - compare several extremely powerful families/dynasties throughout history--how the politics work on a personal level.
WWI & WWII - obviously. Any major war could become a unit study.
History of Science - you could pick any period. Particularly interesting (IMHO) would be ancient Greek/Roman and the emergence of modern science (as opposed to natural philosphy and alchemy).
Elizabethan/Jacobean Drama - I haven't studied it, but my friends tell me it is fun, and with titles like 'Tis Pity She's A Whore, how can you go wrong?
Something about battles? I don't know if Famous Battles Through History would be too diffuse, but it would certainly be appealing for some.
Revolutions - could look at both the history of various revolutions (American, French, Russian, etc.) and the philosophy that was used to justify them.
Old Icelandic Stuff - there are a zillion sagas and one could spend any amount of time on them. Plus the Eddas! And Snorri Sturluson also did a history of the Norwegian kings, so you could get into that, and then there's the Vineland affair.
It occurs to me that many of these unit studies are big enough to take at least a semester, possibly a year. I don't know if you were thinking more of things that could be done in a month . . .
Oh! and Rise of the Universities would make a really great unit study, I think.
Well shoot, while we're shooting for the moon, here are some more unit study ideas:
Epic
The Great Games: History and Playing of Chess and Go
Ancient through Medieval Philosophy
History of Mathematics
History of Western Music
Founding of America
The Industrian Revolution
Communism
Comparative Religions
Judaism
Codebreaking
Development of Linguistics (include decipherment of hieroglyphs, etc)
The Knight
Dualism
Depictions of Heaven & Hell (Or: Conceptions of the Afterlife)
The Novel (or: Development of the Novel)
Victorian Intellectual Movements
Church/State Relations
American Religious Movements
History of Evolutionary Theory (& public reception of it)
Monasticism
Byzantium
Ottoman Empire
This is getting to the point it would put most colleges to shame... :)
But of course. Don't you know it's a rule that all self-respecting homeschoolers must try to make high school more difficult than college? ;-)
Seriously, though, the "Western Lit to Dante" ISLAS class that I took senior year of high school had waaaay more reading material than the first year of the UD core program.
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