Finally, A Pyramid

I've had the story about the Great Pyramid under construction for most of this calendar year -- when I finally posted it just now I noticed that it had originally been dated Jan. 30th. Admittedly, must of this time investment involved procrastination -- and there's also the fact that I went and read a couple very long books on Egypt during the process. But also, Egypt is one of those civilizations that I find it very difficult to wrap my mind around. Reading Egyptian texts, there certainly much that is familiar at a human level. And yet there's a great deal about Ancient Egyptian culture (most especially in this period of the Old Kingdom) which is quite opaque to me.

Anyway. That's done, and I'm going to do my best to wrap the story on mummies and the Egyptian afterlife this week as well so that I can move back into more familiar cultural and historic territory (and hopefully build up some momentum) once I head back to work from paternity leave.

Illustrations for Development of Writing

As I get active on posting again: We've not got some great illustrations up on the Development of Writing story for the Elementary Program. Two great pictures for Hieroglyphics and Cuneiform, and one forthcoming in a bit for Phoenician.

Not Dead Yet...

Contrary to appearances, we have not died. Just been rather unlively and pre-occupied lately...

High School Iliad Profile Up

Well, I'm not doing as well as I should be on getting the High School Year One items posted, but I did finally wrap up the piece on the Iliad.

High School Deadline

I've been finding myself putting much more time into the elementary program lately, probably because our oldest is already old enough to enjoy hearing the stories a bit. Thus, progress in getting content up for the high school program has been slower than it should be.

I rather doubt there's anyone out these considering using the program this coming year, but I'm thinking I better crack down and see if I can get Year One of the High School Humanities Program done before the end of the summer (which to give myself time I'll define as the end of August.)

I don't foresee any further changes in the Year One reading list itself. However, I need to finish writing up the notes on each work (including recommendations on which editions to pick) and also complete the scheduling suggestions. Most of which just requires looking over my stacks of books from high school and college, and checking to see if any interesting new translations have come out recently. Not the most romantic work in the world, but very much in need of doing.

First Illustration Up

It's take our illustrator some time to get started on his research and get the first illustration inked, scanned and ready to post, but I'm proud to announce that the first one is now up.

Check out the story of Helen for our first original illustration, with many more to come in the weeks ahead.

Trojan War Stories

For the last month and change (shocking how long these things can take) I've been struggling over turning the Iliad and Odyssey adaptations. In some ways, this has been made more difficult by the fact I've been re-reading the Iliad as I go along, which results in lots of "I can't leave that out!" thinking.

Anyway, I finally got this to something like a finished state, and I've been going through reading the stories aloud to our eldest daughter as bedtime material. However, she's five (at the bottom of the intended age range) and is willing to sit back and listen to anything from Goodnight Moon to selections from Njal's Saga, so I'm not sure that the fact she keeps listening is actually a sign of success, or just general receptivity to reading. Plus she doesn't really have any feedback on whether everything makes sense, is exciting, etc.

So, a request for anyone out there with kids somewhere around 5-9 who's willing to do some experimental reading: I'd very much appreciate it if you'd read over some or all of the following and let me know if these seem like something that your child would enjoy. Better yet, if you can read them aloud to kids and let me know what their feedback is, I'd appreciate it even more.

The Trojan War: A Blind Poet Named Homer

• The Face that Launched a Thousand Ships


• The Wrath of Achilles


• The Trojan Horse

The Wanderings of Odyssues:

• The Lost Hero


• Odysseus Tells His Story


• The Hero Returns

The one thing I haven't finished yet is adding a list of good outside reading (picture books, story books and chapter books dealing with the Trojan War and Odysseus which are recommended if one wants to read further). I have a few old favorites from my childhood, and a bunch of stuff I picked up at the library that I need to look through, but if you have suggestions, do let me know and I'll include them. (Do please note the length and age level.)

Beginning Poetry Memorization

Eleanor (5) and Julia (almost 4) have memories like steel traps. One time watching a movie and they're already quoting dialogue and rattling off lyrics. Therefore, it must be time to start some real poetry memorization.

Children's poetry is tricky stuff -- we wanted something short enough to be memorable, but not too treacly. A while ago I found a copy of Kate Greenaway's Under the Window at a library booksale. I pulled that off the shelf hoping that I could find some simple poem for Julia. I wasn't overly impressed -- the pictures were charming, but the verse was too twee to be worth the effort of memorization. I have a fondness for A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson, but Darwin doesn't always care for the shortest poems therein. (As it turns out, we did find one by Stevenson that we liked for Julia -- see below.) Right now our favorite poetry anthology for the girls is Classic Poetry: An Illustrated Collection, but the poems are too long for the girls to easily master in a week.

In the end, we consulted The Oxford Book of English Verse and The Oxford Book of Children's Verse to select a poem for each girl. For Eleanor we found "Morning Prayer" by Ogden Nash:

Morning Prayer
by Ogden Nash

Now another day is breaking,
Sleep was sweet and so is waking.
Dear Lord, I promised you last night
Never again to sulk or fight.
Such vows are easier to keep
When a child is sound asleep.
Today, O Lord, for your dear sake,
I'll try to keep them when awake.

Julia's was an old classic (though I'd always thought it was just an old nursery rhyme):

There Was a Little Girl
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There was a little girl
Who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good
She was very, very good,
But when she was bad she was horrid.

We practiced during the week and had a formal recitation on Sunday evening. For this week we have two new selections.

Eleanor:

How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!

--Lewis Carroll

Julia:

Rain
by Robert Louis Stevenson

The rain is raining all around,
It falls on field and tree,
It rains on the umbrellas here,
And on the ships at sea.

Odysseus Draft

I finally completed a draft of The Wanderings of Odysseus. Generally I'm pretty pleased with it, but it's nearly twice the length of any of the other stories so far, so I fear it needs to be cut into two or else pretty seriously shortened.

Feel free to read the draft and provide any other suggestions.

Classical Languages: When and Why?

It seems a generally agreed-upon tenet in certain circles that teaching your children Latin (and possibly Greek as well) is a Good Idea. This fits pretty well with my own inclinations, having been a Classics major and being fairly pleased with my time studying Greek and Latin.

However being currently possessed of rather young children, one of the things I'm less sure of is when to start these languages. My own learning of Latin had a number of false starts and eventually kicked-off for real in high school where I spend a couple years working through Wheelock's Latin, and then Caesar's Gallic Wars and a bit of the Aeneid. All very good stuff, and what grasp I have of formal grammar is definitely attributable to Wheelock. (No blame to my good mother and other teachers -- it's just that I successfully paid fairly little attention to grammatical terminology up to that point since my instincts were generally sound enough to face it.)

However, one of the sources to which I attribute the limits of my mastery of these languages (other than my own failure to apply myself further) is the fact that I started studying them so late, and when I was already very much locked into thinking via English grammar and (especially) vocabulary. (I managed to think in Latin grammar pretty well, but I could never seem to see Latin words as meaning things in their own right so much as "mean this, or sometimes this" sets of translational equivalents. Well, "never" is a strong word, but in most cases my vocabulary was shallow and unnatural.)

A lot of classical education writers seem to suggest kicking off with Latin quite young, perhaps around seven or eight. I can see this as being a good idea in many ways, but I do find myself wondering a bit: where do you go from there? I imagine that it still takes a good two to four years to reach the point where you can read most classical literature with ease, but if you have an eleven-year-old who is fully equipped to read Virgil, Horace and Ovid, that still leaves you with the question of whether a eleven-year-old is well equipped to appreciate those authors.

Maybe its because I came to these authors so late, and thus associate coming to understand them with coming into intellectual adulthood, but I do sort of wonder if having solid Latin and Greek skills at too young an age simply leaves on all dressed up with no where to go. Or, perhaps more likely, in St. Augustine's situation of having been brought to the point of being able to read the classics, but being bored by them and so writing them off more or less permanently.

I fear that much of Classical literature is a rather adult taste, both artistically and intellectually, so it seems like the challenge would be to come up with readings that would make classical languages interesting and rewarding to a younger child. (I suppose one could focus more on religious texts early on. The vulgate and Koine Greek are both fairly easy examples of their language, and there's a great deal in the scriptures which is quite readable at a young age.)

Some writers don't seem too worried about this because their primary interest in Latin and Greek is expanding one's vocabulary and mastering logical/grammatical concepts. But in our case, I'd definitely like to give our children at least a good chance of enjoying real Classical literature in the original language, whether that actually becomes their specialty or merely a background cultural literacy that they bring to the rest of their lives.

The Iliad in Three Pages or Less

I've got the elementary program version of the mythology which is mostly covered in the Iliad up under the title The Wrath of Achilles. I'm worried it's still a bit long, but it's a start.

Hmmmmm...

Some things are harder to explain at a child-friendly level than others. Explaining how Helen came to be the daughter of Zeus may be at the harder end of the scale...



Though there's also always the tradition that Helen was the daughter of Zeus and Nemesis, and that her egg was then given to Leda who raised her as her own.

Please, Daddy!

I may need to jump ahead a bit chronologically in writing the Elementary Program, as the small fry are agitating to hear about the Trojan War.

I'm trying to decide exactly how to break the story up. I really like the narrative structure of the Iliad, but I think that starting near the end of the story would be a bit hard for such young kids to handle. So I may go ahead and start with the marriage of Helen, the apple of discord, etc. I might do three stories: The Tojan War (chronological version of the war up through the death of Hektor, or maybe even Achilles), the Trojan Horse (fall of Troy drawn from the version in the Aeneid) and The Wanderings of Odysseus.

Egypt-mania

I've got the first two pieces on Ancient Egypt up. The first one, which I have a few fears might be a little dry, is on The Rise of Egypt.

The second one is plenty of fun as it covers the Egyptian creation myth and also the story of Isis and Osiris. I hope it doesn't indulge in too much myth-speak, but I'm pretty confident the content will be interesting to kids. Let me know any reactions.

Multum Non Multa

My wife sent me a link to another book about using a classical curriculum The Latin Centered Curriculum, by Andrew Campbell. One of Campbell's big points is multum non multa or "much, not many". He's concerned at the length of the reading lists that many classical curriculums suggest. He make the point (I think in some cases valid) that the curriculums that advise the reading of countless juvenile historical novels are effectively requiring that the student churn quickly through lots of not terribly deep writing.

However, he's also very down on long reading lists of "great books". For instance, he's rather shocked that one seventh grade reading lists gives students five weeks to read the Iliad while simultaneously reading "a work of theology, a study on ancient cities, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and a challenging adult novel by C. S. Lewis."

Well, I'll admit that I'd hold off on Gilgamesh (and indeed the Iliad) until high school, but at the same time I'm a bit amused at his indignation over reading a "challenging adult novel by C. S. Lewis" quickly while reading other things as well. I love C. S. Lewis' novels, but all of them can be read quickly and easily. They may be morally or intellectually challenging, but they're not challenging to read.

As it happens, though, I've been working through the Iliad at one book a day at lunch time. It's been six or seven years since I last read Homer, and I've really been enjoying it. One of my purposes, however, was also to decide how much time needed to be scheduled for reading the Iliad and the Odyssey in the High School Humanities Program. I've been finding that a slow, careful reading of one book (anywhere from 450 to 900 lines - 10 to 20 pages) of the Iliad runs me an average of 30 minutes. Still, it's dense reading, and you want to pay good attention, so I don't think you'd want a student powering through too quickly and losing detail. I'm thinking I'll recommend reading two books a day, three to four days a week, thus finishing the Iliad and Odyssey in 3-4 weeks each. This strikes me as a pretty slow, steady pace. Now, I'm talking about a ninth grader instead of a seventh grader, but I still don't know of Campbell would approve.

Three Times the Charm?

Dorothy Sayers' essay "The Lost Tools of Learning" has achieved near sola scriptura standing among a certain stripe of homeschooler, with a number of curriculums or curriculum suggestions based upon it's grammar, logic, rhetoric thrice-through structure. It's been a while since I'd read the essay (as opposed to books on how to implement the essay's suggestions) so I took a copy along on our recent family vacation and read it over to see how off-shoots fit the original.

Rereading Sayers, I found her essay refreshing, incisive and engaging. She's also, however, much vaguer in some of her recommendations than I had imagined. Although she's quite clear about the stages of grammar, logic and rhetoric (and that the general approaches of these three disciplines should be applied to all subject-matter studied) she doesn't give specific prescriptions on what should be studied in each stage at a subject level. (Indeed, part of her point is that the idea of "subjects" is unfortunate.)

This leaves me still sitting with one of my concerns about several of the "classical education" curriculums that I've looked over. The general approach seems to be to do everything three times. So for instance, you go through world history one time each at a grammar, logic and rhetoric level.

Now, repetition is often good when learning things, but I wonder if this rule of three is actually the way to go. Part of me wonders if the logic stage would lend itself well to a number of 1-3 month intensive unit studies which dug into how exactly particular events or trends came to be, and what their results were. If you've already laid down a good chronological foundation in the grade 1-4 level, you should be able to do a lot of unit studies at the grade 5-8 level (and perhaps a year of strictly American History) and then come back at the high school level to put it all together with another four year run through world history, this time focusing on primary source material.

Thinking back to my junior high years, I certainly consumed huge numbers of straight history and biography (the Landmark Books were a big favorite of mine in grades 4-6) but I also thrived on digging into analysis topics that would lend themselves well to applying logical structure to a unit study such as "Why the South lost the Civil War" or "Why the French Revolution Happened" or "How the Tsar Fell".

A Bible for Very Young Catholics

This looks like a good Bible story resource for very young children. It's a children's Bible published by ACN (Aid to the Church in Need). Pope Benedict XVI distributed four copies of it during his recent trip to Fazenda da Esperança in Brazil, which brought the number of copies distributed in that country up to 10 million.

The book can be viewed online, but I couldn't find any information on how to order a hard copy. So I contacted ACN by email and was told that copies were available from:

Aid to the Church in Need
725 Leonard Street
PO Box 220384
Brooklyn, NY 11222-0384

Suggested donation is $2.00, but I'd suggest sending them a bit more.

Alternate Blog

I set up an additional Humanities Program Blog on homeschoolblogger.com on which to post excepts from stuff as they go up on the main site.

I'm not looking at making it the main blog, but I wanted to provide a little more search/link fodder, and have something out there to try to gradually draw in homeschooler attention.

In Defense of Humanism

Looking at the rather slow rate of visitors here and on the main Humanities Program site, I got to thinking it was time to start trying to get up to speed on classical education and great books influenced homeschooling sites. Google and other site owners tend to agree: if you want to receive links you need to give links.

So I was reading around on a few "classical education" sites and immediately came across this on a site called Trivium Pursuit:

Is Classical Education reading Homer and Plato, or Caesar and Cicero? Many classical educators would say yes – reading such literature is an essential part of a classical education. But, does an unbridled focus upon classical – Greek and Roman – literature lead us toward Christ?

We define a Classical Education differently. We pursue a classical model and a classical method for education – namely, the Trivium – but we have only an incidental interest in the classical humanist literature. We do not want to pursue these three tools of learning – classical languages, skill in thinking, and skill in communication – so that we can really read Homer and really think like Aristotle and really speak like Demosthenes. As Christians, we want to learn languages, logic, and rhetoric so that we can really read, and think, and speak – period! We want to master these useful tools, but we do not want to use these tools as the ancient Greeks and Romans used them. They used these tools to serve everything except the true and living God. We want to use them to serve nothing but the true and living God. The Greeks and Romans took these tools and used them to pursue their own purposes. We are only reclaiming what is rightfully the inheritance of the godly, cleaning them up, and turning them back to serve our Lord. The Scriptures contain everything we need to test every word of man, and to convert what is redeemable to godly use. Before we can use anything – including classical literature – we must sift it through the critical screen of the Scriptures.

We choose to limit our meaning of "classical" to include only what is of good form and lasting value (= classical), and which conforms to a Biblical standard within a Biblical worldview (= Christian). We must carefully sift everything which is classical in the humanist sense through the critical screen of the Scriptures, and we must give whatever passes that screening a new meaning within the Biblical worldview. So, by "classical," we do not mean all culture and literature of ancient times, or of mediaeval times, or of renaissance times, or even of colonial American times. We do not want to revive some previous period of supposed glory. We are not bound to the classical humanist literature or tradition. We focus instead upon what – out of all of these cultures and times – is redeemable for Christ. We want to sort through the rubble and redeem only what we can bring into conformity to Christian order and under the rule of God’s law.

It strikes me as indicative of the overwhelming success of Sayers' essay "The Lost Tools of Learning" that even someone who lacks interest in much of what Sayers considered the purpose of education to be nonetheless is trying to craft a curriculum in tune with her summation of the scholastic approach to education.

Still, there's something very wrong with the above view, and I say this not only as an intellectual and homeschooling parent but also as a Christian.

We should read the classics, both pagan and Christian, because through reading the words that people have put down throughout the centuries we come to understand better what it is to be human. Our modern understanding of the world is scientifically advanced, but it is certainly not the last word culturally. Through coming to understand how the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Medievals and the people of the Renaissance saw the world, we come to better understand who we are as human beings and how we relate to the world around us.

Nor should this sort of humanism be off limits for Christians. If humanity is made in God's image, then through coming to understand man we come to understand God. Though the scriptures may be the divinely inspired word of God, they are certainly not the only thing worth knowing. If Christians believe that God looked on creation and saw that it was good, then knowledge of the world is never sought in vain.

Next Up, Art & Homer

I've been working through Year One of the High School program knocking out the 'easy stuff' as far as writing the profiles of all the works. The anthologies of Sumerian and Egyptian source material are both up now, as is Gilgamesh.

The next projects: Profile the two art history options to be used throughout. Gombrich is recommended for most, with Janson for those who (and are up for reading through) want a much more in-depth approach. (Gombrich isn't light weight by any standards -- it's more than Janson is just plain massive.)

And then Homer. I'm thinking maybe I should take the Iliad and Odyssey with me on vacation to see if I can get another re-read in and see if I can come up with any fresh thoughts. Plus it would be a good refresher when I write the Homer-based stuff for the elementary program.