classical education

When I started to really consider homeschooling last year, a friend loaned me the book The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise. Before I was done with the introductory section, I was sold. This was what my husband and I were looking for to educate our children. We'd already had conversations about wanting our children to learn to think, to analyze, to articulate their thoughts well. He is an attorney; I'm a former editor and an always-aspiring writer. Our entire professions revolve around the use of words. But how to teach those things? Enter the classical education method, all laid out nice and neat.

I bought my own copy of TWTM so I could read it much more thoroughly, which I have been. With a red pen. It's my school book on how to educate my children. I love this book! And this educational method! And the POTENTIAL! Admittedly, it's a bit overwhelming just going through the 1st-4th grade section. There's a lot to do! But a substantial education is not going to happen in 5 minutes a day.

Short version of classical education:

The course of study is divided into three 4-year segments beginning in first grade. The same material is repeated every 4 years but gets more in depth every time it's covered. History is built on the full world history timeline, beginning with the Ancients, the Renaissance, post-Renaissance, and modern. US history and local history are covered in the proper chronology rather than doing "world history" one year and jumping around to US history another year. It's all in the global context and done chronologically. Literature runs the same line with the history. Science correlates based on the chronology of discovery and development - biology (plants and animals), astronomy and earth science, chemistry, and physics.

Kindergarten - ages 4 and 5 - teach the child to read well using phonics, proper basic handwriting, and start on numbers in general (mainly counting). The main emphasis is reading reading reading.

Grammar phase - grades 1-4 - the fact-finding segment. Read as much as you can get your hands on about everything (at the appropriate age level, of course). Begin to memorize things in literature, such as short poems. For language arts, get comfortable with basic penmanship, spelling, grammar, and work your way through learning appropriate sentence and paragraph construction.

Logic phase - grades 5-8 - Everything advances into analysis, the why of events. It's not just, "The Declaration of Independence was written in 1776," but the underlying reasons of what the colonists were aiming for with it.

Rhetoric phase - grades 9-12 - The papers advance further into the realm of the student doing his or her own thesis construction, and making their own arguments relating to various subjects (which they choose). At least two years of formal debate coaching should be included. The suggested reading lists for history and literature just keep going and going. Not that a student must read every single thing on it, but still.

Yes, there is math throughout this entire method as well, starting with counting and going all the way through calculus if the student chooses. It follows the typical pattern that I'm familiar with from public schools. In general, classical education consists of lots of reading and lots of writing. What's not to like?

I have two other education methods tagged in the sidebar - Thomas Jefferson Education and Charlotte Mason. I haven't read full books about them yet, but what I've read online leads to me conclude that they are variations of the classical education method outlined in TWTM. TJEd structures the study of the classics through mentors rather than being lectured. Charlotte Mason focuses on "living books" - read classic books rather than anthology snippets or textbook summaries of a subject. It has a strong component of being outside in nature daily. We can do that. We should do it anyway, regardless of the educational structure we decide to incorporate. Everyone needs a daily dose of sunshine.

For now, I've not read the logic and rhetoric sections of TWTM. I've read the first chapter of each section of the book to get a feel for how it all fits together, but spent most of my time on the grammar section that we're gearing up to begin. There's a lot to do, but I did like that the TWTM authors explicitly state that they do not expect everyone to follow their structure to the letter. Take what works for you and your family and leave off the rest. Me - I figure it's better to shoot for the moon and scale things back as needed rather than not reach far enough in the first place.