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teachingmyown
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I was talking with a friend last weekend who is a MODG consultant. I told her that I was considering Kolbe for my rising 7th grader. This launched a conversation about what a classical education is, and whether the use of "great books" is appropriate at the high school level.
My friend believes, and I take it to mean that MODG holds this opinion as well, that the study of the great books should be delayed until college. The reason is that if the children read them too young, they are not mature enough to fully grasp and explore what they have read. However, because they have read these books, they will enter college with a false sense of understanding.
(I don't think I am expressing my friend's thoughts well. My apology if I am butchering the philosophy of MODG!)
So, what is a classical education? Both schools state that they provide a classical education, yet seem to differ in methodology.
Kolbe seems a better fit for us, but I was at a loss in my conversation with friend.
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CrunchyMom
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This does not answer your question about different philosophies--I am not qualified to answer that. My gut reaction, though, as someone who read a lot while young is this: I read some pretty heavy "great" books when in middle school, in high school, and again as an adult. I've gotten something very different from them as an adult than I did in middle school, but I thought part of the point of a "great" book was that is was worth revisiting. For instance, I would think just because you have a greater understanding reading something as an adult doesn't mean that it isn't worthwhile to read while young.
Given that as my own experience, I am very interested in hearing the responses of those more well versed in the particulars of these philosophies! 
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Kristie 4
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I would have to agree with Lindsay- as our children grow older and mature they will have new understanding to bring to the Great Books!
What is a classical education? These days it seems like everyone adds the word 'classical' to their curriculum, but to the eye the curriculum looks the same as many other non-classical curricula. Historically, a classical education was one that focused on learning the Latin (and often Greek) grammar. In many of the classical curricula you will hear of the three stages in the classical curriculum- the grammar, logic, and rhetoric stages. However, traditionally these were not 'stages' but subjects in the classical curriculum- those being grammar (Latin and/or Greek), the study of logic, and the rhetoric.
I am no authority on this topic but have read some articles and books surrounding it. For more info. you could try looking at...
Latin Centred Curriculum
I know that Willa understands all this quite well (and writes so eloquently about it) that you may want to check out her blog.
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CKwasniewski
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Molly,
It is said that what makes a "great book" great is that one can always come back to it and receive fresh insight. There is always more to be gotten out of it, and as a person matures, he is able to find more meaning, new insights. A great book can be read with profit at any age and there is always more to discover.
I certainly did not completely understand Plato when reading him in high school, but it completely changed my life--taught me to think, inspired me with ideals and truth, and finally led me to the Catholic Church.
Behind the MODG thought is also that children need to read the "good books" first before the "great books." And that is true. However, I do think that lots of high school students could manage some great books. Let us consider that schoolboys in the 18th century were reading Homer--in the original Greek!
Also, the MODG position assumes that children will become intellectually proud if they have read some great books? That does not HAVE to be the case--if they are taught correctly and in an atmosphere of intellectual humility.
I think that the practical answer to the question of when to read great books has to be based on each child. Some may be ready at age 16-17 to read Plato or Homer, and some may not. Only the teacher can determine whether the intellectual background and emotional maturity is there.
The MODG highschool curriculum, imo, is too light in terms of its content (NOT in terms of its workload!) and the Kolbe one as written seems to me to go too far in the other extreme--very intense!
Clear as mud?
ck
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teachingmyown
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CKwasniewski wrote:
Also, the MODG position assumes that children will become intellectually proud if they have read some great books? That does not HAVE to be the case--if they are taught correctly and in an atmosphere of intellectual humility.
Clear as mud?
ck |
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I think this was her main point. The fear would be these kids would get to college believing that they already "knew" the book and thus were not open to learning more.
I agree that this doesn't have to be the case.
Much clearer than mud! Thanks!
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hopalenik
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Hi,
I went to a catholic highschool that contained the last vestiges of classical education. My reading load was similar to that of Kolbe academy (although I have not studied it too closely yet). I can say, that there is validity to both points of view and it probably depends on the student the most. I read Jane Eyre in 4th grade and Thackeray in 5th, and all of Jane Austen by the beginning of 6th. I believed that I knew it all but that is because I had never been given "good books" to read at my grade level. Mind you I taught myself to read at 3 and finished the entire Little Women series by the end of K. I read too much, too soon. I learned from that only to read for plot but I read all those books again in highschool and I still loved them. They didn't scare me, I found the reading load in highschool to be a cakewalk because I had already done it before...
I don't think that every Great Book she be studied in highschool, something has to be left for college and later in life. But I do think that it is selling a highschool student short, to leave them with the easier books that MODG has...there has to be a medium. I guess my intention is to pray about each child. Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina were established as necessary for the AP World Lit exam when I took it in 1990. I know that Laura Berquist has spoken about both books as being inappropriate for the highschooler. I happen to disagree for some children. I personally, think that both books could be used as some fabulous discussions right before your child leaves for college. The wrong/sinful choices that both of these women made were very clearly shown for there destructiveness and the juxtaposition that the authors gave against each of these characters could so easily be used to sear a mark into your child's conscience. I still can never forget my study of Madame Bovary-how she weaped and fainted and reached such emotional highs over the falsely romantic world of romance novels-yet her husband was the one really and truelly facing life and death situations as a country doctor but she saw him as banal and boring. How often do college students come home and see their family as boring and dull in comparison to the rest of the world?
But I definetely think it depends on the kid. Not everyone is up to that challenge no matter how well prepared but not every child is going to assume they no it all either....Just my thoughts....
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JuliaT
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It's funny that this thread should come up now. I have been listening to a CD of a lecture given by Laura Berquist where she discusses this exact issue. She said in the lecture that a high school student cannot possibly be mature or experienced enough to handle all of the themes that the Great Books carry. She says that good books should be read in high school and the Great Books should be left for college.
I have some problems with this. First, I don't think the good books are good enough for a high schooler. When I think of the good books, I think of something that should be read in the middle school years. I don't think they are very challenging to a high school student.
Second, do colleges even read The Great Books anymore? Maybe if the child goes to a Liberal Arts college, but they are becoming few and far between. I live in Canada and the universtities and colleges around here do not even dabble in the Great Books. Maybe colleges in other areas are different.
Thirdly, I would rather that my child go through some of the Great Books under the convering of our worldview. I don't want a college professor, who will probably not have the same worldview as our family, teaching the themes of these books. I would like to prepare my child with our worldview first then look at the Great Books with that worldview.
Lastly, I agree with the others, I think a student can read a Great Book and come away with something that will give them food for thought. They won't get everything from that book, but this will lay the groundwork for when they (hopefully) read it again in the future.
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Willa
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I like the perspective of Andrew Campbell who wrote Latin Centered Curriculum. I think there is real formative value in pondering a few of the Great Books the teenage years or even earlier, perhaps. I just don't think it ought to become literary clutter, so I like the "non multa sed multum" approach.
Personally, I think Kolbe steers a good balance, but I also think MODG has some neat, high quality "Good Books" (like Chesterton's Battle of Lepanto, TS Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral to take two instances) that I would hate the children to miss out on, knowing that most likely they would not encounter them in most colleges.
CS Lewis wrote once:
Quote:
| “An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only. There is hope for a man who has never read Malory or Boswell or Tristaram Shandy or Shakespeare’s Sonnets: But what can you do with a man who says he ‘has read’ them, meaning he has read them once, and thinks that this settles the matter? … We do not enjoy a story fully at first reading. Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid asleep, are we at leisure to savour the real beauties. Till then, it is like wasting great wine on a ravenous natural thirst which merely wants cold wetness." |
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I think in the old days high schoolers not only read the Great Books, but read them in the original languages, most ordinarily. My father read Homer in Greek and Virgil in Latin before he graduated from high school. So it's hard for me to believe that a high schooler nowadays is incapable of approaching the Iliad, for instance, or Dante's Divine Comedy, or Milton's Paradise Lost.
Sure, they won't get everything out of it that they would in their maturer years. But that doesn't matter, because the Great Books can't really be read exhaustively at any age.
My family personally does a bit of a balance. There are some Kolbe high school books I skip. I usually have the children read many of the MODG selections in addition, because I do think those "Good Books" are a fertile soil for future study of any kind. But I usually find that my high schoolers are fully capable of developing an age-appropriate relationship with a few of the suitable Great Books and it often seems to inspire a love for those books that is only deepened when they reread at a deeper level in the college years.
I'm actually thinking of reading the Iliad out loud to my 12 year old next year -- I read it to my then 15 year old a few years back and it was immensely rewarding. I definitely don't believe in bringing college-level analysis down to junior high and high school levels -- I think that tends to do more harm than good, but reading and enjoying, that seems different to me and less likely to impart a "been there done that" type attitude towards a Great Book.
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mariB
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Our whole family is on the Jane Austen kick right now. My 16 year old boy is reading Emma. We read Pride and Prejudice aloud and are listening to Northanger Abby on tape. When I say the whole family...I mean the 4 and 8 year old included!
I am so glad we are doing this because as a child and teenager I was not exposed to any of the books by Jane Austen.
The little ones like to play tea and dress up and pretend they are Miss Smith and Miss Woodhouse from Emma.
There is a lot I love about MODG. We have used them throughout our homeschooling but I also love the Great Books.
BTW some of the books from Berquist's list are considered Great Books (especially the Ancients study in high school) and I got to tell you it was a little tricky for our older ones to get through
The Histories by Herodotus in 7th grade. We had to read it aloud together:)
I love this thread and you guys have inspired me to read a Shakespearen play out loud. (We usually try to read at least one aloud each year.)
I also love the look of Kolbe Academy ... very tempting!
Although The Pearl by Steinbeck is not considered a Great Book, I read it in high school and then I read it again a few years ago. I am so glad that I had read it previously because I loved comparing my thoughts about it as a 17 year old and as a 40+ year old:)
I love the thumbs up by C. S. Lewis about revisting the Great Books. My 16 year old is constantly doing this and I have always thought it was a good idea...wonderful training on HOW to write!
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Christine
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Willa wrote:
My father read Homer in Greek and Virgil in Latin before he graduated from high school. So it's hard for me to believe that a high schooler nowadays is incapable of approaching the Iliad, for instance, or Dante's Divine Comedy, or Milton's Paradise Lost.
Sure, they won't get everything out of it that they would in their maturer years. But that doesn't matter, because the Great Books can't really be read exhaustively at any age.
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I read the books mentioned by Willa in my high school English class (in English) and loved them. I loved them even more in college because I had a little bit of familiarity with them. With each reading of a Great Book, I have found that I learn or understand more than I did the first time. Kolbe's literature requirements look very similar to my high school's requirements.
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Willa
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I just wanted to add quickly that I think Mother of Divine Grace's focus is to prepare the child for a Thomas Aquinas College type education where the Great Books are indeed covered quite well. For that reason MODG may think it more fruitful to emphasize the Very Good Books in the earlier years. It might be a specific policy found to be productive in the curriculum's particular focus, not a wholesale across the board judgment.
So I don't think we're talking in the context of a Mother of Divine Grace critique here but just trying to steer through the reasons for the choices different homeschools and homeschool providers might make.
Also, I am pretty sure that MODG does have the Iliad and Odyssey, at least, in their Ancient History syllabus, so it's not like the Great Books are ignored.
Also, there is a bit of a continuum with MODG -- the material definitely gets steeper in the senior year -- my oldest used the American Government course and it was quite stiff -- reading Aquinas, Federalist and Anti-Federalists, and Toqueville.
So I don't see Kolbe/MODG as polar opposites at all but rather, slightly different prudential emphases. We tended to use a combination through the high school years of my three oldest.
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CKwasniewski
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I want to add that a friend told me this weekend that Kolbe has recently toned their highschool syllabus down somewhat, taking out some of the more difficult or controversial material (e.g., Voltaire).
Sounds like it would be worthwhile to look at both Kolbe and MODG carefully.
ck
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Erin
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Ladies, this is a fascinating discussion. I am really enjoying it.
Can you explain/link to Great Books/Good Books lists?
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Willa
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It refers to the distinction made by John Senior in Restoration of Christian Culture -- explanation here
Quote:
"The Great Books movement of the last generation has not failed as much as fizzled, not because of any defect in the books - 'the best that has been thought and said,' in Matthew Arnold's phrase - but like good champagne in plastic bottles, they went flat.
To change the figure, the seeds are good but the cultural soil has been depleted; the seminal ideas of Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine and St. Thomas thrive only in an imaginative ground saturated with fables, fairy tales, stories, rhymes, and adventures: the thousand books of Grimm, Anderson, Stevenson, Dickens, Scott, Dumas and the rest.
Taking all that was best of the Greco-Roman world into itself, Western tradition has given us the thousand good books as a preparation for the great ones - and for all studies in the arts and sciences. Without them all studies are inhumane. The brutal athlete and the foppish aesthete suffer vices opposed to the virtue of Newman's gentleman. Anyone working at college, whether in the pure arts and sciences or the practical ones, will discover he has made a quantum leap when he gets even a small amount of cultural ground under him: he will grow up like an undernourished plant suddenly fertilized and watered. |
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Here is one possible list of 1000 Good Books. Obviously, mileage will vary. Most people will think of a few of their own favorites that aren't on a given list. I think that's part of the fertility of the Good BOok soil -- sharing your own favorites with your children.
Here is one list of the 100 Great Books
Here is John Senior's list of the 1000 Good Books (divided by grade level)
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Erin
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Well I think all three lists are pretty meaty.
I remember seeing John Senior's list (Angelicum Academy) before, although I would have chosen some of the books a couple of grades later. Am I alone in thinking this?
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CKwasniewski
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The grade divisions are Angelicum Academy's, corresponding to their courses, I would assume. John Senior grouped in larger chunks by age spans 2-7, 7-12, 12-16 and 16-20.
Blessings,
ck
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Lara Sauer
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I would like add here that I would like their first experience of the "great" books to be filtered through the moral lens of our home. I remember studying Proust in my college French class and was so thankful that I studied it with a fairly faithful priest on the first go around, then with the secular Swedish professor the second time. The priest pulled out the symbolism with the eyes of the Church, whereas, the Swedish professor pulled out the symbolism from a very "Fruedian" perspective, if you know what I mean. 
To me, the beauty of a classical model curriculum is the constant recycling of the subjects being studied. In the modern system, a particular subject area might be covered one year for mastery and then never looked at again...think here, studying the American capital cities in 4th grade. And then we are surprised when our high schoolers don't remember which is the capital of South Dakota and which is the capital of North Dakota.
The classical model on the other hand revisits most areas three or fout times throughout the 12 years of education, going into greater and greater depth with each restudying. My children will already have had as their model re-looking at past subjects, so I actually think they would be surprised not to see some of these same areas brought up in a college setting. In fact, I think they would be more likely to pursue a class in the classics since they have some familiarity with them then if they had never seen them before. I myself studied French for 4 years in high school, and rather than figuring I had learned enough, I went on to major in it in college. We generally go on to study what we know and love. I think it the rare student indeed who in college chooses an area of study that would be entirely new to them.
GREAT subject for discussion, by the way!
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Willa
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CKwasniewski wrote:
The grade divisions are Angelicum Academy's, corresponding to their courses, I would assume. John Senior grouped in larger chunks by age spans 2-7, 7-12, 12-16 and 16-20.
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Yes, exactly. Kolbe publishes a booklet with John Senior's list in the original groupings. I couldn't seem to find John Senior's precise listing online though I think it used to be somewhere.
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Willa
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hopalenik
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Lara Sauer wrote:
| I would like add here that I would like their first experience of the "great" books to be filtered through the moral lens of our home. I remember studying Proust in my college French class and was so thankful that I studied it with a fairly faithful priest on the first go around, then with the secular Swedish professor the second time. The priest pulled out the symbolism with the eyes of the Church, whereas, the Swedish professor pulled out the symbolism from a very "Fruedian" perspective, if you know what I mean. |
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I know exactly what you mean. My Catholic highschool did not do a good jump pulling out the morality and the symbolism in most of the good or great works that I read but in college it was all distorted or reversed. If I don't send my children to an Acquinas or Magdalene or Christomdom I will definetely be covering some of those more difficult works in the senior year, so that my kids will have a chance of seeing the symbolism in a Catholic light.
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SallyT
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I've been teaching ancient and classical literature in our homeschool high-school co-op this year, and here are some thoughts I've formulated . . .
When I put the course together, my starting point was the idea that cultural literacy, as in knowledge of the literature which has fed the Western cultural imagination, was a crucial building block for a higher level of education. My husband is a college teacher who has been laboring away as an adjunct in some less-than-impressive local colleges, and among the many things which he finds horrifying about his students' lack of preparation for college work is their complete and utter ignorance of any kind of Western historical or literary tradition (his theory is that they all learned what they learned from one single imaginary book: Martin Luther King and the Founding of America, but that's another story). Shakespeare? Never read him. Thoreau? Never heard of him. Beowulf? Isn't that, like, an endangered species or something?
Now, you can't and shouldn't read everything in high school, but at least to know the story of the Trojan War and the events of The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid seems really critical to me, because the rest of Western lit looks back to that one mythical-historical event. So this year we read all those things -- I didn't so much care WHAT translation the kids read, and I let them choose "children's" versions, like Padraic Colum's, because at this stage I just wanted to be sure EVERYONE at least knew the story. We read The Crito, because it's not that hard. We read Antigone for the same reason. Later they can go on to read more Sophocles, but at least they've got their foot in the door, and they know that they CAN read Greek drama and understand it. And when they encounter these works again, as they assuredly will (well, you hope, anyway), they will both read with the greater understanding and insight of maturity, and they will have some schemata in place for reading, so that they don't just imbibe unquestioningly what some postmodern professor has to say about them. AND if they happen to get my husband for theology, he'll be really relieved to have some students who have actually read something.
We also read some "good" books, by the way -- right now they're reading either Helena by Evelyn Waugh, or The Restless Flame by Louis de Wohl -- for historical context, mostly, and also to see what more modern authors make of ancient stories, legends, and history. (Now it occurs to me to wish that I'd had them compare either Restless Flame or Helena to Shaw's Pygmalion, which we also read: what an author of faith makes of an ancient story vs. what an atheist makes of it).
At home we don't really follow the classical model, by the way, but I do push good/great books. My little kids know the story of The Odyssey, as did my olders from an early age; my oldest read Paradise Lost when she was 11, because there it was on the shelf. I haven't really censored my kids' reading, beyond just trying to make sure that tripe doesn't make it into our house -- I find that they pretty much self-censor without thinking about it, their minds filtering out what they don't understand, and dealing with things emotionally at their own level. I'm not going to read them, for example, the blinding of Gloucester in King Lear, but I'm also not going to worry if they happen to pick up the book and start reading it. If it gets too intense, or too mystifying, they'll simply put it down or skip the parts they don't get, and that's all right in my view.
By the way -- and this really is an aside -- I haven't used much MODG, or any Kolbe or Seton or any of the other complete curricula, but here's something I've noticed in my co-op students this year: an overwhelming desire to turn absolutely everything they read into a Catholic allegory. "How Aeneas=Christ," that kind of thing. Clearly I want to teach from a Catholic moral standpoint, and I think I do, but at some point you have to deal with the literature as literature on its own terms, if that makes any sense. (Actually, as I said to them in class, I think Aeneas has a lot more in common with Abraham . . . that would be an interesting essay topic, too, to compare The Aeneid with the story of Abraham as "foundational" cultural stories . . . ). Anyway, I guess one thing I've been searching for a way to do is to teach literature from a Catholic moral standpoint, which is an adventure to me, because it's certainly not how I was taught at any level of my education, but to get past the need to make everything simply an allegory about how Catholicism is true, end of story. Ultimately I think that's where great literature does point, as all truth points to Christ in the end, but not in such simplistic terms.
I fear I'm not saying this very well, and now I've got to go teach that very class, so I have to leave it hanging.
Sally
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Castle in the Sea
Abandon Hopefully
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4Real Forums : Philosophy of Education
Topic: Classical education- great books
