4Real Forums: Spine for World History?

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High School Years and Beyond
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Topic: Spine for World History?

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Misty
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Posted: March 08 2014 at 1:10pm \| IP Logged

I am looking for a good spine for World History 10th/11th grader. Wondering what some of you have used and why you liked it or not?
Thanks
Misty

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Misty

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CrunchyMom
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Posted: March 08 2014 at 1:41pm \| IP Logged

I anticipate using either Winston Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples or our own Sally Thomas's Abandon Hopefully program for Western Civ.

I, personally, think that there is plenty of opportunity in a solid Western Civ curriculum to hit all the major areas of "world" history.

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Lindsay
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CrunchyMom
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Posted: March 08 2014 at 1:46pm \| IP Logged

Oh and I havent read it, but you might look at Anthony Esolen's Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization. I haven't read it, but everything he writes is splendid to read.

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Lindsay
Five Boys(6/04) (6/06) (9/08)(3/11),(7/13), and 1 girl (5/16)
My Symphony

[URL=http://mysymphonygarden.blogspot.com/]Lost in the Cosmos[/UR

DianaC
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Posted: April 07 2014 at 6:09pm \| IP Logged

CrunchyMom wrote:

Oh and I havent read it, but you might look at Anthony Esolen's Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization. I haven't read it, but everything he writes is splendid to read.

Thank you for this recommendation! I also have enjoyed Anthony Esolen's writing, particularly the way his Catholic understanding underpins everything he writes. We have been working on a course on the Foundations of Western Civilization (using a Great Courses video course taught by Prof. Noble). This will be a great review-read for us this summer.

SallyT
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Posted: April 07 2014 at 8:40pm \| IP Logged

My oldest read the Esolen book during high school -- it's a great resource to pull together a lot of living and primary-source readings. One theme throughout that book is the development of strands of philosophical concepts/ideas, so that for every era you have names of philosophers/works that you can then have your student read, in whole or in excerpt. It's not a terribly long book -- she read it in the fall semester of her senior year, as part of a "History of Ideas" course we did -- but definitely provides a readable timeline that can then be fleshed out with all kinds of literary and other texts.

I'm now trying to remember why I haven't used it just that way this time around . . . and I can't!

Sally

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SallyT
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Posted: April 08 2014 at 11:04am \| IP Logged

What we have used for ancient/medieval/renaissance thus far (not one spine but multiple ones -- I think of it as historical-context reading):

Ancient/Classical World:
Warren Carroll's Founding of Christendom
Werner Keller's The Bible as History
Plutarch's Lives
Great Courses Foundations of Western Civilization lecture series, first half (if you have an Audible account, you can spend a credit and get it for the cost of your monthly subscription, which is a fabulous deal)

End of Roman Empire-Renaissance
How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization
many archived online issues of Christian History magazine, which is not strictly Catholic but is excellent and FREE
Great Courses Foundations of Western Civ, second half
Dividing of Christendom, Christopher Dawson

I focus mostly on primary-source reading and literature, and use resources like these just to provide chronology and context. And I have found it easier to use a number of "spine-ish" books and not just one. When I do my next run through high school, I think I want to set up our reading schedule much more on the order of Ambleside Online, rather than trying to match spine texts exactly to time periods, which gets hard to do very neatly. I really wanted to assign Robert Wilken's new Christian history The First Thousand Years, which is fabulous, but didn't because I couldn't coordinate readings to go with it in the structure I had in my mind. Next time I think I'll just assign it as an all-year read, and let it overlap with other background readings.

But that's some years down the road. Right now I'm all about planning U.S. history and lit . . . :)

Sally

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