Posted on 04/24/2014 2:27:32 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
One of the weaknesses of the school model of education is that it squeezes out great books that don’t fit neatly into one or another of those artificial divisions of learning we call “subjects.” We don’t start with, “What books have had a deep impact in shaping what I am?” But with “What subjects am I supposed to be teaching, and which books will help me teach them?” I don’t teach my children subjects—I seek to instill in them wisdom. Which means I have them read the books that gave me wisdom.
(Excerpt) Read more at ligonier.org ...
Good stuff, even if you ARE NOT a teenager.
ping!
And so you should be. In all the important books of the world, 20% happen to be by yourself? Amazing!
Bfl
Yes, that’s an excellent choice. And if he wants students to study economics, Thomas Sowell’s books are the right choice.
My home-schooled kid hated novels. He read technical manuals and anything having to do with the U.S.Constitution and Declaration of Independence.
IMO, the most productive education method is Delight Directed Learning.
Discover what delights your student and make all subjects involve the thing that delights him or her. The thing that delights might change through the years, so change with it.
We homeschooled all the way though 12th grade and our child then earned a degree with honors from a State university that does not kick God out of its programs.
I graduated from a Catholic High School in 1970. The school had reading lists for each grade but the only book I can remember reading was “Catcher in the Rye.” For all the others I used Cliff Notes.
Animal Farm by George Orwell.
The list is in sore need of some non secular material. We’re raising children, not monks.
I would have thought the Bible would be in this list, and first.
Ping for article of interest to HS'ers, possible discussion thread.
Another one, perhaps for high school level, would be Sowell’s Basic Economics.
Oh, absolutely. You cannot really understand American history, or Western Civilization without reading the Bible. I homeschooled our three kids, and we read it.
My four had to read and understand:
1. Bible
2. Animal Farm
3. 1984
4. Brave New World
5. Earth Abides
6. The Long Walk
7. The entire Uncle Eric Series
8. The Little Britches Series
9. James Dobson’s book On Preparing for Adulthood
10.All the other book they could, our home was filled with over 3000 of them and we had several libraries at our disposal.
Here's the list:
The Epic of Gilgamesh
The Code of Hammurabi
Isaiah
Beowulf
Genesis
On the Origin of Species
Brave New World
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Hobbit
The Federalist Papers
Civil Disobedience
Common Sense
Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans (Plutarch’s ‘Lives’)
The Importance of Being Earnest
The Aeneid
The Odyssey
The Iliad
Herodotus’s ‘Histories’
Aeschylus’s plays
The Chronicles of Narnia (the whole set)
Eagle of the Ninth
The Screwtape Letters
‘Til We Have Faces (CS Lewis)
The Shorter Catechism
1984
Bondage of the Will (Martin Luther)
Canterbury Tales
Confessions (Augustine)
The Divine Comedy
Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Bede)
History of the Kings of Britain (Geoffrey of Monmouth)
Macbeth
Julius Caesar
Romeo and Juliet
Henry V
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Song of Roland
The Rule of St. Benedict
Richard III
The Lord of the Rings (all three books)
Midsummer Night’s Dream
Howard Pyle’s “The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood”
The Nine Tailors
The Anti-Federalist Papers
The Communist Manifesto
The Great Gatsby
Mein Kampf (excerpted)
Of Plymouth Plantation (Bradford)
Pilgrim’s Progress (Bunyan)
Reflections on the Revolution in France (Burke)
The Social Contract
A Tale of Two Cities
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
The Westminster Confession
Animal Farm
Leviticus
Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography
Death of a Salesman
Frankenstein
Gulliver’s Travels
How Should we Then Live? (Schaeffer)
The Old Man and the Sea
Killer Angels
Pride and Prejudice
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
To Kill a Mockingbird
Annals of Imperial Rome (Tacitus)
El Cid
Josephus (selections)
The Unaborted Socrates
Ovid’s Metamorphoses
Meditations (Marcus Aurelius)
Plato’s Republic
Aesop’s Fables
Phantastes (George MacDonald)
The Gospels
Troilus and Cressida
For fun, my nine-year-old is reading through Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series. I have been delighted to see a love of reading spring up in my children from an early age... in my experience, it's the key to much of the rest of learning.
This list represents part (not all) of what my eldest two children were exposed to as we homeschooled using Veritas Press's Omnibus curriculum. Those two are now in college. We have since switched to Classical Conversations for our younger two, as it's somewhat less labor-intensive.
That’s the great thing about home schooling - customization. No need for one size fits all.
I did not see SILAS MARINER on the list anywhere. That novel is so important you will swear off reading anything for the rest of your life!
I had to read it in High School, TWICE! Thought I was gonna die.
Great list—that’s an education.
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