Is there any reason you can't read these with your kids?
I was magic in the classroom not because I was particularly smart, but because I knew the kids could do all the hard things I asked them to.
I think so many of you, adults, don't believe you can handle these things and I think that because many of you were good students. The part you might be missing that I also know is what the school system does to good students.
It tells them their entire value is based on them agreeing with the teacher to get the grade to check the box. And there is enormous risk in saying the unapproved thing. But guys like Aristotle and Faulkner often force you to say the unapproved thing, tow weigh it, to toss it around and sit with it. And that's REALLY scary in a society that rewards you for affirming the beliefs of the guy who signs your annual review, your contract, or audits your taxes.
If you think these books would be too hard or too boring, well, you're right. At first, they might be.
But imagine sitting beside your child and reading these things with her. Imagine the conversations you'd have about Plato alone, not to mention Dostoevskiy or O'Connor.
It's love that drives every single worthwhile thing in life.
I will untangle this knot if it kills me. I'm working with my 12 and 16 yo sons on American history and literature starting this week. I'll do my best to show you all how, but you don't really need me. You just need to love your kids enough to try it and enough courage to handle getting it wrong sometimes. Just like I knew it about my students, you have those things already.
Ok, this is incredible.
A new classical Catholic high school just opened in Fairfax County (St. Jerome Institute) — this is what a serious education looks like:
– Phones collected at the door
– Every class is a seminar discussion
– 15-20 students seated facing one another
– Art and music are required, NOT elective
– Math class teaches "the intrinsic beauty of math"
– Entire curriculum is integrated: philosophical and theological questioning in every class
And here's the literature section of the reading list:
9th grade (Exodus & Odyssey):
– Homer, Odyssey
– Genesis
– Plato, Euthyphro and Apology
– Virgil, Aeneid
– Exodus
– Beowulf
– Song of Roland
– Gospel of Luke
– Plato, Phaedo and Crito
– Acts of the Apostles
– Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
– Wilder, Our Town
10th grade (God & Nature):
– Creation myths
– Plato, Timaeus and Symposium
– Aristotle, De Anima
– Plotinus
– Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, Bonaventure, Aquinas
– Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
– Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
– Descartes, Meditations
– Bacon, Newton, Darwin
– Berry, Wilder, Tolkien
– Tocqueville
– Benedict XVI
– Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop
– Faulkner, The Bear
11th grade (God & the Human Person):
– Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
– Plato, Symposium
– Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
– Augustine, Confessions
– Shakespeare, Twelfth Night and King Lear
– Hobbes, Leviathan
– Swift, A Modest Proposal
– Austen, Pride and Prejudice
– Shelley, Frankenstein
– Hopkins
– O’Connor
– Martin Luther King Jr.
– Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
– John Paul II
12th grade (God & Society):
– Plato, Republic
– Dante, The Divine Comedy
– Aristotle, Politics
– Augustine, City of God
– Aquinas, De Regno
– Natural and human law
– Machiavelli, Hobbes
– Locke, Rousseau
– Marx and Engels
– Dignitatis Humanae, Evangelium Vitae, Centesimus Annus
– John Courtney Murray
– Leviticus
– Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
– The Declaration of Independence
– The Constitution
– The Federalist Papers
"They gain an in-depth knowledge of Western civilization from Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem through England and the founding of our own country."