GMS - Professional Tutoring - Recommended Reading: Humanities

Recommended Reading: Humanities

A good book for homeschoolers -- or anyone wanting to make sure their children get a good education -- is The Well-Trained Mind. From the book's
Website:

Teach your child at home or supplement his or her classroom learning — this book provides you with the

techniques,

curriculum, and resources

necessary to ensure that your child's education is the best it can be. As a

parent, you worry

about your child's education. With thirty students per

classroom, even the most dedicated

teachers often can't give each

student the individual attention so urgently needed, and neither teachers nor parents

can control the social environment of

many schools. Is your child getting lost in the system, becoming bored, losing

his or her natural eagerness to learn?

Maybe it's time to take charge of your child's education — by doing it

yourself.

This book will instruct you, step by step, on how to give your child an academically rigorous, comprehensive

education

from preschool through high

school; one that will train him or her to read, to think, to understand, to be

well-rounded

and curious about learning. Through a language-intensive

process that organizes learning around the

maturing capacity of

the child's mind, your child will receive the complete education that today's overcrowded

schools are often unable to

provide. You do have control over what and how your child learns; The Well-Trained

Mind will give you the tools you'll

need to teach him or her with confidence and success.

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The book “Market Education: The Unknown History," by Andrew J. Coulson, provides a good history of education, going back centuries. Until I have time to
read this book, this recommendation will have to be based on positive reviews from reliable sources. Andrew Coulson's Website describes the book as follows:

Market Education combines public opinion data, twenty-five centuries of historical precedents, and the latest

research to

find out how schools should be

organized to best meet the needs of families and citizens. Special

emphasis is placed on

the relative effectiveness of government-run school systems

versus markets of independent

and competing schools. All of

the major school reform proposals, from national curriculum standards to charter

schools

and vouchers, are also

examined.

Market Education "does not simply point to a few good schools here or there, or to some redeeming qualities of

schools, and then hope that they will

magically be duplicated. Nor does it propound a single cookie-cutter

definition of a

'good' education. Instead, it offers a practical way of bringing

responsive and innovative schools into

being on a

widespread basis; schools adapted to the specific needs of the families they serve, and accessible to

all,

not just the

wealthy." --From the Introduction

Thomas Aquinas College in California has a good curriculum. While I do not advocate the Socratic method as a fundamental method of teaching, as they say
they use it on their Website -- though it is a very effective tool, if properly used as a secondary method to lecture -- I do like their use of the "Great Books."
Jesse Wise and Susan Wise Bauer, authors of The Well-Trained Mind, also advocate reading the "Great Books." The Well-Trained Mind has lists of
recommended books; Thomas Aquinas College has a list of their Website, as well. On the curriculum page of TAC's Website, they say:

The textbooks that most colleges and universities use are soon outdated; they quickly go out of fashion and are

discarded. New ways to think about

things unceasingly replace the old. Yet a consensus exists among generations

of thinkers and writers that certain works have enduring relevance. They

ver go out of style. Why is this?

Lucretius was a Roman poet and philoso

pher who 2,000 years ago wrote a treatise called "On the Nature of

Things." This title could well describe any

of the Great Books. These works - whether philosophy or science,

history or drama - describe things as they really are. They reveal the reality at the

core of human experience, a

reality that - regardless of time or place - does not change. A person hungry for wisdom can return to these books

over and

over again without exhausting their meaning. These are the books that have the power to shape human

events and to change lives.

The following is a list of works read in whole or in part in the College's curriculum. They are not all of equal

weight. Some are regarded as masterworks,

while others serve as sources of opinions that either lead students to

the truth, or make the truth more evident by opposition to it.

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Poetry of Berton Braley can be found her e. Braley was a popular American poet at the turn of the 20th Century. I have heard that, when he was alive and
publishing, his name was a household word, and copies of some of his poems were kept in kitchens and living rooms.

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Poetry of Victor Hugo can be found here. Victor Hugo is best known as the author of Les Miserable and
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, though he wrote other great novels such as Ninety-Three, The Man Who Laughs,
Hans of Iceland, and Toilers of the Sea. But Hugo wrote some beautiful poetry as well.

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Some of the work of the short-story writer O. Henry can be found on the website of a local college: NHMCCD. O. Henry was a genius with words and
surprise endings. His stories reflect the joy of a 'surprise around every corner.' They are worth reading for the pure joy of the stories, but also because of the
vocabulary. His stories would be good for a student to start reading months and years before he or she takes any standardized exams. The stories should help
the student's vocabulary dramatically.

On the subject of art, you can see the most beautiful paintings in the world, by the masters of painting, at the Art Renewal Center, the American Renaissance
for the Twenty-First Century, and the Quent Cordair Gallery.

Some highly recommended books on Greek and Roman history are The Greek Experience by CM Bowra,
The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton and The Roman Way by Edith Hamilton. They can be found in a search for used books, such as at AbeBooks.com.

Bowra presents the essence of Greek civilization and thought, and does so with some of the most beautiful writing you will find. His writing is poetic in itself,
never mind the beauty, grandeur and heroism of the subject itself: ancient Greece. Hamilton gets to the essence of Greek civilization as well, bringing to bear her
own viewpoint and giving us details of Greek life different from those of Bowra. Hamilton's Roman Way shows us ancient Rome as seen through the eyes of its
literary masters, so it teaches us Roman history while exposing us to the finest Roman literature.

Education

Literature

Painting

History