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ELaurie

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    S/O of Humanities thread

    in High School and Self-Education Board

    Posted

    Hi Elinor,

     

    Good morning. :001_smile:

     

    If you are looking to tighten things up a bit, I would recommend that you focus on output rather than input. It's tough to do with all of the paperwork that comes with TOG, but output is the goal of any high school humanities program.

     

    It's easier to understand if you've been through the whole high school trajectory at least once, but you can see the forest from the beginning. It is possible. But you have to remember to keep lifting your chin when the temptation is to see the days and the hours in 9th grade. The days and the hours support the big goals; don't forget that. ;)

     

    Reading. Writing. Arithmetic. Really - sounds simple, but those are the still the goals in high school.

     

    Reading - becomes a means of understanding. A way of gathering not just information, but a means toward critical thinking. Rather than gathering facts, reading becomes a way to gather arguments. Opinions. Facts. Structural arguments. Reading becomes a means to understanding. A switch for sure. But learning how to read in order to understand is really the next step for rhetoric-stage students. It's tough to do because they think they know how to read. ;) Teaching them to read with an eye toward nuance can be tough, but that's the goal in high school. Do they know when they are being had? Do they know a beautiful sentence when they see it? (It's a bit like walking through an art gallery. Are they flying through with more interest in the coffee shop at the end of the route or are they being brought up short to stare slack-jawed as they stroll through the rooms?) Can they spot a beautiful argument? Can they feel the weight of it? Kids at this stage can find the climax in a work of fiction. And they can feel it when the author begins that final push toward the climax. They can sense the switch in the text; they begin to read with more intensity - here it comes! Can they spot the same thing in a well-written work of nonfiction? Is the whole thing just a string of chapters and paragraphs or can they spot the arch? And can they spot the point where they started to hear the engine rev as it climbed the hill toward the climax? Ah-ha! Here it comes. :001_smile: Now they are learning to read.

     

    Writing - becomes a tool to encourage critical thinking. Writing becomes a way of understanding - both for the author and those who read her work.

     

    Between the two you find the discussion.

     

    The TOG model (which of course they didn't invent): Read. Think. Write.

     

    Just outlining and time-lining through HoAW won't get you there. Your daughter needs to practice her research and writing skills. Instead, I would recommend that you trade off weeks. Practice outlining Susan's arguments. I wouldn't have her outline the whole chapter every time. Sometimes you should outline with an eye toward the whole chapter: what is the big idea in this chapter and what are the supporting ideas? How does she transition between them? (Mark in the book.) Does she list the things she is going to cover? If so, where and how. Does she summarize at the end? If so, how? Does she insert her opinion/conclusions? When? How can you tell? Retrace her argument. Is it inductive or deductive? Are any of her propositions sketchy? Which ones? Does she tell you that she's not sure about this or that? Or does she gloss over it? Why?

     

    But then sometimes you should spend your time magnifying a shorter section of the chapter. She does a great job with describing characters. Study that. Write your own description of someone you know using the techniques. Or she tells the tale of an event. She gives background. Then she slows down the narrative to focus on a particular event. Time flies by in the first paragraph and then slows to a crawl in the second. Why? How does this technique affect the reader. What points of view does she use to describe the event? In it? Over it? Through it? Can your daughter do the same? Pick an event. Try it.

     

    Then the research. College kids need to know how to research a topic, develop a thesis, and write a paper. Over and over and over. Practice this. You dd will thank you. If you just spent time describing a character, give you daughter the option of choosing a character in history to research and write about. Help her go to the library and research. Find books. Find articles on Google Scholar. Scan. Develop a plan for writing about that person and DO IT! Or write about an event. Anything in the ancient world. If you're studying ancient Egypt, you could pick something from ancient Egypt, but you don't have to. It doesn't matter really. It's the process that matters. For example, undergrads get nebulous assignments all the time: "Discuss the roll of women in Genesis and the Odyssey." Learning to machete that thing down to a 3-5 page paper size with an actual thesis is no small task. But they are going to be asked to do it repeatedly. Teach them. Practice it. Till they can do it in their sleep.

     

    No college prof is going to ask your daughter to outline a book. It's a necessary skill if your dd is going to understand the arguments of others and is going to generate them herself. But it's a tool. You wouldn't hammer nails into a board for an entire year. Nor would you play scales on the piano for a whole year. Yes, you play scales. Every day. But you also work on piano pieces. Eventually the child has that ah-ha moment, "Oh. That's why we do scales."

     

    Make sure you give her some piano pieces to work on. Scales can be mind-numbing.

     

    Peace,

    Janice

     

    Enjoy your little people

    Enjoy your journey

     

    P.S. Kids don't need to read the Iliad in its entirety to be well-educated. Excerpts really are fine. Read the Odyssey; it has more action which makes it more accessible. If she falls in love with Homer, you might go back and read the Iliad cover to cover. If I was short on time, I would just do the excerpts. No w orries! Cranking out those short papers in 9th grade is what keeps the wolves away, not reading the Iliad.

    Oh, my goodness, Janice! This post is more helpful than you can imagine! Thank you :001_wub:

    Assigning "History of the Ancient World"

    in High School and Self-Education Board

    Posted

    I plan to use HOAW with my dc this year. I plan to focus on the history of western civilization - not because the history of India and China are less important, but because there are 85 chapters in the book, and only 36 weeks in our school year.

     

    With that in mind, I made a list of the chapters I plan to cover in a more cursory fashion, perhaps just listening the the audio book and doing the map work. I've scheduled two to three chapters per week for our school year; during 23 of the weeks I plan to cover two chapters and for 13 of the weeks we will be covering 3 chapters.

     

    HTH!

     

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