Thanks to each of you for your kind words. I was afraid that post would be completely meaningless and impractical. I don't know if I can imagine a week, but let me see what comes to my mind. Let me begin with this insistance: we must teach our children from rest, and not from anxiety. The most important thing we must do as teachers/parents is to never let anxiety be our guide. It led Abraham into serious folly, and it kept Martha from hearing our Lord's words. In James we read, "The wisdom from above is first pure..." The word for pure means simple. Pure water is simple. It is nothing but water. Wisdom from above is nothing but wisdom. It drives away anxiety. We need this wisdom to inhabit our souls. That does not mean that we need to attain perfect wisdom before we start teaching, but that we need to "enter into" that wisdom before we teach. It's a relationship with Wisdom, not a memorization of His words. In that relationship, He will give you words to memorize, but He'll also give you time to memorize them. Outside of that relationship, you might memorize lots of His words and never enter into His wisdom. It's like Mary and Martha. Jesus didn't tell Martha it was OK to be busy, but Mary should also be left alone. He told her that "only one thing is needful and Mary has chosen that good part," which implies that Martha had not. However, Jesus knew and loved Martha. I have a theory about what happened after the Biblical story ended (by the way, you can read this story in Luke, chapter 10, verses 38-42. It's short.). I think Jesus spoke peace into Martha's soul after she was willing to receive it, which required that she physically set aside her anxieties and cares and physically sit down and listen to Him. I think she eventually calmed down and was totally receptive to what He was saying. And then I think He turned to her and said, "Martha, would you please get me a cup of tea?" He created her to serve and knew that it was the delight of her heart to serve. That was why He wanted to cleanse it (her impulse to serve) of anxiety. She'd lost the pleasure and was driven by cares and worries. I've learned over the years that teachers and especially home schooling moms have a lot of anxiety to deal with. You have an awful lot to be worried about. But you can't let that anxiety become your guide. If you do, then you will teach anxiety to your children instead of the peace you so earnestly seek. So when I envision a week of teaching, the first thing I envision is the personal commitment to stay in His rest. Get there at the beginning of the day and stay there. Each day. Things are going to happen, so I'm not talking about legally binding yourself to 60 minutes of prayer and Bible Study before the kids are up. I would suggest something simpler. Have some simple prayer that you pray every morning and keep in your heart throughout the day. For me, I have to keep it very short because I am very prone to anxiety and egotism. This prayer works very well for me: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me the sinner." It works especially well when I want to murder my 16 year old for not holding his pencil correctly or when I have those moments of insanity when I think I am somebody when I am nothing. From that state of rest you will know what your children need to learn and you will be able to discuss things without worrying about passing tests and getting into college. So here's an attempt to move closer to the week for a high school student. He should learn Latin, ideally from someone who knows it like Wes Callihan or Fritz Hinrichs or John Van Fossen. If you know it and have time, teach it. If not, get someone else to do it. If you can't afford that, get him Henle's Latin and tell him you want him to use it and that it is hard and boring, but at least he'll know what's expected of him. He should study Latin for 40-60 minutes/day, preferably in 20 minute chunks. He should learn math on the same pattern (someone who knows it, etc.). 40-60 minutes/day would be a great amount of time. He should learn math by thinking about it and exercising it, not by learning processes for their own sake. If he can't hear numbers sing, find a teacher who can and get him to play for him. He should read deeply, which means letters (history, literature, etc.). But you should focus on reading deeply, not doing the subject, which follows. The way to plunge head first into the depths of a book is not to do a literary analysis, but to ask the question at the heart of every story: Should he have done that (or: what should he do)? By answering that question, he'll learn how to read and how to think. It also makes it easier for you to discuss the book with him, because all you need to do is ask questions that help him dig more deeply. Character arcs, plots, themes, settings, etc. will begin to matter when you approach stories this way. It applies to history as much as it does to literature. He should write an essay every three weeks on what he is reading if you follow the LTW pattern. You can add other forms of writing if you like, but don't assign a lot of writing because you won't be able to keep up with assessing it, which is only slightly less important than his act of writing itself. Of course, he should be encouraged to keep a commonplace book or a journal, but not required, which rather defeats the point. Science is a little trickier, because he's so close, agewise, to actually being able to do science, as opposed to just learning about it (which is really what he can do with history, literature, philosophy, etc.). If he has good background in logic and grammar and observation, etc. he should be encouraged to explore his own scientific questions. However, he also needs to learn the history of science and the great scientific discoveries and theories. This should be taught, but not as a goal, as context. If he likes engines, let him study the history and development of the engine very closely. That will provide links and connections to the wider world of scientific discovery. But what you want him to learn in science classes is how to think like a scientist, which includes background knowledge, ordering and cataloging information, and looking for truth by any means necessary, with an analytical/critical approach. Prayer and time in the scriptures should probably be done separately, though the scriptures will permeate all his thoughts and your discussions, though I would encourage you not to force this. Boys, perhaps, especially seem to find that irritating. Pray when issues come up and at meals and to offer the day to the Lord. Teach them the disciplines and traditions you have learned. I would like to think he is also drawing at least two or three times a week, so that he can learn to see. The arts are about training the senses, and drawing/painting/sculpture trains one to see like nothing else. Music trains the ear to hear and should be taught for that reason, regardless of talen or ability. He might never be able to play well, but he'll always be able to hear better if he plays the piano or violin, for example. I would also recommend he cook at least once a week. This will train the taste buds and the nose. Let him cook literally anything he wants as long as you can afford it. Hot dogs are fine, as are complex and fancy meals. Let him decide. Other than that, let him study whatever he's interested in. If that is the Green Bay Packers, that's fine. Get four hours of Latin, math, letters, music, art, cooking, and science every day and it's amazing what you can cover. You might even find he's got so much time on his hands he starts reading Jane Austen. No, that won't happen, but you never know. This is, again, idealized. But that's because it isn't possible to be specific without a lot more knowledge that is none of my business. But I hope it's helpful. Thanks for asking.

Hi Kfamily, Thanks to Karen for recommending LTW. As for there being a CiRCE curriculum, I'm going to give you an unhelpful and cheeky answer: ;) Our curriculum is the seven liberal arts plus drawing, painting, and sculpture. Does that completely and totally answer your question? OK, I'll make my answer even worse. We believe that classical education is the cultivation of wisdom and virtue by nourishing the soul on truth, goodness, and beauty. That being the case, we cultivate wisdom by interaction with the "real world" (gardens, pets, home business, etc.) and great ideas expressed in great works of art. I don't really care which great works of art (books, music, painting, etc.) you encounter (except that you have to include The Bible and Homer), just so you do it fully engaged. This is the tradition you hand on to your children. We cultivate virtues by identifying and training them: the moral virtues, the intellectual virtues, and the physical virtues. A virtue is an ability that has been refined to excellence. A curriculum focuses on the intellectual virtues, so here you concentrate on language arts (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and mathematical arts (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy), using those great books again. You look continually for the true, the good, and the beautiful and you "gaze on them" when you find them. You discuss great books, historical events, etc. etc. I'm not a big fan of subjects, as they are an application of 20th century mistakes to education and they tend to lead to shallow thinking about lots of things, which is a waste of a good mind's time. I prefer the "tools of learning." So study Latin, Greek, Logic, Rhetoric, maths, music, fine arts, etc. so that your children learn to perceive reality from the soul. You'll need subjects for the transcripts, but to that end I recommend you draw them out from what you teach in the 7 liberal arts and the fine arts. It's easier than it sounds. Let's say you are teaching grammar (which includes reading at a high level). You read Julius Caesar and give your child credit for English, History, and whatever else your state or preferred college is looking for. It really isn't hard. As for the natural sciences, I'd begin with gardening (biology, chemistry, and physics combined and alive) and pet care. Have them observe closely and learn everything they can about something they love. That will necessarily grow into something more technical at the right time and in the right way. If there are other things you want your children to learn (and I don't know what would stand outside this), then just add it. I'll bet this was perfectly useless, wasn't it? I've been told it's idealistic, but what people often really mean by that is that they don't think it will get kids into college. I totally and vehemently disagree. I agree with Plautus who said: Virtus praemium est optimum "Virtue itself is the highest reward" He then went on to enumerate how everything else depends on virtue. We can't have the everything else that we want without virtue, but we won't have virtue if we seek everything so hard that we don't nourish the goose that lays the golden egg. And the goose is nothing other than virtue. One last word (really): do not be intimidated by the fear that you might miss something. If you cultivate wisdom and virtue and stay focused on that, your purposefulness will transcend the details. You'll find what you need when you need it. It's not easy, but it's much, much simpler than we've made it. Thanks for enduring to the end!

It seems to me that the way the assessment is provided makes all the difference. When I was a kid, I played basketball, baseball, and football constantly and got pretty good at them. But I never became very good, because I never was coached. So you need the mentor to help you improve. But the feedback has to be concrete and actionable, not abstract and confusing. It has to apply to something the writer is trying to improve. My daughter loved writing stories when she was about nine years old. She would have dialogues that could extend into infinity. So one day I told her, every story has a problem that the main character needs to deal with. After that, she wrote shorter stories because she had characters trying to solve problems. She also understood stories better. She wasn't threatened or demoralized or negatively impacted. She was instructed and received the instruction. But it has to be done right. I'm not sure how you could tell 12 or 20 or 30 kids all how to improve their writing at the same time and in the same way. Writing is a personal skill that requires personal attention.

You're very welcome. I'm glad that my life has a purpose after all! My brothers never would have believed it.:bigear:

Catherine, That's a good question. Let me approach it two ways. First, I want to encourage you to still focus on your child learning the tools of learning while he has time. It is agonizingly difficult to pick these things up as an adult, for the simple reason that responsibilities interfere. If he doesn't take the time now and in college (and he'd have to do it on his own - I don't think you should bother being involved), he's very unlikely ever to get another chance, or at least as good a one. The easiest way for someone his age to approach Aristotle's writings is through Mortimer Adler's Aristotle for Everybody. He might want to read that first, then do LTW or MP Logic, and then the one he doesn't do second. Second, to your question about the controversy between Bacon and Aristotle, I would start by reading Bacon's own writings if he is ready for that. Bacon is pretty outspoken about the need to recreate the human race based on his new discoveries (in this he lays a precedent that dominates philosophy and popular literature from the 17th to the 21st century). The very title Novum Organon is the throwing down of a gauntlet to the Aristotelian tradition. Any book on the history of philosophy will then describe the new direction taken under the lead of Descartes, Bacon, and other early modern or early Enlightenment thinkers. Some will favor it, a few will challenge it. I like these: The Unity of Philosophical Experience by Etienne Gilson (focuses more on Descartes than on Bacon, but covers that era and describes the nature of philosophy beautifully). Three insightful pages in a book well worth reading by Richard Rubenstein and called Aristotle's Children. The pages are 283-285, which describe the virulence of the rejection of Aristotle by 16th and 17th century thinkers like Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and Martin Luther. I'd check it out of the library just for those three pregnant pages, though the whole book is a history/philosophy buff's dream. I do hope this helps answer your question. The last thing I should say is a quotation from Dante: Much worse than uselessly he leaves the shore More full of error than he was before Who fishes for the truth, but lacks the art. If your son is interested in philosophy, please ensure that he masters the arts of thinking first. The ocean of philosophy is stormy and not to be rushed into without sound preparation.

Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry. Essential to understanding the cultural, social changes we went through, especially after WWII. If you like that, then read his short stories and other novels to see America from the inside over the course of the 20th century. He's the only author I know of who makes you feel in your bones the developments of the last 100 years and how they effected real people and their attitudes and beliefs.

If she is seeking a cure for cancer, I hope she spends time on great books. It's the creativity of an Einstein that we need to find those cures. That's why Einstein said: If you want to raise a smart child, read fairy tales. If you want to raise a smarter child, read more fairy tales.

Andrew Pudewa and I do a workshop on this question and we propose five essential paths to great writing: 1. Read great books closely 2. Study a foreign language, preferably Greek or Latin 3. Learn and apply grammar 4. Understand the nature, principles, elements, and forms of writing (this is for older students - high school, college, and so on) 5. Practice under a coach You really need all five to become "great."

You didn't ask about this, but another suggestion I would make is to try to make it more simple and direct by reducing the number of prepositional phrases: e.g. "how hard it is to make and keep a good friend."

Semi-colons should be used when you have two independent clauses (clauses that contain a subject and a predicate and therefore could each be a sentence by itself: John fell down; Angela got up.). The other main use for them is if you have a list that is so complex commas won't do. In the sentence by your son, you want to replace the semi-colon with either a comma or a colon. When in doubt, it's usually best to rely on the comma.

Hi Catherine A couple thoughts on teaching these organon: First, they are extremely technical and practical works that should be taught over a couple years. Aristotle's Organon is the foundation of what became the seven liberal arts and is essential to a complete education. But to teach these books, you'll want to take a different approach than, say, teaching a novel. Here's what I mean. Organon is Greek for instrument or tool. We get organ from it. When Dorothy Sayers referred to the Lost Tools of Learning this is the thing she was referring to, or at least this is the beginning of the tradition that identified tools of learning as the foundation of all learning. Specifically, the organon are the tools of logic, but in Aristotle's day Grammar was understood to be based on logic, not on usage (a belief I share), so the organon weaves grammar throughout. There are six handbooks in the Organon: The categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics (the syllogism), Posterior Analytics (demonstration - the so called scientific method comes from this), Topics, and Sophistical Refutations. Five minutes spent with any of them will improve your thinking more than almost anything else. Aristotle is a Super-Coach of thinking. In the 19th century, American schools decided to merge everything into "subjects" and to neglect or even eliminate the tools/organon that underlay the subjects. When you teach Aristotle's Organon, you can't approach it like a subject. It's more like learning piano. Take your time and provide coached practice. So far, that might all sound like bad news. Here's some good news. They are absolutely well worth learning and you are wise to have selected them. As indicated above, all learning depends on mastery of the organon. Here's some more good news. They are advanced skills, so if you don't feel like you have prepared yourself or your child for them, don't worry. If you and he can listen, speak, read, and write (the preliminary language skills), then you can learn the organon. But TAKE YOUR TIME!! They can't be learned in a hurry any more than piano can. And here's one more piece of good news. There are curricula available that are faithful to the spirit and practice of the organon. For example, Memoria Press and its logic materials developed by Martin Cothran. Brilliant and easy to use. Also, The Lost Tools of Writing applies material logic, topics, and elements from the categories and the other handbooks. It is a rhetoric program, which, strictly speaking, is not part of the organon, but it applies the organon dynamically. I would suggest, therefore, that you ensure that your child has studied as much of Martin Cothran's logic and of The Lost Tools of Writing as possible so that when you turn to the Organon the terms and ideas are not completely alien. An aside: the reason Aristotle developed the organon is because he believed we live in a world that can be known, so he developed tools to help us gain that knowledge. Modern educational theorists do not believe the world can be known (you have your truth and I have mine), so they do not bother teaching the tools that help us come to know it. That is why you and I have to "Recover the lost tools of learning." On Bacon's Novum Organon: this book is important as a historical document but much less important as a curriculum. In other words, while Aristotle's work is essential to being fully educated (having a thoroughly "well trained mind") and is the root of the whole renewal, Bacon's is not necessary in the same way. For one thing, Bacon was at war with Aristotle and the reason he felt a need to write a "New Instrument" was because he felt Aristotle got it all wrong. He was wrong. Bacon misdirected the western mind and laid the "foundations" for the chaos of modern thought. Thus Bacon is historically important, but not necessary as a handbook on thinking. If you want to read it, by all means do. Don't bother "reading" Aristotle. It would be like reading a car repair manual. Instead use Aristotle's Organon as a lesson guide and use Bacon's as an interesting history lesson with some great insights and some enormous errors. This isn't really what you asked, though I hope it contains some answers. It's just that you asked about such an important thing that I had to leap in and expose my folly. God bless your studies!!

We've both home schooled and private schooled all five of our children and I would put home schooling over even the best private schools for a number of reasons: 1. Teens should not spend so much time together in such large groups. 2. A divided authority arises that children can easily play off each other - and if they don't it can still confuse them 3. You can put your kids in all sorts of classes even if you home school 4. Being in school destroys the family rhythm and wastes a huge amount of time 5. I like having my children around. 6. Good teachers come and go in schools I don't know if this is helpful, and I do recognize that decisions like this require personal judgment, but these are things that come to mind for me. God bless and guide you, ajk

Camille Goldston at Memoria Press has received rave reviews.

I would recommend focusing on their reading, writing, speaking, and thinking skills. Everything else follows.

I'd call it philosophy or comparative religions depending on the college.

I'm not in DC but North Carolina having moved here from Idaho. I have found it to be very different and the worst differences are the ones you can't anticipate. It's hard to explain this, but I find that people around here are friendly but not loyal. Each region is very different and you'll want to establish real friendships as quickly as you can so you can have people tell you the truth.

Foerster's and Jacob's are my favorite choices, the latter having taught the former if I've read correctly. Keep in mind that Saxon was not really written for bright kids who are good at math, but for kids who needed to improve their SAT scores. He explains that in the introduction - or at least he did in the version I used when I taught 54 ten years ago. Better to give them the challenging problems any day, as long as they don't use it as an excuse to not do the work.

I just spent some time with Martin during which we discussed the place of his Rhetoric. He agreed that it is "about" rhetoric (i.e. it is rhetorical theory) and therefore should be studied after students have spent a few years studying the practice of rhetoric. He said that people should use our Lost Tools of Writing (teaches classical rhetoric through writing) for a couple years and then go on to his rhetoric. I agree with him.

Oh, Lisa, please don't feel inferior!! It's a good question and one we obviously need to clarify for a future edition, so thank you for having the courage to ask. You are correct. The practice essay is the one that builds lesson to lesson. It is not meant to be very good; it just collects new elements like barnacles on a ship. It will or at least can be on the same issue every time. The current essay is different. Every new lesson they write a new essay on a new issue. This is the one they take seriously and it is the one you will assess. Does that help? ajk

Krissi, IMO you are putting too much pressure on yourself. For example, with DQ, just keep reading. Who cares if you can't stay awake or don't understand it. Heck, if you don't like it, read something else. Education is not about being something but becoming something. If you are more comfortable reading shorter or simpler stories, go to RL Stevenson or Kipling for short stories, or read some Greek plays (they take about three hours). It's about acting, not feeling. Don't worry about yourself at all. Just teach the next thing, one piece at a time. You can do it because that's how much you love your children.

Charles, Absolutely brilliant!!

I got a bit carried away in what follows and apologize ahead of time. The best way I've been able to understand classical education is to compare it with the other two options. Happily, American history can be divided into three periods, each of which is defined by the form of education they practiced. First, the classical and Christian era from around 1635 to around 1800. Then the traditional era from around 1800 to around 1900. Then the Progressive era, which began around 1900. Here's how I see the differences: Progressive education is rooted in Darwinism as applied to education, especially in that progressives don't think we can know the world around us. Instead we "construct" reality in our own heads. The conventional preschool or elementary school is largely progressive, whether Christian or secular. The goal is not to know reality, but to adapt to it. It is practical, not affectionate, or philosophical and it is certainly not theological. Progressives love electives and apparent choices about what and how to study. In practice, however, Progressivism is trying to recreate society on what they call scientific lines, so they need the state to impose its form of education on us. Thus, property taxes. Because they are "scientific," they don't believe in the soul, reason, or will, so they use manipulative modes of instruction, usually rooted in the behavioral "sciences." They deny and therefore do not cultivate the divine image in students. Their goal is to prepare them for the industrial economy so they built schools on the factory model: 52 minutes and a bell, assembly line specialists, numerical assessment. Replacing the wise man with the expert they turn the teacher into an administrator of information rather than a guide to the perplexed. Virtually every single certified teacher in America learned progressive theories on the path to that certification (the rest had the sense not to pay attention, and blew off the four years partying or something). :confused: (Did i say that?) The best contemporary representative of progressive education is Howard Gardner, who has some really good ideas (and some that are a distraction). The second option is traditional education, which many now call classical. Traditional education became dominant in the 19th century. Whereas the progressive was secular and wanted to prepare children to work in The Economy, traditional education was Christian and largely Protestant. It's goal was to produce a good citizen, which meant one who could reason well, work hard, behave morally, and participate in the Republican form of government our Constitution had given us. To these ends it taught reading, riting, and rithmetic. It also taught a WASP version of American history. By the time a typical kid graduated from 8th grade, he knew enough math to run a private business, enough history to vote intelligently, enough literature to appreciate Longfellow and Shakespeare, and enough writing to compose amazingly eloquent letters like those they found in multitudes on the bodies of Civil War soldiers. The best contemporary representative of traditional education is ED Hirsch. While the goal of the Progressive Educator was to destroy the American tradition and to equip children for the new economy, the goal of traditional education was to preserve the tradition and to prepare children to become members of the American community. There were fewer electives, and teachers, being possessors of the tradition, were held in high esteem and given great authority. Classical Christian education was the norm in America from the founding of Harvard and the community schools in Massachusetts in the 1600's. It was a colonial American form of classical education, however, so it was adapted to our circumstances. The curriculum was amazingly simple, deep rather than wide: Latin, Greek, and math. The practical goal was to prepare people for the ministry or for leadership in the community. However, it was rooted in a strong sense of community, so generally it was open to any student who showed promise. The feeling was that the community was so valuable that those who had the talent to lead should be prepared to do so. The key to classical Christian education was that the world was Agrarian and even pastoral. The Colonists lived under a monarchy and while that monarchy more or less ignored them they still thought of themselves as Englishmen true to the king. Probably the high point for American education came in the middle 1700's when almost every American leader received a classical education in that they studied Latin, Greek, and Math very closely. They also did some science in college, but, as I understand it, they didn't think that was good use of the earlier years because kids, in their view, weren't prepared to do it yet. The reasons they studied Latin and Greek so closely were many: 1. The entire western heritage and, at that time, virtually every historically important document was written in Latin or Greek 2. They could read English literature on their own and it doesn't seem to have entered their minds that somebody should teach them how to do it. 3. Since they were being prepared for law, the ministry, and medicine, they were saved from having to study grammar in college instead of reading books. Consider for example what has happened to the ministry in America because people aren't taught Latin and/or Greek in high school or even college. By the early 20th century, if you wanted to go into the ministry you had to study grammar in seminary. You couldn't read the Bible or works of theology in their original languages because you didn't know those languages. After a while, people going into ministry found that so frustrating that they simply dropped the Bible and theology as a focus of ministry and by the 1980's they spent most of their time studying the lastest psychological theories for Pastoral Counseling. A few specialists kept studying the Bible, but they just write to each other in their journals. Do you need parallel examples for law and medicine? 4. They regarded Math, Latin, and Greek as unparalleled intellectual and cultural training, which was to them extraordinarily important. They thought intelligence was crucially important, not so you could outsmart your opponents in debate or business, but so your community could be led by well-trained minds (sound familiar?!). 5. They believed that if their heritage were lost it would be irrecoverable and that freedom was not possible if the springs of freedom were dirtied or plugged. 6. They liked it. 7. etc. etc. Their goal included economic production and citizenship, but it transcended both. They believed that our greatest need was for wise and virtuous leadership and that only a community-wide commitment to cultivate the highest levels of wisdom and virtue could provide the leadership they needed. Their ideals were incredibly high, but so were their commitments. The constitution of the United States has been described by historians as the highest achievement of classical and Christian education. So to them and to the whole western tradition, classical education was the cultivation of wisdom and virtue - the nourishing of the human being as human being, not as economic unit or even mere citizen. They were about cultivating the divine image. Truth, goodness, and beauty were the food on which the soul fed. They saw Greek, Math, and Latin as the practical tools to those ends, the vessels that held the traditions of freedom, humanity, justice, and truth. They also rightly judged that the Greeks were the best poets ever. Today, what we call classical or neo-classical education makes the needed compromises to do what we can do based on the light we are given. For myself, I wish we could see a few people with the resources to make it happen, but we do get to go to the stream and dip our cups into the spring of our glorious and unparalleled heritage with gratitude. So if the preceding description frustrates you or makes you want to quit, don't worry about it. Don't even care. Education is not about emotions, it's about actions. It's about teaching what you can teach when you can teach it as well as you can teach it and encouraging the many who can do it so much better than I can with a hearty congratulations free of jealousy. Make it your focus, your vision, and your purpose, to cultivate wisdom and virtue in your children by nourishing their souls on the true, the good, and the beautiful. Like parched grass receiving water, they'll astonish you with the transformation that takes place. College and SAT's will take care of themselves. Seek the higher good and the lower ones will follow.

This is a great thread! It makes you realize how incredibly rich we are in our cultural heritage. I would like to add one set of books that I've always loved called My Book House, a 12 volume set edited by Olive Beaupre Miller and printed from 1919 to 1970. the first volume has nursery rhymes and mother goose and the last has biographies of famous people. In between, you'll read a children's version (though with great style) of Shakespeare's plays, Dante's Divine Comedy, Beowulf, Greek and Roman myths and legends, Robin Hood, King Arthur, the Egyptian Cinderella sources, sailing stories, etc. etc. If a child read this set between say four years old and 8th grade he would have a junior liberal education and be ready for the more advanced versions in high school. You could find it in used book stores ten years ago for from 20 to 250 dollars, but I haven't looked for it since then. There are two disadvanteges: one, it doesn't have the little volumes that young children can easily hold in their hands, so they can't read it by themselves before they're five or six years old, and two, Miller didn't like grisly stories so there's no Grimm, so far as I can remember. Read on!!

the metaphor of poking the eyes out is really quite appropriate. We enjoy things that we can see and we don't enjoy things that we can't see. I can't see anything in music, to speak of, so my tastes are terribly primitive. We also enjoy having a question that we are seeking an answer for. Some people approach a book like Scarlet Letter not knowing what to look for. That's what happened to me when I was in my twenties. Couldn't stand the book. Then I read it a few months ago because I kept hearing how great it was. I came with different questions. Can't say it's my favorite book, but I deeply respect Hawthorne's artistry, which is a pleasure in its own right. And I like the, shall we say, message of the book. The Scarlet Letter can't be read like a normal novel. Really, it's a fairy tale. The story is not particularly believable, and it is not meant to be. You basically have three or maybe four characters, and one of them is almost the devil incarnate. here's a suggestion or two that might conceivably increase your plesaure: If you are into this sort of thing, let the artistry wash over you. Ask, should Hester (or either of the two men) have revealed Hester's lover? Keep coming back to that question. Come up with other questions that you might find more interesting about a character and what he/she did. For example, ask: should Hester and her lover have left the village? Should Hester have disciplined her daughter more? Compare a character in this story from one in another. For example, is Hester's husband an Iago? A Richard III? Who else is he like? How? How are they different? OK, that's four, but I hope one of them will prove valuable. It really is a beautiful story. One you are allowed to dislike if you want.

Maybe, but I would caution you against letting anything "clear up" Hamlet. It is not meant to be clear. In fact, my theory is that it is about "Sin's true nature," and since sins' true nature is deceit the whole play is permeated by misdirection and indirection. I would argue that Hamlet did not become king because Claudius was treacherous and had maneuvered and timed things so that he would be irresistable. Shakespeare says little about it in the play, but not many English of the late 16th century would, from what I understand, have thought Claudius had a legitimate claim. Any solutions to the questions you have about Hamlet are almost certainly treacherous!