Signature? I don't need no stinkin' signature. ;-) I am currently teaching two K-ers--and no one else! (WHEW!) One's young enough that he won't officially be enrolled in K until next year, but it only matters a little since I'm teaching to their level and not their ages, anyway, and their levels are all over the place. I won't be adding a third (or more) to the mix until nearly four more years. In the past, I have taught writing courses at several levels, from elementary to adults. I've done a number of short workshops, too--online and off-line both. I've also done one-on-one tutoring and lots (and lots...and lots...) of "friendly critiques" by request. I've never been in the position of a self-contained classroom teacher of 5th-8th grade, which would really have been ideal for teaching across the curriculum. Instead, I've found myself teaching an eighth grader how to write better for her history report...or a tenth grader how to do a critical analysis...or a college sophomore how his lab reports should have been written (hence why he failed the last time!)...or helping a high schooler understand all the concepts in Harmon...or showing a college freshman how to analyze a piece for its logical argument...or teaching a workshop on finding and using rhythm in prose...or teaching a creative writing class. But all this has reinforced in me a conviction of how interlocked writing skills are and how much better it is to examine them holistically than to try to teach things in isolation. I have never taught someone to write from complete scratch. This is going to be the most interesting bit to me! The youngest I've *ever* worked with was probably a group of eight-to-nine-year-olds. I've always been "remedial" in one way or another, meaning that I was fixing ingrained habits as well as introducing new concepts, whether I was teaching someone one-on-one or I had a mixed class of ten. (I've never had a large group except in workshop-like settings, too.) Email me off-list and I'll send you more info about my writing, with samples included. :-) (Same goes for anybody else.) I just don't like publicly announcing who I am because even if people ask, it still smacks of self-promotion! (See, she GOT them to ask. Manipulated them into it. You know--that sort of thing.) (And I've hit 50 posts! Hooray!)

Let's Read And Find Out Science books are truly fabulous and conceptual.

Prima Latina. RS will teach some vocab, will get you child to not translate in her head, and will teach a good (classical) accent. But it won't get you any more than that.

I have looked MOST closely at Classical Composition, which is what gave me the huge ACK!!!!! reaction. I've looked closely at independent interpretations and have mostly only glanced through Classical Writing, the program. I hope I have a better chance with it at the next curriculum fair, but even if I like it better, it won't be because it follows the progymnasmata or not. *g* A disclaimer: I'm not going to buy any program, no matter how good, since I can integrate writing with other subjects and take some of the time burden out of it while making it more natural. I do agree about the need for checkboxes that someone else pointed out. It makes it easier on an instructor, but I remain uncomfortable with that at a fundamental level. This, I can say, I do really like: "In fact, the CW Aesop B workbook calls for two papers for each lesson. One is based on the model, the other is to be based on something from the students history lesson, or science lesson, or current literature being read." Oh, and I didn't mean that CW, CC, or any other particular program (okay, I was thinking of Strunk & White--who don't follow their own rules--and WS and the instructions about adding adjectives for interest) teaches a particular style so much as that being a big soapbox of mine. *g* I'm a novelist who writes in two different genres with COMPLETELY unrelated voices, and I am a strong believer in encouraging both natural expression and flexibility of expression--which can go hand in hand quite well. So it's a big bugbear of mine when people say that good writing has almost no adverbs, or each person has only one voice, or whatever. (And, woo-hoo! I'm almost to 50 posts. I'm going to disappear again for a while after that because I'm insanely busy--AGAIN. I'm way behind on a book I want done by the end of May, and then I have another to finish before the end of summer, *whimper*. But I need to post a couple of things for sale that didn't work for us. I did get good news today: Another of my books sold to Italy, and the horrible state of the US economy at least means that I'm getting a lot more for my European translations!)

I wasn't yelling at you anymore than I was yelling when I wrote VERY--caps also mean emphasis with a sentence. They mean yelling only when an entire sentence is capitalized--or a command. BTW, the Italian Renaissance is generally dated from 1420. So no, the Renaissance didn't begin after the fall of Constantinople but before. But I don't think that's your major concern. And Sister Miriam Joseph's position on Shakespeare is that of a distant, distant minority of Shakespearean scholars and that has no substantiation within his works but can only be made through speculation. (I took a grad class on Shakespeare and read mounds of research by numerous critics--some tedious, some fascinating, most somewhere in between.) When there isn't any evidence that he felt comfortable enough in Latin to read in the language as an adult--and when there is a great deal of evidence that he did read lots of Latin translations--it makes one really question whether he, in particular, attended school frequently enough to have memorized large portions of Ovid in the original language. (Either that, or his so-called grammar school was somewhat like Dickens' experiences in dame school!) If he had, why then would he buy and quote from a translation? That aside, there is a big difference between what was in circulation and what was really *used* as a primary educational vehicle. The ancient progymnasmata *drove* the composition program of ancient students. If it was covered in some grammar schools, it would have been with a glancing nod, not a major portion of the program, which was, after all, centered around translation. It made sense for there to be such an emphasis on Latin translation, particularly, back then because that's what all writings intended for an international audience were made in--everything scientific and philosophical. It was also the language that someone from Germany would use to speak with someone from England. When I speak of the composition "programs," I am talking about the typical instruction in Latin/Greek/rhetoric from the 1400s to the 1850s or so. (Some places continued these methods well into the 20th century with a similar model, but they became more and more unusual, of course.) "Translation" as a foundation makes it sound much more mechanical than it was. You were meant to write in the most excellent version of each language. So it was really a creative process and a process that required true "artistic" skill, so to speak. My comment about analyzing both goals and methods was in response to your own declaration of what a classical education is to you and why you think it's important. You said: >I agree with Andrew Campbell's definition of a classical education: "a curriculum grounded upon--if not strictly limited to--Greek, Latin, and the study of the civilization from which they arose." Latin and Greek are foundational to our homeschool. We speak it and read it right now. My goal is to read the Latin authors from their original text and then write about their work in Latin prose. However, knowing Latin will not be enough, they will need to know how to write too. I believe that the best way to teach them is through a classical writing program that's been proven over time. Part of my argument all along is that there's a difference between something that's old and something that's proven, and there's also a profound difference between the kinds of writing needed for a literate life 2,000 years ago and one today. Goals versus methods. I understand more or less what you feel a real classical education is--and I make no pretense that I give one fig for a conservative interpretation of classical education--but I'm still rather mystified as to *why* you feel many parts of it are important except that they are really old. I could use that same argument for proposing that every child do arithmetic using Roman numerals, despite the fact that this made it so hard that multiplication and division strategies were taught at universities. I'm not saying you have no point. I assume that you do. I'm just saying that I don't see it from any of your posts. I couldn't say why you feel it is important for your children to write in Latin and use the progymnasmata but why you're using the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. So the end of my post was really a muddled invitation for you to elucidate why you feel that these things are part of a classical education and how using Roman numerals, in contrast, is not. I'm just not getting the rubric that you are using to judge things as proper or not. For me, I don't care about "classical" so much as, well, "Renaissance" in the "Renaissance man" sense. I feel that the contemporary Renaissance man--that is, a Renaissance man that is living in today's world--must have excellent comprehension of mathematics, a deep understanding of science, a solid grounding in logic and philosophy, an ability to speak at least two modern languages well, great ability and flexibility in composition, a firm grasp of history, a familiarity with a wide body of literature, and the capacity to research subjects and to understand the research. I listed those in the reverse order (except the last, which is the "crown," so to speak) of that which I feel that most so-called "classical" educational programs handle well. So am I after a classical education? No, not by most standards, even though we will certainly teach Latin and probably Greek, as well. You can accuse me of being unfaithful to any given classical model, and I certainly won't argue. But my goal never has been to find any brand of education and follow it.

Hey, if you're going to say that, you can go ahead and reply as me because you were reading my mind! *g* That's pretty much it in a nutshell. Perhaps it's that I like the idea of the goals of the progymnasmata but that the actual 14 steps just don't *work* for me in a modern context, even updated to some degree. It needs a more profound overhaul than what I've seen to make it really, really work. So yes, I really like the idea of copia and it sounds just like what I've done with some students and will do with the kiddos I'm teaching, but there's a gap between the ideal and the implementation that's to wide to allow for enthusiasm. I'm especially concerned with time invested versus outcome. I want activities to have a high return on investment, and a lot of the classical programs have such high overhead that I can't see myself clear to using them.

Oh, certainly. I just feel that many of the programs have you doing too much of just a couple of exercises and not enough of others. Say, all arpeggios and no counterpoint when the goal is to become a composer! *g* Arpeggios are good. They should be done in many keys. But there are higher order exercises in harmony and composition (yes, often just as "dry"), too! But I really don't think that CW, in particular, is a bad program! I like it pretty well, overall. Greater variety would just be very nice.

You can't use the 5-para essay on the SAT! Not enough time. You can see samples of 800, 700, 600, etc. - point essays on the college board site. They are VERY short--1-2 VERY brief para. I don't think classical programs--well, particularly the original classical model--are a bad place at all to go for inspiration. They just need flexibility and extension. *g* So look at them with a view toward how you could adapt them for your kids and your current topics of study. I don't think the 5-para essay is bad for middle school, either. But it should be replaced by something more sophisticated in high school. Not everything has 3 points. And not every point is equal in weight! Rather than thinking in bullet points, older students should develop a line of argument that flows logically from one paragraph to the next. Analyzing the logic of good essays is really a great way to figure out how to do this oneself. The most difficult thing about packaged composition programs is, I think, how they *must* be divorced from other topics of study when an ideal writing program would be fully integrated. It just adds so much overhead to the process by introducing texts and positions for the mere purpose on writing about them when it would be ideal to make it an extension of all other activities across the curriculum. And, NO, I don't have a band-aid for this! I do wish I did! *g*

Shakespeare's classical references come from ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS of works like Ovid. That was my point before! :-) That's why no one's sure whether he managed to remember any of his Latin at all--and why we know sometimes not only the classical source but the exact English translation Shakespeare referenced in his plays! You go from classical references...to "classical" instruction...to the progymnasmata. There isn't a logical flow here! I have dozens of classical references in my novels, but I can't read a word of Greek, and I only have a smattering of Latin. You can't say that I had a classical education because my books have lots of classical references, much less that I learned from the progymnasmata. Since we know very well what WAS taught in the grammar schools of the 1500s and how it was taught, I can't say how you can claim it was connected closely to the progymnasmata. It wasn't. The "composition" program remained largely unchanged in grammar/Latin schools from the, oh, late 1300s up through the mid-1800s. (Since you like the Teaching Co, there's a really good series on the Renaissance that includes a lecture on the developments in education of the times that is, I think, worth listening to--and much of it will sound very familiar.) You can find many, many textbooks from the 1700s through the 1850s online and elsewhere that are the same as what would have taken place in such a school in the 1500s. The instruction was, of course, dominated by translation above everything else--Latin to English, English to Latin, Latin to Greek, Greek to Latin, and sometimes through all three languages in different orders. Secondarily came other exercises in rhetoric and composition, and yes, most of these were performed in Latin or Greek, too. If modern "classical" education really made much sense, we WOULD be talking about Renaissance writing versus classical writing. The trivium is essential medieval, for goodness sakes! And it has nothing in the world to do with Piaget's discredited theory of child development. But things don't have to make sense for people to get in a stir about it. All you have to do is impress people with the idea that this is the right way that people have been using for X years before foolish modern educators turned their backs on it, and people will buy it. You don't even have to tell the truth when you say it--or, alternatively, you can *sound* like you're saying something other than you really are. (For example, you can say, "We have possessed this wonderful program for 2,000 years..." All that means is that it's 2,000 years old, but is SOUNDS like you're saying that it's been in use for 2,000 years, which would be a lie.) I can lie about Latin, too--we get our English grammar from Latin! Latin is a more logical language!--and as long as it is appealing to people, many will accept it without analysis. Emotional appeal works far better than logic--even when promoting "classical" curricula! BTW, the theory that the Renaissance was sparked by the fall of the Byzantine Empire has been discredited for a number of years. It's an intriguing myth and an oft repeated myth (particularly by Byzantine scholars, who know nothing of the Italian Renaissance but like the idea!), but it is still a myth. The influx of Greek texts was taken in eagerly by the Italian literati, however. Anyhow, I'm not saying that deciding to center one's studies around education of 2000, 2500 years ago--reinterpreted for today, of course--is BAD, period. I just think that there should always be an examination of goals versus methods--continuous and constant--and that one should try to avoid one's own emotional weaknesses when trying to evaluate programs. If you want to have a certain brand of "classical" education because you just like it (an emotional goal as well as a method), then great. But if you want to learn "the way Thomas Jefferson did" or "the way people 100 years ago did" or even "to create the most rigorous and logical program of thought," well, that's another issue entirely!

Argh! I don't mean people to stress out. Writing is one of those things that can be very hard to teach. Honestly, overall, CW does look like a much better program than the vast majority. As long as you can consistently press for improvement in clarity of expression, vividness, sophistication of expression (and I mean that in the best way), and logical or dramatic continuity (depending on the type of writing), you'll be doing well with many programs. The biggest pitfalls are to force a particular contrived style as the "correct" one (whether rewarding flowery writing or taking off for every adverb) or to allow yourself to be impressed by empty words. (Of course, there are also mechanical issues, but those are different.) If you avoid those, you're ahead of the game! The problem in public schools isn't that modern composition is bad--it's that very few teachers do any sort of writing instruction at all. (And don't get me started on "peer edits"....)

I haven't seen it yet--I haven't been to a curriculum fair in a couple of years! I'll be sure to check it out when I go, though.

YES!!! *g* And much writing that was GREAT 600 years ago and is still very, very important wouldn't be considered *great* today--not just because tastes change but because good writers build on the past. Shakespeare is still great...but Dryden's plays? Um. NO. There's a very, very good reason no one puts them on anymore. Actually, that's a big reason why I'm not entirely sold on reading Great Books in high school as the single driving force for history and lit studies. I want a balance that I just can't quite see there, as influential as the books are.

Hmm. In this case, I wouldn't finish it early, but I would remember that you can skip quite a bit of the beginning of RS B if you go straight in from A. So you could tell yourself that the last part of A "counts" as the first part of B, anyway.

We're going to use NEM until the kids are old enough (attention span, maturity, etc.) to switch to EMACS.

And Galen was copies and saved for 2,000 years because his writing is relevant and well-received, right? Wrong. Galen was copied for 2,000 years because he wrote a landmark work that was incredibly great for its time--so great that it influenced people for centuries, for good AND very much for ill. That means that, yes, he is worth reading now, but if you read him not because of his historical influence but because you believe in his relevance to modern medicine--well, your life will likely be much shorter than that of the average person. Landmarks are important because they are, in fact, landmarks. The first novel. The first history. The first metrical poetry. The first epics. All these things bloom and shine for their moment and then form a kind of compost over the years from which even greater things can be grown--if we learn well from our past and make use of it rather than trying to force new plants on barren soil. But to point to something that is old and say, "That is good because it is old, and its age is proof of its excellence"--come on, now. I could use that argument to say that the cave paintings of France are better than the Mona Lisa and that we should ignore the Renaissance and go back to the oldest ways of doing things that we can find. Please keep in mind that 99.5% of everything is twaddle and trash. That goes for what was written 2,000 years ago as well as what is written today. We only have a tiny, tiny percentage of what was produced that long ago, and to try to make it normative and compare it with a modern average is, I think, a mistake. It is also a mistake to not see that, in some ways, even the worst twaddle of modern production does have some elements that are lacking in ancient work that make modern work more readable and more powerful--such as paragraphs, punctuation, point of view, graceful handling of dialog, a straightforward and immediate presentation of emotion, all sorts of figures of speech, and many other things. This doesn't mean that bad modern writers are better than great ancient ones. It means that even if their own stature is worm-like, modern writers have the advantage of standing on the shoulders of giants, including classical giants. The progymnasmata has only one thing more in common with Shakespeare's education than with modern composition: the fact that most of his composition was probably in Latin. Other than that, it's just as different as modern composition. Composition and rhetoric in the 1500s followed a modified medieval scholastic model, not any sacred sequence preserved from ancient times. And, as Ben Jonson writes, Shakespeare hardly had a great Latin education, possessing "small Latin and less Greek," as the famous phrase goes. However much Latin he knew, he was far from comfortable in it, and even if he could struggle through Latin texts, as an adult, it is clear that he read in English whenever he could. (Though he certainly read Ovid in Latin in school, like every other schoolboy, as an adult, he choose to read a translation--we know this from his plays.) There is a reason that English poetry didn't flourish until it cut itself free from the Latin models--just as there is a reason that Greek meter had to be adapted before excellent Latin poetry could be produced. The history of excellence in literature is not one of mindless devotion to the compost but to the careful cultivation of new blooms in the best soil we can find. The problem with slavish classicalism is that you get mired in compost. The problem with throwing out the past is that you try to grow a fabulous garden in hardpan. Neither, I think, has the answer. ADDED: I will be teaching Latin, too--*after* Spanish and Mandarin. I am going to be teaching the kids to read in Latin because it is so incredibly useful in historical and philosophical studies, but I couldn't care less about writing or speaking.

I don't think it's a bad starting place at all! I just think some of the exercises should be taken with a grain--or a tablespoon--of salt. Strip down the elaborateness of the requirements until you get to the heart of what they're going for. Avoid the extraneous, jumping-through-hoop-like requirements--just toss them out altogether and go for the meat. Then expand on what they ask for in other directions by doing imitations of other works, for example. Try different techniques of expanding and summarizing numerous different kinds of stories. If you use the CW curriculum as a springboard instead of following it perfectly, it will get you much farther. Also, just keep in mind as you go along that they aren't going to be looking at many, many types of writing that have been developed in the past 1000 years. You'll probably want to figure out how to work in a Baconian essay and the three main types of sonnet--that sort of thing. Make sure that they understand modern genres like literary analysis and the editorial. You can work things into their writing after they are exposed in their reading. I don't at all think the program is bad. I like both CW and CC much, much more than WS. I haven't had a chance to look over IEW (it's too expensive to buy just to review!), but it might be a good counterbalance. The classical writing programs aren't bad. They aren't *great*, but they are at least decent at written and can be made to be quite good with a little thought into the extension of the curriculum. And that's way ahead of the majority of writing programs!

Honestly, I'd be at a loss as to how to get people who *aren't* writers to evaluate writing--and whatever I came up with wouldn't be suited to the particular student at his particular stage. So I can't say that, in writing a kind of textbook, that I'd do a very good job at all. It's like the difference between giving violin lessons and trying to write a book that teaches excellent violin skills despite the fact that the direct instructor might not know a peg from an f-hole! Actually--that's easier--you can physically *see* wrong bowhold, etc., and poor playing is offensive to any ear. (Well, almost any! *g*) But how do you teach the teacher how to evaluate writing? That's really, really hard, and that's a major reason behind the artificiality of many programs. I've been thinking about it for a long time. I may be able to come up with something in half a dozen years or so, but I'd need that long to make sure that I wasn't just messing people up!

I mean that every classical writing program that I've seen is very artificial. (I did not capitalize it because I meant it in the generic!) All programs are artificial, of course, but classical programs are far worse than most. In most conventional modern programs, kids are taught the five-paragraph essay, for example. NO mature writer uses a three-point, five-paragraph essay! Kids are taught to outline at awkward stages in the planning process and are asked to alternate between several contrived methods of planning--say, webbing or some other sort of diagramming, too. These are artificialities of FORM. I don't mind artificialities of form as long as a writer is encouraged to mature past them. They can be very useful. There are also restriction on CONTENT--for example, the comparative, the narrative, the persuasive, and the instructional papers. The genres of modern programs are fairly natural in their divisions. One would really write instructional and persuasive papers, and one would certainly use narrative elements in many situations. There's a lot more to writing than that, but it's a start. Classical writing programs have far, far more artificiality of form and content, both. They must, if they are to be based off the original progymnasmata. The frank truth is that the progymnasmata existed to teach people to write like Plutarch or Livy, and neither one would be consider to have good prose by contemporary standards. They would be considered to be rigid, formulaic, dry, long-winded, and dense *as contemporary authors.* All modern "classical" programs reinterpret classical approaches to writing in various ways to make them more palatable to modern people and to produce writing that is more flexible and fluid than in the ancient goals. But they remain rooted in the elaborate and ritualized progression from one highly contrived exercise to the next. Here's a good explanation of how classical writing was taught: http://rhetoric.byu.edu/Pedagogy/Progymnasmata/Progymnasmata.htm So here's level one: "Students were given a fable, typically one of Aesop's, which they would amplify and abbreviate. Or, they would write a new fable in close imitation of Aesop. It was specifically recommended that students turn indirect discourse into direct discourse." Lovely--if this is a week-long exercise. It is NOT lovely as originally implemented, however. It is stultifyingly narrow. And programs trying very hard to be "authentic" reflect this limitation of scope. Take a look at the chreia: "Amplify a brief account of what someone has said or done, using these steps: Praise the sayer or doer, or praise the chreia itself Give a paraphrase of the theme Say why this was said or done Introduce a contrast Introduce a comparison Give an example of the meaning Support the saying/action with testimony of others Conclude with a brief epilog or conclusion" Check-box formula. This is a problem that hounds all classical writing programs. People also have this strange idea that the progymnasmata was widely used 100, 200, 300--heck, 500 years ago. It wasn't. This is NOT what Dickens, Austen, Swift, Shakespeare, or Chaucer did in school, nor was it what their contemporaries did. It was strictly, well, *classical.* By far and away the silliest part of Classical Composition, in particular, is the contrived vocabulary--as if a "description of the wind" or of trees is a some kind of modern literary figure to imitate! Yes, and let us have kennings in all our prose, too. And epithets! Why do we not give our characters proper epithets anymore? Surely if Homer called Hera white-armed, we would do well by imitating him and coming up with a similar epithet to use every time we refer to one of our characters, too. Or not. I hope you can see my point! Highly contrived and stereotyped writing had its place, but it is no longer considered GOOD writing among other contemporary works. This is what I meant by taking itself to seriously--I meant taking its role as transmitting classical methods in a blind and slavish fashion. I am not saying this as a person who despises forms. On the contrary, I plan to teach the kids to construct poetry according to all the classic meters--and to require its regular production. I will assign numerous "voice" exercises, requiring that they imitate particular authors or styles and that they write for different audiences. I will require close analysis of prose. In fact, I will likely have them memorize, as I did in school, the entire 600-plus-page Harmon's A Handbook to Literature, and I will have them doing all sorts of formal exercises. I won't, however, limit my scope to prose as it existed 2000 years ago. Where in this program is a place for the sonnet, for goodness sakes? Where is the 18th-century essay? The Great Dialogue moves on. And so must we. That said, I DO like the programs I've seen far more than Writing Strands. The level of composition in the *examples* of WS is not something I would tolerate from a child, much less something to be held up as an example worth emulation, and the exercises go against everything that I believe in about good prose.

RS is almost useless for Chinese and nearly as bad for Japanese unless you have access to a native speaker. You might THINK that you're learning, but just try out your new Chinese on a native speaker--you won't have the tones right, so you'll be incomprehensible. Oh, and Japanese--I'm sure they don't teach the different ways of talking if you're female versus male, informal and formal registers, etc. Start with the FSI courses, available free here: http://www.fsi-language-courses.com/ Then go look here for a textbook series that strikes you, especially for Chinese: http://www.cheng-tsui.com/store/products/textbook_series EDIT: The TEACH YOURSELF series is actually pretty good, too. Not like a full course, quite, but good, nevertheless.

NP! :-) I'm making DH do the Mandarin instruction. Mwahahahaha. It'll start in 2009.

BTW, I'd count the full Platiquemos package as three very GOOD years of Spanish--though I'd make sure he was doing outside reading by year 3. Year 4 is all about writing essay, classroom discussions, and reading great works in Spanish. So you won't find a "package" for this.

Absolutely. But you might be able to move through it a bit faster.

Why don't you get the math card games from RightStart? They're so much more fun than drilling!

Mine hated it. The repetition, even with substantial pruning, didn't work, and he didn't like that he couldn't just "see" the lengths of the cuisinaire rods. So I sold it!

Abeka is spiral. That means you might cover adding within 10, then subtracting within 10, then longer/shorter than, then adding within 20, then subtracting without borrowing withing 20, then measuring length... etc. etc. Singapore is mastery-based. That means you do all the addition you're going to do for a grade all at once, one thing logically building on the next, to create a coherent structure before moving on to the next topic. Mastery is the standard is most other countries--in ALL the highest-scoring countries. Spiral is standard in the US. Singapore has a much better and CLEANER presentation of the material. Singapore's books are, in a word, elegant. They try for economy of words and pictures, choosing carefully to make sure they communicate the concept as clearly as possible in their slender books. Abeka is much more like a regular American textbook. Singapore has problems that require much more thought and fewer routine problems, especially if you use Intensive Practice and Challenging Word Problems.