xpost: I plowed through Teaching the Classics over this long weekend...

[Sunshine State Sue]

I plan on having ds watch this with me over the summer. I figured I better go through it at least once by myself first. I have a difficult time sitting and watching anything. I found that it helped to read the section first, then watch the DVD.

 

As I watched, 2 questions kept coming up for me:

1. What to do when *I* can't answer the Socratic questions? I know I'm not supposed to ask all of them. Do I cherry pick the ones I can answer?

2. What to do when ds answers "I dunno", as he is likely to do?

 

I love the theory of TtC and I believe it's similar to TWEM. I'm not very confident in *my* ability to analyze literature and ds is not very enthusiastic to discuss anything with me. I'm all ears if there is a secular outsourced option in the high school years.

 

Thanks!

[Nan in Mass]

TWEM steps you through the process of thinking about the work, so that by the time we get to the harder questions, we usually have some ideas. The later questions are often questions which don't have one right answer. They tend to be questions that make the reader relate the book to their own lives, making them harder to answer with "I don't know." I can usually think of some more questions that step my children towards some sort of answer, but I often can't guess what sort of answer they are going to come up with. The earlier questions are more concrete, and if I can't answer them, usually one of my children can. Or if none of us can, then we all flip back through the book looking for it. The whole thing seems to be set up so that it works best when I can't answer the questions right away, without thinking about them, and my children and I have to work towards some answers together by discussion. I've often thanked SWB for coming up with a method of studying literature that actually turns my weaknesses into a strength LOL. If I know the answer and tell them, they don't think about the book for themselves. If I ask questions with an answer already in mind, leading them towards it using the socratic method, they get mad or give up and say, "You obviously have something in mind. Why don't you just tell us so we can get on with the discussion?" I'm just not good at narrowing the scope of the questions in exactly the right way to nudge my children towards a predetermined answer. It works much better if I don't know what I am aiming for and we all work together to figure our own opinions about the book. For example, we recently discussed Gilgamesh with my mother and we each had our own idea about what the theme was. I was proud of my son for defending his own idea. As a teenager, he related to the story of a running amok half-god teenage king in a completely different way than my mother and I did, and even my mother and I found we had focused on different aspects of the story. I related more to Enkidu's story, since I love animals, and she paid attention to Gilgamesh's fear of death, since she is old.

 

So - I don't know about TtC, but I do know that I haven't had much luck with the Socratic method and literature (works great for math though GRIN), and that it has actually been an advantage when I didn't know the answers or have too many of my own thoughts about a book. It forced my children to come up with their own thoughts. I'd have to see the set of questions in TtC in order to know if they would work for getting my children to form their own opinions, or if they would work at getting them to arrive at my opinions. I've tried sets of questions for specific works of literature and they didn't make my children discuss or think. TWEM questions are very general, being meant for any work of a particular genre.

 

Don't know how helpful that is. Hopefully you'll get people who use TtC to answer.

-Nan

[Sunshine State Sue]

Thanks, Nan. The first time I attempted to read TWEM, I was totally intimidated and returned the book to the library discouraged. The second time was a bit better, and I at least understood the method to the madness, although I still have grave doubts about my and ds's abilities.

 

Sounds like I ought to put it on my summer reading list...again. Maybe I ought to buy it this time instead of borrowing it. :glare:

[Capt_Uhura]

I too went through the TtC DVDs this past week. I just returned The Well Educated Mind. My impression is that the questions are similar to TtC. I will try to get to the library tomorrow and pick up TWEM again and compare the questions directly w/ TtC and report back.

 

I'll post more thoughts about TtC when I'm rested but probably on the X-post at the Curriculum board as that's where I hang out the most. :001_smile:

 

Capt_uhura