9th grade Ancient History Readings?

[asligting]

For those of you who have followed TWTM History recommendations for high school, how have your 9th graders responded to the Ancient History Great Books readings? My ds will be 14 next year. He is a strong reader and enjoys reading and history, but this year seems like a huge jump in difficulty level. I worry it may be a little dry and weighty for a 14 year old boy. How have your children, especially boys, handled this year?

[Chris in VA]

Well, we did Omnibus1 with my ninth grader, and he was a little older due to being held back, but he read many of the same books on SWB's list. I'd say they "feel" intimidating, but they really aren't. Some of the language is a little different, of course, but ds really liked Ancients. He knew a few of the plots of the stories already, esp the Bible and Homer, due to our previous exposures to simpler versions. At the end he was proud to have such a list!

[elegantlion]

Well, we did Omnibus1 with my ninth grader, and he was a little older due to being held back, but he read many of the same books on SWB's list. I'd say they "feel" intimidating, but they really aren't. Some of the language is a little different, of course, but ds really liked Ancients. He knew a few of the plots of the stories already, esp the Bible and Homer, due to our previous exposures to simpler versions. At the end he was proud to have such a list!

 

Although we're doing our study starting in the fall, I'd agree with the above. I read The Iliad and The Odyssey on my own a few years ago. They are anything but dry imo.

 

I think they feel out of reach because many of us never conquered those books in school. The biggest issue for me was getting through all the Greek names, I will be finding some audio to help us with those.

 

I do believe knowing some of the story is helpful. We've done retellings over the years, so the story line won't be new. Unlike some books that won't ruin it, I believe it will enhance the story.

 

There are also many helps available. The Great Courses lectures by Vandiver are recommended by many for Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid. We plan to use those.

 

I also believe you need to gauge your ds. If it's too much reading either do fewer works or choose selections. We're doing ancient over 1 1/2 years because my ds is doing some Greek philosophy and we're allowing plenty of time for Iliad and Odyssey.

 

One thing I had to do was gain an understanding of where each of these works fit into the puzzle. Is it literature, history, religion, philosophy? What are the core works for that era in each area? What is something I don't want to miss? Where can use a easier version, where is better to do a full translation?

 

It has taken a little time to carve out the must reads for us.

[MtnTeaching]

This is what we wound up doing that seemed to help:

 

1. Introduced the work by reading a retelling - sometimes even a children's book.

 

2. Definitely read about the history behind the text - what was going on at that time in history and about the author. I used a text (Prentice Hall World Literature) along with the main works to cover some other topics, such as Chinese and Japanese lit or works I wanted him familiar with, but just was not able to cover the entire work. It did a very nice job with the historical background.

 

3. Used the Teaching Company DVD's "History of World Literature" where appropriate. I second the recommendation of the Vandiver DVD's - awesome!

 

4. I was not able to read all of the works with ds, but for those I needed to brush up on, I read the CliffNotes on and had regular discussions with him about.

 

5. Ds took a Brave Writer literary analysis course during the year on "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight". This helped with his understanding of what was expected by "literary analysis" and gave him someone else to discuss the work with. We followed the class info for the following readings he did afterward. (We did more than just Ancients this year and ended with Chaucer.)

 

6. It was fun to take the premise of the story and link it to current stories, either in books or movies. It has been a revelation (even to me) how many stories in recent years have been based on the old Ancient to Middle Ages texts.

 

7. We are also spreading the reading out and will be finishing up with Dante and Chaucer in the summer. It was a lot of reading for ds.

 

The good thing is that most of the works ds read this year were ones that would usually interest a boy. Yes, there is "romance" involved a few of them, but there is also a lot of blood, battles, and gore. :D

[Julie in MN]

I don't think of the ancients as dry and weighty. Some of the stories would benefit from some discussion about culture and style, but that is true of modern works, as well. But most of the content of ancient literature has a pretty clear story line.

 

For my son, the length and the language were the challenges.

 

Very.very.long pieces were a hurdle. However, that hurdle will be there from ancients up to moderns. You can always choose something short, such as plays, for instance - most must be able to be spoken in say a 2-hour time frame, after all. And there are always short stories and short novels.

 

Old styles of speaking were a hurdle. But again, this continued to be a hurdle for my kids on up through the 1800s, so definitely not confined to the ancients, since the ancients are often translated by modern folks. Someone mentioned the Bible, and I think that a student familiar with reading the Bible might be a little better prepared for different styles of speaking (poetic, epic, rhetorical, parables, etc.); after all, it's an ancient text.

 

Anyways, don't be afraid of the content. Just realize that bringing a 9th grade boy up to reading the length and language style of writers is going to be a challenge for some. Then just when you get past those to modern writing, that's when you get to the weighty matter you're worried about, so you'll still have that challenge ahead!

 

Julie

 

P.S. There is some weighty matter in ancient philosophy and such, but it isn't any different than wading through modern philosophers, and probably is even be easier.

[Suzannah]

We also use Omnibus. I select which books we will use based on the WTM recommendations or my own interest in a book. DS reads the Omnibus intro and we discuss the book doing some writing assignments and supplemental activities but not all. Some books are definitely a bigger hit than others. I try to alternate heavy and light readings when possible.

[Second Time Around]

I actually did a test drive with my two kids when ds was in his 9th grade year and dd (now at a residential school as a freshman - to study ballet) was in 8th. I was worried about ds because of his background with severe dyslexia. But he did pretty well. The test drive was a kind of "greatest hits of literature through time" sort of deal. Originally I had planned to read each text with them and discuss it at the end of the week. However, my 'part-time' job started to overwhelm my life so that a lot of the time I had to point him to discussions of the text and pick out an essay title. I was amazed at how well he did with this. DD, the ballerina, sciency/mathy type and not a big fan of serious lit. dropped out about half way with a large retelling of Don Q (appropriate for her dancing - but a huge, huge bore for her). But DS actually worked his way through some of the toughest stuff out there including Faerie Queene by Spencer (that I forced my way through - sort of- whilst an English major!).

 

I think for him, the best texts were Gilgamesh (be warned of sexual content) and Iliad and Odyssey. He also loved Paradise Lost (I had a great lit. professor who had some amazing insights into this text, and when I discussed those he was off!) - but that isn't 'ancient'. This year we did the Greek plays which went down fairly well (again, read ahead yourself to make sure your child will be okay with some of the themes - some of them made me cringe! Both of my boys read them when they were 15 and I am glad they were just that one year older). Some of the histories are long and arduous. He liked Caesar's Conquest of Gaul and the Romans in general, who seem to have a more direct, no-nonsense tone (and shorter!!!). Plato took a bit of humor to get through this year, but I think he enjoyed the themes. I find Aristotle crazy-making until I purchased John Vella's Aristotle:A guide for the perplexed. That made *me* feel so much better about him, when it explained to me that his style is the result of the fact that his writings come mainly from lecture notes pieced together. Once you get over that - he is really quite okay, but I don't think DS was thrilled by him. Oh, he also liked Hesiod's Theogeny which is basically the ancient Greek creation of the gods/earth story.

 

I'm not sure that I have created a future classics scholar here, but I think he was surprised at the fact that he could read them at the pace I set (which was not slow) and come up with intelligent responses to most of it. We followed a discussion approach, not a literary analysis approach, based on a Great Books Academy outline that we had from when my eldest took their course several years ago.

 

Next year I will be signing him up for this same course. I am convinced now that he can follow the reading pace (intense) but that I cannot!!! Life is too busy for me to be able to guarantee a great discussion session after each book. Eldest DS who always had a philosophical/literary bent, got so very much out of these courses and still can discuss Plato intelligently today, Computer Engineer that he is!

 

Good luck!

[Candid]

We followed Tapestry of Grace and I taught three ninth graders. The all did fine with the ancient lit. They struggled most with the text Words of Delight which teaches the Bible as lit.