Matching The Teaching Company (The Great Courses) With A Publised Textbook

[DonHomeschool]

I wanted to know if anyone has ever matched a textbook to the video courses of the Teaching Company.  In other words, I am looking at some of their Ancient Civilization, World History, and Modern History videos for a homeschooled high school student.  However, a textbook to supplement these great videos would improve the curriculum. 

 

Any ideas or guidance would be appreciated.

[Dana]

The guidebooks typically have suggested readings for a lecture.

[DonHomeschool]

Dana, the problem with the guidebooks is that the suggested readings come from different sources.  For instance, it may suggest reading chapter 1 & 2 from textbook A for lesson 1, then suggest to read chapter 5 & 6 from textbook B for lesson 2, and so on.  Therefore, I could end up paying hundreds of dollars for various textbook suggestion readings on one full video with 36-48 lessons.  

 

I am looking for one textbook that would match a specific video in a topic and wanted to know if any members actually tried to attempt to manually match them.  I am truly thinking about doing this myself, but wanted to ask the members before taking on this task.

[8filltheheart]

Many of the professors have textbooks they have written or co-written that line up very well. Definitely the case with Western Civ,,intro to Astronomy, etc. many of the others I have looked through and found ones that are referred to multiple times and then supplemented with books of my preference not even mentioned.

[swimmermom3]

If you need an exact match, you may want to look at something like Yale's Open Course for modern European history. Well-respected historian, John Merriman teaches the course using his text, which I believe is also on the AP European History acceptable text list.

[swimmermom3]

We are currently using the Teaching Company course, Foundations of Western Civilization II: A History of the Modern Western World. Professor Bucholz recommends The Western Experience by Mortimer Chambers, et. al. This is a standard AP European History/college-level text. Professor Bucholz doesn't use all of the chapters and he doesn't necessarily use them in order.

 

The problem you are going to find in matching up texts with courses (unless it's like the Yale course where professor has written text) is that the TC professors aren't just good lecturers, they are experts in their fields. They have their own unique sense of how they want to present the subject.

 

I have three AP Europe texts on hand and access to three more online. They basically all say the same thing, but not necessarily in the same order. Of course, the reason for that is that history doesn't occur in discrete blocks. The Reformation didn't wait to start until the last Renaissance artist died and the Industrial Revolution was occurring simultaneously with the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era.

 

If you let go of the idea that there is a "perfect" sequence, it's not too difficult to line up a TC course and text. Remember that the text reading is background material. I expect my student to pull some new material from the lectures or more importantly, a different viewpoint than from the text. If the lecture follows a text word for word, it's a waste of my student's time to sit and listen to the lecture.

 

Last year, we used History of the Ancient World from TC and it's easily aligned with any AP World History text (what we did) or with Susan Wise Bauer's ancient history book. Either works well. I suspect it could be aligned with one of the K12 Human Odyssey text as well.

 

I know the PA Homeschoolers use the American history lectures from TC, so they must have it aligned with an AP US History book. (Hopefully, we find out next year.)

 

Also, in a different discipline, I was able to line up much of Elizabeth Vandiver's Classical Mythology course with a standard text. That text has substantial excerpts to work from if you didn't want to buy all of the recommended books.

 

Aside, my ds rates Robert Bucholz with Elizabeth Vandiver for TC lecturers - at the top.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

I wanted to know if anyone has ever matched a textbook to the video courses of the Teaching Company. In other words, I am looking at some of their Ancient Civilization, World History, and Modern History videos for a homeschooled high school student. However, a textbook to supplement these great videos would improve the curriculum.

 

Any ideas or guidance would be appreciated.

We used a lot of TC lectures over the past couple years. What we tended to do was have the boys read less in textbooks and more in secondary histories and contemporary fiction and bio. For example, when we did the Civil War they read all of Battle Cry of Freedom as well as the Narrative of the Life of a Slave, Red Badge of Courage, various speeches, about half of Uncle Tom's Cabin and a chapter of Hardtack and Coffee. They also used some primary source documents about a relative who served in the war.

 

We had a similar pattern when we did modern history. They listened to lectures from several sets (about 3 lectures a week) and read a ton. Some reading was in general histories, but more was from specific secondary histories or contemporary writings.

 

We do have both Spielvogel's Western Civilization and Kagan's Western Heritage to dip in and out of.

[swimmermom3]

We used a lot of TC lectures over the past couple years. What we tended to do was have the boys read less in textbooks and more in secondary histories and contemporary fiction and bio. For example, when we did the Civil War they read all of Battle Cry of Freedom as well as the Narrative of the Life of a Slave, Red Badge of Courage, various speeches, about half of Uncle Tom's Cabin and a chapter of Hardtack and Coffee. They also used some primary source documents about a relative who served in the war.

 

We had a similar pattern when we did modern history. They listened to lectures from several sets (about 3 lectures a week) and read a ton. Some reading was in general histories, but more was from specific secondary histories or contemporary writings.

 

We do have both Spielvogel's Western Civilization and Kagan's Western Heritage to dip in and out of.

 

I like this idea and wish I had the nerve to leave the AP texts behind for the most part. The lectures are excellent and the texts are dry at best. I am heartily sick of jamming as much info as I can into class time without being able to wander off on rabbit trails.

 

[Sebastian (a lady)]

I like this idea and wish I had the nerve to leave the AP texts behind for the most part. The lectures are excellent and the texts are dry at best. I am heartily sick of jamming as much info as I can into class time without being able to wander off on rabbit trails.j

 

I find it somewhat ironic that the more I poke into AP the more I decide to leave some of the courses alone and go our own way. I doubt that we'll do ap World History, just because I dislike the focus of the course.

 

And despite my degrees in both English and Education I'm struggling to make sense of the point of the English Lang and Comp degree.

 

Fwiw, while not AP my course description and reading list for last year does look awesome.