When I saw this great book curriculum for high school students (albeit for home schooled students…), I was more than a bit jealous… As with St. Johns College great books curriculum, the idea of using original sources to focus upon thinking versus merely amassing a variety of data sets for test has always struck me as a shorter path to some sort of wisdom.
There is an implicit irony in learning in this manner, since it is in one sense incredibly traditional and conservative (to only focus upon great books!) as well as incredibly progressive in that it presents an almost singular focus upon learning how to think. The result is that with a finely hones set of tools like this, everything else should be do-able, learn-able, and graduates should be well set for life.
Another perspective about this is to go against the current stream of thought in education…the idea that everything new is valid (and by inference, everything old is passé). In perspective, it seems to be a rather sophomoric view…to suggest that technology is intrinsically more valid than several thousand years of human thought…
In any case, I have presented part of this post from Well Trained Minds, as in a suggested reading list for 9th and 10th graders…how many have you read?
Great Books
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/great-books
GREAT BOOKS:
A defense and the (inevitable) list.In high school, the classical student actively engages with the ideas of the past and present — not just reading about them, but evaluating them, tracing their development, and comparing them to other philosophies and opinions. This sounds abstract, but fortunately there’s a very practical way to engage in this conversation of ideas: Read, talk about, and write about the Great Books.
To some extent, the division between history and literature has always been artificial; we know about history from archaeology and anthropology, but our primary source of historical knowledge is the testimony of those who lived in the past. Without the books written by Aristotle, Homer, Plato, Virgil, and Caesar, we would know very little about the politics, religion, culture, and ideals of Greece and Rome.
The study of Great Books allows the past to speak for itself, combining history, creative writing, philosophy, politics, and ethics into a seamless whole. The goal of the rhetoric stage is a greater understanding of our own civilization, country, and place in time, stemming from an understanding of what has come before us. “The old books,” writes classical schoolmaster David Hicks, “lay a foundation for all later learning and life.” The student who has read Aristotle and Plato on human freedom, Thomas Jefferson on liberty, Frederick Douglass on slavery, and Martin Luther King on civil rights will read Toni Morrison’s Beloved with an understanding denied to the student who comes to the book without any knowledge of its roots.
Remember again that the goal of the classical education is not an exhaustive exploration of great literature. The student with a well-trained mind continues to read, think, and analyze long after classes have ended.Ninth grade, BC 5000-400 AD
The Bible: Genesis, Job
Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2500 BC)
The Iliad and The Odyssey, Homer (c. 850 BC)
A Day in Old Athens by William S. Davis
History of the Persian Wars by Herodotus (485-424 BC)
The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
(Livingston abridged edition) (460-395 BC)
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex (c. 440 BC)
Medea, Euripides (c. 431 BC)
The Frogs, Aristophanes (405 BC)
Republic, Symposium, Plato (c. 387 BC)
On Poetics, Ethics, Aristotle (384-322 BC)
A Day in Old Rome by William S. Davis
The Bible: The Book of Daniel (c. 165 BC)
On the Nature of Things, Lucretius (c. 60 BC)
De republic, Cicero (54 BC)
The Aeneid by Virgil (c. 30 BC)
Metamorphoses by Ovid (c. 5)
The Bible: Paul, 1 & 2 Letters to the Corinthians (c. 58 AD)
The Wars of the Jews by Josephus (c. 68)
The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Roman, Plutarch (c.100)
The Annals of Tacitus (c. 117)
On the Incarnation by Athanasius (c. 300)Tenth grade, 400-1600
Augustine, Confessions and City of God, Book 8 (c. 411)
The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius (524)
The Koran (selections) (c. 650)
Beowulf (c. 1000)
The Mabinogion (c. 1050)
1066: The Year of Conquest, Howartz Dand
Cur Deus Homo by Anselm (c. 1090)
Life in a Medieval Barony, William Stearns Davis
The Magna Carta, James Daugherty
Aquinas: Selected Writings (ed. Robert Goodwin) (c. 1273)
Novum Organon, Roger Bacon (1270s)
The Inferno, Dante (1320)
Gawain and the Green Knight (c. 1400)
Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (selections)(c. 1400)
Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur (selections)(c. 1470)
Education of a Christian Prince (selections)(1510)
The Prince by Machiavelli (1513)
Utopia by Thomas More (1516)
Commentary on Galatians, Martin Luther (c. 1520)
Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin (selections) (1536)
Aztecs and Spaniards, Albert Marrin
Empires Lost and Won: The Spanish Heritage in the Southwest, Albert Marrin
Faustus, Marlowe (1588)
The Faerie Queene, Spenser (1590)
Julius Caesar (1599), Hamlet (1600), or other plays, Shakespeare
Life in Elizabethan Days, William Stearns Davis
Getting Started
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/getting-started
