Where to begin?
Not only did I NOT receive a Classical Education, I didn't even really receive a Liberal Arts education. The only history and literature courses I took, beyond high school, were those necessary to get a degree in science (not very many!). So assuming I'm completely ignorant, which is pretty much the case, how do I begin educating myself?
I'm studying Henle for Latin. Should I read Adler's "How to Read a Book" or Bauer's "The Well-Educated Mind" to get started? And is there like a Dummy's Guide to Ancient Greece and Rome? LOL! Where would you start -- what do you think is top priority? And would you recommend a "Great Books" list that I should work my way through?
If you have a map you can give this lost soul, you'd have my sincere gratitude!
Glo
Here's where to begin.
Glo, do not worry about not receiving a liberal arts education in college. I have a BA in English, and I do not feel I have received a good liberal arts education -- and I went to a "really good" national university. I will call it High Falutin' University, or HFU for short.
At HFU, we did not read the Great Books. They were too politically incorrect, because they were mostly written by dead white males. We read books written by women and minorities -- simply because the authors were women and minorities. I found that incredibly sexist and racist, but I had really no choice if I wanted to graduate. The thing is, that sort of environment is espoused in nearly every university, except for the ones that make a point to read the Great Books. The experience was so awful that it nearly tore me away from all books entirely.
If I could do it all over again, I would have attended the tiny classical college literally right down the street. Life would have been a lot less stressful, and I would have enjoyed the educational aspect of my college career more. However, I didn't even notice what that college taught till my 4th year in undergrad, and by then it was too late to transfer. The only advantage I have over graduates of the tiny classical college is that HFU is much more well-known, and its name on my resume gave me a couple of jobs. But in a few years, what will that matter? After I get married and have children, I plan to be a full-time wife, mother, and homeschooler. Thus, my expensive college education was mostly a waste of time, and I have a lot of catching up to do in order to educate my children.
As for your question of what to do and where to begin, I recommend that you read this thread at the Memoria Press Forums. We're answering your questions in this thread. I'm also known as geekchic9 over there.
Morgan
Thank you Elizabeth and Morgan
I have learned, even just in teaching Kindergarten (!!) that I learn far more deeply by being the teacher than I did first time around as a student. I do look forward to learning all of this alongside my daughter.
Thanks for that link, Morgan. When I read LCC through the first time, it was while thinking about applying it to my dd. I'm going to read it through again and think about how to apply it to myself. High Falutin' University -- I like that. :D I still suspect that your education was better than that which I received at Mega State University!
I could have written that ...
Morgan, you and I had the same education, including the BA in English with reading politically correct books. It's amazing how little I know.
I know what you mean, but...
I don't think the purpose of a classical curriculum is how many things you know. Multum non multa. (Not many, but much.) I think the purpose of an education is to produce adults who know how to think, who know how to learn, and who know themselves. It seems that fewer and fewer adults meet these standards. I wish I met these standards. I am glad I have time on my side when it comes to learning how to think, learn, and know myself. That is my only advantage at this point. I wish everyone luck as they pursue their self-educations.
Not intended to say
... that a classical education is about what you know. Just marking the similarity between what you wrote about your degree and college experience, and what I think about mine.
I'd like to make a plea for...
content. I do think that what and how much you know is part of being well educated, and that conveying a body of knowledge is a cental concern of classical education. Educators sometimes talk about learning to think as if that could happen without something to think about - as if you could teach a body to digest food effectively without giving it anything to chew. Or that what it chews will have no impact on the relative health of the body in question.
This is one place where I think E. D. Hirsch, Jr., of Cultural Literacy fame, is right on target. It's not just important to get kids to read, but to get them to read good books, and ones that convey a body of common information and common values. The same is true for us grown-ups.
On another message board there's a thread about what books every literate adult should be familiar with. One person suggested that people should just read what interests them. While I obviously wouldn't warn people away from following their interests, I couldn't disagree more with the underlying sentiment: that content is relative, that it doesn't matter as much as the act of reading. Someone whose reading consists solely of Popular Mechanics or People - no matter how passionate the reader is about the subject matter - is very simply not as literate as someone whose reading includes the classics.
Cultural literacy is something held in common. Without that shared foundation, we are a civilization of "idiots" in the Greek sense: private persons with no connection to others.
-Drew (preaching to the choir here!)
***
"Hardly any lawful price would seem to me too high for what I have gained by being
made to learn Latin and Greek. —C. S. Lewis
***
I've been thinking about content, too.
How about this: In addition to knowing how to think, how to learn, I'll add how to value. The knowledge can be expanded beyond self-knowledge to knowledge of the world around us. I think I'll address this more in my blog (link below.)
Seeking a Latin Centered Self-Education.
Again, though, I think this
Again, though, I think this goes back to *which* culture you want to be literate in. If you don't have a basic understanding of Shintoism and Japanese history you can't make sense of Japanese involvement in WW 2. If you don't understand what the Beat Generation was about, can you truly understand "Howl"? If you don't read all those PC books. can you ever understand the whole American experience?
For me, personally, the answer is no.
Elizabeth
Single Mama to Annabelle who is five and a half because "I chopped that year right in half HIYA!"
On the other hand...
if you haven't got a basic understanding of "high culture" and classical forms, you won't understand why Truman Capote said of Jack Kerouac's work, "That's not writing, it's typing." ;)
-Drew
***
"Hardly any lawful price would seem to me too high for what I have gained by being
made to learn Latin and Greek. —C. S. Lewis
***
anti-Western culture books
Those PC books I read presented a very narrow view of the American experience. The books were all, among other things, very anti-Western culture -- and these books usually were written by people who didn't understand Western culture.
Seeking a Latin Centered Self-Education.
*LOL*
Well HFU and Mega State U have a lot on 'never finished U' ;) but then, I consider myself incredibly lucky, because my parents collected the great books and I have read a few over the years as a result.
I am currently working through Adler's book and I have the WEM on my shelf, ready to get out afterwards ;) But I agree...
You should read Drew's book first. It'll calm you down :D Then, you can start pretty much where you like in there. His high school recommendations are excellent... and in fact at one point, he does recommend that you read Adler's How to read a Book.
I think there is something that we can take away from Drew's book that should help... that is the concept of not many but MUCH. That is to say, we dont read a LOT of books, but rather we read a few really well :)
I have started learning Latin myself, I plan to do more than just that, but it is a start.
Happy Learning!
~Rachel~
SAHM to James (6) and Lenore (2)
Glo - I think there are
Glo -
I think there are many of us who received pretty lousy educations, or at least they seem that way in retrospect. I did not need to take a single history or literature course past high school. No, wait a minute... I did take a college lit class on Hans Christian Andersen. It was a joke, but I did read a LOT of his stories for that class (I could have aced the class without reading more than one or two though!)
Where to start? I think it is important as an adult to just start somewhere. Most of what I'm doing is learning alongside my kids, particularly as far as the classical studies materials go. I'm learning Greek *v*e*r*y slowly alongside them. I'll be working through the Shakespeare stories with my oldest this next year, and I plan to read through the actual plays after doing them with him (I do *own* a complete works volume, but I've never read it).
The things that I am doing "above and beyond" are that I am working through Henle First Year. I don't have a lot of time available, but I am just plugging along. I recently got the first volume of Churchill's history book on audio, and I am listening to that. I plan to listen a couple of times, as I know I'm not getting as much from it as I ought... but I just don't have *time* to seriously study that.
I'm mostly trying to take baby steps, and to keep up with my kids.
Where should *you* start? I have no idea. Pick something, start doing it, and once you have it worked into your life and you want to do more, start doing something else too. I'm really, really trying to listen to the tortoise - in the version of Aesop that we just read, he says "Plodding wins the race." I like that better than 'Slow & Steady...' I must say. Plodding just sounds like a better description of what I'm doing.
Thank you all for the help
"His high school recommendations are excellent... and in fact at one point, he does recommend that you read Adler's How to read a Book."
Adler's would be an excellent place to start, wouldn't it? And as for the high school recommendations, actually, I'm afraid I might have to start with more like Fifth Grade!!!! (Yikes!)
Debra, I love that image of the tortoise plodding along to win the race. I think plodding is a pretty good description of what I'm doing with Henle right now. :D
I just
I just finished Adler's How to Read a Book... with the great books reading partnership group :) Well actually, I had to read faster so I could get my book back to the library, but still...
Reading it and LCC are a grea place to start... HTRAB helps you to read better, LCC has a guideline of what to read ;)
~Rachel~
SAHM to James (6) and Lenore (2)
I've struggled with this for
I've struggled with this for a long time now. I even wrote up a long blog post once upon a time about how to do it via TWTM. Now that my daughter is older, I still have no spare time.
To be perfectly honest, I am auditing my own home school. I never was read half the books I've read to my daughter. I was read to every night of my childhood but never went to the library. As I teach math I fill in the holes of my own math education. In showing my daughter that we need to practice legible handwriting my own has become neater. In showing her how to write down and look up words unknown to her I do the same for myself.
Elizabeth
Single Mama to Annabelle who is five and a half because "I chopped that year right in half HIYA!"