I plan to share more about Luke and his Challenge B year in an upcoming post, but these are a few photos from Luke’s mock trial experience with his Classical Conversations class. The class was divided into prosecution and defense teams. Luke was assigned the role of bailiff for the defense team and prosecuting attorney with the prosecution team.
Most of the kids were able to attend and observe a high school mock trial competition early in their preparations, and a local attorney met with the kids to share his experience, answer questions, and inspire them. The teams met together outside of class for two months leading up to the mock trial competition.
Luke said this experience was his favorite class and activity of the year and he would consider joining a mock trial group in high school. That’s high praise from him. He also said he’d be interested in a career as bailiff.
Mock trial is an invaluable experience for these kids, and I am so proud of them!
This morning I re-read an old article at First Things, A Curriculum of Life. The author asserts that a child’s curriculum should enlarge his current life, not be a self-serving means to an end (diploma, employment). He proposes structuring a curriculum using the “Three L’s”: Logic, Literature, and Love.
"But we must never allow a curriculum for school to replace a curriculum of life; schooling mustn’t take over the education of living. When it does it becomes deeply mis-educative and disenchanting. It robs our children of the present gift of life they have been given by God.
"If—heaven forbid—they die young, I hope they will have lived beautiful lives even in their youth, perhaps even more so than those who survive them."
This reminded me of beautiful discussion this month with my Scholé Sisters, led my my brilliant friend Mindy Pickens. We gathered, about twenty of us, to talk about why we take time to read, take time to contemplate, take time to gather and discuss, when we are busy homeschooling moms with endless to-do lists.
What is the use of spending a year on Hamlet or a year on Flannery O’Connor or a year on Tolkien or a year on Pride and Prejudice (our upcoming year)? What do we have to show for our time? Why should this pursuit take up space in our lives that could be used for something more productive or practical?
Let’s contemplate those questions.
In our modern American culture, we tend to divide pursuits or activities into two categories: productive/useful and pleasurable/wasteful. These two categories often carry a moral designation as well: productive, good; pleasurable, bad.
In some ancient cultures, however, different categories of thinking were used: self-focused/utilitarian and truth-focused/non-utilitarian (pursuits that were worthy in and of themselves and not as the means to an end). These weren't moral designations. Both of them were necessary for life.
The interesting thing about self-focused and truth-focused categories is that they are more fluid than our productive and wasteful categories and it often depends on a person's mindset while doing them. We talked about how monks turned the most routine labor into a means of worship.
We can clean our homes so that we can check that task off our list or we can clean our homes in service of the people we love who live there or visit there.
We can stand and eat a protein bar so that our bodies will function for all of our tasks that day, or we can use our meal time as a time to reflect or practice gratefulness. We can make an artful meal or a beautiful table. We can eat in community with others. We can use a meal to bless our families. There is nothing wrong with fueling our bodies quickly with a protein bar, but there are other ways to make meals and fuel our bodies that are less utilitarian.
One of my friends talked about how shifting her mindset to thinking of all the mundane tasks of motherhood (breaking up fights, cleaning up vomit, carpooling to activities) as truth-seeking and service was instrumental in saving her sanity as a mom to many little children. Those aren't big time-drains that take away from our ability to be productive. They have value beyond what they lead to or produce.
The word "school" itself comes from the word "scholé" which means leisure. In the past, leisure was synonymous with activities that were truth-focused and non-utilitarian. Leisure wasn't the absence of work. It wasn't vacation. It wasn't consumerism. It wasn't non-activity such as sitting in front of the television. It was work that was worthy for its own sake, not as a means to an end (a diploma, a good job, a position in society).
When we say we are pursuing truth, goodness, and beauty in education, we mean that we are learning because truth, goodness, and beauty are worthy pursuits in their own right. Cultivating virtue (self-discipline, commitment, perseverance, compassion, cooperation, patience...) is also a goal of education and an end in itself.
I like the three categories in the article: Logic, Literature, and Love. I can fit all of the Classical Conversations Challenge content into those three categories. I can fit all of it into truth-seeking and true leisure—living a beautiful life now and not as the means to an end.
The difficulty lies in thinking of the curriculum in that way, pursuing it in that way, and especially helping our 8th and 10th grade boys to see it that way, rather than as an obligation, a drudge, a check-list, and a stepping-stone to a diploma, which is a stepping-stone to a good job, which is a stepping-stone to vacations and possessions and savings, which is a stepping-stone to retirement.
I also struggle with habit-forming and teaching my boys and myself to love what we ought and not just what is pleasurable. Virtue formation is hard, and often requires doing something repeatedly until we grow to love it.
So I'm saying all this not to be preachy, but to remind myself (because I forget every minute of every day) what a beautiful education can be. It doesn't have to be CC—absolutely not—and it can (and should) be a tailored version of CC, if that’s the path you’re on, but I believe Challenge is full of logic, literature, and love (and leisure!) that can enlarge our students’ present lives. It happens to be a good fit for us at this time.
Figuring out what a beautiful life looks like for ourselves and our children and our families is always going to require constant prayer and consideration. Implementing it in reality is going to be even more difficult (especially with teen boys). There is no formula. It’s complex and messy and hard and beautiful. It also requires a magnitude of faith.
.
How can we operate under a truth-seeking mindset rather than a self-focused mindset?
How can we pursue leisure and virtue and truth, goodness, and beauty rather than a utilitarian outcome?
Do our pursuits enlarge our humanity or diminish it?
What skills are we learning? My friend Mindy thinks in skills rather than subjects. Attending, listening, speaking, reading, writing, remembering, and reasoning.
How can we serve others in this pursuit?
Where is the truth, goodness, beauty, and order in what we are viewing and contemplating?
What virtues are we striving toward? Self-discipline, patience, compassion, wonder?
How can we turn this pursuit into truth-seeking or leisure?
How can we practice re-creating in this endeavor rather than consuming?
How can we delight, attend, worship, contemplate, or build relationships in this moment?
As my friend Sara Masarik said, “A monastery strives to serve with feet on earth and hearts and heads in heaven. And that, I think, is what our homes [our educations, our lives] can be as well.”
We survived our first full day back to school. I even managed to snap a picture of all four kids before we headed to our Classical Conversations community this morning. (I actually snapped a bunch of pictures, but this is the only one that kind of turned out…)
This is our EIGHTH year with Classical Conversations.
Levi is in 10th grade, Challenge 2. Luke is in 8th grade, Challenge B. Leif is in 6th grade, Foundations and Essentials. Lola is in 1st grade, Foundations.
Two middle schoolers and a high schooler. That is mind-boggling.
I’m tutoring Essentials for the third year.
We’ve been homeschooling for a decade.
Luke and Levi have actually been back in class for a couple weeks, but this is the first full normal week for them.
Lola had a rough day today. She was testing boundaries. Where is that line? What happens when I cross it? I’m hoping that she feels her questions were sufficiently answered and doesn’t need to ask them again next week.
Last week was packed with activities and appointments. Levi and I attended a day-long philosophy workshop at Gutenberg College on Friday. Saturday was our annual trek to the Renaissance Faire (pictures forthcoming).
I’m completely and utterly unprepared for this week of lessons at home.
For the past several years I’ve been able to photograph our local Classical Conversations Spring Protocol for the high school Challenge classes. [The lighting and pictures turned out the best at the first protocol in 2014, then again in 2015. The venue changed and the lighting was very dim for the 2016 event, and I only posted one picture.]
This year I finally had a son old enough to attend the event! It was a new venue again—not as conducive for photos, but the protocol team (headed by my best friend, Char) did a lovely job decorating and plating and serving. [I tried my hand at my first ever chalk board design.]
The students enjoyed a four-course meal (soup, salad, main dish, and dessert plus bread and a palate-cleansing sorbet) and then an evening of English country dancing under twinkling lights.
I’ve been working on mapping out Levi’s high school courses and schedule. (Though we are not bound by credit requirements for our homeschool transcripts, I’ve used these Oregon requirements as well as the requirements from our local public high school as general guides.) Levi has no specific post high school plans at this time. We will consider a gap year before any college plans.
[You’ll notice that his courses are reading-heavy. Levi is a strong reader and enjoys discussion and content-based learning, but his struggles in other areas balance out his hefty reading list. I promise.]
Levi is participating in the Classical Conversations Challenge program, in addition to a few other courses. I’ve tried to indicate what courses are CC specific, and I’ve put any additions I’ve made to the CC course specifics in parentheses.
Shakespeare/Drama [CC] 1/2 credit (Language Arts - Elective) Dramatic radio reading and discussion of play; Oral presentation on topic relating to Shakespeare Shakespeare presentation (memorization of three monologues--comedy, tragedy, history) (Attend plays [The Comedy of Errors, Hamlet])
Music Theory [CC] 1/2 credit (Fine Arts - Elective) Introduction to music theory, including reading and analyzing a musical score Math in Motion Score Analysis Project
Latin [CC] 1 credit (Language - Required) Includes basic parts of speech, verb tenses, translations, and Roman history Henle I National Latin Exam (Intro)
American Literature and Composition [CC] 1 credit (Honors Language Arts - Required) Read texts, discuss and analyze literature, writing assignments (persuasive and comparison essays) The Lost Tools of Writing [persuasive essays] CC Literature, Poetry, Speeches, Essays, Autobiographies, and Sermons [unabridged texts]:
The Sign of the Beaver (Elizabeth Speare)
The Call of the Wild (Jack London)
Johnny Tremain (Esther Forbes)
The Red Badge of Courage (Stephen Crane)
The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
Gold-Bug and Other Tales (Edgar Allan Poe)
Billy Budd, Sailor (Herman Melville)
Through Gates of Splendor (Elisabeth Elliot)
Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain)
Harvey (Mary Chase)
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (Barbara Robinson)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
Born Again (Charles Colson)
Up From Slavery (Booker T. Washington)
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Douglass)
The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway)
Self-Reliance (Ralph W. Emerson)
Walden: Or, Life in the Woods (Henry David Thoreau)
Starship Troopers (Robert Heinlein)
An Old-Fashioned Girl (Louisa May Alcott)
The Witch of Blackbird Pond (Elizabeth Speare)
Short Stories, Poetry, Sermons, Documents, and Speeches
Additional Novels:
Pudd’nhead Wilson (Mark Twain)
Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (Twain)
Good Books II: Tolkien [Roman Roads] 1/2 credit (Language Arts - Elective) Weekly online live class discussion Weekly online written discussion Memorization Essays
Algebra I [CC] 1 credit (Math - Required) [He participates in math discussions and presentations in his CC class but uses Khan Academy at home rather than the CC recommended Saxon.] Khan Academy Algebra I (Life of Fred)
American Government [CC] 1/2 credit (Social Studies - Required) Read, annotate, and summarize original government documents, essays, and speeches; discuss historical significance; oral presentations American Documents Memorization [U.S. Presidents, Preamble to the Constitution, Outline of Bill of Rights] Speech memorization/recitation [Individual Event] (“Spirit of Liberty” by Judge Learned Hand) Timeline notebook (Crash Course U.S. Government and Politics video series) (U.S. Citizenship Civics Exam)
Economics [CC] 1/2 credit (Social Studies - Required) Read texts, discuss current economic policy, oral presentations Cost of Living Project Stock Market Project
Policy Debate [CC] 1/2 credit (Language Arts - Elective) Study basic elements of policy debate; Conduct research for resolutions and participate in live debates An Introduction to Policy Debate by Christy L. Shipe Two formal debates [Death Penalty—affirmative team, Immigration Policy—negative team]
Physical Science [CC] 1 credit (Lab Science - Required) Read text, discussion, demonstration/experimentation labs, text assignments, unit tests, lab journal, formal lab reports Exploring Creation with Physical Science by Apologia (Life of Fred: Pre-Algebra with Physics) [research paper for health credit] Additional reading (not scheduled through CC)
4-day leadership camp at state capitol Homework: send letters to state senator and representative, memorize bible verses, vocabulary, write a one-page bill, state political fact sheet, read or listen to governor’s most recent State of the State Address and take notes, complete a bill analysis worksheet, constitutional analysis (Leadership TED Talks)
Swim Team [High School Team/YMCA] 1 credit (Physical Education - Required) (+hiking)
Volunteering at student camp(s) during CC Parent Practicum(s) and vacation bible school
Tentative Plan for the Remainder of High School:
10th Grade [CC Challenge II]
Henle Latin 2 [CC] 1 credit (Language - Required)
British Literature and Composition [CC] 1 credit (Honors Language Arts - Required) Socratic dialogue, persuasive essay writing CC Novels:
Beowulf
Selected Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Retold by J.L. Weston)
Paradise Lost (Milton)
The Pilgrim’s Progress (Bunyan)
Gulliver’s Travels (Swift)
Pride and Prejudice (Austen)
A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
Jane Eyre (Bronte)
Animal Farm (Orwell)
A Passage to India (Forster)
Something Beautiful for God (Muggeridge)
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll)
Robinson Crusoe (DeFoe)
Favorite Father Brown Stories (Chesterton)
Out of the Silent Planet (C.S. Lewis)
The Hobbit (Tolkien)
The Screwtape Letters (C.S. Lewis)
Short Stories
Additional British Literature:
Far From the Madding Crowd (Thomas Hardy)
Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)
Lorna Doone (Blackmore)
Ivanhoe (Sir Walter Scott)
North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell)
The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins)
Lord of the Flies (Golding)
Three Men in a Boat (Jerome)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Robert Lewis Stevenson)
And Then There Were None (Agatha Christie)
The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Windermere’s Fan, An Ideal Husband (Oscar Wilde)
As You Like It, Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Lear (Shakespeare)
All Creatures Great and Small (James Herriot)
The Time Machine (H.G. Wells)
The War of the Worlds (H.G. Wells)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Adams)
Watership Down (Richard Adams)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Arthur Clarke)
Kim and others (Rudyard Kipling)
The Once and Future King (T.H. White)
Pygmalion (George Bernard Shaw)
Jeeves (Wodehouse)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (Arthur Conan Doyle)
Short Stories and Poetry
European Literature:
Don Quixote (abridged) (Cervantes)
The Count of Monte Cristo (Hugo)
Les Miserables (Dumas)
The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Jules Verne)
Pinoccio (Collodi)
Swiss Family Robinson (Johann Wyss)
Russian novel selection
[I will be posting a final master list in chronological order with links at the beginning of the school year.]
Western Cultural History [CC] 1 credit (Social Studies - Required) Artists and Composers Philosophy Historical Timeline Debate Research, exposition, and logic Books:
Biology [CC] 1 credit (Lab Science - Required) Exploring Creation with Biology by Apologia [I’ll be adding to his reading list and possibly adjusting his work load with the text book.] [Additional reading:
American History [CC] 1 credit (Social Studies - Required)
Chemistry [CC] 1 credit (Lab Science - Required) Exploring Creation with Chemistry by Apologia [We may cut way back on what is required with Apologia Chemistry through CC and supplement with the following living books and additional documentaries.] [Additional Reading List:
He will have all his required credits so this will be a flexible year depending on his needs and desires. I’d love to have him go through Challenge 4, but he will likely choose something else. He may need to complete or retake a math or science class scheduled in previous years.
Latin Literature [CC] and/or Spanish 1 credit (Language)
The Aeneid by Virgil
Henle 4
Ancient Literature and Composition) [CC] 1 credit (Language Arts)
[Physics and Pre-Calculus are on the CC schedule, but he would likely opt out or complete/re-take a math or science course schedule in previous years.]
Levi is reading American literature for his 9th grade year through Classical Conversations. The CC Challenge 1 Am. Lit. book list is hefty (full texts, not excerpts), but Levi is a strong and willing reader. Because his CC year ends in April, I decided to round out his book list with additional American literature selections to read May through July before he begins British literature in August for Challenge 2. It is my desire to present him with a robust variety of genres, complexity, and topics, even though I can’t fit everything on the list (obviously I tried, but so many books didn’t make the cut!). When compiling the master list, I chose to include a few relevant books he has read in the past couple years (particularly including CC Challenge A and B literature selections).
Levi has discussed the CC Challenge literature in class and has written essays on many of the novels.
[I have a post coming up with Levi’s full course descriptions for 9th grade and the upcoming high school plan.]
I’ve noted Challenge literature selections with asterisks.
*Challenge A (roughly 7th grade) **Challenge B (roughly 8th grade) ***Challenge 1 (roughly 9th grade)
Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville (published posthumously in 1924, but he began writing it in 1888; Levi did not care for this one, but I’m including it here since it is a CC Challenge 2 literature selection) ***
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (published in 1960; a masterful novel and absolutely essential for cultural literacy) ***
The Chosen by Chaim Potok (published in1967; set in 1940s Brooklyn, NY; a coming of age story about a Jewish boy—excellent)
The Lonesome Gods (and others) by Louis L’Amour (published in 1983; set on the California frontier (Mojave and Colorado Deserts) 1800s?)
Peace Like a River by Leif Enger (published in 2001; set in small-town Minnesota in the early 1960s with an endearing child narrator with a precocious sister and wise father reminiscent of Scout and Atticus Finch—one of my favorite novels of all time)
Little Britches by Ralph Moody (series published in 1950-1968; the first book begins when his family moves to Colorado in 1906—excellent) **
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson (Des Moines, Iowa; 1950s. I am NOT recommending this book to other students without serious parental guidance, but it is the funniest book I have ever read in my life and it contains so much fascinating information about life in mid-century America.)
Through Gates of Splendor by Elisabeth Elliot (1957; Elisabeth’s husband was killed in 1956 while attempting to make missionary contact with the Auca of eastern Ecuador. She later returned as a missionary to the tribe members who killed her husband.) ***
Born Again by Charles Colson (1976) (Chuck Colson served as Special Counsel to Richard Nixon in 1969-1973; he became a Christian in 1973, just before his prison sentence, and later founded Prison Fellowship.) ***
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (published in 1953; a relevant dystopian novel that everyone should read for cultural literacy)
The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov (published in 1953; a futuristic science-fiction detective novel, recommended by a friend)
Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein (published in 1959; a military science fiction novel exploring military and societal ethics) ***
Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank (another novel published in 1959; a realistic apocalyptic novel from the nuclear age, set in the U.S.)
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (published in 1985; another futuristic military science fiction novel—one of my favorite explorations of the nature of leadership)
The Giver by Lois Lowry (published in 1993; a YA utopian/dystopian novel followed by 3 more books in the series)
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (the trilogy published 2008-10; YA futuristic dystopian/apocalyptic novels set in the U.S.—excellent for discussing government and qualities of leadership)
Levi is studying American Documents this year through the Classical Conversations Challenge program. This essay, The Man with the Muck Rake, written in 1906 by Theodore Roosevelt was assigned for this week. I ditched the school schedule and the teen and I had a deep and invigorating 2.5 hour discussion on politics, social media, and virtue. Today I dropped off our ballots with a sense of peace.
Just a few quotes, though much more of the essay is quote-worthy:
"At the risk of repetition let me say again that my plea is not for immunity to, but for the most unsparing exposure of, the politician who betrays his trust, of the big business man who makes or spends his fortune in illegitimate or corrupt ways. There should be a resolute effort to hunt every such man out of the position he has disgraced. Expose the crime, and hunt down the criminal; but remember that even in the case of crime, if it is attacked in sensational, lurid, and untruthful fashion, the attack may do more damage to the public mind than the crime itself."
"It is a prime necessity that if the present unrest is to result in permanent good the emotion shall be translated into action, and that the action shall be marked by honesty, sanity, and self-restraint."
"The first requisite in the public servants who are to deal in this shape with corporations, whether as legislators or as executives, is honesty. This honesty can be no respecter of persons. There can be no such thing as unilateral honesty."
"But in addition to honesty, we need sanity. No honesty will make a public man useful if that man is timid or foolish, if he is a hot-headed zealot or an impracticable visionary."
"More important than aught else is the development of the broadest sympathy of man for man."
"The foundation stone of national life is, and ever must be, the high individual character of the average citizen."
Honesty, sanity, self-restraint. High individual character.
I’ve written about parallelism in the past. It’s powerful and poetic (and picturesque). After finishing The Call of the Wild by Jack London, I am compelled to compose a complete post with copious quotes from this conspicuous narrative. [Oh, wait. This is a post about parallelism, not alliteration.]
The Call of the Wild is an excellent introduction to classic literature for older kids. It’s a fairly short and simple story (my copy has 134 pages with a fair amount of white space), but the themes are more complex than most children’s books and the vocabulary is rich and varied. For example, London manages to squeeze two of my favorite words into a short sentence:
“And so it went, the inexorable elimination of the superfluous.”
As I was reading, I noticed that London used parallelism prolifically in this novel. Because parallelism is a prominent skill taught in The Lost Tools of Writing as well as the building block of many literary devices, students should be on the lookout for examples in their own reading.
The Call of the Wild is a literature selection for the Classical Conversations Challenge 1 program, so it is a handy example for Challenge students. Let’s explore a few instances of parallelism in this novel.
Among the terriers he stalked imperiously, and Toots and Ysabel he utterly ignored, for he was king—king over all the creeping, crawling, flying things of Judge Miller’s place, humans included. [three present participial adjectives]
Manuel had one besetting sin. He loved to play Chinese lottery. Also, in his gambling, he had one besetting weakness—faith in a system; and this made his damnation certain. [anaphora (the repetition of “Manuel/he had one besetting____”)]
Here was neither peace, nor rest, nor a moment’s safety. [emphasis on the 3rd noun with the addition of an article and possessive adjective]
The day had been long and arduous, and he slept soundly and comfortably, though he growled and barked and wrestled with bad dreams. [two adjectives, two adverbs, then emphasis on the third with three verbs]
This first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death. It marked further decay or going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence. [Three clauses (subject, verb, direct object) with anaphora (the repetition of “theft/it marked” at the beginning of each clause)]
Their irritability arose out of their misery, increased with it, doubled upon it, outdistanced it*. The wonderful patience of the trail which comes to men who toil hard and suffer sore, and remain sweet of speech and kindly+, did not come to these to men and the woman. They had no inkling of such a patience. They were stiff and in pain; their muscles ached, their bones ached, their very hearts ached^; and because of this they became sharp of speech, and hard words were first on their lips in the morning and last at night. [*emphasis on third without preposition, +emphasis on third with extra words “of speech and kindly,” ^emphasis on third with “very”]
All things were thawing, bending, snapping. [three present progressive verbs]
And amid all this bursting, rending, throbbing of awakening life, under the blazing sun and through the soft-sighing breezes, like wayfarers to death, staggered the two men, the woman, and the huskies. [three gerunds, three nouns]
With the dogs falling, Mercedes weeping and riding, Hal swearing innocuously, and Charles’s eyes wistfully watering, they staggered into John Thornton’s camp at the mouth of White River. [one gerund, two gerunds, gerund/adverb, adverb/gerund—love the alliteration of “wistfully watering” (and “with,” “weeping,” and “White”)]
Mercedes screamed, cried, laughed, and manifested the chaotic abandonment of hysteria. [four “-ed” verbs, emphasis on the last as it continues with a vivid direct object]
But love that was feverish and burning, that was adoration, that was madness, it had taken John Thornton to arouse. [anaphora (“that was…”), the first clause has a predicate adjective, the second two have predicate nominatives]
And when, released, he sprang to his feet, his mouth laughing, his eyes eloquent, his throat vibrant with unuttered sounds, and in that fashion remained without movement, John Thornton would reverently exclaim, ‘God, you can all but speak!’ [anaphora (“his” repeated each time); so poetic with the adjective following the noun]
He sat by John Thornton’s fire, a broad-breasted dog, white-fanged and long-furred; but behind him were the shades of all manner of dogs, half-wolves and wild wolves, urgent and prompting, tasting the savour of the meat he ate, thirsting for the water he drank, scenting the wind with him, listening with him and telling him the sounds made by the wild life in the forest, dictating his moods, directing his actions, lying down to sleep with him when he lay down, and dreaming with him and beyond him and becoming themselves the stuff of his dreams.
Strangling, suffocating, sometimes one uppermost and sometimes the other, dragging over the jagged bottom, smashing against rocks and snags, they veered in to the bank. [two present participles, two “sometimes____” phrases, two present participles + prepositional phrases]
They went across divides in summer blizzards, shivered under the midnight sun on naked mountains between the timber line and the eternal snows, dropped into summer valleys amid swarming gnats and flies, and in the shadows of glaciers picked strawberries and flowers as ripe and fair as any the Southland could boast. [past tense verb + two prepositional phrases, past tense verb + three prepositional phrases (last with compound object), past tense verb + two prepositional phrases (last with compound object) (all objects of prepositions in first three phrases have adjectives), but emphasis placed on the last phrase by switching order and starting with prepositional phrase and ending with past tense verb (and compound direct object)—so poetic!]
There is a patience of the wild—dogged, tireless, persistent as life itself—that holds motionless for endless hours the spider in its web, the snake in its coils, the panther in its ambuscade… [three adjectives, emphasis on the third with a simile; three nouns with prepositional phrases repeating “in its”]
…this patience belongs peculiarly to life when it hunts its living food; and it belonged to Buck as he clung to the flank of the herd, retarding its march, irritating the young bulls, worrying the cows with their half-grown calves, and driving the wounded bull mad with helpless rage. [present participles with direct objects, increasing intensity and adding words to each subsequent phrase]
As twilight fell the old bull stood with lowered head, watching his mates—the cows he had known, the calves he had fathered, the bulls he had mastered—as they shambled on at a rapid pace through the fading light. [three nouns with adjectival clauses, with repeated “he had”—very strong grammatical parallelism]
From then on, night and day, Buck never left his prey, never gave it a moment’s rest, never permitted it to browse the leaves of the trees or the shoots of young birch and willow. [three verb phrases with “never” repeated at the beginning of each (anaphora), each subsequent phrase getting longer]
The birds talked of it, the squirrels chattered about it, the very breeze whispered of it. [three clauses, grammatically parallel; interesting switch from “of” to “about” in the second clause, emphasis on third clause with addition of “very,” epistrophe (repetition of the word “it” at the end of the clauses)]
He plunged about in their very midst, tearing, rending, destroying… [three present participles] Thenceforward he would be unafraid of them except when they bore in their hands their arrows, spears, and clubs. [three nouns]
One wolf, long and lean and gray, advanced cautiously… [three adjectives]
In the past few months I’ve been contemplating the idea of Christian classical education as I’ve read Awakening Wonder and The Liberal Arts Tradition and reviewed Beauty for Truth’s Sake and Beauty in the Word. As I move forward with our upcoming plans, I will be considering a more holistic and robust approach to classical education and integrating the ideas of piety (“properly ordering one’s loves”), gymnastics (physical training, coordination, and fine and gross motor skills), and musical or poetic education (music, singing, poetry, acting/imitating, drawing, fine art, and stories—fiction and non-fiction) with the arts of the quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy) in addition to the arts of the trivium (grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric). I’ll share about this in upcoming in-depth posts.
For now, this post will serve as a quick overview of our upcoming studies.
As long as I’m being completely honest, I’ll just say it: I’m terrified of our next school year. [wry grin]
I will have four distractible children with completely different needs and studies—who need me at all times. I’m trying to sort out the logistics of it all. Where will they each work so that they have enough space, without the distraction of siblings, with their mother on hand to help with questions and discussion? How can I clone myself to be in 4 places at once? I’m still not exactly sure how this is going to work. Even if I think I get it figured out, we’ll probably still have to adjust several times throughout the year (or maybe the first month or two).
Lola [5/6 Years Old—Kindergarten]
Lola will be in Classical Conversations Foundations. This will be her second year (and our family’s 7th!). She will attend play camp and music class/choir during the afternoon on our CC day. She will continue learning to read (All About Reading), write (Handwriting Without Tears), and count (math picture books and games). She’ll continue to focus on memorizing poetry (Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization) and Bible verses (Sing the Word), and she’ll listen to more audio CDs during independent play time. We’ll also be reading many wonderful books together. [I have long lists of music and story CDs and favorite books coming up here on the blog.] We’ll be working together on physical coordination and games, particularly biking and swimming over the summer.
In the best possible world, Lola would spend about an hour a day (in small chunks of time) on formal lessons (that are rarely formal—more of a snuggle-on-the-couch and learn together sort of thing). I want her to spend most of her time in play. Ideally. The problem here is that Lola does. not. play. independently. She is either messing with her brothers and distracting them, doing one-on-one work with me, or sneaking screen time. It does not matter what fun little activity she is given (bubbles, play dough, rice or beans in bins, coloring, whatever)—it is 5 minutes of play time for her, 45 minutes of distraction for her brothers, and an hour of clean-up for me. The only other option is heavily enforced isolated play time. So I’m trying to do some figuring in this department. She really needs a twin sister to play with. Ha!!
At a glance:
Classical Conversations Foundations [One morning a week for 24 weeks: fine arts, science projects, public speaking, geography drawing, and memory work in history (+timeline), science, Latin, geography, English grammar, and math.]
Many wonderful picture and chapter books—fiction and non-fiction [lists in upcoming posts]
Bike riding, swimming, hiking, cordination exercises and physical games
Leif [10 Years old—5th Grade]
Leif will be in Classical Conversations Foundations and Essentials. This will be his 7th year in Foundations and 2nd in Essentials (and I am tutoring his Essentials class). I am considering choir for him, and he will be starting piano lessons in the fall. During the week he will work on CC memory work, math (Khan Academy), Latin (Song School Latin 2), spelling (All About Spelling), CC Essentials grammar and writing (IEW Medieval History-Themed Writing), geography drawing, and independing reading in all subjects plus literature. He will also continue swim team practice four days a week.
At a glance:
Classical Conversations Foundations and Essentials [One day a week for 24 weeks. Fine arts, science projects, public speaking, geography drawing, and memory work in history (+timeline), science, Latin, geography, English grammar, and math plus grammar, writing, and math games in the afternoon.]
Luke will be in Classical Conversations Challenge A. This will be his first year in the Challenge program (with one of my favorite people, Heather Timmons, as his tutor). The Challenge program will dictate the bulk of his studies during the week, but he will also begin piano lessons in September and continue swimming on the swim team four days a week.
Levi will be in Classical Conversations Challenge I. This is a first for us (the oldest is always the guinea pig), and the first year I’ve had a high schooler in the house! His tutor is another one of my favorite people, Cheryl Halsey. He will again be in class with my best friend’s son, McKinnon, and they will probably continue to do some work together during the week. The Challenge program will dictate the bulk of his studies during the week and he will continue swimming on the swim team daily.
At a glance:
Classical Conversations Challenge I (One day a week in class for discussion and presentation.)
In my last post on the subject of formal rhetoric, I introduced you to the canons of rhetoric, the basic arrangement of a persuasive essay or speech, and the modes of persuasion. I’d like to focus on the modes of persuasion and a new topic (elocution) in this post.
Elocution pertains to the style in which you state your ideas. This includes word choice, sentence structure, and figures of speech.
“Parallelism is actually a “figure of speech,” a sentence pattern that varies the ordinary or conventional use of language. Figures come in two types, those which vary standard word order and those which vary standard word usage: a figure is either a scheme or a trope. If parallelism is the most important scheme, metaphor is the most important trope. Metaphor is like similie since both compare two items; a metaphor is an identity, however, where a similie is an analogy.” [Scott F. Crider, The Office of Assertion]
There are two main categories of figures of speech: schemes and tropes.
Schemes appeal to the senses.
These figures of speech have a pleasing or attention-grabbing sound to the ear. Many schemes use repetition of sounds or structure, rhyme or rhythm.
Alliteration is one of the most familiar schemes. It is the repetition of consonant sounds in close proximity, usually at the beginning of words. For example, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is loaded with alliteration in every line.
This king lay at Camelot at Christmas-tide with many a lovely lord, lieges most noble, indeed of the Table Round all those tried brethren, amid merriment unmatched and mirth without care. There tourneyed many a time the trusty knights, and jousted full joyously these gentle lords; then to the court they came at carols to play.
Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds rather than consonant sounds.
Parallelism (about which I’ve written at length here and here) is the repetition of structure (words, phrases, or clauses), and many other schemes of repetition rely on parallelism.
For example:
Chiasmus is reverse repetition of a group of words, clauses, or sentences.
The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n. [Milton, Paradise Lost]
Antithesis uses parallel structure to contrast opposing ideas.
Eloquent speakers give pleasure, wise ones salvation. [Augustine] (Eloquent vs wise and pleasure vs salvation)
Anaphora is the repetition of a word or a phrase at the beginning of clauses, lines, or sentences.
Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric, out of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry. [W. B. Yeats]
Epistrophe is the repetition of a word or phrase at the end of clauses, lines, or sentences.
Justice is the grammar of things. Mercy is the poetry of things. [Frederick Buechner]
Tropes appeal to the imagination.
These figures of speech twist the usual meaning of words and show resemblance. The two most common tropes are similie and metaphor.
A similie shows explicit resemblance and uses the words like or as.
A metaphor shows implicit resemblance by asserting that one thing is another thing.
We could continue on with symbolism, personification, onomatopeia, and more, but this is only a brief introduction. American Rhetoric is an excellent resource for definitions and examples of figures of speech if you want to learn more.
Elocution is related to the modes of persuasion, because the writer or speaker must keep his audience in mind when considering what style will be most appealing or persuasive.
Let’s quickly review the modes of persuasion before moving on to the practicum.
Ethos is an appeal based on the speaker’s credibility. Logos is an appeal based on reason and logic. Pathos is an appeal to the audience’s emotions.
Now it’s time for us to practice what we’ve learned using the following video:
Here’s an imperfect transcript to make discussion easier:
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, "I need a caretaker." So God made a farmer.
God said, "I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board." So God made a farmer.
"I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle a calf and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait lunch until his wife's done feeding visiting ladies and tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon -- and mean it." So God made a farmer.
God said, "I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt. And watch it die. Then dry his eyes and say, 'Maybe next year.' I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, who can make harness out of haywire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And who, planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty-hour week by Tuesday noon, then, pain'n from 'tractor back,' put in another seventy-two hours." So God made a farmer.
God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds and yet stop in mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor's place. So God made a farmer.
God said, "I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bails, yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink-combed pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadow lark. It had to be somebody who'd plow deep and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week's work with a five-mile drive to church.
“Somebody who'd bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh and then sigh, and then reply, with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to spend his life 'doing what dad does.'” So God made a farmer.
And now a few questions for you. (I’d love for you all to play along in the comments.)
Is this an example of a persuasive argument?
What is this particular video’s purpose?
In the end, who is trying to persuade an audience?
Of what?
Who is the intended audience?
Whose credibility do we consider? Does the video make an appeal based on credibility? How? By association?
Does this video make an appeal based on reason or logic? In what way?
Does this video appeal to the audience’s emotions? How?
Which mode of persuasion is the strongest? Why?
How is elocution—or style—used in this video? What is the overall style of the presentation? Do you notice any figures of speech?
Do you think this video is persuasive? Why? What is most effective about it?
Any other thoughts?
[Spoiler alert. Grin.]
The recording is a speech originally delivered by Paul Harvey in 1978. This particular video is a Ram commercial from the 2013 Super Bowl. (Paul Harvey passed away in 2009.)
I indentified some of the figures of speech as examples.
Rhyme/rhythm: seed, weed, feed, breed
Assonance: “sigh, reply…smiling eyes”
Alliteration: “planned paradise,” “plow and plant,” “ride, ruts, race”
Parallelism (so many examples!) “clear trees, heave bails, tame lambs, wean pigs…” “tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week’s work,” “shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, make harness out of haywire…”
Anaphora: “God said, I need somebody”
Epistrophe: “So God made a farmer.”
Antitheses: “strong enough/gentle enough” and “heave bails/tame lambs”
Metaphor?: “bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing” “plow deep and straight and not cut corners” (Is he just talking about plowing here?)
Foreshadowing: Images of Ram Trucks in film before identifying item being advertised
We’ve talked quite a bit about the 5 Common Topics of Invention (a great dialectic tool) this past year. [The Question] It’s time to learn something new. Let’s move up a rung on the ladder and chat about rhetoric. [The Conversation]
A year or two ago, I had the privilege of speaking on the topic of Rhetoric at a couple Classical Conversations Parent Practicums. As is always the case, I’ve learned so much more about the topic after the fact.
Now I’m itching to lead a Socratic discussion on the topic of Rhetoric using only two videos.
I’m not the person with answers, I’m the person with questions. Will you join me? I’d like to introduce you to the very basics of formal rhetoric, and then we’ll practice identifying the elements of rhetoric after watching a[n entertaining] persuasive speech. Come on—it’ll be fun!
Rhetoric is persuasion aimed at the truth. According to Plato, it is the art of soul-leading by means of words.
The study of rhetoric educates one in a particular liberty, the ‘liberty to handle the world, to remake it, if only a little, and to hand it to others in a shape with may influence their actions.’ Through this ‘office of assertion,’ the writer is a leader of souls… Rhetoric is ‘the care of words and things’; that care is associative, a practice one learns—and never stops learning—in the presence of others, the ones you lead and are led by. Such soul-leading is a liberal power, one which in its finest and fullest manifestation is a form of love; the finest rhetorician not only loves wisdom, but also loves others who do so. The finest rhetor, then, is a friend.
Let’s cover the basics briefly. [The Art of Manliness has an excellent introduction to rhetoric, if you’re interested in reading just a smidge more.]
Canons of Rhetoric Invention (inventio): [This is where Aristotle’s 5 Common Topics of Invention belong.] The content of an argument (gathering information and ideas)
Arrangement (dispositio): The structure of an argument (arranging the content)
Elocution (elocutio): The style of an argument (discovering the best style and words in which to express the ideas)
Memory (memoria): The memorization of an argument (including the memorization of general knowledge to be used in conversation and debate)
Delivery (pronuntiato): The presentation of an argument (formatting writing or delivering a speech with effective body language and voice)
Writing in particular focuses on the first three canons.
“Invention is what you argue, organization [arrangement], in what order you argue, and style [elocution], how you argue.” (Scott Crider)
The Institute for Excellence in Writing program, used by Classical Conversations students in 4th-6th grades, focuses on structure (arrangement) and style (elocution).
The Lost Tools of Writing program, used by CC students in 7th grade and up, places more emphasis on the invention process with the 5 Common Topics and slowly guides students through the arrangement of a formal persuasive essay while adding elocution elements one at a time.
I’ve covered invention (the 5 Common Topics) frequently here on the blog, so let’s move on to a brief introduction of arrangement.
What is arrangement? It is the ordering of your thoughts.
Basic Arrangement of a Persuasive Argument I. Introduction—Exordium [Draw in your audience with a joke, question, quote, statistic, anecdote, or challenge.]
II. Background Information—Narratio(n) [Give your audience context for your argument along with any background information they will need (time, place, characters, causes).]
III. Proof of the case—Confirmatio(n) [State your thesis, state the number of proofs you will using, and briefly state each proof (reason to support your thesis), then detail each proof with supporting information.]
IV. Address Opposition—Refutatio(n) [Refute the opposition by stating the counter position’s possible proofs and explaining why these proofs are not persuasive.]
V. Conclusion/Amplification—Peroratio(n) [Restate your thesis and proofs. Tell the audience to whom the issue matters and why. Inspire enthusiasm!]
In order to be a soul-leader, you must consider your audience as you are preparing and delivering your argument.
This is where the modes of persuasion come in to play.
Modes of Persuasion Ethos is an appeal based on the speaker’s credibility.
Logos is an appeal based on reason and logic.
Pathos is an appeal to the audience’s emotions.
Cicero on Rhetoric: Ethos, Pathos, Logos (Old Western Culture)
Now that you have a basic idea of the canons of formal rhetoric, the arrangement of an argument, and the modes of persuasion, let’s watch an unlikely example of rhetoric and identify these elements.
[Heads up: the speaker uses the word “crap” and “sexy” in this video if you are watching with kids and that concerns you.]
And now a few questions for you. Who is Ashton Kutcher’s audience? Does his audience need to be persuaded of something?
How does he initially connect with that audience? How does he get their attention? [Exordium]
Is his delivery (voice, body language) appropriate to the audience? [Pronuntiato]
Is his style and word choice appropriate to the audience? Is the length of the speech appropriate to the occasion? [Elocution]
Does he give any background or context for his argument? [Narratio]
Is the order of his speech clear? [Dispositio]
Is the purpose of his speech clear? Does he state a thesis or subject for his speech? Does he state the number of ideas (proofs) and introduce them briefly? Does he flesh out each idea with supporting information? [Confirmatio]
Is he familiar with his topic? Does he have enough information gathered? [Inventio]
Is his speech memorized? [Memorio]
Is his speech logical and reasonable? [Logos]
How does he establish his credibility for his argument? Is his credibility strong or weak? In what ways? Is his credibility weaker for any of his arguments? [Ethos]
Does he appeal to the audience’s emotions? How? [Pathos]
Does he restate his ideas in conclusion? Does he identify his audience and tell them why his speech matters to them? Does he inspire them to action? [Peroratio] I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Part 2 is coming up. I can see you on the edge of your seat! [grin]
![On Rhetoric - Socratic Dialogue 2 [Paul Harvey] @ Mt. Hope Chronicles](../../../1552/24727681521_e6cfcddb25_c.jpg)
