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Do any homeschoolers use the Great Books Curriculum?

By Texas137 (Texas137) on Tuesday, February 17, 2004 - 12:05 pm: Edit

Of course. There are 2 million homeschoolers in the US. Somebody somewhere is using any curriculum you could think of.

By Morgantruce (Morgantruce) on Tuesday, February 17, 2004 - 06:31 pm: Edit

I introduced "Great Books" to my daughters in a round about manner half way through their home schooling experience. I figured that giving anyone a list of the Great Books---when they haven't read at least some of those books---would cause a lot of anxiety. So I waited until they had read at least a half dozen or so of the books before I showed them the list of Great Books. Both girls were naturally excited when they found that they had already read some of these GREAT books! It was then NOT an uphill battle to convince them that the rest of the books on the list were worthy of reading.

I gave each of them a copy of the list that they kept as a check off list. I wouldn’t claim that they dug into those lists as avidly as their interests in modern authors, but as they each completed their high school years, they each had made very respectable headway through many of the Great Books. In addition to the books they read entirely, they also read excerpts from many of the Great Books that they found in one of my old college texts "Readings in Western Civilization".

By the way, one of the things each daughter submitted to colleges as a part of their applications was a list of "Recently Read Books" which in both cases made for a great conversation starter in their interviews. One interviewer, while noticing and commenting on the "meaty" Great Books, could not help to notice the large number of books by Barbara Kingsolver---which just happened to be her favorite author. The "30 minute" interview lasted 3 hours.

One interesting thing about getting accepted to the college of your choice: you just never know exactly what it was that got you accepted. Exhibiting a thirst for good books couldn't possibly hurt.

By Innotof (Innotof) on Tuesday, February 17, 2004 - 08:08 pm: Edit

I'm not doing the Great Books program "officially" (for a grade), but I'm reading the books on my own. Type Escondido Tutorial Service into a search engine, and take a look at the reading schedule. I'm doing it according to the ETS plan, but I'm fitting the reading into 2.5 years instead of 5. I'm thoroughly enjoying the Great Books program.