Educating Ourselves: Classical Education for Adults

The great bonus of classical education is the fun that parents have “catching up” on material they never learned in school. I’ve heard dozens of home schooling parents say, “I’m getting the education I never had!” As you shepherd your child through the classical curriculum, you too will learn. Visit our Self-Education Message Board to discuss your ideas with other parents.

General Instructions

1) Take your own education seriously — by setting aside time for it. You’ll learn a great deal as you prepare your child’s lessons. But if you want to make serious adult progress in your own mental development, you’ll need to make a schedule for yourself. I know that parents are busy people; I too struggle to keep up with house work, yard work, home schooling, writing, church responsibilities, and LAUNDRY, LAUNDRY, LAUNDRY. But I still think that most adults are capable of making time for the activities they want to do; as busy as I am, I managed to read two mystery novels this week, wander around the Internet for several hours reading random web sites, and watch two episodes of the X-Files. Don’t cut out all your leisure time, but carve out half an hour per day (before the kids get up, or after bed time) to dedicate solely to study. Start small (don’t begin with a grandiose scheme of getting up at four AM and studying for two hours) and build up from there once you have become consistent in doing your half hour per day.

2) Begin with generally improving your reading skills and keeping a notebook (see “General Education,” below). After you’ve done this, consider concentrating on one subject at a time — science, foreign language, classic literature, history. Adults have divided lives: we take care of kids, pay bills, work, look out for elderly parents, do church work, cook, etc., etc., etc. This often produces a life in which you work hard all day with no particular visible advance forward in any one area. Your study time should be a time when you make concentrated progress on one area of knowledge at a time — something which should give you a great deal of satisfaction. Do Great Books study for six months, science for three months, math for three months, then go back to Great Books. Concetrating on one area at a time will help you to stay “on track.”

3) “Early to bed, early to rise” isn’t in the Bible, but it’s a great way to study — go to bed at a decent hour and do your study first thing in the morning.

4) Turn off the TV. (Even the X-Files.)

General Education

1) Begin the habit of keeping a learning journal in which you jot down ideas, facts, questions, material that you’re learning. The great writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth century are marked by their diligence in writing down what they were learning from their reading. Don’t organize these notebooks too elaborately, or you’ll find that you’re spending your study time tidying your filing and notation system, rather than studying. Just head each page with the subject that you’re learning, and write down facts that strike you and your reaction to them. You’ll find that these learning journals expand into series of notebooks that chronicle your intellectual journey. Make it a habit to dedicate a week of study time, once every six months or so, to reading back through your own notes on your learning.

2) Make your first learning project a read-through of Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren’s How to Read a Book. Most of your adult learning will take place through books, so start out by learning to handle text properly. Take notes on their instructions, and refer back to them as you move on to other subjects.

3) Subscribe to at least one print version of a literary / technical / scientific / general interest journal in an area that that intrigues you. When it comes each month, use your study time to read it. Make notes on subjects that interest you. Jot down titles of books that you see reviewed, and then go and check them out of the library (or buy them). Keep up with what people are reading, writing, and thinking in the world around you. And no, this CANNOT be a home school magazine! Suggestions for general interest magazines include The Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s, both of which contain thoughtful and insightful articles and reviews on literary, scientific, political and cultural issues; Books & Culture: A Christian Review and First Things do the same from a Christian perspective.

4) Improve your own thinking and writing by occasionally following the Benjamin Franklin method on an essay that interests you. Franklin writes in his Autobiography:

Franklin’s self-education succeeded; try copying his methods.

Grammar and Writing

1) If you feel your grammar inadequacy, order a seventh-grade A Beka grammar workbook and go through it with the help of the answer key. This book is a complete grammar review of all the skills you’ll need. After you finish it, jump to the tenth-grade book and do that one as well.

2) Work through the National Writing Institute Writing Strands series by doing Book 6, Book 7, and Writing Exposition. This curriculum will teach you all about organization and persuasive writing; your ability to write effective complaint letters will skyrocket.

3) Get Strunk and White’s Elements of Style and outline their prescriptions for good writing style. After you’ve done that, every time you read a book in your study time, pull the outline of prescriptions back out and analyze a paragraph of the book. Is the writer a good stylist? Why or why not? Back up your conclusions with illustrations from the book’s text.

Logic and Rhetoric

1) Go through the Traditional Logic course we recommend on your own time (you’ll probably be able to do it in less time than your seventh-grader).

2) Then read Nicholas Capaldi’s The Art of Deception: An Introduction to Critical Thinking (Prometheus Books, 1987). You’ll find yourself viewing the presidential race in a whole new way.

3) Finally, read Aristotle’s Rhetoric and take notes on his suggestions.

Literature and History

1) Work through a Great Books list (such as the one we suggest!) with the help of the Os Guinness/Louise Cowan book Invitation to the Classics. Read the introduction they provide; get the Cliff Notes for the book and glance through the outline; and then read the book itself. Cliff Notes are JUST FINE for adults! Use them to prepare yourself for reading, rather than as replacement for the reading. (You’re mature enough to know the difference.)

2) If you don’t have a good grasp of the flow of history, read the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia and write your own narration of world history. Pretend you’re explaining history to your spouse (or teenaged child). You have the job of making it interesting, although short, and of explaining the relationship between historical events. When you’re done, you’ll finally understand the Wars of the Roses.

Mathematics and Science

1) Avail yourself of the self-study books designed for grown-ups in order to give yourself a basic grounding in math and in science concepts. Try the Wiley Self-Teaching Guides in chemistry, physics, biology, astronomy, algebra, and geometry. Or investigate the Made Simple series or the Demystified series.

2) Work through some of the great popular science books of the last twenty years (and some earlier classics). You don’t have to agree with them — but you do need to know what philosophies are shaping popular understanding of science! A brief lists of science books I’ve read (”plowed through” might be more appropriate) in the last ten years includes Albert Einstein, Relativity; Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time; Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box; John Polkinghorne, Belief in God in an Age of Science, and Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker. (I offer this only as a starting point for your own explorations — I’m curious about science, but since this was the weakest subject in my own education, I know that these books are accessible to non-scientists!)