shelleymarie
08-25-2009, 02:12 PM
I would like to introduce myself. I am a newbie, and I have just started The Well-Educated Mind. I have a graduate degree in English Literature and Book History and an undergrad degree in English Lit and Women's Studies. Although I have an advanced degree (graduating at the top of my class for both), I see that my general public education did nothing to help me prepare for college or graduate school, and I often found myself perusing the library for supplementary reading material just to "catch up" with the advanced students at the private institutions I attended.
I am teaching at the college level, and I thought it would be nice to go through TWEM and use it as a launching point into TWTM. I intend to have children in 3-5 years, so I definitely want to get a head start. There is no doubt in my mind that I will home school my children using TWTM program. My hubby and I missed out on quite a bit, and we want our children to have the very best education possible. We plan to use a team method, with him teaching the math/science and me teaching the humanities. Since his area of concentration was science/math, it will be a bit easier for me:) But I digress.
I have read many of the selections in the literature (though not much on the American end), poetry, and drama sections (my concentration was Renaissance British lit) as well as a few in the autobiography section. Shamefully, I have read only a few selections from the history section. I really don't mind rereading if it means that I have a firmer foundation with which to both launch into my own private studies and use as a context to place already studied material.
I read the first four chapters of TWEM last night, and I am getting ready to venture into Don Quixote, chapters 1-10. I have absolutely no classical training in the trivium, but I am wondering if my foundation of literary studies might allow me to do all three stages without rereading the books. I was trained to read in this way (though later in life and not quite so systematically), but I know that I miss a few things here and there.
I am wondering if anyone else has the same problem. Is anyone else working on all three stages at the same time without going back to reread? If so, how did it work for you, and do you believe that you have a firm grasp of the general principles of the classical method?
I am teaching at the college level, and I thought it would be nice to go through TWEM and use it as a launching point into TWTM. I intend to have children in 3-5 years, so I definitely want to get a head start. There is no doubt in my mind that I will home school my children using TWTM program. My hubby and I missed out on quite a bit, and we want our children to have the very best education possible. We plan to use a team method, with him teaching the math/science and me teaching the humanities. Since his area of concentration was science/math, it will be a bit easier for me:) But I digress.
I have read many of the selections in the literature (though not much on the American end), poetry, and drama sections (my concentration was Renaissance British lit) as well as a few in the autobiography section. Shamefully, I have read only a few selections from the history section. I really don't mind rereading if it means that I have a firmer foundation with which to both launch into my own private studies and use as a context to place already studied material.
I read the first four chapters of TWEM last night, and I am getting ready to venture into Don Quixote, chapters 1-10. I have absolutely no classical training in the trivium, but I am wondering if my foundation of literary studies might allow me to do all three stages without rereading the books. I was trained to read in this way (though later in life and not quite so systematically), but I know that I miss a few things here and there.
I am wondering if anyone else has the same problem. Is anyone else working on all three stages at the same time without going back to reread? If so, how did it work for you, and do you believe that you have a firm grasp of the general principles of the classical method?