Free Downloads The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide To Classical Education At Home (Third Edition)
"If you're a parent who has decided to educate your children yourself, this book is the first you should buy."―?Washington TimesThe Well-Trained Mind will instruct you, step by step, on how to give your child an academically rigorous, comprehensive education from preschool through high school―one that will train him or her to read, to think, to ?understand?, to be well-rounded and curious about learning. Veteran home educators Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer outline the classical pattern of education called the trivium, which organizes learning around the maturing capacity of the child's mind and comprises three stages: the elementary school "grammar stage," the middle school "logic stage," and the high school "rhetoric stage." Using this theory as your model, you'll be able to instruct your child in all levels of reading, writing, history, geography, mathematics, science, foreign languages, rhetoric, logic, art, and music, regardless of your own aptitude in those subjects. This newly revised edition contains completely updated ordering information for all curricula and books, new and expanded curricula recommendations, new material on using computers and distance-learning resources, answers to common questions about home education, information about educational support groups, and advice on practical matters such as working with your local school board, preparing a high school transcript, and applying to colleges.
Hardcover: 864 pages
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 3 edition (May 4, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0393067084
ISBN-13: 978-0393067088
Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.7 x 9.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (211 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #32,499 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #38 in Books > Education & Teaching > Schools & Teaching > Parent Participation #57 in Books > Parenting & Relationships > Reference #97 in Books > Education & Teaching > Schools & Teaching > Homeschooling
Wow... some funny reviews below. I bought this book on the recommendation of a friend whose homeschooled Kindergartner loves learning and has been reading for close to two years. I've been an English teacher for ten years and have grown increasingly disenchanted with both public and private schools; I've watched bright, creative, passionate young people have the love of learning sucked out of them by a flawed and over-burdened system, or, worse, fall between the cracks because they have learning differences, despite the fact that they have amazing minds.To the readers who assert that this book is for rigid, obsessive parents, I would urge them to read it again. It's not about rigidity, but about fostering excellence, which does take some hard work. I'm sure that this style of homeschooling is not for every child and every family, but it provides hundreds of resources, and I think there's something here for everyone. Granted, if you're not interested in a Classical approach, you may want to look elsewhere. But I would urge you to consider it, even if it sounds foreign or daunting.And now for my snotty asides: the reviews that are rife with spelling and grammar errors, and insist that the methods in this book are too demanding for children, are a bit hard to take seriously, you know? Other reviews are clearly written by parents who are intimidated because of how little education they themselves have... but the wonderful thing about homeschooling is that you get to learn WITH your children. It should be exciting to you, and if it's scary to confront all of the science, math, history and literature that you don't know, so much the better! Don't we want to teach our children to seek knowledge, and to try things that are difficult?
I am a young parent based in Lagos, Nigeria. While I have been bothered with the quality of education in my own immediate enviroment, I have always been thinking about how my kids education will be world class and alas I found TWMT on , bought and read it and eversince then I have been consulting it and I've even recommended it to friends.TWMT teaches you how to educate your child from age zero upto adulthood and the good thing is that the methodology is borderless and alot of the recommended literature readings in the book are readily available,even in Lagos for as low as $1.For me and my family this book as given us key information about education:1. Rote learning is better and easier done between ages 0 to 10; 2.Short 15-45 minutes consistent classes on daily/weekly basis of any subject is enough to master a subject over a period of 12 years; 3. It intorduced the concept of developing a reader in a child by recommending a jewel of a book "The Read Aloud Handbook" by Jim Trelease; 4. The Authors' keep a very active online forum based on TWMT [...];5. The Authors' are very responsive to your challenges even for someone like me in Lagos, Nigeria,they still responded to my family's educational challenge by profering a solution that actually worked after i mailed them on an observation.Lastly, for those that think the system is rigid, please you don't need to follow the methodology to detail, kindly adapt to your family's challenges. And if you think it's too Language/History focused then you can get curriculum books by "Bernard Nebel" as they are science focused to use along with this "Lost but found Treasure of a book".
I've read this book twice. The older copy from my library was so helpful that I purchased the newer one and read it too. I just spent some time reading the 1-star reviews of it and find myself thinking, "These people just don't get it." First of all, you shouldn't take on anyone's homeschool philosophy whole-heartedly without researching and evaluating yourself and your kids. Also, the book does not claim to be Christian. In fact, the chapter on Bible specifically mentions that they are not going to presume to make your religious/faith-based-education choices for you.Most importantly though, this is a how-to on classical education. The opening chapters say that yes, it's strenuous, yes, it's language oriented. It will be focused on reading, writing, and discussion. And I fail to see how anyone could say you get a shell of an education when the same topics are covered three times with increasing thought given each time. The whole purpose is to introduce ideas and then analyze them.The authors introduce these ideas and expect you to analyze them too.Use your own thinking here. If you want to introduce faith AND analytical thought, just teach your children about God's truth AND greek philosophy. We have been studying Egyptian gods this week with my first grader, and she completely understands that there were people with a different way of thinking and that they did not know and worship the one true God. (In fact, of her own thinking, she reasoned that they would not live again in heaven and was very sad. I wouldn't have intentionally addressed that at a young age.) Teaching the ways of other cultures does not water-down faith and it doesn't worship the Greeks, as some critics said.
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