The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home
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Teach your child at home or supplement his or her classroom learning –this book provides you with the techniques, curriculum, and resources necessary to ensure that your child’s education is the best it can be. As a parent, you worry about your child’s education. With thirty students per classroom, even the most dedicated teachers regularly can’t give each student the individual attention so urgently needed, and neither teachers nor parents can control the social environment of many schools. Is your child getting lost in the system, apt bored, losing his or her natural eagerness to learn? Maybe it’s time to take charge of your child’s education –by doing it yourself. This book 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 reflect, to know, to be well-rounded and curious about learning. Through a language-intensive process that organizes learning around the maturing capacity of the child’s mind, your child will receive the perfect education that today’s overcrowded schools are regularly unable to provide. You do have control over what and how your child learns; The Well-Trained Mind will give you the tools you’ll need to teach him or her with confidence and success.
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First, you should know that the classical approach is not Christian. The classical system that started by the pagan philosophers in Very ancient Greece was brought back by the USA public school system when it turned against the Bible and Puritan education methods. Although some classical educators have tried (like the Catholics of very ancient times) to merge Bible and pagan ways but this book doesn’t even do that. Bauer and Wise esteem intellectualism to the point of idolatry.
Secondly, this approach is demanding, hard, strenuous, and relentless. I agree with the review adage this approach is for the “perfection-obsessed parent,” I would add it is for the incorrect all ears, dysfuctional, perfection-obsessed parent.
“The Well-Trained Mind” will take away any like of learning from your child. And take away any like of teaching from you!
Homeschooling used to be about bringing your child home to teach them about God and His Word – this book has changed the homeschool focus on the greek philosophers and Shakespeare.
I pray God will open the bind eyes of persons lusting after intelectualism and lead them to TRUE WISDOM of God! What excellent is Homer and Shakespeare to the soul?
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
The Well Trained Mind
God help the first year homeschooler that reads this book!
This method is rigid, airless, harsh, severe, and downright boooring. It straight away zaps all the fun out of learning for the students and the teacher.
Why would any Christian homeschoolers want a education approach from the pagan Greeks? Its beyond me. Although I do know the Catholics liking this book- its based on Thomas Aquinas’s (the client saint of education) classical education methods.
This book claims to be a Christian book but has a bare mention, like an after thought, about Bible study. Why bother calling it Christian (oh yeah MARKETING…80% of homeschooler are Christian.) Bauer didn’t waste any time putting out more books for the secular market.
Excuse me, but if an education method calls itself Christian shouldn’t that include more than a drop of Bible? It is astounding that for all the fuss we hear regarding Christian education how small of the Bible really gets studied. We sprinkle the Word of God into education like a small salt on our meals. The Well Trained mind wants you to torture
your children with hours and hours of reading Greek philosophy, and if you have time left over she gives some distorted Bible tales mixed with mythology???????
This is not the first time Christians have tried to merge the Bible with Greek philosophy. Philo of Alexandria, a Hellenized Jew merged Hebrew mythical thought with Greek philosophical thought in the first century B.C. which resulted in nearly 2000 years of pagan Christianity for the Catholics and a very distorted view for many protestants.
At first I thought lets add Susan Bauer to the list of others that tried merging Greek garbage with the Bible- Pleasant of Alexandria, Christian Apologists like Athenagoras, Theophilus, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Origen. But then after reading the rest of the book I see Bauer doesn’t really try to merge the Bible- she just ignores it or misquotes it.
Now why are there so many positive reviews about this book? I judge it is one of two things or a combination of both.
1. Maybe the leader has lots of Amazon friends.
2. Maybe the dread of homeschoolers is so fantastic they grab on to
this rigid schedule in hopes to take in everything. Ugg
Do yourself a favor- pray and read THE living book- The Bible. You don’t need Homer and Plato or Bauer.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
The leader of this book hails the Greek philosophers (Homer, Thales, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle) as sources of wisdom and knowledge. These Greek thinkers, shunning God, came up with man-centered and mystical notions to define the world around them.
This Greek classical approach tends to compartmentalize the student concentrating on his literary ability but the Bible depicts man as a unified whole.
In this book Susan recommends a 6 week study on Homer for her elementary ages. What’s incorrect with this picture? The Bible gets one page while the pagan Greek philosophers, and Greek gods are idolized over and over. Hello, Greek and Rome fell as a direct result of moral decay–and now you want to copy their education methods? Try looking at Hebrews- they sought the right God and right wisdom not gods and legends. “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the essentials of the world, and not after Christ.” (Col 2:8).
I know many Christian homeschoolers are seeking structure and better ways but why are you looking to the Greek philosophers don’t have the answers. Try the Bible and books by Christian authors as a replacement for. The majority of the books on the “Fantastic Books” classical list won’t be seen by my children. Yes we should read classics such as “Small Women,” “Pilgrims Progress,” “Small House on the Prairie,” etc. but stay away from the Greek gods and pagans.
In her newer book written for the secular audience, “The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had,” Susan Wise Bauer says, “The year I turned thirty, I chose to go back to graduate school Then What? The housework suffered and I missed Mulder’s departure [from the XFiles] but I establish myself making a whole new structure of meaning in my mind.” Should a Christian take book recommendations from a name that puts this much emphases on the Xfiles (science fiction/horror with a cult following)?????????
The classical method that was developed in very ancient Greece and Rome and customary in Europe in the middle ages, was used nearly exclusively in the Western world until the 19th century. The main focus was reading the Greek and Roman classics; to be in touch with the literary arts marked one as accomplished. There can be no doubt that literary education is more whole, more human, and more satisfying than today’s modern scientific technological education. But is even literary education is enough? Excellent literature-Scott, Milton, Virgil- promotes courage insight, high morality, and imagination, but it can never do with the Bible does.
Under the Greek system learning begets goodness. Under the biblical system goodness begets learning. All non-Biblical education assumes man can become learned lacking God. Biblical education makes knowledge the foundation of learning. Pursuing knowledge lacking God is a recipe for disaster. We simply cannot and will not survive lacking clear moral direction.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I was shocked to read the advice to throw out phonemic awareness. For a mother of a dyslexic, ADHD child this is the last thing we should do. Citing her immediate circle as evidence this approach works was shocking.
As a professional that works with special needs kids I would fervently recommend parents steer clear of these methods.
I also have to question the logic in learning about men whose lives were morally opposed to our own. So many do not realize that many of the “fantastic” Greek philosophers were so morally depraved that we would never let our children any where near them.
I do not know the logic in teaching Latin over a modern language, especially French or Spanish. Many have said that Latin is similar to English in grammar, but it is not. French is much more similar and so is Spanish. The chance of using either French or Spanish in our society is so much greater. Why would we choose Latin? Some say because of SATs. I have seen research to support that the learning of any romantic language can help with the score. If you are a Christian you are probably going to be able to witness to a French or Spanish speaker but never one who speaks Latin.
Within our society the usefulness of foreign languages is apt greater. Especially in America where the Spanish community is growing in leaps and bounds.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
At the start of the book, the authors of “The Well-Trained Mind” complain that a “classical” education is out of style- in the ensuing 700 pages, they manage to illustrate exactly why. I can’t imagine the type of perfection-obsessed parent who would place their child through the sort of torture that Ms. Wise and Ms. Bauer deem to be the best education for a child. Their plot is demanding, unflinching, and doesn’t allow any breathing room for a child to learn her own individual talents or thoughts. As a replacement for, she is forced through a strict regiment of timed classes (60 minutes for history, 45 minutes for Latin- a language that the authors INSIST a child must take, even if they despise it, for at least two years, otherwise they will end up as total, absolute failures flipping burgers in McDonald’s-, an hour per week of fine composition and art, etc). They insist that a child must listen to a piece of classical composition three times and then crtiticize it, and they also heavily recommend beginning an advanced Algebra I in the 8th grade, something that many education specialists agree is too hard and stressful for 13-14 year ancient students.
As a homeschooling parent to two children (a son aged 13 and a daughter age 6), I establish myself cringing as I read this book, and my heart goes out to the poor children who are forced to adhere to the curriculum these authors place into the world, lacking room for their own minds to flourish. “The Well-Trained Mind” is truly about shaping not only your child’s education, but the very root of your child’s mind, leaving them lacking any indepent thinking, any creativity, or any like of learning.
Please don’t have your child suffer through a classical education like the one Ms. Wise & Ms. Bauer have made.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5