a follow-up to that bleg
1) Sure wish I had remembered to say what we’re doing in math, science, and language (fourth year of Latin). Sorry about that.
2) Did not expect to get sixty-plus comments, but I am really thankful for them.
3) We’re not as ambitious as it might look. (Though at least one commenter thinks that all that material on Victorian sanitation, the problem of evil, and Chinese printing technologies is Easy Street.) We’ll be simply introducing Wes to a lot of this stuff, and nobody in our household expects him to be writing books on these subjects. The idea is that trying to get your head around the full scope of a particular issue — or set of interrelated issues — is useful in itself. The problem of sanitation in Victorian London was brought to the attention of English society as a whole by novelists like Dickens, but it is also a matter of ethics, sociology, science, technology, medicine, politics, city planning, and Lord knows what else. Most of the really interesting and really important issues people study are like that: they have a dozen or more points of entry, each of which gives you a different angle on the overall topic. There’s no way for Wes — or for me, if it comes to that — to get the whole picture. But learning just how much there is to the picture, and learning to fill it in as completely as you can — those are goals eminently worth pursuing. And when you get a sense of the complexity of one such issue, you just might learn to be a little less confident that you thoroughly comprehend other equally complex issues. In short, we want to teach our son a little bit about disciplined research and epistemic humility.
For the math/physics part, if your kid is up for it, I recommend Feynman’s Lectures on Physics. Vol. 1 and 2 are great and read most of them in 10th and 11th grade. Some of the most fun you can have at that age.
— stefan · Jul 14, 10:23 PM · #
I read all the comments on the previous bleg and I too hope you’ll say a little more about his science curriculum.
My son is about to start high school in California and has barely done any science and is headed for the usual year of chemistry followed by a year of physics thing that seems typical over here.
I contrast that with my own experience in England where we did separate chemistry, physics and biology from age 11. By age 16, if we were so inclined we were able to specialize and drop subjects we did not like allowing for all science all the time if we were so inclined.
I am not implying that your son’s curriculum should be tailored that way but I am interested in your thoughts – as someone who clearly has thought a lot about education – on the effects of the lack of opportunities in science in American schools (and homeschooling??).
The Two Cultures and all that…
— Kevin · Jul 14, 10:48 PM · #
If you haven’t already gotten to him yet, Sallust might be a good choice for the Latin—not only is his style engaging, but you can also highlight his epistemic hubris and slippery argumentation (“Fuere ea tempestate qui dicerent…”). A former professor of mine has authored a Sallust reader with varied selections from his writings, a good commentary, and a full vocabulary.
— Bob · Jul 14, 10:54 PM · #
Kevin, what Wes is doing in science isn’t that different than “the usual thing”; there has been rather more rigor than is the norm, and more lab work (I think), but no conceptual innovations. If I were a science prof rather than an English prof I might be able to do something about that, but . . . . The one thing I can do is to link the topics I mention in the earlier post to the history of science and technology, which I know at least something about. And that has some value. But it’s not going to be anything like what he’d get if he went to school, say, here, a few miles from our home.
— Alan Jacobs · Jul 15, 12:20 AM · #
What do you recommend for middle school math?
And for topics, I think for his 20th century looking at how literature addresses a huge event, like Dresden could be really interesting. From Vonnegut to Safran Foer.
— Stephanie Merchant · Jul 15, 01:15 PM · #
Alan, what are his favorite subjects to argue about?
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jul 15, 05:14 PM · #
I second the Feynman lectures and will also add that any Feynman books are great. As for science, the optimal system, imho, is to learn chemistry, physics and bio concurrently. There is a lot of reinforcement that can be attained from that, which is currently lost. For example, classical physics determines the electron orbits of electrons in classical chemistry. If you can reinforce that with the same math topics at the same time even better. That really gets into conceptual understanding and allows the student to look at the same phenomena from different angles. Barring that, you want to make sure that the sciences are taught from a conceptual and not a formulaic approach.
— cevian · Jul 16, 03:14 AM · #
Amen to Feynman. He’s great about everything, even what keeps railroad trains on the tracks.
Stephanie: I don’t know much about middle-school math. We used Saxon books for the first couple of years, and had some great tutors.
Kristoffer: I’ll let Wes comment on his interests if he wants. I confine myself to what I’m thinking about.
— Alan Jacobs · Jul 16, 02:21 PM · #
Fair enough. As a recent kid myself, I’ll just say that one of the best ways to get somebody interested in something is to find out what they like to argue about, and then show them how the big boys do it. Another (for dudes): teach them interesting ideas and factoids in subjects that girls find innately interesting. This is a rational thing for a father to do, anyway, if only as a gene-kin cultivation strategy.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jul 17, 04:20 PM · #
Alan, I think your plan for the year looks fantastic and would plagiarize much of it if I had high-school-aged kids.
One comment: as a former homeschooled student (one who went all the way through high school graduation), I’m sadly aware that—no matter how great the actual education is—a homeschooler has to prove to many people, especially college admissions counselors, that he or she has actually done high school work. In some states, there are outside accreditation programs; in mine, there were none, so I had to resort to a tragic plethora of standardized tests. For me, the value of my self-directed high school English was that I had time to range through vast quantities of primary literature—more than one would manage in a good liberal arts major or even in most graduate-level classes—but college admissions counselors only saw and valued my (fortunately high) AP test scores and dual enrollment grades. I didn’t feel like I’d completely proven myself until I had my college diploma in hand. Have you, your wife, and Wes found a way to make his excellent education look good on paper?
— Katherine Philips · Jul 17, 10:24 PM · #