THE WELL-TRAINED MIND

A Guide to CLASSICAL EDUCATION at HOME

by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer

ISBN 0-393-04752-0, 764 pages, hdbk

As a parent, you worry about your child’s education. With so many students per classroom, even the most dedicated teachers often can’t give each student the individual attention so urgently needed, and neither teachers nor parents can control the environment of many schools.

Is your child getting lost in the system, becoming bored, losing his or her natural eagerness to learn? If so, it may be 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 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," when the building blocks of information are absorbed through memorization and rules; the middle school "logic stage," in which the student begins to think more analytically; and the high school "rhetoric stage," where the student learns to write and speak with force and originality.

Using this theory as your model, you’ll be able to instruct your child--whether full time or as a supplement to classroom education--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. The book also includes sample schedules, detailed book lists with complete ordering information, answers to common questions about home education, and advice on practical matters such as working with your local school board and preparing a high school transcript.

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 your child with confidence and success.

What the Well-Trained Mind Does:

An Overview

If you’re fortunate, you live near an elementary school filled with excellent teachers who are dedicated to developing you child’s skills in reading, writing, arithmetic, history, and science. These teachers have small classes--no more than ten students--and can give each student plenty of attention. The elementary school sits next to a middle school that is safe (no drugs, guns, or knives). This school also has small classes; the teachers train their students in logic, critical thinking, and advanced writing. Plenty of one-on-one instruction is offered, especially in writing. And in the distance (not too far away) is a high school that will take older students through world history, the classics of literature, the techniques of advanced writing, high-level mathematics and science, debate, art history, and music preparation (not to mention vocational and technical training, résumé preparation, and job-hunting skills).

This book is for the rest of us.

After a combined total of forty years in education--Jessie as elementary and middle-school teacher and administrator in both public and private schools, Susan as student, graduate student, and college teacher--we have come to one conclusion: if you want your child to have an excellent education, you need to take charge of it yourself. You don’t have to reform your entire school system. All you have to do is teach your own child.

Never mind educational rhetoric about the years of specialized training necessary for teachers. Forget everything you’ve heard about the need for classes in child development and educational psychology. These things are indeed necessary for the teacher faced with thirty squirming first graders or twenty-five turned-off adolescents. But you have an entirely different task: the education of your own child, one on one.

You probably feel that you don’t have the skills to teach your child at home. You aren’t alone; every home-schooling parent has felt this way (see Chapter 1). But we have consulted with scores of parents--some college-educated, some without high-school diplomas--who have successfully guided their children’s education. At conferences and seminars, we’ve met hundreds more. Home-education magazines overflow with stories of parent-taught teens who excel at reading, writing, science, and math.

All you need to teach your child at home is dedication, some basic knowledge about how your children learn, guidance in teaching the particular skills of each academic subject, and lots of books and tapes, posters, kits, and other resources. This book will provide you with everything except the dedication.

The Well-Trained Mind is a parent’s guide to a do-it-yourself, academically rigorous, comprehensive education--a classical education.

What is classical education?

It is language-intensive--not image-focused. It demands that students use and understand words, not video images.

It is history-intensive, providing students with a comprehensive view of human endeavor from the beginning until now.

It trains the mind to analyze and draw conclusions.

It demands self discipline.

It produces literate, curious, intelligent students who have a wide range of interests and the ability to follow up on them.

The Well-Trained Mind is a handbook on how to prepare your child to read, write, calculate, think, and understand. In the Prologue, we’ll outline what a classical education is and tell you about our own experience with classical education and with various forms of school at home.

You may decide to remove your child from school; you may decide to leave her in regular classes. Either way, this book will give you the tools you need to teach her at home or to supplement and reinforce what she’s learning in the classroom.

Part I tells you how to lay the foundations of academic excellence, form kindergarten through fourth grade. Part II outlines a program that will train the maturing mind of a middle school child--grades 5 through 8. Part III covers high school skills. Even if you’re starting with an older child, though, you should read through the earlier sections so that you understand the basic principles of classical education. Each section includes a grade-by-grade summary so that you can see at a glance what each school year should include.

Part IV is dedicated to the issues surrounding full-time home education--socialization, grade keeping, standardize testing, getting into college, athletics, and other home-schooling matters. If you want to keep your child in school but do remedial work in grammar or math, you can use the curricula and methods we suggest in the evenings or during breaks. If your child wants to go above and beyond what she’s learning in history or science, she can pursue the at-home programs we outline on her own time.

A word about resources. We find huge lists of resources overwhelming. When Susan goes looking for a book about ancient Egypt for her second grader, she doesn’t have time to sort through an extensive list of recommended books--she just wants two or three of the best choices. For this reason, we’ve sorted through available resources and listed our top picks. But for those who want to explore all available options, Chapter 46, "More Stuff: The Annotated Catalog List," will give you a place to start.

Front cover image, authors’ photos, and Overview text are from THE WELL-TRAINED MIND: A GUIDE TO CLASSICAL EDUCATION AT HOME by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer. Copyright © 1999 by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer. Used on CEANet with permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

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Ordering Information and Related Web Sites:

The Well-Trained Mind at W.W. Norton & Co., Publisher

Susan Wise Bauer’s Web Site

The Well-Trained Mind

A Neutral Education?

The Well-Trained Mind Newsletter

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"We can't say enough about The Well-Trained Mind. You not only get a detailed, day-by-day, week-by-week schedule for all 12 grades... you also learn how to teach your children to think and understand, to be well-rounded and curious about learning all their lives"     --- Homeschooling Today