A Thomas Jefferson Education

Last week I got an email from the Relief Society saying that this month's Book Club read was A Thomas Jefferson Education by Oliver Van De Mille. I've never participated in a book club before, but this one sounded like my cup of tea, so I got the book from the library and read. Not knowing specifically what we were going to talk about, I just wrote down my favorite quotes from the book as I read. These are they:

"The myth is that it is possible for one human being to educate another." ~p. 12

"Without great teaching, through mentors and classics, the most that schools can offer is socialization." ~p. 13

"All education boils down to two things: the student putting in the work to educate himself, and the teacher getting the student's attention long enough or deeply enough to get him started and help him keep going." ~p. 15-16

"What nobody seems willing to say openly anymore, perhaps for fear of turning students away, is that getting an education is their job, and that it is a supremely difficult job." ~oops, I forgot to write down the page number for this one.

"No national book means no culture; and this is ominous for the future. Any society which loses its national book declines and collapses in ignorance, dwindles and perishes in unbelief." ~p. 59

"America cannot remain free, prosperous, or moral unless the overall culture adopts a central text of the caliber of the Bible. This is not only profound, it is actually a marching order for parents and educators. The whole problem is a result of families failing to teach, educate, train, and civilize." ~p. 61 (emphasis added)

"The thing which makes a classic great is glaring insight into basic human nature." ~p. 62

"Our challenges define us, our reactions to them mold and shape us." ~p. 63

Alexander Tytler "...the world's greatest civilizations...have progressed through this sequence; from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back again to bondage." ~p. 128

It was a really good book and I've heard that the two follow-ups are even better. I highly recommend it, it's not an exclusively for homeschoolers, so if that is not the route you are taking, you can still learn a lot and get good use out of this book.

What I didn't really like about this book is that the "game plan" for putting it into action is pretty vague. There's a list of 7 or 8 steps in the back about how to read the classics (there's a few lists as well) and analyze and discuss them. But there's no rhyme or reason to which ones you start with or which order you should do them in. And that is why I'll still be sticking mostly to The Well-Trained Mind sequence. I like the order, I like the building-on-each-other phases. It just makes more sense to me. Plus a lot of the work is already done, saving me a lot of time. And we all know I've spent a lot of time researching curriculums. But it has LOTS of classics in it, so I feel like as we go down this route, my family will all be getting a better education.

Near the end, one of the other women was saying how she and her husband started reading books aloud with each other. I really really really liked this idea, so when I got home I talked to DH about it (he said he didn't want a nickname, so that's what he gets). He liked it too and we've decided to start with reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. We've already got it and neither of us have read it, so it's perfect.