Jessie Wise

I bought this book years ago, when I had entertained the idea of homeschooling my child. That did not happen. I decided to read through the book, however, when I found that many of my students (college level) do not know English grammar very well. I don't mean they make grammar mistakes in their own language, but that they can't identify a verb tense or distinguish between an adjective and a noun very easily. Since I teach Russian language, I thought maybe I could use some techniques from show more this book to help my students grasp how words work in an English sentence to help them in constructing Russian sentences (which is an inflected language).

I soon saw that this book was useless for my purposes, but I find the approach to teaching young children grammar very interesting. It is not a "new" approach, in fact--it is very old-fashioned. Jessie Wise uses memorization as the main tool. The child, with the help of the parent, memorizes the definitions of grammatical categories (noun, adjective, verb, sentence, etc.), terms, lists. By the end of the book (which contains 200 lessons that are to be covered in two years), the child can recognize and define all the parts of the sentence.

What is new about this approach is how Ms. Wise goes about it. Every lesson is scripted: what the parent says, how many times he/she must say it, how many times the child must repeat after the parent, activities for the child to do. Lest this sound incredibly boring for both parties, I must say Ms. Wise has done a fine job of keeping up momentum with each lesson. Yes, every lesson starts with a "repeat after me 3 times" rote learning of a definition or rule, but then is followed by exercises that are kinetic (the child must respond physically either acting out the words, or going around the house finding examples), or engage a child's imagination (reading fairy tales and then finding the verbs, acting out the verbs, or drawing pictures of events in the story, looking at pictures and creating a narrative about it). Activities include dictation, drawing, writing letters, giving oral descriptions and reading aloud. The lessons are generally short (probably about 15 -30 minutes per lesson depending on the activities) and progress in sort of a spiral fashion--moving forward and reviewing at the same time.
I have to say that I think memorization has gotten short-shrift in our generation. I think I had to memorize one poem in all my elementary school years. This book has the child memorize 10 poems by the end of the lessons, and read another 12, all of them wonderful. The book teaches them, step by step, how to memorize things (which we also don't teach our children in schools). As a building block of critical thinking, being able to identify and remember facts, to put things in categories and know what order things go in, memorization has a place. I don't know how one would translate her teaching methods into a classroom (this is geared towards the homeschooler), but I think she is onto something important here. show less

Too much dissing of public schools and other approaches to home-schooling... a tighter focus would be more helpful. I considered home-schooling my youngest, and we even tried it for one year. But I just talked to him (he's got his Associate degree and is making plans to continue) and he says that he's glad he wasn't home-schooled, even though he wasn't particularly fond of school. In his experience, home-schooled college students tend to think that they're smarter and more right than anyone show more else.

That is: They may know more information about history, world affairs, etc., and have better skills at rhetoric etc., but their socialization isn't always the best. They are better at sympathizing than empathizing... iow, to put it in extreme terminology, to be 'limousine liberals.' The brief mention of 'character education' in this book is not helpful... and among the traits listed are humility, gratefulness, and patience, which I don't see coming from an education guided by acolytes of Bauer and Wise.

That being said, there's a lot of good about the book. I fully support any dedicated parent who has the wherewithal/ resources to commit to this program. It's a lot of work, but probably worth it for many families. And this is probably a better program for many families than Unschooling or more casual approaches.

Of course, I'll always believe that the best education is a decent public school *and* a lot of family enrichment activities.

And now off to find [b:The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had|25622218|The Well-Educated Mind A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had|Susan Wise Bauer|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1437841276s/25622218.jpg|4391399], which is the book I believe I was trying to request when I was given this. show less

More practical than theory, and does not contain a defense of classical education. Rather, it contains curriculum and textbook suggestions, and ideas for implementing the modern idea of the "trivium" to home education. These and other practical discussions are quite helpful. I do have some significant differences from the book. For example, I reject applying the trivium to elementary years. Frankly, it doesn't fit any articulated views on child development, and attempts to reconcile the idea show more with reality are amusing at best. I also am concerned with their recommendation that children who may not show adequate progress be tested with standardized tests a few months before required testing, so they may be retested "if necessary." This is not sound advice for most situations, and will result in invalid scores, useless information, and a potential cover-up of significant weakness within a homeschooling family. show less

3.5

Considered the "bible" of classical education. I'm glad I read this tome of a book (naturally, I skipped some reference-y parts) before attempting to follow the Memoria Press homeschool curriculum with my son. I have a better understanding of the trivium and of the importance of latin, but most of all, this book helped me to give myself permission to push my child to pursue hard things, even if he does not want to do them. This approach is VERY different than how I was homeschooled, and show more there are some areas where I think a more relaxed approach is helpful. I also was not as interested in the "college prep" high achiever sort of stuff, so I plan to take a bit of a toned-down approach compared to this book. show less