Book Review: The Well-Trained Mind

I have found My Book.

Since starting to seriously consider homeschooling, I have been hunting for a core book from which I could build a full 12-year educational program. I had encountered many resources for the elementary years, many of them excellent, but my goal-oriented mind wouldn’t let me stop at Grade 6. I needed to see how the learning we embarked on in the elementary years progressed to secondary level learning.

Enter The Well-trained Mind.

In one inspiring book, Susan Wise Bauer and her mother, Jessie Wise, have teamed up to explain how a parent can construct an academically challenging program for children from ages 5 through 17. Susan was homeschooled by Jessie and has, by any standard, done well: she possesses several degrees, is a professor, has written several books and curricula, and has a happy family life. In The Well-Trained Mind, these two explain the program that Jessie used with Susan and her siblings.

The mother-daughter team have taken a classical education approach, dividing the learning years into three stages: grammar (K-4), logic (5-8), and rhetoric (9-12). In each stage a different type of learning is emphasized while repeating much of the same material. The first stage focuses on hearing stories and learning facts; the second stage emphasizes understanding and analyzing causes; the final stage centres around developing a student’s ability to communicate her opinions clearly and persuasively.

History and science topics are repeated in four-year cycles, so that students are learning the same subjects again in greater depth in each stage of learning. As someone who pursued science in university, I love the idea of science topics being organized and repeated several times through elementary and secondary levels.

Another aspect of classical education that appeals to me is that it is grounded in history. By dividing the centuries into four periods (Ancient, Medieval, Renassiance, and Modern), the whole history of the world can be approached three times throughout a child’s twelve years. In the grammar stage, a history topic is encountered as a story. In the second stage, a student begins to read some original sources related to the topic and to analyze its causes. In the final stage, history learning happens primarily through reading original sources and developing reflective work on those.

A final appealing aspect of this style of education is its intense concentration on language over images. More simply put, students read and write most of the time, spending very little time with the TV or passive computer work .

The Well-Trained Mind is at once inspiring, practical, and intimidating. The authors encourage the reader that yes, this style of education really is possible at home. They provide resource lists and sample schedules to demonstrate how it might look. And yet, looking at the whole vista of twelve years of education is daunting at times.

Bottom Line: Buy, Borrow, or Skip?

If you are at all considering homeschooling, my advice is to get this book from your local library first. Read it through, giving yourself permission to gloss over bits that may intimidate you at first. After that, you’ll be in a position to decide whether or not it needs to be added to your own library.

It’s joining mine.