⁵ Ibid., I.2.

⁷ L. von Mises, Human Action (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), p. 75.

⁸ Anthony Weston, A Rulebook for Arguments (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992), pp. 35–36.

¹ A side benefit: excellent performance on the verbal section of the SAT.

¹ David Hicks, Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education (New York: Praeger, 1981), p. 138.

² Create a context page only for the great books themselves, not for the history books we’ve included on the list. The ninth grader should make a Book Context page for Cicero’s De republica, written around 54 B.C., but not for William Davis’s history book A Day in Old Rome.

³ The Well-Educated Mind, which is a guide to self-education in the classical tradition, recommends that the mature reader choose one genre at a time and read chronologically through it. Although this is probably ideal for building reading skills, the high-school student is completing history requirements as well as literature requirements in this Great Books Course, and so should read chronologically regardless of genre.

⁴ Douglas Wilson, Wesley Callihan, and Douglas Jones, Classical Education and the Home School (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 1995), p. 6.

¹ In high school, earth science gives way to a more intensive study of astronomy.

² Additional guidance in reading science can be found in Chapter 17 of How to Read a Book, a classic text on how to read, written by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren (Touchstone, 1972).

³ If you use the Saxon physics program, you’ll need to do physics five days per week, rather than following the schedule we suggest at the end of this chapter. However, if you do Saxon physics, you can drop advanced math electives. Saxon physics should be considered a math course; continue to do the source readings and composition assignments, as outlined in this chapter, two days per week.

⁴ Neil Postman, The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School (New York: Knopf, 1995), pp. 192–93. For a full explanation that will help both you and the student think through these issues, we highly recommend reading Postman’s essay on the necessity of “technological education.”

⁵ Postman, p. 193.

¹ Languages studied before ninth grade generally don’t count in the eyes of college admissions officers; they assume that this study was on a lower level.

² T. S. Eliot, The Classics and the Man of Letters (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Haskell House, 1974), p. 22.

¹ Neil Postman, The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School (New York: Knopf, 1995), p. 192.

² Postman, p. 192.

¹ Aristotle, Rhetoric I.2.

¹ Neil Postman, The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School (New York: Knopf, 1995), p. 112.

² Dorothy Sayers, “The Lost Tools of Learning,” in Douglas Wilson, Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1991), p. 161.

³ Postman, p. 93.

¹ Richard J. Murnane and Frank Levy, Teaching the New Basic Skills: Principles for Educating Children to Thrive in a Changing Economy (New York: Free Press, 1996), p. 32.

² Gene Edward Veith, “Renaissance, Not Reform,” an essay posted at the Philanthropy, Culture and Society website, August 1996; www.capitalresearch.org. See also Gene Edward Veith, Jr., and Andrew Kern, Classical Education: Towards the Revival of American Schooling (Washington, D.C.: Capital Research Center, 1997), p. 78.

³ David Hicks, Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education (New York: Praeger, 1981), p. 20.

⁴ Hicks, p. 83.

¹ Shawn Callaway, “Home Education, College Admission, and Financial Aid,” Journal of College Admission (Spring 1997): 8.

² Students with mild speech impediments are often placed in special-education classes. According to an article in the New York Times, financial incentives encourage schools to keep these children in special education, a situation that often yields “isolation and failure.” These children often never return to mainstream classes, and many do not graduate with a regular diploma. (“Fresh Thinking on Special Education,” New York Times, 26 November 1996, sec. A, p. 20.)

³ Pam Belluck, “Poor Teachers Get Coaching, Not Dismissal,” New York Times, 8 December 1996, sec. A, pp. 1 and 46.

⁴ David Hicks, Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education (New York: Praeger, 1981), p. 129.

¹ Urie Bronfenbrenner, Two Worlds of Childhood (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1971), p. 105.

² Christopher Klicka, The Case for Home Schooling, 4th rev. ed. (Gresham, Ore.: Noble, 1995), p. 13.

³ Charles Horton Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order (New York: Scribner’s, 1902), pp. 184–185.

⁴ Peter Miller, “Jane Goodall,” National Geographic, December 1995, p. 121.

¹ Vigen Guroian, Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child’s Moral Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 3.

¹ Douglas Wilson, in Douglas Wilson, Wesley Callihan, and Douglas Jones, Classical Education and the Home School (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 1995), p. 19.

² Alan Lakein, How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life (New York: Signet, 1974), pp. 28–29.

¹ Jessie doesn’t recommend that elementary-age home schoolers take tests with public-school students unless the state requires this. The confusion and unfamiliar chaos of a big class sometimes prevents the child from concentrating on the test. We have also heard of an occasional case where hostility to home schoolers has made a child uncomfortable.

² “Getting College Credit before College,” College Board Online, www.collegeboard.com/parents/csearch/know-the-options/21298.html.

¹ Christopher J. Klicka, Home Students Excel in College, rev. ed. (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Home Education, 1998), p. 1.