(Photo credit: henry…)

I wrote earlier that you can teach worldview – you already are. The problem for us mommies is often confusion. We sit down at the kitchen table, look at our lesson plans, knock over the piles of texts and manuals, and get discouraged. Where is the lesson marked worldview? Where is the Learn Your Worldview in 100 Easy Lessons? 

Worldview isn’t a subject. It’s your point of view. Keep sharing it.

So, without further ado, here is a short list to get you started with your teen.

Ten Ways to Teach Worldview: High School Edition

1. Bible. Teach it. Systematically. Before graduation, a teen raised in a Christian home should know his Scripture, know his doctrine, know how to study and interpret the Word, and know how to apply it. My freshman is currently taking a self-directed Old Testament overview course to that end. Next year, he will be studying Bible doctrine.

2. Math. Love it. Seriously. By the time he hits high school, a Christian teen should be able to explain why the principles he has studied work, how creation demonstrates the logic and pattern of the Creator, and why advanced math is an important mental and occupational discipline. My freshman is wrestling through Saxon Algebra 1 and discussing daily life in terms of linear equations, changes of rate, and probability. High school math is hard, but we can help them see the purpose behind the pain.

3. History. Read it. Voraciously. High school is the time to start being serious about history study, giving the teen a firm foundation for future education. This is the time to openly question the text, scrutinize the heroes, discuss the consequences, and examine the viewpoints. My teen is enjoying reading primary resources, history text books, biographies, and historical fiction.

4. Literature. Vary it. Purposefully. Very soon – if not already – the young person will begin choosing the majority if not all his own reading material. This is our chance to instill discernment and taste into his character before marketing and liberal teachers have their say. Read classics and best-sellers, poems and novels, Christian and *gasp* pagan. Discuss the viewpoints, redeeming qualities, and fallacies. 

5. Writing. Critique it. Constantly. National Dynamics Institute got it right in those commercials years ago: people do judge you by the words you use. Our teens should practice and practice speaking and writing informative and persuasive papers. On varying subject matter. In varying styles. Because no matter what vocation they chose, young adults will be expressing in verbal and written form not only their work but also their beliefs.

6. Science. Explore it. Purposefully. Even those of us who are rather laid-back in science instruction for the early years realize that the language of our day is science. Now is the time to study the major disciplines and discuss the ethical and philosophical questions raised.

7. Philosophy. Discuss it. Candidly. Philosophy is man’s rational explanation for the difficult issues of his time, including life, death, truth, and relationships. It is another way of examining how beliefs affect actions. We are reading a couple of general philosophy guides along with our history and literature studies, examining the outworking of major philosophical beliefs.

8. Fine Arts. Enjoy them. Appreciatively. Art appreciation and music appreciation, I would argue, are just as important as literature study. It is through the fine arts of the time that we view the hopes, dreams, fears, and frustrations of a particular people during a particular time. Teens can read art appreciation books and composer biographies, view art prints and listen to classical recordings, tour galleries and attend performances.

9. Work and chores. Do it. Daily.  It is no secret that I am a huge fan of child labor. During the teen years, my enthusiasm increases. Teens learn work ethic, financial skills, compassion, and responsibility by earning their wages, paying for expenses, and giving to others. This is excellent preparation for the adulthood they crave.

10. Friendships. Encourage them. Sympathetically. Teens are, I am learning, incredibly social creatures, even the introverts. They also begin to understand the ramifications of relationships: their values, personality, convictions, and principles are demonstrated in relationships with those outside their family. They are learning how to respond to gossip, flirting, accusation, bullying, and manipulation. This is another motivation to keep an open relationship with our teens, to help them develop not only social skills but wisdom, graciousness, and empathy.

You ARE teaching your teen worldview. Keep it up. Pass it on.

Related articles

• You CAN Teach Worldview (whateverstateiam.com)

Well, I did get more feedback than I expected, thought most of it was private. Not many wish to declare anti-Latin sentiments coram populo, even if we did not come to our conclusions in vacuo.

Jerry Bailey, of Dynamic Literacy, was kind enough to contact me personally on the subject:

I read your blog entry “No Latin – No Problem.” (I follow you on twitter) When my wife was a kid, she and her friends used to say “Latin is a dead langauge [sic], it’s very plain to see. It killed all the Romans, and now it’s killing me!” While I agree that students don’t necessairly [sic] need to study Latin, English is full of Latin and Greek, and the study of morphology assumes the role of teaching the parts of those dead languages that still exist in English today. By learning Latin and Greek roots in the context of English, students learn how to “mean out” unfamiliar words, just like phonics teaches them to “sound out” words. Learning just 10 morphemes, or units of meaning, can be the key to understanding hundreds of words, something you can’t do with memorization. If you’re interested, I’ve published an article about the history of English which explains, among other things, why there are at least two words for almost everything in English.

I agree with you, Mr. Bailey, that “students don’t necessarily need to study Latin.” Sic, my title. Especially do I agree with your wife. In fact, the more times I read over your comments, quod erat demonstrandum we are more in agreement than disagreement.

Let’s list those agreements:

1. “By learning Latin and Greek roots in the context of English, students learn how to ‘mean out’ unfamiliar words.” I was blessed with an English spelling and vocab instruction from my mother (I was homeschooled, you probably know) that included memorizing such roots. I am constantly spouting them off to my children when we learn new words. At the dinner table, my fourteen-year-old son mused that thigh must be Germanic, because the German words end in the [now] silent gh. I had forgotten that, but a quick check of a dictionary’s entomology of the word proved him correct.
2. “Learning just 10 morphemes, or units of meaning, can be the key to understanding hundreds of words, something you can’t do with memorization.” Again, couldn’t agree more. Today’s math lesson with my five-year-old included finding the angles in a triangle. And that leads to the prefix tri- which gave away the answer to the next question: How many angles are in a triangle? Which led to bursts of tricycle, trinity, triad, etc.
3. “If you’re interested, I’ve published an article about the history of English which
   

   Review of King Alfred’s English: A History of the Language We Speak and Why We Should Be Glad We Do

   explains, among other things, why there are at least two words for almost everything in English.” I’m sorry I did not find the article, or I would have linked it here. Did you read Laurie White’s King Alfred’s English? Going through it with my children gave us all a renewed appreciation for the bounty of vocabulary and history we have at our disposal. And that was what led to my son’s observation about the roasted chicken thighs we ate last night. They were more delicious than Germanic, though.

There is, however, a reason I threw that post out there last week. Too many classically homeschooling mommies think “sin Latin ”  equals “failure.” That just ain’t so.  Ars longa, vita brevis, but I will attempt to write soon a little more on why not Latin, Dei gratia.

Thanks for writing, Mr. Bailey! And please, friends, let me know what you think. You can email me, facebook me, or tweet me any time. In English, please.

Ave et vale.

Related articles

• No Latin? No Problem. (whateverstateiam.com)

SuperMom, in all her packaged glory (Photo credit: happyworker)

- My preschooler was nearly kicked out of the library today for playing too loudly with the puzzle pieces.

- Actually, it was our first time back in the library for a month, because the four of us holding cards were each banned for excessive fines.  We came back today for “Fine Forgiveness Week.”  We got a new start with a bag of canned goods for the needy.

- I have NEVER successfully baked a birthday cake.

- I make my children keep under their beds clean, but don’t look under mine.

- If you dare open the linen closet, something will fall on your head.

- I can’t spell.

- I once purposefully turned and walked away when my child was eating

•  grass.  I just couldn’t take it anymore.

- My three music-playing children don’t practice every single day.

- I’m not a “bedtime story” person. 

- I don’t do windows.

- Apparently, I can’t grow vegetables.

- If a child misbehaves in a public place, I will say to him, “When I tell your mother about this, she is not going to be happy!”  so that onlookers will think I am just the babysitter.

- I have had the same to-do list for the past 3 weeks and haven’t done a thing on it.

Once in a while, another home educator will remark to me “You are such a Super Mom!” I never know what to say to that. Except this: NO-O-O-O!! I am a flawed, weary, bumbling woman doing her best to rear her children, by God’s grace, for His Glory.  Once in a while, I fall painfully.  Sometimes, walking with Him seems peaceful and light.  But it is  not by my might or strength. Only His grace has led me all this way.
We all are on the same road.  Some of us are just beginning our path of marriage and motherhood.  Others are further along the Way with their life tasks.  But regardless, let us pray for one another and lift up one another in our frailties, and remember…
When we are weak, He is strong!

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You can’t be a classical homeschooler and not teach dead languages. Or so it seems, the more one reads classical blogs, magazines, and advertisements.

I have always disagreed. Not only because I don’t know a second language fluently, dead or alive. But something has always rubbed me the wrong way about the entire notion.

My husband and I have discussed this at length, actually. Obviously, he is bilingual, and he is proof that learning another language – and culture – further broadens one’s outlook and opportunity.

But he has never been a fan of dead languages, either. This is something we can agree on.

See, to us, the language you choose to teach your children is more a philosophical and – dare I say it? – religious choice than a mere academic one. But I am very much in the minority here, particularly among classicists.

Last night, however, while researching something else entirely, I ran across this quote which startled me.

Eventually the Latin and Greek Churches became so identified with the Graeco-Roman world that within living memory in the Christian West, almost fifteen hundred years after the disappearance of the last Western Roman emperor, schoolboys and schoolgirls learned Latin as a necessary qualification for entry in any subject to two of England’s leading universities. The crucial stage in this extraordinary cultural saga was the reign of Constantine.  The historian Eusebius of Caesarea so identified Constantine’s purposes with God’s purposes that he saw the Roman Empire as the culmination of history, the final stage before the end of the world. Gone was any expectation of a thousand-year rule of the saints, which he felt to be a deplorable falsehood associated with the Book of Revelation, which he mistrusted. But this Christian historian felt very differently about the nature of the empire from the great Latin historians of the past, such as Tacitus or Suetonius. The city of Rome meant little to him and he took a comparatively restrained interest in its history; the empire had become something greater, more universal in God’s plan. (Diarmaid Macculloch, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, page 196).

Don’t misunderstand me: I don’t have any problem with those who wish their children to learn Latin and Greek. However, there are those of us who conscientiously educate our children in living languages and choose to teach a non-Roman-centric view of history.

Photo credit: mrquizzical

You can pick up toys while talking on the phone and vaccumming the floor.

You grocery shop while steering the impossibly wide “car-style” grocery cart and insist that “No, I don’t need help out.”

Your hand sanitizer is bright green or dazzle-berry blue.

Your back yard may not be manicured, but you can usually find a barbie head or a super hero hidden in a pile of dirt and you don’t step on them.

You have memorized more than half a dozen picture books suitable for bedtime reading.

You can stop traffic with a withering glance.

You can whip up a nutritious meal with any combination of protein, carbohedreit, and vegetation available.

You didn’t bat an eyelash when your son came downstairs with his underwear on his head.

The pediatrician’s office can recognize you by your voice, but they make room for you on the busiest of days.

You could support your family for three days out of the contents of your purse.

You know exactly what is under each child’s bed … and when it must be cleaned.

For the special people in your care, only you can meet their needs.

You are a great mom.