I thought I'd take advantage of what looks like perhaps otherwise being a slightly slow day on the blog here (both Darwins having a lot of stuff lined up today) to introduce the latest project, which was been slowly coming up to steam over the last month.
The Humanities Program is going to be a long term project over the coming years, which will probably crop up from time to time here -- though we'll be careful not to let it overwhelm the accustomed DarwinCatholic topic range.
There are two more or less distinct projects involved. The High School Humanities Program is a slightly revised version of the high school Great Books-style program that I and my siblings all went through in high school. It takes a four year tour through Western history and literature combining lots of reading the original works from Ancient Sumer through the present day with good modern stuff about the periods.
The Elementary Humanities Program is designed to provide children aged somewhere between 6 and 10 with an illustrated, story-based tour of Western culture by putting important people, events and stories into a chronological, readable format.
Since electronic publishing is my thing, and in an effort to get feedback as we go along rather than banging away for months or years before knowing if we're providing what people want, we're putting it together in an open format with comments available on all items. New stories for the elementary program and notes on the works for the high school program should be going up on a pretty regular basis so if you find the project interesting do check back or put it on your RSS.
For our readers who are in the homeschooling community, please do feel free to pass this around. We'll be needing lots of feedback going forward, and hope we're providing something that might be useful.
And, of course, there's a humanities program blog too, which may become the destination for a certain amount of our homeschooling-themed blogging as time goes on, so that the topic doesn't overwhelm things here.
I added the following comment at the "Winds of Change -- 1300 to 1776":
ReplyDeleteYou might want to include something about Bruce's victory over the English at Bannockburn (1314) and the Declaration of Arbroath (Scottish Declaration of Independence, 1320). The Declaration, in the form of a letter to the Pope, is arguably one of the very first declarations of (1) popular sovereignty and (2) the notion of "nationhood".
Interesting idea. Added.
ReplyDeleteThis is quite wonderful, Bren-, er, Darwin.
ReplyDeleteMay I have your permission to link to this in my weblog, L'Abbe Faria's Cell, and to comment regarding this?
Bernard,
ReplyDeleteWhy indeed yes. In fact, that reminds me that I was meaning to link to L'Abbe Faria's Cell from the Humanites Program blog.
Off Topic:- I noticed Jen mentioned your family in her post about the Easter Vigil. How good you were able to be there. I have been invited to church on Sunday for a friend's son's First Holy Communion. (A Catholic plot I feel!)
ReplyDeleteWow, what a great project! I looked through it a bit last night and I think it looks quite promising. I particularly like how you broke up the historical time periods, that makes a lot of sense. Using the fall of Rome as a pivot point always rather bothered me, largely for the same reasons you listed.
ReplyDelete