New World/American History & Literature Syllabus for 11th Grade

GRADE 11 SCHOOL YEAR

Books and Subjects

History

History of the American People, Paul Johnson HAP

The American Record (primary source material) AR

The World’s Great Speeches (primary source material) TWGS

The World’s Great Catholic Literature (primary source material) TWGCL

Undaunted Courage, Stephen Ambrose

Glencoe Literature (primary source material; also counts for literature) GL

Online sources as noted in syllabus

Literature

Fiction, non-fiction, drama, and poetry selections from Glencoe Literature (GL) plus

Huckleberry Finn

Death Comes for the Archbishop

The Scarlet Letter

The Red Badge of Courage

Shakespeare

Hamlet (term 1)

The Taming of the Shrew (term 2)

Henry V (term 3)

Rhetoric

How to Read a Book, Mortimer Adler and Charles van Doren

(Parts One & Two; Part Three to be read senior year)

The Elements of Style, Strunk & White

Traditional English Sentence Style, Robert Einarsson (TESS)

Selected model essays as noted in syllabus

Government and Citizenship

(Much of this reading overlaps with history and is not extra)

Iroquois Constitution

Common Sense, Thomas Paine

Miracle at Philadelphia, Catherine Drinker Bowen

Essays and Speeches:

Benjamin Franklin, On the Faults of the Constitution

The Virginia Debates

Alexander Hamilton, The Federal Constitution

Frederic Bastiat, The Law

Orestes Brownson, Government

Lord Acton, The Catholic Idea of the State

Ourselves, Charlotte Mason

Lives, Plutarch:

Crassus (term 1)

Timoleon (term 2)

Paulus Aemillius (term 3)

U.S. Constitution

John Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies

Geography

The Flame Trees of Thika

Longitude

Undaunted Courage (also counts for history)

Science and Nature Literature

Six Easy Pieces, Richard Feynman

The Life of the Fly, Henri Fabre

The Mason Bees, Henri Fabre

Religion

Bible: 

Prophets, Gospel of St. John, St. Paul’s Epistles to the Corinthians and Thessalonians

Devotional Reading: 

The Imitation of Christ, Thomas a Kempis

Talking With God, Francois Fenelon

Papal Encyclicals:

Deus Caritas Est, Benedict XVI

Spe Salvi, Benedict XVI

Lumen Fidei, Francis

11th Grade Planning

I'm still very much in the process, but here's a rough draft of what I envision my 11th grader doing next year. Grateful acknowledgment is due Ambleside Online for their Bible schedule, history-resource suggestions, and general "shape." I find myself moving further and further in that direction  . . .

I've basically included only reading in this plan thus far, and I haven't broken it down into weeks yet. But that's coming. I am referencing books I already own:  for example, a Glencoe U.S. Literature textbook.  If it were boiled down to only the literature, this book would be far less a doorstop than it is. It's full of stuff nobody needs, but it does have a good selection of relevant literature usefully arranged in chronological order, so we're using it -- selectively. Virtually all the assigned literature for this course could be found, I am certain, in free e-text format, and when I have time, I'll hunt down links. Don't hold your breath, though! It could be a long time.

This course covers U.S. history from the era of exploration to the end of the 19th century. I'm assigning, in addition to the U.S. lit built into the history reading, a long section of H.E. Marshall's English Literature for Boys and Girls, to provide parallel literary and historical context for the American study which is the core of the year. This way we can move, in the senior year, into a 20th-century/contemporary course that encompasses both American and world history, without having lost, for example, Wordsworth in the process. 

Additional Web Resources for Those Doing Western Civ I: Ancient World

Epic of Gilgamesh read aloud in Akkadian

What ancient Greek music sounded like

No end to the goodness at OpenCulture.com

If you want to integrate math history into your history-literature study . . .

Check out the Living Math History Page. 

Unit 1 Notes

Unit 1

Did You Know?

. . . that you can buy selected Great Courses lecture series at Audible.com? 

Western Civ 2: Old World -- Schedule of Student Plans

Note:  The first week of each unit contains the complete plans for that unit, including links to videos and other web resources. Subsequent weeks include plans, but not web resources. Eventually I'll copy the complete plans w/resources into each week, as time allows. Really eventually, I'll break down the plans week by week and link them that way, but for now . . . 

It has also been brought to my attention that I need to clarify reading assignments. To wit:  YOU DO NOT HAVE TO READ ABSOLUTELY EVERY ARTICLE IN EVERY ISSUE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY MAGAZINE. I mean, if you have time, great. Go for it. But a good M.O. might be to skim over an issue, eyeball the various articles, and choose two. If you do read more than that, I'd still only narrate two. We'd all love to digest all the goodness, I know, but we do have to be reasonable here, especially those of us also taking, say, chemistry, alongside this course. 

Reading List

To the Student, Before Beginning Work

Semester 1:

Week 1:  Unit 1:  End of Rome/Early Church
Week 2:  Unit 1 
Week 3:  Unit 1 (short paper due)
Week 4: Unit 2: "Dark Ages"/Anglo-Saxon England (short paper due)
Week 5: Unit 2 (short paper due)
Week 6: Unit 2
Week 7: Unit 2
Week 8: Unit 2 (short paper due)
Week 9:  Unit 2  (90-minute timed essay)
Week 10: Unit 3: Vikings 
Week 11: Unit 3 (paper due)
Week 12: Unit 4:  Middle Ages in England
Week 13: Unit 4
Week 14: Unit 4
Week 15: Unit 4 (rough draft due)
Week 16: Unit 4 (paper due)
Week 17: REVIEW AND CATCH-UP WEEK
Week 18:  EXAM WEEK (or more review and catch-up if you don't do exams)

Semester 2: 

Week 19: Unit 5: Middle Ages Outside England
Week 20: Unit 5
Week 21: Unit 5 (rough draft due)
Week 22: Unit 5 (short paper due)
Week 23: Unit 6:  Dante (a taste of)
Week 24: Unit 6 (90-minute timed essay)
Week 25: Unit 7:  Middle Ages into Renaissance (begin 10-page research paper)
Week 26: Unit 7
Week 27: Unit 7 (research paper outline due)
Week 28: Unit 7 (research paper first draft due)
Week 29: Unit 7 (research paper second and final drafts due)
Week 30: REVIEW AND CATCH-UP WEEK/SPRING BREAK (moveable)
Week 31: Unit 8:  Tudor England and Shakespeare
Week 32: Unit 8
Week 33: Unit 8
Week 34: Unit 8
Week 35: REVIEW AND CATCH-UP WEEK
Week 36: EXAM WEEK (or more review and catch-up, as in Week 18)

Western Civ 2: Semester Two Exam Week

EXAM WEEK

Western Civ 2: Semester One Exam Week

EXAM WEEK

Unit 8 Student Plans

Whew. Term paper done. We're in the homestretch now, ladies and gents, and what a homestretch it is:  Tudor England! Blood, guts, glory. Into the breach, friends!

Here we turn from events on the Continent to the cradle of our contemporary English-speaking culture. Not that all the rest of it hasn't formed us, too, but if we wanted to see, as in a mirror, the infancy of our own turns of phrase and mind, I think we would see those things very clearly here.

Unit 7 Student Plans

Here we look at cultural, artistic, and religious shifts which signal a new era.

Unit 6 Student Plans

Here we follow a Medieval rabbit trail to Italy and the foundational epic of Christendom, Dante's Divine Comedy. The Commedia is to the Medieval world what The Aeneid was to Rome, and it is no accident that Dante's guide through the realms of Hell and Purgatory is the great Virgil himself.

In this course we don't have time to read Dante's work in its entirety;  this unit is merely an introduction, to spark what we hope will be a lifelong relationship with the poem.

Yet Another Book for the Early-Church List

My darling husband has just walked in from the used bookstore and handed me The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, by Robert Louis Wilken. This is a reasonably sophisticated read for a high-schooler, but Wilken's style, while authoritative, is never too scholarly, in the unreadable-jargon-laden sense of the word. A motivated student could take this on as background reading;  a motivated mom or dad might like to read it as well.

Unit 5 Student Plans

Welcome back from Christmas break (ok, I'm writing this in July, so that's kind of weird, but by the time anyone is actually working these plans, it will be after Christmas break when this unit comes up).

Anyway: 

Welcome to Semester 2! Having studied the development of Middle English and its literature, and the rise of Norman culture in medieval England, in this unit, we'll widen our lens to take in what's happening in the rest of Europe (and, to a limited extent, the rest of the world) at the same time. As in England, we see Europe moving out of what are rather erroneously called the "Dark Ages" into the High Middle Ages:  the era of Gothic cathedrals, flourishing monasteries, the growth of towns and the development of a class of craftsmen and merchants. This is also an era of warfare and disease, as the Black Plague rakes Europe. And it's an age of expanded travel and exploration, in which Italian Marco Polo penetrates the mystery that is Asia. 

TIME OUT: What the Younger Abandoned Hopefuls Will Be Doing

In addition to a rising tenth grader, I will also have rising fourth and fifth graders this year. We're merging back into Level 2 of the more-than-excellent Mater Amabilis program, with a few tweaks to accommodate things we've already covered and books we already own, but I'm planning to follow the MA course outline far more closely than I've done in the past, simply because it's so good, and because it's already done. Here then are the schedules I've made out for this level:  the 4th grader will basically follow MA Level 2 Year 1, while the 5th grader is in Level 2 Year 2:

SCHOOL SCHEDULES 2013-14

Unit 4 Student Plans

In the last two units, we've examined a basically Germanic/Norse culture, language, and literature in England (against the backdrop of the rest of Europe and the world, largely courtesy of Robert Wilken's The First Thousand Years). Now we come to the major tectonic shift in the language and culture:  the Norman Conquest of 1066. England moves into the High Middle Ages as a culture influenced by the French, the Continental, the Latinized. It also has a newly revamped feudal social structure, with the Normans at the top of the hierarchy, the dispossessed Saxons at the bottom. The language is importing new words, sounds, and structures at a gallop. The upheavals affecting the European continent -- wars, Crusades, plague -- touch England as well. It's a dangerous, unstable, and unbelievably culturally fertile time. And it's where we're going to be from now until Christmas

As always, your suggested weekly schedule:

Unit 3 Student Plans

Vikings! Berserkers! Ransackers! Oh, my!

Or;  further insights into the culture that lent us Beowulf and words like cake. 

Yet Another Spine-Text Option for Western Civ 2

The Catholic Church Through the Ages:  A History

If I'm driving you crazy with all these spine-text options, don't worry. I'm totally driving myself up the wall, so if that's where you are, believe me, I'm there to keep you company.

Honestly, what I anticipate doing in my own home is this:

1) Have student read Wilken's The First Thousand Years as an "outside" read, possibly in place of historical fiction, because he gravitates more to "information" books than to novels anyway, over the first two units, since those cover . . . the first thousand years A.D.

2) Use articles and whole issues of Christian History. My thought process regarding this resource . . .   I do think that balance is important -- no one team's story is ever the definitive narrative of the whole game -- and while I'm intent on a Catholic education that enriches and expands my student's faith along with his intellectual life, I'm not so sure that that's accomplished by demonizing all Protestant reformers, for example (writes the papist descendant of English Puritans), or being triumphalist about our own history. Meanwhile, as I've said before, this periodical is incredibly well done, and serious, faithful scholars -- including Catholics like Robert Wilken and Glenn Olsen -- write for it. That's it's all available online for free doesn't hurt, either.

3) Choose another book from my "spine" list to have him read as an outside book, probably in place of historical fiction, over the course of subsequent units. How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization would be a frontrunner here, chiefly because we already own it, and our last child read and liked it at this stage. Warren Carroll would be another possibility, though this particular student didn't adore the first installment in that series. He thought it was okay (and in truth I think those books are a lot better than his assessment of them), but he isn't absolutely dying to read the rest of them. Meanwhile, the Wood book is short enough that I'd probably choose a third, and maybe even a fourth, background/spine read, so that we continually have some Catholic history source going in the background, even as we're reading around in primary-source material and Christian History articles.

So I'll probably go back and tweak the plans I've already written, for units 1 & 2,  to reflect this epiphany. See why I opted not to do printed plans for Western Civ 2 this year? It's all so trial-and-error . . . And figuring out how to fit in reading is all crazy making . . . But we persevere.