Today I’d like to suspend my posts on Teaching the Trivium in your classical home school to share a thoughtful article written by my friend, Amy Barr, co-owner of The Lukeion Project, a website offering live, online classes on antiquity. Amy and her husband, Regan, teach Greek and Roman history, Latin, Mythology, Art, Architecture, and Greek and Latin Word Roots among other fascinating subjects. I had the privilege of taking one of their 4 week summer workshops on Troy, and it was superb. I know you’ll enjoy Amy’s perspective on history!

* * * * *

I was at a convention speaking to a harried homeschool mom about educating high schoolers in ancient history when she shrugged and confessed, “This semester we are just going to focus on world history.” I said nothing but thought, “focus on world history?!”

I’m not unsympathetic. As a home educator of three myself, I know all about the tyranny of the urgent. By the time kids get into ninth grade, history often takes a back seat behind a stack of essential-life-skill courses like botany, algebra or creative writing. The worst case scenario? History gets crunched into a survey of the whole record of human activity in a mere 16 weeks. Our ambitions to ignite a passion in our children for learning about history are reduced to a card deck of names, dates and places plus an optional craft project.

History is so much more than surveys and flash cards. We realize this best when studying the history of our nation or of our own ancestors. We can walk battle fields, witness reenactments, grind corn like the first Americans, drive Route 66 or walk the Appalachian Trail. These things easily become real and important because they satisfy all of our senses and give us a sense of broader purpose.

At the Lukeion Project, we want to prove that the ancient world was in Technicolor too! We paint from a broad palette of archaeology, literature, and art. Greek and Latin add great depth. As icing, we flesh out the world of the Bible, walk with Paul or tour ancient Jerusalem. Greece and Rome begin at Troy, the site we once excavated and where Homer once celebrated heroism in the Iliad. All world literature opens up for learners who are introduced to Greek and Latin word roots, ancient tragedy, epic, rhetoric and mythology.

Thomas Jefferson prided himself on being able to write Latin with one hand, Greek with the other. Designers of our nation’s capital copied the Parthenon of Athens for the Lincoln memorial and the Pantheon of Rome for Jefferson. In Washington D.C., buildings are encrusted with symbols of two world powers so important that Hitler wrongly named his the “third.” Alexander the Great teaches tremendous lessons in genius, leadership and hubris. Julius Caesar embodies a fatal lesson about the relentless power of tradition. His heir, Augustus, taught Rome new traditions that included him as emperor. Classical Athens informs us of the strengths and weaknesses of direct democracy. Sparta illustrates the generational curse of the systematic (and legislated) destruction of the family. We learn Rome fell not because of barbarian invasions, but because of an addiction to luxury and power unequaled by any nation but our own.

We can not presume to be educated if we do not go beyond surveys. We must present Greece and Rome to our learners in 3-D and living color. The high school mind must be challenged to tackle the difficult life questions presented to us by the Classical world. Learning about the two cultures that have most shaped our own is a priceless life skill. It is well worth the time, effort and enjoyment. Let me just say: I promise that the family field trips are going to be out of this world!

* * * * *

Coming up next: Teaching the Trivium, step 2, “Thinking Critically.”