Lizzie Sanduleac’s Reviews > Passing the Torch: An Apology for Classical Christian Education > Status Update

Summary of E. D. Hirsch
“Though skills are important, if children are not taught community-shared information, they will not be able to dialogue with people outside their group... Apart from this collective reservoir of symbols and meanings, we cannot communicate effectively through the written and even spoken word.”

Quote from Adler
“We need specialists for our economic prosperity, for our national welfare and security, for continued progress in all the arts and sciences, and in all fields of scholarship.
But for the sake of our cultural traditions, our democratic institutions, and our individual well-being, our specialists must also be generalists; that is, generally educated human beings.”

3 Reasons to teach history, not social studies:

“First, sociological-anthropological approaches… tend to press the volitional human element out of its study of the past. Second, they tend to brush over the facts of history… that students must learn if they are to understand the past at all. Third, they downplay… achievements of the West.”

4-yr history cycle
The first sweep through the classical, medieval, Renaissance, Enlightenment, Romantic, Victorian, and modern eras would emphasize key dates, places, figures, and conflicts (grammar school). The second would [add] biographies… focusing on their moral choices and motivations (middle school). The third would analyze the patterns of force… (high school).