Summary of changes to the new Core 400 (from Amy) (05.03.13)

Thoroughly revised. I can't say much about Bible, but I'm sure it's way better.

The government portion is now only 18 weeks. The book list adjusted to seven books, really focusing on government and not also history.

Keep Carson's Basic American Government as a spine, though I cut about 20% of the total pages, about 100 in all. Those focused primarily on the historical background for the Constitution document, going back as far as the Greeks and various British innovations. Interesting to read about, but not important enough for an 18-week course. Without those challenging pages, Carson is extremely clear, concise, readable, inexpensive. From a brief look at what the Bible says about government, we move into a summary of our government. Carson begins with colonial days, and moves forward to about the 1980s century. We do read some source documents, but not dozens.

Interspersed with Carson is the Basic Idiot's Guide to Government and Politics. A serviceable text that covers some of the same topics, from a different perspective, and up through the 2000s.

For civil rights, I kept the truly amazing Black Like Me, to show what it was like for a person without white skin in the 1950s. The most chilling, frightening book I've read about the horrors of Jim Crow.

To cover political parties, we have Richard Maybury (Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?). His short book Are You Liberal, Conservative, or Confused? offers a thought-provoking look at what should be the uses of government.

And then, to have a better idea of what three branches of government do, we have three books.

Probably my favorite is the Concise Guide to the Supreme Court, a jewel of a book, short, interesting, and dense. The current court has no Christians, and five of the justices come from NJ/NY. Did you know that? Exactly what I'd wish for in an intro.

For the executive branch, we have Selecting a President, about the campaign trail. Caucuses, primaries, the difference between selecting the presidential candidate in the Republican and Democratic parties, why there's a difference between candidates in the primaries and the main election, what's the point of the National Convention.

For the legislative, we have Congress for Dummies, which thoroughly introduces the differences between House and Senate, what a year looks like for those elected officials, how you can affect them.

Finishing this course, I think students will have a good grasp of the Constitution, government history, what the news is talking about, where they fall on the political spectrum, how to make a difference in DC. LOVE IT!

The literature portion is still 36 weeks. As I've now either written or revised all the high school Cores, there are a few books that I thought were out of place. We've moved two books from Core 100, Ender's Game and Their Eyes Were Watching God, both books customers have liked, but expressed reservations in the lower levels. We also pulled A Separate Peace from Core 200. Core 200 is British lit, with some extras thrown in, and A Separate Peace takes place in the US.

So the current Core 400 has 10 lit books that it used to, plus two books moved from the former government program (Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery and Eternity in Their Hearts). We cut 12 of the lit books, including most of the more juvenile Newbery titles and the incredibly long Moby Dick.

What we've added is centered around the very helpful How to Read a Book. One of the things I noticed part way through college was that I could read a book, but it wouldn't stick with me. I read Pride and Prejudice, but I wouldn't remember it well. Or Gogol's "The Nose" or whatever. So although I had read a lot, it hadn't really sunk in to me. So we start the year with instruction in how to read challenging books, how to think about them and make them a part of you, which I think will serve our students well for the rest of their lives. After the basic instruction, the book deals with specific genres, so we match the reading with those genres as much as we can.

For example, a chapter focuses on how-to books. How can you best read a how-to book? So we read about that, then move into the famous Strunk and White Elements of Style, a how-to for good writing that I read in high school (E.B. White, of course, wrote Charlotte's Web.) After we read about fiction, we start with some gorgeous short stories by Wendell Berry, then move into the longer, but still gorgeous, book The Chosen. After we read about how to read a biography, we read Up from Slavery. When we read about how to read fiction, we move into some marvelous little David McCullough sketches.

Clearly, because this is a lit course, we have a lot more practice in analyzing novels, plays, poetry, short stories than we do analyzing history or how-to books. But I think the basic principles are helpful.

We have eight new titles in Core 400 lit, not previously included in a Sonlight Core. I love them all. And I couldn't say that about the previous Core 400 lineup. (The ten I kept, I love.)

Besides the "how to read" element, the literature notes have all been completely revised. Though a few questions might remain the same, my Dad and I don't think very much alike, and we have different methods of teaching. The new IG has new literary analysis as in the other high school Cores (a bit more, since a larger percentage of this Core is "good literature").

We've also completely redone the writing portion. Really excited about it! While we used to have one or two prompts per week, we now have a course structured around William Zinsser's beautiful book On Writing Well. We've tried to have about a 15 minute assignment scheduled four days a week, with a free writing assignment on the fifth day. So a student reads a chapter in Zinsser, then has a very short assignment, then has specific steps to edit the assignment. At the end of the year, the hope is that the student would have about 12 polished pieces worthy of a portfolio, including one longer research paper.

Additional comments about writing assignments (12.23.13) - The creative writing was absolutely "drastically changed." Personally, I like it more, but I can see that, if she is wishing for writing analysis assignments, she would be frustrated. For such prompts, she might want to do a search of various online literary analysis sites, such as ClifNotes, Sparksnotes, etc. Those have writing prompts for the major literary works.

We do have such prompts in other courses. Core 400 now takes a different direction; rather than churning out somewhere around 30 to 60 literary analysis short papers, the assignments come from William Zinsser's delightful book On Writing Well. Because many high school students have to do a college essay, two of the prompts early in the year are taken from the common application--might as well be practical in what you're writing. Zinsser covers how to edit, something our other courses don't cover much, if at all. It's a different focus.

And since most people will, at times, have to write in adulthood, though only English majors will have to write literary analysis, it might be argued that this is the most practical of high school writing courses we offer.

(Amy Lykosh)