Student Suggested Booklist

Any book by Ted Dekker  (These BOLDED books were chosen by several students.)

Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court- Mark Twain

Cry the Beloved Country- Alan Paton

Datable- Justin Lookadoo

The Good Earth- Pearl Buck

The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Heroes Don’t Run- Henry Maze

Les Miserables- Victor Hugo

Merchant of Venice- Shakespeare

Night- Elie Wiesel

Old Man and the Sea- Ernest Hemingway

The Prince- Machiavelli

Same Kind of Different as Me- Ron Hall

The Shack- William P. Young

A Separate Peace- John Knowles

Sherlock Holmes- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Soldier’s Heart- Gary Paulson

Start Up Nation- Dan Senor

Tom Sawyer- Mark Twain

Here is the compilation of books from past years:

General Fiction

The Anybodies- NE Bode

The Somebodies- NE Bode

The Nobodies- NE Bode

The Princess Bride- William Goldman

Katie Weldon series- Robin Jones Gunn

Flight of Eagles- Jack Higgins

The Pendragon Series- DJ Machale

The Shadow Children- Margaret Maddix

Eregon- Christopher Paolini

Atlas Shrugged- Ayn Rand

The Shack- William P. Young

The Hunger Games

Inspirational

Stepping Heavenward- Elizabeth Peters

Personal Growth

How to Win Friends and Influence People- Dale Carnegie

The Me Nobody Knew- Shannon McLinch

97 Random Thoughts About Life, Love, and Relationships- Justin Lookadoo

The Datable Rules- Justin Lookadoo

Enjoying Who You Are on the Way to Where You Are Going- Joyce Meyer

Hello Cruel World- Kate Parnsten

Define Normal- Julie Anne Peters

Historical Fiction

Parallel Journeys- Eleanor Ayer

Iron Peacock- Mary Stetson Clarke

Nine Days a Queen- Ann Rinaldi

Non-Fiction History

The Greatest Generation- Tom Brokaw

Abraham Lincoln: The Man Behind the Myths- Stephen B. Oates

My Grandfather’s Son: A Memoir- Clarence Thomas

General Non-Fiction

Brainwashed- Ben Shapiro

The Outliers- Malcolm Gladwell

Christian Fiction

Various books by Terri Blacktock

O’Malley Chronicles- Dee Henderson

Various books by Karen Kingsbury

Eli- Bill Myers

Suspence/Adventure- secular

Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy

Black- Ted Dekker

Classics

The Iliad

Mansfield Park- Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle- Avi

The Wisdom of Father Brown- GK Chesterton

Oliver Twist- Charles Dickens

Sherlock Holmes- Arthur Conan Doyle

A Wrinkle in Time- Madeleine L’Engle

The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Brave New World- Aldous Huxley

Screwtape Letters- CS Lewis

Space Trilogy- CS Lewis

The Crucible- Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman- Arthur Miller

Catcher in the Rye- JD Salinger

The Bronze Bow- Elizabeth George Speare

Of Mice and Men- John Steinbeck

The Pearl- John Steinbeck

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde- Robert Louis Stevenson

The Hiding Place- Corrie Ten Boom

Lord of the Rings- JRR Tolkein

The Time Machine- HG Wells

The Glass Menagerie- Tennessee Williams

Related posts:

• Great Books
• Quote for the Week
• Quote for the Week

“Is the work you did in ____ course at a college prep level or above?”

So let me explain how to know how Mt. Sophia’s course levels work:

Level 1- Remedial Level

This is material that covers requirements for a high school course but at a remedial level. This is a useful credit for students who have learning disabilities or distinct struggles in a certain subject area.

Level 2- General High School Level

This is material that covers the necessary requirements for a high school course at a pace and depth that most high schoolers can handle. It covers what must be covered for the credit without college-level work.

Level 3- College Preparatory Level

This is material that covers the necessary requirements for a high school course at a pace and depth that will prepare a high schooler for college. More academic work and projects are required than Level 2 and at a greater depth.

Level 4- Advanced Level

At Mt Sophia, this is material that covers the necessary requirements for a Level 3 high school course plus 50% more academic work and projects.

Level 5- Honors Level

At Mt Sophia, this is material that covers fully double the necessary requirements of a Level 3 high school course. This can be accomplished through an honors-level class, approved home-study course or an AP-approved course.

Your academic advisor can help you decide what level is best for your student in each subject. Each student is unique and it is our job to help each one maximize his/her abilities (and create a culture for Christ).

Related posts:

• Mt. Sophia Academy- What is Our Mission?
• Dr. Gerald Culley Teaches on History, Philosophy and Mt. Sophia- Part I
• Figuring Out the Right Way

From what? you might ask.

From our oppressors, we would respond.

The English? you ask. (Poor English people. Can you imagine them watching us celebrate being independent from them every year?)

Not really, no, we respond. After all, none of us were ever oppressed by England.

I mean, raise your hand: Have you ever been oppressed by an Englishman or -woman?

Didn’t think so.

____

The 4th is not about our freedom from England. It’s about freedom from tyranny — from unjust, exploitative, illegitimate force and violence.

It’s about the day when the leaders of the thirteen “united States” (not, interestingly, the “United States”) said that there are certain fundamental truths that everyone can see — truths about people and governments and God and countries — and that anybody who violates those truths forfeits his (or her) authority to rule.

But notice that they claimed these were truths everyone could see.  And notice how they felt it necessary to explain their actions to the world by writing up a “Declaration.”

And notice that they didn’t declare war on the 4th. They simply claimed to be speaking the truth and explaining themselves.

____

Now, the guys who wrote and signed the Declaration of Independence weren’t all good guys. But we can learn something from them, nevertheless.

The Declaration of Independence was an attempt to remind everyone of important truths (important truths they all already knew), to convince them that the government of England had violated those truths, and to convince them that the citizens of the thirteen American colonies were justified — because of those violations — in no longer seeing the government of England as their government.

The road to independence, in other words, begins with truth, reasoning, and argumentation.

____

If you want to teach independence to your children, then, what must you do?

First, teach them to see truth.

Second, teach them to understand how others see the world.

Remember, the Declaration of Independence doesn’t appeal to truths that only Americans or Christians could see.  It appeals to truths that everyone could see. The Declaration of Independence tries to start its argument from “common ground.”

But even if you can’t find “common ground” with an opponent, you still need to understand how he or she sees the world.  You can’t help someone get from the wrong place to the right place if you don’t know where he’s coming from!

Third, teach them how to make a case, or construct an argument, that others will find convincing.

Remember, the job of the Declaration of Independence was to convince the rest of the world that the American colonists were right.  The Declaration isn’t a law that forced people to agree.  And it isn’t a declaration of war that threatened violence if they didn’t agree. Its job was to make a rational argument that rational people would find convincing.

Fourth, teach them how to write.

The Declaration is extremely well written. It wouldn’t have had nearly the force it’s had for 200+ years had it not been.

But also, the secret to the Declaration of Independence is John Locke’s Second Treatise of Civil Government.  Everyone had already read John Locke’s book, and been convinced by it.  All the Declaration had to do, then was to remind everyone of what John Locke had said about people and governments and God and countries, and then convince them that what Locke had said applied to the American situation.

John Locke’s book was a culture changer. Without it, there would have never been a Declaration of Independence.

____

As homeschoolers, you have already declared your independence from the “normal” school system.  And that means you have the freedom to teach independence to your children.

The 4th of July is here to remind us not to let such opportunities go to waste!

-Micah Tillman

^{[Micah is a Mt. Sophia graduate who is working on his doctoral dissertation at The Catholic University of America. He also gets to teach philosophy (as a "teaching fellow"), which he loves.]}

Related posts:

• On the Reading of Old Books
• Rituals and Communities
• Roots, Fruits, and Redemption

____

I was thinking, the other day, about the Classics. You all make your children read them during the school year, and maybe even over the summer. And I bet you’ve all heard some complaint to the effect of, “Why do we have to read this book? What’s so important about it?”

Where I teach philosophy, we are very much “into” the Classics.  We teach the Classic Philosophical Texts. That is our approach to teaching philosophy.

Other schools might focus on Classic Philosophical Problems, or Recent Philosophical Problems, or Contemporary Questions in Philosophy, or Historical Debates in Philosophy. And we do that too. It’s just our specialty is in teaching the Classic Texts.

____

But why focus on classic books?  What do you tell your children?

Here’s some of my thoughts on the subject:

____

The classics are, for the most part, very old, and very well-known. They’ve been popular for a very long time, in other words, and have been read by many, many historically-important people

When you sit down to read a classic book, therefore, you’re doing the same thing that countless other people have done before you, are doing right now, and will still be doing in the future.

You’re joining in an activity that spans the ages and the globe. You’re participating in an experience that is shared by thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people across time and space.

____

You’re having the same experience now as the George Washingtons, Winston Churchills, Abraham Lincolns, etc. of history had when you read Shakespeare today. You’re having the same experience now as Cicero and Julius Caesar and maybe even the Apostle Paul had when you read Homer.

When you pick up a Jane Austen novel, you’re joining with a whole sea of unseen others who have picked up the same novel. When you read a C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkein story, you’re living through the same events that many great people have lived through as they read the same book.

____

When you read classic books, therefore, you’re helping to tie history and the world together. You’re participating in the same activities and experiences that many others have. The experience you have, and activity in which you engage, of reading the story is the same as the experience others have had, and the activity in which others have engaged, around the world and through the years.

Furthermore, when you read classic books, you’re becoming part of a tradition. You’re participating in something larger than yourself.

____

And, when you read classic books, you’re enabling yourself to better understand the people who have shaped your world, because (a) you’ve now shared some of their experiences with them (the experience of reading the book you’re reading, and of living through the story with its characters), and (b) you now know the characters and plots and stories that helped them to see the structures in their world and to understand the events in their lives.

The stories we read and hear and watch begin to act as metaphors for the events in our lives. We begin to see our world through the stories we’ve experienced. The stories we’ve lived through help us to see the organization and structure of what we live through in the real world.

There’s an important sense, therefore, in which you cannot understand another person unless you understand the stories they see the world through.

____

So, we read the Classics in order to participate in the connecting of different times and places with each other, in order to participate in a tradition larger than ourselves, and in order to better understand other people (especially those who have helped to shape our world).

But there are other reasons as well.

What do you think?

-Micah Tillman

^{[Micah is a Mt. Sophia graduate who is working on his doctoral dissertation at The Catholic University of America. He also gets to teach philosophy (as a "teaching fellow"), which he loves.]}

Related posts:

• Best “Real Life” Books?
• Great Books
• A Homeschooler’s Identity

It’s from The Onion, a fake newspaper/news site, full of satire and spoofs of current culture.  And while I can’t recommend the site in general (it ranges from the completely innocuous to the  completely offensive), this article was too good to pass up.

So, please accept my apologies for bringing The Onion into our little discussion about homeschooling, but I hope that once you reach the end of this post, you’ll have decided it was worth it.

____

The article opens with the following:

According to a report released Monday by the U.S. Department of Education, an increasing number of American parents are choosing to have their children raised at school rather than at home.

There was, of course, no such report by the DoE, since this is The Onion — where everything is made up.  But the article proceeds to detail “school-homing” parents’ concerns with the quality of their children’s home environments and guardians.

School-homing parents, the article says, worry about the ability of their children’s parents to provide proper care, education, and values to their children.  It’s best just to let the experts at school take care of raising the children, the school-homing parents say, rather than relying on their children’s incompetent parents raise them.

____

In the end, the article takes all the usual arguments for removing children from schools in order to homeschool them, and reframes those arguments as arguments for removing children from their homes in order to have the schools raise them.

The result, I think, is hilarious.   But all joking aside, what does the article actually tell us?

____

First, the article presents the act of turning your child’s education and formation over to a school as being an admission of your own incompetence, selfishness, and laziness.

We’ve come a long way since the days when it was the homeschoolers who were the one’s being made fun of!

____

Second, it shows us that homeschoolers are having an impact.  The article wouldn’t be funny unless people were familiar enough with homeschoolers to know why homeschoolers choose to homeschool their children.

After all, all the reasons the “school-homing” parents give are exactly the reasons that homeschooling parents give, just with the words “school” and “home” (or “school teacher” and “parent”) reversed.

Unless people could recognize these arguments as, “typical arguments for homeschooling, just turned around backwards,” no one would find the article funny.

The fact that The Onion expects people to find the article funny means that The Onion expects people to be familiar with homeschooling and homeschoolers.

We’re no longer some bizarre fringe group.  We’re now an acknowledged part of the culture, with which people are expected to be familiar.

____

Third, it means that people are expected to agree with us.  The article wouldn’t be funny unless the arguments made by the “school-homing” parents didn’t seem ludicrous to people.

But the arguments made by the “school-homing” parents are exactly the opposite of the arguments made by homeschooling parents.

So, if The Onion expects people to find the “school-homing” parents’ arguments ludicrously hilarious, that can only mean that The Onion expects people to find the arguments of homeschooling parents to be sane and sensible.

____

Even though this is just a satire/spoof article on a fake news site, in other words, I think it shows us that we homeschoolers are better positioned than ever to be culture changers!

-Micah Tillman

^{[Micah is a Mt. Sophia graduate who is working on his doctoral dissertation at The Catholic University of America. He also gets to teach philosophy (as a "graduate fellow"), which he loves.]}

Related posts:

• What Good Is College (or High School, or ANY School)?
• New School Year Poem by Lisa Schea
• Homeschool Asylum

Evidently, homeschooling in Germany is seriously illegal.  And if you read the article, you’ll see that everything homeschoolers are afraid of here in the US actually happens in Germany.

Home School Legal Defense Association assisted in the process of helping the Romeikes (the German family in question) get asylum.

I, personally, am glad to know that HSLDA is still around.  As a child, I comforted myself with the knowledge that if a US state tried to pull what the German government continues to pull, HSLDA would be there to help.

But it’s been a while since I’ve thought at any length about HSLDA or the legal side of the life of homeschoolers — so I don’t know how HSLDA has changed or grown over the years, and I don’t keep up with the current state of homeschooling legislation in the US.  However, stories like the Romeikes’ must hit very close to home for those of you working on the front lines of homeschooling.

So, read the article, and let me know what you think.  Does the situation in Germany warrant the granting of asylum here in the US for German homeschoolers?

-Micah Tillman

^{[Micah is a Mt. Sophia graduate who is working on his doctoral dissertation at The Catholic University of America. He also gets to teach philosophy (as a "graduate fellow"), which he loves.]}

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• A Homeschool Soliloquy by Christa Swafford
• Homeschooling vs. School-homing
• Co-op As a “Type” of Happiness?

We’ve all been asked about our qualifications for teaching our children. We’ve all come up with some variation of “we learn it together” or “I find another mom/dad who helps with that, while I teach from my area of expertise” or “we find an online course”. We make it work.

But, what of those areas of life where this doesn’t work?

Academically, the model has been quite successful. However, not all education is about academics. If we don’t mold our children’s character and give them the foundation for a healthy spiritual life, haven’t we failed them?

As part of my preparation to teach essay-writing classes, I have been reading essays – lots of real essays written by real people for real people (as opposed to essays written by students, to be read by test graders, because they have to do well on their SAT’s).

In “On the Transmission of Christianity”, by C.S. Lewis (from God in the

Dock), the author discusses the failure of Christianity to be transmitted to the younger generation. He states, “None can give to another what he does not possess himself.”

He goes on to say:

“We are often told that education is a key position. That is very false in one sense

and very true in another. If it means that you can do any great thing by interfering with

existing schools, altering curricula, and the like, it is very false. As the teachers are, so

they will teach.

Your ‘reform’ may incommode and overwork them, but it will not radically alter the total effect of their teaching. Planning has no magic whereby it can elicit figs from thistles or choke-pears from vines. The rich, sappy, fruit-laden tree will bear sweetness and strength and spiritual health: the dry, prickly, withered tree will teach hate, jealousy, suspicion, and inferiority complex -whatever you tell it to teach.

They will do it unknowingly and all day long. But if we mean that to make adult Christians now and even beyond that circle, to spread the immediately sub-Christian perceptions and virtues, the rich Platonic or Virgilian penumbra of the Faith, and thus to alter the type who will be teachers in the future -if we mean that to do this is to perform the greatest of all services for our descendants, then it is very true.”

While Lewis was speaking about the institution of education, I believe that the principle is true on the personal level. If we are not being “fed” spiritually, we will have nothing to pass on to our children. If we are not allowing God to discipline us and build our character, how can we build the character of our child?

Are you spending time in the Word? Are you spending time in prayer? In fellowship with other believers? In corporate worship and teaching? Do you have people in your life who will hold you accountable to God’s standards? If not, how will you be equipped to pass these things to your children?

A friend recently asked me if I had thought about what kind of grandmother I would like to be (first grandchild coming in March). Of course I have. I want to spend time with this and future grandchildren. To have fun and learn and make memories. Most importantly of all, I want to pass on a legacy of faith, which I must first possess.

How about you?

Related posts:

• Welcome Adelaide Dagny Groop!
• Homeschooler, Justify Thyself!
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I urge upon us words that are crisp and clear and imaginative. Mark Twain said that the difference between the right word and the almost right word is like the difference between lightning and a lightning bug! We need to love God all the way down to our nouns, verbs, and adjectives.

Oh, do you love words? Do you love their sound? Do you love their meaning? Do you love their history? Do you love their rhythm?

Oh, that our words would be animated with love and terror and pity and pain and wonder and all the other glorious emotions that make our lives dangerous and great and bearable.

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• Quote for the Week
• Quote for the Week
• Quote for the Week

Saying Yes Ain’t All It’s Cracked Up to Be

I’ll say yes, Lord, I’ll say yes

To your will, Lord, I’ll say yes.

Where you lead me, I will go.

I’ll say yes, Lord, I’ll say yes.

When I enter into the presence of the Lord singing this chorus, my zeal for God seems so strong that I could go to the darkest places for Him.  Then I walk out into the sunlight and realize that I just have to go back to the life He gave me.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m grateful for the life God gave me.  I made a conscious decision to say “yes.”  But I blush when I tell you that sometimes I’m just like Peter in the courtyard, saying, “Who me?  Nah, you got it wrong; I don’t know that guy.”

You have to hand it to Peter; he understood the price was high. He was past the romance and into the reality.  Sometimes saying “yes” just stinks.

Have you ever arrived at the fulfillment of a dream, then realized that instead of living an episode of The Cosby Show, it was more like Better Off Ted?  I have.

When I put on my hiking boots and marched off to “homeschooling adventure camp,” I had pink-cotton-candy dreams of accelerated children learning to read at the age of four, quoting Shakespeare at the age of eight, reading Tolstoy in middle school, getting their doctorate at 16, winning the Nobel Peace prize at 21…

Don’t be laughing at me, people.  You’ve had those kinds of fantasies too, even if you don’t go public with them.

Click here for the sound of screeching brakes.  (Jk, just use your imagination.)

In my world, the screeching brakes came in the form of dyslexia.  I spent years in self-blame.  I’ve invested hundreds of dollars and hours.  I’ve spent many days crying in frustration, many nights lying awake wondering if I’ve ruined my children’s futures.

Eleven years out, I can say that my eldest began reading somewhere around fourth grade.  He is now a high schooler studying ancient history and world literature.  My eighth grader still struggles with reading.  (Gasp!)  But he can read when he must, and he loves science and music.

As if I didn’t have my hands full, three years ago we went to Brazil and adopted two girls, ages seven and 13.  When people ask what made us decide to do that, I tell them “temporary insanity.”

Looking at a doe-eyed photo of an adorable orphan is simply not the same as having damaged, wounded children in your own home. Sometimes we say “yes” because we can’t see everything down the road.  I guess that’s a good thing, because if God revealed all at once, we’d be huddled in a corner somewhere.

Why haven’t I given up?  Why not send the boys to school and the girls to a good foster home?  (Believe me, I’ve wondered if I should.)  When you know that you are called, and you say “yes,” you don’t back down.  You pray up, you suit up, and then you stand up.

I write transparently because I want anyone who is struggling and looking at someone else with envy to know that the object of that envy labors too.  Any amount of success starts with “yes.”  Saying “yes” ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, but sometimes it’s so much more.

Related posts:

• A Season of Pictures- Feb 12
• On the Reading of Old Books
• Explaining Academic “Levels” at Mt. Sophia Academy

I always like to feel I am contributing something useful to other folks’ lives. So that is what my sister-in-law gleaned a few years back, when she and her family stayed with us for a couple of weeks while they waited for their new house to be ready. (I notice, however, that she does not apply it- I have NEVER seen a dust bunny at her house despite all the education and activity that she does.)

But you see, the dust bunnies live on books. We have books- gently-aged classics, spankin-new paperbacks, text books, collections, kid’s books- shelves and shelves of them. In fact, one time the furnace repairman looked around our sunroom and said, “You gotta get rid of some of those books!” (I didn’t believe him, actually.)

And in my eccentric opinion, books don’t look completely authentic unless they have been kissed with a little dust. I think it gives the atmosphere of erudite thinking.

Our “erudition” illuminates Seth’s education these days.

This year school looks like:

Monday and Thursday classes: essays, Latin, Spanish, art, ancient history and literature, study skills

At home: Teaching Textbooks Math, Classical Roots Vocabulary, J. Weston Walch Grammar, A Case of Red Herrings (critical thinking), Earth Science (Globe Fearon), A Beka Health, personal reading list, guitar, Wii Fit

With Tri-State: Choir, MEK

Youth groups: at New Beginnings and Christ Community Churches.

If you dropped in at the Tillman house, you might climb over some projects and trail past my pile of bills and weave between some bookshelves. Or you might just decide to stay outside and admire the sheep gamboling around the field behind us. But if you come in, we can enjoy a cup of coffee and appreciate a dust bunny or two together.

Related posts:

• On the Reading of Old Books
• What Good Is College (or High School, or ANY School)?
• Best “Real Life” Books?