Year 10

First, a note of reassurance--when you first begin reading through Year 10, you will inevitably feel overwhelmed. But as you begin to break down the subjects and select from the options, it WILL become less overwhelming to you. Hang in there!

High school is hard work. Students should be encouraged to approach it as though it's their first full-time job, and parents must remain involved -- even as the child is maturing toward independence and becoming capable of taking over some of the decision making and record keeping. Some students already have specific career goals in mind that can be integrated into their school work, while college-bound students will need to tailor their studies to meet university admissions requirements.

Selecting the best books is a challenge that increases with each successive school year. High school students are journeying across the bridge into adulthood, and the books they should read at this level reflect the adult world. While previewing the content of mountains of books for the HEO high school years, we've been constantly aware that we cannot predict how far across that bridge other people's children may be. Families vary greatly in their views on sheltering, protecting and preparing for adulthood, so it would be futile for us to attempt to be the censor or guardian (the bridge troll?) for all House of Education Online scholars. We set a very high standard for HEO materials, and we've gone the extra mile and beyond to create and provide a Year 10 prototype that reflects excellence. However, by no means do we claim to have done all the work for you! It remains the homeschool parent's job, most particularly on the high school level, to assume full responsibility for matching your child's sensitivities and sensibilities, and your family's standards, with the books you select for study.

In the booklist below, we've offered a few notes on potential concerns in certain books, but it goes without saying that we have not noted every potential concern in every book. Please understand that the absence of a comment does not mean the absence of anything your particular family might find offensive or inappropriate.

For these and other reasons, the HEO high school Years are designed not as a single curriculum list (like the preceding Years), but rather as what we fondly call the HEO "Salad Bar" approach. In many subject areas, we offer a variety of options for you to choose among (or you may substitute your own). The final product will be your design. Those who still prefer the comfort of a single booklist may simply select "Option One" where options are presented.

We feel that this Year 10 book list is in keeping with Charlotte Mason's principles, but it isn't the only possible way to "do" CM in high school. You are free to use it en toto, piecemeal, or simply as an example to consider.

To arrive at the best high school plan for your child, expect to burn some midnight oil, dig a little more than you did to prepare for the younger grades, and make more personal choices. You should budget time over a few weeks to focus on previewing and selecting books. Look on the bright side: you'll emerge from this process more conversant and familiar with the era and books your student is about to cover -- and discussion is so vital for students in the upper grades. You'll also be more sympathetic to your hardworking young scholar!

As you devise your own Year 10 curriculum, whether using our book suggestions or your own substitute titles, it's useful to keep a page count in mind. Charlotte Mason's students covered approximately 1600-2000 pages in a term by Year 10, using about 40 different books. This loose guideline will help you gauge whether your own academic load is in keeping with Miss Mason's.

Before beginning Year 10, please do yourself one very smart favor: zealously pursue some teacher preparation time for yourself. It's a little investment that will pay you back double every single school day. We suggest you read (or reread) volume 6 of Charlotte Mason's six volume set. We suggest rereading it every single year of high school. Volume 5 may also be helpful to you. Both are available online, as free e-texts. You'll also find it useful to scan the sample Programmes from Miss Mason's own PNEU school, which are linked from the AmblesideOnline homepage. Forms V and VI are the ones relevant to Year 10. You'll find a wealth of helpful articles at Ambleside Online, so plan to spend a few evenings exploring the site. It's also helpful to have on hand a good current book on homeschooling through high school. And you'll find terrific support on the HEO email list - please subscribe and participate!

[Please Note: We do not wish to appear to imply that a full and complete study of American History is mandatory for non-Americans. Because of the influence the US has had on world events, we do believe that some understanding of the histories of England and the US is necessary for everybody; however, the depth of that coverage is an individual choice. Students from other countries should have a more thorough exposure to their own national history than our suggested options offer, and we encourage all HEO users to seek excellent books on their own history and heritage. However, as we lack the resources and time to choose histories for other countries, we leave this responsibility to our foreign users. Please be bold in making the curriculum fit your own needs.]

First, a book you might find helpful for reference while studying this era (both for yourself as a teacher, and for your student to use) is The Cambridge History of English and American Literature (An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes), which is available online.

Secondly, many AO/HEO parents find Truthquest History guides to be a tremendous help for enriching discussion of the big picture of history, and for establishing a Biblical worldview. Truthquest guides are somewhat reminiscent of the kinds of lesson preparation materials Charlotte Mason provided her PNEU teachers. Truthquest is a flexible-use program and may be used to supplement whatever history books you choose. Two guides fit the Year 10 era: Age of Revolution 2 (1800-1865) and Age of Revolution 3 (1865-2000) in the NEW Truthquest editions published after 2003 (these have full-color covers). Those who already own the original Age of Revolution editions with the old pink covers would use AOR 3 (1800-1865) and AOR 4 (1865-2000). Note that the 1865-2000 guide can be used again in HEO Year 11. [The contents of the newer editions of these two volumes is virtually identical to the old pink editions, but the author has announced plans to release revised editions in late 2004.] For more information see http://www.truthquesthistory.com .

We think it best to select Churchill's The Great Democracies plus one of the American history books listed below, but some may prefer to choose one of the following options over the Churchill book. Choosing two American History books would probably be overkill.

OPTION ONE: The Great Democracies, by Sir Winston Churchill (volume 4 of his History of the English Speaking Peoples series). Churchill offers a broader overview of the time period. Americans and those who desire a more complete picture of the American Civil War (which is covered in Term 2) will prefer an additional option. One alternative would be to use the Churchill book alone for terms 1 and 3, and substitute an American history book to be used alone for term 2. The breakdown for this book is given further below under each term's history.

Johnson's book is an easier read than Morison's (more engaging), perhaps more editorial in places. Juicier than either Churchill or Morison. Johnson is fond of America. Year 10 students would read: Term 2 (or terms one and two if the book is being used instead of Churchill rather to supplement Churchill): All of Part 3; Part 4 up to the part on Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction Term 3: Part 4, the concluding section on Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction; Part 5, just the beginning few pages, concluding at Theodore Roosevelt and His Golden Age (the last sentence read will be "...Parker carrying Southern States only.".

Factual, detailed, scholarly. Year 10 students would read: Chapters XXV thru XLIII (19 chapters total) in Term II (or terms I and II if members wish to use it INSTEAD of Churchill's book rather than alongside of Churchill's book). Term III: Chapters XLIV thru XLIX

Carson (a history professor) has a scholarly tone, and approaches his topic from a libertarian, probably Christian, point of view. This is a five volume series, available through used booksellers or currently in print from Bluestocking Press as a six-volume series Also available on cassette from Blackstone Audio, who offer a considerable discount to homeschoolers (order by phone for discount).

Term 3: chapters 48-53 These last are less equivalent than the other books because his chapter break downs do not line up so nicely. Sullivan's book has a nice feature at the end of chapter; he lists titles for additional reading, generally fictional books, classics that go with that time period. That is a lovely option in a history book.

--Churchill Users (The Great Democracies) read the first seven chapters, or approximately 8 pages a week. This section covers The British Empire from 1815 to around 1860 or so (and one or two Australian chapters have us romping breathlessly through all of Australia's European history up to the 1860's). Please note that in the first chapter there is coverage of the queen being tried for adultery in a very ugly and very public trial.

Read all of the following documents (most of which are brief, but important), scheduling them where they appropriately fall in your studies. We hope to provide directions for scheduling these documents in their appropriate place in each term's reading schedule, when we have time to focus on that task. Perhaps one of our users can volunteer for this task and contribute that information (hint, hint!).

Incredibly rich mine of information on the Corn Laws and their repeal. Report of Cobden's maiden speech may be of particular interest. Richard Cobden was one of the founders of the Anti-Corn-Law League. He made many important speeches against the Corn Laws after he became a Member of Parliament; this "maiden speech" as an MP is well worth your student's attention.

Other fantastic primary sources at http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/terrace/adw03/c-eight/primary.htm such as Disraeli's speech in favor of Chartism, and Macaulay's speech against it. These are only suggestions. Bookmark this website and refer back to it frequently for further documentary sources for term one.

The series is now online. Beacon Lights contains many short biographies. We do not recommend them all, but you may wish to choose one or two of interest to you and your student. The biographies you choose will probably depend upon the interests or affinities of your student.

- There are also online map drills. Many countries have a tourism department, and writing to their embassies for free brochures, maps, and other travel information might be an inexpensive way to supplement geography studies.

- Miss Mason's students at this level were expected to "know from Atlas something about foreign regions coming most into note in the newspaper, and in connection with history etc. studied. Summarize readings by memory maps on blackboard."

OPTION TWO: For those who wish their geography to be more up-to-date (you may, of course, combine options, using a geography book contemporary to Year 10 one term and a more modern text in another term), select from this list:

- Travel books such as 'Lonely Planet' and 'Insight Guides.' These will need a bit more parental involvement as certain readings will be a waste of time, and others less than edifying (descriptions of red light districts, for example).

- Heidi's Alp "One Family's Search for Storybook Europe" by Christina Hardyment. Well written travel guide tracing the roots of children's books from Hans Brinker's Holland, to Hans Christian Anderson's Denmark and Germany. Pre-reading recommended (includes a passage about castration).

- Naturalist, E.O. Wilson's autobiography. Well written. Theme: how his childhood interests and adventures developed into his (spectacular) adult career. Also, his Journey to the Ants is a popular book on the travel and research behind his Pulitzer prize winning book Ants. Please preview.

Charlotte Mason had students at this level read the daily news and keep a calendar of events. We suggest students choose the most important 2 or 3 stories of the week and re-write them in their own words as a chronicle of the year, making the heading of each page something like "This Week in History, September 1st, 2003." Parents: pre-read and filter current events materials (on the web, or in print) as necessary, due to the potential for coverage and topics of an explicit nature, even from conservative sources.

- World Magazine, an excellent weekly newsmagazine written from a Christian worldview. This is by far our best recommendation in this category. A subscription to World is a worthwhile curriculum expenditure for high school students. While the other reading selections in this Year teach students to understand the past, this is the best tool currently available for preparing a student to comprehend and interpret the age they live in.

- The World and I, A fantastic monthly publication of The Washington Times for 'serious readers,' now available only as an online publication (which makes it fully searchable, including all archives!). Subscription access is $36 per year at present writing, and gives subscribers access to all W&I archives of past issues, as well as all their current online publications. Superb for family current events reading and cultural awareness studies (as always, please proofread for inappropriate content).

- The Drudge Report, breaking headlines from around the world, as well as links to news magazines, newspapers, international news agencies, and columnists on the internet. Due to the ever-changing photos and material on this site, parents should peruse it first each time for suitability.

-The White House website publishes the full texts of all the President's speeches, including his weekly radio address, and the entire website can be read in Spanish for foreign language practice. There are also wonderful photo essays here. [WARNING: DO NOT type ".org" nor ".com" for the White House address as this will take you to an extremely inappropriate website.]

Includes the Congressional Record and full text of all legislation from the 101st Congress (1989) to the present, summaries of legislation back to the 94th Congress (1974) as well as additional historical information, a great search engine, and links to other useful sites.

-- Understanding the Times by David A. Noebel - This text will require 2-3 years to cover; however, Noebel has now condensed the information in this huge book into a 12 week study plan entitled "Thinking Like A Christian" which many families find more user-friendly. For more info, see http://www.lifewaystores.com

Essays may be used for dictation work. After studying essays, students should be prepared to tackle writing essays on subjects they choose. One possible usage is to have students read an essay on Monday, outline it on Tuesday, rewrite it from their outline on Wednesday, and polish up that rough draft on Thursday. Note: In PNEU's Form III, a paragraph was dictated; in Form IV, selections were occasionally written from memory. You might occasionally assign the student's mastered work for the dictation lesson. Forms V and VI also wrote: "A good precis. Letter to The Times on topics of the day. Essays on subjects taken from the term's work in History and Literature and Economics; or, write on a picture studied, or on some aspect of nature."

Miss Mason directed students at this level to keep a Common-place Book for passages that strike them particularly; to learn a hundred lines of poetry; and to be able to give some account of what they have read in each book, with sketches of the chief characters.

** Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (Please do not shy away from this book based on the way popular horror movies have grossly revised it. Do please give this book a try. If what you know about Frankenstein is based on a movie, you will be very pleasantly surprised.)

Use the Oxford book of English Verse, edited by Arthur Quiller Couch. This is a poetry anthology Charlotte Mason used; excellent (a classic!), and online in a searchable format. The Victorian era was a rich one; some poets will have to be skipped. We suggest one option would be:

If your student has not read Elements of Style by Strunk and White (scheduled in Year 8) and On Writing Well by William Zinsser (Year 9), schedule these for Year 10. If your student has completed these books, use _______ (to be determined).*

See the Essay options for Year 10 for four excellent essays by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch from "On the Art of Writing: Lectures Delivered in the University of Cambridge, 1913-1914" which can serve dual duty for this subject also.

Note: Most students in Year 10 will have the SAT barrelling down on them, and will need to focus on preparing for the essay portion of that test. As for assigning research papers, we leave this to parental discretion. A student should learn to cite sources properly; however, it takes very little time to learn how to do this. Students should already have become proficient at writing from previous schoolwork such as narration.

Assign 3 to 5 written narrations each week, varying the assignments among subjects, and assigning some narrations to be written from readings done earlier in the week. [Example: On Tuesdays, the student would read the scheduled Literature, news of the week, historical or allegorical subjects, etc. Then on Thursdays, the student would write a narration of one of those readings.] Narration can be done in many ways: poetic, in answer to an essay-style question, straight narration, narration in letter-writing form, and many other creative ways. Examples of creative narration techniques for the high school level, see here NO LINK ACTIVATED YET

Dr. Robert Einarrson's Grammar Handouts, which is reasonably priced and very user friendly. (Should you buy this, Karen Glass requests that you tell him she sent you. She gets no monetary reward, she just wants him to know how much she likes his text ;-).

5. 1 passage from the term's Shakespeare play. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is a helpful tool for finding quotable sections from Shakespeare, especially quotes which appear in various other literature. Bartlett's 10th edition is online here and here.

The student studies two or three pages of dictation material per week, from which the teacher dictates several paragraphs or sections. Students should have the opportunity to study the passage carefully for spelling, punctuation and form before they are required to write it from dictation. At this level, you may wish for your student to alternate between taking dictation in the traditional way by hand, and with a word processor (an added benefit here is the spellchecker function, which can be a useful teaching tool and actually functions in a manner complementary to CM's spelling methods.)

Dictation selections may be drawn from sources such as the term's prose, poetry and Bible readings. You may also occasionally choose to assign selections from well-written journalism sources to exemplify a more technical and factual style of writing. However, choose carefully as newspapers and magazines are often poorly written. Examples of worthy sources might include World Magazine, and columnists such as Peggy Noonan, William F. Buckley, William Raspberry, Charles Krauthammer, Cal Thomas, George Will, and Thomas Sowell, most of whom are accessible from www.drudgereport.com . Another good resource for exemplary journalism is http://www.opinionjournal.com from the Wall Street Journal. Writers from these sources are prolific and skilled at the craft of writing. The New Yorker magazine is known for being expertly written and edited, but may require parental previewing.

These provide a good starting point for the essay form of writing. After two or three terms of studying Lamb's essays, students should be prepared to tackle writing essays on subjects they choose. One possible usage is to have students read an essay on Monday, outline it on Tuesday, rewrite it from their outline on Wednesday, and polish up that rough draft on Thursday. If you did Lamb's essays last year, continue in the same vein using: Essays in Criticism, by M. Arnold, or Quiller-Couch's collection of essays Note: In PNEU's Form III, a paragraph was dictated; in Form IV, selections were occasionally written from memory. You might occasionally assign the student's mastered work for the dictation lesson.

Be sure to get the revised edition, which was written by both Adler and Charles Van Doren. If Van Doren is not a co-writer, it's the older book. It was revised in 1972, but later books may not be called "revised." The version to use has five chapters in part 1; 7 chapters in part 2; 7 chapters in part 3; and two chapters in part 4. The unrevised edition may have fewer parts. If you read part 3 in Year 9, then complete the book this year.

~Suggested songs: Old Folks at Home, Old Kentucky Home, Hard Times Come Again No More (a recent version by James Taylor, Mark O'Connor and Yo Yo Ma is on the CD "Appalachian Journey"), Beautiful Dreamer, Oh Susanna, Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair, I Would Not Die in Springtime.

(One Advisory suggestion: For routine fitness, Living Arts' Pilates videos/DVD's offer a challenging but enjoyable 30 minute mat workout that will benefit the entire family. Instructor Ana Caban gives clear and concise verbal cues that even young children can follow with a little guidance (even a 3 yob! ;-) and the background music is neither loud nor distracting. Start with the Beginning Mat Workout video/DVD, which explains the basics, before advancing to the Intermediate Mat Workout. Available at most major bookstores and fitness stores.)

- PE: learn and play a game (kick ball, tennis, croquet, ping-pong, bocce ball, softball, racquetball, volleyball, soccer, etc.) or take up folk-dancing, hula dancing, clogging, Scottish dancing, or pursue other physical activity of your choice. Hike, improve swimming skills.

Charlotte Mason had students do house or garden work, make Christmas presents, pursue useful crafts, sew, cook, and learn first aid. She also suggested that the student help darn and mend garments from the wash each week and sew for charity (serving at a soup kitchen would also work).

Miss Mason frequently recommended Scouting tests (Parents' Review, May 1920) and said that all girls should take the First Aid and Housecraft Tests. We suggest that all students learn CPR and First Aid. Scouting or 4-H are other options to consider.

P. G. Wodehouse (Wodehouse titles of your choice. Some readers may be uncomfortable with the alcohol consumption in his books, a reflection of differing standards of culture and time. Read these for the superb humor and Wodehouse's remarkable knack for simile.)

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