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Humanities

Grammar School

Grammar school students receive an overview of world history through individual time periods. Classes often will learn chants and jingles to commit numerous dates and facts to memory, creating an expansive backdrop on which they can develop a clear picture of the world as they continue through their upper school courses. Grammar school courses also integrate geography.

  • Kindergarten: Kinderculture
  • 1st grade: Ancients – continents and mapping skills
  • 2nd grade: Greeks and Romans – Middle East and North Africa
  • 3rd grade: Middle Ages – Europe
  • 4th grade: Exploration and Colonization – Africa and Asia
  • 5th grade: American Revolution and Civil War – North and South America
  • 6th grade: Modern History – world geography review

Logic and Rhetoric School

Beginning in seven grade, students begin two three-year cycles of ancients, medieval, and modern. In an integrated approach to the humanities, students study art, history, literature, theology, and geography. Rather than rely on summarized and superficial text-books, students engage with the primary sources themselves and learn to develop a picture of the time period from those who actually lived in it. Students practice skills and arts that they have learned in other classes in order to read a text charitably and critically, neither dismissing an author because “he doesn’t have a Biblical worldview,” nor accepting everything he says because “he’s a classical author.” Students read, meditate, and synthesize across a variety of disciplines as they seek a unified knowledge of the world around them.

Sample reading lists:

  • 7th grade (ancients): Chronicles of Narnia, Epic of Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, Screwtape Letters, Plutarch’s Lives, Herodotus’ Histories
  • 8th grade (medieval): On the Incarnation, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Macbeth, Henry V, Robin Hood, Lord of the Rings, The Song of Roland, The Rule of St. Benedict, Beowulf
  • 9th grade (modern, European emphasis): Tale of Two Cities, The Social Contract, Beyond Good and Evil, Frankenstein, Gulliver’s Travels, The Hiding Place, 1984, The Old Man and the Sea, Pride and Prejudice, Romeo and Juliet, Pilgrim’s Progress, The Communist Manifesto
  • 10th grade (ancients): The Republic, Ethics, The Iliad, Oedipus Rex, Oresteia, Bacchae, Julius Caesar, Plutarch’s Lives, The History of the Peloponnesian War
  • 11th grade (medieval): The Divine Comedy, City of God (excerpts), The Great Divorce, The Prince, The Tempest, The Consolation of Philosophy, The Shorter Summa, Hamlet