Why We Chose the TJEd Model for our Family's Education

As a high school senior I became disillusioned about the fidelity of the school system I was graduating from.   I distinctly remember feeling that I had become GOOD at a lot of things, but I was not truly GREAT at anything.  I started college feeling lost and unsure.  What I needed was a mentor; someone who could guide me through the world personally by introducing me to the classics.  Someone who could help me to become GREAT!

Oliver DeMille started a movement in education almost two decades ago.  He named his philosophy the Leadership Education Model or Thomas Jefferson Education.  Five years ago, he spoke at a seminar I attended.  He challenged us as we left, to go home and read classics books, find like-minded people, and get together regularly to discuss our thoughts.  Plunging into the unknown, I started a book group called “Mothers Who Know” that meets once a month. 

Studying the classics regularly brings you face-to-face with the greatest minds in history.  This process will change and inspire you to become better.  If I am going to mentor my children in the classics, I need to know them intimately myself.  For instance, when I studied Les Miserables this last fall I read the book, watched the movie, listened to the CD of the musical driving around town, attended a live performance of the musical, and discussed it with my book group.  My children now have a great love of Les Mis, because I exemplified a real love of this story.

Studying great classic works can be hard work.  If the home is filled with distracting media, it may be difficult or impossible to study.  Thus, my family has opted to not have a television or any video games in our home for the last four years.  Our children are allowed to be “bored” on purpose.  They have to find their own fun.  Without distracting media in our home, I am able to fill that space with great things.  Memorizing and reciting poetry, studying the Suzuki method for violin,  Spelling to Write and Read, Latin, The Life of Fred math series, gardening, swimming, reading and listening to classical stories for children, canning, raising pet chickens, and serving others in our community keeps us plenty busy.

The Thomas Jefferson Education model does not offer a specific curriculum. It is a philosophy and a way of life.  DeMille identifies different phases that children go through as they develop.  Each of the phases has specific goals that help our children to become the best individuals they can be.  Young children need to learn a set of core values.  Older children should establish a wonderful love of learning with different strategies of how to approach studying classics. Teen and young adults dig deep into great works and learn to keep commitments as scholars.  Through succumbing to a mentor and exposure to the classics, children can’t help but become not only GOOD, but GREAT!

December's Title Swap

North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell
Cranford - Elizabeth Gaskell
The Forgotten Garden - Kate Morton
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Hiding Place - Corrie Ten Boom
Boys Adrift - Dr. Leonard Sax
Girls on the Edge - Dr. Leonard Sax

What Daisy and Mrs. Weightman Have in Common

I found Daisy's quote from the Great Gatsby... it's not as eloquent as I remember.

 

(This is Daisy's recollection of the birth of her baby. She has also just explained to Nick that she knows that her husband has been unfaithful for years. )

"I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. "All right," I said, "I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."

 

This is what came to mind when we discussed Mrs. Weightman being her husband's greatest masterpiece.

 

Genevieve

November's Title Swap

The Green Smoothies Diet - Robyn Openshaw
Leon's Story - Susan L. Roth
Letters of a Nation - Andrew Carroll
Freedom Shift - Oliver DeMille
The Long Winter - Laura Ingalls Wilder
One Second After - William Forstchen
Alas Babylon - Pat Frank
Homemade Laundry Soap Link
Kandle Heater Link

The Great Levers in Our Country - Men's Hearts

"Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal, a phrase that the Yankees and the distaff side of the executive branch of Washington are fond of hurling at us.  There is a tendency in this year of grace, 1935 for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions.  The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious - because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority.  We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe - some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they-re born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others - some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men.

"But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal - there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court.  It can be a the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this  honorable court which you serve.  Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, buy in this country our courts are the great levelers, an in our courts all men are created equal.

"I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system - that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality.  Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury.  A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up."

To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee in 1960
First Warner Books Printing 1982
pg. 207- 208

October's Title Swap

Secrets of a Buccaneer - Scholar by James Marcus Back
Before Green Gables by Budge Wilson
Sense and Sensibly - DVD with Emma Thompson
Hatfields and McCoys on the History Channel
How Children Learn by John Holt
Raising Up a Family to the Lord by Gene R. Cook
Girls on the Edge by Leonard Sax
Courageous, the Movie

If Juliet Had a Mentor

Marianne: “Can the soul really be satisfied with such polite affections? To love is to burn like Juliet or Guinevere, or Eloise!”

Mrs. Dashwood: “They came to rather pathetic ends, dearest.”

Marianne: “To die for love? What could be more glorious!”

-Emma Thompson, film adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility”

 

 

Marianne envied Juliet! She wanted so badly to feel a mutual passionate love for someone. Willoughby was her Romeo. Yet her end was so different. What was it that changed her mindset? She had a level-headed mentor, her sister Eleanor. Eleanor taught her sense and selflessness and forgiveness. What did Juliet have? A none-too-bright, rather crass and selfish nurse. Whilst Juliet dies for “love”, Marianne settles in with her “polite affections” and poignant love for Colonel Brandon. Had Juliet been a more sensible girl, with a decent mentor, perhaps she too could have found another love... one that would last?

Posted by Genevieve Kopping

Strageties For Learning

Approaching a classic can be overwhelming and intimidating, to say the least  -especially if you were educated in a traditional school.  There are so many different ways to learn about a new classic that can ease this process and make it more meaningful and enjoyable.  The following is a list of recommend strategies to approach learning:

Read a book.
Find a children's version or cliff notes of the story.
Use different forms of media - movie, audio CD, soundtracks...
Take notes about your thoughts as you study.
Look up vocabulary that you come across that you don't understand.
Research about the time period that the classic is set in. (Cultural Literacy)
Research at the library.
Discuss the classic with a group that meets regularly.
Do a project.
Seek help from a mentor.
Seek out a quiet, private place to think.
Take a class.
Give a presentation.
Build a model.
Memorization.

The most important  part of studying a classic is being patient and consistent.  To absorb a classic is a lost art.  It is difficult - but truly worth the process.  When you come face to face with the greatness that is found in these works, you can not help but become GREAT yourself.  Happy Studying!

How to Destroy the Mole of Crime

"The times has come to open other depths, the depths of horror. 
"There is beneath society, we must insist upon it, and until the day when ignorance shall be no more, there will be, the great cavern of evil.
"This cave is beneath all, and is the enemy of all. It is hate universal.  It does not undermine, in its hideous crawl, merely the social order of the time; it undermines philosophy, it undermines science, it undermines law, it undermines human thought, it undermines civilization, it undermines revolution, it undermines progress.  It goes by the naked names of theft, prostitution, murder, and assassination.  It is darkness, and it desires chaos.  It is vaulted in the with ignorance.  Destroy the cave Ignorance, and you destroy the mole of Crime."

Victor Hugo
Les Miserables 1862
Abridged Edition from Border Classics
page 289

September's Title Swap

THRIVE Cook Book
The Price We Paid by Andrew D. Olsen
A Special Kind of Hero by Chris Burke
What Happened to Justice?  by Richard Mayberry
The Other Eminent Men of Wilford Woodruff by Vickie Jo Anderson
RighStart Math Games Kit
Spell to Write and Reach Core Kit
For the Love of Learning - Amy Edwards sdliberalarsacademy@gmail.com