Last year I taught a\u00a09th-12th-grade literature class for our homeschool co-op. The selections were based primarily on the literature assignments in George Grant’s Gileskirk curriculum for Modernity, but I made a few changes.<\/p>\n
In the first semester, I added Jane Eyre<\/em> because I thought it would be a disgrace to graduate from high school without reading it. I replaced Hard Times<\/em> with Great Expectations<\/em>, which is a much better Dickens novel. I also added Shelf Life<\/em>, a wonderful book about books.<\/p>\n In the second semester, I added Hemingway and Faulkner because they are 2 of the 3 giants of 20th-century American literature (Fitzgerald is the other). I also added some Fitzgerald short stories. I added Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings<\/em> because it’s one of my favorite books, as well as some Welty stories and essays.\u00a0<\/p>\n I reduced the Flannery O’Connor assignment to only two stories (wish I’d had time for more), and reduced the Lord of the Rings<\/em> assignment to just The Fellowship of the Ring, <\/em>not because Tolkien isn’t important and wonderful, but because most of my students had already read the entire trilogy voluntarily, and I wanted to make room to introduce them to new authors.<\/p>\n This was the first time I had read Sir Walter Scott (love The Antiquary!<\/em>) or John Buchan (Greenmantle<\/em> turned out to be a favorite with the class).\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite my best efforts, most of the students hated The Great Gatsby<\/em> because they couldn’t see past the depressing story to the beauty of Fitzgerald’s writing. (Disclaimer: I’ve written a book on Fitzgerald, so this was particularly distressing to me.)\u00a0 However, a couple of students really “got” Fitzgerald, which was a delight.<\/p>\n Several students fell in love with Eudora Welty’s writing, and the O’Connor stories sparked the most discussion (even drawing in a couple of students who had not uttered a word in class throughout the\u00a0rest of the school year).<\/p>\n I devised some interesting writing assignments for the class, but I’ll post those another time.<\/p>\n Here’s the reading list:\u00a0<\/p>\n First semester:<\/strong><\/p>\n Pride & Prejudice<\/em> by Jane Austen<\/p>\n The Antiquary<\/em> by Sir Walter Scott<\/p>\n Jane Eyre<\/em> by Charlotte Bront\u00eb<\/p>\n Portable Romantic Poets, <\/em>ed. Auden & Pearson<\/p>\n Great Expectations<\/em> by Charles Dickens<\/p>\n Shelf Life<\/em> by George and Karen Grant\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Second semester:<\/strong><\/p>\n Greenmantle<\/em> by John Buchan<\/p>\n The Great Gatsby<\/em> by F. Scott Fitzgerald<\/p>\n \u201cThe Diamond as Big as the Ritz\u201d by F. Scott Fitzgerald<\/p>\n \u201cMay Day\u201d by Fitzgerald (optional due to language)<\/p>\n \u201cWinter Dreams\u201d by Fitzgerald<\/p>\n \u201cBig Two-Hearted River\u201d by Ernest Hemingway<\/p>\n The Old Man and the Sea<\/em> by Hemingway<\/p>\n The Fellowship of the Ring<\/em> by J. R. R. Tolkien<\/p>\n Nobel Prize speech by William Faulkner<\/p>\n \u201cBarn Burning\u201d by Faulkner<\/p>\n \u201cSpotted Horses\u201d by Faulkner<\/p>\n \u201cThe Old People\u201d by Faulkner<\/p>\n \u201cA Worn Path\u201d by Eudora Welty<\/p>\n One Writer\u2019s Beginnings<\/em> by Welty<\/p>\n Selections from The Eye of the Story<\/em> by Welty<\/p>\n \u201cEverything that Rises Must Converge\u201d by Flannery O\u2019Connor<\/p>\n \u201cA Good Man Is Hard to Find\u201d by O\u2019Connor<\/p>\n The Innocence of Father Brown<\/em> by G. K. Chesterton<\/p>\n This was a challenging class, since it covered both English and American literature from Jane Austen all the way to the late 20th century. That’s not the way I’d ideally set it up, as a standalone literature class\u00a0but I did it that way to conform to the Modernity time frame of Gileskirk.<\/p>\n Happy reading!<\/p>\n Mary Jo Tate<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last year I taught a\u00a09th-12th-grade literature class for our homeschool co-op. The selections were based primarily on the literature assignments in George Grant’s Gileskirk curriculum for Modernity, but I made a few changes. In the first semester, I added Jane Eyre because I thought it would be a disgrace to graduate from high school without … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}