Video Courses and Classical Education

Video Courses and Classical Education: An Opportunity

Homeschooling parent, are you ready to give a riveting lecture on the greatest literature that is known to man to your teen? NO??

Some would lead you to believe that because of this unfortunate deficiency, you, dear parent, are unqualified to teach your children.

But before I debunk this ludicrous idea, let me first point out that even if it were true, most "classical literature teachers" actually are in the same boat. Even the greatest teacher would feel inadequate the more they realized how much they could or should know and love these works.

And that is the perfect segue: the best thing a teacher (both homeschool parent or career classical teacher) can spend their time on is reading aloud with their students. Joshua Gibbs stated at a recent ACCS conference training seminar that he reads aloud in class 90% of what he assigns. This is the way!

Now, I understand that some introductions and context are necessary. That is where video courses provide an advantage to both the homeschooler and the classical teacher. And this is the core of what we mean when we say "flipped classroom" or "classical recitation." If you make the video lectures the (ideally sole) homework, then you open up class time for reading aloud, and discussing the text, and enjoying the story. If the student already knows the big picture, has had the lecture (by someone who's spent his lifetime knowing and loving that text, carefully captured on video), then the parent or teacher gets the dessert: the reading aloud as much as they can with their students. This applies especially to the epic poetry and stories.

Video courses are not a "crutch" or a shortcut, or an outsourcing of teaching. To the contrary, they allow the most important part of teaching a text to take front and center.

This classical approach may be counterintuitive even to modern classical teachers, but think about it for a second.

Modern approach: Assign books 1 and 2 of Homer's Iliad before class. Maybe you'll even have a quiz. Upon arriving in class, you give a lecture on the "An Introduction to Homer's Iliad" or something like that. They take notes. End of class, you tell them "read books 3 and 4 before next lecture." They leave. Maybe it was a great lecture, and they're eager to go home and read. Maybe. But even the eager student will pick up Homer alone.

Classical Recitation: Assign a 30 min lecture for home, an introduction to the Iliad, by, say... the riveting Wes Callihan known for conveying a love of the great books! And you add this: "Don't you dare crack open the text! That's what I get to do in class - it will be worth it. NO CHEATING!"

Class arrives, and every student has had their orientation. You open the text, and the reading is the center event, the performance of your career: "Sing, goddess, the ruinous wrath of Achilleus..."

This works. How do I know? Because when I was 14 years old, a teacher did just that for me, with Milton's Paradise Lost. And the following year, with Vergil's Aeneid. That teacher even placed his chair on his desk to read as Jupiter. It was epic.

Whether you use video courses or not, read aloud as much as you can. Video courses are an opportunity to make room for that center performance.

That is why every Roman Roads Press curriculum, and Old Western Culture in particular, has a video course either at its center, or closely accompanying it.

If you have never experienced our video courses, try them out for free: romanroadspress.com/try-owc