Review: Teaching the Classics from IEW

As you probably know if you read the blog we are HUGE book fans around here!  So when the opportunity to check out a DVD lecture series on Teaching From the Classics showed up - I jumped on it!  It certainly doesn't hurt that the product is from a favorite company of mine, The Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW).  I haven't yet tried a product from IEW that I don't like!

The Teaching the Classics DVD and workbook is a collection of 6 ~1 hour long seminars taught by Adam Andrews.  Adam Andrews and his wife Missy Andrews are both Hillsdale graduates with great appreciation and love for good literature.  This course came about after Adam and his wife Missy, who homeschool their six children, were approach by neighbors who wanted their help in learning to better teach their children how to appreciate literature.  After putting some thought into the matter this course, Teaching the Classics, was the result.

The title is a bit deceiving.  Although Adam is clearly passionate about great classics, the course is really about teaching the skills of literary analysis.  These skills are demonstrated in the seminars through the use of classical reading material but the skills can just as easily be applied to any type of literature.

Why bother analyzing your reading, or teaching your children how to engage more deeply with what they read?  I, and Adam, think that this ability to critically engage with, and think about, the books that you read is a valuable skill!  It is through better understanding the why and what of our reading that it becomes more meaningful and alive to us.  And, as any book lover will tell you, through a good book you can go anywhere and converse with all the great debates and thoughts!  All from the comfort of your couch.  As parents, finding the right books to introduce our children to ideas can help us give them the right tools to shape their opinions on most everything.  Heady stuff!

This seminar set is primarily designed for high school students and adults.  The material taught in it can be used to educate all ages, but it's not designed to be directly taught to the younger crowd.

I am looking forward to using some of my new literary analysis skills (or skills in development, at least!) in the effort to help my kids engage more fully with what they're reading.  I have some excellent young readers around here, and they already do a pretty good job of analyzing basic facts.  Next step?  Teaching them to think a little more deeply about their reading!  Which is what this course helps teachers and parents develop the skills to do.

During the course of the lectures you learn about everything from how to analyze the plot to the importance of setting, context, and historical details relevant to the author's story.  There is discussion of socratic questions, and character and theme analysis.  I found the theme analysis particularly interesting.  Some stories are about man versus man.  Some are about man versus nature.  Some are about man versus God... (you get the idea!).  At the heart of every story there is normally a somewhat universal idea that is being discussed in the context of a question and a theme.  This isn't something we normally think about when reading, but it can certainly make even our own non-educational reading more meaningful to us!  What is the author trying to convey to us with their story?  What is their stance on ___?  Do I agree?!

You can get a really good feel for the "flavor" of the course by checking out the "more info" area of the product's page.

The production quality, in terms of lighting and audio, wasn't quite what I expected from a seminar of this price.  With that being said, the most important aspect of the DVD was well worth the price -Adam is very engaging, dynamic, and passionate - I really enjoyed watching him teach and found it time well spent!  I think that the insights I picked up from watching this will help me be a better guide when working with the kids, and furthermore I found it just plain fascinating and fun stuff to absorb!

Interested?  The seminar series costs $89.99 and you can find it here!  It comes with a set of DVDs housing the lectures, and a workbook that follows along with the seminar material and provides some handy reference questions.

The Old Schoolhouse's Review Crew also reviewed some other writing products from the Institute for Excellent in Writing.  You can check out their reviews here.