Some thoughts on The Well-Educated Mind, by Susan Wise Bauer - plus full book/reading list!!1
Full Book List from The Well-Educated Mind - click here for spreadsheet! - Last Updated 8/13/07, all publishers of recommended editions on list. Hope to update soon with any important notes that Bauer includes in the book summary on each book (stuff like - don’t read the preface till you read the book first, or the opposite being true).
As my dear wife’s blog adequately states, she’s about to be teaching as a classical education school, which is quite the new thing for her (and me!). To edu-muh-cate herself on the topic, she picked up several books recommended by the headmaster there (yeah, they’re badass, they have a headmaster).
One such book was entitled The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had by Susan Wise Bauer. My ladyfriend, intrepid teacher that she is, greatly desired that I at least read the first four chapters of this book, simply that I would be more informed regarding her upcoming employment and could be engaged in discussion with her about the topic.
She got more than she bargained for. I read the 1st four chapters as requested, then continued on deeper in to the book, and purchased the tools the book suggests for its course of literature. You see, this book’s central point (IMO, of course) is that modern education lacks a great deal of depth, and that many of the skills of reading through and interpreting a book have been lost. The author offers up a digest of books, sorted by category (Novel, Autobiography, History/Politics, Poetry/Plays, in that order), that are then sorted by chronological order.
All in all, we’re looking at 117 books that include a sampling of the great literature of the world (though admittedly, mostly Western side of this world), in general from the last 400 years.
My goal, lofty as it is, is to work through this course of literature, no doubt skipping some titles and perhaps adding some of my own, and share thoughts from each of these works on this blog (since regular “hahah look what happened to me” posts are definitely on an extended pause for the moment).
Also, if your interested in the titles included on Bauer’s list, I’m working on creating a spreadsheet that has just about anything you’d need to know to pick up these books. It can be found Here. Note that I haven’t completely transcribed the publishers and publish dates yet, but its forthcoming soon.
Just for information’s sake, I’ll include the full list of titles and authors here, followed by the FL. Look forward to the thoughts on Don Quixote coming up soon!
Note I’m doing some experimenting w/ generating URLs to wikipedia using excel without typing in 117*2 a href=” blah blah blah statements. Some of these wikipedia articles may not work, but you’ll live, I think.
FL: Whoa. - best youtube of wild animals evar. Now, with stupid tourist/safari goer commentary!
this is cool stuff man. i would like to gloat for one moment that i finally finished barnett’s ‘blueprint for action’ last night. the last chapter was particularly awesome.
regarding this list, you’ll think this is funny, but i own copies of “the souls of black folk” and “up from slavery”, both from a very dear african american history class that i took.
we also have the pilgrim’s progress and the return of the native if you want to borrow those when the time comes.
Dude, badass on finishing blueprint. What’s next on the list? The Pentagon’s New Map?
It’s totally awesome you have copies of those two. Booker T and I, we go way back.
Probably will be borrowing Pilgrim’s Progress real soon here, as it’s the second one on the list.
Great hanging out with you on Saturday. Looking forward to more of that as the year goes on.
The list is very cool. I’m happy to say I’ve finished a few on the list, but a long way to go there. And my 101 in 1001 list won’t necessarily help me. But Bauer’s got a pretty good handle on ideas that Adler/Van Doren went deep with. That’s another one that’s worth having on hand, if you don’t.
Cheers.
Very nice Mr. Henderson. You are one witty fellow. My friend is going through the list as well. Moby Dick and your starting point, Don Quixote, were hard rows to hoe.
Yaar!!!! Me hardy!