The Well Educated Mind-Part 2

Chapter Two- Wrestling with Books: The Act of Reading

• You become informed by collecting facts-- you become enlightened when you make sense and use the facts you gather.
• Technology eases the gathering of facts but does little to simplify the gathering of wisdom.
• Reading is a life-long process-- no semester schedule.
• Serious readers are not trying to assimilate tons of info as quickly as possible but are trying to understand a few multi-faceted ideas.
• Speed reading's three rules (1) the more abstract words a passage contains, the harder it is to read quickly, (2) the fewer ideas a passage containes, the easier it is to read fast, and (3) the more prior knowledge, the easier it is to read.
• Speed reading is most useful when pure information is offered.
• Serious reading gets easier with practice.

The Well Educated Mind-Part 1

Chapter One-Training Your Own Mind: The Classical Education You Never Had

• Thomas Jefferson said to his nephew on acquiring an education in historical reading, "It is to be acquired from books, and if you pursue it by yourself, you can accomodate it to your other reading so as to fill up those chasms of time not otherwise appropriated."
• Sustained, serious reading is at the center of the self-education project.
• Reading is a discipline like running regularly, or meditating, or taking voice lessons.
• Study of literature requires different skills than reading for pleasure.
• Francis Bacon said: "Some books are to be tasted, other to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested,"
• The trivium: grammar (taste-find out the facts), logic (swallow-evaluate them), and rhetoric (digest-form your own opinion).
• "The density of ideas in Plato or Shakespeare or Thomas Hardy frustrates the mind that comes to them ready to draw conclusions."
• "To tackle a course of reading successfully, we have to retrain our minds to grasp new ideas by first understanding them, then evaluating them, and finally forming our own opinions."
• Isaac Watts: "Engage not the mind in the intense pursuit of too many things at once, especially such as have no relation to one another."
• "The first task of self-education is not the reading of Plato, but the finding of twenty minutes in which you can devote yourself to thought, rather than to activity."
• "Morning is better than evening."
• Start short-like physical exercise is to be introduced gradually.
• Don't schedule yourself for study every day--try four days a week.
• "Never check your e-mail before starting."
• "Guard your reading time."
• "Take the first step now."

Finding Free Nookbooks

On the Barnes and Noble site, just type 0.00 and the title/author subject in the search bar with Nookbooks in the search parameters and if there are free books those all pop up! Yea!

New Beginnings

For a time I blogged about our family's homeschooling adventures and it was a grand time, but like all good things, it's coming to an end. My homeschooling duties are more about check writing and being a sounding board for my children's ideas and schemes rather than mother, teacher, principal, etc. In short I've mostly worked myself out of a job. Yea me!

I've been floundering, wanting to blog but not really having anything to say. Then I got a Color Nook for Christmas (thanks, Shell!!!) and a new blog is born. I'm going to homeschool myself, at minmal cost, and blog about it! I imagine some homeschool stuff will slip in here and there, but I will try to focus on the books in my Nook.

I plan to use as my guide two books by Susan Wise Baur, "The Well Educated Mind" and the "Well Trained Mind".