Dialectic (Logic), Grades 7-9

Rhetoric, Grades 10-12

"All genuine learning arises from the activity of the learner's own mind."

                                                                                    -Mortimer Adler

"A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher."                                    -Jesus (Luke 6:40)

The Good Shepherd Secondary Curriculum is arranged from three perspectives.  Peruse all three for a thorough understanding.

Three Windows into the Secondary Curriculum

Mortimer Adler, in The Paideia Proposal, divides student learning into three categories.   Using his division, we will track through Good Shepherd School's secondary curriculum three ways.   Students acquire (1) organized information and facts in eight different disciplines: Bible, English language and literature, math, history, science, foreign language, fine arts, and physical education. Students through guided practice and coaching develop the (2) skills of learning:   language skills (reading, writing, speaking, listening), quantitative skills (calculating, problem-solving, observing, measuring, estimating), and evaluation skills (distinguishing, relating, comparing, appraising, judging).   By entering the "great conversation" through discussion and debate, and by participating in music, drama, and other modes of artistic expression, students gain an (3) enlarged understanding of truth, beauty, and goodness (wisdom).

1. Curriculum as Information and Facts, Organized by Discipline (Subject)

BIBLE

Old Testament Survey

New Testament Survey

Historic Christian Doctrine

Biblical Ethics

World Religions and Defense of the Faith

World Views

ENGLISH GRAMMAR, LITERATURE

7th Grade Grammar; Elements of Poetry, Fiction, and Drama

8th Grade Grammar; Elements of Poetry, Fiction, and Drama

9th Grade Grammar; Classical World Literature

Medieval World Literature

Classical Rhetoric; Post-Reformation World Literature

English Literature

MATHEMATICS

Pre-Algebra

Algebra 1

Geometry

Algebra 2

*Pre-Calculus

*Calculus

HISTORY

American History (post-Civil War)

Church History (Apostolic era through Protestant Reformation)

Greek and Roman World

Medieval World

Modern World (post-Reformation) and Economics

American History and Government (pre-Civil War)

SCIENCE

Life Science

Earth Science

Physical Science

Biology

Chemistry

*Physics

FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Latin 1

Latin 2

*Latin 3 (Caesar, Cicero, Pliny, Ovid, Vergil, Vulgate, Latin Mass)

*AP Latin 4 (Vergil's Aeneid)

*Biblical Greek may be taught as an additional requested elective.

Modern Foreign Language studies may be pursued as additional requested elective.

FINE and RHETORICAL ARTS

Participation in one major play each year, usually Shakespearean

Sight singing and recorder playing; vocal and recorder choirs

Participation in NFL competitive Cross Examination Debate each year

Drawing and Art History

PHYSICAL EDUCATION

Stretching, strength, and aerobic exercises for life-long fitness

Fundamentals and competitive athletics in volleyball, tennis, basketball, soccer, fencing,

track and field

*Honor students only

2. Curriculum as the Skills of Learning, Developed Incrementally

The skills outlined below cut across all the disciplines, and so all our teachers share in coaching them. Students practice speaking or writing every day in every class under teacher or peer scrutiny.   Coaching at this intense level requires that we keep our classes small.

LANGUAGE SKILLS (reading, writing, speaking, listening)

By the end of eighth grade, students are studying classic or master works rather than textbooks.   This requires a different level of reading, for which grade seven and eight prepare them.   (See book list in section three.)

Also in junior high, students learn to write sentences employing the three types of subordinate clauses (adverb, adjective, noun) and the five types of phrases (prepositional, participial, infinitive, gerund).   They gain skill as informative, descriptive, persuasive, and poetic writers through daily practice producing short compositions (1-2 pages).

High school students learn to employ the five canons of classical rhetoric (invention, arrangement, style, memorization, delivery) in longer verbal or written presentations.   This includes writing original cases (5-10 pages) for cross-examination debate.

Formal Latin study   (required two years, but available to honor students for four) develops critical language skills: an expanded vocabulary, precision and clarity in word use, a seasoned proficiency in grammatical analysis, and an increased appreciation for poetry and nuance.

QUANTITATIVE SKILLS (calculating, problem solving, observing, measuring)

For the most part, Good Shepherd School uses the Saxon Math Program for its secondary mathematics curriculum.   The strength of this program is in its recursive method--every problem set and every test is cumulative-- which over time automates algebraic and problem solving techniques.    Students learn to become comfortable with abstraction and with the use of symbols to reduce mathematical, scientific, or logic problems to their essentials.

In geometry class, students learn to see mathematics as an axiomatic system, built deductively and rigorously from a few basic assumptions.   They learn the nature and limits of deductive proof.   In science, on the other hand, they learn the power and range of inductive proof--the scientific method--which they must repeatedly employ in demonstration and experiment for the three fundamental sciences: biology, chemistry, and physics.

EVALUATION SKILLS (distinguishing, relating, comparing, appraising, judging)

Because evaluation skills are constantly employed in all subjects in different ways, a progressive development of them in the secondary curriculum cannot be briefly traced. There are crucial points in the curriculum, however, at which students are given and coached in the use of new criteria for evaluation.

a. Logic: syllogisms, formal and informal fallacies. In junior high logic class, students learn to evaluate arguments.   They distinguish conclusions from their premises, check whether the reasoning is valid, and identify common formal and informal fallacies.   They also practice constructing sound arguments.

b. Cross-examination debate: stock issues. In high school debate class (required all four years) and in the crucible of interscholastic tournaments, students learn to evaluate whether political and social proposals (cases) satisfy a five-question test:    Is the case topical under the year's resolution?   Does it address a significant problem?   Is this case needed if the problem is to be fixed?   Does it actually fix the problem? Does the implementation of this case bring advantages which outweigh any consequent disadvantages?

c. High school Bible program:   Historic Doctrine, Biblical Ethics, Apologetics, World Views.

God's revelation must ever be the touchstone for our appreciation of goodness, beauty, and truth - "in Thy light we see light" (Psalm 36:9). For this reason, detailed attention is given to central teachings of the Christian faith as revealed to the historic Church and summarized in the early creeds of the Church.   These are developed as a criterion, a fundamental set of assumptions, from which to evaluate other belief systems. Over time, students learn to ask basic questions, to make hidden assumptions explicit, and to examine the support for influential ideas.   Also, the interconnectedness of truth, because of its unity in God, becomes clearer to them.

3. Curriculum as an Enlarged Understanding of Ideas and Values

DISCUSSION OF GREAT BOOKS

Because he is made in God's image, man has continually striven to search out answers to fundamental questions:   What does it mean to be human?   What is the good life?   Who is God? How should society be organized? etc. In seeking these answers, Western man has responded with fascination and favor, or with aversion and contempt for God's Word.   This investigative process, including the interaction with God's Word, frames and orients Western culture, and is often compared to a "great conversation", on going since the times of Moses and Plato.  

Our students must enter this conversation.   They must understand it and engage in it, lest they be unconsciously conformed to this age rather than transformed by Christ.   Our students, therefore, study excellent and influential products of Western culture.   They are led beyond mere familiarity with such works to discuss and debate important Western ideas and insights in the light of God's Word.

Our secondary curriculum takes up the study of the Great Books.   (Although the school of Humane Letters is interdisciplinary by nature, this literature is most often organized around the year's History or Bible class.)

Ninth Grade

Adler, Mortimer. Aristotle for Everybody.

Calvin, John.   The Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life.

Homer. Illiad.    Odyssey.

Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity.

Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives (selections).

Spencer, Edmund. The Faerie Queene, Bk 1.

Vergil. Aeneid.

Tenth Grade

Abbott, Edwin. Flatland.

Athanasius. On the Incarnation of the Word.

Augustine.   Confessions.

Bunyan, John.   Pilgrim's Progress.

Calvin, John. The Institutes of the Christian Religion.

Chaucer, Geoffry. Canterbury Tales.

Dante. The Divine Comedy.

Goodrich, Norma. Medieval Myths.

Kreeft, Peter. A Shorter Summa (selections from Thomas Aquinas).

Luther, Martin. Luther's Three Treatises.

Ursinus and Olevianus. The Heidelberg Catechism.

Eleventh Grade

Austin, Jane. Pride and Prejudice.

Bastiat, Frederick. The Law.

Kreeft, Peter.   Christianity for Modern Pagans: Pascal's Pensees.

Lewis, C.S. That Hideous Strength.

Machen, J.G. Christianity and Liberalism.

Orwell, George. Animal Farm.

Paton, Alan. Cry, the Beloved Country.

Remarque, E.M. All Quiet on the Western Front.

Twelfth Grade

Catton, Bruce. This Hallowed Ground.

Chesterton, G.K.   Heresies.   Orthodoxy.

Cooper, James F. The Last of the Mohicans.

Dana, Richard. Two Years before the Mast.

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations.

Hofstadter, Douglas. Godel, Escher, Bach.

Morison, Samuel E. The Oxford History of the American People.

Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath.

Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

STUDY OF DRAMA

Because they better engage a lively understanding and enthusiasm, the rhetorical arts best flower in their social use.   Thus, the production of a Shakespearean play fitly climaxes the broader study of dramatic literature and public speaking. Each year secondary students may be part of such productions, which have included Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Everyman (a medieval morality play).

STUDIES ABROAD PROGRAM

Alternating trips abroad with domestic travel, high school students are given the opportunity to visit places of historic and cultural importance. In preparation they must study selected readings and write major papers.   Most recently, a group of students made a circuit through England and Scotland, studying the Christianization of those lands.