In the first section of this chapter the author reminisces about her grad school experience, then goes on to say that you can have a similar experience at home, without being shackled to the academic system. All you need are a shelf full of books, a congenial friend or two who can talk to about your reading, and a few "chasms of time not otherwise appropriated". She goes on to give examples of both male and female historical figures who self-taught their way to a liberal arts education.
Unfortunately she doesn't say what to do when you don't have a congenial friend handy. Otherwise I think her idea is a sound one.
In the second section she asks the question "What if your mind is hungry but not particularly literate?". She talks about how most adults today feel they are incapable of serious, sustained reading, and how for many it is simply a matter of discipline. She uses examples such as running a marathon to show that being able to read at the standard 8th-10th grade level used in newspapers and on news sites is equal to running around the backyard. Assume that because you know the mechanics of running you can run a marathon and you are bound to rail. Self-teaching requires preparation, diligence and patience.
Of course diligence and patience also require practice. But that's why we're here, no?
In the third section she introduces the Trivium method of home learning. She claims that learning progresses through three distinct stages: Grammar, or learning basic facts and processes, Logic, or learning to apply analytical skills to the facts before you, and Rhetoric, or learning how to express your opinion on the matter. She claims that most people, or at least most Americans today, jump right to the Rhetoric stage, forming an opinion on the material before the facts are known or have been determined to be accurate and applicable. To her learning to learn requires learning how to go through each step in order when presented with new material. To tackle a course in 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.
The Trivium concept is her shtick, based (she claims) on the Socratic method or some such. If you pull the cute names out, call it acquiring facts, analyzing facts and reporting results or some such, it might be easier to grasp. To me it's a way of applying scientific thought to the study of liberal arts.
The final two sections speak to how to begin and how to schedule your practice. She uses historical examples and in the case of scheduling her own experience to back up her claims that it is best to work on one subject at a time, beginning with learning this process, and to take any topic in historical order, starting with the foundations and working your way to the current time. And she says to make this practice a priority by getting to it as early in the day as possible so the mind is not too tired to do the work.
I heartily agree with reading early in the day. I know I have found that later in the day I'm too tired to attempt anything challenging. I also agree with starting with the historical basis, in some categories. My concern is that those who start with the Ancient Greek rarely make it up to WW II, especially in history and fiction, and asking people who are having trouble with diligence and patience to read something as foreign to our minds as the Ancients is setting one up for failure. I would suggest, and plan for myself, to start with a plan that gives a broad overview of the current state of a topic before delving deeply into the history, to give one a chance to work up to the more difficult works, and to allow one to see the relevance as you then work forward through the masters.
As an example, later in the book she gives recommended lists of what to read in each topic. For Drama her last play suggested is Equuis, written by Peter Shaffer in 1974. This book was published in 2003, apparently no one wrote any good plays in those 30 years.
Here's an example of plays she somehow missed:
Whose Life Is It Anyway? by Brian Clark- 1979
Children of a Lesser God by Mark Medoff - 1980
Amadeus by Peter Shaffer - 1981
"Master Harold"...and the Boys by Athol Fugard - 1982
'night, Mother by Marsha Norman - 1984
Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet - 1985
Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Christopher Hampton - 1987
Six Degrees of Separation by John Guare - 1991
Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel - 1992
Angels in America by Tony Kushner - 1993
All of which came out well in advance of the books publication.
Keeping that in mind we will move forward.
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