Tackling Aristotle

We have these great leather love seats in the family room. They're as comfortable as all get out. I was stretched out across one this afternoon and my son, 13, was stretched out across the other. He stretches out further than I do now, and while that is hardly a great accomplishment, it is a landmark nonetheless--a landmark he enjoys more than I do.

We were reading Aristotle's Poetics aloud to each other. (His humanities course this year is George Grant's Gileskirk program, Antiquities, and I like to tie in his literature to his history.) Why read it aloud? Well, one reason is that my goals for his education exceed what mine was, and I haven't read it before. So why not read it together and help each other out?

Besides, he might need my help with the vocabulary.

Mom: "Now his use of the word trajectory here is not in the sense of..."…

Son: "I know, Mom, he means the movement of history."

Mom: "Right. Very good, now where was I..."

Later he pointed out that the definition of tragic plots vs. comic plots that I had explained before reading Aristotle on tragedy and comedy were really quite different than what Aristotle had in mind. I was thinking about a plots turning up or down and Aristotle was only concerned about whether the characters were admirable or laughable.

Brat.

It struck me suddenly that here I was reading Aristotle with my thirteen year-old and HE GETS IT. Now every parent likes to think that his kid is the next Albert Einstein, but I know better. My boy is bright kid, but not out of the ordinary. And as far as motivation goes, well, sometimes it's like pulling teeth to get him to get his work done. I don't want to paint one of those rosy pictures that so many homeschoolers paint so their readers sigh and think, "Oh, I could never do that!"

But why do we avoid things like Aristotle's Poetics and other classic works? Is it because our lack of familiarity with it makes us afraid to try? Somehow I think the worst thing we could teach our kids is that there are whole categories of things out there that they aren't qualified to even try to learn. I can't hope to give my son a complete education in the next four years. I hope he will be learning for a lifetime. I hope that twenty years from now when he's looking for something to read he will see Aristotle's Politics on the shelf and, rather than be intimidated, he will say to himself, "I think I'll tackle this. After all, if I've been reading Aristotle since I was thirteen."

Comments

[Valerie]

Hello, Dory!

I like this one. :) You actually encourage me to consider reading Aristotle with my 13 yo son. Maybe we could actually do it. :) Oh, my! But it is like pulling teeth to get my boys to do academics! Do you have other children? What are their ages?

Sorry I haven't yet replied to your latest email. I like this site. It's nice! :) I certainly prefer this commenting system over Blogger's. Maybe I could make you some pretty wallpaper...

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about wanting to do. Just as you signed up first with blogspot, then switched to typepad, you could instead sign up for a blog with "PrairieMuffinBlogs". (I think I need to come up with a differen name, that looks good in the address bar.)

Blessings!