I have a 9th grader this year, and we'll be using TOG for the first time. We are starting with year 4, because it was loaned to me. I have the year planned out so far and I absolutely LOVE Taspestry of Grace from all the planning I have done this summer. It is such a rich and wonderful curriculum. Well we are starting in just enough time to do all 4 years of TOG in highschool, however I have a question. I had thought about starting year 1 next year, then do yr 2, then yr 3. My son thinks year 1 looks boring and would prefer to study what's in year 2 and year 3 and just skip year 1 all together. I think there is plenty in 3 years of TOG, to get a World History, US History credit as well as an Economics/Govt credit. Do you see any reason NOT to skip year 1? Do you think it might not be as boring as he thinks it will be. He's just not interested in pyramids and all that sort of thing. So, should we just skip it - or just do it anyway regardless if he wants to or not and maybe he'll like it after all? OR - and this is what I think would be good IF it would be ok to do TOG this much out of sequence.....
What if we do year 4 this year - 9th grade
Then year 2 in 10th year 3 in 11th - then in 12th grade we could go back and do year 1. I think he would just prefer to go ahead and do years 2 and 3. I think by the time he's in the 12th grade he might enjoy year 1 better. Or would it just be ridiculous to do it that much out of sequence?
Any ideas!!!
Blessings!
Traci

No, not ridiculous. There are advantages to doing it in sequence, but it's really okay to do it out of sequence, too.

The sequence I'm doing with my family is:
3, much of 4, 2, 3, 4, and then (hopefully) start a normal 1-4 progression. We had good reasons for this progression that wouldn't apply to others.

I would say to use any sequence that fits your family. Your plan of putting off year 1 might work well. But he is also likely to enjoy it more than he thinks he will.

One thing that I have considered when scheduling is that once my kids get to be a senior, I really don't know what their schedules will be. Will they be enrolling in community college courses? Will they be doing projects that will take much of their time? By their senior year, I would like to listen to their input more than I have so far. I don't want to feel that they have missed out on something vital if we decide not to follow Tapestry for their senior year.

I am also intending to help my kids plan for AP exams, partly to be able to demonstrate competence on college applications. Using AP exams to demonstrate competence implies doing them no later than the junior year. This is a second reason for me to consider their junior year so important, and to think twice about putting off something important until their senior year.

We'll see how it actually works out!

Beth

Just my $0.02, but Year 1 isn't just about pyramids -- Egypt is only in the first 3 weeks. There's SO much more to Year 1 -- the rest of the history of Israel, all of the smaller people-groups of that timeperiod, all of Greece, and Rome!

HTH!

maggie

My biggest concern is the year 4 material in 9th grade. I think many of the issues in that year might be better for an older student.

This is a really good point. Year 4 is the toughest year emotionally, and 9th graders probably have trouble with this. The literature, especially, is pretty demanding emotionally. I would recommend doing D rather than R with a 9th grader in year 4, actually.

Beth
who's been doing year 4 with a student of that age...

Can you give me more information on WHY you would do D instead of R in year 4? Is it the literature selections, History selections, or just all of it? I would love to know why you think that, it would really help me since this is our first year. I have already cut a few of the R literature selections and exchanged them with D ones.
Thanks to all of you for your help so far.
Traci

The literature selections are the biggest deal, as I recall. But the history can be a burden, too.

I started doing R level with my 14yod this spring, and within a few weeks we had dropped back down to D. The reading was just much more accessible, and she definitely has been learning lots from it. She's been doing TOG for a while, but she has never studied the twentieth century in any level of detail. The R level assumed a level of sophistication that she didn't have.

Here are some sentences, taken truly at random, from some important R-level history resources from year 4:

"In 1898, for instance, the Americans interpreted the presence of a strong German naval squadron near the Philippines as evidence of designs upon the islands. In the growing Anglo-German antagonism of 1900-14, the Special Relationship of Britain and America operated powerfully in Britain's favor. It is significant that in 1902, when both Germany and Britain punished Venezuela for reneging on its debts, President Roosevelt's administration criticized Germany but not Britain for violating the Monroe Doctrie." (Johnson, _History of the American People_)

"'I have no faith in pugnacious foreign policy,' declared Japan's new premier, General Hayashi Senjuro, upon taking office in February 1937. Unfortunately for him and the rest of the world, other Japanese military leaders did. In a matter of a few months, Hayashi was replaced by Prince Konoe Fumimaro, whose cabinet was much more sympathetic to the military. Unchecked by the central government, the Japanese army quickly moved ahead with its long-brewing plan to conquer China." (Glennen, _Our Times_)

"The closing of the archives to independent scholarship, however, was not the only reason for much of the prevailing misunderstanding of the Russian Revolution. The principal cause is the fact that the Soviet regime claimed to derive its political legitimacy from history, and hence treated history as a matter of high political priority. Although paying lip-service to the most perfect ideals of democracy, it never subjected itself to a popular vote. True, it did participate in the elections to the Constituent Assembly held in November 1917, but after Lenin's party, then already in power, gained less than a quarter of the votes, Lenin ordered the assembly dissolved....The Communists asserted that they had been chosen by history to accomplish mankind's momentous transition from a class-based society to a classless one. For this reason, the manner in which modern Russian history was presented and taught was to them of much greater importance than it is to societies whose legitimacy rests on a popular mandate...." (Pipes, _Three "Whys" of the Russian Revolution_)

If your son has the intellectual maturity and the background knowledge to handle page after page of prose like that on a daily basis, then he belongs in R. But my 14yo preferred the books which sounded like this instead:

"Wilson realized that it was critically important for the United States to preserve its rights as a neutral. Germany, in the meantime, had embraced the modern technology of submarine warfare and had adopted a policy of its "unrestricted" use. This meant that German U-boat (short for Unterseeboot) commanders could fire torpedoes on any and all vessels, including British and French passenger liners, without warning...." (Idiot's Guide to the Twentieth Century)

"War has broken out between China and Japan after Japanese troops on a military exercise in the state of Manchuko opened fire on a Chinese patrol just outside the Chinese capital, Peking. The Japanese claim they were provoked, but it is probable that they set up the incident as an excuse to attack China." (DK Children's History of the 20th Century)

"In the first days of the Wall there were numerous escapes from the East to West. A Volkswagen car was driven at high speed through the barbed wire, and some people escaped by swimming across the Teltow Canal. In one street, Bernauerstrasse, blocks of apartments backed on to the Wall and some of the residents jumped out of high windows into blankets held by waiting West Berliners. It was not long before East German guards bricked up the windows. Later the apartments were torn down." (Taylor, _The Cold War_)

Tapestry R level expects a good amount of background knowledge, and an adult level of reasoning. (And an intelligent adult, at that.) At one time I thought this was totally unrealistic to expect from high school students, but I have come to see that years of preparation can lead a student to such a level. But it certainly doesn't happen just because of age - this is a level that most kids, however bright, don't reach without careful preparation.

You know your kid, and only you can make this judgement. I can tell you, though, that reading through the year 4 dialectic readings with my two kids has added immeasurably to my own understanding of the twentieth century. I'd be very surprised if your son found it beneath him!

Beth

Just adding my 2 cents. I have a 9th and 10th grader and we will be doing year 4 this year. We are skipping a lot of the lit selections and doing mostly dialectic. I did preread a lot of them and just didn't feel that the material covered was something I wanted my 9th and 10th graders to deal with. If they were older, it might be different. So, we are doing Rhetoric level history and Worldview and going light on Lit.

Patti

I really appreciate the replies! Now I don't feel so bad about doing a mixture of D and R.
I sort of felt like I should go with R just because he is now in highschool, but after reading some of the books I didn't feel he was ready for them. I think we will do Dialectic history selections...then for Literature we will do some D and some R. I feel better doing it this way - I was beginning to wonder how he would be able to handle all the work in the R level. I was worried he wouldn't do well, and I feel more at ease now.
Thanks!!!