Online Courses
ONLINE COURSES
Ancient, Medieval, and Modern Literature are available for this academic year. The cost for any of these full-year courses is $100. Each additional student under the same roof pays $50.
The short courses, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Animal Farm, are available within forty-eight hours of registration with access for approximately two months. Short courses can take as little as one week to complete. These short courses are $15 each.
The Full-year Courses:
Ancient, Medieval, and Modern Literature will begin in early September.
By way of videoing our in-person classes. we have taken our popular local Tuesday Lit Class and made it available online for families who are looking for tools to deepen their students' experience reading classic literature. Have a look at what our online students are saying!
These courses give instruction and encouragement to students as they read and model faithful thinking about literature, the arts, and worldview from a distinctly Christian perspective. Registered students will watch an introductory video on the major themes of each work, answer study questions in a Reading Guide, and watch a classroom discussion on each week's reading. During the ninety-minute classroom discussion, Mike Schutt uses a combination of lecture and Socratic method to facilitate the discussion.
Pacing and Deadlines
The courses are not fully self-paced-- they are designed to keep students accountable to complete their reading on schedule. The Syllabus will always provide a deadline within a seven-day window for families to adjust to their schedules. This gives a range of days for students to complete the reading and a limited window in which the Classroom Video can be accessed. This requires that students remain current on their reading in order to watch the Classroom Video before it becomes inaccessible.
We'll begin with selections from Edith Hamilton's Mythology as we prepare to enter the world of the ancient Greeks. In the fall, we'll also read Homer's Iliad and Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and Antigone. In the spring, we'll return to Homer, tackling the Odyssey and then finishing the semester with The Oresteia of Aeschylus.
The booklist, tentative Syllabus, and registration links are found on the Ancient Literature page.
The fall of Rome in the early fifth century marks the beginning of the middle ages-- the Medieval era. It was a time of great change in the world-- for the Church and theology, for law, for culture, and for the arts and literature. The Middle Ages lasted roughly one thousand years-- from the fall of Rome until the Renaissance, and the literature of the period is therefore both vast and varied, and we will only just sample the highlights.
We begin with Beowulf, a window into the pagan world of the Danes, written by a Christian poet near the dawn of the second millennium after Christ. In Beowulf, we explore the radical shift that Christ brings to the world.
We'll take a week to explore the Rule of Saint Benedict, written as a guide to Christian community outside mainstream culture. We'll then examine the ideals and failings of Chivalry through the eyes of French and Saxon poets in The Song of Roland and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and we'll finish the semester with a modern work set in the middle ages, T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, to give us perspective on important historical events in the Church and the world.
The spring semester is dominated by Dante's Inferno and concludes with selections from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
The booklist, tentative Syllabus, and registration links are found on the Medieval Literature page.
Modern literature brings us into contact with a much more familiar world than that of ancient Greece. Yet the great stories of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries challenge us with the morals and manners of worlds that seem just as remote. We examine growing up in Victorian England, the life of a runaway slave on the Mississippi, or the heart of darkness on the Congo River at the turn of the 20th century. We learn to empathize, to think, and to evaluate our own moral dilemmas through the eyes of some of the great characters in literature.
The booklist, tentative Syllabus, and registration links are found on the Modern Literature page.
How the Ancient, Medieval, and Modern Literature Courses Work
Each family participates in the Literature course based on the schedule set out in the Syllabus. Students complete the reading assignments in advance of viewing the Class Discussion Videos, which are posted every Monday morning and removed the following Sunday.
Parents, of course, will choose which day of the week the readings are due and when (during the week) the student will view the Class Discussion Video.
The Short Courses:
We are offering these short courses for $15 each to be used in one of two ways. Students can read and enjoy the book and benefit from the supports our courses offer, or moms and curricula purchasers can examine a typical week of our full-year courses to see if our offering fits their objectives in their students' literary educations.
The Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Short Course is a tool for students to engage the big questions about what it means to be human. The course, including the introductory video, the reading using the reading guide, the classroom lecture video, and the final discussion, can be completed in less than a week, but for study groups or family engagement, it can be easily adapted to a longer time table.
The Short Course is a sampling from the first week of the Modern Literature course, which gives families an opportunity to experience online literature with a lesser commitment.
The Animal Farm Short Course is a tool for students of all ages to engage one of the great literary "fables" of all time. Through satire and allegory, George Orwell helps readers ask big questions about politics, economics, power, and language. The course, including the introductory video, the reading using the reading guide, the classroom lecture video, and the final discussion, can be completed in less than a week, but for study groups or family engagement, it can be easily adapted to a longer time table. The course can be used for individual or group study, family time, or a community worldview conversation.
The Short Course is a sampling from the Modern Literature course, which gives families an opportunity to experience online literature with a lesser commitment.
