Humanities

A classical Christian education at Veritas includes the completion of four years of Humanities.  This program combines the various academic disciplines, and in particular, literature, history, rhetoric and logic studies.  With a viewpoint guided by Biblical and theological foundations, the culture of Western Civilization is viewed and learned as a whole.  In addition, our courses in Latin, music, science, and art supplement the Humanities classes.  Occasional field trips, guest lectures, films, and projects are also enrichments to this program. Student presentations of written compositions are often opened to parents and the public to attend.

These courses will involve, as seen below, extensive readings.  Students will keep literary journals and do lots of writing assignments, implementing good composition skills and aptitude with computers.  Classes will be based on lectures, discussions, films, and comparative studies of the texts read.  These classes are designed for high school age students, but the goal is to produce students at the college level and beyond.

As a four-year study centering primarily on history and literature, Veritas Academy Humanities is modeled on the idea of what is called “the Great Conversation.”  This means that we seek to discuss the recurring issues that people have thought about and debated throughout the ages.  Central to the discussion is the framework provided by a Christian worldview.  All thoughts are brought into captivity to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  We seek to bring all ideas together in a way that best explains the world God created and Christ redeemed. What Christian philosopher Gordon Clark said of Augustine applies to our vision for Humanities.  Clark said, “Too obvious to escape notice and too important to escape mention is Augustine’s constant relating of history to ethics, of ethics to theology, of everything to everything so as to form a comprehensive system.”  We think these four years of study provides our students with such a comprehensive system of learning and thinking about God’s Word and God’s world.

There are four courses in the Humanities sequence.  In order, the first covers the Ancient and Classical World or the time period from history’s earliest beginnings to the time of the Roman Empire; the second course is the Medieval World or Christendom which covers the rise of the early church and goes through the Middles Ages and up to the Renaissance; the Modern World, also called from the Reformation to the Present, focuses on the Protestant Reformation and then contrasts that with the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Revolution.  The theme of Reformation and Revolution carries the student up to our times. The fourth course is the American story, which focuses upon both the history and the literature of the United States. 

All Humanities students in the high school take the courses together, and the order in which they begin does not matter.  As Andrew Nelson Lytle said, “It does not matter so much what books you read as it does with whom you read them.”  The development of a reading and thinking community of young scholars is the goal of this program. Grades are based on completion of readings, tests and quizzes, compositions, journals, and class participation.

Humanities Course	Key Topics Studied	Representative Authors or Sources
Ancient, Classical, & Biblical World	Greek and Roman Heritage, along with Old and New Testament Bible History and Literature	The Bible Homer—The Iliad & The Odyssey Virgil –Georgics & The Aeneid Aristotle—On Rhetoric & Poetics, Politics Plato--selections Greek Dramatists—tragedies & comedies Herodotus—The Histories Edith Hamilton--Mythology Ernle Bradford—Thermopylae & Hannibal
Christendom: Early Church, Medieval, & Renaissance World	European History from the Fall of the Roman Empire through the Renaissance; The growth and development of the Early Church; the Middle Ages; the Age of the Renaissance	St. Augustine—City of God Bede—Ecclesiastical History of the English Church Beowulf Eusebius—Church History Chaucer—Canterbury Tales Dante—The Divine Comedy Thomas Mallory—L’Morte d’Arthur Boethius—Consolation of Philosophy Thomas Aquinas—selections from Summa Theologica Shakespeare—Selected plays and poems Barbara Tuchman—A Distant Mirror
Reformation & Revolution: The Modern World:  The Reformation To the Present	The Protestant Reformation; Exploration and Colonization; The Enlightenment and the French Revolution; Industrial Revolution; Modern Wars; Theological Wars	Martin Luther—Bondage of the Will John Calvin—Institutes The King James Bible Jane Austen—Pride and Prejudice Charles Dickens—A Tale of Two Cities Victor Hugo—Les Miserables Fyodor Dostoevsky—selected novels Charles Darwin-On the Origin of Species Francis Schaeffer-How Should We Then Live?
The American Story	An historical, cultural and literary survey of America; the ideas, theologies, books, and people who impacted the United States’ rise from colonies to the leading world power	The Puritans—selections Mark Twain—Huck Finn James Fenimore Cooper-selected novels Nathaniel Hawthorne-The Scarlet Letter Herman Melville—selections Founding Fathers—speeches & writings The Federalist Papers William Faulkner—The Unvanquished Fitzgerald & Hemingway—Selected Novels

 

For more information please see Ben House's blog and his humanities blog