Considering Cornerstone Curriculum’s “World Views of the Western World” for Your Homeschooled Teen?

At this year’s Arizona Families for Home Education (AFHE) convention, I was thrilled to meet the author of a curriculum I had used as a homeschooled highschooler, along with his wife: David and Shirley Quine, founders of Cornerstone Curriculum. It was so satisfying to be able to tell them some of the memories I have of using that particualar course of study and of the impact I feel it made on my life. I only wish I could have had time to sit down and tell them more!

In World Views of the Western World, Part I, I had studied some very well-known Greek classics, along with several deeply thoughtful analytical works by Francis Schaeffer (a famous evangelical theologian of the 20th Century), among other books. This course covered the early history of the world starting from Genesis and Job, then followed the major thinking that influenced Western culture by considering the ancient Greco-Roman world view.

Having actually gone through the course myself, I feel generally qualified to have an opinion on its merits versus its faults. Some of its merits, for example, include the ability it gave me to better critique our culture (and myself), the laughter it induced as my brother and I read together some of the more ridiculous portions from The Iliad and The Odyssey, and the questions it raised about the nature of truth, along with the answers it helped us find, in the Bible. On the other hand, the coursework was at times mentally exhausting as we tried to follow the reasoning in books even most adults would find challenging!

Some of you may be considering this curriculum for your highschoolers and would like to hear from someone who’s actually used it. Here, I’d like to share with you — looking back almost 20 years later — what I feel are both the negative and the positive points.

Before diving in, I should let you know that I did not use the entire World Views curriculum; I only used the first year, The Bible and Ancient Thought. I might have gone on to the following two courses, but we had started in a little late and I was ready to graduate by then.

What you might like about it, and what you might not . . .

I’ve divided this up into several categories: Time Commitment, Quality of Content, Level of Parent/Child interaction, and Cost. I’ll mention the negative points first, followed by the positive.

TIME COMMITMENT

NEGATIVE — This course does require a lot of dedication. If you try and squeeze too many separate school subjects into the school day, you’ll find you won’t have enough time to complete everything in one year. It took me and my brother about two years.

The curriculum was designed as an Integrated course of study, meaning that it covers all these subjects in one program: “Composition: 1/4 credit, Philosphy/Theology: 1 credit, Western Civilization: 1/4 credit, World History: 1/4 credit, Literature, Ancient: 1 credit, and Humanities: 1/4 credit.” So, you might not need a separate literature/writing course or a separate Bible study. If you attempt to do those in addition to Word Views, you’ll most likely be overwhelmed.

POSITIVE — The trick is to simplify and let this course take you on an unforgettable educational journey, doing more than just skiffing over the high points but going deep into the thought processes that made Western Culture what it eventually became. As long as one keeps the school schedule simple, I believe it is possible to cover the entire first part of the program in one year.

You don’t have to do ALL the writing projects suggested in this curriculum; you can opt to ask questions and have discussions on the subject matter, instead. If you already have an awesome literature/writing program that you love, this method could be a nice altervative. Just beware, you might not have time to do ALL the writing projects in your favorite literature program, either.

But, even if this course does take longer than one year, that’s okay. Homeschooling gives us the freedom to focus more intently on any given topic. More important than keeping to a strict schedule is having purposeful conversations with our children and giving them the opportunity to digest meaningful literature.

Though I only covered Year One and it took twice as much time than we expected, it was nevertheless an experience I treasure and that was foundational to my perspective on life as an adult.

QUALITY OF CONTENT

NEGATIVE — As far as the ancient classics go, this course has it covered: The Iliad (Homer), The Odyssey (Homer), The Aeneid (Virgil), The Republic (Plato), The City of God (Saint Augustine), and audio publications of the sayings of Socrates and other “Giants of Philosophy.” However, this is all rather heavy reading for a ninth-grader, which is the level this program is intended for (I was actually in 11th grade when I began).

Much of the material was over my head, while some of it was outright boring. Can you imagine reading page after page of Homer’s battle accounts in The Iliad, where the most interesting portions that stood out were his mentioning which body parts the arrows or spears pierced through? I practically fell asleep over some of those chapters. I recall Plato’s Republic being full of intricate reasoning that hurt my brain to consider.

One thing this program lacks, in my opinion, is a broader base of enjoyable, soul-stirring, inspirational literature. Yes, you can borrow books from the library and read them on your own time, which is what I did; but, as a parent trying to search out the best literature for my own children, it would be helpful to have it already chosen for me and in one place, integrated into the same program, right along with Homer and Plato. Having some lighter — but still high-quality — literature in a variety of genres to balance out the heavier books would make the course more doable in the long term, I believe.

I’m worried that some kids may get stressed out to the point of giving up if they find the work too difficult.

POSITIVE — Yes, there is rather heavy reading involved. And yet: We don’t have to understand everything in a book to get something useful out of it, do we? Sometimes just the process itself of trying to get to the bottom of what is really being said is elemental to the development of our reasoning abilities. Later on, as adults, we may begin to understand more deeply what we may not have understood completely as teens.

Of course, if the coursework seems overwhelmingly hard for the teen, then it could be helpful to cut back on some of the work and only cover certain parts of the books. And that’s okay; we’re in charge of our children’s education, and we have the freedom to adjust things in a way that best serves our children’s and family’s best interests without feeling guilty.

You might also find helpful a primer course in world view studies that David Quine developed to help prepare students for the harder, upper-level work. It’s called Starting Points.

Cornerstone uses the “real book” method, rather than relying on textbooks. Approaching education in this way gives students a much richer experience and a much deeper understanding, in my opinion. It also makes them feel more educated and secure in what they really know, since they have interacted with primary-source material instead of just reading what someone else has already pre-digested for them. It takes away the fear of “not being able to stand up against false ideas.” At this age (highschool), I think children need to be able to deal cautiously with false ideas in order to recognize that they’re false and to debunk them with the biblical view.

Worldviews of the Western World, Part I is very strong in how it follows chronologically the development of Western thinking and identifies the biblical worldview as opposed to false thinking. The ability to discern between the two and to be able to understand WHY Western culture has eventually come to think as it now does, is crucial. This course offers more than just knowledge about the world: it gives a biblical map for understanding it.

Though the program doesn’t include a great variety of “enjoyment literature,” perhaps one way of incorporating these into your homeschool is to borrow books from the library, or to view other homeschool curriculums’ book lists and buy titles off Amazon (or directly from those companies) that interest you and your students.

LEVEL OF PARENT/CHILD INTERACTION

NEGATIVE — My brother and I pretty much managed our own studies throughout highschool, with little involvement from our parents. Though this was helpful in some ways, it was unhelpful in others. At this time of life — especially at this time of life — I believe young people need to have more than just an occasional coversation with their parents about the things that matter most. It seems to me that we would have understood much more of our books, and gotten much more out of them, if our parents had taken some time to read and discuss them with us.

In my opinion, for this course to live up to its highest potential, both children and parents need to work through it together, having intelligent discussions around the content. This doesn’t have to mean that parents follow along with every single page side-by-side with their children; actually, it does highschoolers good to learn how to study independently. But what I think is ideal is for parents to keep in touch with what their teens are studying by choosing several of the books to read with them and asking questions about the others to gauge comprehension and be available for their teens to ask them questions about it. I believe that it is conversations like these that have the potential to forge life-long relationships between teens and parents, especially if the parents are willing to listen to their children reason things out.

However, I understand why it could be difficult, or uncomfortable, for some parents to spend this much time with their teens. If a teen isn’t highly motivated or isn’t very disciplined, and if the parents aren’t able to be available to help him or her understand things, this course could be very challenging to get through.

POSITIVE — If we are totally dedicated to teaching our children at home, and if we believe it is our God-given responsiblity to raise our offspring for His glory, then I think we can find a way to meet the challenge of the time commitment and involvement this course requires.

Granted, this will not always be easy. However, as mentioned earlier, we don’t have to read every book with them. Though it does make sense to read all their school materials on our own time, we don’t necessarily have to read right along with them. We can choose which books, or which portions of books, to discuss with them, when we have the time. During the afternoon when the younger children are napping might be ideal. And even if we can’t invest as much time as we would like, even some time is better than none and can be very influential in the lives of our children.

COST

NEGATIVE — Year I: The Bible & Ancient Thought costs $550.00. Some parents might feel a little stressed at the thought of having to fork over that much money at once, in addition to purchasing separate math and science programs (which don’t come with the World Views Course), and whatever curriculum they are purchasing for their younger children. Homeschool materials per year could easily pass the $1,000 mark for a whole family, which may not be within the possibilities of some families.

POSITIVE — I buy all our homeschool materials with our tax refund every year. However, if you don’t get a refund, I understand how difficult it can be to come up with $550 for school books. I suggest saving up over the course of the year; or, you could buy one or two books at a time, as needed. You could also borrow some of the titles from the library instead of purchasing them. If you could get them used from secondhand bookstores or from book fairs, that could work, too.

Still, I do highly recommend, if you’re able, actually purchasing the books, either all at once or one at time. Books that you own can be written in, used over and over again with multiple children (a huge money saver), and cherished in a way that borrowed books cannot. The books will form part of a family library, and can be read and re-read for personal enjoyment over the years. This is much better than textbooks, which, though they may be used again by other siblings, will probably never be read again for enjoyment or for personal enrichment.

Twenty years after doing this world views course, I still have most of the books! I just read the whole Francis Schaeffer trilogy in its entirety for the first time (for the course, Mr. Quine actually only schedules portions of the book). As I was reading it, I recalled going over many of the same passages during my highschool studies; it was amazing how much I actually remembered. So, the price paid for my own school books has ended up continuing to be worth it all these years later.

Looking at the whole picture, homeschooling actually costs much less than tuition for a Christian private school. So, for a superior (I’m obviously biased), parent-led, individualized Christian education, buying our own homeschool books gets us more but costs us less, when compared to private schools.

Would I choose this course for my own children?

Now we come to the issue you have probably been wondering about: what highschool curriculum have we chosen for our own children?

Oh, this has been a difficult choice, and one that we really haven’t finished making yet. I will tell you a few things I did NOT like about the Cornerstone Curriculum in general while I was considering it for our children: it did not seem to cover in a complete way all the elementary-age subjects, and I was hoping for a program that I could use consistently throughout ALL levels; it has a lot of heavy reading and not much variation in literature genres; and it can be boring at times. And yet, I know that if we did have them do this course, they would get a lot out of it, just as I did.

My main struggle has been a tug of war between wanting to continue with Sonlight — which we all (including my children) love! — and recognizing the great value of working through Cornerstone’s World View program for highschool. One thought I’ve entertained is, to continue using Sonlight but to incorporate some of Cornerstone’s “great books” and discuss them individually.

For this year, we’ve already purchased Sonlight’s History of Science J for our two teens. They picked it out and are very excited about it. So, I can go over some classics with them this year, or maybe just wait to see what we’ll decide to do next year. Sonlight does have a new World Views course, which may be comparable to Cornerstone’s. I haven’t tried it yet, though.

What do you think?

So, that’s my take on both the negatives and the positives of Cornertone Curriculum’s World Views of the Western World, Part I. Would you please share with me, if you want, what your opinion is about it? It would be awesome to get your feedback and ideas!