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The Well-Trained Mind: Essential Edition
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$39.99 - $34.95(Save 13%)
Is your child getting lost in the system, becoming bored, losing his or her natural eagerness to learn? If so, it may be time to take charge of your child’s education by doing it yourself.
NEW to the Essential Edition! Specific resource recommendations have moved out of the text and into an online portal, available via an annual subscription through Well-Trained Mind Press. Moving recommendations to the Resource Recommendations Portal means Susan and her team can provide subscribers with up-to-date, curated lists of the best curricula for every grade level and learning style.
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Product Overview
The Well-Trained Mind will instruct you, step by step, on how to give your child an academically rigorous, comprehensive education from preschool through high school―one that will train him or her to read, to think, to understand, to be well-rounded and curious about learning. Veteran home educator Susan Wise Bauer outlines the classical pattern of education called the trivium, which organizes learning around the maturing capacity of the child’s mind and comprises three stages: the elementary school “grammar stage,” when the building blocks of information are absorbed through memorization and rules; the middle school “logic stage,” in which the student begins to think more analytically; and the high-school “rhetoric stage,” where the student learns to write and speak with force and originality. Using this theory as your model, you’ll be able to instruct your child―whether full-time or as a supplement to classroom education―in all levels of reading, writing, history, geography, mathematics, science, foreign languages, rhetoric, logic, art, and music, regardless of your own aptitude in those subjects.
NEW to the Essential Edition! Specific resource recommendations have moved out of the text and into an online portal, available via an annual subscription through Well-Trained Mind Press. Moving recommendations to the Resource Recommendations Portal means Susan and her team can provide subscribers with up-to-date, curated lists of the best curricula for every grade level and learning style.
Thousands of parents have already used the methods described in The Well-Trained Mind to create a truly superior education for children in their care. You do have control over what and how your child learns. The Well-Trained Mind will give you the tools you’ll need to teach your child with confidence and success.
Question
Megan –
I see recommendations are being moved to an online portal, but will the hard copy book still include recommendations?
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Answer Desk –
The Well-Trained Mind, The Essential Edition does not include specific curricula recommendations. Like prior editions, it outlines the classical pattern of education called the trivium, and contains the teaching strategies and plans to provide your child with a rigorous education from preschool through high school.
The overall philosophy, approach, and strategies don’t need to be updated every few years, but the specific resources change often – recommended books go out of print, curricula gets revised (sometimes to the point of basically being a different product), prices change, and new things come along every day. Meanwhile, the core of TWTM – how to teach classically – remains essentially the same, so the book and the recommendations are now separate. Recommendations can be found at our online portal, for just 12.99/year! https://welltrainedmind.com/curricula-recommendations-twtm-ee/
If you have the 4th edition of TWTM, you probably don’t need the Essential Edition, unless you want to complete your collection. There were some significant changes made for the 4th edition, primarily related to STEM subjects, so anyone with an earlier edition than that might want to consider it.
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Lacey Matkins –
This book is a must read for homeschoolers. Even if you’re not into classical education TWTM is excellent inspiration for any style. The most disappointing part is curriculum recommendations were removed and put behind a paywall and not even a one time additional fee but an annual one. I’ll continue to recommend this book to anyone and find my recommendations elsewhere.
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Answer Desk –
Thanks for the kind words, Lacey! Allow me to provide a bit of context for the decision to move to the subscription portal: Through the fourth edition, all of the recommended resources (titles, ISBNs, prices, availability, format) have been printed in the book.
However, resources are always mutating. They go out of print. Their prices change. They get edited (sometimes out of recognition). Innovative new ones come along. These days, all of that often happens at a very rapid pace. Meanwhile, the core of TWTM – how to teach classically – remains essentially the same.
Moving the recommendations to the subscription portal means we can keep the recommendations up to date in a way that isn’t possible with a printed book. The cost is $15.99 for the entire year, so the total cost of the book and a year’s subscription is less than what an expanded version of the book with recommendations would have cost. We need to charge something so we can devote resources to updating the subscriptions, and we landed on a small annual fee versus the more typical monthly subscripton fee.
Thank you for recommending the book!
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Question
Beth Rill –
Is the “Essential Edition” the 5th edition or is the 4th edition the most recent?
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Answer Desk –
The Essential Edition is the 5th edition!
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