From the time I started my adventure in homeschooling over a decade ago, I have wanted to collect some of the most inspiring words spoken by American leaders since our founding — eloquent and soaring words, rooted in the wisdom of the ages. The desire emerged from reading those great words of American history aloud with my daughter, contrasting them with the words we heard daily all around us, and realizing that something priceless had been lost.
American education, not long ago the envy of the world, has become a corrupt, bloated, and failed institution. This has been happening for over a century and there is no sign of recovery. The loss can be summed up in one sentence: We have lost our words. We no longer read the greatest spoken and written words of all time in the fields of history, literature, poetry, philosophy, and politics, and so we have lost the understanding of words that our ancestors lived by. More critically, however, we have lost what those words have represented.
So what can we do? I made the choice to homeschool, yet I felt less than qualified. I had been accepted into a master’s degree program at Stanford, where I assumed that what I learned would better fit me to teach. But soon I learned what I ought to have seen earlier: one does not need a college degree to teach children.
One day while I was at Stanford, my daughter’s kung fu teacher asked if I would be willing to teach an academic class for his kung fu students. I happily agreed and called the class “Language & Leadership.” Perhaps counterintuitively, I would simply read aloud with the children the books I was currently reading in my master’s program: Plato’s Republic, Virgil’s Aeneid, the Old and New Testament, The Analects of Confucius, and others, and we would look up and memorize all the vocabulary words the children did not yet know.
The students did not need to understand the depths of those literary works, which challenge even mature readers. We simply started with the words. For the foundation of all learning, all communication, and all thought, is words.
The decision to take this path led to a few life-changing insights. One was that children — in this class, ages 5–16 — were able, if assisted, to read, to understand, and to love those great works. So were their parents, several of which started attending class with their children.
Another insight was that I knew far, far less in general than I once thought I knew of the world of books, learning, and pedagogy. I recognized that my own education had been mediocre. So I determined to give my child the best education possible. It was a long study, which involved taking up books I had never heard of till then. I began to read backwards in time. By now I have spent over a decade reading books from the 19th century, then the 18th, the 17th, and so on, and I have only begun to claim a finer education, and my child, at the age of 14, is already further down the road than I. But that was the goal all along.
Eventually I began to see that I was not alone. Word had gotten out about the state of education. When people had often approached me over the years, asking nothing about my homeschooling beyond how I “socialize” my child, they were now stopping me in aisles at the grocery store and all but climbing into my cart, grabbing my shoulders, and begging, “How can I do it?”
For several years I had been contemplating this question: If I had the chance to help others reclaim the education that was rightly theirs — to answer those who inquired, to put just one book into the hands of children, parents, teachers, the young and the old, and of anyone who sees the problems, wants to fix them, but does not know the first step to take, what would I suggest? Finding Our Words: Words That Made America is my answer. In my book I offer ideas for reading the speeches and other great works, and specifically for reading them with children of all ages. Some of them are:
Start Early
My first suggestion to parents, whether homeschooling or supplementing outside school, is to start early. Very early. I first read George Washington’s 1789 Inaugural Address to my daughter when she was five years old. We would read only one or two paragraphs per sitting. That was enough. I would paraphrase every one or two sentences, and we would discuss them until I knew she had a general understanding. I used to be amazed when meeting older toddlers who could speak two or three languages, which was not uncommon in places where I have lived. But no longer. I have seen it enough to know that if parents are talking frequently or all day to their children, those children are learning.
Secondly, start late — for parents, that is. For many of us who attended school after the 1940s, our education was sadly lacking. But we do not need to return to college. We simply need to think and contemplate — and be deliberate and diligent with our reading. Choose books wisely, as they become traveling companions. Get started here with the speeches in Finding Our Words.
Make Vocabulary Cards and Use a Dictionary
Third, when we read extraordinary works, we encounter words which we might be able to understand in context but not define. To build our vocabulary, we need not to dread the “hard” words but look forward with hope to acquainting ourselves with them.
For this subject, the English word “vocabulary” is lackluster. I prefer the German word for vocabulary: Wortschatz. Wort means “word” and Schatz means “treasure”… word-treasure.
The pen is mightier than the sword, and words are a greater treasure than diamonds and pearls. Do not leave your treasure scattered among the pages. Gather your words as you go and store them in your treasure chest.
I have kept vocabulary index card rings built from our readings from the time my child began to read, and for each word we looked up, we made a new card. We would write the word (using phonetic symbols to help with pronunciation), the part of speech, the definition, and the sentence in which we found it. Including the entire sentence has done more than just help us to remember the word; it has shown the word at the pinnacle of its career. It is exasperating and essentially a waste of time to use pre-made vocabulary card sets that usually cast strong and noble vocabulary words into the dungeon of absurd, illogical, and demeaning sentences. Adorn your own word-treasure cards with sentences from the greatest works of all time.
Begin to Practice Elocution
Fourth, elocution was once a standard part of school curricula. It has not been so for the last hundred years or more, and we hear the results all around us. Finding Our Words is not an elocution course, but a few tips can get us started. When having children read aloud, encourage them to incorporate a manner of expression appropriate to the text. Encourage them to project their voices. A favorite word we have used in reading the speeches in this book is “stentorian.” In the days before microphones and speakers, a stentorian voice was required if one wished to be heard.
Take Your Time
Fifth, with the one exception of the Gettysburg Address, I myself never read any of these speeches in school, but I have now been reading these and other speeches for well over a decade, and every time my child and I read one of them again, we find something new to appreciate. We have not rushed through them collectively or individually. For most of us, these speeches are too rich to consume in large portions. Enjoy the amount that is satisfying in one sitting, and come back for more later, and from now on.
Struggle
Sixth point to consider: If you take your time and read in small doses, any struggle with fine words will never be a burden. It will be what author Tracy Lee Simmons describes as “an entrée to greatness… through a daily struggle with clear and constant examples of superior perception and utterance.”
Practice Leisure
Finally, our last point. Less than a century ago, and stretching back to antiquity, “leisure” summoned scenes other than those one might imagine today: strolls through a forest, riding through the countryside on horseback; or time at home with family or a gathering of friends, playing musical instruments and singing, or reading aloud from great works by fireside or in the garden.
Whatever the leisurely pursuit, the purpose was to restore, invigorate, and enrich one’s life. The mood created by reading great works aloud shifts us away from “doing homework” and into a reward that is anticipated with joy. For instance, I have created a ritual around reading aloud by doing so outside when possible and serving rose tea. Create your own rituals. Small touches added to a routine can transform the scene from one of drudgery to the highlight of one’s day, to a beloved tradition, and to the making of multigenerational memories.
It is exhilarating to realize how much one can learn, how much can quietly change within one’s self and within one’s family, simply by reading these words, slowly, and making them one’s own.