eclectic education series

 

If you ever wanted your homeschool to be a one-room red schoolhouse from the turn of the century (the last one, not the most recent), you may find that the Eclectic Education Series is for you. The series is available on CD (we received it in a download) and it puts what could be a complete curriculum (for years) at your fingertips. These are classic books, scanned in (fonts and such are not modern and sometimes the resulting quality is not the best) and indexed.

From the EES web site:

“The Eclectic Education Series (EES) is a set of textbooks which from roughly 1865 to 1915 WAS education in the United States, almost exclusively. They were the standard textbooks in many states and were chosen independently by over 10,000 school boards as their standard textbooks.”

I confess that I like the idea of this, but it was too difficult to implement here. This style is quite foreign to my boy who is used to a more modern (but not necessarily better) approach. Some of these materials will remain valuable to us – American Poems, for instance – but this was not something that I found easy to transition into. That’s more about our style than the materials, I imagine, but I do believe that modern day science programs, etc. are necessary.

Many (maybe all?) of these are public domain materials that are available for free online. Dollar Homeschool puts them in pdf form on CD and that is the real benefit of buying this product: convenience and ease of use. The cost for that is not cheap ($159 for the entire collection), in my opinion, but I know that time is money and if you prefer the ease of access over searching out the materials, this may be for you. If you plan to use this regularly in your homeschool and especially if you are teaching multiple children, the price becomes easier to justify. Please note that there are some missing pages in these scans and I found the quality to be lacking in some materials. I have not compared EES images to those in the public domain.

Here’s what is available in the EES (list is also online):

For Teachers

• Manual of Methods
• Question Book
• Successful Teaching in Rural Schools

Ray’s Arithmetic

• Ray's Primary Arithmetic.
• Ray's Intellectual Arithmetic
• Ray's New Elementary Arithmetic 192 pages. /Rudimentary Arithmetic.
• Ray's New Practical Arithmetic
• Ray's New Higher Arithmetic
• Ray's New Elementary Algebra
• Ray's New Higher Algebra
• Ray's Treatise on Geometry and Trigonometry
• Ray's Analytic Geometry
• Ray's Differential and Integral Calculus

History

• Thalheimer's Histories
• Cromwell
• Progressive Course in Reading
• Cyclopedia
• Andrews Constitution
• American Poems
• Rhetorical Reading
• Good Morals and Gentle Manners

Science

• Norton's Elements of Chemistry
• Norton's Elements of Natural Philosophy.
• Norton's Elements of Physics
• Ray's Elements of Astronomy
• Ray's Surveying and Navigation
• Complete Book Keeping
• Schuyler's Principles of Logic
• Introduction to Botany
• Nature Study
• First Year Science
• Political Economy
• Simplified Industrial Mechanics
• Guide to Health

McGuffey's Readers

The Grammar Series

• Long’s Language
• Pinneo’s Grammar
• Harvey’s Grammar

 

The entire EES collection is $159 on CD, with free shipping and a 30-day guarantee. Sample pages are available online. Subjects (Ray’s Arithmetic, McGuffey’s Readers, History, Science and Grammar) are available separately on CD.

We received a free download for review. I was not compensated. My opinions are my own.