why not the final progym exercise?

[Jenadina]

I'm curious as to why the Law exercise will not be taught in this series...

[Lene Mahler Jaqua]

If you are referring to this page

home.att.net/~classicalwriting/Progym.htm

where we show the lay out of the progymnasmata relative to the titles of our books

or this page

home.att.net/~classicalwriting/Demosthenes.htm

where we give a brief overview of a book not yet written.... then yes, we do not state explicitly that we will or will not teach "Law".

The truth is, I am currently writing Plutarch (Praise, Blame, Comparison), after which I shall start Demosthenes (Thesis, Law, and possibly Declamation). At this point I cannot see my way to whether or not we will have time to teach Law or Declamation, given all that goes into rounding this course off--just to do a good job of Thesis and keep pulling in modern writing and research papers.

So, the answer is I don't know, but if there is enough 'space' and 'time' in terms of what we can reasonably ask an 11th and 12th grader to do, after we have made sure that his writing education has covered all he needs to be able to do for college prep, then yes, we would teach Law and possibly also Declamation. As it stands, I can only promise Thesis, as the most important thing to cover... Law, while important was a specialty in the ancient world, something every citizen had to learn, to be able to defend himself in court on his own. It has modern applications, yes, but it is very specialized.

If there is no room in Demosthenes for this, it is also possible that we will write one additional book on Law for those advanced students who finish the other progymnasmata ahead of time and still have time to cram that into their high school experience.

I am one book away from Demosthenes, and I don't like to promise more than I am fairly certain I can deliver.

Does that answer your question?

Lene

[jenadina]

Very well, thank you!