This book is recommended in our Mater Amabilis high school English course (Level 6 Year 2, twelfth grade). First Son's English courses were a combination of the new plans and the old beta plans, so I spent a lot of time debating his options for senior year. I didn't want him to miss all of the great books and resources, but because he was going to take a college writing course, he didn't have time for everything that was left.
I decided to take a chance on this book and scheduled it for First Son. I really don't know how much it helped him; he's a fine writer, though a bit too succinct for my own taste. I think it's an excellent book, though, and I'm already looking forward to First Daughter reading it in a few years.
There book consists of six chapters, an example student essay, and a couple of other helpful appendices. The Mater Amabilis lesson plans cover it in nine assignments (once a week). I assigned it to First Son in the first term, along with some Shakespeare and novels I wanted him to read. (I gave him a semester's credit of English for this book and the plays and novels, then a year's credit for the college writing course he took in the spring.) The example student essay is about Telemachus and the Odyssey, which Mater Amabilis students will especially appreciate if they read it in Level 5.
Dr. Crider covers everything about crafting an essay - forming an argument, organizing the essay's structure, stylistic choices, revising, and critiquing. Most of these topics should be somewhat familiar to a Level 6 student (eleventh or twelfth grade), but The Office of Assertion pulls it all together clearly and succinctly. He includes examples throughout from masterpieces of rhetoric like the Declaration of Independence and Samuel Johnson's "Preface to Shakespeare."
All liberal arts, in both the sciences and the humanities, are animated by the fundamental human desire to know, the fulfillment of which is a good, even if it provides no economic or political benefit whatsoever. An education for economic productivity and political utility alone is an education for slaves, but an education for finding, collecting, and communicating reality is an education for free people, people free to know what is so. (pp. 122-123, emphasis of the author)
This book is an excellent part of our high school plans. It fits well in the senior year, when students are likely more proactive in improving their writing and when it will remain fresh in their minds as they begin college coursework.
I have received nothing in exchange for this post. Links to Amazon and Bookshop are affiliate links. I purchased my copy new from Amazon.
