TOS Crew Review: Eclectic Education Series & Ray's Arithmetic

As part of the TOS Crew, I received the electronic downloads for both Ray's Arithmetic and the rest of the Eclectic Education Series by Dollar Homeschool.


Ray's Arithmetic is a curriculum for teaching mathematics for K-12. The books are broken out as follows: (click on the picture to better see the topics)

Ray's Arithmetic is available on one CD for $59.00.

The entire Eclectic Education Series is available as a CD for $159.00 and includes Ray's Arithmetic, Science, History, Grammar, and the McGuffey's Reader Series. Science topics include chemistry, physics, botany, and industrial mechanics. The history includes a collection of historical books focusing on a Christian world view. The grammar and readers are the same used in the early days of American education and continued on for over half a century.


While I think the compilation of texts and standards for public education in the 19th century found in EES is convenient for users (and cost effective), I find the idea of implementing these items as they were used for the first 50 years of public education rather puzzling. The standards of what was required for students early in America's educational history may be more rigorous, but the way in which instruction was delivered "back in the day" is not a standard to which I believe we should all strive for today.