Instructor Access (Optional grading support) is available for this course. Please note: this is ONLY recommended if you wish to write the optional paper. All quizzes are internally graded in this course. Optional papers will be completed via this page (click here) for an Instructor Access fee of $75.

In this startlingly original book, even as Chesterton defends the need for a conservative and humane order, he is the poet of a God wildly beyond our most soaring imaginations. Sign up today and learn why Chesterton is considered one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.

How to get the most out of The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton with Dr. Henry Russell:

• First, carefully read the course details below and obtain the book.

• Prepare a course notebook for note taking during reading and the recordings.

• Students begin their coursework by reading Chapter One of The Man Who Was Thursday.

• Next, listen to the recording.

• Students should then click on Quiz: Class One. After completing the quiz, it will be graded automatically.

• If you need review, go back and watch the recording again and/or go over the PowerPoint.

• Repeat until all 6 classes are complete plus the Final.

• Once the course is completed to the parent's satisfaction, there is a Certificate of Completion at the end to be filled in and printed for your records. Make sure to record your grades (HSC does not provide record keeping services).

Total number of class meetings: 7

Duration of each class: ~55 minutes

Prerequisite: The ability to enjoy reading and discussing the work

Suggested grade level: 10th to 12th

Suggested credit: ½ semester credit. For a full semester credit, precede with Dr. Russell’s The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis (January).

Instructor: Dr. Henry Russell

Course Description: At the turn of the 1900s, anarchy was a political fad every bit as powerful as global warming is today. More locally destructive, anarchists murdered several heads of state (ranging from President McKinley to the Archduke Ferdinand), and numerous public servants. They also fueled the statist revolutions of the communist era. European nations vastly increased their power by developing their secret police in response to the public panic created by these lunatic figures.
G. K. Chesterton, the great Catholic man of letters, writes one of the most startlingly original novels of the 20th-century in response both to the original source of anarchism (the imitation of Satan’s non serviam) and to the faithless response of modern man to such a threat. In the process Chesterton delineates, beautifully and entertainingly, the way that the very God who created and sustains order is so far beyond order (as puny human minds comprehend it) that He appears wild, chaotic and even threatening to our stubborn desire to reduce the cosmos to our control. Thus, even as he defends the need of a conservative and humane order, Chesterton is the poet of a God wildly beyond our most soaring imaginations.

Course outline:

Class 1: Biography and Chapter One
Class 2: Chapters 2-3 and an excursus on anarchists
Class 3: Chapters 4-6
Class 4: Chapters 7-9
Class 5: Chapters 10-12
Class 6: Chapters 13-14
Class 7: Chapter 15

Course Materials: The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton (https://www.chesterton.org/store/product/man-who-was-thursday)

Homework: Approximately 20 pages per week, about an hour’s reading. There will be computer-graded quizzes available after each class, and a final.

©2023 Homeschool Connections and Henry Russell, Ph.D. All rights reserved.

This course is designed by Henry Russell, Ph.D.

• This material is only to be used for its intended purpose by active subscribers of Homeschool Connections. Any other use without explicit permission is in violation of the seventh commandment (yes, the 7th commandment) and in violation of US and International copyright laws.

• You may print or download to local hard disk extracts for your personal homeschool and non-commercial use only. This is not to be used for homeschool co-ops without express written permission from Homeschool Connections.

Technical Help: If you have any technical trouble or questions about course content, please email us at homeschoolconnections@gmail.com.

Technical Help: If you experience technical difficulty with watching the recorded classes or have a question about course content, please email us at homeschoolconnections@gmail.com.