Ticks

I was reading some of the third section of CM's Volume 1 tonight on geography in the younger years(p. 72-78) and here are my two favorite quotes, posted to the blog so I don't lose them somewhere.

"He will soon come across the difficulty, that a place is not exactly east or west, north or south. It is well to let him give, in a round-about way, the direction of places as--'more to the east than the west, 'very near the east but not quite,' 'half-way between east and west.' He will value the exact means of expression all the more for having felt the need of them."

I like this. She is reminding us to allow things to go unsaid at times in order to stimulate our students' appetite for knowledge, rather than dulling it with too frequent lectures. This makes me think of one of Mr. Honey's favorite sayings: "let the game come to you".

"Does so wide a programme alarm the mother? Does she with dismay see herself talking through the whole of those five or six hours, and, even at that, not getting through a tithe of the teaching laid out for her? On the contrary, the less she says the better; and as for the quantity of educational work to be got through, it is the fable of the anxious pendulum over again: it is true there are countless 'ticks' to be ticked, but there will be always be a second of time to tick in, and no more than a single tick is to be delivered in any given second."

And here she reassures us again that too much talk is not to be desired, and that a journey begins (and progresses) by single steps, wisely spaced. She was so smart.