Friday, January 20, 2012

Still trying to figure it out...

I am taking the kids ice skating today.  While they skate, I am going to go through materials on writing, including progym and LTW, and compare them with CM's volumes and some great articles on how CM *is* classical education.  Oh yes, I am so excited.  :DDD

I got discouraged this week considering basic composition programs that are mostly based on progym.  I was recalled to sanity by a couple of posts by Cindy of Ordo Amoris.  When will I learn that much teaching is liable to kill learning?  I mean, I need to internalize this!  I must not have it if I still need reminders.

Here are the resources I plan to peruse.  (I probably will not get to all of them.)

"To divorce a subject from its meaning was the error of modernity, a mad quest to produce more in less time. The classical authors and educators from antiquity until now were not searching for efficiency and it is puzzling that modern classical educators have missed this point."  --Cindy

"Education is the Science of Relations; that is, that a child has natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts: so we train him upon physical exercises, nature lore, handicrafts, science and art, and upon many living books, for we know that our business is not to teach him all about anything, but to help him to make valid as many as may be of 'Those first-born affinities/That fit our new existence to existing things.'" --Charlotte Mason

"There is a way to have both rigor and meaning but we must not take shortcuts through the avenue of too many subjects."  --Cindy

"The more important a 'subject' the greater danger we are in of over-teaching it."  --Cindy

"She was seeking a classical education that would serve the needs of the general population, but founded in principles that had weathered well."  --Karen Glass

Since I don't know a whole lot about Classical Ed, I want to limit myself to teachers that have CM's principles at the heart of their teaching while also understanding Classical Ed.  I feel more certain of this with Andrew Kern than I do James Selby, but I really like Selby's presentation of the progym so far.

This was the article that really scared me.  I am going to read it again, writing comments and questions in the margins.

I also have some materials from Kern's Lost Tools of Writing, Selby's Classical Composition program and the Classical Writing  program (by different authors).

Why am I doing this to myself?  Because I need to have a foundation of understanding.  When I work with my kids on their writing, I want it to be in a way that respects the nature of the student.  But I lack knowledge.  I have little understanding of the nature of writing!  I intuitively get some things but do not see the path on which to lead others.  I NEED this.  How can I teach otherwise?

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