Commonplace Book: A Working Philosophy of Education

"We want an education which shall nourish the mind while not neglecting either physical or vocational training. 

"...the mind of a child takes or rejects according to its needs... the mind, in fact, requires sustenance––as does the body, in order that it increase and be strong; but because the mind is not to be measured or weighed but is spiritual, so its sustenance must be spiritual too, must, in fact, be ideas (in the Platonic sense of images).

"...education is of the spirit and is not to be taken in by the eye or effected by the hand; mind appeals to mind and thought begets thought and that is how we become educated. For this reason we owe it to every child to put him in communication with great minds that he may get at great thoughts; with the minds, that is, of those who have left us great works; and the only vital method of education appears to be that children should read worthy books, many worthy books.

"...The teacher affords direction, sympathy in studies, a vivifying word here and there, help in the making of experiments, etc., as well as the usual teaching in languages, experimental science and mathematics."

--Charlotte Mason, Volume 6, Towards a Philosophy of Education

How Summer is Going, or Changing Expectations

I had all these good intentions of spending quality educational time together with Cornflower this summer. We were going to read poetry and essays and Shakespeare, practice dictation, do some writing, and finish the last four chapters of her biology textbook. So far, all we've done is kept up with biology. It's only mid-June, but I'm already thinking I may use my beautiful summer plans as a basis for our together work in the fall, and allow summer to be what it should be-- a relaxing of requirements so she can rest a bit. She's entering high school this fall. This may be her last restful summer for awhile.

I never feel like I do enough with Cornflower. She is my youngest, and I have this perpetual sense that she's gotten short shrift.  When I'm thinking rationally, I'm pretty sure that is not the case-- at least not anymore. But the guilt has become a habit that is hard to shake.

She has been painting her room this week.  She did some babysitting for a friend and earned some money which she used to buy paint in exactly the color she wanted. For the past five or six days, she's spent all her spare time thinking about her room and painting and arranging it.

And this is part of my insanity.  This girl has been painting her room all week and I'm fretting that we haven't read Shakespeare.  She is making exciting strides in piano practice, and I'm upset that we aren't working on writing.  She is volunteering at the library, and I'm sad we aren't having poetry teatime together.

The other day, I mentioned that it didn't look like we were going to follow the (beautifully laid-out and posted in the kitchen) summer schedule I had made.  She said consolingly, "Yeah, I'm really sorry you went to so much trouble to plan out stuff we aren't going to do."  Little stinker. ;)

So I've decided to switch gears and make new plans. I've been wandering the house this week like a lost soul, trying to figure out what to do whenever I'm not working in my music studio or tidying the house or making meals. Because I laid all these plans and we are not doing them and I don't feel right forcing them on my daughter.

Today is my day for starting over with new summer expectations.  I can't keep wandering the house picking up odd socks and wondering what I'm supposed to be doing.

It's weird having almost-grown kids.

Dormant (Latent) Appetite for Knowledge

I have read Volume 3 at least twice from cover to cover, but only today did I actually grasp the following delightful anecdote from Chapter 20, given to remind us to avoid drilling our children on their understanding of the things they read.  We are laying a foundation for future connections.

As a girl of twelve or so the writer browsed a good deal on Cowper's poems and somehow took an interest in Mrs. Montague's Feather Hangings. Only the other day did the ball to fit that socket arrive in the shape of an article in The Quarterly on 'The Queen of the Bluestockings.' Behold, there was Mrs. Montague with her feather hangings! The pleasure of meeting with her after all these years was extraordinary; for in no way is knowledge more enriching than in this of leaving behind it a, so to speak, dormant appetite for more of the kind. Vol. 3 pages 223-224

I think she means dormant in the sense of latent:  (of a bud, resting stage, etc.) lying dormant or hidden until circumstances are suitable for development or manifestation (Google)

Later she says:

Not what we have learned, but what we are waiting to know, is the delectable part of knowledge.

This is the kind of teacher I want to be.

(h/t Ann Voskamp)

Why It Matters (Sara Groves)

I have listened to this song many times
without really processing the words.  

But they are profound and so important.  

This Youtube video highlights the lyrics of this song by Sara Groves.

Morning Walk

The trees are greening

Warm enough for flip-flops, cool enough for blankets

What are you, Mom, the paparazzi?

Yes, I am! One never knows how long these lovely everyday days will be around.

We'll pose, then.

"Now make a fist. Slowly ease it up underneath your chin...
this is looking really good."

Did I mention they also rescue stuck basketballs?

Daddy's home!

Actually, he is just leaving...

The Warrior Poet and his truck

And a beautiful baby tulip

Anxiety the Note of the Transition Stage*

(Title and quotes taken from CM Volume 3 Page 27)

I have often recalled CM's idea that anxiety is the note of a transition stage-- I always thought it meant that the presence of anxiety may reveal that the person is in some kind of transition.  I liked the sound of it.  It rung true.  And I took it and let it echo in my mind, free of context.

This morning I was thinking about my family's various transitions, and there it was again-- "anxiety is the note of the transition stage".  While I have never actually used this statement as license for anxiety (there is that whole "be careful for nothing" scripture in the Bible, after all), it does appear in my head when fear enters my heart-- well, anxiety is the note of the transition stage. What did I expect? To be exempt?

Strange how our minds work.

I was thinking about praising God in the hallway, and there it was, right on schedule.  But this time I wondered, what exactly did she mean by that?  So I went and looked it up.  It is in a chapter on masterly inactivity.

Every new power, whether mechanical or spiritual, requires adjustment before it can be used to the full... to perceive that there is much which we ought to do and not to know exactly what it is, nor how to do it, does not add to the pleasure of life or to ease in living. We become worried, restless, anxious; and in the transition stage between the development of this new power and the adjustment which comes with time and experience, the fuller life, which is certainly ours, fails to make us either happier or more useful.

She is talking about a transition into better habits.  She is revealing that tendency to indulge in restless action when we perceive that our previous efforts have been lacking.  And she is encouraging us to exercise wise passiveness, to be gentle with ourselves (and our children!) as we change:

We ought to do so much for our children, and are able to do so much for them, that we begin to think everything rests with us and that we should never intermit for a moment our conscious action on the young minds and hearts about us... We may take heart. We have the qualities, and all that is wanted is adjustment; to this we must give our time and attention.

 She is really talking about the development of a new power in a human being, not the deliverance of God in the midst of circumstances.  Not every transition in our lives is the result of us making a move toward better habits.  I have been misapplying this idea!

I wonder how many other idea fragments float around in my head, prepared to leap out and be misapplied at a moment's notice.

Anxiety is the note of transition from a worse habit to a better one.  And, rather than anxiously nitpicking every little thing that has to do with a new habit, Miss Mason recommends we rest ourselves in Sphynx-like repose, keeping on the alert without being fussy, and trust that the new habit will develop with time.

What does this have to do with praising God in the hallway as we wait for him to open doors?  Well, in some cases we need to work and wait, asking Him what we should do. (It is often not what we want to do.)  In others we need to wait without work, accepting that there is nothing we can do, and refrain from complaining. (This is often harder than doing what the Lord tells us to do!)  But always we should ask the Lord to redeem our feeble efforts.

I'm praising God in the hallway and in the doorway and fully in the room this morning.  I pray He will direct my steps, redeem my efforts, and still my murmuring thoughts.

Travel

I am going to the Charlotte Mason conference, oh yes I am.  Aravis wanted to attend as part of her graduation gift.  Perhaps I will blog some about it.

We left from church Sunday afternoon and drove to WestTennessee.  The next day, we drove into East Tennessee and Aravis got to visit friends she has loved for years and never met.  The visit was too short, and I forgot to take pictures, but it was still worth it.

Some beautiful people in Kingsport, Tennessee opened their home and their hearts to us, and we have been visiting with them the last day or so.  So many great conversations have already taken place, I feel the conference has already started.

This morning, we will complete the drive into Virginia.  They tell me the conference is exceedingly edifying.  Even if it is not, I have already been fed.

And here is a fabulous post by Cindy on school planning.  Just because it is restful and now is a time for rest and renewal.

CM and Math

The past few years, math and writing have been bees stuck in my bonnet.  I'm parking a few math links here for my own help.  Perhaps they will help others too.

Miss Mason:

There is no one subject in which good teaching effects more, as there is none in which slovenly teaching has more mischievous results...a child who does not know what rule to apply to a simple problem within his grasp, has been ill taught from the first, although he may produce slatefuls of quite right sums in multiplication or long division...Care must be taken to give the child such problems as he can work, but yet which are difficult enough to cause him some little mental effort.

(Give the child problems which are difficult enough to cause him some effort.  This is key in understanding so many of CM's recommendations.  CM is gentle, yet rigorous.  CM respects the child, yet challenges the child.)

More from CM on arithmetic:

The copying, prompting, telling, helping over difficulties, working with an eye to the answer which he knows, that are allowed in the arithmetic lesson, under an inferior teacher, are enough to vitiate any child; and quite as bad as these is the habit of allowing that a sum is nearly right, two figures wrong, and so on, and letting the child work it over again. Pronounce a sum wrong, or right––it cannot be something between the two.

On the beauty of mathematics: 

 We take strong ground when we appeal to the beauty and truth of Mathematics; that, as Ruskin points out, two and two make four and cannot conceivably make five, is an inevitable law. It is a great thing to be brought into the presence of a law, of a whole system of laws, that exist without our concurrence,––that two straight lines cannot enclose a space is a fact which we can perceive, state, and act upon but cannot in any wise alter, should give to children the sense of limitation which is wholesome for all of us, and inspire that sursum corda which we should hear in all natural law.

On examination-driven teaching of math:

Arithmetic, Mathematics, are exceedingly easy to examine upon and so long as education is regulated by examinations so long shall we have teaching, directed not to awaken a sense of awe in contemplating a self-existing science, but rather to secure exactness and ingenuity in the treatment of problems.

(I want to awaken a sense of awe in my students.  Math was created by God.  It cannot be denied that mathematical laws exist outside of man-made laws.)

On math and success:

...why should a boy's success in life depend upon drudgery in Mathematics? That is the tendency at the present moment to close the Universities and consequently the Professions to boys and girls who, because they have little natural aptitude for mathematics, must acquire a mechanical knowledge by such heavy all-engrossing labour as must needs shut out such knowledge of the 'humanities' say, as is implied in the phrase 'a liberal education.'... [Mathematics] may not engross the time and attention of the scholar in such wise as to shut out any of the score of 'subjects,' a knowledge of which is his natural right.

(Lord, please help me remember this!  Awaken awe, challenge the student, keep math focus in perspective relative to other subjects.)

Parallel Construction in CM's Volume 3 (and a beautiful thought too)

We owe it to the past 
to use its gains worthily 
and to advance from the point at which it left off. 

We owe it to the future 
to prepare a generation better than ourselves. 

We owe it to the present 
to live, 
to live with all expansion of heart and soul, 
all reaching out of our personality 
towards those relations appointed for us.

CM Series Vol. 3 Chapter 8

Where Do You Find all the Books?

Yesterday, a friend asked me this question in relation to the AO/HEO books we use to educate our kids at home.  This post is a list of recommended strategies for gathering living books.

Many Charlotte Mason educators consider their libraries part of the legacy they will leave their children and purchase the highest quality books they can afford.  Our family homeschools on a shoestring.  I have often bought the least expensive 'average' condition book, but it is worthwhile to get a high-quality hardcover  if you find one at a good price.  

Before shopping for used books, it is helpful to know the jargon.  Thankfully, Abebooks has a glossary of used book terminology and abbreviations.  Keep this page open and use the "find" function on your computer to locate any terms in a listing that you don't understand.

My first stop when looking for books is AddAll.  This website searches the Internet for the lowest price.  AddAll doesn't actually sell you books, but directs you to book sellers online.  Here is a brief list of book selling websites I use:

Amazon Marketplace 

Half.com

Abebooks

Christian Book Distributors

Paperback Swap is an interesting concept.  Users post books they are willing to trade and receive a credit for each book they mail to another user.  The credits are used to choose books from other users.  You can keep a wish list on the site, and they will notify you when books come available.  Twice I have gotten rare, out-of-print AO books for the price of shipping.  I have also exchanged much twaddle for living books. I currently have almost nothing I'm willing to swap, so I just buy credits when my wish list books come up.  Credits are $3.79 apiece.  Receiving credits for books mailed is generally less expensive, as the U.S. media mail rate for books under 1 lb is $2.47.  Usually, one credit gets you one book.  See the website for more information.

(I cannot recommend eBay because I do not like shopping that website.  I get too wrapped up in the competitive aspect, which causes me to overbid.  It is just better for me not to go there.  :)  Your experience may be different.)

I prefer to shop for books online because I can do specific searches and keep myself from getting sidetracked by other goodies that look wonderful but are not on my list.  Shopping for books in real life is often hit-or-miss, which is dangerous for a bibliophile.  When I leave the house to shop for books, I want to come home with books.  If I enter a brick-and-mortar store with a specific book in mind, I will very likely emerge, not with the book I need, but with four or five others that look scrumptious.  This is fine for a family with discretionary income, but for a family on a tight budget, it can seriously mess with next year's educational prospects.  

Having said that, here are some real-life places I like to shop for books:

Half-Price Books

Homeschool book fairs (usually have a couple booths of used and out of print books)

Homeschool support group/co-op used book sales

Barnes and Noble (We view this store more as a museum we visit to remember what new books look like, but they have a nice collection of reasonably priced classics in hardcover.  Some are abridged, so do your homework.)

As a homeschool buyer of many years, I can honestly say it is less expensive in the long run to purchase books on the purchasing list online, even at slightly higher prices (shipping, you know) than to purchase ten amazing books just discovered at a brick-and-mortar store or homeschool used book sale.  The exception, of course, is if you find a thrift store or flea market practically giving books away for under a dollar.  These places exist.  One of the thrift stores near us sold books for 25 and 50 cents for years.  If you find a store like this, shop every week until they come to their senses.  ;o)  Libraries sometimes literally give books away, too.  Here are a few places to check for these free or almost-freebies:

Thrift stores

Flea markets

Libraries

Garage sales

Half-Price Books warehouse is another place to get free or almost-free books.  These are clearing-houses for books that do not sell in the stores.  Homeschool moms qualify as teachers at the warehouse in our area.  If you are a teacher, you may attend their clearance events in which they give away books for free or almost-free.  You have to sign an affadavit stating you will not attempt to resell the books.  I got some of my best books at one of these events.  But it can be a mad rush of people jostling for books, so beware.  This is the reason I only went once!  Also, bring boxes and a hand truck and prepare to stay to the bitter end.  People take entire shelves of books, sort through them, and put back what they do not want.  Sometimes what they do not want are classic works of natural history and science.  You can find great things if you are patient.

Borrowing books can also be an option if you know other CM homeschoolers in your area.   Many CMers are protective of their books, and with good reason.  (See "building a legacy for their children", above.)  Borrowers do not always return books, and lenders do not always remember who has their loaned books.  I have been on both ends of this trouble.  I lost several lent books over the years, some of which I just realized were missing this year when I needed them for my youngest daughter's schooling.   I had to repurchase them.  But I am not innocent, oh no.  Only last week I almost gave away a book I borrowed over three years ago! 

With all its pitfalls, borrowing and lending can be a great way to share books if a few rules are followed:

1)  If someone lends you a book, respect the honor conferred upon you and return it as soon as possible,  

2) Only lend books you don't mind losing, and

3) Keep records of borrowing and lending so you do not forget.

The library can be a great borrowing resource, too.  Our library expanded into a new building (and a new purchasing budget!) a few years ago and actually requested that patrons make book purchase suggestions.  Homeschoolers took them up on this opportunity!  Even if your library is not asking, you can request that they look for certain books when they have a purchasing budget.  The worst they can do is say no.  We live in a large metro area and have cards to three different library systems.  If one library doesn't have what we need, another may.  Also, many people use inter-library loan, and, while I haven't ever used it, I have heard that it is a good way to borrow rare books.  The drawback to using the library is that the books must be read more quickly than is usual in a CM education. 

Purchasing books for Kindle and other eReaders is a new trend in CM homeschooling.  It is affordable and convenient.  You do not have to own a Kindle to use a Kindle book.  You can download them onto your PC.  Also, quite a few classic books are available to download for free on the Internet.  Some of these books are indicated with hyperlinks on the Ambleside Online website.  At our house, we use a lot of free-on-the-Internet books for the cost-savings, but we prefer paper pages and hard covers and purchase as many hard copies as we can afford.  We have a running joke that when the electrical grid goes down, we want to be like the monks of the Dark Ages, preserving beauty and knowledge with our paper books... not that we think the grid will go down any time soon.  ;o)  Doom and gloom aside, here is a sampling of links for downloadable ebooks:

Ambleside Online (online books indicate with hyperlinks which lead to other websites)

Project Gutenberg

A Celebration of Women Writers 

The Literature Network

The Baldwin Online Children's Literature Project

Amazon (do a search for "free kindle books")

These are a few strategies I use to find books for my kids' education.  What book-finding tips would you offer a lately-come-to-CM mom?

Appreciating Shakespeare

Today we had the Shakespeare class over to watch a movie version of the play we just finished reading.  We watched "As You Like It" (1936) with Lawrence Olivier and Elisabeth Bergner.

I think the kids enjoyed the movie.  They seemed to like the actor's portrayal of Touchstone, thought Duke Senior was a little overdressed for the forest, and wondered whether "our" Corin should have a beard.  They were disappointed at some of the cuts.  They went for more snacks during the "Seven Ages of Man" monologue.  They looked at me knowingly when Audrey sang the right tune to "It was a Lover and His Lass".  They thought Rosalind was cute, although she whacked people too much with her stick.

Our class' favorite scene is when Orlando says he "can live no longer by thinking" and Silvius explains what it means to love (Act V Scene II).  The scene is cut short in the 1936 version.  This raised an outcry.  They wanted ALL the now-familiar lines.

In our class reading of "As You Like It", that scene had been a sort of tipping-point.  It was then that I knew for sure all of us were on the same page.  At the end of the reading, the kids had burst out laughing, then talked excitedly.  They wanted THIS scene for Family Night.  The other teacher and I had already cobbled together a script of short scenes for the end-of-year program, but I want you to know we took it apart and redid it.

Many times, especially at the beginning, students told me, "I don't get it."  Some of them had never read a real Shakespeare play.  I gave background, but tried not to explain too much.  I told them Shakespeare wrote for regular (16th Century) people.  I told them to grasp what they could and leave the rest, to listen to the rhythm if they couldn't catch the sense, to focus on the subject and verb in the sentence because the rest was decoration.  We paraphrased a scene into postmodern English.  We paraphrased in our narrations.  We made an ANI chart on the issue of whether Rosalind should have deceived Orlando.  One by one, week by week, students engaged, and by the day we read Act V Scene II... the last act, although not the last scene... all of us together appreciated Shakespeare.  "As You Like It" is now our play.

Next year I want to read Hamlet.

Encyclopedia of Children

Our book club is currently reading Chapter 4 6 of Charlotte Mason's third volume, School Education.  I found a helpful website:  Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society.  I haven't explored it too much yet, but the writing seems to be straightforward.  (It is an encyclopedia, after all.)  It is part of FAQs.org:

Brief biography of Pestalozzi

Brief biography of Froebel

Brief biography of Herbart

Teaching Composition and Feeding Souls

I am still thinking about writing programs.  Some folks from the LTW mentor list have taken time to email privately, giving me tremendous help toward understanding progym-- what it is, what it is not, how it compares with other things.

I'm getting sort of geeked up about progym.  I do not like writing programs as a general rule, so this is different for me.  (LTW was the first exception.  I still like it a lot.  I just wonder if something beforehand mightn't be amiss.)  I think Charlotte's audience must have already known about teaching composition, so she didn't give a lot of details... the way she didn't say much about math...  I don't know.  I did a search through Volumes 3 and 6 to confirm that I wasn't missing anything... either I don't get it, or she didn't go much beyond narration, copywork and dictation.  I may not understand what she meant by those terms.  Or maybe as a teacher I get in the way.  Or maybe life holds too many distractions for my kids.  I don't know.  I have one that is a natural writer and still struggles with argument and form.  I can't teach that without a practical map.  As a writer, I was poorly educated, and I can't find a practical map for middle/high school level composition in the CM Volumes.  If I am missing it, someone please point it out.  (I already know about the writing handbooks recommended at AO.  I have all of them.  They didn't help as much as I would have liked.  It is possible I did not use them properly.)

Beneath the thrill of possibly finding the 'answer', quotes like these keep me cautious:

"...these men... can read and write, think perversely, and follow an argument, though they are unable to detect a fallacy...why do so many... seem incapable of generous impulse, of reasoned patriotism, of seeing beyond the circle of their own interests...? These are the marks of educated persons... Why then are not these persons educated, and what have we given them in lieu of education?”  (CM Vol. 6)

What is education?  What is knowledge?

"Knowledge... is passed, like the light of a torch, from mind to mind, and the flame can be kindled at original minds only. Thought, we know, breeds thought; it is as vital thought touches our minds that our ideas are vitalized, and out of our ideas comes our conduct of life." (CM Vol. 6)


It is about more than discipline, more than form.

"...let us be careful that our disciplinary devices, and our mechanical devices to secure and tabulate the substance of knowledge, do not come between the children and that which is the soul of the book, the living thought it contains."  (CM Vol. 3)

Oh, criminy.  I wish someone would just tell me what to do.

How to Secure Students' Attention

(Taken from the introduction to Volume 6)  This is mostly for my own benefit.

First, what not to do:

1.  Don't depend on personal magnetism, force of influence, etc.  Yes, this works at the time, but it does little to develop the long-term habit of attention.  Your sparkling personality is simply the shiny thing of the moment.  When someone flashier comes along (say, a comical classmate or charismatic politician), the student's attention will stray.

2.  Don't depend on interest.  The student can go down rabbit trails in his spare time.  Knowledge gotten in lessons ought to be consecutive.

2.  Don't talk so much.  Who is learning if the teacher is narrating?  (My children have confessed that sometimes when they don't feel like narrating, they ask questions that they think will lead me to narrate myself.  According to them, I usually fall for it.  Oh yes.  My honest, wicked children and my naive, foolish self.)

3.  Don't ask many questions.  The only questions should be Socratic "for the purpose of moral conviction."

4.  Don't encourage competition or approval-seeking.  This chokes the child's innate desire for knowledge.  "It seemed to me that we teachers had unconsciously elaborated a system which should secure the discipline of the schools and the eagerness of the scholars,––by means of marks, prizes, and the like,––and yet eliminate that knowledge-hunger, itself the quite sufficient incentive to education."

What to do:

1.  Regulate the lessons as carefully as you do your kids' nutrition (which is actually not very careful at our house right now, but I'm working on it... ). Lessons should be evaluated for literary quality, beauty, and generous variety.

  2.  Be brief.  Introduce the lesson if you must, READ the passage (this should be the longest part of the lesson), have the kids narrate, then briefly offer one or two points if you must.  (If you have a lot to say, then write something.  Make sure it is clear, succinct and literary.  Then let your kids read it when they are ready.  If you don't have time to write something worth reading, you probably shouldn't lecture during lessons either.)

3.  Avoid monotony by reading the passage only once.  This also ensures enough time to read the large number of books Charlotte recommended.

4.  Require narration at the end of the reading.  Knowing they are required to narrate afterward (and that the teacher will not be narrating for them in her misguided attempt at elucidation) will help students pay attention in the first place.  (Aravis says the exception is when the student had a rough morning, ie., overslept, rushed, got in trouble, etc.  It is difficult to pay attention when you feel guilty and tired.  Which leads us to practical habit training, but that is another subject.  Sort of.)

5.  Respect the student's desire for knowledge, however hidden it might be.  "Poetry, history, romance, geography, travel, biography, science and sums are all moral foods, and must be presented to children without predigestion by the teacher."  For no reason may we limit the child's proper curriculum.  

6.  Teach students about their abilities.  Each one of us is capable of self-direction, and also has some capacity to relate intellectually, imaginatively and morally to the things and ideas we find in this world.  It is our duty to USE our abilities.  It is not okay to drift through life entertaining ourselves.  Ourselves is a great resource for this fortifying of the will.  Also Proverbs provides warnings and explains where to look for help.

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.)

Towards a Defense of Charlotte Mason by Cindy Rollins

"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

Toward a Philosophy of Education 

"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

Teaching from a Place of Stress 

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

Language Arts:  My Opinion 

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

The Classical Side of Charlotte Mason 

"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

Several recordings from the 2011 Society of Classical Learning 

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.

The Vertical Integration of Aphthonius' Progymnasmata 

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?

Free and Natural Development

"Probably no degree of loving intimacy will throw the closed doors of the child's nature permanently ajar, because, we may believe, the burden of the mystery of all this unintelligible world falls early upon the conscious soul, and each of us must beat out his conception of life for himself.

But it is much to a child to know that he may question, may talk of the thing that perplexes him, and that there is comprehension for his perplexities.

Effusive sympathy is a mistake, and bores a child when it does not make him silly. But just to know that you can ask and tell is a great outlet, and means, to the parent, the power of direction, and to the child, free and natural development."

CM Series, Volume 3

Purposeful, Determined... Gentleness

Someone shared this quote someplace recently, and it really struck me. I tend to take the "Well, you'll learn from hard experience, and don't blame me" approach a lot of times when the kids don't want to take my advice. But maybe I ought to tactfully and gently insist the kids follow it. (That's the problem. I have no tact, and my gentleness goes out the window when addressing foolishness.)

But there are times when the "relations are strained"; and of these, the moment when the child feels himself consciously a member of the school republic is one of the most trying. Now, all the tact of the parents is called into play. Now, more than ever, is it necessary that the child should be aware of the home authority, just that he may know how he stands, and how much he is free to give to the school. "Oh, mither, mither why gar ye no' mak' me do it?" was the cry of a poor ne'er-do-weel Scotch laddie who had fallen into disgrace through neglect of his work; and that is just what every schoolboy or schoolgirl has a right to say who does not feel the pressure of a firm hand at home during the period of school life. They have a right to turn round and reproach their parents for almost any failure in probity or power in after-life. But no mere assertion of authority will do: it is the old story of the sun and the wind and the traveller's cloak. It is in the force of all-mighty gentleness that parents are supreme; not feebleness, not inertness––there is no strength in these; but purposeful, determined gentleness, which carries its point, only "for it is right." "The servant of God must not strive," was not written for bishops and pastors alone, but is the secret of strength for every "bishop," or overlooker, of a household. --Vol. 5 p. 200-201, "The Relations Between School and Home Life"

Convicting.

Those Poor Boys in Volume 6

For the last few days, I have been thinking about the "pair of charming twins" Charlotte mentions in the last, or supplementary, chapter of Volume 6. These two young men had "the usual" preparatory school education and then "had ten or twelve years among most excellent opportunities" at university. They each had a burning desire to learn and were not afraid of the hard work of study. Yet "they left school thoroughly uneducated".

This is so sad. HOW did this happen?

I'm not going to tell you how it happened. I don't really know. What I am going to do is piece through the last chapter of Vol. 6 and see if I can figure it out.

The name of the chapter is "Too Wide a Mesh". It refers to the educational system in early 20th Century England. The system is compared to a fishing net in which the holes are so large that all but the biggest fish escape-- "escape" being, in this analogy, that they get away without an education.

Back to the brothers-- after University, one of them leads and adventurous life, while the other moves to the city and studies in his spare time, encouraging his brother to do likewise. He sets to work on a "queer set of books", meaning, I suppose, that his studies are haphazard rather than well-planned. He sets about to learn by exercising his mind with memorization. His own description of his efforts really makes it sound like intellectual calisthenics:

"Anyone can improve his memory: the best way is by learning by heart––no matter what––and then when you think you know it, say it or write it. After two or three days you are sure to forget it again and then instead of looking at the book 'strain your mind' and try to remember it. Above all things always keep your mind employed."

That "no matter what" really leaps out at me. Learning *anything* by heart will give you an education? I wonder what exactly he thought he wanted that he hadn't got at University? No doubt his school failed to educate him, but what was HIS definition of education?

I love Charlotte's description of the sort of "Mind Gym" this fellow set up for himself and his brother:

They ran an intellectual race across a ploughed field after heavy rain and the marvel is that they made way at all.

The waste of it. She says they had enough zeal to have been great statesmen if they had been properly educated.

The young man finally comes to the conclusion that he and his brother "go at a subject all wrong." Charlotte again:

These letters are pathetic documents and, that they are reassuring also, let us be thankful. They do go to prove that the desire of knowledge is inextinguishable whatever schools do or leave undone; but have these nothing to answer for when a pursuit which should yield ever recurring refreshment becomes dogged labour over heavy roads with little pleasure in progress?

Where is the delight? And yet they had enough enthusiasm and energy and will to supply ten young men.

Charlotte says one thing they lacked was a cultivated sense of humor. She seems to get a bit off-topic with the following statement, but think of it in terms of intellectual calisthenics:

Perhaps the youth addicted to sports usually fails to appreciate delicate nonsense; sports are too strenuous to admit of a subtler, more airy kind of play...

Charlotte's conclusion:

We have to face two difficulties. We do not believe in children as intellectual persons nor in knowledge as requisite and necessary for intellectual life.

:sigh: We have to actually give them knowledge rather than simply tools for thinking. God already gave them those. What they need is knowledge to chew on and digest. The really sad thing about these brothers is that they had mind-food right in front of them, but they were so occupied with the knives and forks that they never actually tasted it. Sort of like savages that have no idea of bread.

Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread?
--Isaiah 55:2a

An Atmosphere, A Discipline, A Life

Education is...

relational _{thought-environment}

an atmosphere...

physical _habit

a discipline...

spiritual _ideas

a life.