Thursday, July 20, 2006

Books, more books

Finished:

1. The Talisman, by Sir Walter Scott. Heads will roll. Ewww... But it was an excellent story--knights and honour and chivalry and jousting in the middle of the desert.

2. The Treasure Seekers, by E. Nesbit, with Ponytails.  One of the Bastable Children books.

3. Ourselves and Philosophy of Education (re-read), both by Charlotte Mason. These two books are very closely connected--if you're into jotting in margins, you can cross-reference them back and forth in many places. In fact, two different parts of Philosophy are pretty much summaries of Ourselves. One of the points that keeps hitting me as I've been rereading through the Home Education Series (Charlotte Mason's books) is that The Curriculum is a vital part of what she's talking about (although some people have misbegotten the idea that a specific curriculum isn't central to CM), and yet it's not where you need to start working through her ideas, and it doesn't even take up a great amount of space in the books. She did give lots of detail on what school lessons should be like, and education, schools, and children were obviously where her heart was; but that was just one application of her bigger picture. I think that's why she made that somewhat mystical comment to a student teacher at her college: "My dear, you have come here to learn to live." (The Story of Charlotte Mason, by Essex Cholmondeley)

Working on:

1. A Biblical Psychology of Learning, by Ruth Beechick. You can see it with its new title here.

2. The Wouldbegoods (second in the Bastable series), with Ponytails

3. Finishing up some odds and ends and things I started too long ago.

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