From the archives : A woeful feeling

First posted June 2007.

"I have a woeful feeling, as if the double O of doom were sticking in my throat." ~~ James Thurber

From [an] ongoing discussion about Big Words (of course some people would call it just blog chatter, since we're all supposed to be non-professionals not entitled to consider these things):

The Deputy Headmistress weighs in again on all of this, and mentions a high-ranking clergyman who says (in big words) that he would like to simplify church language for the rest of us.

"Why is he allowed words the rest of us aren't? Is it because they taste yucky, so we won't like them anyway?"

Ah! I love it, it makes so much sense. Not that any of us believe in a conspiracy to limit our language or turn us all into Alphas, Betas...Epsilons...
The DHM's reference to "yucky" refers to a motherly deception she once tried to keep one of her offspring from asking for the pop she was drinking. (She is very, very sorry now and will never do it again.) It reminds me of some friends of ours who used to give their toddler plain yogurt while they were eating ice cream. It worked--until he got old enough to notice that there was a difference! (And it NEVER worked when the younger ones came along.)

And goodness knows I do like yogurt myself--I have some yogging on the heating pad as we speak. But speaking strictly in terms of "something somebody else has that's better than what you've been given"--is it possible that we've been gradually slipped more and more yogurt in place of the Vanilla Chocolate Chip that might give us ideas about Mocha Almond Fudge or even White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle?

Like our toddler friend (who's now an almost Goliath-sized teenager), demand your semantic rights as loudly as you can, and be a voice for the vocabulary-impaired.

"Black showed his teeth and made a restless gesture. 'Taking a single letter from the alphabet,' he said, 'should make life simpler.'

"'I don't see why. Take the F from life and you have lie. It's adding a letter to simple that makes it simpler. Taking a letter from hoarder makes it harder.'"--James Thurber, The Wonderful O

To read today: The Common Room on the vocabulary of good books

The Deputy Headmistress has a few well-chosen words about allowing children to climb the library shelves, so to speak.

Herbartianism Made Fun and Easy, Part Seven: Education is making a life dictionary

Part Six is here.

Chapter Seven of Herbartian Psychology is one of the most original in the book, I think. I don't know how much of it is Herbart's idea and how much is John Adams', but anyway it's worth reading. You can, you know--it's right there on Archive.org.

This is how it starts: someone in the 17th century named Isaac Habrecht is quoted (by Simon Somerville Laurie in a book on Comenius) as saying that it would be handy if we could all get tickets to Noah's Ark, because then we could learn all the names of all the animals all at once, without having to go out and learn them bit by bit. (When I first read this chapter, I wondered if "Noah's Ark" might be an early English zoo or menagerie, but apparently Habrecht  did mean the original Noah's Ark.)

Adams, speaking for Herbart, says no, actually, that wouldn't work well at all. In fact, trying to learn all the animals at once, out of their normal habitats and without any other context, would be about as interesting as trying to learn all the words in the dictionary. At once. (He admits that he tried that when he was young...the dictionary, that is...but gave it up.) It's like trying to remember the names of everyone you get introduced to at a meeting or party; again, people there are away from their normal lives and contexts, "not their natural selves, yet Isaac calmly assumes that the animals in the Ark were at their ease."

Yes, the Ark idea is useful if you want to compare one animal with another. But, says Adams, "the great defect of Ark education...[is that it] tears away objects from their natural surroundings, and thus renders them meaningless; then it tries to make up for this loss of meaning by studying with great elaboration the details of the objects thus unnaturally isolated." It reminds me of Mr. Gradgrind's classroom in Dickens, where Bitzer gives the "correct" definition of a horse. Adams criticizes even "school museums," if their aim is "to save the pupil the labour of wandering about to pick up knowledge for himself." I find this fascinating in view of Adams' Herbartian leanings, with his often-repeated phrases about teachers being right on the spot to take care of the apperception masses. This sounds much closer to Charlotte Mason's insistence that the only real education is self-education--which is not a plea for unschooling, but just a different way to say that you really have to learn things for yourself. Adams talks about two dangerous fallacies in education: trying to save the pupils time, and trying to save them trouble.

"It seems eminently sensible, not to say humane, to save children as much labour as possible. But it is necessary for parents and teachers alike to remember that children are not sent to school to be saved trouble, but to be taught how to take trouble. Taking pains is one of the main things to be learnt at school."

But school museums don't bother Adams so much as teachers who are "forever preparing [a] little list of specific gravities, or genders, or constitutional changes, or words sounding the same but spelled differently. These are all little arks, each with its more or less choice selection of animals which can be thus more quickly known than they could be had the pupil to find them out for himself in their natural place." This is a wonderful image, and it can apply to so many not-so-good educational tools: reading textbooks full of facts, dates, and vocabulary lists, for example, instead of allowing that content to appear in the natural context of "many living books."

"For Isaac has not been left without successors who have marched with the times. The short cut to knowledge is not the menagerie or the museum. The Ark of Arks in education is the dictionary."

Dictionaries are bad? Doesn't every schoolroom need a dictionary? Yes, says Adams, but (pay attention!) "we must work up to the Ark, not down from it. We must go to the dictionary to find the meaning of words we have actually met; we must not go to it as to an armoury of words where we may choose what is best suited to our purpose." "The dictionary meaning may be compared to the skeleton of the full meaning; something fixed and definite, to which person who uses it adds his own special flesh and blood."

And then this is the best quote in the chapter:

"May we not, without putting an undue strain upon the words, say that education consists in the making of dictionaries?...The pupil must first learn to use his own private internal dictionary, and then learn to compare and correct it with the standard dictionary."

So a lifetime of learning, in a way, is about making our own mental dictionaries. Or encyclopedias, if you like. As adults, when we want to learn things, we wander. We poke around, we discover, we ask questions, we read, and then we add, line on line. Teachers must also allow students the privilege of wandering, of trouble, of "taking pains." When we require them to learn large amounts of freeze-dried, devitalized information, it shouldn't surprise us at all when they either resist altogether, or obediently try to learn the words without understanding the meaning. There is a right time for "arks," for charts and lists, even (I am sure of it!) for pre-printed timelines! There is definitely a time for seeing how things fit together. But we can't start there. Arks are our ending point, not our beginning.

Part Eight is here.

You know why Charlotte Mason preferred North's Plutarch? (or, don't eat your fingers) (Updated)

Which edition and/or translation of Plutarch's Lives is the best? 

Charlotte Mason voted for North's translation-of-a-translation, in this (Blackie) edition and this (Cambridge University Press) edition (Google Books preview.  Google Books has it labelled wrong: it says it's Dryden/Clough, but it's not, it's selected Lives translated by North and edited by P. Giles.)  (Actually, with the Blackie edition--I think they may have even bought the individual Lives each term, as in this one.  It seems to make sense, especially since the Programmes state that the books cost only a shilling each.)

* * * * * * * * * * * * *
UPDATE ON THAT:  I figured it out, based on the few Programmes that we do have online.  It's even simpler than it first appeared.  After I saw that Brutus and Coriolanus booklet, I couldn't figure out why there weren't more--once you start looking for the Picture Study booklets, for example, they're all over the place, terms and terms of them.  But the only other individual Blackie title I found was Julius Caesar.  And the other funny thing is that the P. Giles book only contains a few Lives:  Timoleon, Paulus Aemilius, Agis and Cleomenes, Tiberius and Caius Gracchi.  That's it.

So it was a case, I think, of using exactly what was available!  In Programme 90 (spring 1921), they did Timoleon.  Programme 91, Paulus Aemilius (big surprise).  Programme 92, Form III did Julius Caesar (it fit their history) and Form IV did Agis and Cleomenes.  Programme 93, Form III did Coriolanus, Form IV did Tiberius and Caius Gracchi.  Programme 94, everybody did Brutus.   And that's as far as we have.

(2015 update: you might like to know that Oxford's P. Giles Selections is being reprinted!)
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The sentence below shows you why

Dryden:
But the Carthaginians who were left in Rhegium perceiving, when the assembly was dissolved, that Timoleon had given them the go-by, were not a little vexed to see themselves out-witted, much to the amusement of the Rhegians, who could not but smile to find Phoenicians complain of being cheated.

Loeb Classical Library, 1920, by Bernadotte Perrin:
But the Carthaginians in Rhegium, after Timoleon had put to sea and the assembly had been dissolved, were indignant, and in their discomfiture afforded amusement to the Rhegians, seeing that, though Phoenicians, they were not pleased with what was effected by deceit.

North:
But the captains of the Carthaginians, that were in Rhegium, when they knew that Timoleon was under sail and gone, after that the assembly of the Council was broken up, they were ready to eat their fingers for spite to see themselves thus finely mocked and deceived.

Linked from Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival at North Laurel Home & School.

Me not just dumb monster, me read Plutarch

In response to Wine Dark Sea's "Celebrating The Long Sentence", which was a response to this post on The Slow Language Movement

Our Apprentice has been reading Frankenstein, and she pointed out this passage from Chapter 15:

"One night, during my accustomed visit to the neighbouring wood, where I collected my own food, and brought home firing for my protectors, I found on the ground a leathern portmanteau, containing several articles of dress and some books. I eagerly seized the prize, and returned with it to my hovel. Fortunately the books were written in the language the elements of which I had acquired at the cottage; they consisted of Paradise Lost, a volume of Plutarch's Lives, and the Sorrows of Werter....

"I can hardly describe to you the effect of these books. They produced in me an infinity of new images and feelings that sometimes raised me to ecstasy, but more frequently sunk me into the lowest dejection... .

"The volume of Plutarch's Lives, which I possessed, contained the histories of the first founders of the ancient republics. This book had a far different effect upon me from the Sorrows of Werter. I learned from Werter's imaginations despondency and gloom: but Plutarch taught me high thoughts; he elevated me above the wretched sphere of my own reflections to admire and love the heroes of past ages. Many things I read surpassed my understanding and experience. I had a very confused knowledge of kingdoms, wide extents of country, mighty rivers, and boundless seas. But I was perfectly unacquainted with towns, and large assemblages of men. The cottage of my protectors had been the only school in which I had studied human nature; but this book developed new and mightier scenes of action. I read of men concerned in public affairs, governing or massacring their species. I felt the greatest ardour for virtue rise within me, and abhorrence for vice, as far as I understood the signification of those terms, relative as they were, as I applied them, to pleasure and pain alone. Induced by these feelings, I was of course led to admire peaceable lawgivers, Numa, Solon, and Lycurgus, in preference to Romulus and Theseus. The patriarchal lives of my protectors caused these impressions to take a firm hold on my mind; perhaps, if my first introduction to humanity had been made by a young soldier, burning for glory and slaughter, I should have been imbued with different sensations."

I pointed out that if the monster learned nothing else from Plutarch, he at least picked up the habit of writing in very LONG sentences!

"I have a woeful feeling, as if the double O of doom were sticking in my throat."

From the ongoing discussion about Big Words (of course some people would call it just blog chatter, since we're all supposed to be non-professionals not entitled to consider these things):

The Deputy Headmistress weighs in again on all of this, and mentions a high-ranking clergyman who says (in big words) that he would like to simplify church language for the rest of us.

"Why is he allowed words the rest of us aren't? Is it because they taste yucky, so we won't like them anyway?"

Ah! I love it, it makes so much sense. Not that any of us believe in a conspiracy to limit our language or turn us all into Alphas, Betas...Epsilons...

The DHM's reference to "yucky" refers to a motherly deception she once tried to keep one of her offspring from asking for the pop she was drinking. (She is very, very sorry now and will never do it again.) It reminds me of some friends of ours who used to give their toddler plain yogurt while they were eating ice cream. It worked--until he got old enough to notice that there was a difference! (And it NEVER worked when the younger ones came along.)

And goodness knows I do like yogurt myself--I have some yogging on the heating pad as we speak. But speaking strictly in terms of "something somebody else has that's better than what you've been given"--is it possible that we've been gradually slipped more and more yogurt in place of the Vanilla Chocolate Chip that might give us ideas about Mocha Almond Fudge or even White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle?

Like our toddler friend (who's now an almost Goliath-sized teenager), demand your semantic rights as loudly as you can, and be a voice for the vocabulary-impaired.

"Black showed his teeth and made a restless gesture. 'Taking a single letter from the alphabet,' he said, 'should make life simpler.'

"'I don't see why. Take the F from life and you have lie. It's adding a letter to simple that makes it simpler. Taking a letter from hoarder makes it harder.'"--James Thurber, The Wonderful O

Charlotte Mason might have liked Mighton

It's already the weekend and I'm still working on some of the things that stood out from last weekend's papers. In the midst of thinking about Big Words, I put off writing about another Big Idea, this one from the Globe and Mail's Books section last Saturday. Here's the review (by Keith Oatley) of John Mighton's book The End of Ignorance: Multiplying Our Human Potential.
Check out these quotes:

"As Mighton observes, there are differences in people's abilities. But do we want a school system that first accentuates such differences, and then takes them to define who people are?"

"When [Mighton] was younger, he worked as math tutor for primary-school children. He was struck by how even children labelled hopeless could learn math by means of simple procedures. It turns out that, approached in this way, math was enjoyable for children, among the easier things to learn rather than among the more difficult."

"He is brilliant at breaking down math problems into parts that children can do easily, which can then form more complex wholes....as they complete each step and repeat it with small variations, unforeseen abilities emerge, sources of pride and confidence for the children."--all quotes by Keith Oatley, Globe and Mail review

I don't know anything about the JUMP program, but that sounds very CM-friendly to me.

Big Word Response

The Deputy Headmistress reprints an argument over the word "behooves," posted to the comments on the Globe and Mail's Big Words article. It behooves me to point you over there for this interesting exchange, and also some ideas on children's writing from Phyllis McGinley.

"It Pays Makes-Some-People-Very-Nervous-That-You-Want To Increase Your Word Power"

Okay, have you had time yet to read the Big Words article? (First mentioned here.)

Is it undemocratic and elitist to celebrate words? Should those who do have large vocabularies back off and shut up because it might make the less erudite feel bad? (erudite: characterized by great knowledge; learned or scholarly: an erudite professor; an erudite commentary.) Did you catch that first line of the article: "With the Lord of Loquacity on trial in Chicago and schools playing down language to level the playing field...." [italics mine]

How long ago was it we were talking about that example from The Incredibles?

Helen: Right now, honey, the world just wants us to fit in, and to fit in, we gotta be like everyone else.
Dash: But Dad always said our powers were nothing to be ashamed of, our powers made us special.
Helen: Everyone's special, Dash.
Dash: [muttering] Which is another way of saying no one is.

But that whole angle of level playing field, undemocratic, elitist is just missing the point. It's not about a few people having talent for words and time enough to enjoy them (I still love Burgess Meredith). Our collective gift of language is one of the most democratic things we have (please take "democratic" as a positive idea there). It is being able to read and understand the greatest ideas that have been written, and express our own as well, that keeps us from slavery--including slavery to propaganda. What kind of a Brave New World would we be living in if we were limited--by political correctness or any other such foolishness--to using "story" for "narrative," "very big" for "prodigious," and "teach" for "instruct?" (See the "Forbidden Words" sidebar in the article, about OISE professor Clive Beck, who believes that "teachers should avoid unnecessarily big words so that they can 'talk on the same level' as their students.") With such spavined vocabularies, we would be locked out of some of the most influential books ever written--like Common Sense (thank you, DHM). (spavined: adjective 1. suffering from or affected with spavin. 2. being of or marked by a decrepit or broken-down condition: a spavined old school bus abandoned in a field.) What's democratic about that?

How do you teach or learn new vocabulary--by endless drills, by writing out definitions? I can think of several more effective ways:

1. By listening to those who use language powerfully--and that would, we hope, include the teachers Clive Beck wants to limit. (Can you imagine getting "bleeped" for using a phrase like "nefarious villain?")

2. By reading what those same people have written--and though that road may end with books written for adults, it begins much earlier. If we wanted to limit our children's literary menu to books using the easiest and most commonly used words, we wouldn't have read them A.A. Milne, Beatrix Potter ("I am affronted," said Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit), William Steig, the Bible, Jacobs' English Folk and Fairy Tales, Lewis Carroll, Graham Oakley...or Melissa Wiley.

Our Crayons (just turned six) is reading Anne of Green Gables to herself--she doesn't want it read to her. The motivation was that she found a small porcelain Anne doll at one yard sale, and then a copy of Anne at the next one. We already owned two copies, but she wanted this one for her own self, to go with her doll--and it was her quarter. She sits in my grandfather's little rocking chair with her doll beside her, and reads it while Mr. Fixit reads the newspaper. It's way beyond her vocabulary and experience, and I didn't expect her to get past the first couple of pages--but she has read eight chapters already (and did allow me to read her the ninth). I'm sure she skips what she doesn't understand, but she can still tell you a lot about the story, particularly about Anne's imaginary friends. Would she be better off with an adapted version? Define "better off."

3. By reading books that lead us gently through unfamiliar territory--like Melissa's Martha books, set in Scotland in the 1700's. (Want to read an excerpt? And then there's the whole sad business of their current state of abridgement, which is itself a perfect example of where all this is taking us.) (2012 update: sorry, both of these links are now defunct.) Again it was Crayons who first asked to be read these books. She's now acquainted with box bed, waulking wool, governess, kirk, peat, spindle, flax, loch, dustgown, Hogmanay, and pianoforte. When I asked her if those were hard words, she said (I quote): "Kids know DUST and kids know GOWN so you just put them together and make DUSTGOWN." What's a governess? "A lady who takes care of you." No problem.

4. By actively seeking out the specialized vocabulary that we need to learn to do the things we want to do! Sometimes for pleasure, sometimes out of necessity. Pod in The Borrowers Aloft has a very short time to learn the vocabulary (and thus the technology) of building a hot-air balloon [actually it was gas-filled]; his understanding of words like "ballast" and "envelope" is what allows his family to escape from their kidnappers.

From Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH to Roald Dahl's Matilda, the key to freedom has always been reading, reading, reading--and those are just the fictional examples.

Books fall open, you fall in,
delighted where you've never been;
hear voices not once heard before,
reach world on world through door on door;
find unexpected keys to things locked up beyond imaginings.
What might you be, perhaps become,
because one book is somewhere?....
--David McCord

Consider what happens if we lose the ability to look beyond our own place in time and space. We become small-minded, small-souled, wrapped up only in our immediate interests...and vulnerable because we are unable to think clearly.

"But they couldn't do it,
for their poor brains were such
That they couldn't think often,
and hadn't thought much."
--Virginia Kahl, The Duchess Bakes a Cake

Freedom lies in our ability to discern truth and choose right actions. Leadership, courage, hope, conscience, character, faith, critical thinking, magnanimity--all those things are available to those who take and read--but only if we develop the vocabulary to understand.

P.S. Clive Beck responds here, but I can't get a link to the full text--sorry. This link takes you to a few other letters in response--also just the beginnings, though--I hate these subscriber-only newspaper sites! I liked Eileen Reardon's comment: "My first reaction on reading the list of 'unnecessarily big words' Clive Beck would like to remove from teachers' mouths was: Nuts! (Simple enough?) Then I started the cryptic crossword and had a horrible thought: If Prof. Beck has his way, he won't merely be gutting the language of nuance, he'll be taking the fun out of crosswords. Egad!"

P.P.S. One more comment here, linking to the Common Room post "Interesting comments".

Ruskin on masked words

"There are masked words droning and skulking about us....which nobody understands, but which everybody uses, and most people will also fight for, live for, or even die for, fancying they mean this, or that, or the other, or things dear to them: for such words wear chameleon cloaks--"groundlion" cloaks, of the color of the ground of any man's fancy: on that ground they lie in wait, and rend him with a spring from it. There were never creatures of prey so mischievous, never diplomatists so cunning, never poisoners so deadly, as these masked words; they are the unjust stewards of all men's ideas; whatever fancy or favorite instinct a man most cherishes, he gives to his favorite masked word to take care of for him; the word at last comes to have an infinite power over him,--you cannot get at him but by its ministry."

--John Ruskin, "Of Kings' Treasuries," in Sesame and Lilies