From the archives: Northrop Frye, on young poets and weasel words

First posted April 2005 

Two nice quotes from Northrop Frye:

"As long as [a young poet] is writing primarily for himself, his thought will be rooted in private associations, images which are linked to ideas through his own hidden and unique memory. This is not his fault: he can write only what takes shape in his mind. It is his job to keep on writing and not get stuck at that point....Then he is likely to pass through a social, allegorical, or metaphysical phase, an awkward and painful phase for all concerned. Finally, a mysterious but unmistakable ring of authority begins to come into his writing, and simultaneously the texture simplifies, meaning and imagery become transparent, and the poetry becomes a pleasure instead of a duty to read.....Every once in awhile, we run across a poet who reminds us that when the lyrical impulse reaches maturity of expression, it is likely to be, as most lyrical poetry has always been, lilting in rhythm, pastoral in imagery, and uncomplicated in thought." ~~ Northrop Frye, "Letters in Canada," 1953 (reviews collected in The Bush Garden)

"He realizes that the enemy of poetry is not social evil but slipshod language, the weasel words that betray the free mind: he realizes that to create requires an objective serenity beyond all intruding moral worries about atomic bombs and race prejudice." ~~ Northrop Frye, speaking of Canadian poet Louis Dudek

Quote for the day: the democratic right to grammar

"Since we live in a competitive society in which the struggle for survival is primary, power exists, and power will have its symbols. Literacy is a far better tool and symbol of empowerment than any other, even money...However much you may hate grammar, think how much better a system ours is in which even the lowest peasant can achieve literary equality by learning rules of writing, spelling, grammar, and diction that are available equally to all and that apply equally to all." ~~ David R. Williams, Sin Boldly!: Dr. Dave's Guide to Writing the College Paper

From the archives: Start with a word

First posted October 2014. Lydia was doing AO Year 8.

"The smallest significant element in a book is, of course, a single word."  ~~ Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book

Today's plans and readings:

Three pages from How to Read a Book.  Adler says that in the early chapters of his book, he was explaining how to break a book down.  Now he's going in the opposite direction: starting with the smallest units, the words and terms; then building up to propositions (which are composed of terms) and arguments (which are composed of propositions).  Or you can think of it as going from words / phrases, to sentences, to collections of sentences (paragraphs).

Picture Talk: Titian's "The Madonna of the Rabbit" or "Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and a Rabbit." 

Poetry:  Sidney, "My true love hath my heart"; e.e. cummings, "i carry your heart."

Some good blog stuff to pass on

A couple of blog posts you really shouldn't miss this week:

The Deputy Headmistress at The Common Room has started a series about the Charlotte Mason approach to composition. This is not just theory; the DHM has a whole lot of years of experience with this, both ups and downs.

The latest Seven Quick Takes post on Afterthoughts has a couple of good links to challenging articles. Plus a cute baby goat.

That's all for now! (Really, there's enough in there to keep anybody busy for awhile.)

Quote for the day: on words and writing

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug." -- Mark Twain.

Countdown to School: Middle School Language Arts, Part Two

So what are "we" talking about, when we talk about Language Arts at this level?  What am I talking about, meaning what Dollygirl should learn this year?  Is it literature?  Is it grammar?  Is it that thing called Communication, which can either be one of the most important concepts ever, or just a weasel word for dumbed-down English?  If Charlotte Mason didn't label anything as "Language Arts," is that because almost everything in her curriculum involved language, reading, oral and written skills?  How do we stay true to CM, but also stay current, without turning everything into a podcast?

"To try to teach literature by starting with the applied use of words, or 'effective communication', as it's often called, then gradually work into literature through the more documentary forms of prose fiction and finally into poetry, seems to me a futile procedure. If literature is to be properly taught, we have to start at its centre, which is poetry, then work outwards to literary prose, then outwards from there to the applied languages of business and professions and ordinary life."--Northrop Frye, The Educated Imagination

So no, I'm not talking especially about grammar.  That's over to one side, almost a separate subject.  Like arithmetic practice when you also have bigger math ideas to focus on.  (Mathematics, as one math history book we used to have showed us, is like a great big tree with a lot of branches, and arithmetic is just one branch.  But that's another post.)

And it's not about spelling, at least not now, not for us.  Dollygirl did some work with All About Spelling a few years ago, and that helped her out a lot.  Now when I dictate paragraphs to her, prepared or unprepared, she usually does so well that it's hard to stump her.  Her handwriting is another story; so I've been having her do dictation on the computer.

But handwriting isn't the biggest part of Language Arts either.  Yes, it's a question, especially these days when I've read that many schools don't even teach cursive writing (can you imagine?), and especially when Dollygirl still does have some issues with cursive, but it's not the core.

So what are we back to?  Reading.  Writing.  Reading what?  Writing what, and how?  Even the Ambleside Online "Language Arts Scope and Sequence" isn't extensive at this level:  it's basically grammar, narration, dictation, and copywork, with a note that if you have to set something aside at this stage, you should keep the dictation going instead of the copywork.  One key is that "narration" covers a great deal of ground.  Another is that, looking at either Ambleside Online's booklist for the year, or any of the original PUS programmes, there's a high level of reading competence assumed, and not a lot of hand-holding.  Again, maybe that's what it all comes down to:  Charlotte Mason didn't talk much about Language Arts per se, because they were just doing it.  As Mortimer J. Adler says in the first chapter of How to Read a Book, the assumption used to be that you read because you wanted to learn.  Reading and learning were almost synonymous...and sometimes reading to learn meant freedom or even outright rebellion.

Maybe that's still the truth.

The textbook I looked at has a great deal of emphasis on "critical thinking," but from a "self-expression" kind of viewpoint.  What do you think about this or that issue?  The culminating project--which can be done in several ways, from a formal essay to a photo-essay--is about one's own view of the "global family" or  "human family."  Not that I have anything against the big questions, the big ideas--the normative questions, themes of heroism and so on are, what's the word I want, imperative, indispensable, vital.  But there's more than one issue there that I trip over.  Not only that that theme risks becoming a bit one-worldish and political...some people would just think that "the human family" is a nice, peaceful, inclusive thing to think about.  Could even be part of a Christian textbook.  No, it's, first of all, that overemphasis again on the centrality, almost the infallibility, of the seventh-graders' viewpoint on how the world works; not that I don't think seventh-graders can think, but, for Pete's sake, they're twelve- and thirteen-year-olds, with both bigger and smaller concerns...and while allowing them to pontificate on the global family may turn their attention somewhat away from their own issues...and this is the thing I'm stretching for, so stick with me...I don't think the material that's being given to them (in school, in this book, in the contemporary, public-school approach to Language Arts and education as a whole) is going to speak much to the bigger ones.

If you're going to ask the big questions, you had better provide a means to at least look for the big answers. And I don't think a seventh-grade language textbook is going to be the place to find them, at least not on its own.

Important Postscript:

I was going to say, "stay tuned for Part Three" and leave it at that, but something funny (and suggestive, as CM would say) happened. We are having some tree work done this morning in the Treehouse yard. (Aftermath of the quite violent storms last month.) One of the tree guys said that he had planned to put a bolt into one of the trees, but he couldn't do it this morning, because his drill was broken. Mr. Fixit told him to hold on. He disappeared into the workshop and came back with his late grandpa's 1950's brace and bit. The tree guy was very impressed.  "Do you know how hard it is to find good equipment like this?" Grandpa left us many of the tools we need. We just have to know how to use them. And provide sufficient amounts of material (mind-food) to make it worthwhile.

Image from OldToolHeaven.com.

Countdown to School: Middle School Language Arts, Part One

Part Two is here.
Part Three is here.

It's five weeks till school, and this week I'm working on Language Arts, that school subject that didn't exist for Charlotte Mason.

I have a seventh grader this year.  We're up to "middle school."  It's time to graduate our methods from the elementary level, to do more, ask more, think in new ways.  But still, what's core is reading and writing--right?

I look at the provincial standards for grade seven Language curriculum--the headings are Reading, Writing, Listening/Speaking, and Media; but the actual requirements are pretty nebulous.  Do we even mean the same things by Reading and Writing?

Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I look at the publisher's website for a popular public school Grade 7 language textbook.  The units are cool, there's lots of media awareness, some neat poems and stories; somebody has obviously put lots of thought and work into this book.  Maybe that's the problem--the teachers are having more fun than the students. When I try to apply that outline to the amount of reading we have planned, I run into trouble:  are we overloading, or are they underloading?  There's something else that troubles me about it. When the "preview" to the first poem in the book is longer than the poem itself, there's something wrong.  Didn't Charlotte say, somewhere, that we package things up so neatly that nothing can possibly get lost...but that nothing else can get in?

Well, there's one thing I do like about the textbook, kind of.  Dividing up the year into half-term units makes sense, and having a few smaller writing assignments plus one larger project planned for each unit would also work.  I find a teacher's grade 7 webpage divided into similar groupings, but using "real books," and his approach is to assign one "critical" and one "creative" assignment for each.  Yes, we could do that too; not for every book on the list, but for the major ones.

Browsing the grade 7 lists, I come across one of the last places I would have looked for help:  the World Book Typical Course of Study, that's been reprinted all over the Internet for years.  Can someone explain why a short list like this is closer to our CM plans than any current government outline?  It certainly wasn't designed with Charlotte Mason or homeschooling in mind...but maybe it's just older.

• Improving reading skills--yep, Mr. Adler is covering that.
• Literary terms--yep, we're doing The Grammar of Poetry.
• Novels, short stories, plays--yep.
• Myths, legends, ballads--Age of Fable.  Sigurd of the Volsungs.
• Types of poetry--see number 2.
• Biography and autobiography--got it covered.
• Planning and producing dramatizations
• Speech activities--like narrating?
• Listening skills--you have to listen before you can narrate.
• Refining dictionary skills
• Spelling
• Parts of speech--that would be Easy Grammar Plus.
• Person, number, gender of nouns and pronouns
• Punctuation of conversation
• Clauses and phrases
• Compound sentences
• Writing descriptions, reports, journals, and letters--yes, all good things to write.
• Note taking and outlining--Mr. Adler talks about that too.
• Extending reference skills: atlases, directories, encyclopedias, periodicals, on-line information services, CD-ROMs, and other electronic reference material
• Library organization

Thank you, World Book.  That makes me feel a whole lot better.

Stay tuned for Part Two, or, when Language Arts starts to make more sense.

Linked from the Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival: Citizenship at The Common Room.

To communicate with...words (Hidden Art, The Writing Chapter)

If one of Edith Schaeffer's main messages in The Hidden Art of Homemaking is that art communicates...

and that the forms of homemaking art she has already discussed (such as music, graphic art, decorating, flowers, food) communicate, non-verbally, something about the Creator, something of the beauty of His creation, something generally of beauty and truth...to put it another way, they are a sort of mostly-unspoken message that communicates what we believe (that there is a Creator God, that he has created us as individuals, that we are created in His image, meaning we share some of his attributes including something of His creativity)...

then is it paradoxical that the writing chapter seems the most difficult so far to place into that framework?

Maybe it's because when we think of a home, homemaking, we think visually, not verbally.  Other than maybe a quotation on the fridge, or an embroidered or stencilled motto, or something we've stuck up for education or inspiration in the homeschooling space, words themselves don't tend to be part of the homemaking scenery, or at least the permanent decoration of a room.  Books, magazines, newspapers, yes; but words as words, no, at least in Western culture; maybe verbally, through people conversing or singing, or heard on the radio, and of course all over the peanut butter jars and cereal boxes;  but not (usually) on the wall, not on the plate, not arranged artistically and then painted or photographed as a still life.  A quilt, a tree, a vase of flowers, a bowl of apples, a piano concerto all seem to have a more fluid way of coming into our field of vision (or hearing), speaking more strongly to anyone who comes within range than, say, a sermon, a paragraph, or even a poem, that has to be read from beginning to end, top to bottom. 

And, in fact, that's a big part of what Edith is trying to get us to do with all these hidden arts of homemaking: use visual (or musical, or culinary) language to communicate that God exists, that He created the world, that individuals matter because God created them in His image, that God loves us, and that Christians care for each other. The whole point is to be able to say those things in a kind of visual and active shorthand, rather than offending or boring people with streams of God-talk. Charlotte Mason said much the same thing: that parents should reserve direct talk about God for particularly meaningful moments; not that Deuteronomy is wrong where it says that we should speak of God when we rise up, walk on the way etc., but just that it's easy to weary children (or grownups) with endless religious verbiage.

So where does that leave our poor little unpretty words?

"To try to teach literature by starting with the applied use of words, or 'effective communication', as it's often called, then gradually work into literature through the more documentary forms of prose fiction and finally into poetry, seems to me a futile procedure. If literature is to be properly taught, we have to start at its centre, which is poetry, then work outwards to literary prose, then outwards from there to the applied languages of business and professions and ordinary life."--Northrop Frye, The Educated Imagination

The words may not be decorative, but they're still important. What did people do at L'Abri besides hike in the mountains, eat orange rolls, and play guitars (and, according to Edith, do an awful lot of laundry and dishes?)  Talked.  Talked and talked and talked.  Sometimes they listened to tapes of talking.  Sometimes they read and then talked. 

Maybe, to try to combine Northrop Frye and Edith, the poetry they began with was a tea table, or the healing effects of working in the garden.  In one of the L'Abri-related books...I think maybe it was For the Children's Sake...a guest is mentioned as being struck by the children playing outside; just playing, being children.  He said that he didn't know that children still played like that.  The simple and meaningful times of life together can be seen as poetry.

But without the more prosy and ordinary words to surround those images, the poetry loses context.  According to Edith, that's where the value of brief "lunchbox" notes and longer letters to the children (and, in the next chapter, bedtime rituals and prayers)  comes in.  A picture may be worth a thousand words, but eventually you're going to need at least a few of them to say, out loud or in writing, "I love you," "I'm sorry," or "Here's why we do what we do."   This doesn't negate what I was trying to say in a previous post about the importance of writers, or about trying to turn art (including written art) into something that's just religiously useful or a tool for evangelism...although written art can be "useful" in what Northrop Frye calls a reality-is-irrelevant sense, not in a didactic or isn't-that-nice way, but in the same way as a great painting is "useful": that it speaks to us of truth, of beauty, of God, through what it is.  In the next chapter, Edith talks more about one way we use words to communicate in our homes: through reading aloud to each other, and not just "religious" books and the Bible, but all kinds of fiction, poetry and more.

But for now, in this chapter, we need to allow the words-in-the-home, the words we speak or write to each other, to have their chance to do their own work.  Life, as Marilla said, is uncertain.  If we haven't been making the time to talk to those who are close by, or write or email those who are away, then we need to find the words to do that.

"Education is a matter of developing the intellect and the imagination, which deal with reality, and reality is always irrelevant."  ~~ Northrop Frye

Linked from the Hidden Art of Homemaking linky at Ordo Amoris.

Almost as good as a "specious family home"

Back in 2007, I posted about a real estate listing that offered a "specious family home," and that wasn't unique: a search for that phrase brought up an amazing number of "specious homes" for sale [my 2017 note].

Yesterday we saw a listing almost as good.  This one had an "expensive foyer."

Like this, maybe?  But I think they meant "expansive."

On the teaching of poetry (Parents' Review Volume 2)

"Books," in The Parents' Review, Volume 2, 1891/92, pg. 151.  "A Third Poetry Book." Compiled by Miss M.A. Woods, Head Mistress of the Clifton High School for Girls. (Macmillan and Co.) "Our first feeling in turning over the pages of these [three] "Poetry Books" is--envy! What delightful wanderings over the wide fields of English poetry do they represent! "

"Nowadays the schools do their best to give a taste for good literature, and we have no longer to complain of the dry extracts "from the best authors," which were all we had to nourish us in former days. Now when books like Miss [Mary A.] Woods' poetry books are to be found in our schools, there is nothing better to ask—and the only fault is, that the child has not been trained at home to enjoy the feast which is put before him, and is apt to consider it only another branch of school work, and never to give himself the trouble of trying to enjoy it. If he knew a number of the selections before he met them at school, the meeting would be a joyful recognition of old acquaintances—he would remember how his father or mother had repeated those verses to him, he would recall and try to imitate the emphasis they had used and the cadence of their voices." ~~ "The Teaching of Poetry to Children," by Mrs. J. G. Simpson, The Parents' Review, Volume 12, 1901, pgs. 879-883

And if you like the book, get the author to write you an article..."On the Teaching of Poetry," by Mary A. Woods, Head Mistress of the Clifton High School. The Parents' Review, Volume 2, 1891/92, pgs. 111-116.  "In this same play of 'As You Like It,' Touchstone says to Audrey, 'I would the gods had made thee poetical!' Ah! It is not 'the gods,' it is not Nature, that has refused to make our children poetical. It is we who, with our petty maxims and theories, to say nothing of our prosaic lives and worldly ideals, have done what in us lies to destroy the poetry that was born with them....[we] reduce all to the dull level of prose. "  Don't miss the rest.

Sir John Gielgud can have the last word (sorry the audio is out of synch):

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.

In which we remain stubbornly attached to our squiggly lines and paper pages (Response to "Literature is the new [dead] Latin")

So Michael Reist says that "literature will never die, but if we keep force-feeding it to the kids of cyberspace, its integrity will certainly suffer."

And since he has thirty years of classroom experience, and has written and lectured extensively on the problems of both teenagerhood and education, we assume that he does know what he's talking about.  The tone of the editorial made me think at first that he was actually cheering the demise of English literature; but after reading some other quotes, I think he sees the situation more as sad but true; lamentable, but inevitable.

His conclusion?  "There are two ways to resolve this tension: Lower the standards in English class so the poor kid can go and make video games, or stop the mandatory study of English at, say, Grade 10. For many kids, the only thing they learn in Grade 11 or 12 English class is to hate it even more."

Those alternatives sound like the equivalent of "you don't get a real dinner tonight, but you can choose between fries, candy, and vitamin-mineral supplements."  Or, more closely, since the diners refuse to eat "real" food, we will no longer bother to cook and serve it.  Let them find their nourishment as best they can.

“But I’m going to be a video game designer!” protests one of my Grade 10 English students. “I don’t need to be able to read novels or write essays.” --Michael Reist

Need to be able to?

Would anyone dispute the idea that human bodies still need to eat? Public school lunches are all about enforced nutrition, these days. So don't human minds still need to think, and to know what has been thought?

Around here, school IS, largely, reading.  If you search this blog for the word "subversive," you will find that every occurrence, with the single exception of a tuna recipe, has been in connection with books and reading.  In our view, the immeasurable value of Real Books has not changed and will not change. 

But in Michael Reist's opinion, the rest of the world has stopped caring, and there's no turning back.  The occasional Matilda is simply an odd exception; the other "students" are shut out.

Prove him wrong.

"All the reading she had done had given her a view of life that they had never seen. If only they would read a little Dickens or Kipling they would soon discover there was more to life than cheating people and watching television."--Roald Dahl, Matilda

Linked from Carnival of Homeschooling #350: Ideas You Can Use.
Also linked from the Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival at Charlotte Mason in the City.

Where do you even START? ("Literature is the new Latin")

This kind of editorial just leaves me gasping for breath.

When English teachers with thirty years' experience propose that we make the last two years of high school English optional, I know that we really are in Ray Bradbury territory.

I think I need to sleep on this one and come up with some kind of semi-coherent response tomorrow.

Homeschool things to do for Tuesday: Personal research, library skills

Sometimes homeschoolers ask how to use an English handbook as the core of a language arts or grammar-and-composition course.  This year our main text for grammar and composition is Write Source 2000: A Guide to Writing, Thinking, and Learning, one of the Great Source handbooks.  It's aimed at grades 7 and 8, but since we found a copy at the thrift store, we're using it for grade 6 (we used some of it for grade 5 as well).  Here is a sample of the ways I am planning on using it this month with Dollygirl.

Weeks 1 & 2: Personal Research & Writing

1.  Read sections 265-268, about how Robert Fulghum researches.  "See what there is that interests you, that arouses your curiosity, that gets you wondering."

2.  Look at the part of section 267 with the blue bar.  What is the difference between "traditional research" and "personal research projects?"

3.  Make a list of ideas that start with "I wonder."  "I wonder what it's like to..."  "I wonder why..."  "I wonder what would happen if I..."  Circle three that really get you interested.  Choose one that you would most like to find out about.  (NOTE: this is a SHORT report, due on Friday of the second week of school.  Choose something that you can research and put together in a short time.)

5.  Section 269: Selecting and Collecting.  Do some personal research, including talking to at least one person who knows about your subject.

6.  Section 270: Telling Your Research Story.  You can do this in any way that you would like (be Kit Kittredge writing a newspaper story, do a blog post, do an oral report after dinner...).

Weeks 3 & 4:  Using the Library

1.  Read the introduction and section 290.

2.  Sections 291-293 show you how a "card catalogue" works.  What are some reasons that most public and school libraries now use computerized catalogues instead of actual cards?  Would there be any advantages to a card system?  Disadvantages?

3.  Review of the Dewey Decimal System, sections 294-297.  Re-read the online story "Do We" Really Know Dewey?.   Choose one of the games or quizzes to do, or make one up for someone else to solve.

4.  Go to the library and take out books that interest you from THREE different Dewey sections of the children's room (such as one from the 200's, one from the 300's, one from the 400's).  Now go to the adult section (with your parent) and find books with the same Dewey numbers (or as close as possible).  If you're interested, have your parent sign them out for you.

5.  The Reference Section:  Instead of reading this section, go to the public library and look at their reference books.  (Does the children's room have reference books?)  List five books you see there that might come in handy sometime.  (Better write down their call numbers too.) What are the good and bad things about books being in the reference section?

Homeschool things to do for Tuesday: Robert Frost's poetry

In the that-was-easy department:   We will be reading the 51 poems in Robert Frost's You Come Too: Favorite Poems for Young Readers.


(Warning: there are extremely rude comments below this video.)

We own the 80-page junior biography Robert Frost: America's Poet, by Doris Faber.  What do you do with a junior biography, a sixth grader, and a homeschool curriculum based mostly around just reading the poems?

Taking a leaf from the Ordo Amoris tree, I think the best way to include things like this is to put them in a "Morning Time."  A gathering where maybe you don't always have to stick to the regular books.  Even if you are homeschooling just one, you can make a habit of getting together for some reading, maybe singing or memory work, close to the start of school or at another time that works well--maybe even at tea-time, if you have a regular time for that.  We have gotten out of tea-time in recent years, but what I remember was that by that time of the day, the Squirrelings were often impatient if I tried to thrust yet another book on them.  Individual poems, yes, but not whole chapters--they were ready to go and play.  So I guess it depends.

So Faber's book can go into some kind of a "Morning Time" reading basket.

What else can you do with poems beside read them, memorize them, copy them out, sometimes sing them?  Ruth Beechick has lots of ideas:  experimenting with word choice, changing verse into prose, and so on.  We also have a copy of Rose, where did you get that red? Teaching Great Poetry to Children, by Kenneth Koch, which has some good writing suggestions based on poems by Wallace Stevens, John Donne, African tribal poems, and more.

You can illustrate them.  We recently acquired several volumes in Scholastic's Graphic Poetry series, in which each book takes one or two poems by one author, and sets them up in what's basically picture book format--but for older readers, not little ones.  I think this would be a fun project in combination with the simpler book-binding and booklet-making ideas in Erin Zamrzla's At Home with Handmade Books.  Is that art, literature, handicrafts, or what?  Does it matter?  We'll work it in to an afternoon time.

A grammar quiz for smart homeschoolers

Grandpa Squirrel is a generous donor of large Sunday newspapers and other interesting reading material for the Treehouse.  This week he sent over a magazine for Mr. Fixit with an article about vintage radios.

Mama Squirrel read the article and was grammatically appalled.  There were enough sentence fragments, run-ons, and strange turns of phrase in there to illustrate a whole lesson on sentence structure (which we did).  Out of curiosity, Mama Squirrel perused the rest of the magazine, and uncovered a few other zingers that the editorial staff had missed.  (We hope we are not getting ourselves into trouble by copying these lines, but really, we think that certain magazine editors should take a closer look at what gets printed.)

So here's the challenge:  what's wrong with these sentences, and how would you fix them? (If you can.)

Note:  I don't pretend that my understanding of grammar is perfect either.  If you think some of these examples are correct, feel free to say so.

1.  She, and other craftspeople, has a very nice display space for their wares.

2.  By the mid 1930's over 50% of North American homes had at least one radio.  Over 1 1/2 million in automobiles.

3.  A table model which resembles a church Cathedral usually with four dials on the front.  A small window screen which contains the channels panel and at the top red fabric of the speaker.

4.  The new AC model radios began to sell in large numbers as owners threw out their battery operated radio.

5.  By the 1930's the design of the radio and its case began to change.  It went from a square body box design and outside speakers which sat on top of the radio or close by.

6.  The designs became more compact and speakers in the body of the radio and their appearance became more desirable.

7.  Repaired items should be priced considerably lower than a, similar, perfect head vase.

8.  Ordering from private distributors is possible but not cost affective.

9.  Orson Welles played The Shadow on radio.  Then moved onto Hollywood after his famous Halloween production of War of the Worlds.

10.  Ideas for the designs came from many sources such as: popular fashion magazines or Hollywood movie magazines.

Linked from the Carnival of Homeschooling.

Can I be remarkably critical here? (Grammar gripe)

Ontario is approaching a provincial election.  We are being overloaded with advertisements, mailbox cards, and all the rest of it.

Today we got a postcard which quoted the currrent government's Special Advisor on Early Learning (scroll down, it's on the right hand side of that page):

"Full-day learning....is a remarkably critical investment in our children." 

This refers to full-day kindergarten programs, which have recently been implemented in Ontario.  No matter what you think about the usefulness or uselessness of such things, is there really such a phrase as "remarkably critical?"

Once something's critical, hasn't it already become remarkable?

"Highly critical" would make sense (although it's redundant).  Or maybe "critically important." But "remarkably critical?"  That's sort of like saying "remarkably terrible."

The more you say it, the less sense it makes.

What do you think?

Punctuation Rant

I opened the weekly "shopper" paper yesterday, looking for yard sale ads.  Our "shopper" has gone to a mostly-articles format, since few people want to pay for print ads these days.  The headline that caught my attention said something like this:

"Prom and Grad, call for true elegance."

Did we learn this in school?

Were we ever told to write, "Pugsley and Wednesday, are playing with their octopus?"

Were we ever told that it was correct to say, "You and I, could make beautiful music together?"

Of course not.  So when did people start doing it?

The composer of such titles should write on the blackboard one hundred times:

I will not separate the subject of a sentence from its verb with a comma.  Even a plural subject (two nouns joined with "and").

That's it.  I'm done.

Quote for the day: the centre is poetry

"To try to teach literature by starting with the applied use of words, or 'effective communication', as it's often called, then gradually work into literature through the more documentary forms of prose fiction and finally into poetry, seems to me a futile procedure.  If literature is to be properly taught, we have to start at its centre, which is poetry, then work outwards to literary prose, then outwards from there to the applied languages of business and professions and ordinary life."--Northrop Frye, The Educated Imagination

How homeschoolers do things: period.

I was pleased with Crayons' written narration of Dryope, but I did notice that her sentences and punctuation need some work.

Well, as Ruth Beechick said, find out what they don't know and teach that.

Today's English lesson:  three separate paragraphs copied from an online edition of The Secret Garden.  I copied each paragraph into a Word file twice, and then mucked up one copy of each, leaving out periods, erasing capitals and quotation marks.  I printed them out and gave them to Crayons for "editing."  After she had a go at the first one, we compared it with the original.  Oops--missed a few sentence breaks, but not too bad.  She did the same with the other two paragraphs.  I pointed out that there was one place where I might have broken a sentence in two but where the author kept it as one long sentence; that there's often room for individual choice.

I'm planning on having Crayons continue to work on this for awhile.  However, I did notice that a written narration she did later on showed much more attention to periods! (maybe too much, but we'll work on that)

JACK AND JILL, by Crayons
(from Jack and Jill, by Louisa May Alcott, chapter 7)

One day Jack and Jill were working in Jack's stamp book.  Then Frank came in.  "Jack when are you going to do your latin." he said.  "I dunno" Jack said.  Frank became angry he grabbed Jack's stamps.  "I'm not giving them back till you do your latin."  He said.  "ERRRRR" shouted Jack.