Good reading for today: Where did Charlotte Mason stand?

On the Northwest by North blog: was Charlotte Mason progressive, classical, or unique?

Recommended for your educational pondering.

Quote for the day: Philosophy and plumbing, both legitimate

"The time and problem orientations do not imply that everything adults want to learn is so immediate as fixing the plumbing...For one person, finding out whether beauty lies in a museum painting or in a mountain-top view may constitute a legitimate learning problem. For another person determining how the ancient philosophers combined work with study may be an equally immediate problem." ~~ William A. Draves, How to Teach Adults (1984/1997)

Quote for the day: keep learning

“You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.” ~~ T.H. White, The Once and Future King

It's not about the stripes: Charlotte Mason and colour analysis

The background (oh, the vanity of it all):

In my early twenties, I shucked out some money I couldn't afford for a colour/style analysis. In those days, they gave you a choice of four seasons, not twelve or sixteen or a hundred, so I was classified as a Summer, with extra stars beside a swatch of deep cherry-pink. That explained why my elementary school pictures looked even worse than most: I was usually wearing gold, rust, or moss green. Then there was the wild horizontal stripes thing in high school, but we won't go there. I also found out that I looked better in V-necks than boatnecks, better in soft details than in hard lines, and so on (things you know but you don't know). I didn't need to totally understand how or why it worked; I just needed to be able to see enough to say OH YES or NO WAY.

Over the years, there were times when I owned clothes that fell in line with those colours and styles; I had a maternity sweater and skirt in raspberry, and maternity stirrup pants (yeah, those) in gray. I wished I could be pregnant forever...just for the clothes, okay? There have been other times when I was just putting on whatever went with blue jeans (which was everything), or whatever went with black (which was everything). But believing in a certain colour philosophy, and seeing the benefits when I did apply it, has hung on for all those years.

The way we live now

Life today is more individualized, more customized, more complicated than it was in the 1980's. We worry more about getting everything right. A colour analysis blogger did a post with responses to a reader's very anxious questions, things like "What is the very coolest blue?  Originally I thought it might be the blue that has an RGB value of (0, 0, 255) – an HSL hue of 240.  However, that blue is opposite yellow on the color wheel..." The colour analyst began her comments by saying, "May I suggest that this information might not be what a colour-analyzed shopper needs?" She said, "Despite being a century old, the Munsell system persists because it appears to represent human vision exceptionally well...incorporating other colour systems...make less sense to me since they span too many colours, animal, vegetable, mineral, computer, neon, textile, plastic, and so on, that have nothing to do with humans." Towards the end of her post, she said, "Questions related to application are taking us in a more constructive direction. We would love to bring the answers down to one set of criteria, If This Then That, a safely anchored set of rules. Colour analysts would love that even more but it doesn’t work that way. Colour is as fluid as any magic, now you see it, now you don’t. Try not to think in terms of how it has to be. Learn to work with what you see in front of you."

I have also noticed a few "shocking" things on this analyst's blog. She acknowledges that finding a hundred per cent of your clothing or cosmetics in the absolutely perfect colours is going to be difficult, if not impossible...so it's okay, even necessary sometimes, to compromise (are you not going to wear shoes at all if you can't find any in the right shade?). She even appears in a video wearing a blouse that includes a stripe of colour from outside her own "season." She points that out, and says it's okay, really, honestly, the world isn't going to fall apart: it's the overall OH YES that you're going for, even if all the details don't match. How can a professional colour analyst dare to wear that, or say that? Well, yes, she's a human being too.

What this has to do with Charlotte Mason

If you're involved in discussions of Charlotte Mason's educational philosophy, have you noticed any parallels yet? If we called the OH YES the recognition of certain principles, would it be more apparent?

We get a lot of questions on AmblesideOnline that are just as serious and detailed as "What is the very coolest blue?"  When, exactly, should written narrations start? What is the best mathematics curriculum? What brand of notebook, of paints? And so on. I've probably written this here before, but Charlotte Mason's sidekick Elsie Kitching responded to questions about teaching reading by saying that most teachers would probably already have found some method that worked best for them, and that's what they should use. If they've got the principles right, if they're remembering that all this has to connect with human being-ness (did you notice that in the response?), then they probably are doing it right. If your children are excited about nature, making connections with books, then keep doing what you're doing. You want to hear a little "oh yes" at the end of a lesson, a medium one at the end of the day (most days), and a large happy one at the end of the term. That's what you're working towards.

What is the best way to reassure people that it's not all as hard as it might appear to be? Like the colour analyst, it might help to remind everyone that we need to allow a little room for magic, mystery, and focusing on what we really see happening, rather than starting with theory. I would also suggest that, sometimes, just seeing someone else do it can be very relaxing and reassuring. To give a completely unrelated example, when our first baby was born (after I shed the sweater and stirrup pants), we had a few nursing issues. I tried to do what the midwife said, what the books said, and ended up going to a La Leche League meeting. Just one, because what I really needed to know, I saw in about the first ten minutes, without need of words: what the other mothers were doing naturally. Aha. It worked. In the same way, about two years ago a CM learning community in Ontario put on a Saturday workshop, a show-and-tell day. I think people learned more in that one hands-on day than they did by reading hundreds of forum posts. As homeschoolers, we can be isolated, and we do get anxious. What if we miss something? What if we find out, ten years too late, that this or that nuance should have been different, that this or that book really wasn't up to the highest standard?

Even Charlotte Mason admitted that the Parents' Union School couldn't always locate the very best examples of every book for every subject. Sometimes those examples didn't exist, hadn't been written. Sometimes they found someone to create what they'd been waiting for (like a handwriting curriculum). Other times they compromised.

No, we don't want to compromise. For some of us in particular, compromising is something we don't do well at all. In our perfect world, all the stripes would be from the right palette. We'd have education down to a science. But there needs to be room for reality and also for grace.  If we can get to YES more than NO, then we're probably doing fine.

Most amazing thing you should read today

A very important point about the meaninglessness of "what do you all think of that?"

"What Does Goodness Think of You?", by Joshua Gibbs, at the Circe Institute blog.

Dollygirl's School Plans: Term 3, Week 8

"We are aware that our own discursive talk is usually a waste of time and a strain on the scholars' attention, so we (of the P.N.E.U.) confine ourselves to affording two things,––knowledge, and a keen sympathy in the interest roused by that knowledge. It is our part to see that every child knows and can tell, whether by way of oral narrative or written essay."  ~~ Charlotte Mason, Philosophy of Education

Monday:
(Daily opening time: hymns, poetry, current events)
Old Testament: Book of Numbers
Saxon Algebra 1/2
History of England: Who was Henry III?
French, using Complete French Smart 7 workbook
Apologia General Science:  how do "calories" relate to the ideas about food consumption and combustion we have been discussing?
Shakespeare's King John
Grammar: a review passage drawn from literature (but definitely easier than the last one we did)
Ourselves Book II: how reading philosophy helps instruct the conscience

"Perhaps the gravest defect in school curricula is that they fail to give a comprehensive, intelligent and interesting introduction to history."  ~~ Philosophy of Education

Tuesday:
New Testament: Gospel of Mark
Saxon Algebra 1/2
Money Matters for Teens
French
Plutarch's Life of Cicero (we are doing two Plutarch lessons this week)
Map quizzes with Seterra Onlinne
The White Mountains
Handwriting with Fix It...Write
History: work on Century Chart

"...the desire for knowledge for its own sake, on the other hand, finds satisfaction in knowledge itself."  ~~ Philosophy of Education

Wednesday:
Old Testament: Book of Numbers
Money Matters for Teens
French
History of Music for Young People: lesson on Mendelssohn we missed last week
Apologia General Science: about metabolic rates in humans and animals
Ivanhoe
A little more grammar practice
University of Waterloo Gauss mathematics competition

"These young students have the powers of perfect recollection and just application because they have read with attention and concentration and have in every case reproduced what they have read in narration, or, the gist of some portion of it, in writing." ~~ Philosophy of Education 

Thursday:
New Testament: Gospel of Mark
The Spring of the Year: chapter on phoebes that was missed last week
French
History of England: about Henry III and parliaments
Picture Talk: Jan Vermeer
Key to Geometry
The White Mountains
Handwriting

"Children recognise with incipient weariness the doctored tale as soon as it is begun to be told, but the human story with its evil and its good never flags in interest." ~~ Philosophy of Education

Friday: 
Basic Bible Studies by Francis Schaeffer
Balance Benders Level 3
Apologia General Science: finishing off Module 12, about life and energy
Plutarch's Life of Cicero
Transcription (copywork)
Ivanhoe
Key to Geometry
French History: reading more from De Joinville's Memoirs of the Crusades
Notes in the Book of Centuries

Homeschooling, guru worship, and commitment

A local newspaper columnist published a piece today about, of all things, food trucks.  You know, mobile cafes, burgers on wheels.  She mused, "No one wants to be tied down.  Everybody wants to do what they want, when they want...Churches are selling their buildings...fewer want to subscribe to a newspaper...It's harder and harder to get a commitment for anything." What does that have to do with food trucks?  That we will grab a sandwich and go, but at the expense of sit-down places that have some "commitment" to the community.

Now, I'm not so sure that she isn't stretching the idea of bricks-and-mortar diners as cornerstones of community--after all, they can close up shop and disappear almost as easily as food trucks.  In a small town, you may get Rosie the waitress and Joe the grocer year after year, but here in the city you are more likely to find that the local coffee shop or corner store is suddenly under new ownership--again--and that all the old staff are gone as well. (Mr. Fixit's favourite family-run sub shop changed hands and is now a pale vestige of its former mayonnaise-laden self.)  And I have nothing in particular against food trucks.  But I appreciate her lament over the general lack of commitment in society.

And I hear a similar "aversion to commitment" from some homeschoolers who have trouble understanding a willingness to stick with one particular educational philosophy.  If you centre on one philosophy or method, you risk being called closed-minded.  You may be told that since what works for one child does not always work for another, there can be no overall approach that is "best." You may even have your religious faith questioned, because studying one person too much might mean you are respecting them more than God, or their books as more valuable than the Bible.

Well, it might.  It could also mean that what you have found seems to work, that it contains common sense, that it lines up with your worldview, that it enriches and supports your faith rather than distorting it.  It could mean that you are opting for focus rather than fashion.

Yes, it might mean you're not adventurous or willing to try new things.  Or it could just mean that you've found a road and that's the way you're travelling.  If we're headed to Lake Ontario, we don't have time to worry that we're not going to see Point Pelee or Wasaga Beach.

In an age of pluralism and "wanting it all" that extends, as our columnist says, across everything from  marriage to group memberships, from investments to the taco truck, embedding yourself into any particular anything or anywhere seems risky.  Choosing one thing over another implies that we have already judged the rest negatively. Public schoolers get defensive around homeschoolers, even when we haven't said anything bad about school, because we have committed ourselves, at least for a time, to a different choice.  Non-Christians can't understand how Christians can be so arrogant as to think that one belief is true and others are not.  The presence of one vegetarian can throw a wet blanket on a whole tableful of steak-eaters.

But it is not arrogance that allows commitment to an idea. It's not about us. It is simply being convinced of the value and truth of the idea itself. 

Countdown to school: looking at science with Ruth Beechick

It's three weeks till school starts.

I'm looking at the chapter on "Science and Health" in Ruth Beechick's You CAN Teach Your Child Successfully, Grades 4-8.  Ruth Beechick, if you're too young to remember, is one of the homeschool grandmas of "common sense learning."  She teaches a very conservative view of young-earth Creation, but even those who disagree with that may find she makes some good points in this chapter.

"This last point is the second fallacy of the 'strict textbook' thinking.  For high success we must take into account the way people learn.  The textbook style of science learning is traditional in our schools, and research is showing that as students progress through the grades they like science less and less, until after grade 12 only 10% still give 'attention' to science.  The other 90% are considered scientifically illiterate."

Ouch.

Dr. Beechick doesn't give footnotes or sources for her statistics, but I'd guess that current research (twenty years later, since she says she was writing in 1993) would probably back up the general idea of what's she's saying.

"Research into the causes has shown that students, especially in high school, perceive books and teachers as 'knowing' science and as 'answer givers.'  This progressively turns off students' own curiosity, motivation, and interest in the subject....So as teacher, you do not have to be an 'answer giver.'  That should take pressure off practically all of us, since only a few science professionals probably feel qualified to take that role."

She also makes this important point:

"Is it science that will improve the lot of mankind?  Will science literacy for all citizens lead to better decisions?....The world may need better scientists and a nation may need citizens who are scientifically literate, but far more do we need leaders and citizens in the moral and religious realms.  With that we would make better use of our science knowledge."

She refers to a project that was in progress at that time:  the NRC (National Research Council) national science education standards of 1996.  Writing in 1993, Dr. Beechick considered it "the greatest effort ever toward reaching a national consensus on what children should learn in school science."  The basic idea sounded good: get students more interested, more involved, give them more ownership over their science learning, let them design their own science experiments, let them think about the "why" of science. I do not know what she said about the NRC standards afterwards:  it turned out to be one of the "outcomes-based" educational initiatives of the '90's that left homeschoolers and other educators either scratching their heads in bewilderment or pulling their hair in frustration (Plutarch might say eating their fingers).  In other words, the same stuff happened to science teaching in the American public schools as happened to math and English.

How does knowing all that help us, or not help us?

Well, we can still take what Dr. Beechick felt was good about the move towards a more human, maybe more holistic understanding of science, even if its public-school application turned out to be a turkey.  While recognizing the limits and the dangers of worshipping science, she wanted her students to finish school at least "liking science." ("How much does he care?")  She seemed to like the idea of including the philosophy, history and sociology of science in the curriculum, along with the more facts-based material.  You can sprout beans, study volcanoes, melt and freeze things all you want in science class, but there has to be a reason behind it.

Next time I'll post about what the science plans are for the fall.  (Hint: it involved the World Book Typical Course of Study.  Another hint: it turned out to be more or less what we were already doing.)

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.