About home stuff: something to read today

Blogger Leah at StyleWise has a post up about the way homes have become, more than ever, public fishbowls for our "image." It might not be a bad image; it might be a very sharp minimalist or delightfully retro image. The point is that what you had in your house didn't matter so much in years past, any more than what your lunch looked like. Now there's a push to keep ourselves on display, and even to keep changing and updating so that "our" social media pics don't get stale.

I put "our" because even that idea is a bit contrived. Probably only a handful of people you know in real life worry about those things. Contrary to expectations, not everybody has a phone-plus. Some people I know don't even have email. Gasp.

But the push on expectations is there, and we're probably going to run into it or up against it. Like our family story about taking a Squirreling to the fast-food indoor playland for a birthday party, and discovering that it was no big deal for her little friends, who were probably there every week. Or like inviting people over who Just Don't Get It.

Well, it happens.

But read the post anyway.

Quote for the day: here is a tough one

"No emotion is, in itself, a judgement: in that sense all emotions and sentiments are alogical. But they can be reasonable or unreasonable as they conform to Reason or fail to conform...When a Roman father told his son that it was a sweet and seemly thing to die for his country, he believed what he said. He was communicating to the son an emotion which he himself shared and which he believed to be in accord with the value which his judgement discerned in noble death...[this was] men transmitting manhood to men." ~~ C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

Something to read today, and a quote on malaise and discord

Joshua Gibbs just posted an interesting article on the Circe Institute blog, about whether one classical teacher in a school is more classical than another. He makes the point that the point is effectiveness.

But towards the end, he says something that echoes Charlotte Mason's words on teachers who wield undue influence over students, and also her beliefs on loyalty:

"So, too, the Catholic teacher who incites Presbyterian students to doubt the Presbytery is not making his students into Catholics, but atheists. Once malaise emerges, it is hard to direct. Malaise is like ink in water and becomes diffuse. In and of itself, discord does not kill morale, because man is born into trouble as the sparks rise. A little discord is unavoidable. However, the knowledge that discord is intentionally being stirred up breaks the spirit."

Worth reading and thinking about.

Quote for the day: Stop reading, start engaging

From an article in Psychology Today by Erin Clabough, Ph.D.:

"This is perhaps a start, but books can be far more useful tools. We just have to learn to stop simply reading to our children, and start engaging them...Educational studies have repeatedly shown that it’s the reflection process where the deep learning happens. The most powerful part of reading often happens when you put down the book. The value of the story is found percolating in our children’s heads afterwards—in the thoughts banging up against their assumptions and their carefully constructed worlds. Does the book make them think after the cover is closed?"

Charlotte Mason would surely agree.

(Thanks to The Common Room for linking to that article.)