Monday, May 17, 2010
Anglewings or angelwings?
We're not sure--anyway, this looks just like the butterfly that Crayons found this morning. Folded up, it looks like a dead leaf--but when it opens, you can see the tortoiseshell pattern.
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
Forgotten fractions?
I found this article (and quiz) by Brian D. Rude through a comment on another blog.
Can you pass the fractions test he gives his first-year college students? Can your kids? And what does that say about the success/failure of North American education?
Can you pass the fractions test he gives his first-year college students? Can your kids? And what does that say about the success/failure of North American education?
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
A Month with Charlotte Mason, #30 (On Dandelions)
How are we supposed to end this?
We started with A Leisurely Education. Freedom from the small round of busywork, opportunity to grab hold of something bigger, learning to see ourselves (including our children) more as we are in God's time and in God's universe. Living without futility.
And I'm ending with dandelions.
The Treehouse backyard this week has been covered with yellow dandelions. Much-maligned little flowers that provoke criticism from the neighbours (spraying's in disfavour, but they would like to see us at least hard at work rooting them out). They're not good for much except making more dandelions (okay, I know you can eat them too). The first big batch are either going to seed or were cut off last night with the lawnmower, but they'll be back. [As in, within 24 hours.] Nobody really gets rid of dandelions forever, even if they want to--they're stubborn. And we don't want to get rid of them. In spite of the seasonal allergies kicking in around here, we like our dandelions.
I get the feeling that cultivating a yard full of unfashionable dandelions is somewhat like our approach to education, and maybe our approach to life. This is a time of too many conflicting ideas, at least around lawn care. Lawn spraying is now illegal here (we didn't spray anyway), but people still expect you to have a weed-free, dandelion-free, well-trimmed piece of grass around your house...more or less the same as anyone else's. Educational powers talk about diversity while squeezing out the individual. They dump a lot of fertilizer, if you'll pardon the metaphor, and try to control what grows and what doesn't.
Keep the dandelions growing, if only as a reminder that our natures are stubborn and won't be satisfied with educational sludge. Leave enough room for the intangibles and the poetry--as Cindy said, we can always catch up on grammar later.
We started with A Leisurely Education. Freedom from the small round of busywork, opportunity to grab hold of something bigger, learning to see ourselves (including our children) more as we are in God's time and in God's universe. Living without futility.
And I'm ending with dandelions.
The Treehouse backyard this week has been covered with yellow dandelions. Much-maligned little flowers that provoke criticism from the neighbours (spraying's in disfavour, but they would like to see us at least hard at work rooting them out). They're not good for much except making more dandelions (okay, I know you can eat them too). The first big batch are either going to seed or were cut off last night with the lawnmower, but they'll be back. [As in, within 24 hours.] Nobody really gets rid of dandelions forever, even if they want to--they're stubborn. And we don't want to get rid of them. In spite of the seasonal allergies kicking in around here, we like our dandelions.
I get the feeling that cultivating a yard full of unfashionable dandelions is somewhat like our approach to education, and maybe our approach to life. This is a time of too many conflicting ideas, at least around lawn care. Lawn spraying is now illegal here (we didn't spray anyway), but people still expect you to have a weed-free, dandelion-free, well-trimmed piece of grass around your house...more or less the same as anyone else's. Educational powers talk about diversity while squeezing out the individual. They dump a lot of fertilizer, if you'll pardon the metaphor, and try to control what grows and what doesn't.
Keep the dandelions growing, if only as a reminder that our natures are stubborn and won't be satisfied with educational sludge. Leave enough room for the intangibles and the poetry--as Cindy said, we can always catch up on grammar later.
A game of romps (better, so far as mere rest goes, than games with laws and competitions), nonsense talk, a fairy tale, or to lie on his back in the sunshine, should rest the child, and of such as these he should have his fill.--Charlotte Mason
Monday, May 03, 2010
A Month with Charlotte Mason, #29: Fragmentation, trivialization, and redemption
"Our four children came home from their private boarding school in Rhodesia for the last time. They were well-dressed, well-shod, well-fed, prosperous-looking children. Only when one listened to their vapid chatter, limited by both vocabulary and knowledge, did one glimpse the distressing poverty of their minds."--Joyce McGechan, "To Prosper in Good Life and Good Literature," Parents Review, 1967I've been struggling to write the last two posts in this series, trying to decide on an ending. I think I just had this one handed to me in one of Grandpa Squirrel's Toronto weekend papers. Click over to Saturday's Globe and Mail and read Margaret Wente's interview with Camille Paglia. [LINK FIXED] (Warning: several of the comments afterward contain language that is just not nice.)
I do not agree with her viewpoint on other important issues, but she has gotten the problems of education absolutely correct. Just--wow.
"When I went into graduate school at Yale, the professors of poetry were the leading lights on campus. Can you imagine anything comparable today?"
"Art history survey courses are in the verge of extinction. Teachers have no sense that they are supposed to inculcate a sense of appreciation and respect and awe at the greatness of what these artists have done in the past. The entire purpose of higher education is broadening. But since then we've witnessed the fragmentation and trivialization of the curriculum."
"The long view of history is absolutely crucial....I believe in chronology and I believe it's our obligation to teach it. I've met fundamentalist Protestants who've just come out of high school and read the Bible. They have a longer view of history than most students who come out of Harvard."
"Educators need to analyze the culture and figure out what’s missing in the culture and then supply it. Students find books onerous. But I still believe that the great compendium of knowledge is contained in books."
"At the primary level, what kids need is facts. They need geography, chronology, geology. I'm a huge believer in geology – it's all about engagement in physical materials and the history of the world. But instead of that, the kids get ideology. They're taught that global warming has been caused by factories. They have no idea there’s been climate change throughout history. And they're scared into thinking that tsunamis are coming to drown New York."How can we stay out of this "landscape of death" and create an oasis of hope? According to Camille Paglia, the answer is not in teaching critical thinking, ideology, or hysteria over drowning polar bears. It's in poetry, geology, the long view of history, physical books, geography, art appreciation. It's the struggle against fragmentation and trivialization. Question is, will anyone listen?
"Our shabby little crew, with few material advantages, have a good life. They work hard at lessons and on the farm. Then duties done, they run free on the veld, catching butterflies, collecting stones, watching birds, gathering wild flowers. Evenings for them are all too short. Specimens must be identified, labelled, catalogued. There are still unread books on the bookshelves, as well as old friends to be re-read. Daddy must hear someone's latest effort at poetry composition, or told the anecdote about George IV's false teeth.
"Thanks to Charlotte Mason and the PNEU school these children of ours are, in fact, rich."--Joyce McGechan
Sunday, May 02, 2010
A Month with Charlotte Mason, #28: Sunday Ponderings from the Parents Review
"Geology I dabbled in, having met with "Lyell's Principles" in the School Library. A piece of spar still remains which I obtained from the lowest Lias at the deep cutting, then being made, on the London and Birmingham Railway; I loved to gaze from the top of its banks on the three spires of Coventry. The slight knowledge acquired of what was then a new science was like a seed thrown into the ground, which did not germinate till long years after. I still eagerly pursued Entomology, chiefly with Wratislaw."--"Memories of Arnold and Rugby 60 Years Ago," by a Member of the School, in 1835, '36 and '37. Parent's Review, Volume 7, 1896, pg. 127
"Fifty years ago, when that famous pioneer of science, Dr. William Buckland, was Professor of Geology in the University of Oxford, it was his pleasant custom on occasion to announce to his class at the close of a lecture, 'Tomorrow, gentlemen, we shall meet at the top of Shotover, at ten o'clock.' And to the top of Shotover Hill the class would ride or walk from Oxford the next morning, and there the professor would talk to them in his vivacious, impressive fashion about the formation of the hill on which they stood, its limestones, clays, ironstones, gravels or fossils, on the evidences of denudation or the methods of stratification. And if things got a bit dull he would take especial delight in giving the most fastidious of the equestrian freshmen a practical lesson in geology by leading their horses through the stickfast mud on the slopes so that they might remember the nature of the Kimmeridge clay. And, doubtless, they did remember it, with the help of Common Room jokes thereon.
"Dr. Buckland, like every great man of science (and if one may presume to judge from programmes alone, like the truly scientific promoters of the work of this Union) was thoroughly convinced of the supreme importance of the school out of school, of out-door education. Buckland used often to say that such geological terms as stratification, denudation, faults,--to mention only a few of the commonest--could never be understood through lecture-room teaching alone. Shotover Hill was to him a lesson in geology, far superior in force to any which could be learnt from books or lectures, however admirable, and however rich the illustration by diagrams or pictures, or even by actual specimens of rocks and fossils. And all such illustrations in the lecture-room itself, Buckland used with a liberality that was utterly astounding and disconcerting to the academic Oxford of his day.
"Yet Buckland was teaching young men, not mere children, and might justly have relied to some extent on their fairly mature intelligence to grasp his verbal explanations of geological phenomena. But with the true teacher's instinct he studied his own mental processes, and asked himself, 'Now, could I really, thoroughly understand what a fault looks like, could I have a vivid mental picture of it from books and diagrams if I had never seen the thing itself in the rocks?' And being aware that the intense reality of his knowledge came purely from his early friendship with the rocks themselves at Lyme Regis, and Bristol, and elsewhere, from a long-continued intimacy with the thing and not the name or even the picture of the thing, he made it his business to bring his students to see the thing itself, since in such a case the thing could not be brought to the students.
"This, then, is the testimony and the practice of one who was a master of earth-lore. No less significant is the evidence of one whose study lay amongst the great stone-books of art. As Buckland was the pioneer of geological studies in Oxford, so was John Henry Parker (now resting in the quiet of St. Sepulchre's, near Jowett and T. H. Green) the pioneer of the study of Historical Architecture. In one of his books on Gothic Architecture, which have been the source of a new joy in life to throngs of students, Mr. Parker tells us with the brief unmistakable words of a master: 'The only real way of thoroughly understanding architectural history is to go about and see the buildings themselves.'"
"If Buckland and Parker thus insist on the necessity of bringing the real thing before the eyes of students of university age so that the thing may teach its own lesson, how much more essential to right understanding is this 'real' teaching for children of school age, and how absolutely the only right sort of teaching for the very young whose school days have not yet come."
--"At School on Hampstead Heath," Parent's Review, by Mrs. Grindrod, 1897
"Fifty years ago, when that famous pioneer of science, Dr. William Buckland, was Professor of Geology in the University of Oxford, it was his pleasant custom on occasion to announce to his class at the close of a lecture, 'Tomorrow, gentlemen, we shall meet at the top of Shotover, at ten o'clock.' And to the top of Shotover Hill the class would ride or walk from Oxford the next morning, and there the professor would talk to them in his vivacious, impressive fashion about the formation of the hill on which they stood, its limestones, clays, ironstones, gravels or fossils, on the evidences of denudation or the methods of stratification. And if things got a bit dull he would take especial delight in giving the most fastidious of the equestrian freshmen a practical lesson in geology by leading their horses through the stickfast mud on the slopes so that they might remember the nature of the Kimmeridge clay. And, doubtless, they did remember it, with the help of Common Room jokes thereon.
"Dr. Buckland, like every great man of science (and if one may presume to judge from programmes alone, like the truly scientific promoters of the work of this Union) was thoroughly convinced of the supreme importance of the school out of school, of out-door education. Buckland used often to say that such geological terms as stratification, denudation, faults,--to mention only a few of the commonest--could never be understood through lecture-room teaching alone. Shotover Hill was to him a lesson in geology, far superior in force to any which could be learnt from books or lectures, however admirable, and however rich the illustration by diagrams or pictures, or even by actual specimens of rocks and fossils. And all such illustrations in the lecture-room itself, Buckland used with a liberality that was utterly astounding and disconcerting to the academic Oxford of his day.
"Yet Buckland was teaching young men, not mere children, and might justly have relied to some extent on their fairly mature intelligence to grasp his verbal explanations of geological phenomena. But with the true teacher's instinct he studied his own mental processes, and asked himself, 'Now, could I really, thoroughly understand what a fault looks like, could I have a vivid mental picture of it from books and diagrams if I had never seen the thing itself in the rocks?' And being aware that the intense reality of his knowledge came purely from his early friendship with the rocks themselves at Lyme Regis, and Bristol, and elsewhere, from a long-continued intimacy with the thing and not the name or even the picture of the thing, he made it his business to bring his students to see the thing itself, since in such a case the thing could not be brought to the students.
"This, then, is the testimony and the practice of one who was a master of earth-lore. No less significant is the evidence of one whose study lay amongst the great stone-books of art. As Buckland was the pioneer of geological studies in Oxford, so was John Henry Parker (now resting in the quiet of St. Sepulchre's, near Jowett and T. H. Green) the pioneer of the study of Historical Architecture. In one of his books on Gothic Architecture, which have been the source of a new joy in life to throngs of students, Mr. Parker tells us with the brief unmistakable words of a master: 'The only real way of thoroughly understanding architectural history is to go about and see the buildings themselves.'"
"If Buckland and Parker thus insist on the necessity of bringing the real thing before the eyes of students of university age so that the thing may teach its own lesson, how much more essential to right understanding is this 'real' teaching for children of school age, and how absolutely the only right sort of teaching for the very young whose school days have not yet come."
--"At School on Hampstead Heath," Parent's Review, by Mrs. Grindrod, 1897
Friday, April 30, 2010
A Month with Charlotte Mason, #27
A housekeeping note: I had to decide whether to make the "month" end with April, or go for a nice round number of posts. I think I'll go for the round number.
When it comes down to personal application of Charlotte Mason's philosophy, we've done better at some things here than at others....and knowing that our homeschooling achievement isn't perfect is probably as it should be. We are human beings, after all, trying to take hold of what's offered but doing so, often, rather imperfectly.
Some people find it strange that the original PNEU programmes defined so strictly what was to be done at each level during each term, since Charlotte Mason talked so much about the individual. But was it as cookie-cutter a curriculum as that sounds? Let's look at that for a minute. Each student was assigned certain pages in certain books to read or have read to him/her. Each one had a certain number of memory assignments--though those could vary, they were things like "Two hymns by Keble." Each one was expected to keep nature journals and, when old enough, history records (century charts, books of the centuries etc.). Each one was expected to make certain handicrafts (such as "a child's dress.") Each one was to be learning arithmetic, French, etc., though it was thought more important that each one be making progress than that a particular level be reached each term.
So--yes, it was all laid out, and there was a suggested timetable of subjects, and Charlotte Mason felt that the PNEU was doing parents and teachers a favour by going through the publishers' lists and picking out the best in-print choices at the time--plus having a few books specially written by PNEU members and friends. But what wasn't spelled out in the programmes is more "suggestive," as Miss Mason might say: what the children were supposed to think about such and such a fairy tale, what ideas they were supposed to take from a passage of Plutarch, or what vocabulary and what multiple-choice-type facts they were to have learned from a science chapter. Susan Schaeffer Macaulay tells a story about her childhood visit to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and how she "discovered" a famous painting by Rembrandt. She points out that nobody told her to stop looking at it, or what to think about it, or even what it was about. She just absorbed what she needed from it. The freedom that was given within a PNEU term was not in the assignments (find three catkins and three tree buds) but in the ideas; in each student's "digestion" of all this material, in each one's response, and in each one's growth.
Still, I think if our own family has erred in our application of CM, it's often been on the too-relaxed end rather than in the too-rigid...the parent's and child's comfort zone pushes our own natures forward, but those laws of learning have a voice of truth that we can't ignore. I think that, for instance, often our Squirrelings go away too fast after listening to something read aloud, when according to Charlotte Mason's plan they should stick around to discuss it a bit more. For one reason and another, we've read school books aloud at an older age than is probably ideal, and we've delayed written narrations for the same reason-and-another. I've never sat under a tree with my knitting and demanded that they go look at some other tree and then give me a full description so that I can identify it--I probably wouldn't know what it was either. I thought the Squirrelings were getting a pretty good overview of what's in the Bible, and they could even sing the Old Testament and New Testament books in order, but then I realized that they still didn't know how to find even the books quickly, much less chapters and verses. (We're working on that.) I'm not sure if they know what a catkin is, or a fjord. And I sometimes think that we could have done better at cultivating habits of perfect attention from the time that they were small...although, being Squirrels, that isn't something that comes naturally.
I find the years...particularly the school years...slipping away too fast, and with them, the number of chances we have to start fresh, learn new habits, rediscover what learning is about. And, ironically, I seem to understand this education thing better as my Squirrelings get closer to leaving the nest. (Well, they're not THAT close yet, but you know what I mean.)
If I could give the Squirrelings one thing during the next homeschooling year--which will probably be Ponytails' last before high school--it would be to increase their love of learning, that sense Charlotte Mason described as "everything seems to fit into something else"--and to extend it to some of the areas that stay at the edge or just outside of their personal circle of relationships. History and geography, even with good books, are often too far away from their own world to seem real. Literature sometimes seems to have just too many pages; math is unending (I'd like to try some math journalling with them), and French verbs are just made up to pester people. Isn't the boredom of doing something because somebody's making you do it what we're trying to avoid? So do we then make our curriculum easier, drop books or subjects, expect less, if this way doesn't always cause a sort of earthquake of learning? What do you do when, after all your well-thought-out planning, your kids find more to discuss from an Arthur episode than from a history chapter?
The lesson I've had to learn myself is to be patient with both the teacher and the students; and not to take the teacher's striving for "nice lessons" too seriously. (Charlotte Mason said much the same thing--that we cannot depend too much on our own wisdom in presenting lessons.) I've come to the conclusion that some students, in some subjects, will be like lettuce, springing up quickly and obviously; others are more like carrots under the ground, that must not be yanked up before they're ready. I've also had to remember that squirrels have a habit of taking acorns but then burying them to be used much later.
These are the things I saw the younger Squirrelings doing today: catching a Red Admiral butterfly...and letting it go again after we figured out what it was. Noticing that the centres of forget-me-nots look like embroidery. Finding forget-me-not poems in two Flower Fairies books. Designing a crocheted hair scrunchie. Helping cheerfully with chores and projects. Practicing on a yard-saled recorder. Standing in the driveway singing. Playing MultiEight (online word game) and beating the grownups (I think that was yesterday). Putting together an awesome photography/Powerpoint nature assignment with music. Improvising orange-cream cheese filling for blintzes. Re-reading Magic Elizabeth (this makes several times). And yes...playing on the Stuffed Animal Site after school work was done. We celebrate our childrens' growth in the sometimes unexpected places, and trust for the rest...
Which doesn't mean that there still isn't room for teacher improvement as well. Definitely there are things in which I'd like to boost our CM-ness, without violating the uniqueness and particular gifts of these Squirrelings. But that'll keep for another post.
When it comes down to personal application of Charlotte Mason's philosophy, we've done better at some things here than at others....and knowing that our homeschooling achievement isn't perfect is probably as it should be. We are human beings, after all, trying to take hold of what's offered but doing so, often, rather imperfectly.
Some people find it strange that the original PNEU programmes defined so strictly what was to be done at each level during each term, since Charlotte Mason talked so much about the individual. But was it as cookie-cutter a curriculum as that sounds? Let's look at that for a minute. Each student was assigned certain pages in certain books to read or have read to him/her. Each one had a certain number of memory assignments--though those could vary, they were things like "Two hymns by Keble." Each one was expected to keep nature journals and, when old enough, history records (century charts, books of the centuries etc.). Each one was expected to make certain handicrafts (such as "a child's dress.") Each one was to be learning arithmetic, French, etc., though it was thought more important that each one be making progress than that a particular level be reached each term.
So--yes, it was all laid out, and there was a suggested timetable of subjects, and Charlotte Mason felt that the PNEU was doing parents and teachers a favour by going through the publishers' lists and picking out the best in-print choices at the time--plus having a few books specially written by PNEU members and friends. But what wasn't spelled out in the programmes is more "suggestive," as Miss Mason might say: what the children were supposed to think about such and such a fairy tale, what ideas they were supposed to take from a passage of Plutarch, or what vocabulary and what multiple-choice-type facts they were to have learned from a science chapter. Susan Schaeffer Macaulay tells a story about her childhood visit to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and how she "discovered" a famous painting by Rembrandt. She points out that nobody told her to stop looking at it, or what to think about it, or even what it was about. She just absorbed what she needed from it. The freedom that was given within a PNEU term was not in the assignments (find three catkins and three tree buds) but in the ideas; in each student's "digestion" of all this material, in each one's response, and in each one's growth.
Still, I think if our own family has erred in our application of CM, it's often been on the too-relaxed end rather than in the too-rigid...the parent's and child's comfort zone pushes our own natures forward, but those laws of learning have a voice of truth that we can't ignore. I think that, for instance, often our Squirrelings go away too fast after listening to something read aloud, when according to Charlotte Mason's plan they should stick around to discuss it a bit more. For one reason and another, we've read school books aloud at an older age than is probably ideal, and we've delayed written narrations for the same reason-and-another. I've never sat under a tree with my knitting and demanded that they go look at some other tree and then give me a full description so that I can identify it--I probably wouldn't know what it was either. I thought the Squirrelings were getting a pretty good overview of what's in the Bible, and they could even sing the Old Testament and New Testament books in order, but then I realized that they still didn't know how to find even the books quickly, much less chapters and verses. (We're working on that.) I'm not sure if they know what a catkin is, or a fjord. And I sometimes think that we could have done better at cultivating habits of perfect attention from the time that they were small...although, being Squirrels, that isn't something that comes naturally.
I find the years...particularly the school years...slipping away too fast, and with them, the number of chances we have to start fresh, learn new habits, rediscover what learning is about. And, ironically, I seem to understand this education thing better as my Squirrelings get closer to leaving the nest. (Well, they're not THAT close yet, but you know what I mean.)
If I could give the Squirrelings one thing during the next homeschooling year--which will probably be Ponytails' last before high school--it would be to increase their love of learning, that sense Charlotte Mason described as "everything seems to fit into something else"--and to extend it to some of the areas that stay at the edge or just outside of their personal circle of relationships. History and geography, even with good books, are often too far away from their own world to seem real. Literature sometimes seems to have just too many pages; math is unending (I'd like to try some math journalling with them), and French verbs are just made up to pester people. Isn't the boredom of doing something because somebody's making you do it what we're trying to avoid? So do we then make our curriculum easier, drop books or subjects, expect less, if this way doesn't always cause a sort of earthquake of learning? What do you do when, after all your well-thought-out planning, your kids find more to discuss from an Arthur episode than from a history chapter?
The lesson I've had to learn myself is to be patient with both the teacher and the students; and not to take the teacher's striving for "nice lessons" too seriously. (Charlotte Mason said much the same thing--that we cannot depend too much on our own wisdom in presenting lessons.) I've come to the conclusion that some students, in some subjects, will be like lettuce, springing up quickly and obviously; others are more like carrots under the ground, that must not be yanked up before they're ready. I've also had to remember that squirrels have a habit of taking acorns but then burying them to be used much later.
These are the things I saw the younger Squirrelings doing today: catching a Red Admiral butterfly...and letting it go again after we figured out what it was. Noticing that the centres of forget-me-nots look like embroidery. Finding forget-me-not poems in two Flower Fairies books. Designing a crocheted hair scrunchie. Helping cheerfully with chores and projects. Practicing on a yard-saled recorder. Standing in the driveway singing. Playing MultiEight (online word game) and beating the grownups (I think that was yesterday). Putting together an awesome photography/Powerpoint nature assignment with music. Improvising orange-cream cheese filling for blintzes. Re-reading Magic Elizabeth (this makes several times). And yes...playing on the Stuffed Animal Site after school work was done. We celebrate our childrens' growth in the sometimes unexpected places, and trust for the rest...
Which doesn't mean that there still isn't room for teacher improvement as well. Definitely there are things in which I'd like to boost our CM-ness, without violating the uniqueness and particular gifts of these Squirrelings. But that'll keep for another post.
Where's the Month with Charlotte Mason?
It's co-op day, I have a crocheting lesson to get ready for some homeschooled girls, and we're busy here as well studying forget-me-nots (a flower Anna Comstock forgot to put in her book) and reviewing subtraction. In other words--
I'll post later! Trying to decide how to wind this all up...as Ponytails makes crepes and Crayons hands me an EARTHWORM.
You all have a nice day too.
I'll post later! Trying to decide how to wind this all up...as Ponytails makes crepes and Crayons hands me an EARTHWORM.
You all have a nice day too.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
A Month with Charlotte Mason, #26
So we were talking about the timeless aspects of what we currently call a Charlotte Mason education, but which has a history pre-dating Charlotte Mason herself. Can we get hold of the soul or spirit of this kind of education so that we can discern where to stay faithful to what CM wrote, and use what she used, and where we re-invent?
In one of Cindy's latest study posts on Norms and Nobility, she writes:
Because when I started thinking through this post, I came up with a few basic CM ideas like these: training in the habit of observation, the habit of attention, the habit of books; emphasizing the value of the natural world (not worshipping it, but as the creation of the Heavenly Father); expecting that children can and should do small jobs perfectly and then work up, emphasizing quality over quantity. And the emphasis on facts not being presented "without their informing ideas."
I also thought about the PNEU programmes' structure, listing books and subjects rather broadly and generally, rather than trying to make sure that every hero and every concept are accounted for and categorized. There is an avoidance of time-wasting activities that no self-respecting child would choose to do without coercion and that do not advance the child's knowledge or abilities. And on the teacher's part, there is an avoidance of too much patronizing explanation.
Which brings us back to what Cindy said. We are raising young people, and while they definitely need time in their lives to be children, without being rushed, pressured, and burdened with knowledge they're not ready for (NOTE: non-family-friendly news content in that link), they also need the opportunity to grow, to be provided with mind-food according to their needs and appetites as human beings. I like seeing the little bitty plants and seeds go into the garden in spring, but I'm expecting that by the end of the summer, barring disaster and rabbits, we'll have tomatoes and beans.
In one sense we may see an afternoon's nature outing as a chance to let children to be children, to relax a bit but get moving at the same time; to drop the need for 'tween attitudes at least long enough to get interested in a newt or a garter snake; to have fun playing in the way children used to play before coaches and computers started telling them the next move. And as Charlotte Mason says, there are places in children's play where adults may not intrude. But at the same time, by giving our children that opportunity to see, to be curious, to compare and record, to tell back, to paint robins and violets with real art materials, to show us their discoveries; by giving them some space and time to play; and by not giving them a worksheet to be filled out on each detail of their afternoon, then we are treating them more as adults, as our equals in intelligence, as partners in discovery, as sharers in this journey.
In one of Cindy's latest study posts on Norms and Nobility, she writes:
"The rest of Chapter 3, Part II may well be the heart of the chapter, the point being that we are not raising (teaching) children, we are raising adults. This is where the transformational power of ideas comes in. If we change our thinking in this one small area, we completely change our educational philosophy."And maybe that's it.
Because when I started thinking through this post, I came up with a few basic CM ideas like these: training in the habit of observation, the habit of attention, the habit of books; emphasizing the value of the natural world (not worshipping it, but as the creation of the Heavenly Father); expecting that children can and should do small jobs perfectly and then work up, emphasizing quality over quantity. And the emphasis on facts not being presented "without their informing ideas."
I also thought about the PNEU programmes' structure, listing books and subjects rather broadly and generally, rather than trying to make sure that every hero and every concept are accounted for and categorized. There is an avoidance of time-wasting activities that no self-respecting child would choose to do without coercion and that do not advance the child's knowledge or abilities. And on the teacher's part, there is an avoidance of too much patronizing explanation.
Which brings us back to what Cindy said. We are raising young people, and while they definitely need time in their lives to be children, without being rushed, pressured, and burdened with knowledge they're not ready for (NOTE: non-family-friendly news content in that link), they also need the opportunity to grow, to be provided with mind-food according to their needs and appetites as human beings. I like seeing the little bitty plants and seeds go into the garden in spring, but I'm expecting that by the end of the summer, barring disaster and rabbits, we'll have tomatoes and beans.
In one sense we may see an afternoon's nature outing as a chance to let children to be children, to relax a bit but get moving at the same time; to drop the need for 'tween attitudes at least long enough to get interested in a newt or a garter snake; to have fun playing in the way children used to play before coaches and computers started telling them the next move. And as Charlotte Mason says, there are places in children's play where adults may not intrude. But at the same time, by giving our children that opportunity to see, to be curious, to compare and record, to tell back, to paint robins and violets with real art materials, to show us their discoveries; by giving them some space and time to play; and by not giving them a worksheet to be filled out on each detail of their afternoon, then we are treating them more as adults, as our equals in intelligence, as partners in discovery, as sharers in this journey.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
A Month with Charlotte Mason, #25
Where does CM advice become the most nitty and gritty?
Is it in the general comments, the principles and philosophy, given in her six volumes...which transition into the later parts of those volumes, describing specific work and practices of the PNEU schools? Or the technical details of the Form III Programme #90 for 1921? Is it only in CM's own books, or in the more diverse viewpoints given in the Parent's Review articles? Is it in Eve Anderson's video appearance (which I've never seen), or PNEU teacher Mrs. Norton's taped interview (available from Sound Word Associates)? Is it in the array of books by various parents and educators that have attempted to bring CM principles into the 20th and now the 21st centuries?
In other words, is it more meaningful for me to track down Selfe's Work of the Prophets (used in 1921), in hopes that I can either use it as is or learn from it as a comparison...or to read suggestions from thoughtful CMers who have found new books that meet the same needs? How much should I worry if the nature notebook or Book of the Centuries doesn't get off the ground? How come we're talking about "leisurely" and then realize that, according to the Form III schedule, our twelve-year-old is supposed to be narrating Dumas in French and starting German as well? If we want to have the "whole CM package" as she described it, what stays and what goes? (I assume that relatively few of us are doing Sloyd and Swedish Drill as they were practiced a hundred years ago.) What if our circumstances or the children we're teaching are very unusual? How long will Kipling and Kingsley continue to be meaningful? Where does old CM meet new CM, and your CM meet my CM, and become timeless CM, CM without boundaries?
What, you're expecting me to have answers to all that?
I do not think it's quite as simple as saying that none of the specific books are integral to CM methods and we really don't need that emphasis on Victorian literature; or that since there was nothing particularly amazing about pulling bits of yarn through canvas with a crochet hook, we can dismiss CM's recommendation of making "Smyrna rugs" and find something else we'd rather be doing; or that since children's needs in science and math have changed so much, we have to rework the whole thing, while still trying to respect students' intelligence. Did CM herself succumb to a few late-Victorian educational fads, or was she simply selecting the best of the new ideas that had come in at that time? (Like Scouting.) Is that what we should be doing--pulling the best from our own educational time? Is there anything now worth pulling from? (Perhaps we might include computers, websites, software and DVDs when we ask that last question.)
One instructive book, that I brought as "Exhibit A" to the conference workshop, is Melissa Wiley's Down to the Bonny Glen, from the Martha Years series. (The uncut original version.) If any of you don't know, the author is a homeschooling parent with a deep understanding of Charlotte Mason's philosophy. Her "Miss Crow," Martha's new governess, anticipates CM by about a hundred years in her handling of Martha. Go through the book and you'll pick out the principles: masterly inactivity (seeming not to be watching, but aware of everything), concern for hygiene, interest in Martha's natural environment and in her wool-dying skills, bringing in new books such as Burns' poems, and showing both respect and firmness. Miss Crow fills the same needs as Anne Shirley's Miss Stacy and Clara's grandmother in Heidi. She doesn't preach or nag; she expects diligence but encourages a love of learning. She teaches Martha to care more deeply, not only about lessons but about the world, about life.
So Miss Crow, though she's created from Melissa's post-CM imagination, can serve as a model of CM principles in a pre-CM world. With that in mind, perhaps our own imaginations can create equally wise and creative educators from other time periods. What might an enlightened tutor have done in Elizabethan times? Or in Colonial America? Even Charlotte Mason did a little imaginary time-travelling, in her "dinner table a hundred years from now." What do you imagine a CM education might look like for your own great-grandchildren? Will they have found any better English plays than Shakespeare, or anything more necessary than the Bible? (Assuming Bibles are still legal.) Will they still be studying Plutarch, Mozart, Mary Cassatt? Will they still skip the first chapter of Ivanhoe, laugh at Wamba's impersonation of a priest, and sit up straight when Robin Hood makes a sudden appearance? Will they still feel the excitement of the final contest with Brian de Bois-Guilbert? Will they still learn to love the first childhood classics, the Pooh stories, the Garden of Verses, Jeremy Fisher? (What a mercy that was not a pike.)
More tomorrow.
Is it in the general comments, the principles and philosophy, given in her six volumes...which transition into the later parts of those volumes, describing specific work and practices of the PNEU schools? Or the technical details of the Form III Programme #90 for 1921? Is it only in CM's own books, or in the more diverse viewpoints given in the Parent's Review articles? Is it in Eve Anderson's video appearance (which I've never seen), or PNEU teacher Mrs. Norton's taped interview (available from Sound Word Associates)? Is it in the array of books by various parents and educators that have attempted to bring CM principles into the 20th and now the 21st centuries?
In other words, is it more meaningful for me to track down Selfe's Work of the Prophets (used in 1921), in hopes that I can either use it as is or learn from it as a comparison...or to read suggestions from thoughtful CMers who have found new books that meet the same needs? How much should I worry if the nature notebook or Book of the Centuries doesn't get off the ground? How come we're talking about "leisurely" and then realize that, according to the Form III schedule, our twelve-year-old is supposed to be narrating Dumas in French and starting German as well? If we want to have the "whole CM package" as she described it, what stays and what goes? (I assume that relatively few of us are doing Sloyd and Swedish Drill as they were practiced a hundred years ago.) What if our circumstances or the children we're teaching are very unusual? How long will Kipling and Kingsley continue to be meaningful? Where does old CM meet new CM, and your CM meet my CM, and become timeless CM, CM without boundaries?
What, you're expecting me to have answers to all that?
I do not think it's quite as simple as saying that none of the specific books are integral to CM methods and we really don't need that emphasis on Victorian literature; or that since there was nothing particularly amazing about pulling bits of yarn through canvas with a crochet hook, we can dismiss CM's recommendation of making "Smyrna rugs" and find something else we'd rather be doing; or that since children's needs in science and math have changed so much, we have to rework the whole thing, while still trying to respect students' intelligence. Did CM herself succumb to a few late-Victorian educational fads, or was she simply selecting the best of the new ideas that had come in at that time? (Like Scouting.) Is that what we should be doing--pulling the best from our own educational time? Is there anything now worth pulling from? (Perhaps we might include computers, websites, software and DVDs when we ask that last question.)
One instructive book, that I brought as "Exhibit A" to the conference workshop, is Melissa Wiley's Down to the Bonny Glen, from the Martha Years series. (The uncut original version.) If any of you don't know, the author is a homeschooling parent with a deep understanding of Charlotte Mason's philosophy. Her "Miss Crow," Martha's new governess, anticipates CM by about a hundred years in her handling of Martha. Go through the book and you'll pick out the principles: masterly inactivity (seeming not to be watching, but aware of everything), concern for hygiene, interest in Martha's natural environment and in her wool-dying skills, bringing in new books such as Burns' poems, and showing both respect and firmness. Miss Crow fills the same needs as Anne Shirley's Miss Stacy and Clara's grandmother in Heidi. She doesn't preach or nag; she expects diligence but encourages a love of learning. She teaches Martha to care more deeply, not only about lessons but about the world, about life.
So Miss Crow, though she's created from Melissa's post-CM imagination, can serve as a model of CM principles in a pre-CM world. With that in mind, perhaps our own imaginations can create equally wise and creative educators from other time periods. What might an enlightened tutor have done in Elizabethan times? Or in Colonial America? Even Charlotte Mason did a little imaginary time-travelling, in her "dinner table a hundred years from now." What do you imagine a CM education might look like for your own great-grandchildren? Will they have found any better English plays than Shakespeare, or anything more necessary than the Bible? (Assuming Bibles are still legal.) Will they still be studying Plutarch, Mozart, Mary Cassatt? Will they still skip the first chapter of Ivanhoe, laugh at Wamba's impersonation of a priest, and sit up straight when Robin Hood makes a sudden appearance? Will they still feel the excitement of the final contest with Brian de Bois-Guilbert? Will they still learn to love the first childhood classics, the Pooh stories, the Garden of Verses, Jeremy Fisher? (What a mercy that was not a pike.)
More tomorrow.
Monday, April 26, 2010
A Month with Charlotte Mason, #24
Last night I found myself deep in Charlotte Mason's School Education (the third volume in the Home Education series), because I was thinking hard about how what we do for school here does or doesn't match up with CM goals. (Sometimes it doesn't!) I did take some time out to watch the last part of Mr. Holland's Opus with Mr. Fixit and Ponytails, including the part where Mr. Holland's school cuts out all the music and drama courses because of lack of funds and because the administration does not value those things.
Ray Bradbury and Aldous Huxley, though not necessarily kindred spirits to CM, agreed on one point: that books, real books, are the strongest of those tools. Take books away from people, either physically or by taking away their ability to read them (or their belief that books are valuable, or their understanding that some books are just paper with covers while others are more than that), and you can reprogram your subjects to think any way you want. Find them again, and the winter of frozen minds starts to thaw and bud into spring. It even happened in the Bible.
That's why slaves were forbidden to read. That's why printing presses and newspapers are often damaged or closed down during times of political turmoil. Knowledge (not just information, as Charlotte Mason repeatedly said) is power. Thinking is power. Reading is power. We have the natural world, we have Mozart, we have paintings, we have so much more there to discover...but beyond that, we have books. They are still there. We can still read them. They disappear from the library shelves and from publishers' lists, but they often show up (as if in retaliation) as e-books and on used booksellers' sites. Nobody's taken away the Harvard Classics online. Nobody's yet taken away your right to buy books by David Hicks and Richard Mitchell. Or Bibles, at least for the time being and at least in this country. Or Shakespeare. Or the books that inspired Frankenstein's monster. If they humanized him, can they do less for us?
The definition proposed here for "a leisurely education" was having the freedom (time, space, opportunity) to discover what makes you fully human. Without a doubt, that freedom is being pulled away. Pull back as hard as you can, as long as you can.
Vice Principal Wolters: I care about these kids just as much as you do. And if I'm forced to choose between Mozart and reading and writing and long division, I choose long division.It's hard to get away from the discussion and thinking over educational questions that have come up in Ontario over the past couple of weeks, questions about political correctness, about the school vs. the family's role in teaching anything beyond the "basic" subjects. The Toronto weekend papers were full of comments from people who would seemingly like nothing better to get their hands squeezed tightly around the minds of my children. We've also been talking about spiritual warfare as part of a study at church. It all leads me to a sense not so much of despair but of urgency, a sense that if our children are to have a chance to stand against not only systematic reprogramming of personal values but against the Vice Principal Wolters of the world, we need to give them some very strong tools to do it with and we need to do that now.
Glenn Holland: Well, I guess you can cut the arts as much as you want, Gene. Sooner or later, these kids aren't going to have anything to read or write about.
Ray Bradbury and Aldous Huxley, though not necessarily kindred spirits to CM, agreed on one point: that books, real books, are the strongest of those tools. Take books away from people, either physically or by taking away their ability to read them (or their belief that books are valuable, or their understanding that some books are just paper with covers while others are more than that), and you can reprogram your subjects to think any way you want. Find them again, and the winter of frozen minds starts to thaw and bud into spring. It even happened in the Bible.
That's why slaves were forbidden to read. That's why printing presses and newspapers are often damaged or closed down during times of political turmoil. Knowledge (not just information, as Charlotte Mason repeatedly said) is power. Thinking is power. Reading is power. We have the natural world, we have Mozart, we have paintings, we have so much more there to discover...but beyond that, we have books. They are still there. We can still read them. They disappear from the library shelves and from publishers' lists, but they often show up (as if in retaliation) as e-books and on used booksellers' sites. Nobody's taken away the Harvard Classics online. Nobody's yet taken away your right to buy books by David Hicks and Richard Mitchell. Or Bibles, at least for the time being and at least in this country. Or Shakespeare. Or the books that inspired Frankenstein's monster. If they humanized him, can they do less for us?
The definition proposed here for "a leisurely education" was having the freedom (time, space, opportunity) to discover what makes you fully human. Without a doubt, that freedom is being pulled away. Pull back as hard as you can, as long as you can.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
A Month with Charlotte Mason, #23
I'm finding myself thinking more about Charlotte Mason's principle "education is a life." Maybe because a couple of homeschoolers I know have had to put their children back in school recently, or send them for the first time...when their hearts would have preferred to keep on homeschooling if circumstances had allowed it. Why the italics?--because homeschoolers like homeschooling. If things are going well, then our day-to-day learning-related thinking isn't about whether or not we're possibly going to be able to keep up with the public school class. It's about learning itself. It's about what to teach, how to do it, how our children learn best, how this fits into our larger lives. That's the kind of enthusiasm that instantly connects people standing in line together at a homeschool conference; we find it in ourselves, and we recognize it in others. It's the reason that some of us spend our online time reading and writing about what seems to matter in education.
When homeschooling suddenly stops--or not so suddenly, because sometimes it just happens that our children grow up (they do, faster than you'd think)--for most of us there isn't a feeling of release from something we haven't wanted to do, but rather a reluctance to see it end. This may be because we, the parents, have found some or many of our social connections in the homeschool community, and we don't want to lose those just because we're no longer worrying about math curriculum; but it may also be because we've found ourselves part of something larger, a way of thinking about learning that goes beyond how many children you actually have at home every day. It's not "playing school," as a post we've linked to before criticized homeschoolers; it's looking at our own lives differently because we've had these children to teach.
About a year ago I spoke at a support group meeting, on the topic "What in your own life has inspired your approach to learning?" For instance, experiences I had (years ago) working with mentally challenged adults gave me strong impressions about each individual having something unique to offer the world, and that has always coloured my ideas about trying to meet each person's needs rather than expecting everyone to fit into a pre-determined system. But if I had the chance to give a followup talk to that one, I'd ask this: "What in your homeschooling has inspired the rest of your life?" You may have started homeschooling for all kinds of different reasons. I know people who just always wanted to teach their own children, and I know others who got bounced into it because of teachers' strikes or bullying, or because their child wasn't fitting into the classroom or the curriculum. Some of the "bounced" ones have loved homeschooling and stayed with it, others haven't. But if you started and you stuck with it for any length of time, no matter what methods or curriculum you used, there's almost no way that you could come away from it and not think of school, teachers, learning, books, words, worksheets, writing, classrooms, play, authority, motivation, memory...thinking... in a different way than you did before. Not to mention having pies and Cheerios inseparably connected with arithmetic in your mind for years to come.
We're often cautioned not to let homeschooling become our lives. Most of us have husbands, other family members, home and outside responsibilities and interests, ministries, jobs that require lots of attention. Nobody wants to get so narrow that all she can think or talk about is what's in the latest homeschool magazine. But education, in its broadest sense, does become a big part of our lives. We enjoy seeing our children learn. We figure out that we need to learn as well. We start picking up books. Some of us even pick up degrees. We don't want to have to stop doing that just because our children have reached a certain age or stage.
And we don't have to.
When homeschooling suddenly stops--or not so suddenly, because sometimes it just happens that our children grow up (they do, faster than you'd think)--for most of us there isn't a feeling of release from something we haven't wanted to do, but rather a reluctance to see it end. This may be because we, the parents, have found some or many of our social connections in the homeschool community, and we don't want to lose those just because we're no longer worrying about math curriculum; but it may also be because we've found ourselves part of something larger, a way of thinking about learning that goes beyond how many children you actually have at home every day. It's not "playing school," as a post we've linked to before criticized homeschoolers; it's looking at our own lives differently because we've had these children to teach.
About a year ago I spoke at a support group meeting, on the topic "What in your own life has inspired your approach to learning?" For instance, experiences I had (years ago) working with mentally challenged adults gave me strong impressions about each individual having something unique to offer the world, and that has always coloured my ideas about trying to meet each person's needs rather than expecting everyone to fit into a pre-determined system. But if I had the chance to give a followup talk to that one, I'd ask this: "What in your homeschooling has inspired the rest of your life?" You may have started homeschooling for all kinds of different reasons. I know people who just always wanted to teach their own children, and I know others who got bounced into it because of teachers' strikes or bullying, or because their child wasn't fitting into the classroom or the curriculum. Some of the "bounced" ones have loved homeschooling and stayed with it, others haven't. But if you started and you stuck with it for any length of time, no matter what methods or curriculum you used, there's almost no way that you could come away from it and not think of school, teachers, learning, books, words, worksheets, writing, classrooms, play, authority, motivation, memory...thinking... in a different way than you did before. Not to mention having pies and Cheerios inseparably connected with arithmetic in your mind for years to come.
We're often cautioned not to let homeschooling become our lives. Most of us have husbands, other family members, home and outside responsibilities and interests, ministries, jobs that require lots of attention. Nobody wants to get so narrow that all she can think or talk about is what's in the latest homeschool magazine. But education, in its broadest sense, does become a big part of our lives. We enjoy seeing our children learn. We figure out that we need to learn as well. We start picking up books. Some of us even pick up degrees. We don't want to have to stop doing that just because our children have reached a certain age or stage.
And we don't have to.
Book sale finds
This weekend was the big University Women's book sale. We didn't make it there yesterday--we had a really busy day between homeschool co-op in the afternoon and the Apprentice's choir coffeehouse in the evening. But we dropped in this morning when things were a little quieter.
This is what we brought home:
Two videos: Grammar Rocks and Miracle on 34th Street (1947 version) . Mr. Fixit found some videos as well.
A whole boxful of children's books for $4:
Making Simple Clocks, by Marjorie Stapleton
Sing a Song of People, by Roberta McLaughlin and Lucille Wood
Prières dans l'Arche, by Carmen Bernos de Gasztold (Prayers from the Ark, in French)
The Glass Mermaid, because Crayons requested it
Bored of the Rings, as a joke for The Apprentice
The Jungle Book II, by Rudyard Kipling
Soup, by Robert Newton Peck
The Light Beyond the Forest, by Rosemary Sutcliff
Did you carry the flag today, Charley?, by Rebecca Caudill
A Jean Little bindup of Different Dragons, Lost and Found, One to Grow On
Sarah, Plain and Tall, by Patricia McLachlan
Justin Morgan had a Horse, by Marguerite Henry
Amy and Laura, by Marilyn Sachs
The Painted Garden, by Noel Streatfeild (the story that features grown-up Posy and Pauline from Ballet Shoes)
Celebrating Children's Books, edited by Betsy Hearne and Marilyn Kaye
Some "schoolish" stuff in the same box:
Insects Activity book (word searches and things like that)
Nature's Wonderful Family, edited by Jack Mysers, Ph.D. (a Highlights for Children book)
Les Insectes, by Marie-Claude Ouellet--a workbook in French
Ma grammaire d'observation, by Daniel Poulin/Claude Simard--kind of a junior French grammar-at-a-glance
Jouer avec le français--a workbook meant for older children whose first language is French, but still interesting for French class
Six small French books in the same series by Lise Bernard--some "real life French" stuff again meant for French-speaking students, but with possibilities for learning French as well.
Some for the vintage Scholastic shelf: Two on an Island, Magnets and How to Use Them, Codes and Secret Writing, If You Lived in Colonial Times, and a couple of others
Four $1 books from the main room at the booksale:
Step Into Patchwork (I'll Teach Myself #3)
Collected Poems of Karol Wojtyla
Robertson Davies: Man of Myth, by Judith Skelton Grant
Flower Fairies of the Wayside
Three $1 books from the library discard rack later in the morning:
Living a Beautiful Life, by Alexandra Stoddard
How to Talk Dinosaur with Your Child, by Q.L. Pearce
Glenn Gould, by Peter F. Ostwald
This is what we brought home:
Two videos: Grammar Rocks and Miracle on 34th Street (1947 version) . Mr. Fixit found some videos as well.
A whole boxful of children's books for $4:
Making Simple Clocks, by Marjorie Stapleton
Sing a Song of People, by Roberta McLaughlin and Lucille Wood
Prières dans l'Arche, by Carmen Bernos de Gasztold (Prayers from the Ark, in French)
The Glass Mermaid, because Crayons requested it
Bored of the Rings, as a joke for The Apprentice
The Jungle Book II, by Rudyard Kipling
Soup, by Robert Newton Peck
The Light Beyond the Forest, by Rosemary Sutcliff
Did you carry the flag today, Charley?, by Rebecca Caudill
A Jean Little bindup of Different Dragons, Lost and Found, One to Grow On
Sarah, Plain and Tall, by Patricia McLachlan
Justin Morgan had a Horse, by Marguerite Henry
Amy and Laura, by Marilyn Sachs
The Painted Garden, by Noel Streatfeild (the story that features grown-up Posy and Pauline from Ballet Shoes)
Celebrating Children's Books, edited by Betsy Hearne and Marilyn Kaye
Some "schoolish" stuff in the same box:
Insects Activity book (word searches and things like that)
Nature's Wonderful Family, edited by Jack Mysers, Ph.D. (a Highlights for Children book)
Les Insectes, by Marie-Claude Ouellet--a workbook in French
Ma grammaire d'observation, by Daniel Poulin/Claude Simard--kind of a junior French grammar-at-a-glance
Jouer avec le français--a workbook meant for older children whose first language is French, but still interesting for French class
Six small French books in the same series by Lise Bernard--some "real life French" stuff again meant for French-speaking students, but with possibilities for learning French as well.
Some for the vintage Scholastic shelf: Two on an Island, Magnets and How to Use Them, Codes and Secret Writing, If You Lived in Colonial Times, and a couple of others
Four $1 books from the main room at the booksale:
Step Into Patchwork (I'll Teach Myself #3)
Collected Poems of Karol Wojtyla
Robertson Davies: Man of Myth, by Judith Skelton Grant
Flower Fairies of the Wayside
Three $1 books from the library discard rack later in the morning:
Living a Beautiful Life, by Alexandra Stoddard
How to Talk Dinosaur with Your Child, by Q.L. Pearce
Glenn Gould, by Peter F. Ostwald
Friday, April 23, 2010
More vintage books online (A Month with CM #22)
Just nostalgia today: on the same site where I found Aunt Mai's Annual, there are other books mentioned in Charlotte Mason's books or in Parent's Review articles. Here are some I found:
John Aikin's Evenings at Home (more info here)
"The method of this sort of instruction is shown in Evenings at Home, where 'Eyes and No-eyes' go for a walk. No-eyes come home bored; he has seen nothing, been interested in nothing: while Eyes is all agog to discuss a hundred things that have interested him.--Charlotte Mason"
Author: Furneaux, William S
Title: The out-door world, or, Young collector's handbook
"There are many very helpful handbooks, but those mentioned below have been found the most useful. Warne's or any other large Natural History; Furneaux' Out-of-Door World (very useful to beginners, as it tells how and where to collect); Wood's Common Objects of the Country; Wood's Common Objects of the Seashore (Geo. Routledge & Sones, 3/6, coloured plates; or 1/-); any of the Natural History Rambles Series (S.P.C.K., 2/6) (others in the series are here); Geike's Geology (Macmillan, 3/6); John's Flowers of the Field (S.P.C.K., 7/6)."--G.M. Bernau in The Parent's Review, Volume 4, 1893/94, pgs. 603-605
From Programme 94, for Form IV. (The 94th term of work set since the Parents' Union School began.) September to December, 1922. January to March, 1922, in the Dominions.):
Do some definite house or garden work. Make Christmas (gifts?) and provide a Christmas entertainment with (?) poor children. Cooking: Tried Favourites Cookery Book (Marshall, 2/6). Heaton's Cardboard Modelling (Newman, 6/-); make six models. (Materials from Arnold & Son, Butterley Street, Hunslet, Leeds.) Simple Garments for Children, by Synge (Longmans, 7/6). Constructive and Decorative Stitchery, by L.G. Foster, 3/6): design and make a garment. Darn and mend garments from the wash each week: First Lessons in Darning and Mending (P.N.E.U. Office. 2d.) be used. Teacher will find useful What shall we make? by M. La Trobe Foster (C.M.S.,1/-). See also (unless working as Girl Guides) tests under Scouting (Parents' Review, May, 1920): all girls should take First Aid (No.10) and Housecraft (No. 7) Tests. Make a garment for the "Save the Children Fund"; for particulars apply to 29 Golden Square, Regent Street, W.1.
Sorry that most of these last are just links to titles and authors, not whole books. Back to "real" CM posts tomorrow.
John Aikin's Evenings at Home (more info here)
"The method of this sort of instruction is shown in Evenings at Home, where 'Eyes and No-eyes' go for a walk. No-eyes come home bored; he has seen nothing, been interested in nothing: while Eyes is all agog to discuss a hundred things that have interested him.--Charlotte Mason"
Author: Furneaux, William S
Title: The out-door world, or, Young collector's handbook
"There are many very helpful handbooks, but those mentioned below have been found the most useful. Warne's or any other large Natural History; Furneaux' Out-of-Door World (very useful to beginners, as it tells how and where to collect); Wood's Common Objects of the Country; Wood's Common Objects of the Seashore (Geo. Routledge & Sones, 3/6, coloured plates; or 1/-); any of the Natural History Rambles Series (S.P.C.K., 2/6) (others in the series are here); Geike's Geology (Macmillan, 3/6); John's Flowers of the Field (S.P.C.K., 7/6)."--G.M. Bernau in The Parent's Review, Volume 4, 1893/94, pgs. 603-605
From Programme 94, for Form IV. (The 94th term of work set since the Parents' Union School began.) September to December, 1922. January to March, 1922, in the Dominions.):
Do some definite house or garden work. Make Christmas (gifts?) and provide a Christmas entertainment with (?) poor children. Cooking: Tried Favourites Cookery Book (Marshall, 2/6). Heaton's Cardboard Modelling (Newman, 6/-); make six models. (Materials from Arnold & Son, Butterley Street, Hunslet, Leeds.) Simple Garments for Children, by Synge (Longmans, 7/6). Constructive and Decorative Stitchery, by L.G. Foster, 3/6): design and make a garment. Darn and mend garments from the wash each week: First Lessons in Darning and Mending (P.N.E.U. Office. 2d.) be used. Teacher will find useful What shall we make? by M. La Trobe Foster (C.M.S.,1/-). See also (unless working as Girl Guides) tests under Scouting (Parents' Review, May, 1920): all girls should take First Aid (No.10) and Housecraft (No. 7) Tests. Make a garment for the "Save the Children Fund"; for particulars apply to 29 Golden Square, Regent Street, W.1.
Sorry that most of these last are just links to titles and authors, not whole books. Back to "real" CM posts tomorrow.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
I've got it, I've got it! (Aunt Mai for real)
Aunt Mai's 1894 Annual, online and readable. Do a search-this-page for "Mai's." They've misspelled Mrs. Steinthal's name as author, but it doesn't matter. Smyrna rugs (called Door Mats) on page 119. Also the Japanese curtains etc. etc.
And the key to the whole question is...LATCH HOOKING. Yep. No knitting, no weaving...the PNEU programme specifically recommended this particular set of instructions, so the official CM "Smyrna rugs" were short pieces of yarn pulled through canvas with a crochet hook. That's it, that's all.
As for materials, Aunt Mai recommends the following for one door-mat: 1/2 yard of canvas, a yard wide; 1 1/2 pound of "thrums, or the leavings of carpets"; 8 lengths of wood, 7 or 8 inches long and 1/4 inch wide ("The lid of a cigar-box furnishes the best wood"); a crochet-hook; pair of scissors.
Oh, what the hey, might as well write the whole thing:
"Let the pupil wind each piece of wool separately round the wood, and cut through one end, leaving each piece of wool 2 1/2 inches long. Place the canvas on a table and draw the chief lines of the pattern in pen and ink, or with a brush and sepia. Choose the colour to begin with; put the two ends of the piece of wool together; put the crochet hook through the first hole, draw the wool through, loop it, and pull it to make it quite firm. The wool is put in and drawn tight, exactly as the fringe used to be put on to antimacassars. It is the best plan to begin with the border, and then decide what pattern will look best in the centre, and last of all, to choose the background....Dark blue is effective, also a very dark terra cotta.
"Cross-stitch patterns can easily be copied, but after one or two attempts the children find a keen pleasure in inventing thei rown designs.
"When the mat is finished, brush the back with glue and a little flour added, which stiffens the rug and prevents any wool getting loose. Then seam on a strong piece of canvas, and a strong, beautiful mat is produced, which will last for years."
There you go.
And the key to the whole question is...LATCH HOOKING. Yep. No knitting, no weaving...the PNEU programme specifically recommended this particular set of instructions, so the official CM "Smyrna rugs" were short pieces of yarn pulled through canvas with a crochet hook. That's it, that's all.
As for materials, Aunt Mai recommends the following for one door-mat: 1/2 yard of canvas, a yard wide; 1 1/2 pound of "thrums, or the leavings of carpets"; 8 lengths of wood, 7 or 8 inches long and 1/4 inch wide ("The lid of a cigar-box furnishes the best wood"); a crochet-hook; pair of scissors.
Oh, what the hey, might as well write the whole thing:
"Let the pupil wind each piece of wool separately round the wood, and cut through one end, leaving each piece of wool 2 1/2 inches long. Place the canvas on a table and draw the chief lines of the pattern in pen and ink, or with a brush and sepia. Choose the colour to begin with; put the two ends of the piece of wool together; put the crochet hook through the first hole, draw the wool through, loop it, and pull it to make it quite firm. The wool is put in and drawn tight, exactly as the fringe used to be put on to antimacassars. It is the best plan to begin with the border, and then decide what pattern will look best in the centre, and last of all, to choose the background....Dark blue is effective, also a very dark terra cotta.
"Cross-stitch patterns can easily be copied, but after one or two attempts the children find a keen pleasure in inventing thei rown designs.
"When the mat is finished, brush the back with glue and a little flour added, which stiffens the rug and prevents any wool getting loose. Then seam on a strong piece of canvas, and a strong, beautiful mat is produced, which will last for years."
There you go.
Charlotte Mason #21: A Lovely Thought
"[People need] the cultivation of the power to appreciate, to enjoy, whatever is just, true, and beautiful in thought and expression. For instance, one man reads--
'...He lay along,
Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood;
To the which place a poor sequester'd stag,
That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish;'--
"and gets no more out of it than the four facts of the reclining man, the oak, the brook, and the wounded stag. Another reads, and gets these and something over--a delicious mental image, and a sense of exquisite pleasure in the putting of the thought, the mere ordering of the words....If people are to live in order to get rich, rather than to enjoy satisfaction in the living, they can do very well without intellectural culture; but if we are to make the most of life as the days go on, then it is a duty to put this power of getting enjoyment into the hands of the young....But the press and hurry of our times and the clamour for useful knowledge are driving classical culture out of the field; and parents will have to make up their minds, not only that they must supplement the moral training of the school, but must supply the intellectual culture, without which knowledge may be power, but is not pleasure, nor the means of pleasure." -- Charlotte Mason, Formation of Character
'...He lay along,
Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood;
To the which place a poor sequester'd stag,
That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish;'--
"and gets no more out of it than the four facts of the reclining man, the oak, the brook, and the wounded stag. Another reads, and gets these and something over--a delicious mental image, and a sense of exquisite pleasure in the putting of the thought, the mere ordering of the words....If people are to live in order to get rich, rather than to enjoy satisfaction in the living, they can do very well without intellectural culture; but if we are to make the most of life as the days go on, then it is a duty to put this power of getting enjoyment into the hands of the young....But the press and hurry of our times and the clamour for useful knowledge are driving classical culture out of the field; and parents will have to make up their minds, not only that they must supplement the moral training of the school, but must supply the intellectual culture, without which knowledge may be power, but is not pleasure, nor the means of pleasure." -- Charlotte Mason, Formation of Character
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
April 22nd is God's Earth Day
I am not the only one to think of calling April 22nd "God's Earth Day," but it did come into my head as I contemplated one of my least favourite "holidays," on which it's demanded that we bow down not only to the Bunny but to the Asian Elephant, the Blue Whale, the Hybrid Spider Monkey, and every other endangered species, not to mention the Dandelion and the Recyclable Plastic Bag. Homeschooling means little when you're trying to be politically incorrect: it's all over TVOntario, even all over the Stuffed Animal Site (you didn't know that April 22nd is That Site's official holiday?).
"On April 22nd, over six million Canadians will join one billion people worldwide in celebrating Earth Day. Nearly every school across Canada will also participate in Earth Day events and festivities. Everyone is looking to make a difference – one that will heal our planet."--TVOntario websiteSo how are we reclaiming this homeschooling day without using the words green, environment, recycle, or eco-anything? (Some of these things were already on our schedule, some I'm adding in.)
Bible Sword Drills using the word Earth
Our current Bible memory song: Psalm 100, that begins "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands..."
Favourite hymns: All Creatures of Our God and King, This is My Father's World, any others...and ending with Isaiah 6:3: "....Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory."
A chapter of Eleanor Doorly's The Insect Man (biography of Jean Henri Fabre)
Nature notebook time in the backyard--lots of dandelions to sketch, and our lone tulip that hasn't yet been eaten by The Bunny...
A game of Beaver Ed's Nature Cards, or maybe a round of Animal, Vegetable or Mineral (Twenty Questions)
A lesson for Crayons from Munro Leaf's book Geography Can Be Fun (which is about the earth too)
Watering the cucumber and pepper plants we've started indoors, and remembering to rinse the lentil sprouts in the cupboard
Usborne Map of the World Jigsaw
Making something good to eat...just haven't decided what yet...
Want more? Christian Earth Day Printables (colouring pages and such)
O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!....Psalm 8:1
What's a Japanese curtain?, and other fun CM things (A Month with Charlotte Mason, #20)
UPDATE on Aunt Mai and the Smyrna Rugs
"The Handicrafts best fitted for children under nine seem to me to be chair-caning, carton-work, basket-work, Smyrna rugs, Japanese curtains, carving in cork, samplers on coarse canvas showing a variety of stitches, easy needlework, knitting (big needles and wool), etc."--Charlotte Mason, Home Education
One of the original PNEU programmes for Form 1A (second- and third-graders) recommends these (vintage) books on handicrafts: "Carton Work, by G.C. Hewitt (King, Halifax, 2/-); make a pin tray, a salt-cellar, a book-mark, and a table. Japanese Curtains (see Aunt Mai's Annual, 1894, Glaisher, 2/8). Self-Teaching Needlework Manual (Longmans, 9d.) : children to be exercised in stitches, pages 1-6. Use coarse canvas and wool, then coloured cotton and coarse linen." For the youngest class that same year, these handicrafts were recommended: "Attend to garden (see Aunt Mai's Annual, 1894, Glaisher, 2/6). Smyrna rugs (Aunt Mai's Annual, 1894, Glaisher, 2/6). Carton Work, by G. C. Hewitt (King, Halifax, 2/-): make a pillar-box, a match box, a pen tray, and a vase. Self-Teaching Needlework Manual (Longmans, 9d.): children to be exercised in stitches, pages 1-15. Use coarse canvas and wool, then coloured cotton and coarse linen. Make a pair of cuffs."
What's carton-work? I think it's like Paper Sloyd--making models and useful things with cardboard. Besides the PNEU-recommended book above, here's another vintage title you might look up: The 'A.L.' carton-work, by Joseph Henry Judd, 1909. "Being a combined scheme of planning, drawing, folding, cutting, supermounting, and constructing in paper and cardboard, for lower forms, junior elementary, and secondary schools."
What's a Japanese curtain? If you don't have Aunt Mai's Annual, The Boy Mechanic Volume 1 has full instructions for you.
What's a Smyrna rug? More complicated, because there are real Smyrna rugs, and there is a kind of Smyrna weaving, and there are Smyrna embroidery stitches, but I think I have the answer. According to Charles Dickens' Household Words, an old-fashioned method of knitting rugs was re-popularized by Paul Schulze, author of Designs for the home-knit oriental (Smyrna) rugs", 1884. From the same article on this hot new craft:
What does all this come down to? Lifetime skills...hobbies...making useful and decorative things...and looking for crafts that adults like to do as well as children. Forty years ago that might have been making macrame plant hangers. For my Squirrelings the big fad a few years ago was embroidery-floss friendship bracelets and bead jewelery. ..which they still enjoy doing, along with knitting and crocheting. Pick out something you all like, and enjoy working together!
"The Handicrafts best fitted for children under nine seem to me to be chair-caning, carton-work, basket-work, Smyrna rugs, Japanese curtains, carving in cork, samplers on coarse canvas showing a variety of stitches, easy needlework, knitting (big needles and wool), etc."--Charlotte Mason, Home Education
One of the original PNEU programmes for Form 1A (second- and third-graders) recommends these (vintage) books on handicrafts: "Carton Work, by G.C. Hewitt (King, Halifax, 2/-); make a pin tray, a salt-cellar, a book-mark, and a table. Japanese Curtains (see Aunt Mai's Annual, 1894, Glaisher, 2/8). Self-Teaching Needlework Manual (Longmans, 9d.) : children to be exercised in stitches, pages 1-6. Use coarse canvas and wool, then coloured cotton and coarse linen." For the youngest class that same year, these handicrafts were recommended: "Attend to garden (see Aunt Mai's Annual, 1894, Glaisher, 2/6). Smyrna rugs (Aunt Mai's Annual, 1894, Glaisher, 2/6). Carton Work, by G. C. Hewitt (King, Halifax, 2/-): make a pillar-box, a match box, a pen tray, and a vase. Self-Teaching Needlework Manual (Longmans, 9d.): children to be exercised in stitches, pages 1-15. Use coarse canvas and wool, then coloured cotton and coarse linen. Make a pair of cuffs."
What's carton-work? I think it's like Paper Sloyd--making models and useful things with cardboard. Besides the PNEU-recommended book above, here's another vintage title you might look up: The 'A.L.' carton-work, by Joseph Henry Judd, 1909. "Being a combined scheme of planning, drawing, folding, cutting, supermounting, and constructing in paper and cardboard, for lower forms, junior elementary, and secondary schools."
What's a Japanese curtain? If you don't have Aunt Mai's Annual, The Boy Mechanic Volume 1 has full instructions for you.
What's a Smyrna rug? More complicated, because there are real Smyrna rugs, and there is a kind of Smyrna weaving, and there are Smyrna embroidery stitches, but I think I have the answer. According to Charles Dickens' Household Words, an old-fashioned method of knitting rugs was re-popularized by Paul Schulze, author of Designs for the home-knit oriental (Smyrna) rugs", 1884. From the same article on this hot new craft:
"A revival of a very old-fashioned kind of knitting is finding favour amongst ladies who want something easy to work, and that entails but little trouble. It has been registered by Mr. Paul Schulze, and is known as Smyrna rug-knitting, but it is an adaption of the old rug-knitting that used to be done with odds and ends of worsteds, and without any design. Mr. Schulze has patented a quantity of patterns of decidedly Eastern design, and has elevated a rather ugly accomplishment into something decorative and really useful. All people are now familiar with the peculiarly soft colouring and intricate design of the carpets and mats that come from the East, and also with the soft, imperceptible way the patterns melt into each other, and are not cut and marked out like our European workmanship. This blending of colour with colour is seized upon in the Smyrna rug-knitting, and mats of all shapes and sizes, for drawing-room, carriage, or bedroom use, and even strips for the sides of beds, or to place upon polished floors, are made in this way.The Book of the Home: An Encyclopaedia of All Matters Relating to the House and Household Management, by H. C. Davidson (1905) promises that "As the rugs are formed of strips, to be sewn together afterwards, they are not difficult to hold, and even an indifferent worker, with practice, can make sure of good results." And Varied Occupations in String Work, by Louisa Walker, calls the same kind of knitting “String Rugs,” and says that "This occupation is particularly suitable for the boys, because the work is rather firm and needs strong little fingers to hold a large piece." Walker's book (you can Google-Books it) gives clearer directions than does the first article, and uses bits of cloth and string rather than fancy wools. I'm not sure which version Charlotte Mason had in mind for children's handicrafts, but I'm guessing that it was something closer to Varied Occupations in String Work.
The materials required are the Smyrna wools, which are of very soft shades and of six-strand make; steel knitting-pins, No. 13; a wooden stick with a groove down it upon which to wind the wool and cut it to its proper length; the pattern, and the fine twine or cotton upon which to knit the tufts. The strips are made as wide as possible, but it is better to try a short length first. The work is done as follows: Cut up the wool on the stick and arrange it in little heaps as to colour, cast on the number of stitches required—say twenty or forty, two stitches for one stitch on the pattern—knit the first stitch plain, take up the piece of wool required, put it across the work, one end on each side of the knitting, and knit the second stitch, pass the end of the wool on the wrong side of the work round the knitted stitch to the front of the work; knit the next plain, and put wool between the third and fourth stitch, knit the fourth stitch, pass the end of the wool on the wrong side across it and to the front, and knit the fifth stitch; and so on to the end of the row, always consulting the pattern as to the colour of the wool. Work a perfectly plain row between each wool row. Always work the row in which the wool is inserted with the back of the knitting towards the worker, and the plain knitting row with the right side of the work towards the worker. By this arrangement the dots made by inserting the wool can easily be counted, and the pattern followed, as each dot represents one stitch of the design. The design will not be seen until a good length of the work is done: it will then be found that the various colours amalgamate very prettily, and that the Eastern appearance is rather heightened than not by the irregularities in the length of the wood inserted, it being impossible to knit every piece in quite evenly. Messrs. Fandel and Phillips keep the material for this new work. The rugs and carpets so made will cost less than real Smyrna articles, although cheap imitations can be had at a less price; but ladies will find their own rug-work lasts much longer than the latter, and will also have the pleasure of doing it. Very little eyesight is required, and the strips can be joined together by overcasting when finished so as to make carpets."
What does all this come down to? Lifetime skills...hobbies...making useful and decorative things...and looking for crafts that adults like to do as well as children. Forty years ago that might have been making macrame plant hangers. For my Squirrelings the big fad a few years ago was embroidery-floss friendship bracelets and bead jewelery. ..which they still enjoy doing, along with knitting and crocheting. Pick out something you all like, and enjoy working together!
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
A Month with Charlotte Mason, #19: Beyond Us
I said yesterday that I was going to go in a certain direction with this...but I changed my mind.
It's true that Miss Mason warned even school principals not to take up her methods too "lightly," and if it was a danger for them, surely it is for us as well...a lot of what online CMers have worked at over the past decade or so has been meant to balance the proliferation of "Charlotte Mason Lite." It's also true that if you want to know what all this is/was about, you cannot do better than to read Charlotte Mason's books. Forty years of experience packed into a few paperbacks..."the best thoughts of the best minds" and all that.
However... there are two points, two big ones anyway, that get missed in this. One is that Charlotte Mason headed the Parents National Educational Union, which was a nation-wide group. In other words, it wasn't just CM and her best and closest friends; this was a large iron-sharpening-iron community. You can call her the inspiration, the head, even the heart behind this educational movement...but she didn't do it alone. She edited the Parent's Review, but she didn't write it alone. She headed the House of Education training college, but she didn't teach it alone. She wouldn't have called her philosophy and methods "Charlotte Mason Education." I'm not even sure what she did call it. In the books she refers to "this method," "PNEU methods" and so on, but "it" doesn't even seem to have a more official name...and perhaps that's the reason we've fallen back on referring to it as "Charlotte Mason" or CM, just like "Montessori schools." But perhaps if we started saying that we homeschool using PNEU methods, it would get even worse...people would do Google searches and come up with travel guides. Or we'd get people asking about how you homeschool using that pneu-monia method. Without trying to discredit Charlotte Mason, I wonder if someday we'll come up with a name for her method that nails it without requiring an entire workshop's worth of explanation.
The second issue is this, and it's why I pasted that quote at the top: there is a need for the wisdom-made-practical that we have benefited from ourselves, even if it's not labelled CM or packaged the way we expect. Charlotte Mason appreciated excellent educators, even if they'd never heard of her methods (or they had lived before her time). She particularly mentioned a teacher in a mining community who taught his students what they really wanted and needed to know, helped them find answers to the things they wondered about, and (I think) showed them that they were intelligent enough to learn those things. It reminds me of Marva Collins teaching inner-city kids stuff that was way off the expected-results charts. It reminds me of some of the books on the website Learner's Library, like Richard B. Gregg's Preparation for Science, published in 1928, endorsed by Mahatma Gandhi, and meant to give rural students in India a strong start in science...which also reminds me of George Washington Carver and his college students scrounging stuff to make their own lab equipment. It reminds me of some of the points in For the Children's Sake, that CM's methods can be used in the most unlikely settings.
And those unlikely settings...perhaps...are where we should be setting our hearts, using our creativity. The unlikely children, even the ones with the "play in the toilet" parents. Especially those ones. Many of us have cultivated our creative frugal homeschooling...and yet it's not even our children, necessarily, who need that creativity the most. I live on a somewhat limited budget, but I could go out and buy a math game if I needed to; I just prefer to make my own, or to use what we already have, or to scrounge a used one. For some parents, using any available materials would be necessity, not choice...but even more important, for some of those same parents, the materials may be there but the motivation and the knowledge to use them are not. Simplest example: many homeschoolers know how to use a deck of cards to teach math skills...you count the spots, you learn the numerals, you play simple games...and don't most people have cards around the house, or pencil and paper, or Cheerios? Using Cheerios, or beans or raisins or pennies, you could exactly duplicate the very detailed early math lessons that Charlotte Mason gives in Home Education. We have this information...we have used it, we've expanded on it, we've created games, we've taught our children... but to a lot of people, a deck of cards is just a deck of cards.
So where to from here? Literally, where to?
Who to?
I greatly admire our online friend the Deputy Headmistress, and I've often drawn on her CM ideas myself. She's been one of the driving forces behind Ambleside Online for years. What has impressed me lately, though, is how she's...reinvented isn't the right word, but I'm searching for a better one...retooled how she does CM/AO, to work well under special circumstances, for two children of a different cultural, different economic/family background. She and her family are giving them the atmosphere and the discipline (sorry about the tulips), the ideas and the living books. What Blynken does for school when he's there doesn't have to look exactly like AO Year 1 (well, he's only in kindergarten anyway). It couldn't, because he isn't there all the time.
But this is the whole point...that this thing is based, according to Charlotte Mason, on a few principles and truths about the way our minds work, about who we are, about what we need. It's not a Victorian/Edwardian/George the Fifthian, English, one-old-woman-in-black movement. It has roots going back to Comenius and Plutarch and classical education as a whole (see some of Krakovianka's posts for discussion on that). It resonated with twentieth-century Christians working at L'Abri. It can reach forward into a time when it's most needed...a time that's already here when we're forgetting so much of even our own past century's history, when people don't want to read anything longer than Twitter, when we don't know how to survive without our plug-ins, or how to cook food that comes without a package and directions. Mr. Fixit has a young German-raised co-worker who didn't recognize the term "Austro-Hungary" (where Mr. Fixit's grandparents were born), and who knows almost nothing about the Third Reich. As another example, when the Apprentice started public high school she was somewhat surprised to find that she knew more about women's history issues (such as the right of a woman to be recognized as co-owner of a family farm) than some of her friends did. And we are hardly militant feminists here.
I don't think the answer, somehow, is going to be in hosting scare-you-off CM workshops, even basic ones. The world is full of Blynkens, and toilet kids, and teenagers who could still find a bigger room to step into if they had some encouragement. Not all of us can handle weekend (or two-week) unofficial foster kids. But some of us can find...need to find...other ways to reach out beyond our own few lucky homeschooled children. The world may not need (or think it needs) more "CM," but it does need more magnanimity, more imagination, more story, more humanness, more connection points, more wonder. If that's what we're able to give our own children, that's good. But if we can find a way to pass it on even further...wouldn't that be amazing?
Something to think about, anyway.
"I think of a young woman I met at the corner store once who was toting a little one; I asked her if she knew about the mom-and-tot play programs and drop-ins that our community centre offered. She just looked at me without much interest and said, "He'd rather play in the toilet." Maybe she was joking? I've never been sure."--2005 post here about povertyIf there's anything I feel apologetic about in Charlotte Mason, it's that...in a way...homeschoolers have appropriated her ideas, made them our own, and turned Charlotte Mason into...well, Charlotte Mason. Something that takes us an hour to explain (including the necessary biographical details) and causes people to wonder (as one lady asked plaintively at a support group meeting), "um...are there any OTHER ways to homeschool?"
It's true that Miss Mason warned even school principals not to take up her methods too "lightly," and if it was a danger for them, surely it is for us as well...a lot of what online CMers have worked at over the past decade or so has been meant to balance the proliferation of "Charlotte Mason Lite." It's also true that if you want to know what all this is/was about, you cannot do better than to read Charlotte Mason's books. Forty years of experience packed into a few paperbacks..."the best thoughts of the best minds" and all that.
However... there are two points, two big ones anyway, that get missed in this. One is that Charlotte Mason headed the Parents National Educational Union, which was a nation-wide group. In other words, it wasn't just CM and her best and closest friends; this was a large iron-sharpening-iron community. You can call her the inspiration, the head, even the heart behind this educational movement...but she didn't do it alone. She edited the Parent's Review, but she didn't write it alone. She headed the House of Education training college, but she didn't teach it alone. She wouldn't have called her philosophy and methods "Charlotte Mason Education." I'm not even sure what she did call it. In the books she refers to "this method," "PNEU methods" and so on, but "it" doesn't even seem to have a more official name...and perhaps that's the reason we've fallen back on referring to it as "Charlotte Mason" or CM, just like "Montessori schools." But perhaps if we started saying that we homeschool using PNEU methods, it would get even worse...people would do Google searches and come up with travel guides. Or we'd get people asking about how you homeschool using that pneu-monia method. Without trying to discredit Charlotte Mason, I wonder if someday we'll come up with a name for her method that nails it without requiring an entire workshop's worth of explanation.
The second issue is this, and it's why I pasted that quote at the top: there is a need for the wisdom-made-practical that we have benefited from ourselves, even if it's not labelled CM or packaged the way we expect. Charlotte Mason appreciated excellent educators, even if they'd never heard of her methods (or they had lived before her time). She particularly mentioned a teacher in a mining community who taught his students what they really wanted and needed to know, helped them find answers to the things they wondered about, and (I think) showed them that they were intelligent enough to learn those things. It reminds me of Marva Collins teaching inner-city kids stuff that was way off the expected-results charts. It reminds me of some of the books on the website Learner's Library, like Richard B. Gregg's Preparation for Science, published in 1928, endorsed by Mahatma Gandhi, and meant to give rural students in India a strong start in science...which also reminds me of George Washington Carver and his college students scrounging stuff to make their own lab equipment. It reminds me of some of the points in For the Children's Sake, that CM's methods can be used in the most unlikely settings.
And those unlikely settings...perhaps...are where we should be setting our hearts, using our creativity. The unlikely children, even the ones with the "play in the toilet" parents. Especially those ones. Many of us have cultivated our creative frugal homeschooling...and yet it's not even our children, necessarily, who need that creativity the most. I live on a somewhat limited budget, but I could go out and buy a math game if I needed to; I just prefer to make my own, or to use what we already have, or to scrounge a used one. For some parents, using any available materials would be necessity, not choice...but even more important, for some of those same parents, the materials may be there but the motivation and the knowledge to use them are not. Simplest example: many homeschoolers know how to use a deck of cards to teach math skills...you count the spots, you learn the numerals, you play simple games...and don't most people have cards around the house, or pencil and paper, or Cheerios? Using Cheerios, or beans or raisins or pennies, you could exactly duplicate the very detailed early math lessons that Charlotte Mason gives in Home Education. We have this information...we have used it, we've expanded on it, we've created games, we've taught our children... but to a lot of people, a deck of cards is just a deck of cards.
So where to from here? Literally, where to?
Who to?
I greatly admire our online friend the Deputy Headmistress, and I've often drawn on her CM ideas myself. She's been one of the driving forces behind Ambleside Online for years. What has impressed me lately, though, is how she's...reinvented isn't the right word, but I'm searching for a better one...retooled how she does CM/AO, to work well under special circumstances, for two children of a different cultural, different economic/family background. She and her family are giving them the atmosphere and the discipline (sorry about the tulips), the ideas and the living books. What Blynken does for school when he's there doesn't have to look exactly like AO Year 1 (well, he's only in kindergarten anyway). It couldn't, because he isn't there all the time.
But this is the whole point...that this thing is based, according to Charlotte Mason, on a few principles and truths about the way our minds work, about who we are, about what we need. It's not a Victorian/Edwardian/George the Fifthian, English, one-old-woman-in-black movement. It has roots going back to Comenius and Plutarch and classical education as a whole (see some of Krakovianka's posts for discussion on that). It resonated with twentieth-century Christians working at L'Abri. It can reach forward into a time when it's most needed...a time that's already here when we're forgetting so much of even our own past century's history, when people don't want to read anything longer than Twitter, when we don't know how to survive without our plug-ins, or how to cook food that comes without a package and directions. Mr. Fixit has a young German-raised co-worker who didn't recognize the term "Austro-Hungary" (where Mr. Fixit's grandparents were born), and who knows almost nothing about the Third Reich. As another example, when the Apprentice started public high school she was somewhat surprised to find that she knew more about women's history issues (such as the right of a woman to be recognized as co-owner of a family farm) than some of her friends did. And we are hardly militant feminists here.
I don't think the answer, somehow, is going to be in hosting scare-you-off CM workshops, even basic ones. The world is full of Blynkens, and toilet kids, and teenagers who could still find a bigger room to step into if they had some encouragement. Not all of us can handle weekend (or two-week) unofficial foster kids. But some of us can find...need to find...other ways to reach out beyond our own few lucky homeschooled children. The world may not need (or think it needs) more "CM," but it does need more magnanimity, more imagination, more story, more humanness, more connection points, more wonder. If that's what we're able to give our own children, that's good. But if we can find a way to pass it on even further...wouldn't that be amazing?
Something to think about, anyway.
Monday, April 19, 2010
A Month with Charlotte Mason, #18
In which we continue our interview with Charlotte Mason. Tomorrow: Mama Squirrel asks (nicely) for some curriculum makeover tips.
Mama Squirrel: Your philosophy of education seems to warn against both too much teaching and too much teacher.
Charlotte Mason: The Herbartian philosophy of education lays the stress of education––the preparation of knowledge in enticing morsels, presented in due order––upon the teacher.
Mama Squirrel: Wikipedia says that Herbart advocated five formal steps in teaching: “Using this structure a teacher prepared a topic of interest to the children, presented that topic, and questioned them inductively, so that they reached new knowledge based on what they had already known, looked back, and deductively summed up the lesson’s achievements, then related them to moral precepts for daily living.” (E.J. Miller, 2003.)
Charlotte Mason: Children taught upon this principle are in danger of receiving much teaching with little knowledge; and the teacher's axiom is, 'What a child learns matters less than how he learns it.' It is not that teachers are not eminently capable, but because information does not become knowledge unless a child perform the ‘act of knowing’ without the intervention of another personality. We do not try to drop one isolated idea at a time into a child’s brain.
Mama Squirrel: So you are not putting down teachers themselves, but saying only that a teacher's teaching can get in the way.
Charlotte Mason: We are, perhaps, opposed to oral lessons or lectures except by way of occasional review or introduction. For actual education children must do their own work out of their own books under the sympathetic guidance of an intelligent teacher.
Mama Squirrel: But how can the teacher teach or guide intelligently without getting in the way? And how does your method of education make it possible for parents to teach their own children? Many of us are somewhat unsure of our own ability to pull out the ideas that our children should know, much less know how to guide just enough and not too much.
Charlotte Mason: We teachers are also modest and diffident and are not prepared to say that we are more capable of handling a subject than is a carefully chosen author who writes especially upon that subject.
Young and Able Teacher: Yes, but professional teachers have been trained to understand children’s minds, and we know when to introduce the proper age-appropriate content and vocabulary. We know better how to reach the minds of children than does the most eloquent author speaking through the dull pages of a book.
Charlotte Mason: We have proven that idea to be completely wrong. The mass of knowledge, evoking vivid imagination and sound judgment, acquired in a term from the proper books, is many times as great, many times more thoroughly visualised by the scholars, than had they waited upon the words of the most able and effective teacher. This is why we insist upon the use of books.
Principal: We tried using a great-books list at our school, but it didn’t work. Maybe we just need better teachers.
Charlotte Mason: No, the failure came because you ignored the principles and their faithful practice. I feel strongly that to attempt to work this method without a firm adherence to the few principles laid down would be not only idle but disastrous.
Deputy Headmistress: It could also be that you used excellent works of literature as mere delivery systems for things like vocabulary, critical thinking skills. If those books are merely delivery systems, then it no longer matters exactly what the children are reading- any book will do, after all, the children are at least reading, some will say, or others will insist it doesn't matter what they learn as long as we teach them how to learn.
Principal: Well, we didn’t get enough parent co-operation either. We asked parents to buy good books for their children but they said they couldn’t afford them.
Charlotte Mason: It is our part to see to it that books take root in the homes of our scholars and we must make parents understand that it is impossible to give a liberal education to children who have not a due provision of very various books.
Cindy: “And now for my LOST tie-in. This week we saw in Illana's tent the book Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky. “Leave us to ourselves, without our books, and at once we get into a muddle and lose our way–we don’t know whose side to be on or where to give our allegiance, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise. We even find it difficult to be human beings with real flesh and blood of our own…”
Charlotte Mason: We find, I may add, that once parents recognize how necessary a considerable supply of books is, they make no difficulty about getting those set in our programmes.
Mama Squirrel: What were the principles that seemed to be missing, even if the books were good ones?
Charlotte Mason: First, the somewhat obvious fact that the child is a person; and the object of a person's education is to put him or her in living touch as much as may be of the life of Nature and of thought. The mind feeds on ideas, and therefore children should have a generous curriculum, taking care, only, that the knowledge offered to him is vital—that is, the facts are not presented without their informing ideas.
Mama Squirrel: I have never totally understood what “without their informing ideas” means. But I think it means that the facts are not pulled apart from their original state, kind of like the nutrients issue that the Deputy Headmistress posted about, from the Michael Pollan food article. Food is often seen today only as a collection of particular nutrients so that it doesn’t matter exactly what food you’re eating, it is more important whether it’s low sodium or high fibre than whether it’s chicken or fish. You can also apply that to facts being presented in kind of a naked way, like the students in Dickens who were giving facts about horses without knowing anything about horses.
Charlotte Mason: I believe I have used that example myself. Yes, that is what “informing ideas” are. And once the habit of reading his lesson-book with delight is set up in a child, his education is--not completed, but--ensured; he will go on for himself....
Mama Squirrel: Your philosophy of education seems to warn against both too much teaching and too much teacher.
Charlotte Mason: The Herbartian philosophy of education lays the stress of education––the preparation of knowledge in enticing morsels, presented in due order––upon the teacher.
Mama Squirrel: Wikipedia says that Herbart advocated five formal steps in teaching: “Using this structure a teacher prepared a topic of interest to the children, presented that topic, and questioned them inductively, so that they reached new knowledge based on what they had already known, looked back, and deductively summed up the lesson’s achievements, then related them to moral precepts for daily living.” (E.J. Miller, 2003.)
Charlotte Mason: Children taught upon this principle are in danger of receiving much teaching with little knowledge; and the teacher's axiom is, 'What a child learns matters less than how he learns it.' It is not that teachers are not eminently capable, but because information does not become knowledge unless a child perform the ‘act of knowing’ without the intervention of another personality. We do not try to drop one isolated idea at a time into a child’s brain.
Mama Squirrel: So you are not putting down teachers themselves, but saying only that a teacher's teaching can get in the way.
Charlotte Mason: We are, perhaps, opposed to oral lessons or lectures except by way of occasional review or introduction. For actual education children must do their own work out of their own books under the sympathetic guidance of an intelligent teacher.
Mama Squirrel: But how can the teacher teach or guide intelligently without getting in the way? And how does your method of education make it possible for parents to teach their own children? Many of us are somewhat unsure of our own ability to pull out the ideas that our children should know, much less know how to guide just enough and not too much.
Charlotte Mason: We teachers are also modest and diffident and are not prepared to say that we are more capable of handling a subject than is a carefully chosen author who writes especially upon that subject.
Young and Able Teacher: Yes, but professional teachers have been trained to understand children’s minds, and we know when to introduce the proper age-appropriate content and vocabulary. We know better how to reach the minds of children than does the most eloquent author speaking through the dull pages of a book.
Charlotte Mason: We have proven that idea to be completely wrong. The mass of knowledge, evoking vivid imagination and sound judgment, acquired in a term from the proper books, is many times as great, many times more thoroughly visualised by the scholars, than had they waited upon the words of the most able and effective teacher. This is why we insist upon the use of books.
Principal: We tried using a great-books list at our school, but it didn’t work. Maybe we just need better teachers.
Charlotte Mason: No, the failure came because you ignored the principles and their faithful practice. I feel strongly that to attempt to work this method without a firm adherence to the few principles laid down would be not only idle but disastrous.
Deputy Headmistress: It could also be that you used excellent works of literature as mere delivery systems for things like vocabulary, critical thinking skills. If those books are merely delivery systems, then it no longer matters exactly what the children are reading- any book will do, after all, the children are at least reading, some will say, or others will insist it doesn't matter what they learn as long as we teach them how to learn.
Principal: Well, we didn’t get enough parent co-operation either. We asked parents to buy good books for their children but they said they couldn’t afford them.
Charlotte Mason: It is our part to see to it that books take root in the homes of our scholars and we must make parents understand that it is impossible to give a liberal education to children who have not a due provision of very various books.
Cindy: “And now for my LOST tie-in. This week we saw in Illana's tent the book Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky. “Leave us to ourselves, without our books, and at once we get into a muddle and lose our way–we don’t know whose side to be on or where to give our allegiance, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise. We even find it difficult to be human beings with real flesh and blood of our own…”
Charlotte Mason: We find, I may add, that once parents recognize how necessary a considerable supply of books is, they make no difficulty about getting those set in our programmes.
Mama Squirrel: What were the principles that seemed to be missing, even if the books were good ones?
Charlotte Mason: First, the somewhat obvious fact that the child is a person; and the object of a person's education is to put him or her in living touch as much as may be of the life of Nature and of thought. The mind feeds on ideas, and therefore children should have a generous curriculum, taking care, only, that the knowledge offered to him is vital—that is, the facts are not presented without their informing ideas.
Mama Squirrel: I have never totally understood what “without their informing ideas” means. But I think it means that the facts are not pulled apart from their original state, kind of like the nutrients issue that the Deputy Headmistress posted about, from the Michael Pollan food article. Food is often seen today only as a collection of particular nutrients so that it doesn’t matter exactly what food you’re eating, it is more important whether it’s low sodium or high fibre than whether it’s chicken or fish. You can also apply that to facts being presented in kind of a naked way, like the students in Dickens who were giving facts about horses without knowing anything about horses.
Charlotte Mason: I believe I have used that example myself. Yes, that is what “informing ideas” are. And once the habit of reading his lesson-book with delight is set up in a child, his education is--not completed, but--ensured; he will go on for himself....
Saturday, April 17, 2010
A Month With Charlotte Mason, #17
In which we set aside the interview for today (will pick it up on Monday)
Yesterday afternoon I was sitting at the community centre waiting for the Squirrelings to be done a co-op class, and not having one of my own to teach, I started browsing through the bookshelf there. I picked up Super Crunchers, by Ian Ayres, and had time to read through the forward and the first chapter before the kids switched classes.
This book gives new meaning to "[oops] lies and statistics." It's written by a Yale law professor who's also an economist, and the book is about how our culture is, more or less, becoming run by algorithms and formulas. Which are right more often than they're wrong, to the discomfiture of those who have been dethroned by mathematical ways of doing things...but whether that's a good thing or not is another question. Particularly in the area of education, although that isn't a main focus of the book. Isn't that what the DHM, Cindy and others have been saying lately too? That what our culture wants is to measure everything, predict everything, get everything possible down to a quantifiable science rather than depend on less-dependable human instincts? And when you're predicting wine vintages (as in the forward to the book) or whether an anti-car-theft device will reduce crime, that's fine--but when you're predicting people, it's frightening.
Because, to paraphrase Cindy, we now have those tools and we're using them on ourselves instead of for ourselves.
And it makes me think of the whole CM idea "for the children's sake." For whose sake do the schools spend so much money developing programmed reading instruction that says now, today, you will be able to take this step, read these new words, understand this and this concept...but don't ask questions that aren't covered in this step, this lesson. The computer (I'm guessing) may even be able to predict that you may have periods of faster or slower learning, and adjust for that...but in the end, who is this all for? For the student, or for the system? In Understood Betsy, Dorothy Canfield Fisher ends her chapter on Betsy's country school by pointing out that it was only a poky little school with a few children, that no city school superintendent would bother with. My response is, now they should be so lucky.
For whose sake are we becoming only more numbers in huge databases? Have you tried getting any kind of insurance lately? The goal of reducing human error sounds like a good one, until you realize that we're the humans in question...
Comments?
Yesterday afternoon I was sitting at the community centre waiting for the Squirrelings to be done a co-op class, and not having one of my own to teach, I started browsing through the bookshelf there. I picked up Super Crunchers, by Ian Ayres, and had time to read through the forward and the first chapter before the kids switched classes.
This book gives new meaning to "[oops] lies and statistics." It's written by a Yale law professor who's also an economist, and the book is about how our culture is, more or less, becoming run by algorithms and formulas. Which are right more often than they're wrong, to the discomfiture of those who have been dethroned by mathematical ways of doing things...but whether that's a good thing or not is another question. Particularly in the area of education, although that isn't a main focus of the book. Isn't that what the DHM, Cindy and others have been saying lately too? That what our culture wants is to measure everything, predict everything, get everything possible down to a quantifiable science rather than depend on less-dependable human instincts? And when you're predicting wine vintages (as in the forward to the book) or whether an anti-car-theft device will reduce crime, that's fine--but when you're predicting people, it's frightening.
Because, to paraphrase Cindy, we now have those tools and we're using them on ourselves instead of for ourselves.
And it makes me think of the whole CM idea "for the children's sake." For whose sake do the schools spend so much money developing programmed reading instruction that says now, today, you will be able to take this step, read these new words, understand this and this concept...but don't ask questions that aren't covered in this step, this lesson. The computer (I'm guessing) may even be able to predict that you may have periods of faster or slower learning, and adjust for that...but in the end, who is this all for? For the student, or for the system? In Understood Betsy, Dorothy Canfield Fisher ends her chapter on Betsy's country school by pointing out that it was only a poky little school with a few children, that no city school superintendent would bother with. My response is, now they should be so lucky.
For whose sake are we becoming only more numbers in huge databases? Have you tried getting any kind of insurance lately? The goal of reducing human error sounds like a good one, until you realize that we're the humans in question...
Comments?
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