Blood-sucking Monkeys from West Mifflin, Pennsylvania (how not to be one)

 

Illustration of pygmy marmoset and giant toad from Sarah Saw a Blue Macaw, by Jo Ellen Bogart, illustrations by Sylvie Daigneault

by Anne White

Charlotte Mason drew a line between people (famous, infamous, and not-so-famous) who lived with Will, and those who did not. This was not about their moral behaviour, but about whether they lived their lives, first of all, with an object outside of themselves; and, second, with an ability to choose and act, rather than merely to react. The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre wrote that the difficult part of ethics is deciding not between the good and the bad, but between the good and the good; and this is where we touch on the idea of our vocation being a “bit of the world’s work,” requiring that we say “no” to opportunities and ideas that would sidetrack our chosen path.  Christians would say it’s the path to which God has called us, but we still need to continually choose to stay on it. (Look at what happened to Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress when he tried to take a shortcut.)

A third hallmark of Charlotte’s “Will” people was that they understood self-denial, at least when their personal comfort or desires stood between them and the larger goal. Charlotte warned us not to be “That Person,” in whatever life situations we might be getting into, as much as we can help it. That rude customer, or passenger. That tiring person whose five-minute request always stretches to half an hour. That driver who endangers others by their recklessness or carelessness; or just someone who makes others have a worse day.

Now, if Charlotte was trying to illustrate those same principles today, she might start at a different point. I can imagine her drawing a line between people who bring oxygen into a room, and those who suck it out. Or, if you want to get a bit messier, those who act like “blood-sucking monkeys from West Mifflin, Pennsylvania.” (Credit to Joe Flaherty as Count Floyd on SCTV.) Even the Bible contains images of things that take life rather than giving it back: ““The leech has two daughters. ‘Give! Give!’ they cry” (Proverbs 30:15 NIV).

What does that have to do with Will? This: when we come into a situation, we view it with strength and determination (we want to get something done), but not with self-regard. We don’t use up the oxygen in the room; we try to replenish it. In a certain sense, each objective choice we make shoots the meter a bit more into the positive zone. You know that Christmas movie where all the people singing together create enough force to get Santa’s sleigh off the ground? Yeah, like that.

Which is a pretty long stretch from blood-sucking monkeys, but there we are. Let's aim for liftoff.

Eating all the cookies

by Anne White

There have been a lot of popular habit-themed books written in recent years, and one of them is Tiny Habits, by B. J. Fogg, Here are my takeaways from it: 

If you want to increase your chances of cementing or continuing a habit, you have to make it easier OR give the person a stronger motivation for doing it.

If you want to break one, you have to make the thing more difficult OR change their motivation. 

Fogg doesn't talk about Frog, Toad, and their difficulty in not eating cookies (in Frog and Toad Together), but that story comes close to what he's saying. By putting the box up on a shelf, they did make it more difficult to get at them, but they still had a strong motivation to eat the cookies, so it didn't work very well. Still, changing just one of those factors makes it more likely that you will change the habit, one way or another. 

Another example is something my husband mentioned: that people aren't giving blood as much these days, and the blood-donation places are wondering why. One reason may be that workplaces used to make blood donation super-easy, having clinics on site or giving people time off to go to them. Since people's internal motivation to donate blood can be very low or mixed (they know it's a good thing to do, but it might hurt), that's something that you have to counteract by making it as easy and painless as possible for them to do so. We're not describing a habit here, but it's the same sort of problem where, to see an action happen more often or more regularly, you have to make it easier to people to buy into it. Or harder for them not to.

B. J. Fogg claims that it is NOT necessary to do something for a month or a certain number of times in order for it to become a habit: the factors that really count in forming a habit are things like motivation and ease of doing the action. He offers the example of a young person who is given a smart phone which is immediately glued to them. There are certain habits we can pick up very quickly, but also some that we can drop just as quickly.

Charlotte Mason makes a great deal of the power of habit, and we usually focus on the word "habit" there, but I think we should emphasize the word "power" just as much. And this "power" is something that we can have over ourselves, if we have the right tools. One tool is the power of association, or what we might now call "triggers." The interesting power of recognizing "triggers" is that they can be turned on their heads. To break a habit, you need to purposefully change what that trigger tells you to do. I think it was in Fogg's book that I saw this example:. A woman was going through a bitter divorce, and every time she had to meet with her husband he would say nasty things. She created a cunning plan in which she gave herself little rewards (like watching an episode of her favourite show) based on how many whammies he threw at her. Sounds very odd, but for her it created a new sense of delight rather than resentment; the trigger of an insult gave her something to look forward to, rather than the urge to retaliate. (Disclaimer: this example is not meant to reflect on anyone's marital experience or to minimalize the pain of interpersonal conflict, it's just something that apparently worked for one person.)

Another part of the power of habits is our ability to chain them together--and many of us have seen this as we train children to go through a morning routine, where  they comb their hair, then brush their teeth, then make their bed. One action triggers the next. If we already have one good habit fixed in place, we can more easily load a bonus habit on top of it.

Which is, perhaps, a whole new side of the idea that "education is the science of relations."

What do you think?

To have is not to hold

A quilt made during WWII by a neighbourhood children's club. Hundreds of people donated ten cents apiece to have their names embroidered on the quilt, which was then given to a veterans' hospital.

by Anne White 

"And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity." (2 Peter 1:5-7)

In that first verse, the Greek word translated "add" carries a similar meaning to what a generous benefactor does to help another. If you want Latin roots instead, think of "contribute," which comes from con, with, and tribuere, bestow. Or the word "endowment," which comes from root words meaning "gift." As the public broadcasting station says before the concert starts, it is "made possible by a grant from The National Endowment for the Arts, and the financial support of viewers like you."

Bible commentators have pointed out that Peter's emphasis is on virtue being used for the good of the body or community, rather than to better oneself. You don't bestow something to yourself, or make a donation to yourself. Charlotte Mason talked about the danger of the "cult of the self" too, including the dangers of building up the mind, muscles, physical health, or even emotional or spiritual health, simply for our own good. Her emphasis was always objective, that is, having an "object" in view outside of ourselves.

There are girls of another pattern, who have no enthusiasms––other than a new "frock" excites; who do not "gush," have no exaggerated notions of duty or affection, but look upon the world as a place wherein they are to have and to get, but not, save under compulsion, to do, to bear, and to give––these three, which make up the ideal of a noble life, have no part in their thoughts. (Formation of Character, p. 237)

Our "enthusiasm," inspiration, and passion should indeed be to add or bestow virtue to our faith; and those other things too (though it almost seems virtue itself would be enough). But its purpose is not for us to increase our have and get (not only material possessions, but physical and emotional well-being), but our do and give, along with our bear, or courage and fortitude. Knowledge and temperance are lower on Peter's list than are the black-belt traits of patience and kindness.

But let's have the courage to start, no matter where we are. Because a diligent dime can go a long way.

But Sunday's Coming

Backyard barbecue, 1967. (The giant coffeepot was a must.)

by Anne White 

Our aim in Education is to give a Full Life...Thou hast set my feet in a large room; should be the glad cry of every intelligent soul. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking––the strain would be too great––but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest. (School Education, p. 170)

About two years ago, Malcolm Guite did a video in which he introduced viewers to the philosopher-critic-professor George Steiner, and read a passage from Steiner's 1991 book Real Presences. For the sake of brevity, I'm going to paraphrase it. "People of many beliefs understand something about both Good Friday and  Resurrection Sunday. The horror of the Crucifixion mirrors the deepest pain of their own lives. The hope of the Resurrection, no small thing even for non-believers, is symbolic of their own 'liberation from inhumanity and servitude,' no matter where they might be looking for that liberation. Friday is so terribly dark that 'even the greatest art and poetry are almost helpless.' And Sunday is so blissfully happy that such things will 'no longer have logic or necessity.' However, it is Saturday, stretching between Friday's 'suffering, aloneness, unutterable waste,' and Sunday's 'dream of liberation, of rebirth,' with which we need to concern ourselves here." In Steiner's own words:

The apprehensions and figurations in the play of metaphysical imagining, in the poem and the music, which tell of pain and of hope, of the flesh which is said to taste of Ash and of the spirit which is said to have the savor of fire, are always Sabbatarian. They have risen out of an immensity of waiting which is that of man. Without them, how could we be patient?

Did you get that? Even for Christians, who celebrate the joy of Sunday and feel the grief of Friday, this human life is made up largely of 

one

LOOOONNNNNNNNNG

Saturday.

And that's okay.

It's exactly because of Saturday that human beings need story, poetry, art, and music. These things arise out of our "immensity of waiting." They represent something we're longing for, hoping for, searching for. At their best, they combine the memory of Friday's suffering with the hope of Sunday's happy ending. 

And when Lucy was tired of eating the Faun began to talk. He had wonderful tales to tell of life in the forest...about feasting and treasure-seeking with the wild Red Dwarfs in deep mines and caverns far beneath the forest floor; and then about summer when the woods were green...Then to cheer himself up he took out from its case on the dresser a strange little flute that looked as if it were made of straw and began to play. And the tune he played made Lucy want to cry and laugh and dance and go to sleep all at the same time." (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C. S. Lewis)

But don't scoff  at our need for this kind of play and poetry, for the wildness of imagining, for our Beethoven's Sixth Symphony ability to enjoy a picnic on the banks of the river but follow it up with a thunderstorm. The life of "born persons" anticipates the full-on light of Sunday (though seen only in glimpses), and includes the half-remembered darkness of Friday (though we must not succumb to it).

"It was about a cup and a sword and a tree and a green hill, I know that much. But I can't remember and what shall I do?" And she never could remember; and ever since that day what Lucy means by a good story is a story which reminds her of the forgotten story in the Magician's Book. (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C. S. Lewis) 

As Steiner said, without this sense of longing, how could we learn patience? (And without understanding that same sense in others, how could we learn empathy?) It is that same longing that makes us attempt to recreate the forgotten story, or to reproduce that beauty we have seen in glimpses.

No, we are not decadent on the whole, and our uneasiness is perhaps caused by growing pains. We may be poor things, but we are ready to break forth into singing should the chance open to us of a full life of passionate devotion. (Philosophy of Education, p. 336) 

(Me with my great-grandmother.)

"Something that concerns you and concerns many men."

Not asphodel, but definitely greeny.

by Anne White

Of asphodel, that greeny flower,

                        I come, my sweet,
                                                to sing to you!
My heart rouses
                        thinking to bring you news
                                                of something
that concerns you
                        and concerns many men.  Look at
                                                what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
                        despised poems.
                                                It is difficult
to get the news from poems
                        yet men die miserably every day
                                                for lack
of what is found there...

(Excerpt of "Asphodel, that greeny flower," by William Carlos Williams.)

Poems are not places to get today's news, according to William Carlos Williams; or facts, or dates, or phone numbers. Or, really, anything practical and useful.

And yet, he says, we die (not peacefully, but miserably!) "for lack of what is found there..."

In Can Poetry Matter: Essays on Poetry and American Culture, Dana Gioia refers to this poem in a slightly different context. He has been discussing the problem of poetry, in the twentieth century, having lost its wider audience, and having become sort of a niche thing that only other poets care about. Gioia says this:

Williams understood poetry's human value but had no illusions about the difficulties his contemporaries faced in trying to engage the audience that needed the art most desperately. To regain poetry's readership one must begin by meeting Williams's challenge to find what "concerns many men," not simply what concerns poets. (p. 17)

Now, all this is undoubtedly true of poetry, and requires much thought. But let's expand. Is Christianity just for Christians? Certainly not (although "Christian sub-culture" is a real issue). Is educational truth just for educators? Are homeschooling methods just good for homeschoolers? And here's a big one for us: is Charlotte Mason's philosophy only to be kept in a C.M. box, to be brought out at C.M.-branded events or in C.M.-labelled books? Consider this principle of education:

12. "Education is the Science of Relations"; that is, that a child has natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts: so we train him upon physical exercises, nature lore, handicrafts, science and art, and upon many living books, for we know that our business is not to teach him all about anything, but to help him to make valid as many as may be of––  "Those first-born affinities / "That fit our new existence to existing things." 

If we are indeed born persons, living in a world in which we relate to several billion other born persons, we need to care that many of those same persons are dying (not peacefully) "for lack of what is found there..."  They are not finding it "in what passes for the new." And yet we tremble to offer our despised poetry, our good news (on whatever level). We are, as Charlotte says, "diffident," modest, shy (Preface to Ourselves). However, as she also says there, we are  urged to "encourage the others.". And not just the friendly "others," but the older ones, the younger ones, the better-educated ones, the bored and cynical ones. Not just those who sign up for conferences or buy books, but those who might throw our asphodel on the ground and stomp on it.

What is that mysterious, vital something found in poems (that isn't the news)?

The answer seems to be this: in discovering what it is "that concerns many men," or, in other words, the people around us. As Charlotte said, what is the spirit of our time? What questions are people asking about science and art, or (more worryingly) are they asking any questions at all? Can we offer handicrafts and living books? Can we help others to reclaim their first-born affinities?

Let's rouse our hearts, as Williams says, and take courage. Swap books. Start Sunday schools and math clubs. Care for communities. Share beauty and truth. And think of asphodel, that greeny flower.

You should really pay attention to this one.

by Anne White

One of the better-known stories in Formation of Character is "Inconstant Kitty," or, if you're reading Leslie Laurio's Modern English version, "Flighty Katie." The chapter is written as two letters, one by little Kitty/Katie's frustrated mother, and the other in response by the older, wiser aunt. The problem, as the mother sees it, is Kitty's extreme lack of attention in every situation: lessons, playing with dolls, etc. The response from Aunt Charlotte is twofold: first, meet Kitty where she is (create opportunities for success, while remembering she's still a little girl); but, second, don't let this habit-forming opportunity slip by, thinking "we'll take care of that later on."

There is a fine line, in other words, between destroying Kitty's spirit, and neglecting a faultline that could lead to tremors and quakes. Children are born persons, unique and individual, but also with a need to live up to their potential personhood, and that's formation of character. Kitty's mother needed to let her daughter blossom in her imaginative and enthusiastic way, but she also needed not to sow harmful idea-seeds, or to allow weeds to choke out that growth. We don't get a "Ten Years Later" on this story, so we can only hope that things improved for Kitty and her family.

But let's back up here a minute. What was, perhaps, an unusual problem in Charlotte's day, is now very much the norm. We are surrounded, in this generation, with Inconstant Kitties, who may in fact be ourselves.  I don't have to give all the examples, they're very familiar: high school teachers who no longer use books, children surrounded by toys but who don't know how to play, adults who quickly tire of relationships or jobs. Middle-aged readers who feel they've lost their focus. Are there physical, chemical reasons for this? Is it our damaged social infrastructure? Should we blame everything on electronics?

Like Kitty's great-aunt, we might start our letter of response by saying that the reasons, to a certain extent, don't matter. The bigger question itself seems to be: do we still value the habit of attention? Why does it matter? Are parents being overly strict if they require children to sit quietly (even for a short time) in church? Are there any tasks given to children that still require their absolute attention? What about their play? 

There is a difference between holding onto things (or people, or groups, or causes) loosely, not strangling them or being trapped by them,  knowing that all things are God's, and people are in his hand; and not understanding why we should commit ourselves to any of those things in the first place. If we don't have attention, we can't have commitment, and if we don't have "how much does he care," the same. It's closely related to Will.

As Aunt Charlotte might say, that's an awful lot to lay on a little child. We cannot reasonably expect mighty oak trees of virtue from preschool and elementary-aged children.

But we begin with ten minutes of attention. One story, one short walk, one cleanup job well done. Or even two or three minutes, if that's all we can manage. One poem, one kitchen task (done together). Little shoots, growing into small but healthy plants.

Don't give up.

It matters. 

Are you feeling liminal?

(Photo taken at Woolwich Dam and Reservoir, September 2024)

by Anne White

In the bleakness of January 2021 (when it felt like Christmas had taken a Narnia-like pass and the winter would go on imprisoning us forever), Amber Sparks wrote a piece for ElectricLiterature.com, called "I Just Want to Hang Out in the Wardrobe." 

Well, who wouldn't? But Sparks (chafing in that pandemic limbo) says her craving isn't for full-on Narnia; she writes, "I’ve been wishing instead to stop at the threshold, to open the door of the spare room and crawl into that wardrobe and not come out again." She goes on to talk about the particular attraction of "liminal spaces" in literature--the thresholds, vestibules, hallways, or phantom tollbooths that lead us to--well, somewhere else. That cinematic moment when Dorothy pauses with her hand on the doorknob; or, in The Secret Garden, Mary finding the locked door in the wall. Sparks doesn't specifically mention C. S. Lewis's "Wood Between the Worlds," but that would also fall into the "liminal" category: not a world in itself, but a place containing the doorways to all the other worlds. 

She warns that those of us over a certain age may never be able to return fully to the fantasy worlds that not only enriched our childhoods, but that, often, helped us survive them. As a child, she dreamed of finding "a place where a kind of low, slow magic still exists, where gym class doesn’t, where underdogs are issued powerful weapons and magical powers"; and books became those magical spaces for her. And for a time so long that we think it won't end, we keep returning, until one day, like Alice in Wonderland, we find we can no longer fit through the doorway.

"At 42, let’s be real, I can’t imagine a talking animal giving me a magic talisman without snickering a little. The first time I thought about how the Pevensie children’s mother must have broken her heart with worry when she sent them to the country, I think I wept a little to be so grown up at last."

But there is still a memory of that enchantment that we allow ourselves, or perhaps there is a new one that (as Sparks says) we don't fully experience until we have slowed down enough to appreciate those thresholds for themselves. 

"Waiting is, in fact, a repellent concept for most children, eager to be in action, eager for answers."

It might be similar to discovering a peculiar enjoyment of airports and train stations; or even of the journey itself, rattling down tracks past the backsides of towns, or suspended in that unlike-anything-else time of flight, before we get to our real destination. T. S. Eliot wrote about exactly that sense in "The Dry Salvages" (part of the Four Quartets):

When the train starts, and the passengers are settled
To fruit, periodicals and business letters
(And those who saw them off have left the platform)
Their faces relax from grief into relief,
To the sleepy rhythm of a hundred hours.
Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past
Into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus...

Some of you reading this may still be able to fit yourselves fully through the doorways of enchantment; to get off the train and know you have arrived. Others, like the camel in Nick Butterworth's The Little Gate, may find they have to kneel down or unload a few things first. And then there are those of us whose knees are getting a bit stiff to go through fairy doorways. What then shall we do? Just wait outside?

Sparks finds that writing itself "is a kind of liminal space, with all the possibilities of wonder and none of the risk. We can’t get back to Neverland once we are grown, but we can write a path through the midnight sky." In other words, there is a sense that our creativity can open those worlds for others. And perhaps those of us who don't write (or paint or compose or sculpt or weave), but do read, and particularly those of us who read to others (older or younger), can do the same. This also applies to those who teach Sunday school, lead nature walks, or explore mathematics joyfully. 

And for ourselves? Even if we cannot force our way in, Sparks says, we may still find that "liminal spaces have a regenerative power of their own...Perhaps we liminal adults can feel we, too, belong, that the world is almost a good place for us, too, if we can remake it in these spaces." These outside places, these doorsteps and waiting spaces, also have things to teach us.

As Sparks says, liminal spaces can still offer wonder, without the risk. Maybe there is a new kind of adventure for us right there in the woods, even when the magic rings are lost. 

That Sense of Hairbreadth Escape

The "Mariposa Special" steam train, Orillia, Ontario, 1967

by Anne White 

"Chaos is dull; because in chaos the train might indeed go anywhere, to Baker Street or to Bagdad. But man is a magician, and his whole magic is in this, that he does say Victoria, and lo! it is Victoria. No, take your books of mere poetry and prose; let me read a time table, with tears of pride...You say contemptuously that when one has left Sloane Square one must come to Victoria. I say that one might do a thousand things instead, and that whenever I really come there I have the sense of hairbreadth escape. And when I hear the guard shout out the word ‘Victoria,’ it is not an unmeaning word. It is to me the cry of a herald announcing conquest. It is to me indeed ‘Victoria’; it is the victory of Adam.” (G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday)

Certainly the question why one thing follows another must still be answered in Eliot as in Donne, though the answer be more implicit in one than in the other. Neither an emotional nor a musical effect, if it is really such, can be founded on incoherence. This study assumes that poetry as meaning is neither plain sense nor nonsense, but a form of imaginative sense.  (George S. Williamson, A Reader's Guide to T.S. Eliot)

Now, one thing following another is necessary and good, as both of the quotes above point out. But by itself, that is not enough. Quite awhile back, my husband and I watched a T.V. miniseries about shipboard adventures in the early 1800's, very colourful and exciting. Still, it seemed to me  that something was a bit off. At the end, the main character searches for some sort of deep meaning in the voyage, but he is told by another character that it "was not an odyssey...It is, or rather it was, what it was. A series of events." Which raised the question of why we had wasted all that time watching it. 

It turned out that the miniseries was based on a trilogy of novels written in the 1980's, which explained a lot. Some critics have said that the author intended an opposite meaning, that of course the story was more than just a "series of events"; but I believe the speech had its intended effect, bursting any romantic balloons we might have held about the meaning of life or the importance of story. 

A lesson which had laid such literature beside the advertisement and really discriminated the good from the bad would have been a lesson worth teaching. There would have been some blood and sap in it — the trees of knowledge and of life growing together. (C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man)

Maybe Chesterton was right, and we should celebrate the fact that timetables and train tracks help keep the world moving smoothly. But also the equally important truth that story, poetry, art and music, in their best forms, are neither inconsequential nor incoherent, and woe to those debunkers who try to make them so, who drain them of their blood and sap. 

Because in their own way, they also cry "Victoria." 

Catchwords Floating In the Air

"Clouds," by Tom Thomson, 1915; also titled "The Zeppelin(s)" or "Zeppelin, Algonquin Park"

In 1915, Canadian artist Tom Thomson took one of his famous canoeing/creating trips to Ontario's Algonquin Park. More than likely he didn't have any of his usual painting cronies with him, as most of those who would become the Group of Seven were caught up one way or another in World War I. It's never been completely explained why Thomson wasn't in the army (there might have been medical reasons), but it does seem clear that his wilderness trips at that time gave him not only a chance to paint, but also provided an escape from people who assumed he should be more actively involved.  Anyway, with whatever reasons Thomson went off to the wilderness, plus the fact that at least three of his art colleagues were serving in the Canadian military forces, plus the general news of battles (Ypres was a major one in the spring of 1915), it is not that surprising that an oil-on-wood sketch of clouds ended up somewhat resembling German zeppelins; so much so, in fact, that in its first public exhibition (about ten years later) it was titled "The Zeppelin." And the only relevant point about all of that, perhaps, is that people walking through the exhibit would have gotten it. "Zeppelin" was a spring-loaded word.

When I was in university (forty years ago, which is rather terrifying), "postmodernism" was something I was only hearing about for the first time, mostly in literature studies. But media theorist and sociologist Dick Hebdige was already publishing a book that talked about how "postmodernism" was creeping into every part of western culture, somewhat like zeppelins masquerading as clouds:

When it becomes possible for a people to describe as 'postmodern' the décor of a room, the design of a building, the diegesis of a film, the construction of a record, or a 'scratch' video, a television commercial, or an arts documentary, or the 'intertextual' relations between them, the layout of a page in a fashion magazine or critical journal, an anti-teleological tendency within epistemology, the attack on the 'metaphysics of presence', a general attenuation of feeling, the collective chagrin and morbid projections of a post-War generation of baby boomers confronting disillusioned middle-age...the collapse of cultural hierarchies, the dread engendered by the threat of nuclear self-destruction, the decline of the university, the functioning and effects of the new miniaturised technologies, broad societal and economic shifts into a 'media', 'consumer' or 'multinational' phase, a sense (depending on who you read) of 'placelessness' or the abandonment of placelessness ('critical regionalism') or (even) a generalised substitution of spatial for temporal coordinates – when it becomes possible to describe all these things as 'Postmodern' (or more simply using a current abbreviation as 'post' or 'very post') then it's clear we are in the presence of a buzzword.(Hiding in the Light, 1988, quoted in Wikipedia article "Criticism of postmodernism")

I've kept most of that intact just to show how long Hebdige's list was. In other words, he thought the Postmodern Zeitgeist was now everywhere and everything, although that in itself implied that it was running out of Geist. You might be innocently looking at clouds and get fired at by a Postmodernism.

And now? You might not be that worried about Postmodernism, but you can apply the same thinking to just about any other current "ism." When you hear it all the time, you can start to find it everywhere you look.

ALFRED: A lot of bad "isms" floating around this world... (Miracle on 34th Street, 1947 film)

Charlotte Mason suggested a tried-and-true antidote both for those who find themselves obsessing over "isms," and those who would rather ignore them: read. Read wisely. Read widely. Read orderly.

Here, again, we have a reason for wide and wisely ordered reading; for there are always catch-words floating in the air, as,––'What's the good?' 'It's all rot,' and the like, which the vacant mind catches up for use as the basis of thought and conduct, as, in fact, paltry principles for the guidance of a life. (Charlotte Mason, Philosophy of Education, p. 62)

 To misquote Michael Pollan, "Read books. Not too much. Mostly classics."  

And let the clouds be clouds.

CM's Paraphrases Are In Print (again)!

 I don't know if anyone else is like me, but when I first started this CM journey, I was not a huge reader. The first book I read about the Charlotte Mason method was For the Children's Sake, and the first time I read it, I read Susan Schaeffer Macaulay's text but skipped right over all the long CM quotes. They were just too long and difficult; I couldn't make sense of them. It wasn't until my third time reading For the Children's sake that I even attempted to read those CM quotes.

During my last pregnancy, I decided to read all of Charlotte Mason's volumes, and to make sure I didn't skip over anything that seemed cloud in my brain, I paraphrased each sentence as I read into easy language that even I could understand. That forced me to unravel the long sentences in my mind, try to make sense of vague concepts, and actually look up references that illustrated her point. By the time my daughter was born, Home Education was completely paraphrased. While she napped, I continued with Volume 6, then Volume 3, and on until I had been through the entire Series.

If you're like me and want to understand Charlotte Mason's ideas without having to first get over the language difficulty and more complex sentence structure of Victorian English, a paraphrase may be a helpful way to get from Point A to Point B. And now all six paraphrased volumes are in print and available directly from Amazon.com! Of course, they are still (and will always be) available to read online for free, and you are welcome to download them from the AO website and put them on your Kindle or other device, or print yourself a copy to read offline. But if you'd like to read them from a "real book," there are purchase links at https://www.amblesideonline.org/CMM/ModernEnglish.html.

Confronted With an Idea

by Anne White

A slide popped up a couple of days ago on my social media. I couldn’t track down the author's account, which is one reason I think it may have been floating around for awhile. Nevertheless, what it had to say was intriguing: 

“Reading books is so profound because it denies you the ability to speak when confronted with an idea. You must listen. It isn’t a conversation. Sometimes it shouldn’t be a conversation. Sometimes we should just listen. Just listen.”

Now, that (as many commenters squawked back) flies in the face of much we’ve been told about reading and books. Mortimer J. Adler’s How to Read a Book  famously compares reading to a game of catch, which demands at least some amount of back-and-forth activity. In an age when what students do in class is discuss things; in a time when we’re encouraged to leave comments and feedback on every post and every video (because it helps with the ratings), to be told we should listen in silence… just listen…feels heretical.

And yet. And yet.

What do Charlotte Mason students do? Narrate. As opposed to Vanity Fair’s  young whippersnapper George Osborne, whose little essay is derided by Charlotte in Home Education. “And well might Mrs George Sedley be delighted. Would not many a mother to-day triumph in such a literary effort? What can Thackeray be laughing at? Or does he, in truth, give us this little 'theme' as a tour de force?” (p. 244)

And what comes before narration? Listening. Attentiveness. Observation. Hearing, in the Biblical sense.

In Ragman and Other Cries of Faith, Walter Wangerin Jr.  wrote about his experiences as a young pastor, visiting an older woman from his church who was facing an unknown future after cancer surgery. One day as he talked about the weather and how nice it would be when she was feeling better, this woman became exasperated with his chatter and told him to “Shut up.” So he did: “I entered her room at noon, saying nothing. I sat beside her through the afternoon, saying nothing…; but with the evening came the Holy Spirit. For the words I finally said were not my own…”

Learning to shut up allowed Wangerin the needed space for the Spirit to minister.

Learning to listen first, including as we read, may do the same.

It's something to think about, anyway. 

We would not willingly educate [a child] towards what is called 'self-expression'; he has little to express except what he has received as knowledge, whether by way of record or impression; what he can do is to assimilate and give this forth in a form which is original because it is modified, re-created, by the action of his own mind; and this originality is produced by the common bread and milk which is food for everyone, acting upon the mind which is peculiar to each individual child. (Philosophy of Education, p. 66)

Here Because We're Here

(The photo: My grandmother, my mother, and baby me.--A.W.)

by Anne White

While trekking through Parents and Children for besides-the-point reasons, I found myself almost at the end of the book, and was struck by one of those should-be-obvious things Charlotte Mason likes to throw at us:

It cannot be too strongly urged that our education of children will depend, nolens volens, upon the conception we form of them. (Parents and Children, p. 260)

 The Latin nolens volens can be translated as "willy-nilly," or whether we like it or not, and that actually matters here. A leads inevitably to B; we have no choice about that. New homeschoolers are often encouraged to "philosophy shop," picking a method, or combining two or three, to suit their particular inclinations--"I'm not a very good reader, so I guess classical/Charlotte Mason isn't for me." The advice is well meant, but it points people in the wrong direction. We cannot paste one method of education on top of quite another belief system, and expect to see success. Mason's use of the word "conception" is interesting there as well: it can be defined simply as "idea," but it has more depth than that. It could be rephrased as "the belief we have of children (or human beings)," or "the way we perceive them as existing," or "the essential nature of childhood."

Well, this much we know:

1. Children are born persons.

And, as we sometimes missed in the earlier days of reading Mason, but as has been pointed out more and more in recent years, that does not mean only that our teaching/raising must respect a child's individuality, but (possibly even harder for us to get a handle on), his/her status as a member of the human race. What makes me a person applies equally to him and her and you. And what is that?

[Children are] instruments fit and capable for the carrying out of the Divine purpose in the progress of the world. (p. 260)

There is a Divine purpose: children have a relationship with God.

There is a Kingdom purpose: children are here to carry out God's plans in the world.

Children have been created "fit and capable" for those purposes; "they are "perfectly fitted to receive those ideas which are for the inspiration of life" (pp. 260-261);  but the right sort of education makes them even more so. And if you think all this sounds like another Mason principle, you're right.

13. Education is the Science of Relations; that is, that a child has natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts: so we must train him upon physical exercises, nature, handicrafts, science and art, and upon many living books...

So here, from the same passage, are our directives as educators:

1. "Endeavour to discern the signs of the times," or what Mason referred to elsewhere by its German term, the Zeitgeist. What are the good points (yes, there must be some!) of the current state of the world? What pieces are missing? Look and listen. Pray for discernment.

2. "Perceive in what directions we are being led." In two confusing chapter titles near the end of Parents and Children, Mason asks "Whence" and "Whither," but she later unpacks them as "What is the history, where are the roots of this philosophy? In the 'potency' [potential] of the child," and then "Where does this take us, where will the branches grow? In the living thought of the day." In School Education, Mason pointed out that the Zeitgeist of turn-of-the-century England would not necessarily be the same as that of the future, but that each time and place would have its big questions, big needs.

3. "Prepare the children to carry forward the work of the world," which Mason believed in her time to be "the advancement of the [human] race." How was this to be done? "By giving them vitalising ideas." And then, with her hand perhaps shading her eyes as the crew of the Dawn Treader did when they glimpsed something "beyond the End of the World," she said:

We find that all men everywhere are keenly interested in science, that the world waits and watches for great discoveries; we, too, wait and watch, believing that, as Coleridge said long ago, great ideas of Nature are imparted to minds already prepared to receive them by a higher Power than Nature herself. (Parents and Children, p. 261)

Check that last bit out carefully: Mason believed that God was doing amazing things and giving great ideas to people: but that the minds of those future adults, who happened to be children right now, needed to be prepared to receive them. They needed to be taught to use their reason, but not to depend on it uncritically. They needed to develop all the body, mind, and heart habits that are outlined in Ourselves. They needed some Formation of Character so that they could live with Will. And they needed to acknowledge Authority, since to reject it also rejects its Author.

Zeitgeists change, but minds don't.

Nolens volens.

Pain Relief

Most people know what a Vulcan mind meld is, don't they? In Star Trek: The Original Series, Mr. Spock, like other Vulcans, has the ability to tap into someone else's consciousness, usually by placing his fingers on their head (or the appropriate parts of a Horta).

In the 1989 Star Trek movie The Final Frontier (the one that comes after the whales), Mr. Spock's long-lost half brother Sybok has a weird twist on the mind meld: he uses his telepathic abilities to draw out an individual's most deep-seated painful experiences, and help them experience a kind of catharsis or purification from that pain. Each person who experienced this was immediately so grateful to Sybok that they would put aside all other loyalties and do whatever he asked. Captain Kirk is one of the only holdouts to Sybok's brain-meddling; he tells Sybok that he doesn't want his pain taken away, it's part of who he is. (Those who have read Brave New World will see some parallels there.)

Is Sybok the antagonist of the story? The actor who played Sybok, Laurence Luckinbill, recalls how he thought of the character while playing him:

...his impulse is good, is really good. He is not a villain. He is someone who has made mistakes. You and I might make those mistakes. And in terms of trying to change your family or hold the community better, or something like that, you might get nuts and say, ‘No, you will do it this way.’ But the impulse [is] to make things better, and really, at its heart, is let me take your pain away. Let me make life better for you. So, that was what that is. That is my take on it. And I resisted the idea of being the villain. And I told Bill [Shatner] that. I said he's not a villain. He's a heroic guy. And he's just, he's just in the way of the legal stuff, you know. That's what I would say.

Sybok, according to the actor who, we might say, knows him best, is not villainous, but well-meaning. However, this well-meaningness nearly causes untold destruction, and, on a smaller, moral scale, he's going where no man has gone before and really shouldn't. 

Charlotte Mason knew about this too. In Parents and Children, she wrote:

...our feelings are educable, and that in educating the feelings we modify the character. A pressing danger our day is that the delicate task of educating shall be exchanged for the much simpler one of blunting the feelings. (p. 199)

She then goes on to speak, as she has in other places, about the great amount of standing back that parents and teachers must do, especially as young people must learn to choose their own actions. Luckinbill calls Sybok "heroic," but Charlotte would certainly not use that word to describe someone so manipulative, even if (as Luckinbill says) the character's desire is to make everyone's life better. And, as Kirk says, we don't need our pain to disappear completely.  It may be something that has helped shape our character, something that is there inside us but which we have mastered. Having developed the strength to keep fighting that thing may be what helps us deal with other struggles. The characters who had all their traumas blotted out by Sybok seemed floppy, without any will. They were cheerful and co-operative, but they were not choosing to submit, they were unable to do anything else.

The mother may do a good deal to avert serious mishaps by accustoming the younger children to small feats of leaping and climbing, so that they learn, at the same time, courage and caution from their own experiences, and are less likely to follow the lead of too-daring playmates. Later, the mother had best make up her mind to share the feelings of the hen that hatched a brood of ducklings, remembering that a little scream and sudden 'Come down instantly!' 'Tommy, you'll break your neck!' gives the child a nervous shock, and is likely to cause the fall it was meant to hinder by startling Tommy out of all presence of mind. (Home Education, p. 84)

We don't want to see our children suffer. Our natural urge is to protect them wherever we can. But lest we find our good intentions taking us "just in the way of the legal stuff," by which I think Luckinbill means stepping over moral lines, we need to become less--and therefore more--heroic, by stepping back.

A baby falls, gets a bad bump, and cries piteously. The experienced nurse does not "kiss the place to make it well," or show any pity for the child's trouble––that would make matters worse; the more she pities, the more he sobs. She hastens to 'change his thoughts,' so she says; she carries him to the window to see the horses, gives him his pet picture-book, his dearest toy, and the child pulls himself up in the middle of a sob, though he is really badly hurt. Now this, of the knowing nurse, is precisely the part the will plays towards the man. It is by force of will that a man can 'change his thoughts,' transfer his attention from one subject of thought to another, and that, with a shock of mental force of which he is indistinctly conscious. And this is enough to save a man and to make a man, this power of making himself think only of those things which he has beforehand decided that it is good to think upon. (Home Education, p. 324)

And that is the power of the Charlotte Mason mind: un-melded.

Words that hover above the page

by Anne White

Ideas are everywhere, in the words and, so to speak, behind the words, present because they are literally present and present even if they appear to be absent. A writer may despise the idea of zoos and communicate that hatred by writing a book about animals in the bush, never mentioning zoos, never alluding to zoos or dropping a hint about zoos. Because of the way the mind works, we get the message...If you picture a page of writing as three-dimensional, with the words hovering a half-inch or so above the paper, then you begin to see where the ideas are: behind the words, between the words, really everywhere. (Eric Maisel, Deep Writing)

In Jan Karon’s novel Out to Canaan, people in Mitford are feeling overworked and stressed by a variety of situations. Partway through the book, Father Tim invites his parishioners to a special evening church service, and as they recite the prayer of confession, we are given a glimpse of what is going on in their minds.

“Most merciful God,” Esther Bolick prayed aloud and in unison with the others from the Book of Common Prayer, “we confess that we have sinned against You in thought, word, and deed…” She felt the words enter her aching bones like balm.

“…by what we have done,” prayed Gene, “and by what we have left undone.”

“We have not loved You with our whole heart,” intoned Uncle Billy Watson…He found the words of the prayer beautiful. They made him feel hopeful and closer to the Lord, and maybe it was true that he hadn’t always done right by his neighbors, but he would try to do better, he would start before he hit the street this very night.

Now, setting questions of religious faith aside just for the moment, the point is that there is something going on here that transcends the levels of understanding, the social backgrounds and whatnot of the people praying. One big reason that this prayer speaks to Esther, Gene, Uncle Billy, and others I did not include here, is that the words, as Eric Maisel says, have dimensionality. The words, the sentences, are allowed to live, and to give life. There is enough space above them, between them, and underneath them, for each person to find green pastures and quiet waters. 

This is, in effect, the definition of a living book, and also of a living education. In Home Education, Charlotte Mason acknowledges that much good educational theory has been "conceived and perfected by large hearted educators to aid the many sided evolution of the living, growing, most complex human being"; it respects our own dimensionality (perhaps another way of saying "personhood").

The wind has painted fancies

on my wings.

Fancies...

Where was I?

O yes! Lord,

I had something to tell you:

Amen.

("The Prayer of the Butterfly" in Prayers from the Ark)

However, we tend to take such vital, free-fluttering ideas, and pin them down on collecting boards, labelling and cataloguing them, but ignoring the fact that they will never fly again. Charlotte says, "but what a miserable wooden system does it become in the hands of ignorant practitioners!...the observing of rules until the habit of doing certain things, of behaving in certain ways, is confirmed, and, therefore, the art is acquired––is so successful in achieving precise results, that it is no wonder there should be endless attempts to straiten the whole field of education to the limits of a system" (p. 9). 

These systems, these books, these artificially-generated things, are "precise" but also "straitened"; there is no room in them for us to move or breathe. I once wrote on our family blog:

... the stuff that gets used the least here is usually something produced specifically for the classroom...Case in point: a music-and-math resource book...which has such classic songs in it as this (sung to the tune of Three Blind Mice): "Let's make a people graph / Let's make a people graph / Of all our friends / In the classroom. / Boys stand over here. / Girls stand over there. / Then line up in two rows / So we can compare, / So we can compare." My daughter says she'd rather sing "Aiken Drum" any day.

Charlotte said the same thing:

The promoters of the kindergarten system have done much to introduce games of this, or rather of a more educational kind; but is it not a fact that the singing games of the kindergarten are apt to be somewhat inane? Also, it is doubtful how far the prettiest plays, learnt at school and from a teacher, will take hold of the children as do the games which have been passed on from hand to hand through an endless chain of children, and are not be found in the print-books at all. (Home Education, p. 82)

Near the end of Home Education, Charlotte discusses the religious training of young children, and she pulls no punches on what we might call un-dimensional teaching: 

There is no more fruitful source of what it is hardly too much to call infant infidelity than the unreal dead words which are poured upon children about the best things, with an artificial solemnity of tone and manner intended to make up for the want of living meaning in the words. Let the parent who only knows one thing from above teach his child that one; more will come to him by the time the child is ready for more. (pp. 346-347)

So, let the parent who knows no more than one prayer-book prayer, one or two good hymns by heart, a couple of folk songs, a favourite tale, and the names of one butterfly, two trees, or three wild flowers, share these things freely.  Let the ideas that are present take flight, and those that are absent also be noticed by their absence. God will surely bless such an education more than He will a whole heap of unreal dead-leaf words, though they be raked ever so neatly into piles. 

As the butterfly said...Amen.

A reading challenge for friends (and enemies)

by Anne White

In Arnold Bennett's 1910 book How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, he proposes that novels should be excluded from serious reading. Now, everyone, keep your literary shirts on while Bennett gives his reasons:

1. Bad novels ought not to be read in the first place, so they're ruled out.

2. "A good novel rushes you forward like a skiff down a stream, and you arrive at the end, perhaps breathless, but unexhausted. The best novels involve the least strain."

3. It is only the bad parts of [otherwise good] novels that are difficult.

4. If you're working hard at learning to think better, read more deeply, dig more skillfully, it seems (according to Bennett) that all of that inspiration is going to require a bit of perspiration. Novel reading (in his terms) is just a bit too much fun! He says, "You do not set your teeth in order to read 'Anna Karenina.' Therefore, though you should read novels, you should not read them in those ninety minutes [of serious reading]."

What sorts of books do qualify then? Bennett mentions history or philosophy, but he has a preferred alternative for beginners: poetry.

Imaginative poetry produces a far greater mental strain than novels. It produces probably the severest strain of any form of literature. It is the highest form of literature. It yields the highest form of pleasure, and teaches the highest form of wisdom. In a word, there is nothing to compare with it. I say this with sad consciousness of the fact that the majority of people do not read poetry...Still, I will never cease advising my friends and enemies to read poetry before anything.

How should we start? Here are Bennett's suggestions:

1. William Hazlitt's essay "On Poetry In General," which you can read here. Why? Here's Bennett's review: "It is the best thing of its kind in English, and no one who has read it can possibly be under the misapprehension that poetry is a mediaeval torture, or a mad elephant, or a gun that will go off by itself and kill at forty paces. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine the mental state of the man who, after reading Hazlitt's essay, is not urgently desirous of reading some poetry before his next meal." A warning: it's fifteen pages long, so pour yourself a large cup of something first. Here's a short excerpt: 

We are as prone to make a torment of our fears, as to luxuriate in our hopes of good. If it be asked, Why we do so? the best answer will be, Because we cannot help it. The sense of power is as strong a principle in the mind as the love of pleasure. Objects of terror and pity exercise the same despotic control over it as those of love or beauty. It is as natural to hate as to love, to despise as to admire, to express our hatred or contempt, as our love or admiration. "Masterless passion sways us to the mood / Of what it likes or loathes."

2. Next, try reading some "purely narrative poetry." Bennett suggests Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh, which (he says) is a novel written in poetic form, and which you can read here. Here is his advice: 

Decide to read that book through, even if you die for it. Forget that it is fine poetry. Read it simply for the story and the social ideas. And when you have done, ask yourself honestly whether you still dislike poetry. 

Here is an excerpt of Aurora Leigh to whet your appetite:

    I, Aurora Leigh, was born
    To make my father sadder, and myself
    Not overjoyous, truly. Women know
    The way to rear up children, (to be just,)
    They know a simple, merry, tender knack
    Of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes,
    And stringing pretty words that make no sense,
    And kissing full sense into empty words;
    Which things are corals to cut life upon,
    Although such trifles: children learn by such,
    Love’s holy earnest in a pretty play,
    And get not over-early solemnised,—
    But seeing, as in a rose-bush, Love’s Divine,
    Which burns and hurts not,—not a single bloom,—
    Become aware and unafraid of Love.
    Such good do mothers. 

3. And after that? Bennett recommends that apprentices in serious reading should take, oh, about a year to build up muscle on such poetry. Then we'll be "fit to assault the supreme masterpieces of history or philosophy. The great convenience of masterpieces is that they are so astonishingly lucid."

4. Of course, reading some Arnold Bennett wouldn't hurt either. Or maybe he'd be rated as too much fun.

What do you think about this literary "no pain, no gain?" Have you read Hazlitt's essay, or Aurora Leigh? Do you agree that good novels should whish you along the mental stream without effort, or is Bennett perhaps not giving writers of prose (including himself) enough credit?