By Anne White
After a winter like we've had, browsing through an online book called The Spring of the Year sounded like a tonic for the dirty snow banks still heaped outside my window. For some reason, the author's excitement over his blossoming shad bush got my curiosity up too. What is a shad bush, and do we have any around here? A few minutes of Internet searching came up with other names--service berry, bilberry, Saskatoon--Saskatoon? like the Saskatoon berries out west? Gotcha. And there were some photographs of white flowering trees, plus the assurance that yes, serviceberries (or shad bush as the author called it) certainly do grow in Ontario. After beating back the usual guilty I-didn't-teach-that-to-my-kids reaction, I kept reading and recognized many of the bird and plant names--just not, in most cases, their faces. Violets and dandelions we get in abundance, right in our yard; but to see bloodroot and trilliums, you have to put your boots on, so to speak, and go out to the woods. We see robins every day, sometimes cardinals and jays, crows, flickers in fall--but bluebirds? I never see them in my own neighbourhood. More Internet and local-bird-guide searching...yes, there are bluebirds, and warblers, and Brown Thrashers. I suddenly found myself picking my husband's brains for likely trails and parks...and this was just after reading the first chapter.
Early in the last century, Brown University professor Dallas Lore Sharp had begun publishing collections of his nature essays, such as The Lay of the Land. A number of those same essays were then re-used in a series of seasonal books, with extra practical material aimed at young students. Although I don't have any of the actual details on how that happened, I can imagine Professor Sharp's editor (in a collar up to his chin) coming over one day, maybe having to wait while Sharp returned from the woods, and launching the idea he'd had to boost sales: a new series, aimed at schools. I imagine him saying something like, "You won't really have to do all that much work...we can re-use a lot of your earlier stuff, with a little editing here and there...we just want you to come up with some hands-on ideas for the nature clubs, maybe a couple of extra chapters in each book. Oh, and some notes for teachers would be good. What do you think?"
Not so surprisingly, Sharp agreed. More surprisingly, these books do not read like re-packaged adult material with a few sidebars for the children (as might have happened with other writers). Knowing their previous publishing history does explain their slightly episodic format; that is, why they aren't necessarily books you must read through from beginning to end, no skipping. But that's almost a contemporary approach, isn't it?--seeing each of the volumes as a sort of nature package, that can be unpacked at different points. Each of the four volumes in the series has "Things to See" and "Things to Do" chapters interspersed with essays. A teacher or homeschooling parent might read or assign the essays, but present the hands-on material in a less formal way, using Sharp's suggestions as a basis for field study. There was just one chapter in Spring of the Year that I did not like as much, or rather, I felt my squeamish student might not appreciate, about predators and prey, and whether small animals experience a "life of fear."
These are not books that will give you detailed information about exactly where to find bobolinks, or what colour certain types of eggs are; they are meant more to get the reader excited about discovering nature in his own region. Of course, since Sharp lived in New England, most of the plants and animals he describes are native to the northeastern United States, and, to some extent, to the surrounding areas such as southern Ontario. I found that most of the birds mentioned in the Spring volume also appeared in our local nature guides, as did several of the wild flowers such as Jack-in-the-Pulpit. That doesn't mean they're in every back yard, just that if you live in the northern hemisphere, east of the Rockies, and if you put a bit of effort in, you might have a chance of seeing them.
The lists of things to see, do, and listen for in spring are useful, and sometimes humorous, such as "listen for grass growing.". In fact, that's one of Dallas Lore Sharp's strong points: besides being practical, his style is friendly and not overly serious. These are good books for families to read together, and then to go out, find things, draw them, write them down. You can start any place in the series, but Spring seems like a particularly nice opening point. Go find a shad bush, or whatever marks the seasonal turning point for you; start there, and then use Sharp's "bucket lists" (or make your own), and enjoy the spring together.
(Scanned and plain-text versions of Sharp's nature books are available on various websites including Project Gutenberg.)
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Monday, March 17, 2014
Dallas Lore Sharp on the problems of nature writing
"Insincerity is the mother of all the literary sins. If the writer cannot be true to himself, he cannot be true to anything. Children are the particular victims of the evil. How often are children spoken to in baby-talk, gush, hollow questions, and a condescension as irritating as coming teeth! They are written to, also, in the same spirit....
"Just as strong to the story-writer is the temptation to blacken the shadows of the picture—to make all life a tragedy. Here on my table lies a child’s nature-book every chapter of which ends in death—nothing but struggle to escape for a brief time the bloody jaws of the bigger beast—or of the superior beast, man.
"Neither extreme is true of nature. Struggle and death go on, but, except where man interferes, a very even balance is maintained, peace prevails over fear, joy lasts longer than pain, and life continues to multiply and replenish the earth. 'The level of wild life,' to quote my words from 'The Face of the Fields,' 'of the soul of all nature is a great serenity. It is seldom lowered, but often raised to a higher level, intenser, faster, more exultant.'
"This is a divinely beautiful world, a marvelously interesting world, the best conceivable sort of a world to live in, notwithstanding its gypsy moths, tornadoes, and germs, its laws of gravity, and of cause and effect; and my purpose in this series of nature books is to help my readers to come by this belief. A clear understanding of the laws of the Universe will be necessary for such a belief in the end, and with the understanding a profound faith in their perfect working together. But for the present, in these books of the Seasons, if I can describe the out of doors, its living creatures and their doings, its winds and skies with their suggestions—all of the out of doors, as it surrounds and supports me here in my home on Mullein Hill, Hingham, so that you can see how your out of doors surrounds and supports you, with all its manifold life and beauty, then I have done enough. If only I can accomplish a fraction of this I have done enough." --Dallas Lore Sharp, from the introduction to The Fall of the Year, 1911.
(AO curriculum users who have read Year Seven's natural history option Lay of the Land will be familiar with Dallas Lore Sharp. Stay tuned for a review of his seasonal nature books -- Anne White.)
"Just as strong to the story-writer is the temptation to blacken the shadows of the picture—to make all life a tragedy. Here on my table lies a child’s nature-book every chapter of which ends in death—nothing but struggle to escape for a brief time the bloody jaws of the bigger beast—or of the superior beast, man.
"Neither extreme is true of nature. Struggle and death go on, but, except where man interferes, a very even balance is maintained, peace prevails over fear, joy lasts longer than pain, and life continues to multiply and replenish the earth. 'The level of wild life,' to quote my words from 'The Face of the Fields,' 'of the soul of all nature is a great serenity. It is seldom lowered, but often raised to a higher level, intenser, faster, more exultant.'
"This is a divinely beautiful world, a marvelously interesting world, the best conceivable sort of a world to live in, notwithstanding its gypsy moths, tornadoes, and germs, its laws of gravity, and of cause and effect; and my purpose in this series of nature books is to help my readers to come by this belief. A clear understanding of the laws of the Universe will be necessary for such a belief in the end, and with the understanding a profound faith in their perfect working together. But for the present, in these books of the Seasons, if I can describe the out of doors, its living creatures and their doings, its winds and skies with their suggestions—all of the out of doors, as it surrounds and supports me here in my home on Mullein Hill, Hingham, so that you can see how your out of doors surrounds and supports you, with all its manifold life and beauty, then I have done enough. If only I can accomplish a fraction of this I have done enough." --Dallas Lore Sharp, from the introduction to The Fall of the Year, 1911.
(AO curriculum users who have read Year Seven's natural history option Lay of the Land will be familiar with Dallas Lore Sharp. Stay tuned for a review of his seasonal nature books -- Anne White.)
Friday, February 28, 2014
Sunday Reading in the Parents' Union School
by Anne White
When we're examining the P.U.S programmes, it's easy to miss "For Sunday Reading" squeezed between the books and commentaries for formal Bible study and the devotional reading just after it.. After all, it is "optional." "Optional," when you're squeezed for schedule space already, is taken as the equivalent of "skip this."
But that's what Sunday is for, isn't it? A "stop right there" on the seventh day? A refresher? Some of us are stricter about Sunday-keeping than others, and I'm sure that Charlotte Mason's students would also have come from a variety of religious backgrounds where "Sunday reading" and "Sunday occcupations" were or weren't enforced, encouraged, or permitted. But here it is in the programme: an invitation to pause in the week's schoolwork; an offering of refreshment.
Aside from a few heavily Bible-oriented and church history titles that come up repeatedly, the "Sunday Reading" category has room for different sorts of biography, books on exploration (especially those relating to missionary work), and occasionally poetry and fiction (such as Uncle Tom's Cabin). One choice book that I'd never heard of, included one term shortly after Miss Mason's death, was The Roll Call of Honour, a new book of golden deeds, by Sir Arthur Quiller Couch, a book that refers to itself as not A Book of Golden Deeds but "a book of golden lives." It includes chapters on Simon Bolivar, John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, Giuseppe Garibaldi, David Livingstone, Florence Nightingale, Louis Pasteur, (Major-General) Gordon, and Father Damien. Similarly, a book called Adventures in Science by Arthur Maile includes short biographies of Pasteur, Lister, Perkin, Edison, Rontgen, and Marconi. So Sunday reading seemed to include anything relating to heroism, character, and principles, although the subjects were not always specifically Christian.
A good number of the books mentioned, though, were published by the Society to Promote Christian Knowledge (S.P.C.K.) or the Religious Tract Society (R.T.S.); it was supposed to be Sunday reading, after all.
Here are some of the titles I've come across that were mentioned as Sunday reading for the different forms (grade levels). Some are included in the Programmes currently on the Ambleside Online website, others came from the Charlotte Mason Digital Archives (some of those, as I mentioned, are books that were used throughout the 1920's after Miss Mason's death).
A small warning: I am including the publisher information because it does help to track down the right books online. Many of them are online; a search by title and author will bring up page images on sites such as archive.org or Project Gutenberg. However, and please take this seriously: not every book on this list will be a good choice for students' reading. Some contain negative racial or other views that were typical of their time; others may not agree with your own religious beliefs. Please preview before handing to children.
Form I (primary grades)
Sidelights on the Bible, by Mrs. Brightwen (R.T.S., 8/-).
The Child's Book of Saints (Dent. 9/6)
Form II (grades 4-6 or 7)
Sidelights on the Bible, by Mrs. Brightwen (R.T.S., 3/-).
English Church History for Children, Vol. II. (Methuen, 5/-).
Mackay of the Great Lake (Milford, 3/6)
The Children's Year (Church Seasons), by the Rev. G. R. Oakley (S.P.C.K., 8/6).
St. George of England, by B. Hood (Harrap, 2/6).
The Book of a Chinese Baby, by M. Entwhistle (U.C.M.E., 1/6).
How to Use the Prayer Book, by Mrs. Romanes (Longmans, 2/-).
The Northumbrian Saints, by E. N. Grierson (Mowbray, 2/6).
Lion-hearted (Bishop Hannington), by Canon Dawson (Seelay, 3/6).
Form III (grades 7-8)
Heroes and Writers of the Book of Common Prayer, by A. M. Forde (S.P.C.K., 8/6)
.Longfellow's Golden Legend (Oxford Press, 5/-).
Life and Voyages of Columbus, by Washington Irving
Africa and her Peoples (Walker) (not online)
The Roll Call of Honour, by A.T. Quiller Couch
James Gilmour of Mongolia (R. Lovett)
A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains (Mrs Bishop)
The Last Secrets, by J. Buchan
Ethics of the Dust, by John Ruskin
Longfellow's / Tennyson's Poems
The Romance of Excavation (Masters)
Saints and Heroes of the Western World (Davies)
Adventures in Science (Arthur Maile)
The Story of My Life (Helen Keller)
George Washington (A. Russell)
The Firebrand of the Indies (Xavier), by E.K. Seth-Smith
Henry Martyn, Confessor of the Faith, by C.E. Padwick
The Holy War / The Pilgrim's Progress
Fight the Good Fight, by W.E. Frost (not online)
The Faerie Queene Book I
The Land of the Incarnation (Gertrude Hollis) (not online)
St. Elizabeth of Hungary (Canton)
Joan of Arc, by Mark Twain
Form IV (approx. grade 9)
Keble's Christian Year (Longmands, 10d.).
Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies (Allen, 2/8, or Dent, 1/6). (f)
The Golden Legend, by Longfellow
The Quest of Nations, by T. R. W. Lunt (U.C.M.E., 2/6), pp.1-60.
The Story of S. Paul's Life and Letters, by J. Paterson Smyth (Sampson Low, 5/-), pp. 1-75.
The Fall of Constantinople, by J. H. Neale (Dant, 2/6).
Forms V and VI (senior high)
"The 'way' of this kind of teaching is very simple and obvious; read to him, or read for him, that is, read bit by bit, and tell as you read, Hartwig's Tropical World, the same author's Polar World, Livingstone's missionary travels, Mrs. Bishop's Unbeaten Tracks in Japan––in fact, any interesting, well-written book of travel." ~~ Charlotte Mason, Home EducationTrivia question: who is possibly the most famous owner of Hartwig's The Polar and Tropical Worlds (a bindup of the two books)? Give up? Charles Ingalls. It is otherwise known as "Pa's Big Green Book," the only book that Laura and Mary were allowed to look at on Sundays.
When we're examining the P.U.S programmes, it's easy to miss "For Sunday Reading" squeezed between the books and commentaries for formal Bible study and the devotional reading just after it.. After all, it is "optional." "Optional," when you're squeezed for schedule space already, is taken as the equivalent of "skip this."
But that's what Sunday is for, isn't it? A "stop right there" on the seventh day? A refresher? Some of us are stricter about Sunday-keeping than others, and I'm sure that Charlotte Mason's students would also have come from a variety of religious backgrounds where "Sunday reading" and "Sunday occcupations" were or weren't enforced, encouraged, or permitted. But here it is in the programme: an invitation to pause in the week's schoolwork; an offering of refreshment.
Aside from a few heavily Bible-oriented and church history titles that come up repeatedly, the "Sunday Reading" category has room for different sorts of biography, books on exploration (especially those relating to missionary work), and occasionally poetry and fiction (such as Uncle Tom's Cabin). One choice book that I'd never heard of, included one term shortly after Miss Mason's death, was The Roll Call of Honour, a new book of golden deeds, by Sir Arthur Quiller Couch, a book that refers to itself as not A Book of Golden Deeds but "a book of golden lives." It includes chapters on Simon Bolivar, John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, Giuseppe Garibaldi, David Livingstone, Florence Nightingale, Louis Pasteur, (Major-General) Gordon, and Father Damien. Similarly, a book called Adventures in Science by Arthur Maile includes short biographies of Pasteur, Lister, Perkin, Edison, Rontgen, and Marconi. So Sunday reading seemed to include anything relating to heroism, character, and principles, although the subjects were not always specifically Christian.
A good number of the books mentioned, though, were published by the Society to Promote Christian Knowledge (S.P.C.K.) or the Religious Tract Society (R.T.S.); it was supposed to be Sunday reading, after all.
Here are some of the titles I've come across that were mentioned as Sunday reading for the different forms (grade levels). Some are included in the Programmes currently on the Ambleside Online website, others came from the Charlotte Mason Digital Archives (some of those, as I mentioned, are books that were used throughout the 1920's after Miss Mason's death).
A small warning: I am including the publisher information because it does help to track down the right books online. Many of them are online; a search by title and author will bring up page images on sites such as archive.org or Project Gutenberg. However, and please take this seriously: not every book on this list will be a good choice for students' reading. Some contain negative racial or other views that were typical of their time; others may not agree with your own religious beliefs. Please preview before handing to children.
Form I (primary grades)
Sidelights on the Bible, by Mrs. Brightwen (R.T.S., 8/-).
The Child's Book of Saints (Dent. 9/6)
When I was a Boy in Serbia (Harrap, 3/6)
Mrs. Gatty's Parables from Nature (Dent. 2/6)
When I was a Boy in Japan (Harrap, 3/6).
Mrs. Gatty's Parables from Nature (Dent. 2/6)
When I was a Boy in Japan (Harrap, 3/6).
The Story of Stanley (Nelson, 2/-)
Form II (grades 4-6 or 7)
Sidelights on the Bible, by Mrs. Brightwen (R.T.S., 3/-).
English Church History for Children, Vol. II. (Methuen, 5/-).
Mackay of the Great Lake (Milford, 3/6)
The Children's Year (Church Seasons), by the Rev. G. R. Oakley (S.P.C.K., 8/6).
St. George of England, by B. Hood (Harrap, 2/6).
The Book of a Chinese Baby, by M. Entwhistle (U.C.M.E., 1/6).
How to Use the Prayer Book, by Mrs. Romanes (Longmans, 2/-).
The Northumbrian Saints, by E. N. Grierson (Mowbray, 2/6).
Lion-hearted (Bishop Hannington), by Canon Dawson (Seelay, 3/6).
Form III (grades 7-8)
Heroes and Writers of the Book of Common Prayer, by A. M. Forde (S.P.C.K., 8/6)
.Longfellow's Golden Legend (Oxford Press, 5/-).
Life and Voyages of Columbus, by Washington Irving
Africa and her Peoples (Walker) (not online)
The Roll Call of Honour, by A.T. Quiller Couch
James Gilmour of Mongolia (R. Lovett)
A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains (Mrs Bishop)
The Last Secrets, by J. Buchan
Ethics of the Dust, by John Ruskin
Longfellow's / Tennyson's Poems
The Romance of Excavation (Masters)
Saints and Heroes of the Western World (Davies)
Adventures in Science (Arthur Maile)
The Story of My Life (Helen Keller)
George Washington (A. Russell)
The Firebrand of the Indies (Xavier), by E.K. Seth-Smith
Henry Martyn, Confessor of the Faith, by C.E. Padwick
The Holy War / The Pilgrim's Progress
Fight the Good Fight, by W.E. Frost (not online)
The Faerie Queene Book I
The Land of the Incarnation (Gertrude Hollis) (not online)
St. Elizabeth of Hungary (Canton)
Joan of Arc, by Mark Twain
Form IV (approx. grade 9)
Keble's Christian Year (Longmands, 10d.).
Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies (Allen, 2/8, or Dent, 1/6). (f)
The Golden Legend, by Longfellow
The Quest of Nations, by T. R. W. Lunt (U.C.M.E., 2/6), pp.1-60.
The Story of S. Paul's Life and Letters, by J. Paterson Smyth (Sampson Low, 5/-), pp. 1-75.
The Fall of Constantinople, by J. H. Neale (Dant, 2/6).
Forms V and VI (senior high)
Stanley's The Eastern Church
Stanley's Sinai and Palestine (Murray, 4/-), pp. 304-364.
Stanley's Sinai and Palestine (Murray, 4/-), pp. 304-364.
Moral and Religious Education, by Dr. S. Bryant
The Myths of Plato
Browning's View of Life (with the poems referred to)
Browning's View of Life (with the poems referred to)
Westcott's Religious Thought in the West (Macmillan, 6/-):
Benjamin Whichcote.
Sunday Collects, by Canon Masterman (S.P.C.K, 2/-).
John Inglesant (Macmillan, 4/6).
George Herbert's Life and Poems (Oxford Press, 2/6).
Benjamin Whichcote.
Sunday Collects, by Canon Masterman (S.P.C.K, 2/-).
John Inglesant (Macmillan, 4/6).
George Herbert's Life and Poems (Oxford Press, 2/6).
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Some of the Difficulties of Modern Motherhood: A New Parents' Review Article, Part 3 of 4
Part 1 is here
Part 2 is here
Without going so far as the complete separation suggested in this scheme, there is no doubt that the whole tendency of modern life is, for the poor as for the rich, towards an alienation of the children from their parents - Sunday schools, games clubs, free meals, even the "happy evenings for the little ones," what excellent schemes they all are! Yet I confess that full of admiration as I am for each individually, as a whole, I dread their results.
Nature is a stern economist, and unused powers soon atrophy, and when all the mother work has been taken over by State and Philanthropy, home life will cease to exist, and the best incentive to heroism and self-devotion will disappear, with the last of the old-fashioned mothers.
But the question especially before us in this paper- the question that I am earnestly hoping some other parents will help me to answer, is what ought we mothers of the middle and upper classes to do in this matter? Are we to give up the management of our children altogether to experts in each phase of child life, or are we to "face the music" of professional criticism and insist on doing a certain amount ourselves? Personally, I do not think there can be any complete or definite answer to this question. Each mother must decide for herself, what she can and will do for her children, for it is not every woman who can nurse a sick child, or teach a wilful one. Two things only I venture to plead for. Let us keep some definite share in our children's lives- if we cannot teach them, or nurse them, then at least let us play with them, or work with them, but at any rate, have a real personal share in the young lives, somehow, so that we may not become to our children the mere payers of bills, and adorners of childish garments.
The other definite duty that I should like to urge is that the mother, what ever else she gives up, should at least keep in her own hands the first religious instruction of her children, surely, the God who has knit together with such amazing closeness the lives of child and mother must have intended the first knowledge of Himself to come from her. No two human beings think of God quite in the same fashion, but by teaching the little ones ourselves we can at least make sure that the first image help up to the childish mind is the noblest and most beautiful we ourselves can conceive. In this case it is really no excuse to say, "I am no good at teaching." No one need be a professor of theology or a trained instructor to impress upon a child's mind the one great fundamental truth that underlies all true religion- that in all that He says and does and is- God is Love; so that our little ones "being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend, with all the saints what is the breadth, and length and depths and height- and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge."
This one lesson, so simple that the babies can understand it (sometimes they seem to understand it better than their elders) so deep and complicated in connection with the mysteries of sin and suffering and death, that even the wisest of our clever sons can never fully grasp it, this we must face boldly with our children or neglect the greatest opportunity that God has given us; for when a boy learns from his mother's lips, with all her soul's tenderness in voice and eyes, that her love is but a shadow dim and imperfect of the love of God, then he gains an impression of God's love that in beyond all words, and that no one else on earth can ever give to him.
But it may be urged this great lesson does not cover the whole ground of a child's religious education. That is true, and although I have not the smallest doubt that it would be better for the child to have learnt this lesson, and missed all the rest, than to have learnt all the rest and never mastered this- still there is no reason why the rest should be neglected. Here comes in the difficulty....
To be continued
Background information (from the first part of the article):
Our source for this article: Previously, I shared how the Advisory obtained the Parent's Review volumes which our volunteers have typed for Leslie to put on the website.
Shortly after that blog-post, our volunteers finished typing up the last of the 9 volumes that were in the Advisory's possession. Providentially, we believe, at that same time one of our AO users shared that another volume was available for sale in England at a charity website. It was shockingly underpriced (I think about ten pounds), so I scurried over there and bought it. (I really love the internet, don't you?) It's volume 19, published in 1908. You can see the table of contents listed here on our website.
We'll be posting more photographed pages to share for volunteers to type as soon as I can coerce, er, I mean, cajole and convince, my 17 year old to photograph it for us. Her 23 year old sister did the photographing of volume 2 for us and she does physically still live at home, however, she is currently absorbed in college work and wedding plans. The 17 year old is lobbying for a reduced school schedule in exchange for photography work. (Updated: we had come to an amicable arrangement, and then ran into camera problems, and we are now awaiting a new charger).
In the meantime, I thought I'd share an article that I enjoyed here on the Advisory Blog. I'll be posting it in installments. I hope you enjoy it as much as I!
Part 2 is here
Nature is a stern economist, and unused powers soon atrophy, and when all the mother work has been taken over by State and Philanthropy, home life will cease to exist, and the best incentive to heroism and self-devotion will disappear, with the last of the old-fashioned mothers.
But the question especially before us in this paper- the question that I am earnestly hoping some other parents will help me to answer, is what ought we mothers of the middle and upper classes to do in this matter? Are we to give up the management of our children altogether to experts in each phase of child life, or are we to "face the music" of professional criticism and insist on doing a certain amount ourselves? Personally, I do not think there can be any complete or definite answer to this question. Each mother must decide for herself, what she can and will do for her children, for it is not every woman who can nurse a sick child, or teach a wilful one. Two things only I venture to plead for. Let us keep some definite share in our children's lives- if we cannot teach them, or nurse them, then at least let us play with them, or work with them, but at any rate, have a real personal share in the young lives, somehow, so that we may not become to our children the mere payers of bills, and adorners of childish garments.
The other definite duty that I should like to urge is that the mother, what ever else she gives up, should at least keep in her own hands the first religious instruction of her children, surely, the God who has knit together with such amazing closeness the lives of child and mother must have intended the first knowledge of Himself to come from her. No two human beings think of God quite in the same fashion, but by teaching the little ones ourselves we can at least make sure that the first image help up to the childish mind is the noblest and most beautiful we ourselves can conceive. In this case it is really no excuse to say, "I am no good at teaching." No one need be a professor of theology or a trained instructor to impress upon a child's mind the one great fundamental truth that underlies all true religion- that in all that He says and does and is- God is Love; so that our little ones "being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend, with all the saints what is the breadth, and length and depths and height- and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge."
This one lesson, so simple that the babies can understand it (sometimes they seem to understand it better than their elders) so deep and complicated in connection with the mysteries of sin and suffering and death, that even the wisest of our clever sons can never fully grasp it, this we must face boldly with our children or neglect the greatest opportunity that God has given us; for when a boy learns from his mother's lips, with all her soul's tenderness in voice and eyes, that her love is but a shadow dim and imperfect of the love of God, then he gains an impression of God's love that in beyond all words, and that no one else on earth can ever give to him.
But it may be urged this great lesson does not cover the whole ground of a child's religious education. That is true, and although I have not the smallest doubt that it would be better for the child to have learnt this lesson, and missed all the rest, than to have learnt all the rest and never mastered this- still there is no reason why the rest should be neglected. Here comes in the difficulty....
To be continued
Background information (from the first part of the article):
Our source for this article: Previously, I shared how the Advisory obtained the Parent's Review volumes which our volunteers have typed for Leslie to put on the website.
Shortly after that blog-post, our volunteers finished typing up the last of the 9 volumes that were in the Advisory's possession. Providentially, we believe, at that same time one of our AO users shared that another volume was available for sale in England at a charity website. It was shockingly underpriced (I think about ten pounds), so I scurried over there and bought it. (I really love the internet, don't you?) It's volume 19, published in 1908. You can see the table of contents listed here on our website.
We'll be posting more photographed pages to share for volunteers to type as soon as I can coerce, er, I mean, cajole and convince, my 17 year old to photograph it for us. Her 23 year old sister did the photographing of volume 2 for us and she does physically still live at home, however, she is currently absorbed in college work and wedding plans. The 17 year old is lobbying for a reduced school schedule in exchange for photography work. (Updated: we had come to an amicable arrangement, and then ran into camera problems, and we are now awaiting a new charger).
In the meantime, I thought I'd share an article that I enjoyed here on the Advisory Blog. I'll be posting it in installments. I hope you enjoy it as much as I!
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Some of the Difficulties of Modern Motherhood: A New Parents' Review article, Part 2
"Has she used them to establish those deep life long bonds of love and sympathy and mutual help and understanding, which should year by year take the place of mere physical or animal affection- or has she, to use the stinging words of Mrs. Lyn-Linton "allowed motherhood to end, where it ought to begin, at the birth of the child, and trusted other women to do for money, what she would not do for love." Those are bitter words, and like most satirical sayings they are only half-
This demand "to stand aside" for the good of the child is being made not only on the mothers in our own rank [I believe the upper middle classes and above, WLC], but of late the same process is strongly urged for the children of the poor; it is not long since the Westminster Gazette published a series of very eloquent appeals called the "Cry of the Children." These letters pressed for the wholesale removal of slum children to the country, where they might grow up amid healthy surroundings, with foster mothers in cottage homes. Now, green fields, and fresh air, and birds, and flowers, and country food are all good and excellent things, but I venture to think they are not for one single moment to be weighted against a mother's love, and when we talk of "taking the children back to nature" the last lesson we should learn from her would be to part the little ones from those who gave them birth. The heritage of a poor child in a great city is but a dark and pitiful one, but I think those who know it best would be the first to acknowledge, that often its one glory is the beautiful and unselfish devotion of the poor mother.
It is perhaps the one great compensation for the children of the poor, that they alone may fully know how much their mothers loved them. The rich mother may do much for her children, but she is not called upon to go hungry that they may be fed, nor cold that they may be warm, nor to work sixteen hours out of the twenty-four, in order to keep the home together, and through the cold and hunger, and unceasing toil are evil things, the love and heroism that they give rise to may be more beautiful and more valuable to the children's hearts, than all the sweet sounds and sights of country life."
From volume 19 of The Parents' Review
Illustrations are taken from a woman's magazine of the same time period
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Life in the Real World After a CM Education
A post-AO perspective by Tim Laurio
A little more than a year ago I graduated from college, married my best friend, and moved to a new city. The year since then has been one of transition: from the life of a high school and college student to the life of a married, working adult. It's been a challenging year, to say the least, but rich and rewarding as well.
It's also been confusing. When I was first invited to write a blog post about life after a Charlotte Mason education, I didn't have the slightest idea what I could say. Life has moved faster than my ability to reflect on it or make sense of it. And things are still changing. For that reason, most of this blog post will be about the transition itself.
In a lot of ways, my transition into adult life has been pretty standard. I graduated from high school, went to college for four years, and got a degree. Now I'm married, I live in the city, and I have a 9-to-5 job at an office. I see friends on the weekends, I watch TV in the evenings, and I go to church most Sundays. I've been having a minor quarter-life crisis, but I also have a lot of exciting new opportunities.
Sounds normal, right? And, in a way, normal is good. It means my education "worked." At twenty-three years old I am a gainfully employed, law-abiding, functioning member of society. I pay my rent on time, I play well with others, and I even have hobbies--all without ever setting foot in the public school system. Of course, there's more to life than jobs and hobbies and a social life. But I would call this a minor success for home education.
That's not to say that the transition has been completely smooth. It's been challenging in a lot of ways. In fact, in one area I think my Charlotte Mason upbringing has actually made the transition harder. Let me explain.
I work in the office of a large internet company, answering emails from customers. The work is easy but repetitive. Charlotte recommended short lessons and varied schedules to keep students' attention from flagging, but none of that is built into a standard work shift. And let me say it now: whatever living ideas do for the mind, repetitive work does the opposite. For the first month or two at my current job, I came home in the evenings feeling like an empty shell. My energy and attention and creativity were sapped. All I wanted to do was sit in front of the TV or go to bed.
The strangest part, at first, was that none of my co-workers seemed to notice. I didn't hear them complaining about how repetitive the work was, or how hard it was to pay attention for hours at a time, or what effect the long, dull days had on their imaginations. After a while I realized: they took all of that for granted. As a CM graduate I expect my work to be fulfilling and to demand my full attention. My public-schooled co-workers, on the other hand, are accustomed to buckling down for long stretches of dull work. They have coping strategies, whether that means zoning out or listening to music or watching YouTube videos in the background. I'm not used to sitting inside at a desk for most of the day, but most of them have probably been doing that since they were six. I'm not used to work that leaves my mind and spirit starved for real food. For them, it seems to be normal.
If that's normal, my education left me woefully unprepared for normal life. Now, maybe that's a bad thing. My lack of conditioning has made for a tough transition, one that--heaven and my wife know--I haven't always handled gracefully. Then again, maybe it's a good thing. I have a different expectation of what "normal" means. I have a full life outside my job, and I've found my own ways to cope with the work itself. I'm allowed to wear headphones while I work, so I've been listening to all sorts of material: music, audiobooks, podcasts, lessons and tutorials on YouTube, the daily news. To top it off, I come home every evening and give my wife a narration about whatever I listened to that day.
Full-time work hasn't dried up my creativity, either. The last year has been incredibly rich and productive, and my Charlotte Mason upbringing has played a huge role in that. For one thing, my wife and I have been developing an original science-fiction series for the indie screen. That means creating characters, developing a world, coming up with stories, planning episodes, refining season arcs, and writing scripts. The project has occupied most of our imaginative headspace for the last two years and it's still our favorite pastime. (If all goes well, we will start filming in a few years--stay tuned!)
I've also been doing a lot with music. Like most Ambleside Online students, I grew up reading great literature and listening to great music, and I fell in love with both. I entered college as an English major with music lessons on the side. Then, about halfway through my degree in English, my love of music turned into a passion. I finished the English major, but I added a music minor, and I decided that I wanted to pursue music seriously.
After graduating, I started teaching myself orchestration and arranging using any means I could get my hands on: online articles, YouTube lessons, orchestration manuals, and lots of careful listening to orchestral music. When we moved to Boston, I joined a couple of choirs and found a part-time position as an accompanist. Soon I had the opportunity to arrange a piece for one of my choirs. And then another piece. And another.
Since then, I've been blessed with a flood of opportunities. I've arranged pieces for choir and orchestra. I've conducted rehearsals and performances of my own arrangements. I've written original compositions, including a song commissioned for a friend's choir and the theme for another friend's web series. I've led a recording session and played in an orchestra. Currently, I'm taking voice lessons, singing in an opera, directing a choir, and scoring an indie film. I'm also researching music schools and planning college applications for a return to school.
Music is a big part of my life now. But my interest in music didn't come out of nowhere. The seed of that relationship was planted as a very young Charlotte Mason student, listening to classical music on the radio and doing composer study and taking piano lessons. The habit of attention and love of learning that I developed as a CM student allowed me to continue pursuing music in college and after I graduated. And that pursuit has opened a wealth of new relationships, experiences, and opportunities.
Once you make a habit of learning, it's hard to stop. I found this to be true with music, certainly, but in my experience it applies to everything. The attitude of attention, once acquired, becomes a constant part of who you are and how you approach the world. The discipline of education really does become a life.
(This was originally posted Nov 2, 2013 on the Childlight USA weblog.)
A little more than a year ago I graduated from college, married my best friend, and moved to a new city. The year since then has been one of transition: from the life of a high school and college student to the life of a married, working adult. It's been a challenging year, to say the least, but rich and rewarding as well.
It's also been confusing. When I was first invited to write a blog post about life after a Charlotte Mason education, I didn't have the slightest idea what I could say. Life has moved faster than my ability to reflect on it or make sense of it. And things are still changing. For that reason, most of this blog post will be about the transition itself.
In a lot of ways, my transition into adult life has been pretty standard. I graduated from high school, went to college for four years, and got a degree. Now I'm married, I live in the city, and I have a 9-to-5 job at an office. I see friends on the weekends, I watch TV in the evenings, and I go to church most Sundays. I've been having a minor quarter-life crisis, but I also have a lot of exciting new opportunities.
Sounds normal, right? And, in a way, normal is good. It means my education "worked." At twenty-three years old I am a gainfully employed, law-abiding, functioning member of society. I pay my rent on time, I play well with others, and I even have hobbies--all without ever setting foot in the public school system. Of course, there's more to life than jobs and hobbies and a social life. But I would call this a minor success for home education.
That's not to say that the transition has been completely smooth. It's been challenging in a lot of ways. In fact, in one area I think my Charlotte Mason upbringing has actually made the transition harder. Let me explain.
I work in the office of a large internet company, answering emails from customers. The work is easy but repetitive. Charlotte recommended short lessons and varied schedules to keep students' attention from flagging, but none of that is built into a standard work shift. And let me say it now: whatever living ideas do for the mind, repetitive work does the opposite. For the first month or two at my current job, I came home in the evenings feeling like an empty shell. My energy and attention and creativity were sapped. All I wanted to do was sit in front of the TV or go to bed.
The strangest part, at first, was that none of my co-workers seemed to notice. I didn't hear them complaining about how repetitive the work was, or how hard it was to pay attention for hours at a time, or what effect the long, dull days had on their imaginations. After a while I realized: they took all of that for granted. As a CM graduate I expect my work to be fulfilling and to demand my full attention. My public-schooled co-workers, on the other hand, are accustomed to buckling down for long stretches of dull work. They have coping strategies, whether that means zoning out or listening to music or watching YouTube videos in the background. I'm not used to sitting inside at a desk for most of the day, but most of them have probably been doing that since they were six. I'm not used to work that leaves my mind and spirit starved for real food. For them, it seems to be normal.
If that's normal, my education left me woefully unprepared for normal life. Now, maybe that's a bad thing. My lack of conditioning has made for a tough transition, one that--heaven and my wife know--I haven't always handled gracefully. Then again, maybe it's a good thing. I have a different expectation of what "normal" means. I have a full life outside my job, and I've found my own ways to cope with the work itself. I'm allowed to wear headphones while I work, so I've been listening to all sorts of material: music, audiobooks, podcasts, lessons and tutorials on YouTube, the daily news. To top it off, I come home every evening and give my wife a narration about whatever I listened to that day.
Full-time work hasn't dried up my creativity, either. The last year has been incredibly rich and productive, and my Charlotte Mason upbringing has played a huge role in that. For one thing, my wife and I have been developing an original science-fiction series for the indie screen. That means creating characters, developing a world, coming up with stories, planning episodes, refining season arcs, and writing scripts. The project has occupied most of our imaginative headspace for the last two years and it's still our favorite pastime. (If all goes well, we will start filming in a few years--stay tuned!)
I've also been doing a lot with music. Like most Ambleside Online students, I grew up reading great literature and listening to great music, and I fell in love with both. I entered college as an English major with music lessons on the side. Then, about halfway through my degree in English, my love of music turned into a passion. I finished the English major, but I added a music minor, and I decided that I wanted to pursue music seriously.
After graduating, I started teaching myself orchestration and arranging using any means I could get my hands on: online articles, YouTube lessons, orchestration manuals, and lots of careful listening to orchestral music. When we moved to Boston, I joined a couple of choirs and found a part-time position as an accompanist. Soon I had the opportunity to arrange a piece for one of my choirs. And then another piece. And another.
Since then, I've been blessed with a flood of opportunities. I've arranged pieces for choir and orchestra. I've conducted rehearsals and performances of my own arrangements. I've written original compositions, including a song commissioned for a friend's choir and the theme for another friend's web series. I've led a recording session and played in an orchestra. Currently, I'm taking voice lessons, singing in an opera, directing a choir, and scoring an indie film. I'm also researching music schools and planning college applications for a return to school.
Music is a big part of my life now. But my interest in music didn't come out of nowhere. The seed of that relationship was planted as a very young Charlotte Mason student, listening to classical music on the radio and doing composer study and taking piano lessons. The habit of attention and love of learning that I developed as a CM student allowed me to continue pursuing music in college and after I graduated. And that pursuit has opened a wealth of new relationships, experiences, and opportunities.
Once you make a habit of learning, it's hard to stop. I found this to be true with music, certainly, but in my experience it applies to everything. The attitude of attention, once acquired, becomes a constant part of who you are and how you approach the world. The discipline of education really does become a life.
(This was originally posted Nov 2, 2013 on the Childlight USA weblog.)
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Some of the Difficulties of Modern Motherhood: A New Parents' Review Article
Some of the Difficulties of Modern Motherhood (part 1)
by L. Nott Bower
There has never been a time when the duties and privileges of motherhood have been more constantly insisted upon than at the present day: every writer, who considers the up-bringing of children, lays a full burden of responsibility on the shoulders of the mother, and while the pastors and masters are more than willing to claim credit for all the successes, among the young folk, it is noticeable, that the failures are almost invariably credited to the mother's account. She is held responsible for her children's health- for their manners, for their morals, and even for their intellectual achievements in after life. Well and good- like most women- I should be much averse to belittling the influence of my sex; but I confess it does seem strange to me that the very generation that is doing its best- or its worst- to take from mothers all their best opportunities of influencing their children's lives should be the age which has decided to talk most loudly of a mother's influence. There can, I think, be little doubt that all the tendencies of modern life are towards separation rather than union between mother and child.
Let us begin at the very beginning- when first a woman looks down at the face of her new-born baby, it is with a veritable pride of possession, surely this is her own, as nothing else on earth can ever be. But from the first, she will find all the forces of civilisation leagued together to rob her of her supremacy. Probably the first question will arise concerning the feeding of the baby; it is astonishing, to any one who has glanced at the statistics of infant mortality, to note how light-heartedly doctor and nurse will advise the bringing-up of a child by hand [my note; bottle feeding]. It is sufficient for any little difficulty to arise (and there are unfortunately, few mothers, in these days, who can nurse their babies, with complete physical ease) and a "bottle for the baby" is suggested as cheerfully as though by the use of artificial food all the dangers of infant life were not seriously increased, and one of motherhood's dearest privileges at once surrendered. For the bringing up of a baby by hand not only diminishes the child's first best chance of a healthy life, but also makes it fatally easy to violate that wise law of nature, which decrees that a baby in its first year of life shall never long be absent from his mother's arms.
Next comes the question of a nurse for the child: and on all sides the counsel is practically unanimous to engage a throughly [sic] trained woman. "You would never forgive yourself, if you had not done so, and anything went wrong with your baby." This is an unanswerable argument to a young mother, but the highly trained nurse is an autocrat, who brooks little interference within her nursery, and the more competent she is the more completely will she govern every detail of the baby-life. Many mothers with a "treasure of a nurse," would, if the truth were known, have to please guilty to some secret awe of nurse's wishes, and have often been conscious of being somewhat "on sufferance" in the nursery, whereas surely they ought to be the very centre and mainspring of life in that domain. Then comes the next step. In the last generation it was not unusual for the mother to undertake the early instruction of her children, it was the pride of many busy mothers in the Victorian Era that they had taught all their numerous children to read and write, but this is an age of specialisation, and according to the specialiasts, it is little short of criminal for an unqualified person to attempt the instruction of a child, and I have heard it emphatically stated at an educational meeting, that the last person to teach a child should be its own mother.
So the little one passes from the trained nurse to the trained teacher, and soon- cruelly soon, the claims of the perfect organisation for child-life in the modern boarding-school will begin to be urged. There are so many drawbacks to the bringing-up of children at home, especially in the suburbs- the difficulty of finding a good school within reach, social complications, and perhaps above all, the impossibility of completely compassing that most important item in young life, healthy out-door freedom in play-time, in conjunction with reasonable supervision. No wonder that the mothers, who have visited the charming preparatory schools of the present day, with all their perfect arrangements for work and play, feel that it is impossible to do better for their youngsters than dispatch them to one of them as early as may be. And yet with the beginning of boarding school life, for boys at any rate, a real home life has ceased to exist. They have become rather, visitors, dear and welcome guests for their holidays, and instruction and correction are both a little shirked to avoid spoiling their good time. Many of them, we know, will never be real inmates of the home again. In any case, with the beginning of the boarding-school, the first great chapter of the mother's influence ends.
The question that the modern mother must ask herself is what has she done with those early opportunities? (to be cont.)
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Our source for this article: Previously, I shared how the Advisory obtained the Parent's Review volumes which our volunteers have typed for Leslie to put on the website.
Shortly after that blog-post, our volunteers finished typing up the last of the 9 volumes that were in the Advisory's possession. Providentially, we believe, at that same time one of our AO users shared that another volume was available for sale in England at a charity website. It was shockingly underpriced (I think about ten pounds), so I scurried over there and bought it. (I really love the internet, don't you?) It's volume 19, published in 1908. You can see the table of contents listed here on our website.
We'll be posting more photographed pages to share for volunteers to type as soon as I can coerce, er, I mean, cajole and convince, my 17 year old to photograph it for us. Her 23 year old sister did the photographing of volume 2 for us and she does physically still live at home, however, she is currently absorbed in college work and wedding plans. The 17 year old is lobbying for a reduced school schedule in exchange for photography work.
In the meantime, I thought I'd share an article that I enjoyed here on the Advisory Blog. I'll be posting it in installments. I hope you enjoy it as much as I!
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