All That Glitters

by Anne White 

He took one of the nice little trouts on his plate, and, by way of experiment, touched its tail with his finger. To his horror, it was immediately transmuted from an admirably fried brook-trout into a gold-fish, though not one of those gold-fishes which people often keep in glass globes, as ornaments for the parlor. No; but it was really a metallic fish, and looked as if it had been very cunningly made by the nicest goldsmith in the world. Its little bones were now golden wires; its fins and tail were thin plates of gold; and there were the marks of the fork in it, and all the delicate, frothy appearance of a nicely fried fish, exactly imitated in metal. A very pretty piece of work, as you may suppose; only King Midas, just at that moment, would much rather have had a real trout in his dish than this elaborate and valuable imitation of one. (Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Golden Touch" in A Wonder Book)

We have heard a great deal lately on the topic of imitation (via AI) vs. real. AI may create something cunning, delicate, even frothy, with marks of the fork in it; but it's still not fish.

However, for educators, the story of Midas can hold even deeper meaning. Charlotte Mason did not write about serving children metallic fish, but she did mention feasts of "smoke and lukewarm water," or, more literally, "stale commonplaces" (V.6, p. 44). We might even say that when administrators and curriculum developers touch the king's breakfast with their well-intentioned fingers, they almost invariably turn the food into something glittering but inedible. At the very least, they affect the trout; at the worst (as in the story of Midas and his daughter), they transform the children themselves.

It had been a favorite phrase of Midas, whenever he felt particularly fond of the child, to say that she was worth her weight in gold. And now the phrase had become literally true. And now, at last, when it was too late, he felt how infinitely a warm and tender heart, that loved him, exceeded in value all the wealth that could be piled up betwixt the earth and sky!

What shall we do to repair this damage, to restore life to these warm and tender hearts? Midas was told to sprinkle river water over the affected objects (and people) in his palace. Mason has a few similar suggestions, which, perhaps not coincidentally, includes the early reading of Hawthorne's stories.

Nature-Knowledge––Thus our first thought with regard to Nature-knowledge is that the child should have a living personal acquaintance with the things he sees. 

Object-Lessons––...we should rather leave him receptive and respectful for one of those opportunities for asking questions and engaging in talk with his parents about the lock in the river, the mowing machine, the ploughed field, which offer real seed to the mind of a child, and do not make him a priggish little person able to tell all about it. 

We trust much to Good Books––...We are determined that the children shall love books, therefore we do not interpose ourselves between the book and the child. We read him his Tanglewood Tales, and when he is a little older his Plutarch... 

We do not recognise [an artificial] 'Child-Nature.'––We endeavour that all our teaching and treatment of children shall be on the lines of nature, their nature and ours...  [we]  leave time and scope for the workings of Nature and of a higher Power than Nature herself. (V.2, pp. 231-232)

The healing of King Midas began with the recognition that a real trout could be even more beautiful than one made of gold. The restoration of education also requires that we recognize the value of the "lines of nature," that we allow Nature and the Holy Spirit their proper "time and scope."

And that can be...an epiphany.

Press Pause

by Anne White

One of Frederick Buechner’s last published books was titled The Remarkable Ordinary: How to Stop, Look, and Listen to Life. Near the beginning, he wrote:

…art is saying Stop. It helps us to stop by putting a frame around something and makes us see it in a way we would never have seen it under the normal circumstances of living, as so many of us do, on sort of automatic pilot, going through the world without really seeing much of anything.

This passage is about the purposes of literature, but I think it also applies to the way the world suddenly seems to stop for Christmas.

Kermit: Yeah, life would just pass in a blur if it weren't for times like this. (A Muppet Family Christmas)

There's a rightness in that. 

For the little child is the true St Christopher: in him is the light and life of Christ; and every birth is a message of salvation, and a reminder that we, too, must humble ourselves and become as little children. This is, perhaps, the real secret of the world's progress––that every babe comes into the world with an evangel, which witnesses of necessity to his parents' hearts. That we, too, are children, the children of God, that He would have us be as children, is the message that the newborn child never fails to bear, however little we heed, or however soon we forget. (Charlotte Mason, Parents and Children, pp. 281-282)

 Let's all make time to stop and see.

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.

Some Christmas Thoughts from Charlotte Mason

Excerpted from Parents and Children, abridged and edited by Karen Glass

It takes the presence of children to help us to realise the idea of the Eternal Child. The Dayspring is with the children, and we think their thoughts and are glad in their joy; and every mother knows out of her own heart's fulness what the Birth at Bethlehem means. Those of us who have not children catch echoes. We hear the wondrous story read in church, the church-bells echo it, and our hearts are meek and mild, glad and gay, loving and tender, as those of little children; but, alas, only for the little while occupied by the passing thought. Too soon the dreariness of daily living settles down upon us again, and we become a little impatient, do we not, of the Christmas demand of joyousness.

But it is not so where there are children. The old, old story has all its first freshness as we tell it to the eager listeners; as we listen to it ourselves with their vivid interest it becomes as real and fresh to us as it is to them. What a mystery it is! Does not every mother who holds a babe in her arms feel with tremulous awe that, that deep saying is true for her also, 'The same is my mother'? [Matt 12:50; Mark 3:35]

In [the little child] is the light and life of Christ; and every birth is a message of salvation, and a reminder that we, too, must humble ourselves and become as little children. This is, perhaps, the real secret of the world's progress––that every babe comes into the world with an evangel, which witnesses of necessity to his parents' hearts. That we, too, are children, the children of God, that He would have us be as children, is the message that the newborn child never fails to bear, however little we heed, or however soon we forget. The note of childhood is, before all things, humility. An old and saintly writer has a luminous thought on this subject of humility.

'There never was nor ever will be, but one humility in the whole world, and that is the humility of Christ, which never any man, since the fall of Adam has the least degree of but from Christ. Humility is one, in the same sense and truth that Christ is one, the Mediator is one, Redemption is one . . . There are not two Lambs of God that take away the sins of the world. But if there was any humility besides that of Christ, there would be something else besides him that could take away the sins of the world.' [William Law.]

Our common notion of humility is inaccurate. We regard it as a relative quality. We humble ourselves to this one and that, bow to the prince and lord it over the peasant. This is why the grace of humility does not commend itself even to ourselves in our most sincere moods, but this misconception confuses our thought on an important subject. For humility is absolute, not relative. It is by no means a taking of our place among our fellows according to a given scale, some being above us by many grades and others as far below. There is no reference to above or below in the humble soul, which is equally humble before an infant, a primrose, a worm, a beggar, a prince.

Humility does not think much or little of itself; it does not think of itself at all. It is a negative rather than a positive quality, being an absence of self-consciousness rather than the presence of any distinctive virtue. The person who is unaware of himself is capable of all lowly service, of all suffering for others, of bright cheerfulness under all the small crosses and worries of everyday life.

The Christian religion is, in its very nature, objective. It offers for our worship, reverence, service, adoration and delight, a Divine Person, the Desire of the world. Simplicity, happiness and expansion come from the outpouring of a human heart upon that which is altogether worthy. But we mistake our own needs, are occupied with our own falls and our own repentances, our manifold states of consciousness. Our religion is subjective first, and after that, so far as we are able, objective. The order should rather be objective first and after that, so far as we have any time or care to think about ourselves, subjective.

Now, the tendency of children is to be altogether objective, not at all subjective, and perhaps that is why they are said to be first in the kingdom of heaven. This philosophic distinction is not one which we can put aside as having no bearing on everyday life. It strikes the keynote for the training of children. In proportion as our training tends to develop the subjective principle, it tends to place our children on a lower level of purpose, character, and usefulness throughout their lives; while so far as we develop the objective principle, with which the children are born, we make them capable of love, service, heroism, worship.

This kind cometh forth only by prayer, but it is well to clear our thoughts and know definitely what we desire for our children, because only so can we work intelligently towards the fulfilment of our desire.

During each coming festival of the Eternal Child, may parents ponder how best to keep their own children in the blessed child-estate, recollecting that the humility which Christ commends in the children is what may be described, philosophically, as the objective principle as opposed to the subjective, and that, in proportion as a child becomes self-regardful in any function of his being, he loses the grace of humility. This is the broad principle; the practical application will need constant watchfulness and constant efforts, especially in holiday seasons, to keep friends and visitors from showing their love for the children in any way that shall tend to develop self-consciousness.

This, of humility, is not only a counsel of perfection, but is, perhaps, the highest counsel of perfection and when we put it to parents, we offer it to those for whom no endeavour is too difficult, no aim too lofty; to those who are doing the most to advance the Kingdom of Christ.

(Read the unedited chapter here.)

What Is Twaddle?

Whenever two or more Charlotte Mason parents get together, especially those who are newer to the approach, there is sure to be some discussion of twaddle, and what it is, and more keenly, what it is not.  None of us wants to admit that the books we adored in our own childhood might just be twaddle, and we don't appreciate the kill-joys who try to tell us otherwise.

Often there is skepticism as well about just how much it matters, and did Miss Mason really understand what she was talking about, anyway?   You may enjoy this letter to the Parents' Review schools written in 1967 by a former skeptic much like many of us.  Here's an excerpt:

Although a trained teacher, I knew nothing of Charlotte Mason's methods. I ordered 'Home and School Education' and read it with interest; but I must confess to some scepticism.

'Children have no natural appetite for twaddle,' she had written in the chapter on Aspects of Intellectual Training.

'Huh!' thought I. 'Haven't they though?'

I underlined that sweeping statement; and in my mind I classified it along with a few odd ones I had heard at college'Children are not naughty,' and the rest. Experience had fast taught me that children are downright wicked unless they are kept so busy and interested that they have no time to think up any fresh devilment.

I cannot possibly describe my bewildered, fascinated disbelief when the first batch of books arrived. Of them all, 'Plutarch's Lives' hit me hardest. Those long, measured periods in difficult language! Alison, at eleven, would not understand a word! How on earth was Robin going to assimilate 'Mankind in the Making' and 'The Spangled Heavens'? What was Charles going to make of 'Pilgrim's Progress'?

By the time I had been through them all I was in a whirl of doubt. However, I was prepared to give the programmes and the method a try. I threw my notions about 'giving lovely lessons' out of the window the more readily because I was aware that I simply could not give a lesson, lovely or otherwise, on the origin of the Solar System! We bashedand that is the only verb that describes our progress in those early days through the text-books, got the gist of them by determined attention, and miraculously found ourselves enjoying every minute. Narrations were wobbly affairs, half inarticulate, half incorporating remembered phrases from the reading. Parsing and Analysis they found absorbing and rewarding. French and Latin were fun. After all, languages were words, weren't they? A sudden word-hunger seemed to grip them all; and a new world had opened up. When, at morning prayers, they sang:

'Praise for the singing! Praise for the morning! Praise for them springing Fresh from the Word!'

Their eyes shone. They were not thanking God as a dutiful routine, but joyfully.

They have retained their sense of delight and wonder.

Those of us who plead for the reduction, or better, eliminationm of twaddle from your family's literary diet do so not because we are kill-joys, but because there is a deep, abiding richness to the quality of joy, delight, and wonder which comes from living books (and the rest of CM's methods), which is precisely what twaddle cannot truly give. 

But what are we to do, when we have not all grown up with living books?  How does one learn to develop a taste for real books when we have grown up on cotton candy and pizza?

The first step is in recognizing that not all reading is equal anymore than all foods are equal. It is not true that it doesn't matter what they read, so long as they are reading. This notion is a sort of a buzzword of our non-reading generation, but it really cannot stand up under scrutiny.  Is it really just fine if a human soul spends an entire lifetime reading only about wimpy kids and heroes in underpants?   It does matter, or we might as well merely all read cereal boxes and Disney picture books and nothing else (shudder.  Disney picture books are truly among the worst).

Let's conduct a little thought experiment.  Let us imagine  two groups of children.  The children in each group have access to only two books for their first 8 years of life.  Group A may have the 800 page 'Disney Princess Comics Treasury' and nothing else (no link, because, ugh). Group B will have only a complete collection of Hans Christian Anderson's original tales, perhaps this one: The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories, which is even unillustrated.  Or we could substitute Aesop's, or Grimm's, or Jacob's, or even Pilgrim's Progress, so long as it a recognized work of literary value, a book everybody agrees is a living book.  Each group will be read to from the assigned book and only the assigned book at least fifteen minutes a day, and in every other area will be treated precisely the same.  Will there be absolutely no discernable difference between the language skills, the ideas and thoughts and imaginings of a child who has never read anything but Disney?   The mind feeds on ideas, and twaddle is not sustaining.  So please, let us dispense with the false notion that it doesn't matter what they read so long as they are reading.

 The next step is a little harder- how do we learn to detect twaddle?

I have two excerpts to share which help us in defining living books vs twaddle.  This is from a Parents Review article by Charlotte Mason:

What manner of book will find its way with upheaving effect into the mind of an intelligent boy or girl? We need not ask what the girl or boy likes. She very often likes the twaddle of goody-goody story-books, he likes condiments, highly-spiced tales of adventure. We are all capable of liking mental food of a poor quality and a titillating nature, and no doubt, such food is good for us when our minds are in need of an elbow-chair; but our spiritual life is sustained on other stuff, whether we be boys or girls, men or women. 

  This is from volume 6 of her six volume set (Toward a Philosophy of Education):  

"I do not know better how to describe the sort of books that children's minds will consent to deal with than by saying that they must be literary in character. A child of seven or eight will narrate a difficult passage from The Pilgrim's Progress, say, with extraordinary zest and insight; but I doubt if he or his elders would retain anything from that excellent work, Dr. Smiles's Self-Help! The completeness with which hundreds of children reject the wrong book is a curious and instructive experience, not less so than the avidity and joy with which they drain the right book to the dregs; children's requirements in the matter seem to be quantity, quality and variety: but the question of books is one of much delicacy and difficulty. After the experience of over a quarter of a century [The P.U.S. was started in 1891.] in selecting the lesson books proper to children of all ages, we still make mistakes, and the next examination paper discovers the error! Children cannot answer questions set on the wrong book; and the difficulty of selection is increased by the fact that what they like in books is no more a guide than what they like in food."

Volume 6, page 248


 *Whether or not somebody enjoys a book is no guide to determining whether or not it is twaddle.

 **Pilgrim's Progress is not twaddle, Dr. Smiles 'Self-Help' is.  The diligent mother may use this comparison to good effect by clicking through the above link and comparing them.  'Self-Help' reminds me very much of a couple of popular books and lessons that are generally marketed as 'Character Education,' or 'Character Studies.'

 **** The opposite of twaddle includes books that are "Literary in character"- this is a bit harder for many of us to define.  

This quote from  another  Parent's Review Article may help:
Another foe to simplicity in our era is the multitude of books about books. Personally I have almost a horror of this class of belles-lettres.   We don't want elucidations, we want the classics themselves. Many people read notes and criticisms and commentaries and preliminaries and antecedents and never reach the original. It is as though a person bent on seeing Westminster Abbey were to stay listening to a tittle-tattle of the verger instead of seeing Westminster Abbey. Another evil of the time from which we should abstain is the plague of cheap editions. This reaches an acute crisis when it consists of a cheap edition of detached fragments of world's literature.


I'm going to name some names here, although I realize that there is a danger of touching on somebody's favorite and thereby offending.  The Junior Classic books, Childcraft, and the like, beyond the first couple of volumes (because the first one or two volumes are usually nursery rhymes, fables, and fairy tales which do stand alone), are 'detached fragments of world's literature.' Bill Bennet's Book of Virtues is also, to me, more like the tittle-tattle of the verger- the stories he chooses are good stories, but he introduces them with tittle-tattle, and sometimes rewrites them himself, and it is my opinion is that the result is rather flat and lacks the charm of the originals.

Twaddle does not respect the mind of the child, but trivializes it:

"the Bible has this, among other marks of a classic, that its language has the power of attracting young minds," and it is deeply to be regretted, we think, that children should lose the delight of Bible stories as they are told in the Bible--should be given instead the reading-made-easy twaddle of some little book of Bible stories. Not even a Bible story told by "mother" herself will have for a child the rhythmic charm and pictorial power of the stories in Bible words.  (from the Parents' Review, review of a Bible for children which used the Revised Version and was edited by omission, leaving out stories such as the one of Lot and his daughters).

We no longer really understand what 'literary in character' means, and often confuse flowery, Victorian prosiness with 'literary.'  So how do we get better at it? From a Parents' Review Article (I strongly suggest reading all of this one): 

The literary mind is indeed rare. For a hundred who will read a book for what it has to tell or for amusement, only one perhaps will read it also for its literary value. The appreciation of good literature, for all our schools and universities, remains the possession only of a few.
Yet, just as the average person can be trained to appreciate good music and art, he can also be trained to appreciate good literature. And it is in the nursery that the key to the palace of good literature is opened. The reason why so few people have developed the critical faculty with regard to reading is that so few have grown up in the company of good books--only good books--but have been allowed, while their minds were growing, to read any printed twaddle within the covers of a book or magazine.

In the world of nutrition, many people these days have been trying the 'real food' approach, eating only whole foods without additives they don't recognize and can't pronounce. One of the interesting results those who try it discover is a new appreciation for the flavor of basic, unprocessed foods prepared simply.  Another result (I admit one I found a little depressing) is that many of the over-processed foods one previously ate no longer taste good.  One breaks one's strict diet regimen for a special treat only to discover it's no treat at all, but rather a slightly nasty,  over-sweetened bit of glop with a metallic after-taste. 

So, what is the application if we wish to distinguish Living Books from Twaddle?  

1.  I suggest that in order to strengthen one's ability to detect twaddle, to distinguish true works of literary value from over-processed, over-sweetened, bits of glop, try your own 30 days of daily reading of real literature- books that pretty much everybody agrees are living books, and no twaddle at all. For an easy list, try the books from AO's year 1-3.  
2. I suggest further that one limit one's electronic screen time, including Kindles and other electronic reading devices (hear me out- I love mine.  I just suggest a temporary fast), and definitely limit computer time as well (yes, even here), and social media.  Just spend time with the classics.  Even if you're only reading really good selections in picture books and children's fiction, I venture to suggest that at the end of the month you will have developed a taste for quality, as well as improved your ability to distinguish quality. 

In other words, off with the twaddle, in with the classics.  Try this out for at least 30 days and see if you don't find yourself appreciating the living books more and detecting the twaddle more easily at the end.

That sounds like a lot of effort though, and everybody has always told us we're good readers, right?  So why should we bother?

From volume 2:

"In literature, we have definite ends in view, both for our own children and for the world through them. We wish the children to grow up to find joy and refreshment in the taste, the flavour of a book. "We do not mean by a book any printed matter in a binding, but a work possessing certain literary qualities able to bring that sensible delight to the reader which belongs to a literary word fitly spoken. It is a sad fact that we are losing our joy in literary form. We are in such haste to be instructed by facts or titillated by theories, that we have no leisure to linger over the mere putting of a thought. But this is our error, for words are mighty both to delight and to inspire... "Children must be Nurtured on the Best––For the children? They must grow up upon the best. There must never be a period in their lives when they are allowed to read or listen to twaddle or reading-made-easy. There is never a time when they are unequal to worthy thoughts, well put; inspiring tales, well told. Let Blake's 'Songs of Innocence' represent their standard in poetry; De Foe and Stevenson, in prose; and we shall train a race of readers who will demand literature––that is, the fit and beautiful expression of inspiring ideas and pictures of life..." 

 We want to reduce the twaddle in our lives, in our children's lives, because we want something greater for them and for ourselves. We want 'the fit and beautiful expression of inspiriting ideas.  We want something living, sustaining, a new world, with an even greater sense of joy and wonder.

 'Praise for the singing! Praise for the morning! Praise for them springing Fresh from the Word!'