A Tune We Have Not Yet Heard

Music in art: poster found at a flea market

by Anne White

In his address The Weight of Glory, C. S. Lewis said:

“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.” (emphasis his)

Yes, the pile of books can betray us.  A book can disappoint. It can have a terrible ending. It can make us angry. It can bore us. It can leave us in tears or give us nightmares.  The whole pile could (literally or metaphorically) fall on our heads and kill us.

The music we love can suddenly become insufficient. A few among us may remember the ratings-busting finale of M*A*S*H* (in 1983, further back now than the actual Korean War was when we were watching it).  Near the beginning of the episode, Dr. Charles Winchester discovers that five captured Chinese soldiers are musicians, and he begins teaching them to play a Mozart clarinet quintet, using their own instruments. Later, the prisoners are taken away as part of a prisoner exchange (playing Mozart as they go). But just as a ceasefire is being announced, they are killed in a last round of enemy attacks.  When Winchester hears this, he goes to his tent and tries to listen to the Mozart record, but ends up smashing it to pieces. It is not only the music that betrayed him, but everything else in which he put his trust and which it represented.

Charlotte Mason also warned us about seeking beauty too much for its own sake:

The Beauty Sense adds so much to the joy of life that it is not easy to see what danger attends it...[We may think that] that the joys of Beauty are so full and satisfying that nothing else is necessary to complete the happiness of life...The person who is given up to the intoxication of Beauty conceives that Beauty and Goodness are one and the same thing, and that Duty is no more than seeking one's own pleasure in the ways one best likes. People, too, become excluded. (Ourselves Book I, p. 54)

We are fully allowed to value poetry, visual art, music, plays, and the natural world (including its tastes and textures). But we can love the scent of the flower, the echo of the tune, the rhythm of the sonnet (as Mason says) without becoming intoxicated by them. When they show themselves (as the Greek philosophers said) as only shadows of the true and wonderful things yet to come, we can understand and not grieve for what they are not, knowing that it is what comes "through them" that really matters.

And as our friend Lynn used to say, that enables us to enjoy every sandwich.

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.

Equipping the Power

by Anne White

Charlotte’s primary-level students narrated a little at a time, to fully develop their powers of attention and their skill in telling back.

“[Attention] is the power of bending such powers as one has to the work in hand; it is a key to success within the reach of every one, but the skill to turn it comes of training.” (Formation of Character, p. 95)

They used the same stories for “telling back” as they did for other subjects, from mythology, fairy tales, The Pilgrim’s Progress, and the Bible; and they told about “how we know the world is round and a great deal besides; for all their work lends itself to oral composition and the power of such composition is innate in children and is not the result of instruction” (Philosophy, p. 191). Does that contradict what Charlotte said in Formation of Character? No, it is the attention, or the listening ear, that must be trained; but the power to tell (aside from a few basic instructions in what is expected) is a natural one.

The junior grades “wrote their little essays themselves.” “Little” seems to refer only to length, because oh my, the reading list... “We could do anything with books like those,” said an unnamed headmaster. Charlotte scolded him for missing the point, but I think he was at least half right: the ability to narrate well, and to turn that skill into written composition, does begin with the choice of books. Some writers can start from a point inside their heads, without any outside reference, but for most of us, that’s as hard as being handed a brush and told to paint, without having anything to look at. “Compose something,” my piano teacher once commanded, when I was about ten. But since I knew very little about listening to music, much less about creating it, the result was worthless, a waste of time. I knew my way around the piano keyboard, but I had no musical ideas, nothing to write music about; I did not understand even how to begin with the “major lines,” much less work out the details. And she never asked me to do that again. Why, similarly, do teachers ask children to shape composition bricks, but refuse to give them the right mud for the task, never mind straw?

"For right thinking is by no means a matter of self-expression. Right thought flows upon the stimulus of an idea, and ideas are stored as we have seen in books and pictures and the lives of men and nations; these instruct the conscience and stimulate the will, and man or child ‘chooses.’" (Philosophy, p. 130)

Excerpted from Ideas Freely Sown: The Matter and Method of Charlotte Mason, by Anne E. White

The Way of the Reason in George Eliot's Romola

by Anne White

"What a world is opened up even by a single novel like Romola..."  Ronald McNeill, "The choice of Literature for the Young," Parent's Review, Volume 8, no. 9, 1897, pgs. 561-568; 624-630

"Literature is full of tales of temptation, yielded to, struggled against, conquered. Sometimes temptation finds us ready and there is no struggle, as in the case of Tito Melema..."  Charlotte Mason, Ourselves

"In like manner, every young man who reads of Arthur Pendennis, or Edward Waverley, or Fred Vincey, or, alas, of Tito Melema, or of Darsie Latimer, George Warrington, or Martin Chuzzlewit––the list is endless, of course––finds himself in the hero."  Charlotte Mason, Formation of Character

"Commonly we let reason do its work without attention on our part, but there come moments when we stand in startled admiration and watch the unfolding before us point by point of a score of arguments in favour of this carpet as against that, this route in preference to the other, our chosen chum as against Bob Brown; because every pro suggested by our reason is opposed to some con in the background."  Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education

What is the hold that fictional characters have on us?  What is their role in shaping our "norms" or our "nobility?"  The value of reading about the truly heroic is obvious; but what about the not-so-heroic, the characters with feet of clay?  Why the "alas" in the mention of "Tito Melema?"

Unless we are unusually big fans of George Eliot, the reference is likely to be lost on us.  Tito Melema is the main character in Eliot's novel Romola, which was published as a serial from 1862 to 1863, and which is set in Florence during the Renaissance.

Tito, from the beginning, is kind of a mystery man.  He shows up in the first chapter, having survived a shipwreck; but even after he sells off some jewels to get him on his feet in Florence, and gets a job assisting an elderly, blind scholar with his work (Tito is obviously well educated), he doesn't tell much about himself, and hints about his true identity come slowly.  One day, though, his past confronts him: he has an adoptive father, Baldassare Calvo, who has most likely been sold into slavery, and who should be--should already have been--ransomed with the money from those jewels.  Tito, in other words, had no business starting a new life until he had done everything he could to help this man to whom he owed a great personal debt.

So does Tito drop his new job, new sweetheart (Romola) and everything else and go rushing off to rescue his father?  No, he does not.  The only other person in the world, seemingly, who knows about this situation, is a monk who gave him the message; and immediately afterwards, he hears that the monk is gravely ill, likely to die.  When nobody else knows what you've done wrong, it's easy to reason yourself into anything you want.

Here is a passage, slightly shortened, from the end of chapter 11 and the beginning of chapter 12 of Romola.  It might be worthwhile for older students to work through it, see how well Tito reasons--but also to discuss why his decision is still just plain wrong.

(You might also want to read "Literature as Moral Instruction," posted here by Wendi.)

* * * * *

Tito had never had occasion to fabricate an ingenious lie before: the occasion was come now—the occasion which circumstance never fails to beget on tacit falsity; and his ingenuity was ready. For he had convinced himself that he was not bound to go in search of Baldassarre. He had once said that on a fair assurance of his father’s existence and whereabout, he would unhesitatingly go after him. But, after all, why was he bound to go? What, looked at closely, was the end of all life, but to extract the utmost sum of pleasure? And was not his own blooming life a promise of incomparably more pleasure, not for himself only, but for others, than the withered wintry life of a man who was past the time of keen enjoyment, and whose ideas had stiffened into barren rigidity? Those ideas had all been sown in the fresh soil of Tito’s mind, and were lively germs there: that was the proper order of things—the order of nature, which treats all maturity as a mere nidus for youth. Baldassarre had done his work, had had his draught of life: Tito said it was his turn now.

And the prospect was so vague...After a long voyage, to spend months, perhaps years, in a search for which even now there was no guarantee that it would not prove vain: and to leave behind at starting a life of distinction and love: and to find, if he found anything, the old exacting companionship which was known by rote beforehand. Certainly the gems and therefore the florins were, in a sense, Baldassarre’s: in the narrow sense by which the right of possession is determined in ordinary affairs; but in that large and more radically natural view by which the world belongs to youth and strength, they were rather his who could extract the most pleasure out of them. That, he was conscious, was not the sentiment which the complicated play of human feelings had engendered in society. The men around him would expect that he should immediately apply those florins to his benefactor’s rescue. But what was the sentiment of society?—a mere tangle of anomalous traditions and opinions, which no wise man would take as a guide, except so far as his own comfort was concerned. Not that he cared for the florins save perhaps for Romola’s sake: he would give up the florins readily enough. It was the joy that was due to him and was close to his lips, which he felt he was not bound to thrust away from him and so travel on, thirsting. Any maxims that required a man to fling away the good that was needed to make existence sweet, were only the lining of human selfishness turned outward: they were made by men who wanted others to sacrifice themselves for their sake. He would rather that Baldassarre should not suffer: he liked no one to suffer; but could any philosophy prove to him that he was bound to care for another’s suffering more than for his own? To do so he must have loved Baldassarre devotedly, and he did not love him: was that his own fault? Gratitude! seen closely, it made no valid claim: his father’s life would have been dreary without him: are we convicted of a debt to men for the pleasures they give themselves?

 Having once begun to explain away Baldassarre’s claim, Tito’s thought showed itself as active as a virulent acid, eating its rapid way through all the tissues of sentiment. His mind was destitute of that dread which has been erroneously decried as if it were nothing higher than a man’s animal care for his own skin: that awe of the Divine Nemesis which was felt by religious pagans, and, though it took a more positive form under Christianity, is still felt by the mass of mankind simply as a vague fear at anything which is called wrong-doing....

Chapter Twelve. The Prize is nearly grasped.

 Tito walked along with a light step, for the immediate fear had vanished; the usual joyousness of his disposition reassumed its predominance, and he was going to see Romola. Yet Romola’s life seemed an image of that loving, pitying devotedness, that patient endurance of irksome tasks, from which he had shrunk and excused himself. But he was not out of love with goodness, or prepared to plunge into vice: he was in his fresh youth, with soft pulses for all charm and loveliness; he had still a healthy appetite for ordinary human joys, and the poison could only work by degrees. He had sold himself to evil, but at present life seemed so nearly the same to him that he was not conscious of the bond. He meant all things to go on as they had done before, both within and without him: he meant to win golden opinions by meritorious exertion, by ingenious learning, by amiable compliance: he was not going to do anything that would throw him out of harmony with the beings he cared for. And he cared supremely for Romola; he wished to have her for his beautiful and loving wife. There might be a wealthier alliance within the ultimate reach of successful accomplishments like his, but there was no woman in all Florence like Romola. 

AO's Shakespeare Rotation

Over on AO's forums (where I hope you are already a member, and if you are not, you are really missing out on some great support!), one of our members asked the Advisory how we chose the Shakespeare rotation that we did, and did we really intend for students to do some plays twice, and others not at all.

Here was my answer (slightly edited for this blog):

You can never read Shakespeare too many times.=)

 There are 37 plays, and we only begin the reading of a full play in year 4, so it would seem we could have scheduled one play per term and gotten a lot more of them in- and, in fact, initially, that was our intention.  We did initially plan a different play for each term with no repeats. We worked out a schedule for doing just that- in the midst of discussions on the hymn and art rotations, website details, and a few other things as well. At any rate, once we worked out a term by term rotation with one play per term and looked at it, we realized that did not fit with our vision for AO.

In volume 4 of Miss Mason's six volume series, on page 72, she writes of Shakespeare:

We probably read Shakespeare in the first place for his stories, afterwards for his characters, the multitude of delightful persons with whom he makes us so intimate that afterwards, in fiction or in fact, we say, 'She is another Jessica,' and 'That dear girl is a Miranda'; 'She is a Cordelia to her father,' and, such a figure in history, 'a base lago.' To become intimate with Shakespeare in this way is a great enrichment of mind and instruction of conscience. Then, by degrees, as we go on reading this world-teacher, lines of insight and beauty take possession of us, and unconsciously mould our judgments of men and things and of the great issues of life.

On the following page she talks of the value of the best novels, and says that they should be read with care and attention, and can be read over and over again, every time with pleasure. Shakespeare, too, is like this.  We don't want to give our students the impression that having read a play once, they are done with it for life. We don't want to give them impression that education ends with graduation, either. We want them to continue reading (and watching) Shakespeare for pleasure long after they have left school.  If they read a play twice, several years apart- they will discover for themselves how much they see in the play the second time than they did the first, and we hope they will conclude that a third time might reward them the same way, and a fourth time, too.

There were other issues we took into consideration as we looked over our Shakespeare rotation.  Not all of the plays are suitable for school children, in our opinion (Titus Andronicus is hard for many adults to stomach). Some of these plays are so foundational to an understanding of English Lit, to common speech (Hamlet is the most quoted play in the English language), and have such insights into human nature, that it's not right for a child to 'do' that play once, at 10 years of age, and then never see it again. We do think Hamlet, MacBeth, Henry V, Much Ado, Twelfth Night, etc, merit more than one reading during the school years. Some of the plays just weren't that vital, in spite of the glow of Shakespeare's name, and some of them were downright unsuitable- Timon, Titus, Croilus and Cressida, off the top of my head.

 We also realized that,  unlike in CM's days, the majority of our users probably haven't done much Shakespeare at all, or perhaps only one or two plays. It occurred to us that  often, we are introducing parents as well as children to Shakespeare. Our goal is also the enjoyment and appreciation of Shakespeare, not a comprehensive study of the body of Shakespearean works, so that informed our choices as well. Remember that Charlotte Mason's standard was not merely how much a child knows, but how much he cares (vol. 3, p 170).

There are other reasons we left out some plays.  Advisory member Leslie Smith read Professor Edward Dowden's introduction to a collection of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, and shared that he said there is good reason to doubt most of Henry VI was even written by Shakespeare (he is not, in general, a sceptic about the authorship, so we took that to heart. This seems to be an older play by somebody else that Shakespeare revised, but not entirely successfully). He described parts of Pericles as 'revolting to the moral sense.' Some of the historical plays are much, much drier than others.

Our final selections also reflect the combined thought, such wisdom as we possess, prayer, and research of all seven of the Advisory, rather than the perhaps more prejudicial choices any one person might have made. For instance, one of us would have left out King Lear altogether, another thought we could do without any of the histories at all. I would have left out Two Gentlemen of Verona myself, but Anne's saner view prevailed, as she recommended it 'as a fairly simple, non-gory play suitable for reading with younger students,' and it had the advantage of having a 'decent BBC video version.'

 So, to make a long story short, yes, we do intend that students will do some of the plays twice. However, we also encourage parents to make the curriculum their own, and adapt as they see fit. We also favour live performances over readings, so any time you have the opportunity to take your family to a live performance, that's the play I would do that term (unless it's Titus Andronicus or Timon).

Our goal is not to make Shakespeare Scholars of our students, although that may perhaps be a happy by-product for some of them. It is simply to come to appreciate, even love, the great master of the English language and his insights into human character.

Since our goal at AO is always to reproduce a Charlotte Mason education as much as possible, I'll close here with this quote from Miss Mason. It's found in volume 5, page 226:

And Shakespeare? He, indeed, is not to be classed, and timed, and treated as one amongst others,––he, who might well be the daily bread of the intellectual life; Shakespeare is not to be studied in a year; he is to be read continuously throughout life, from ten years old and onwards. But a child of ten cannot understand Shakespeare. No; but can a man of fifty? Is not our great poet rather an ample feast of which every one takes according to his needs, and leaves what he has no stomach for? A little girl of nine said to me the other day that she had only read one play of Shakespeare's through, and that was A Midsummer Night's Dream. She did not understand the play, of course, but she must have found enough to amuse and interest her. How would it be to have a monthly reading of Shakespeare––a play, to be read in character, and continued for two or three evenings until it is finished? The Shakespeare evening would come to be looked on as a family festa; and the plays, read again and again, year after year, would yield more at each reading, and would leave behind in the end rich deposits of wisdom.

(from Taming of the Shrew)

Postscript: This discussion came up on our FB group as well, where somebody whose previous experience of Shakespeare was the badly taught 8th grade study of Romeo and Juliet hat was inflicted on her, and she didn't like Shakespeare and wanted to know why others did. A couple of our members gave such good answers I reproduce them (with permission): Karen Richmond:

In some ways tastes are a hard thing to explain. I don't understand why so many people love coffee. I can't stand it. Possibly if I tried it over and over again, though, I would learn to enjoy it. Or possibly not. Anyway, I'm definitely not going to like it if I never have any. So I can give you reasons, but they won't teach you love. Only time and practice can do that, and even then it's not guaranteed. What is it that I, personally, love about Shakespeare? The turns of phrases, the way he says things better than anyone else. The deep insight into human nature, into personality and choices and temptation and virtue. The way he takes stale conventions and breathes new life into them. Sure, parts are crude. (My mother felt the same way, she was always deeply suspicious of him but not quite suspicious enough to get rid of the volume in the attic, so I acquired my love for Shakespeare partly from clandestine reading in the attic and partly from my bardophilic aunt.) Partly it was the need to simply produce popular entertainment, something that will keep the gallery laughing. Partly was that the Elizabethan times were simply plainer spoken than most eras since (they weren't afraid to talk about sex OR death). Partly it was that Shakespeare embraced all of life; the sublime and the absurd and the crude and the beautiful. All of it is part of being human. We are divine spirits in earthly vessels. To ignore either part of our nature is to be less than human. I don't know why people always inflict Romeo and Juliet on 8th graders. It's not the best starting place, except for soppily romantic girls. Try *The Tempest*, perhaps. Or *The Merchant of Venice*.

Mary Frances Pickett:

So, you asked why we care? And what you're missing? And you feel like you would be inflicting pain on your children to assign Shakespeare. I care because Shakespeare understood human emotions and motivations in an extremely deep and insightful manner. These are rich, rich stories that always give me much to ponder and yield new perspectives each time I read them. I know that the best way to have my children desire the good and beautiful and true, is to expose them to it over and over again. And Shakespeare's writings are good and beautiful and true. Yes, there are characters that do things that we do not want them to emulate. One way to discern whether something is True is to discern whether those people reap the consequences of their actions. And in Shakespeare they do. I think what you're missing is what many of us were/are missing - our tastes have not been trained to enjoy. That comes with time. It has happened for me as I read the AO books. You may find the Circe podcasts on Hamlet and Macbeth to be helpful at some point down the road. As for whether it is inflicting pain on my children. They haven't always loved the retellings, but it in retrospect it was ME that was inflicting a painful experience, not the Bard or the Lamb's. As I've learned to not push, to just do a little bit, to accept narrations kindly, to scaffold for them, they've turned into Shakespeare lovers.

You may also find this helpful. "A useful word of caution is given in connection with the teaching of a play of Shakespeare; namely that all cumbrous discussion as to the story, the date, the authenticity, the characters, and so forth- all, in fact, that is usually found on the first few pages of every annotated edition of a play, should be severely left alone...." Richard Wilson, author of a grammar text Mason used. More here. Appropriate Goals for Studying Shakespeare