To have is not to hold

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

by Anne White 

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

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

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

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

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

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

You should really pay attention to this one.

by Anne White

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Don't give up.

It matters. 

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.

Thomas Carlyle’s Really Ripping Yarn

by Anne White

In the depths of Charlotte Mason’s Formation of Character (p. 280 to be exact), we are given some life history about someone, apparently fictional, named Diogenes Teufelsdröckh.

This chapter, all by itself, may be one reason homeschoolers quietly slip Formation of Character  to the bottom of the C.M. volume stack.

Why does Charlotte drag this person with the hard-to-pronounce name into the chapter (which, she admits, is an already tenuous comparison of two other obscure German characters)? It might have been because she was discussing a novel by Goethe, and one of Carlyle's chapters is titled "The Sorrows of Young Teufelsdröckh," which is a riff on Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther. Charlotte had the kind of mind that liked to dredge up weird things like that. She would have been a terrific blogger.

However, whether Charlotte intended it or not, her use of Teufelsdröckh as a character pasted on top of other characters is not that far removed from his original appearance in Thomas Carlyle’s un-novelish novel Sartor Resartus, which also contains a story within a story. Diogenes Teufelsdröckh is a professor “of everything,” which tells you something right off. (His name is also an indicator that, as Charles Kingsley said a generation later, you must not take this story as anything other than a fairy tale.) As the story begins, this Professor Teufelsdröckh has written a rather massive book, in German, about the “philosophy of clothes.” An English editor has been given the task of explaining the book to English readers, and he has also been sent several bagfuls of stuff documenting Teufelsdröckh’s so-average-it’s-funny early life. In the best Ripping Yarns style, our editor plunges in, making his best guesses about his subject’s childhood, schooling, love life, and later career. Along the way we get slices of Teufelsdröckh’s magnum opus, carefully translated and cited. If we make it to the end, we ask: was Professor Teufelsdröckh a sane genius, an insane genius, or just a fool? The same might be asked of the editor, and/or the author. Hopefully it won’t be asked of Charlotte for including it in an otherwise serious chapter about how children (even fictional ones) grow and learn from what’s around them.

Here are a couple of other things you might or might not know about Sartor Resartus. Carlyle started writing it in 1831, when he was in his thirties (a good age to be writing satire, or fairy tales). It was serialized in a magazine over the next couple of years—more to public puzzlement than acclaim, but at least it won the admiration of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who arranged for it to be published in Boston in 1836. The first British edition did not appear until two years later. The Latin title (which helped ensure that the book would be forever ignored) can be translated "The Tailor Re-Tailored." In her book English Literature for Boys and Girls, H. E. Marshall gave up on trying to explain it to students, but she did write this:

I do not think I can make you understand the charm of Sartor. It is a prose poem and a book you must leave for the years to come. Sartor Resartus means "The tailor patched again." And under the guise of a philosophy of clothes Carlyle teaches that man and everything belonging to him is only the expression of the one great real thing--God. "Thus in this one pregnant subject of Clothes, rightly understood, is included all that men have thought, dreamed, done, and been." The book is full of humor and wisdom, of stray lightenings, and deep growlings. There are glimpses of "a story" to be caught too. It is perhaps the most Carlylean book Carlyle ever wrote. But let it lie yet awhile on your bookshelf unread.

Did Marshall fully get the gist of the book? Is that what Carlyle was actually trying to say? Perhaps. My take on it is something more like “The world is pretty nutty and it’s full of pompous, presumptuous people who will try and tell you what it’s all about; and in that situation, the most meaningless thing you could spend your life studying might be the philosophy of clothing. However, when you really get down to it, perhaps that tells us all we need to know…and it actually starts to make some sense, in a Fish Called Wanda kind of way.” To extend the John Cleese analogy, Sartor Resartus is believed to be the first literary use of the phrase “The Meaning of Life.”

And if you can read it in that way, it’s rather a ripping yarn.

Stay tuned for, quite possibly, some more thoughts on Diogenes Teufelsdröckh.

Why, they say, we can't read books anymore

by Anne White

Have you read the Christian Science Monitor article about people being so distracted that they can't pay attention long enough to read anything demanding, even if they want to?  It popped up for me on Yahoo a few days ago, and I actually read it.  I do read things.  But then that's what I do.  And on the other end, there are people who really never did read much in the first place, so superimposing the distraction of technology on them isn't going to make a lot of difference.

I'm trying to put myself in the place of someone who used to read,  used to want to read, and who has actually changed that because of "digital distraction."  Is there really such a person?  Maybe, maybe not.  I'm more concerned about how this applies to children, learning or not learning.  If the office workers cited in the article were interrupted about every three minutes and took twenty-three minutes to get back on task-and these were adults--is it any easier for children who are constantly interrupted and distracted?  It sounds as if we're putting ourselves, or being put, into an ADHD experiment..  The question is, why would we want to do that to ourselves, and more so, to our children?

And check out this observation: "I see people of all ages around me abandoning the moment they're in to search for something better."  The author blames this, again, on the intrusion of technology, claiming that a friend found a miraculous cure by abandoning a fancier phone for a flip phone.  Wow, if that was all it took...the funny thing is, I don't even have a flip phone, and I still get distracted.  Not enough not to read, but just trying to keep all the usual balls in the air.  But this friend, apparently, could not bring himself to read books as long as he felt enslaved to his do-everything, don't-abandon-me piece of technology.  (Doesn't that remind you a bit of those Japanese electronic "virtual pet" toys, popular about fifteen years ago, that demanded to be fed and coddled hour on the hour?  Is it possible that those were just training wheels for "SmartBerries" and the rest?)  Well, anyway, there we seem to have our Exhibit A, somebody who would have read, could have read, but who was too busy to stop and seriously look a book in the eye. Well, good for him, at least.

But again, he's an adult. He knows better and he can make his own choices.  What concerns us are the children, our own and those around us.  Are we allowing them a great deal time free of distractions?  We may have to deliberately create that--I don't mean sabotaging the devices, but at least going places where they're not wanted or not allowed, and that can include "unplugged" places and times within our own homes.  If education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life, we need to be vigilant about guarding all three.

With young children, we can play with them, with our own gadgets turned off of course.  We can do as Charlotte Mason suggests in "Inconstant Kitty" (Formation of Character), and encourage them to finish the game, play with the same toy a bit longer, go a little slower and more carefully at building something.  We can provide toys with many possibilities.  We can even do as the mama in All-of-a-Kind Family did with chores: she hid buttons (and occasionally pennies) when the little girls were dusting, so that they had to do a very thorough job to find them all.

If we homeschool, we can practice the disciplines, create the habits that do teach them to concentrate, pay attention, observe--and then record observations non-electronically.  If we teach classes or work with groups of children, we can provide books and activities that absorb them, that make them suddenly come up for air and ask for another chapter, more time to keep working or watching something.

Some will say that is not exactly cutting-edge.  But in a world where distraction is the new normal--maybe it is.

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.