I Dare You (Charlotte Mason is powerful, Part IV)

by Anne White

Part I is here
Part II is here
Part III is here

"'You got to be kidding,' he said...'You want both sides of the paper for homework?' His voice cracked in disbelief midway through the question...Marva said, 'When your mother gives you dinner, do you want only half a chop?'" (Marva Collins' Way)

Charlotte Mason used the word "stultifies" to describe the well-meant attempt to bring the world down to a child's level, to make everything easy, controlled, regular, and predictable. She said that by doing this, we underestimate, degrade, even steal from the children in our care.

David V. Hicks,  in Norms and Nobility, contrasts two piano teachers he knew as a child.  His friend's teacher had young students memorize Mozart pieces.  His own teacher, more in touch with how modern children were supposed to learn, used graded exercises and fun, hands-on activities.  He says that his friend, who initially balked and struggled, was nevertheless playing Chopin and other difficult composers within a few years, while he himself never got beyond a simple arrangement of "The Lone Ranger." (Head First?, posted here in 2013)

This statement flies in the face of all we know, all we have been told over the past century-plus about learning and teaching. Particularly all we were ever told by the Herbartians. The cloud of classical witnesses, on the other hand, may be looking on knowingly.

We can't expect students to learn everything about everything, or even something about everything. But they can learn the things that matter about things that matter. This does not mean we allow them to overspecialize, or to go as far as Sherlock Holmes in selectivity:

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
"You appear to be astonished," he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. "Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it." (A Study in Scarlet)

And the way, it seems, to let them learn the things that matter, is to allow them to balk and struggle a bit, as (for instance) many of our children did at first when studying Plutarch's Lives, or Charles Kingsley's books, or Parables from Nature. We give them something tough--not completely unchewable or unpalatable, but more solid than they are used to--and we bring them into the ages-old circle of listeners; we make them part of the "membership." Those who are allowed only to approach by baby steps, it seems, are the ones who will find themselves locked out, powerless.* How will they "increase their power of observation" if nothing demands to be looked at? How can they learn to reason without hearing reason? How can they develop what Martha Nussbaum calls "daring imagination" if they are never given that dare?

Our desire is not to abuse children (as someone said, "suffer, little children"). Nobody wants to see their child in tears over a book (although several, reportedly, have wept over the Battle of Hastings). But as serious sports coaches know that there will be no success without tough training, we count it as abuse of adult power if we do not allow them the chance to join the conversation.

"'I am not going to give up on you. I am not going to let you give up on yourself. If you sit there leaning against this wall all day, you are going to end up leaning on something or someone all your life. And all that brilliance bottled up inside you will go to waste...' Marva's highest aim as a teacher was to endow her students with the will to learn for themselves." (Marva Collins' Way)

* (Those studying Charlotte Mason's volumes may want to look at her story of the Grenfell twins in the Supplementary section of Philosophy of Education.)

Pray for the children to prosper in good life and good literature- Dean Colet

by Wendi Capehart

Why is that book in the curriculum?

This was a legitimate question asked recently in the forum (please visit!). Homeschooling moms by default are involved moms, and they care about their children's education.  They want to know why.

So it's not the first time we've seen some variation of this question. In this case, it was specifically referring to a year 7 literature selection: Watership Down, by Richard Adams.

 I was a little loathe to answer (I explain why below), but I stepped in and made the attempt.  My reply was off the cuff and hastily written.  While I had been reluctant to answer, once I got started, I got excited about it and got a little carried away.  Our moderators seemed to like it and they asked me to share.   So what follows is my (somewhat) edited reply:

 Because we said so. (cheesy grin)   No?

Because David Hicks said so, which is closer to the truth.
David Hicks included Watership Down in his curriculum list in the book Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education and with his gracious and generous permission we relied heavily on his suggestions for the upper years.

 But that answer is like many origins theories- it doesn't answer the question of biogenesis- why did David Hicks include it in his list in the first place? Why did my college room-mate tell me her teacher-mother required all her 8th grade students to read it and she was shocked that I had never even heard of it, since it was one of the greatest children's books ever? Why is it still in print after all these years? Why?

There are reasons.  However, we on the Advisory  are getting older and I know I am forgetting more and more details these days.  It's many years now since I last read it and we discussed where and how to add it to our year 7.  In fact,  I had to look up Watership Down at Wikipedia to remind myself of some of the details so I could explain.

     It's a struggle for me to explain our reasons sometimes.  I don't feel capable of giving the answers the books and the askers deserve- partly that's my own personal frustration with myself and my own inability to explain things adequately. It's hard for me to put my ideas about the books into words sometimes.

 Also, I cannot be succinct. This is all me, a deep flaw. I am reluctant to start because I don't know when I'll end.

But the biggest reason it's hard to explain?   It's  the books. The more-than-merely-good books,  the living books- they are amazing. While with some programs you can say, "This book is listed because it is about a family living in Japan and we study Japan this term. This book is listed because it is about peanuts and we study George Washington Carver this term. This book is about a family in the Civil War, and that's where we are in history... etc."

It's tidy, neat, simple-  and you will have said pretty much all there is to say about the reason to read those books.

With living books? You cannot pigeonhole true living books like that. 

They are not one-note songs. I'm getting excited now, skip with me through a daisy field of badly mixed metaphors here (and analogies, and similes). The living books are nuanced orchestra pieces. They are dishes at a king's banquet, richly flavored with layers and layers of aromatic goodness, spiced and seasoned throughout with ideas about at least fifty different things.

So perhaps I can tell you the big things that stand out about a particularl book, but sometimes that is like pulling one thread out of a tapestry and telling you that is the most important thing. It's not- all the threads work together. There may be thirty yards of green thread and only 2 yards of white in that tapestry (I'm making up the numbers), but if you left out the white, you lose some key details that are part of the larger picture.

It's like asking somebody to pick out the most important ingredient in a fine pico de gallo, a perfect roll of sushi- the end result is greater than the sum of the parts. 

 All living books have many, many living ideas, and I don't know which one will mean the most to your children or you- and neither do they, right now. The things they can narrate right now are good and wonderful, but they will also have feelings, resonating chords in the heart that they aren't even aware of yet- ten years from now they may think- 'this reminds me of what Fiver said in Watership Down (this, btw, pretty much never happens with twaddle or one note song stories).

 I can say that Watership Down is about... epics, about worldbuilding, about thinking 'what if' thoughts, seeing the world through a completely foreign point of view in a way that will also (I hope) some day give a student the idea that, 'you know what? I eat with a fork and a knife, but eating with chopsticks is not so weird- there are reasons why different cultures might develop different customs and stories and courtesies...'

Maybe he won't even be able to put it into words. Maybe he won't even know that the first little nudging of that idea was from stories he read in first grade, and then the idea picked up a little emphasis and moved forward and gained speed with another story he read in year 4, and that idea was reshaped and given wheels with Watership Down, and then.... another book added another gentle layer on another layer.

 Or I could say Watership Down is in the curriculum because of what it teaches about governments, leadership, statecraft, freedom and tyranny- perhaps this child reader will notice the different forms of government the rabbits meet in different warrens, the advantages and disadvantages of each of them.  Perhaps your child will absorb some of the statecraft of one of the rabbit leaders, or think big thoughts about politics. Or perhaps he will just notice the problem with the lack of does and how the rabbits try to solve that issue, and maybe he will make connections with the Sabin women story in Plutarch, or the population problems in China thanks to her one-child policy.

 It might be that he (or she, I'm old-fashioned and still use 'he' as a gender neutral pronoun) will note the character of the different rabbits and how that relates to the things they do, their successes, strengths, weaknesses, and failures. Perhaps he will connect to Hazel and want to be a leader like him, or maybe this child will recognize Hazel's traits in another leader and throw his support to that candidate who most resembles Hazel, or maybe he will connect to Blackberry- withinnovative mind with a bent toward discovery beyond his fellows.  Maybe this child will just learn something about recognizing when friendship extended is not truely friendship at all, as the rabbits learned from Cowslip's warren.

I could say we have included Watership Down because it will help children understand anthropology, the study of customs, culture, peoples, and politics. Maybe the hints of those topics, rustling through the pages beneath the obvious parts of the plot, will whisper in your child's ears and he will discover an interest in those topics as he grows up, he will be able to make connections in ways he might not otherwise have been able to do if he had never met the various rabbits, read their stories, songs, poetry, and beliefs in WD.

 Perhaps the children will make connections between this story and the story of Abraham, told by God to leave everything and almost he had known in Ur, and journey to a new land and make his home there. Perhaps the reader will one day be called to become something of a gypsy himself- a missionary, a member of the military, a travel writer.

Perhaps he will find in this story a germ of an idea about what life is like for refugees, the struggles they face, and the home they miss and the one they hope to create. Maybe nothing greater will come of that but that he will be sympathetic toward refugees in general, and pray for them when he reads their stories in the news- and he will never realize that reading Watership Down is what first lit that little flame, created an affinity, if you will.

 Perhaps your student will discover he wants to be a fiction writer, creating a world like the author of Watership Down did, using animals as characters, or it will be the writing style that strikes the bell in his heart, or it will be something else I haven't even thought to mention.

 Interwoven into all this richness are true facts about real rabbits, real-life experiences the author had in a battle in the Netherlands in WW2, and stories he told to his little girls to amuse them on car trips. Maybe something there will connect with your reader.

I haven't even touched half the veins of ideas a child could mine from this book.

 It can be this way because Watership Down is a living book, in good company with Beowulf, The Lord of the Rings, The Oddysey, and other epics. Living books are written in interesting, complex language with challenging ideas, and excellent characterization and plotting.  They defy easy categorization. Watership Down is richly endowed with many, many living ideas, too many to list, and so it is difficult to label it with one 'cause' for including it in the curriculum. Like a Charlotte Mason education, it is full of wide and generous ideas.

 We could say that about any of our literature selections.

Ironically, or serendipitously, or providentially, or because this is the thing about connections, about the great ideas, about literature, a day or two after I wrote the above explanation for Watership Down, Auxiliary member Naomi shared this link with me.  you should read it all, but here's what caught my attention:

"But it is in the schools that perhaps the deepest confusion exists about the purposes of children’s literature. This year my husband and I attended several open houses at top“ranked private schools. At some of these events, tables for each grade were set up with frequently used materials, books read, and work produced. Very few of the classic children’s books were in evidence. Instead, the children were reading books chosen not because they were beautifully written or had stood the test of time, but because of their relationship to “appropriate” subject matter. In the lower grades at least, books were seldom understood as literature; they were merely aids to teaching social studies." 

There is a time and a place for books that are aids for teaching specific subjects. But literature is a worthy cause on its own merits, because good literature is a treasure trove of good ideas.

All the things I wanted to say, Part Two

by Anne White

More on the subject of Charlotte Mason and the upper years of school...

One hesitation at this point might be that if you've followed Charlotte Mason methods with your family through elementary school, you may also feel, or feel like you're being told, that all that time travelling was fun ,but that now it's time to come back down to earth; time to get down to a more serious view of education. Sometimes people will say this simply because they're not really aware of how challenging some of Charlotte Mason's upper level books and assignments were.

But for others, it is a problem more of philosophy and educational models. We may feel we're being told that the seemingly simple, subjective, mythos or poetic viewpoint is something we should outgrow; that as our children's minds stretch towards adulthood, we have to cut all that out of their schooling and replace it with a big, heavy dose of logos, of reason, of efficiency, of "life is real and life is earnest."  (I think of the mythos and logos as kind of like Ernie and Bert on Sesame Street.  Bert is all "be sensible, behave yourself," and Ernie is all about imagination.)  

David Hicks in his book on classical education, Norms and Nobility, says that "where distrust of connotative language...that is, language that is subjective and emotional, words like 'truth' or 'beauty' or 'home'...invades the modern school, there is a methodological tendency to exclude myth and to encourage detached analysis at the expense of the imaginative mind." Hicks says that the "mythos" side of our consciousness is our imaginative, spiritual effort to make our world intelligible; it gives meaning to human feelings, gives them significance and beauty, and allows us to communicate and share those experiences and ideas with each other. The upper years are about new ways of thinking, the Way of the Will, the great conversations. There is a lot of important stuff happening there beyond the book list, just as there is more to the TARDIS than the control room.

And the other problem with thinking that Charlotte Mason is good for young children, but not practical for older ones, is that we start to expect that when they reach a certain age, they just won't have time for all those books, all the fancy or fun stuff, because they're going to be so busy doing hours of math and science or maybe Latin and Logic, because when you get to that age, you start to focus so much of what you're doing on the next step, whatever lies beyond, like college. The lifetime of learning is going to have to wait until after high school, or maybe until after university. But by that time the key to the TARDIS may have been lost.

In much of today's education, there is the danger of too much specialization too soon; we need to enjoy generalizing (in its positive sense), provide the generous curriculum, while there is still time. In fact, time itself is one of the gifts that we can give our older students: Laurie Bestvater (in The Living Page) quotes from a book by Quentin James Schultze, Habits of the high-tech heart, where he warns that we need to "slow down enough to discover moral wisdom."

The logical, reasonable, "normal" view of education tends to focus on limits--much like looking at the outside, police call box view of a TARDIS. A couple of years ago I opened up a box of some school stuff I had saved from the years when our oldest was about eight through eleven, the first few years we really followed CM, and even I was a little bit shocked at how much I seemed to have expected of her...it almost seems impossible that we were getting that much done in a term, even with a preschooler and a new baby. But I don't remember those school times as being especially hard or unhappy; the truth is that in our daily round of school, my daughter and I (and later her sisters) took those books, and the other parts of a CM education, a bit at a time, day by day, lesson by lesson, term by term; and it worked. We learned to trust the process, to believe in the unknown universes, the places in time and space to which this "travelling phone booth" could take us.. And while I'm speaking here mostly about our own experiences in the elementary years, the same thing can apply to the middle school and high school years.

More in Part Three.

Head First?

by Anne White

The following is an unpaid, shameless advertisement for something you may be doing already.

Charlotte Mason warned that heads of schools should be discouraged from taking up her methods "lightly."  We assume that by "lightly" she meant carelessly, without real commitment, or piecemeal.  To use a term she probably would have shuddered at, she wanted educators to go at it whole hog.

Now, there are things it would be a mistake to dive into head first without being quite sure that one knows what one is doing.  Using power tools and trapping skunks come to mind.  However, in other, less high-risk pursuits, it is not only acceptable, but preferable, to jump in all at once.  Dipping your toes in too cautiously means that you may never enjoy the full experience.

Some examples? In the movie Mr. Holland's Opus, the main character describes how he was told by a record-store owner to listen to a certain piece of music.  He didn't like it, didn't get it.  When he complained, he was told to go home and listen to it again.  After several sessions of simply listening, something finally clicked, and what had been beyond his understanding started to make sense.  Mr. Holland  also has a struggling clarinet student who "practices constantly" but gets nowhere.  He helps her break through by making her put the book away and just play along with the piano.  For the first time ever, she jumps completely into the music, and then experiences new confidence in other areas of her life as well.

David V. Hicks,  in Norms and Nobility, contrasts two piano teachers he knew as a child.  His friend's teacher had young students memorize Mozart pieces.  His own teacher, more in touch with how modern children were supposed to learn, used graded exercises and fun, hands-on activities.  He says that his friend, who initially balked and struggled, was nevertheless playing Chopin and other difficult composers within a few years, while he himself never got beyond a simple arrangement of "The Lone Ranger."

In How to Read a Book, Mortimer J. Adler recommends reading even difficult books straight through the first time, not worrying about the parts you don't understand.  Because if you get bogged down with details, you may never finish.  And if you try to avoid that by reading only books you already understand completely, you'll learn nothing.  That may well apply to Charlotte Mason's volumes.  It can also apply to the Bible, to poetry, to Shakespeare, to Plutarch.  Norms and Nobility itself often makes me reach for a dictionary or an online explanation; but I learn more when I try to work out its philosophical points for myself.

But if we understand how that can help our own learning, do we allow our students the same opportunity?  Do we sometimes read poetry simply for the sound, the rhythm, the enjoyment?  Do we read books, or show paintings, to children that are a little, or a lot, beyond what they're supposed to like or appreciate?  Do we allow them sometimes not to comprehend every point, define every word?  Do we let them experience the satisfaction of what they do understand, along with a useful prickling of dissatisfaction that tells them they haven't quite arrived, that there's something still to reach for?

Norms and Nobility mentions the way certain ancient Greek teachers approached books and learning.  Like the old-style piano teachers, they didn't hesitate to plunk down something hard and say "read it, learn it, take a stand on it." How else could the young people learn how to think like adults? And besides, after mastering one super-tough book, everything afterwards would seem easy!

Deciding to take the CM plunge?

Go right in.  Head first.  And bring the children.