Babble On

by Anne White

Near the end of C. S. Lewis’s novel That Hideous Strength, the speeches being given at a college banquet turn into word salad (“Tidies and fugleman—I sheel foor that we all—er—most steeply rebut the defensible, though, I trust, lavatory…”). If you haven’t read the book, the explanation is both complicated and simple: the wizard Merlin, resurrected for the occasion, has been interfering. This is what happens next:

[Merlin] had left the dining room as soon as the curse of Babel was well fixed upon the enemies. No one had seen him go. Wither had once heard his voice calling loud and intolerably glad above the riot of nonsense, "Qui Verbum Dei contempserunt, eis auferetur etiam verbum hominis."

The translation of the Latin is given in a footnote: "They that have despised the word of God, from them shall the word of man also be taken away."

We can turn that around, and say that to love and revere the Word of God, we must also revere the “word of man.” That does not mean “the wisdom of this world [which] is foolishness with God” (1 Cor. 3:19), but rather something sacred and profound: God’s gift of language. The curse of Babel was that people lost their ability to communicate with each other; so its reverse is to be able to speak, to understand, to share meaning and metaphor, to instruct, to exhort, to tell stories, to make jokes. Think of the talking animals in Narnia. Think of what happens to Ginger the Cat in Lewis’s The Last Battle, when he loses that privilege.

“Look, look!” said the voice of the Bear. “It can’t talk. It has forgotten how to talk!...” And then the greatest terror of all fell upon those Narnians. For every one of them had been taught—when it was only a chick or a puppy or a cub—how Aslan at the beginning of the world had turned the beasts of Narnia into Talking Beasts and warned them that if they weren’t good they might one day be turned back again…”And now it is coming upon us,” they moaned.

How do we keep this gift and not lose it? And how do we teach the children under our care to cherish and not to despise it?

We talk to them. We sing to them. We read to them, repeat, repeat. Most of us reading this, know this. It is good  to read books full of strong and deep language; but (as in our music and art studies), we may also need to provide specific work on technique. And, in a time when the “curse of Babel” threatens civilization, we may need to go even further not only to protect our own walls, but to venture out in the spirit of those who go out carrying  tools to rebuild storm-flattened houses. Educator Marva Collins, always a proponent of word study in the classroom, wrote about a vocabulary “weapon” that she found; and tells us, as she told her students, why it really mattered.

That fall I discovered a secret weapon for building vocabulary, a book called Vocabulary for the College-Bound Student [by Harold Levine]. I ordered copies for all the students in Westside Prep. 

“Words are ideas. They make up thoughts. If our words are limited, our thoughts are limited,” I said, holding up the book and pointing to its title. “You see what this says? It says for the college-bound student, not the failure-bound student. To succeed in life, you must be a thinker, and to be a thinker, you must have vocabulary.” (Marva Collins’ Way, p. 170)

The introduction to Vocabulary for the College-Bound Student (available online) echoes the military, “secret weapon” analogy:

Though reading is the basic means of vocabulary growth, it is a relatively slow means. For the college-bound student who has not achieved a superior vocabulary, reading needs to be supplemented by a direct attack that will yield comparatively rapid growth—and that is the purpose of this book.

We may not require Harold Levine’s help in building our own vocabulary, but we could do worse than spread some of that curiosity and delight in words, and, in consequence, the ability to use them to think, to write, and to share dreams. Weapons or tools, whichever idea works better for us—the important thing is to develop skill in their use, and also care and respect for them, so that we will never be forced to rebut the defensible, though, I trust, lavatory.

[Aslan] said, “Rise up, Sir Peter Wolf’s-Bane. And,  whatever happens, never forget to wipe your sword.” (C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe)

For Me

by Donna-Jean Breckenridge

When my oldest daughter Bethany was just about six years old and our 'only,' I had begun using the 'Picture Study' that is one of the many hallmarks of a Charlotte Mason education. Simply put, it's to show a child a print of a great work of art (usually doing around six works of the same artist, over several weeks), letting them see it silently for a minute or two, and then having them, without looking at it, tell back what they've seen. That process is called narration - and that's it. No lecture, no added biography or lessons, no big teaching, just that. The painting speaks to the child. Then the print is usually hung nearby for that next week or so. 

We were doing Rembrandt. I had gotten prints from a respected family-company, and there were some interesting notes that went with it that helped me understand a bit more about Rembrandt. So one day at lunch, which was when we always had Picture Study, I showed her the large print I had gotten of Rembrandt's "Raising of the Cross." 

It's not a happy picture - Christ's nearly naked body is lit up on a diagonal, as the cross is being raised upright. There aren't the usual gashes or streaks of blood, but it's intense, nonetheless. Surrounding the cross, in increasing darkness, there are people - most notable is a man helping to lift the wood in place. He's dressed in clothes that don't fit Bible times - he's got a blue beret, and it's easy to understand that it's a self-portrait. Rembrandt put himself at the scene of the cross as one of the very people who crucified Jesus. It's jarring, haunting, even disturbing, and I admit that I wondered if I was introducing something too intense to my little girl.

There's another dominant figure in the painting - though not as significant as Christ and the self-portrait of Rembrandt. It's a man on a horse - like a centurion - looking official and noble. He's looking directly at the viewer - which is very different, even troubling - and his hand is outstretched. He's got something in his hand - and it appears to be a sword. But - the sword is held backwards - he's extending it hilt side out - so that you, the viewer, would grab it as if to use it yourself. Rembrandt seems to be saying, "I was there, I'm the reason Christ died, my sin is what crucified him - and now take the sword because you're a part of it, too."

Several days after this Picture Study moment, Bethany asked if she could paint. I always felt reluctant to get out the paints - it seemed as though I'd set up the easel in the kitchen, find the paints and brushes, spread newspaper on the floor, and her art time would take less than the time it took me to put it up and clean it afterwards. But that day I didn't make an excuse or try to distract her, and instead I found something else to do (no doubt something I thought was so vital at the time, but probably was very insignificant) while she fussed with her own art time. 

After a little while, I saw her painting. On her own, with garish, bold colors and with stick figures, she painted a kind of narration of Rembrandt's Raising of the Cross. There was Christ, hanging on the tree, and beside him was a little girl, her long yellow braids evident, holding her own sword, with a tearful face. 

The 27-year-old Dutch master had spoken across three hundred and fifty years to help my little girl see her part in Christ's death on the cross. There is no junior Holy Spirit. God speaks to children, too - and uses means we often think are too hard, too difficult, too complicated. 

I've never forgotten that - and the power of the truth of Good Friday. I have sometimes struggled with Good Friday services that focus on intense medical analyses of the torture Christ suffered - but I know I need to hear it. So I sit through whatever is presented, whether the details of the crucifixion, a dramatic or choral portrayal (grateful - or wishing - I was in it), or even an afternoon of the seven last words from the cross (like when I was a kid) - to remember that this is what Jesus did for me. I was there, because I was on His mind. It's all for me. 

I know it from the Gospels, from Rembrandt, and I know it from my own child. 

In the Storm with Jesus

by Donna-Jean Breckenridge

I was getting together my prints for our next Picture Study time with my granddaughters and I pulled out an old book I have called "Rembrandt and the Bible."

I looked over some of my favorites, and then my eyes fell on “Storm on the Sea of Galilee.” It’s not one of the six for this term, but I like it anyway.

And it brought back some memories. I recalled a time I taught a children’s Sunday School class, using Charlotte Mason principles and picture study. (As the church’s Christian Education Director, I had some liberty in curriculum. I used CM’s principles many times in that role over the years.)

I sat in the low chair with the kids at the round table, surrounded by bold murals of Noah’s Ark. (I’ve often wondered if those who use that account for church nursery decor recognize its full story of death and destruction, and of God’s deliverance to an obedient few. But I digress.)

We opened the large book and I showed them the picture. I introduced the idea of narration to them, and I gave them time to look carefully at the painting.

I closed the book, and they told it back to me. “There was this boat,” one of them began. “And a big wave!,” another chimed in. One child went on and on with quite a few details. Not to be undone, one boy said loudly, “I saw a guy throwing up!” (Truly, I had never noticed that before.)

And then we talked about how Jesus was in the boat during the storm. Because this was our church time, we opened the Bible and read the historical accounts from the different Gospels of this moment. One young observer asked why the artist hadn’t included the “other little boats.” And we talked about the miracle that followed.

The kids decided to re-enact the painting in a kind of tableau. It wasn’t done up with great costuming or beautiful sets. It was a jacket or two, a blanket from the nursery, more little chairs were arranged, someone was Jesus, and one kid was “the guy throwing up.”

I’ve often wondered what they told their parents about that Sunday School class that day.

But that painting has come to my mind a lot lately. I’ve thought about the period of time in Rembrandt’s work. It depicted a terrible storm - one that caused seasoned, professional fishermen on a familiar sea to be filled with terror. Wave crashed upon wave, unrelentingly.

And Jesus was in the boat. He was the same One they’d seen perform miracles; recently, even.

The big moment is yet ahead - Jesus will calm the storm, still the waves, and all will be well.

But often we’re stalled out in Rembrandt’s painting. No calm, no miracle, no stillness. Wave upon wave is hitting us, with no let-up in sight. Hardly the stuff of encouragement, of blessed assurances, of all-is-well.

And yet - Jesus was in the boat all along. Jesus is with me in my storms today. He has performed miracles in the past. And He may show His mighty power yet again. And I come to Him with my troubles and fear in my heart, asking for Him to do again what He’s done before, or for what I believe He can do now.

But in the meantime, I’m safe. It surely doesn’t look like it or feel like it. And sometimes I might feel more like the guy losing his lunch over the edge. But Jesus is with me, before, during, after. I’m safe. And He is safe to trust.

At AmblesideOnline, we're praying for you and yours today. Lean on Jesus. He’s with you, no matter what waves are hitting you.

Literature as Moral Instruction

Some Advisory Progeny sort through
a few family books. 

You may have noticed, and perhaps wondered why, AO does not use any of those popular reprinted Victorian morality tales which are specifically geared toward the teaching of 'character.'  It is not because we are not concerned with the development of good character in our children.  Rather, it is because we believe that the little books and studies which purport to 'teach' character are misguided, at best, and usually poorly written. In her third volume, Miss Mason refers to such books as twaddle:

What manner of Book sustains the Life of Thought?––The story discloses no more than that they were intelligent girls, probably the children of intelligent parents. But that is enough for our purpose. The question resolves itself into––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, (emphasis mine, WC) 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 possibly 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. By spiritual I mean that which is not corporeal; and which, for convenience sake, we call by various names––the life of thought, the life of feeling, the life of the soul.

I would put character development under this 'life of the soul.' How could we define that further?  Could we say it is the growth of both an instructed, informed conscience, combined with habits of right action?  The habits we can discuss later. For this post, we will focus on how we instruct the conscience.  The Bible, of course, is the best instructor of all.   Real, living books also serve very well for lessons in what we would call 'character development.'

Miss Mason explains why:

The instructed conscience knows that Temperance, Chastity, Fortitude, Prudence must rule in the House of Body. But how is the conscience to become instructed? Life brings us many lessons––when we see others do well, conscience approves and learns; when others do ill, conscience condemns. But we want a wider range of knowledge than the life about us affords, and books are our best teachers. There is no nice shade of conduct which is not described or exemplified in the vast treasure-house of literature. (emphasis mine, WC) History and biography are full of instruction in righteousness; but what is properly called literature, that is, poetry, essays, the drama, and novels, is perhaps the most useful for our moral instruction, because the authors bring their insight to bear in a way they would hesitate to employ when writing about actual persons. Autobiographies, again, often lift the veil, for the writer may make free with himself.

The above quote is taken from Leslie Noelani's Modern English version of Ourselves, Miss Mason's fourth volume.

On pages 50 and 51 of volume 6, Miss Mason explains how well the children are able to extract the morals from the biographies they read:

The way children make their own the examples offered to them is amazing. No child would forget the characterization of Charles IX as 'feeble and violent,' nor fail to take to himself a lesson in self-control. We may not point the moral; that is the work proper for children themselves and they do it without fail. The comparative difficulty of the subject does not affect them. A teacher writes (of children of eleven),––"They cannot have enough of Publicola and there are always groans when the lesson comes to an end."

A while ago I read the above passages to my children (grown and nearly grown), and asked them if any of the books we'd read came to mind immediately.  One of my daughters said we'd think she was weird, but Winnie The Pooh and Shakespeare's Sonnets came to mind almost immediately. I also remembered another time when we had a lesson on gossip at church.  One of our daughters had been reading A Tale of Two Cities, by Dickens (she was about 11 at the time). She told me the lesson, which used the verse about how the tongue is as a roaring fire reminded her of the darkest days of the French Revolution, when a careless remark could get your neighbor arrested, and a malicious remark could have him beheaded. Another of my children spent a good deal of profitable time pondering over the lessons about false friends which she gleaned from reading Dickens' Oliver Twist.

Children are able to handle much stronger stuff than we give them credit for, too.  This is another reason those 'goody goody storybooks' Miss Mason spoke of often miss the mark. As a small child away from home for the first time, another of our daughters requested of her grandmother that a 'comforting story' to be read to her from the Bible. The grandmother asked for a suggestion, and my young daughter (about 8) asked for the story of.... Jezebel!  That is not the story most of us would choose, is it?  I pondered over that for a while and then realized that what comforted that small child of 8 was the meaty and firm knowledge that the wicked did not prosper forever.  Left to my own devices, I would have made another choice for a 'comforting' story.

The goody goody storybooks Miss Mason would not use in her own classrooms seek to create a sort of a recipe, or formula, for character development rather than deal holistically with the child as a whole person who is nourished not by morality tales, but by living ideas in literary form.

 As Charlotte mason wrote in her sixth volume:

Education is a life. That life is sustained on ideas. Ideas are of spiritual origin, and God has made us so that we get them chiefly as we convey them to one another, whether by word of mouth, written page, Scripture word, musical symphony; but we must sustain a child's inner life with ideas as we sustain his body with food. Probably he will reject nine-tenths of the ideas we offer, as he makes use of only a small proportion of his bodily food, rejecting the rest. He is an eclectic; he may choose this or that; our business is to supply him with due abundance and variety and his to take what he needs. Urgency on our part annoys him. He resists forcible feeding and loathes predigested food (emphasis mine. WC). What suits him best is pabulum presented in the indirect literary form which Our Lord adopts in those wonderful parables whose quality is that they cannot be forgotten though, while every detail of the story is remembered, its application may pass and leave no trace. We, too, must take this risk. We may offer children as their sustenance the Lysander of Plutarch, an object lesson, we think, shewing what a statesman or a citizen should avoid: but, who knows, the child may take to Lysander and think his 'cute' ways estimable! Again, we take the risk, as did our Lord in that puzzling parable of the Unjust Steward. One other caution; it seems to be necessary to present ideas with a great deal of padding, as they reach us in a novel or poem or history book written with literary power. A child cannot in mind or body live upon tabloids however scientifically prepared; out of a whole big book he may not get more than half a dozen of those ideas upon which his spirit thrives; and they come in unexpected places and unrecognised forms, so that no grown person is capable of making such extracts from Scott or Dickens or Milton, as will certainly give him nourishment. It is a case of, “In the morning sow thy seed and in the evening withhold not thine hand for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that."

I suspect that most, if not all, of the Victorian style morality tales count as 'predigested food.'
 Feed the children's minds, and their 'characters'  upon living books, of which the Bible is chief.