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. 

Confronted With an Idea

by Anne White

A slide popped up a couple of days ago on my social media. I couldn’t track down the author's account, which is one reason I think it may have been floating around for awhile. Nevertheless, what it had to say was intriguing: 

“Reading books is so profound because it denies you the ability to speak when confronted with an idea. You must listen. It isn’t a conversation. Sometimes it shouldn’t be a conversation. Sometimes we should just listen. Just listen.”

Now, that (as many commenters squawked back) flies in the face of much we’ve been told about reading and books. Mortimer J. Adler’s How to Read a Book  famously compares reading to a game of catch, which demands at least some amount of back-and-forth activity. In an age when what students do in class is discuss things; in a time when we’re encouraged to leave comments and feedback on every post and every video (because it helps with the ratings), to be told we should listen in silence… just listen…feels heretical.

And yet. And yet.

What do Charlotte Mason students do? Narrate. As opposed to Vanity Fair’s  young whippersnapper George Osborne, whose little essay is derided by Charlotte in Home Education. “And well might Mrs George Sedley be delighted. Would not many a mother to-day triumph in such a literary effort? What can Thackeray be laughing at? Or does he, in truth, give us this little 'theme' as a tour de force?” (p. 244)

And what comes before narration? Listening. Attentiveness. Observation. Hearing, in the Biblical sense.

In Ragman and Other Cries of Faith, Walter Wangerin Jr.  wrote about his experiences as a young pastor, visiting an older woman from his church who was facing an unknown future after cancer surgery. One day as he talked about the weather and how nice it would be when she was feeling better, this woman became exasperated with his chatter and told him to “Shut up.” So he did: “I entered her room at noon, saying nothing. I sat beside her through the afternoon, saying nothing…; but with the evening came the Holy Spirit. For the words I finally said were not my own…”

Learning to shut up allowed Wangerin the needed space for the Spirit to minister.

Learning to listen first, including as we read, may do the same.

It's something to think about, anyway. 

We would not willingly educate [a child] towards what is called 'self-expression'; he has little to express except what he has received as knowledge, whether by way of record or impression; what he can do is to assimilate and give this forth in a form which is original because it is modified, re-created, by the action of his own mind; and this originality is produced by the common bread and milk which is food for everyone, acting upon the mind which is peculiar to each individual child. (Philosophy of Education, p. 66)

Nature Study: Seeing the World in a Grain of Sand (Parents' Review Excerpt)

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour

William Blake's Auguries of Innocence

"Let us consider for a moment what unequalled training the child naturalist is getting for any study or calling-the powers of attention and concentration, of discrimination and patient pursuit, and growing parallel with his growth, what will they not fit him for? Besides life is so full of interest for him, that he has no time for the faults of temper which generally have their source in lack of occupation for body or mind.

The sense of Beauty comes from early contact with Nature. "The aesthetic sense of the beautiful," say Dr. Carpenter, "of the sublime, of the harmonious, seems in its more elementary form to connect itself immediately with the perceptions which arise out of the contact of our minds with external Nature"; while he quotes Dr. Morell, who says still more forcibly that "All those who have shewn a remarkable appreciation of form and beauty, date their first impressions from a period lying far behind the existence of definite ideas or verbal instruction." There is no end to the store of common information, got in such a way that it will never be forgotten, with which an intelligent child may furnish himself before he begins his second career.

A child should be made familiar with natural objects, that is the observant child should be put in the way of things worth observation, and the unobservant child encouraged to notice and be on the look out for things. Generally speaking, this is not difficult, because every natural object is a member of a series. Take up any natural object-it does not matter what-and you are studying one of a group, a member of a series; and whatever knowledge you get about it is so much towards the science which includes all of its kind. Break off an elder twig in spring; you notice a ring of wood round a centre of pith, and there at a glance you have a distinguishing character of a great division of the vegetable world. You pick up a pebble. Its edges are round and smooth. It is water-worn and weather-worn and that little pebble brings you face to face with disintegration, the force to which, more than any other, we owe the aspects of the world we call picturesque-glen, ravine, valley and hill. It is not necessary to tell the child anything about dicotyledonous plants or disintegration, only that he should observe the pith within the twig and the rounded edges of the pebble. By and by he will learn the bearing of the facts with which he is already familiar-a very different matter from learning the reason why of facts which hitherto have never come under his notice. The power to classify, discriminate, and distinguish between things that differ is amongst the highest faculties of human intellect, and no opportunity to cultivate it should be allowed to pass. For this reason children should be encouraged to make such rough classifications as they can with their slight knowledge of both plant and animal forms of life. A classification taken from books, that the child does not make out for himself, cultivates no power but that of verbal memory."

Read the rest here.