Is Plutarch too difficult for children? A few century-old opinions

by Anne White

In 1919, twenty-six schools using the PNEU curriculum (i.e. the correspondence school based on Charlotte Mason’s methods) were surveyed as to their impressions of the books, methods, the success of the curriculum with their students, etc. The results were compiled into an article that was included in a booklet, Impressions of the Ambleside Method.

On the topic of Plutarch, the survey drew mixed responses.

“The study of Plutarch's Lives,” says another [teacher], “seems suitable only for riper minds. If the Lives as a whole were studied the scholar might get an idea of the foundation of the Roman and Grecian Empires.”

“But,” said [the editor] Mr. Household, “he has missed the whole purpose of the study, which is by no means to give them ‘an idea of the foundation of the Roman and Grecian Empires,’ but something very different.” 

Mr. Household quoted the French philosopher Montaigne:

 “He (the teacher) shall by the help of Histories inform himself of the worthiest minds that were in the best ages. It is a frivolous study if a man list, but of invaluable worth to such as can make use of it...What profit shall he not reap touching this point, reading the lives of our Plutarch? Always conditioned the master bethink himself whereto his charge tendeth, and that he imprint not so much in his scholar's mind the date of the ruin of Carthage, as the manners of Hannibal and Scipio, nor so much where Marcellus died, as because he was unworthy of his devoir he died there; that he teach him not so much to know Histories, as to judge of them...” (Of the Institution and Education of Children. Essays, Book I, Chap. xxv)

[One teacher] found that “Narration has greatly improved their English. The children have a larger vocabulary. They have a clearer way of expressing themselves, and are not afraid of speaking in front of the other scholars...Then again there are many subjects for Compositions and the Compositions have certainly improved; they are not as scrappy as they used to be. The subjects of their essays are more interesting.”

“The children very much appreciated the story of Romulus and Remus, ” said [a young teacher], “and seem to have set out with the determination to enjoy the life story of Lycurgus. It is this book--Plutarch's Lives--and the History of Rome which are the subjects of interesting compositions.”

To sum up, another teacher said,

“There is no disguising that the children find Plutarch difficult, but they are meant to find him difficult. The joy comes when the difficulties are mastered, and they are being mastered at [our school]. ”

Q and A: What Would You Say....

Q. What would you say to a mom who is considering homeschooling but she says the books AO uses are too advanced, too difficult for children that are assigned to read them to understand?


A.  It is true that the books are quite advanced, and seem very challenging.  On the other hand, if we go back and look at classrooms and children's bookshelves in the past, we would see that well over one hundred years ago, the books in the AmblesideOnline curriculum were commonly read, understood, and much loved by average middle-class students of the same ages. (The Lambs wrote their Shakespeare retellings in 1807 and it was an immediate hit).

Charlotte Mason used many of these same books with children whose parents were coal miners and others from the uneducated working classes, and she found them very successful. They were used in India with children for whom English was their second language, and they worked.

 I would like to stop and think about why we believe today's average 7 year old cannot understand what the average 7 year old of 100 years or more ago could enjoy?   And after we have given that some thought, I would like us to further consider that insomuch as it is true that today's 7 year old cannot understand books that were the delight of 7 year old children over a hundred years ago, is this something to be satisfied with, or is it something to deplore and correct for our own children?

I recently learned that in America, public school texts, particularly the language arts and literature textbooks, were significantly simplified (dumbed down) after the Great War (WWI) and then again after WW2 - to the point that what currently passes for Advanced Placement courses for high school is equivalent to work done by average seventh graders before the mass stupification (sorry, it just makes me so mad).  (Source: The Perfect Score Project by Debbie Stier, a book primarily about helping your students do well on the SAT)- and I believe they have been revised and dumbed down again more than once since then.

So why is public school the standard?    Rather than accepting what was done to us and is being done to our children, fight back. Raise the standard. Children understood and loved these texts before. They can do it again. They are doing it again, as we have seen in hundreds and hundreds of families who are using AO, in our own children, and in a few CM-inspired small cottage schools we hear of here and there, some of which use our curriculum. These books were well within these same target ages appropriate in the 1800s and the 1900s, and (barring significant issues which would be obvious exceptions) there is no reason they cannot be read, understood, and much beloved by school aged children today.

Naturally, we are not all starting at the same point.  For some of us it takes some more work, some more effort, and some more sacrifices (namely, do give up electronic screen time if you are having trouble, and don't skip the glorious outdoor play and romps), but it is *so* worth it.

 That's what I wish I could say to such mothers - with earnest pleading, and a reminder that every one of the Advisory put this together for such a mom as you, and we and our fabulous Auxiliary team and dozens and dozens of other devoted volunteers reaching across the table and grabbing every young mother's hands and promising to help as much as we can on our fb page, on the forum, and via our website.

The modern place for older books

by Wendi Capehart

Why do we use old books?  We live in the 21st century after all!

In general, well written older books use richer vocabulary, more  complex sentence structure, and contain more ideas per page than  modern books. Recently written books, by contrast, use watered down language, weaker, less complex, sentence structures and if they have any meaningful ideas, they either sandwich them  between pages and pages of fluff, or they club the reader over the head with the message.

C. S. Lewis, in his introduction to Athanasius, advised that moderns needed to read more old books and fewer new books.  He explained:

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. … To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them.

We can see the blind spots of previous generations, but it is harder to know our own.  Older books that we use have stood the test of time. They have  been read for generations and will be read for generations more.  It's too early to tell which of our currently published, modern crops of books will  still be communicating to readers outside of the culture and time  that produced them a hundred years from now.  Those who are contemporaries of the authors are the worst judges of that timeless quality, because we cannot step outside our own time, culture, and assumptions to see which are merely passing whims and which are timeless, not with any certainty, anyway.

The marginalizing of old books as though truth and beauty have expiration dates reflects modernity's disconnect with the past, something David McCullough addressed, pointing out:

Learning about history is an antidote to the hubris of the present, the idea that everything in our lives is the ultimate.Former President Harry S. Truman once remarked that the history we don’t know is the only new thing in the world. Picking up on a related theme, the late Daniel Boorstin, an eminent historian, Librarian of Congress, and friend of mine, wrote that planning for the future without a sense of the past is similar to planting cut flowers and hoping for the best. Today, the new generation of young Americans are like a field of cut flowers, by-and-large historically illiterate. This does not bode well for our future.

A sense of the past is not just a matter of knowing dates and events and being able to put them in order.  It's about coming into contact with some of the best minds of the previous centuries, not mere decades. It's about reading their ideas and stories in their words, getting a feel for   Truth, justice, mercy, faith, friendship, charity, loyalty, courage, these are ideas and traits that are timeless. 

While Mason did use some books which were newly published in her day, she relied more heavily on great books of the past.  In volume VI, she explains that the children read literature which was published in the same historical time period they are studying.  She mentions Milton, Pope, Sir Walter Scott, Goldsmith- and of course, they were not 'modern' in her day, either.

She explains:

 The object of children's literary studies is not to give them precise information as to who wrote what in the reign of whom?––but to give them a sense of the spaciousness of the days, not only of great Elizabeth, but of all those times of which poets, historians and the makers of tales, have left us living pictures. In such ways the children secure, not the sort of information which is of little cultural value, but wide spaces wherein imagination may take those holiday excursions deprived of which life is dreary; judgment, too, will turn over these folios of the mind and arrive at fairly just decisions about a given strike, the question of Poland, Indian Unrest. Every man is called upon to be a statesman seeing that every man and woman, too, has a share in the government of the country; but statesmanship requires imaginative conceptions, formed upon pretty wide reading and some familiarity with historical precedents.

It is not that her students never read modern books for literature, it's just that Mason did not see a need to emphasize them.  She wrote that sometimes the oldest students' studies touched on:

current literature in the occasional use of modern books; but young people who have been brought up on this sort of work may, we find, be trusted to keep themselves au fait with the best that is being produced in their own days.

It is also true that we at AO appreciate about older books is that they are in the public domain.  Now, many, many public domain books are still twaddle, so that alone won't qualify a book for AO.  But once we've found a really well written book we love it when it's also public domain.  This means they are available on line as etexts,  *and will remain available.* I can't tell you how frustrating, how  much gnashing of teeth it causes the Advisory when a book goes out  of print. When we put together the curriculum (and when we revise it), it was and is the result of truly, thousands of Mama-hours (these are worth  more than man-hours, right? Just Joking!) researching books. 

We  amazed our librarians with the number of books we checked out from the  library and put on interlibrary loan. When all else fails, we  actually, gulp, spend money on a book if we can't find it to review  it any other way. We scan excerpts of different books into our  computers and pass them on to each other to compare and contrast.  We look at the wording, the breadth and scope of coverage, the  illustrations (if any), topics covered (and just as important,  topics not covered), and then, after devoting months of our lives to  this project, we finally pick the best book of all those available  and proudly and gleefully share it with the world.  Then it goes out  of print and we all have to go on anti-depressants and receive hours  of pastoral counseling. Okay, that last part was an exaggeration.  We don't go on medication.  Seriously, though, the newer, in-print  books have a Very High turnover rate. They very quickly become  newer but now hard to find and out of print books, and thus, of no  use to us. 

Individual homeschoolers can use and benefit from those books, of  course. Some of them may actually be better than any given book we  have listed. But a book that may be perfect for your family (or  mine) is not perfect for AmblesideOnline if it's out of print but not online.

Here's are some reasons why out of print but not yet in public domain books are not  very useful to us:
 We want to share our vision of what a Charlotte  Mason education might look like put into practice, and at the same  time, we want to make that vision available to as many people as  possible who might want to benefit from it.

We specifically want to consider the unique situations and needs of  missionaries, military, and other expat families overseas, as well as parents and educators around the world who love their kids; single  parents; families without access to a decent library, a good  bookstore, or inexpensive shipping; families who travel often and so  cannot cart thousands of pounds of books around; and fellow  homeschoolers all over the world. We want to recreate a solid, sound, and beautiful rendition of  what a CM curriculum might look like today, and we want that version to also  work for all those different families I mentioned. The best way for  us to do that is to rely strongly on public domain works that can be  used as etexts, whenever we find etexts of excellent quality..

This is not the only way to implement Charlotte Mason's ideas and  principles. These are not the only books worth using. But these  are the books that best fit the criteria we set for ourselves at the  start of this project. We want to offer a model of what a real living book looks like.  We want to share a curriculum based on excellently written books, packed with informing ideas rather than twaddle and  barren facts, in living language that engages the mind (often with some effort required, which is also an important part of a CM education),   and so we have chosen what we believe to  be the cream of the crop from those books that are online or still  in print, and in some cases, worked hard to get that oop book available online, or convinced a publisher to republish. 

We share this freely, and we try to keep costs down because we believe in Miss Mason's vision of 'Education for all.'

What I learned from a tree ornament

by Anne White

November is my annual crafting, making, planning for holidays month. As I was putting ideas together, I saw these patchwork tree ornaments linked from Sew Mama Sew's Handmade Holidays, and thought they didn't look too difficult.

Wrong.

Photo below: the almost-finished disastrous first attempt. If it doesn't look that awful, that's just because the photo's a bit blurred.

I put that pattern aside for a week or so while I worked on other things. Then I made a second try.

Sewing these ornaments made me think of several Charlotte Mason principles.

1.  In many parts of life, hit-or-miss is good enough. In this case, it didn't work well. The first time around, I thought I would save time by folding rectangles in half and then snipping across (to make squares), and eyeballing the seam allowances. The second time, I cut paper patterns for each required piece, and marked the patterns with quarter-inch seam allowances as well. No more missing tree points and crooked borders. Everything lined up the way it was supposed to. Should I have been surprised?

But it's not just about practicing attention and accuracy. It's about commitment to the method. It would have been easy to say the pattern was not right or too hard, just because my first try didn't work. I didn't become that much better a sewer in one week. What made the difference? Having faith in the image that was presented, and following all the instructions.

2.  Just because something's free doesn't mean it's the best choice. For the first ornaments, I used a scrap of red holiday-print fabric for the borders, and another green and red print for the backing fabric. (I was very limited in what I had to use, but I thought it should be red because the original was red.) The print turned out to be too scattered for the small area, and the backing fabric didn't match very well. The second time, I had been to the store and picked up a quarter-yard of brown print with tiny hearts, for both borders and backing. It looks much nicer, even though it wasn't sold as a "Christmas" fabric.

3. But it's okay to mix new and vintage materials. The white sections in both sets of ornaments are a scrap of old white percale sheet, the last remaining piece after using it for other projects over a couple of years (it was a really big sheet). I found that the percale had an interesting quirk: any holes made in the fabric, such as needle marks made in the wrong place, were very noticeable and couldn't be smoothed over. It was a strong encouragement to do it right the first time.

4. Iron, iron, iron. Kind of like narrate, narrate, narrate.

5. New challenges are how you grow, and just because a first attempt at a new book doesn't go well, it doesn't mean that you or your students are failures, or that the book is bad. In this case, I'm glad I came across that new fabric that inspired me to try again. I learned from the first failures. (But don't expect me to hang them on the Christmas tree as an object lesson.)

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.)

How to use the website and booklists

We're revamping our website and planning some changes, but they aren't done yet, and people are working on their school year now.
They visit us at amblesideonline.org, and are often overwhelmed by the information (honestly, sometimes we are, too!).

Who is this tutorial for? If you shut the website down in a panic one second after opening it, this might be for you.  If you find yourself feeling a little dizzy while you look at it, numbly asking yourself, "What do I do? Where do I start? This is all so confusing!"-  I hope this post will help with that.  It's intended for raw beginners, so I explain things that may seem obvious to old-timers, and don't explain some other things that I think can wait until newcomers get their feet wet a bit.

CM Philosophy in a sentence: It's better to know something of Miss Mason's philosophy, but what if you are pressed for time and urgently need to begin now?
Know this:

 Children are born persons. Much and varied humane reading, as well as human thought expressed in the forms of art, is, not a luxury, a tit-bit, to be given to children now and then, but their very bread of life, which they must have in abundant portions and at regular periods. This and more is implied in the phrase, "The mind feeds on ideas and therefore children should have a generous curriculum." 

This is a generous curriculum, based on Charlotte Mason’s ideas.  For help understanding how to implement the things on our website, feel free to ask questions on our forum.

Breaking it down into bitesized pieces of years, terms, and weeks:  We offer a 12 year curriculum list, although the years do not necessarily correspond to grades. We have had at least one student complete our program only through year 8 and still go to college on SAT scholarship. More commonly students have finished at one of the years from 9 to 11 and still been able to manage college.

 Each year is divided into 3 terms, 12 weeks each. We expect students to take 12 weeks to complete the readings assigned for each term. There is no benefit to completing them faster, and tearing through the school readings as though you’re driving on the autobahn is the antithesis of a CM education (by this, we mean, it’s not good. Don’t).

 There is a 13th week for exams. Don’t worry about exams yet. We do not recommend teaching to the test anyway, and we also offer exam helps on the website and forum, so we’ll be there when you get to exam week and need us.

 What year do you need? I don't know.  I always let somebody else answer this question.  Ahem.  Think about your child’s reading level, habits, and experiences. If you are taking a child out of public school, you might choose the year that matches the grade he just finished. If you have a five year old, you probably want year 0. If you have a six or seven year old and are just beginning your CM journey, you probably want year one.  But since this is also a question that often comes up on the forums and you can find more specific help by asking about placement there- people with children the same ages as yours can share what they’ve been doing, I'm not going to spend more time on this question here.

 Are you crazy?  These books are too hard!  The reading will appear quite difficult at first if you are not used to AO or Charlotte Mason’s approach. If you find that a year is too hard or too easy for your child, you can switch after you start- that’s the wonderful thing about a free curriculum. (Even if you find you bought books that you don’t need after all, you should be able to resell them in the buy/sell area of our forum).  But give it a chance. Respect the minds of your children (and your own mind as well!).  I bet all of you can do more than you think you can.

 Walking step by step through one curriculum year on the website: But you don’t have to have a year chosen to go through this outline of website helps.  Let's just pick any year- there will be some differences from year to year, but the general outline is mostly the same, so for now, go to our curriculum pages and click on AmblesideOnline Curriculum (click any pictures to enlarge):






 and look for the years in the left sidebar: http://amblesideonline.org/curriculum.shtml

Let’s pick year 4 as an example. Click on a year, and you'll see something similar to this (click to enlarge):

1. Every year has a quote at the top of the page, one we chose from Miss Mason’s writings which we thought was a good fit for that year.

 2. Next you’ll find a paragraph with short overview (not intended to be complete, just to give you a sense of direction for the year).

3. The most confusing part is perhaps a choice you'll need to make, so let's ignore that for a moment and come back to it.

4. There is also a grid which gives a picture view of the year. It’s basically just a visual overview of what you read in the paragraph of description.  Like that paragraph description, it's not intended to be a thorough picture.  We wanted to give you just enough information to give you a sense of direction for the year.

We offer both, because some people would prefer to read text, some want a look at a glance. Some find both distracting (see me, sheepishly raising my hand), and just want to get on with it, so let’s look at your choices.

We'll come back to the 36 week schedule later.  But DO Note: this is merely an overview.  It's not exhaustive, it's not a replacement for the actual booklist.  We also have a gridded schedule available with the schedules, and it is not enough to print that out alone.  YOU NEED TO CLICK THROUGH and LOOK AT THE BOOKLIST.  In fact, I find myself referring back to the booklist frequently.

basic vs detailed: We offer two options called basic, and detailed. The main difference is that in the detailed version we sometimes offer alternatives- more choices to make! There might be more than one biography to choose from for instance, or two or three options for church history, or several options to choose from for geography.

 In the basic version, we simplified things for you by removing all options.  We just give a straight list with no substitutions or varied selections (again, this was just to simplify things- you are always free to make substitutions, of course). You would choose the basic if you don’t want to make choices, if you are in a hurry, if you feel you are not really familiar enough with Miss Mason and her principles to make informed choices, if you live somewhere and some way that your options and time to process this information are limited anyway.

 Some years, especially the younger years, there are almost no differences because we didn’t offer that many options anyway- there weren’t many good ones, or it was obvious that the best of the best was simply the only option (Island Story for year 1 history, for instance).

The Booklist:  So pick one, detailed list with several options and choices to make for many of the books, or the basic ‘this is what you do, no alternative choices listed’ and click through:

Time Period: Every year except year 12 covers a specific period of history (with occasional side-trips, romps through events or biographies in other areas to keep things interesting, or because a theme matches even if the year does not). We list the main era covered at the top of the page for that year.

Asterisks = terms:  Every year is divided into 3 terms, and we break it down further and tell you what period of time each term will cover as well.  If you scroll down through the booklist you'll see asterisks in front of titles.  We denote the terms through the simple method of asterisks. One asterisk, *, means that item will be used in term one, two- **- means term two, and so forth.

Table of contents for each year: Before you get to the actual curriculum, we have a short table of contents for each curriculum year page. You can think of it as another brief overview.

 If this is your first time, you can skip that. All the material is on this page, and you can scroll down to look at it. This linkable, clickable toc will be immensely helpful to you later, when you want to look back at a particular subject for a given year to check your progress, or make sure you got the title correct, or see if you scheduled it properly- instead of skimming through the whole page, you can quickly skim a list of a dozen or so words, find the subject and click on it. For now, don’t bother with it.

Cunningly devised key to (mostly) free stuff: Next is a key, a table of symbols which will at first look confusing and overwhelming, but don’t skip it.

 This will help you find the books you want for the best price (or free!).
When we give the title to a book, we also share where you can find it. Whenever possible, we share free sources, because that is part of our mission- making this as cost friendly as possible, and something missionary families with weight limits overseas can use, as well as families who have just been through a devastating flood, a job loss, or some other life drama. If we were to list out all the sources for each book, it would make the pages longer, more visually overwhelming, and printing them out would be a real bear. So instead, we have a cunningly devised list of symbols (See above.  Isn't it cunning?)

 Our actual book titles in the curriculum lists are always hyperlinked to Project Gutenberg (our first choice) or other FREE online text if no Project Gutenberg text is available- provided a free online version is available. If we don’t know of a free online source, the book title will not be hyperlinked. When we find a new source of free online titles, we add it.

 So take a moment to look over that key and get an idea of what it means. For example, when you see a title followed by the symbol β , that is a clickable hyperlink to manybooks.net, another free ebook site. Whenever you see a ‘Δ’ following a title, that is a clickable hyperlink which will take you directly to a free etext version of that title at archive.org. When you see this symbol, ☊, (doesn’t it look like little headphones?), that takes you to a free audiobook at Lit2Go, and so forth.

 About our Amazon links: When you see a capital K following a booktitle, that is a clickable hyperlink which will take you to a free Kindle text from amazon.com. ($) will take you to a hard-copy book purchase from amazon.com, and the K in parentheses (K), is *not* free- it is a clickable link which will take you to (K) a Kindle purchase from amazon.com. For about the last three years, the Amazon links have been affiliate links, and this is how we cover expenses such as the website, research materials, and related costs. I say they are affiliate links, but of course, Amazon does not pay us for free books. That’s not a criticism, just a clarification. We do get an affiliate percentage if you click through to Amazon through one of our links and then also buy something else there on that visit. We appreciate it, but do not require it- we are a ministry first, and not a business at all, or we’d have more than Amazon links, and we’d have had them for far more than the 3 of our 17 years or so of existence.

 This is for Amazon.com, not Amazon.CA or Amazon.UK. We don’t have affiliate status there.   If you want an easier- just-fill-your -shopping-cart without worrying about finding the cheapest version option, we also have an amazon A-store- it's here on our blog, over on the right side.  You know best what best meets your needs.

 So the key tells you some of the places we know of where you can find free versions of the books, and it links to Amazon, and sometimes Christian Book Distributors.  This key, confusing as it may appear upon first light perusal, is your friend, and it will help save you boatloads of money.

Daily and weekly subjects:  Next on the page is a list of subjects under daily and weekly.  At the moment, it looks like this, although we are in the process of streamlining it and making some things more clear:

  The reason for this list is that there are some necessary subjects in a CM education that do not rely on a specific title in our book list, but are still an integral part of a CM education.

 For year 4, we have these things- and if you don't know what any of them mean,   you can search the website (go to our ‘articles’ section), search Miss Mason’s volumes, or ask at the forum:

 Daily:
Penmanship or Copywork (also called transcription in Miss Mason’s books)- there is a right way to do this and a wrong way.

 Math- you choose your own curriculum, but we do offer suggestions on the website.
Foreign language- your choice, but we do offer suggestions on the website.
Latin (I consider this optional, but you should know Charlotte Mason didn't and neither does Auxiliary member Brandy, and both of them are smarter than I)
Musical Instrument Practice- your choice.

Recitation (or memorization) practice should be here, and will be soon. Its absence in year 4 is really just an oversight. It is included in the other years.

Weekly:
Art Appreciation (this is picture study)
Art- this refers to skills such as painting and drawing.  You don't want to omit it even if you think nobody in your family can draw.
Grammar (there's a hint or two as well on what to do for grammar in those years where grammar is taught as a separate topic)
Correspond history readings with a timeline or century book [tl] and map- there are different ways to do this, most families I think just do this one day a week for a few minutes, others may do it every time they read.

Handicrafts-this is meaningful craft work such as sewing, weaving, carving, leatherwork, crochet, carpentry, and so forth. If I can, I prefer implementing this several times a week.
 Music Appreciation, including folksongs and hymns- in my family, singing was a daily activity, not weekly.
Nature Study 
One Life from Plutarch per term (we help you schedule these out over the term)
A Shakespeare play each term (same as above)

You can learn more about these later- right now, just note that you will need to include them in your schedule, although Plutarch and Shakespeare are scheduled for you if you wish to use our optional 36 week schedule.

Finally- the BOOKS!:
 Now we come to the topics where specific books are required. This is what year four has first:

"Bible: This site has many versions. [1]"

 We have here a link to versions of online Bibles, and a footnote to our site.

Important note about our footnotes:  We used footnotes to make the booklists easier to print and less visually cluttered, but some people are used to skipping footnotes.  This is not a good idea for our website.  They really are not the sort of footnotes that you should skip as though they were just extra, unnecessary information only of interest to geeks and nerds (and we love geeks and nerds). Our footnotes are really expansion, additional information you probably need.
For instance, this footnote takes you to this text:

” It is preferable for a child to become accustomed to the language and flow of the King James Version of the Bible, as a familiarity with King James English will make other literature more accessible. Please read Lynn Bruce's article on the King James Version by clicking here. The weekly schedule lists readings taken from J. Paterson Smyth's commentaries, with Old Testament readings focusing on Joshua and the Judges, and New Testament in Mark and the beginning of Acts. (see AO's Bible plan) Charlotte Mason taught both with commentaries, reading the Bible passage first, then narration, then reading the commentary, but Smyth's commentaries may reflect the doctrine of his era and denomination; they are not necessary to follow the Bible schedule. Optional Bible Resources: Timeline; Study questions with maps.” 

You see, if you skip the footnote, you’ve missed what version we officially recommend and why, you’ve missed that we do offer a scheduled reading plan, and you’ve missed the additional optional mapwork for Bible. Our footnotes are important.

Next in year 4 we have:
History: 1700's up to the French and American Revolutions

This Country of Ours, by H.E. Marshall β Δ ($ K) Ω [2]
** *** George Washington's World, by Genevieve Foster ($) [5]

This is from the ‘basic’ version. Had we chosen the detailed version, it would have looked like this:
 This Country of Ours, by H.E. Marshall β Δ ($ K) Ω [2]
** *** George Washington's World, by Genevieve Foster ($) [5] OR The Story of Mankind, by Hendrick Van Loon ($ K) β Δ Ω [3]

Optional: A Child's History of the World, by Virgil Hillyer; An Island Story, by H. E. Marshall β Δ Ω [4]

And then:
History Tales and/or Biography
* Poor Richard, by James Daugherty ($) [6a]
** *** Abigail Adams: Witness to a Revolution, by Natalie S. Bober ($ K) [7]
Optional:: Trial and Triumph, by Richard Hannula ($ K) [6]

Remember the asterisks denote terms- so Poor Richard is for term one. It is not in the public domain, so the title is not hyperlinked. When you have to buy a text, we only list two places- Amazon or the Christian Books Catalog. We use those because they are readily accessible to all, and we have affiliate links there, but you are free of course to buy a copy anywhere you like, or to check it out from the library or borrow it from a friend. The footnote to this book answers a common question we get about it- the way it ends makes some readers think their book is missing a page. We used the footnotes to  explain why it isn’t missing a page.

Abigail Adams is a book we use in two terms, the second and third (see the asterisks). It’s available for purchase from Amazon in Kindle or hardcopy ($ K). In this case (and for the next book), the footnote explains some caveats or concerns some parents might have, and directs readers to a helpful discussion of those caveats in the forum.

 Whenever the footnote is red, that takes you to an explanation of something we believe some parents would want a heads up about so they can discuss it, or even omit it, as they choose.  We are not your Holy Spirit, and we can't, of course, foresee everything parents will find objectionable.  We also don't see that such warnings are as important as the students get into the upper years.  It's meant as an aid, not a substitute for the parent.

So you finally have all your books.  What are you supposed to do with these books?   How do you use them?

Prepare the Lesson when you can.  See this Parents' Review for some ideas.  Always be sure to link what they are about to read with what they already read- this can be as simple as saying "Where were we?" and letting the child tell you, or reading the last paragraph of the previous reading. Preparation shouldn't take more than a few minutes.

Start Reading. Have your child read them if possible, and you read aloud if the child can't read them yet.  You do this in small increments over time- the more you quit while the child is hungering to finish the story, the more time he will spend thinking about it, dwelling on it, reviewing it, analysing it- without any extra effort on your part, and that's performing his own review and evaluation and assessment!  It's fantastic when this happens, and we don't want to stymie the process by reading larger chunks of material just because the child begs us to keep reading.  I know it's hard.  Be strong.

Immediately after the reading, the child narrates.  That's basically it, although there are many expanded tips and suggestions for parents in the forum and on the website.  None of them will involve creating cut and paste projects, turning the reading into a math problem, making a six foot model of a drawbridge from a mattress box, or studying goat husbandry just because you read Robinson Crusoe.  Charlotte Mason is not a unit study curriculum, and for good reason.

 Now, you can schedule out the readings yourself (divide the number of pages by 12, that's about how much to read in a week, then sort it out by day as best it works for you), or take advantage of our 36 week schedules diligently created by the rock of AO, Leslie Noelani Laurio (Jesus is The ROCK of AO, Leslie is the lower-case-r-rock), it’s up to you.  You will have the best results by using the curriculum as intended, and that means however you choose to schedule them, you schedule the books out so the children are not reading huge chunks of text at one time. Spread the readings out.

 The children should narrate after every reading. If that is sometimes not possible, they should at the very least never know that they will not be narrating until after the reading. The narration is where the children process the material they’ve read, think about it, sift it, analyze it, organize it. It’s not really a negotiable part of a CM education. One of Miss Mason’s students actually explained it by saying “We narrate, and then we know.” They will not truly know the material they do not narrate.  They will also retain far more material and think of it more carefully through narrating than through any other 'project.'  There are ways to vary the narrations and use some creativity with them, even make them hands on.  It’s enough to know at the beginning that narration is basically telling back, but you should take further time to read about it as you are able. You might start here. http://archipelago7.blogspot.com/2015/03/narration-helps.html

Some other odds and ends: 
Copywork, once the child has mastered handwriting or letter formation, is taken from the books he's reading (not his own writings), and is an integral part of the language arts curriculum.

nature study: This is science.  It's about the child observing and drawing conclusions for himself, from real life.  It's foundational for future science. It will help children develop their attention skills, and it will help them appreciate the world their Creator made, and thus, the Creator as well.

Drawing- this, too, will help children learn to observe and really *see*, even if they don't seem to be actually drawing well.  It will also be useful for science later.

For more about the folk songs, picture study, poetry, composer study, hymns, and so forth, look at the left side bar and click on those topics.

Additional helps: You will find much more specific help and can get answers to additional questions in our forums.  We know that many people are intimidated by the forum, so Auxiliary member Naomi has made a couple videos to walk you through it:
the direct links are
http://youtu.be/KKAxd6ekloE
and
http://youtu.be/7gm5fVg9M-0

I hope this helps.  Should you have any other questions, or other areas of the website you'd like explained, feel free to ask here or on the forum.  We wish you the very best for your upcoming school year!

P.S. You might find the masterbooklist helpful: On the main curriculum page, scroll down to the bottom, or visit here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nPPei_V-x1tKURTQ6InmFSmFXuRNH3t91B_1ZYtlPgE/edit#gid=1434456495
There is a a separate tab with all the extra, optional Geography selections for high school. (special thanks to Kathy Livingston)

Be sure to read the notes on each book on the AO Geography page (http://amblesideonline.org/GeographyOptions.shtml) since many of the books need parental previewing.

What Is Twaddle?

Whenever two or more Charlotte Mason parents get together, especially those who are newer to the approach, there is sure to be some discussion of twaddle, and what it is, and more keenly, what it is not.  None of us wants to admit that the books we adored in our own childhood might just be twaddle, and we don't appreciate the kill-joys who try to tell us otherwise.

Often there is skepticism as well about just how much it matters, and did Miss Mason really understand what she was talking about, anyway?   You may enjoy this letter to the Parents' Review schools written in 1967 by a former skeptic much like many of us.  Here's an excerpt:

Although a trained teacher, I knew nothing of Charlotte Mason's methods. I ordered 'Home and School Education' and read it with interest; but I must confess to some scepticism.

'Children have no natural appetite for twaddle,' she had written in the chapter on Aspects of Intellectual Training.

'Huh!' thought I. 'Haven't they though?'

I underlined that sweeping statement; and in my mind I classified it along with a few odd ones I had heard at college'Children are not naughty,' and the rest. Experience had fast taught me that children are downright wicked unless they are kept so busy and interested that they have no time to think up any fresh devilment.

I cannot possibly describe my bewildered, fascinated disbelief when the first batch of books arrived. Of them all, 'Plutarch's Lives' hit me hardest. Those long, measured periods in difficult language! Alison, at eleven, would not understand a word! How on earth was Robin going to assimilate 'Mankind in the Making' and 'The Spangled Heavens'? What was Charles going to make of 'Pilgrim's Progress'?

By the time I had been through them all I was in a whirl of doubt. However, I was prepared to give the programmes and the method a try. I threw my notions about 'giving lovely lessons' out of the window the more readily because I was aware that I simply could not give a lesson, lovely or otherwise, on the origin of the Solar System! We bashedand that is the only verb that describes our progress in those early days through the text-books, got the gist of them by determined attention, and miraculously found ourselves enjoying every minute. Narrations were wobbly affairs, half inarticulate, half incorporating remembered phrases from the reading. Parsing and Analysis they found absorbing and rewarding. French and Latin were fun. After all, languages were words, weren't they? A sudden word-hunger seemed to grip them all; and a new world had opened up. When, at morning prayers, they sang:

'Praise for the singing! Praise for the morning! Praise for them springing Fresh from the Word!'

Their eyes shone. They were not thanking God as a dutiful routine, but joyfully.

They have retained their sense of delight and wonder.

Those of us who plead for the reduction, or better, eliminationm of twaddle from your family's literary diet do so not because we are kill-joys, but because there is a deep, abiding richness to the quality of joy, delight, and wonder which comes from living books (and the rest of CM's methods), which is precisely what twaddle cannot truly give. 

But what are we to do, when we have not all grown up with living books?  How does one learn to develop a taste for real books when we have grown up on cotton candy and pizza?

The first step is in recognizing that not all reading is equal anymore than all foods are equal. It is not true that it doesn't matter what they read, so long as they are reading. This notion is a sort of a buzzword of our non-reading generation, but it really cannot stand up under scrutiny.  Is it really just fine if a human soul spends an entire lifetime reading only about wimpy kids and heroes in underpants?   It does matter, or we might as well merely all read cereal boxes and Disney picture books and nothing else (shudder.  Disney picture books are truly among the worst).

Let's conduct a little thought experiment.  Let us imagine  two groups of children.  The children in each group have access to only two books for their first 8 years of life.  Group A may have the 800 page 'Disney Princess Comics Treasury' and nothing else (no link, because, ugh). Group B will have only a complete collection of Hans Christian Anderson's original tales, perhaps this one: The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories, which is even unillustrated.  Or we could substitute Aesop's, or Grimm's, or Jacob's, or even Pilgrim's Progress, so long as it a recognized work of literary value, a book everybody agrees is a living book.  Each group will be read to from the assigned book and only the assigned book at least fifteen minutes a day, and in every other area will be treated precisely the same.  Will there be absolutely no discernable difference between the language skills, the ideas and thoughts and imaginings of a child who has never read anything but Disney?   The mind feeds on ideas, and twaddle is not sustaining.  So please, let us dispense with the false notion that it doesn't matter what they read so long as they are reading.

 The next step is a little harder- how do we learn to detect twaddle?

I have two excerpts to share which help us in defining living books vs twaddle.  This is from a Parents Review article by Charlotte Mason:

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, 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 no doubt, 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. 

  This is from volume 6 of her six volume set (Toward a Philosophy of Education):  

"I do not know better how to describe the sort of books that children's minds will consent to deal with than by saying that they must be literary in character. A child of seven or eight will narrate a difficult passage from The Pilgrim's Progress, say, with extraordinary zest and insight; but I doubt if he or his elders would retain anything from that excellent work, Dr. Smiles's Self-Help! The completeness with which hundreds of children reject the wrong book is a curious and instructive experience, not less so than the avidity and joy with which they drain the right book to the dregs; children's requirements in the matter seem to be quantity, quality and variety: but the question of books is one of much delicacy and difficulty. After the experience of over a quarter of a century [The P.U.S. was started in 1891.] in selecting the lesson books proper to children of all ages, we still make mistakes, and the next examination paper discovers the error! Children cannot answer questions set on the wrong book; and the difficulty of selection is increased by the fact that what they like in books is no more a guide than what they like in food."

Volume 6, page 248


 *Whether or not somebody enjoys a book is no guide to determining whether or not it is twaddle.

 **Pilgrim's Progress is not twaddle, Dr. Smiles 'Self-Help' is.  The diligent mother may use this comparison to good effect by clicking through the above link and comparing them.  'Self-Help' reminds me very much of a couple of popular books and lessons that are generally marketed as 'Character Education,' or 'Character Studies.'

 **** The opposite of twaddle includes books that are "Literary in character"- this is a bit harder for many of us to define.  

This quote from  another  Parent's Review Article may help:
Another foe to simplicity in our era is the multitude of books about books. Personally I have almost a horror of this class of belles-lettres.   We don't want elucidations, we want the classics themselves. Many people read notes and criticisms and commentaries and preliminaries and antecedents and never reach the original. It is as though a person bent on seeing Westminster Abbey were to stay listening to a tittle-tattle of the verger instead of seeing Westminster Abbey. Another evil of the time from which we should abstain is the plague of cheap editions. This reaches an acute crisis when it consists of a cheap edition of detached fragments of world's literature.


I'm going to name some names here, although I realize that there is a danger of touching on somebody's favorite and thereby offending.  The Junior Classic books, Childcraft, and the like, beyond the first couple of volumes (because the first one or two volumes are usually nursery rhymes, fables, and fairy tales which do stand alone), are 'detached fragments of world's literature.' Bill Bennet's Book of Virtues is also, to me, more like the tittle-tattle of the verger- the stories he chooses are good stories, but he introduces them with tittle-tattle, and sometimes rewrites them himself, and it is my opinion is that the result is rather flat and lacks the charm of the originals.

Twaddle does not respect the mind of the child, but trivializes it:

"the Bible has this, among other marks of a classic, that its language has the power of attracting young minds," and it is deeply to be regretted, we think, that children should lose the delight of Bible stories as they are told in the Bible--should be given instead the reading-made-easy twaddle of some little book of Bible stories. Not even a Bible story told by "mother" herself will have for a child the rhythmic charm and pictorial power of the stories in Bible words.  (from the Parents' Review, review of a Bible for children which used the Revised Version and was edited by omission, leaving out stories such as the one of Lot and his daughters).

We no longer really understand what 'literary in character' means, and often confuse flowery, Victorian prosiness with 'literary.'  So how do we get better at it? From a Parents' Review Article (I strongly suggest reading all of this one): 

The literary mind is indeed rare. For a hundred who will read a book for what it has to tell or for amusement, only one perhaps will read it also for its literary value. The appreciation of good literature, for all our schools and universities, remains the possession only of a few.
Yet, just as the average person can be trained to appreciate good music and art, he can also be trained to appreciate good literature. And it is in the nursery that the key to the palace of good literature is opened. The reason why so few people have developed the critical faculty with regard to reading is that so few have grown up in the company of good books--only good books--but have been allowed, while their minds were growing, to read any printed twaddle within the covers of a book or magazine.

In the world of nutrition, many people these days have been trying the 'real food' approach, eating only whole foods without additives they don't recognize and can't pronounce. One of the interesting results those who try it discover is a new appreciation for the flavor of basic, unprocessed foods prepared simply.  Another result (I admit one I found a little depressing) is that many of the over-processed foods one previously ate no longer taste good.  One breaks one's strict diet regimen for a special treat only to discover it's no treat at all, but rather a slightly nasty,  over-sweetened bit of glop with a metallic after-taste. 

So, what is the application if we wish to distinguish Living Books from Twaddle?  

1.  I suggest that in order to strengthen one's ability to detect twaddle, to distinguish true works of literary value from over-processed, over-sweetened, bits of glop, try your own 30 days of daily reading of real literature- books that pretty much everybody agrees are living books, and no twaddle at all. For an easy list, try the books from AO's year 1-3.  
2. I suggest further that one limit one's electronic screen time, including Kindles and other electronic reading devices (hear me out- I love mine.  I just suggest a temporary fast), and definitely limit computer time as well (yes, even here), and social media.  Just spend time with the classics.  Even if you're only reading really good selections in picture books and children's fiction, I venture to suggest that at the end of the month you will have developed a taste for quality, as well as improved your ability to distinguish quality. 

In other words, off with the twaddle, in with the classics.  Try this out for at least 30 days and see if you don't find yourself appreciating the living books more and detecting the twaddle more easily at the end.

That sounds like a lot of effort though, and everybody has always told us we're good readers, right?  So why should we bother?

From volume 2:

"In literature, we have definite ends in view, both for our own children and for the world through them. We wish the children to grow up to find joy and refreshment in the taste, the flavour of a book. "We do not mean by a book any printed matter in a binding, but a work possessing certain literary qualities able to bring that sensible delight to the reader which belongs to a literary word fitly spoken. It is a sad fact that we are losing our joy in literary form. We are in such haste to be instructed by facts or titillated by theories, that we have no leisure to linger over the mere putting of a thought. But this is our error, for words are mighty both to delight and to inspire... "Children must be Nurtured on the Best––For the children? They must grow up upon the best. There must never be a period in their lives when they are allowed to read or listen to twaddle or reading-made-easy. There is never a time when they are unequal to worthy thoughts, well put; inspiring tales, well told. Let Blake's 'Songs of Innocence' represent their standard in poetry; De Foe and Stevenson, in prose; and we shall train a race of readers who will demand literature––that is, the fit and beautiful expression of inspiring ideas and pictures of life..." 

 We want to reduce the twaddle in our lives, in our children's lives, because we want something greater for them and for ourselves. We want 'the fit and beautiful expression of inspiriting ideas.  We want something living, sustaining, a new world, with an even greater sense of joy and wonder.

 'Praise for the singing! Praise for the morning! Praise for them springing Fresh from the Word!'