Boxing Lessons

by Anne White

D. E. Stevenson’s Five Windows is a coming-of-age novel set in a Scottish village. The early chapters tell about a nine-year-old boy, David, and his friendship with Malcolm, a local shepherd. Malcolm is also a woodworker, and one day David goes to his shop and shows him a picture frame he has made at school, as a gift for his mother. “I was rather proud of it,” the older David remembers. Malcolm’s reaction is not what he was expecting. “Did they learn you to make that at school? It’s dreadful! And the wood is good, too. A good piece of wood doesn’t need to be cut about and ornamented with whirly-gigs and scrolls. A piece of wood has its own beauty which just needs to be brought out.” Malcolm realizes quickly that he has hurt David’s feelings, and apologizes for his abruptness; but David notices himself that, even against the plain polished wood of the worktable, his project looks “tawdry.”  And then the amazingly wise Malcolm says, “Well, lad, I tell you what we’ll do. We’ll choose a piece of wood and you’ll make a box for your mother. You’ll do it all yourself—every bit of it—and I’ll show you how.” And he does. It takes them from the Christmas holidays until sometime in March, but finally the box is finished.

It was a solid chest, made of beautifully grained wood, about three feet long and two and a half feet broad, perfectly plain, with no nonsense about it. The lid fitted as snugly as the lid of an air-tight container. It stood upon the bench shining like a chestnut and I it was beautiful. Malcolm ran his hand over it, and said, “You’ve made something worth-while, Davie. That box will still be a good, useful box long after you’ve gone…When you’re dead and gone—and perhaps forgotten—that box will be as good as ever. The work of your hands, Davie!” It was a new idea to me—rather a frightening idea, but interesting too. Somebody would own that box, he would open it and shut it and use it to keep things in…

Worrying a little that his makership might be forgotten, David carves his initials and the date on the bottom of the box.

A year later, Malcolm is killed, fighting in France. In his grief, David begins to write Malcolm’s story, telling what they had done together (including fishing and taking care of the sheep), and what Malcolm had taught him. “Then there would be no danger of forgetting him.” He shows the story to his mother, who loves it, and not just because her boy has written it (as she might have felt about the picture frame), but because it truly is a good story. (Those  who have read Jan Karon’s To Be Where You Are might see a resemblance to the story young Grace writes about her “adopted grandma” Louella.) David’s mother stores up everything that he writes in the wooden box, and, much later in the book, the adult David, now a novelist, comes back and re-examines his early work. Some of it he thinks not bad, some he discards. But the box itself matters just as much as the stories. “It was the same sort of thing,” the adult David writes; “Malcolm had had a hand in making me.”

This story is only a small part of Five Windows, but it can be unpacked in several important ways. First, for those who are concerned with Charlotte Mason’s philosophy of education, Malcolm’s gentle lesson in contrasts can be taken as both a general principle and a practical example. Even quality materials, as Malcolm points out, can lose their beauty if we insist on decorating them with “whirly-gigs and scrolls,” or if we praise that which is quickly completed but which holds no lasting value. We are content to have a slow but solid method of teaching.  David’s box took him weeks to make, and Malcolm told him that it would last for a hundred years. What are we giving our children that will be that solid, last that long? When someday they look back on their education, will they remember only the small projects, or will they have any recognition of the box itself?

Second, there is a spiritual sense in which we may spend years making things we consider beautiful and valuable, even quite big and important things in the world’s eyes, things of which we are “rather proud”; but when we lay them on God’s worktable, they are shown in their true light. As Robert Boyd Munger writes in his classic My Heart—Christ’s Home, God has come into our workroom and is not impressed by the few “little toys” we have managed to knock out. He does not scold or reject us for our lack of skill or taste, but He does ask us to let Him teach us his better way of box-making. And box-filling.

Third, we have the opportunity to make beautiful, lasting boxes. But even a clumsy handmade picture frame is, these days, still a step beyond something stamped out of a machine. Though we may have begun polishing our own boxes (in whatever sense), we are reminded to be gentle with those who need encouragement to enter the workshop and view the work of the master. We have all been there once.

And finally, we are reminded of the need to value the past, including its artists and craftspeople, those who had skills and knew things we have forgotten. We also need to appreciate the work of those  who are still with us. A thing that has been carved, or embroidered, or painted, or built with stones, or hammered out of iron, or baked, still carries something of its maker (as well as its Maker).  Our care, our ideas; our initials, our fingerprints.

Ma made the cornmeal and water into two thin loaves, each shaped in a half circle. She laid the loaves with their straight sides together in the bake-oven, and she pressed her hand flat on top of each loaf. Pa always said he did not ask any other sweetening, when Ma put the prints of her hands on the loaves. (Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie)

A New Look at "This Country of Ours"

 

On AmblesideOnline's website, we say that "This Country of Ours is a classic work for which we have found no equal, and it is an important spine in the AO curriculum." We stand by that statement, and we recommend the book for the very end of Year 2, and for all of Years 3, 4, and 5.

H. E. Marshall's book was published in the United States in 1917, and it therefore has certain terms and expressions that are no longer in usage today. Over the years, I've wanted to update the book, and to add some notes and helps that would enhance the reading for a new generation.

That project is part-way done. I have completed Volume 1, which is chapters 1-28, in an "Annotated, Expanded, and Updated" version. Here are a few of the things that are added or adjusted in this version:

-the sources of Marshall's many quotes are listed, as accurately as possible.

-outdated or color-based terms for Native people are removed and replaced with the correct tribal name wherever possible.

-terms that are now considered offensive are changed (such as the term for a Native woman).

-new information that is pertinent is added (such as links to Viking discoveries, or how the Spotswood Peace Treaty continues to this day).

-there is a Pronunciation Guide for names of people or tribes, and there are now definitions of some words that are not easily understood in the context.

-in some places, a few sentences or paragraphs that explain more of the story are included, where it's helpful.

-there is enhanced punctuation, to make read-aloud easier.

-American spellings are used, rather than British spellings.

All notes are at the end of each chapter, so as not to disrupt the reading. (One additional change: the title of chapter 17 has been changed to "A Year to be Remembered, and the Peace of Pocahontas Ends.")

In the process of this project, I have been impressed once again by Marshall's passion for the truth, by her fairness, and by her gift of writing. The story of America is compelling, and she has done a worthy job of telling it. This version seeks to follow in her footsteps.

This version is now available in paperback, hardcover, and in an inexpensive Kindle version. Volume 2 will be available in a few months, with the third volume completed in a similar time period. Volume 4 will be original material, taking the story beyond 1917, for term 1 of year 6.

Charlotte Mason wrote, "It is never too late to mend but we may not delay to offer such a liberal and generous diet of History to every child in the country as to give weight to his decisions, consideration to his actions and stability to his conduct; that stability, the lack of which has plunged us into many a stormy sea of unrest." ("Towards a Philosophy of Education," p. 179)

In this stormy sea of unrest, here is a new look at "This Country of Ours."

Please know that anyone can still use the original version of TCOO, and the free version online! But if you want the updated version, it is available on Amazon.

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.'

On young children and ancient history (quote from Parents' Review)

"If the education of the citizen is to be our aim at all, it must be our aim from the beginning, and if we are going to do our deliberate work through lessons, it must begin with the lessons. To insure the acceptance of the ideas we offer, we must take care that they are served attractively, and not only to be found, if ever found, after a long and painful search. For this reason it might be better not to begin by taking modern history with the young child. We are a little too close to it. Looking at a picture from a near point of view, we see so clearly all the details that we find it difficult to see the broad lines and the meaning of the whole. If we go further off, however, the details cease to distract our attention, and we see clearly the whole plan. So it is with history. The nearer the history comes to our own time, the fuller it becomes of political and constitutional details, and the more we are involved in questions of statecraft. If, however, we go back to the early history, we find it moves on broader, simpler lines, and the statesmanship, so far as it exists at all, only shows how a resourceful mind attempts to cope with circumstances.

"The early histories also are practically biographies, written about great men by men of their own time. With the child, a biography is of greater use than a number of detached history stories, because in the latter it is difficult to make the characters real living men and women, whereas if he drops leisurely into some biography, he begins to think the thoughts and take the point of view of the man whose life he is studying, and he becomes accustomed to the dress and habits of his time. In this way, he is living not only in the life of one man, but in his period."

(From Miss Ambler's PR article on Plutarch's Lives)

In which Ralph Vaughan Williams writes to the children of the P.U.S.

(posted by Anne White)

To the children of the Parents' Union School, Ambleside

February, 1951

A small girl was once having a music lesson.  Her teacher gave her a new piece to learn, which she explained was composed by a well-known musician who had lately visited the school.  'But,' said the little girl, in great bewilderment, 'I thought all composers were dead.'

Have we really been taught that all composers are dead? Then indeed our art is dead. Vital art must be creative.

It has been said that we should stand in the present with one eye on the past and one on the future.  Let us by all means build our house on the foundations of the great masters, but let us remember that the composers of our own time and of our own country have something to say to us which even the greatest masters of the past age cannot give us; that is the only way we can build a great future for our music.

We must not let let the dead lion swallow up the living dog.

R. Vaughan Williams.

From the Letters of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1895-1958,  edited by Hugh Cobbe.  Retrieved from Google Books.

A quote for today: On great history and biography, and a warning against twaddle

posted by Anne White, from Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversations, "Southey and Landor"

Landor.  In Livy, as in Milton, there are bursts of passion which cannot by the nature of things be other than poetical, nor (being so) come forth in other language. If Milton had executed his design of writing a history of England, it would probably have abounded in such diction, especially in the more turbulent scenes and in the darker ages.

Southey. There are quiet hours and places in which a taper may be carried steadily, and show the way along the ground; but you must stand a-tiptoe and raise a blazing torch above your head, if you would bring to our vision the obscure and time-worn figures depicted on the lofty vaults of antiquity. The philosopher shows everything in one clear light; the historian loves strong reflections and deep shadows, but, above all, prominent and moving characters. We are little pleased with the man who disenchants us: but whoever can make us wonder, must himself (we think) be wonderful, and deserve our admiration....Tacitus was also a great poet, and would have been a greater, had he been more contented with the external and ordinary appearances of things. Instead of which, he looked at a part of his pictures through a prism, and at another part through a camera obscura. If the historian were as profuse of moral as of political axioms, we should tolerate him less: for in the political we fancy a writer is but meditating; in the moral we regard him as declaiming. In history we desire to be conversant with only the great, according to our notions of greatness: we take it as an affront, on such an invitation, to be conducted into the lecture-room, or to be desired to amuse ourselves in the study.