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)

Words that hover above the page

by Anne White

Ideas are everywhere, in the words and, so to speak, behind the words, present because they are literally present and present even if they appear to be absent. A writer may despise the idea of zoos and communicate that hatred by writing a book about animals in the bush, never mentioning zoos, never alluding to zoos or dropping a hint about zoos. Because of the way the mind works, we get the message...If you picture a page of writing as three-dimensional, with the words hovering a half-inch or so above the paper, then you begin to see where the ideas are: behind the words, between the words, really everywhere. (Eric Maisel, Deep Writing)

In Jan Karon’s novel Out to Canaan, people in Mitford are feeling overworked and stressed by a variety of situations. Partway through the book, Father Tim invites his parishioners to a special evening church service, and as they recite the prayer of confession, we are given a glimpse of what is going on in their minds.

“Most merciful God,” Esther Bolick prayed aloud and in unison with the others from the Book of Common Prayer, “we confess that we have sinned against You in thought, word, and deed…” She felt the words enter her aching bones like balm.

“…by what we have done,” prayed Gene, “and by what we have left undone.”

“We have not loved You with our whole heart,” intoned Uncle Billy Watson…He found the words of the prayer beautiful. They made him feel hopeful and closer to the Lord, and maybe it was true that he hadn’t always done right by his neighbors, but he would try to do better, he would start before he hit the street this very night.

Now, setting questions of religious faith aside just for the moment, the point is that there is something going on here that transcends the levels of understanding, the social backgrounds and whatnot of the people praying. One big reason that this prayer speaks to Esther, Gene, Uncle Billy, and others I did not include here, is that the words, as Eric Maisel says, have dimensionality. The words, the sentences, are allowed to live, and to give life. There is enough space above them, between them, and underneath them, for each person to find green pastures and quiet waters. 

This is, in effect, the definition of a living book, and also of a living education. In Home Education, Charlotte Mason acknowledges that much good educational theory has been "conceived and perfected by large hearted educators to aid the many sided evolution of the living, growing, most complex human being"; it respects our own dimensionality (perhaps another way of saying "personhood").

The wind has painted fancies

on my wings.

Fancies...

Where was I?

O yes! Lord,

I had something to tell you:

Amen.

("The Prayer of the Butterfly" in Prayers from the Ark)

However, we tend to take such vital, free-fluttering ideas, and pin them down on collecting boards, labelling and cataloguing them, but ignoring the fact that they will never fly again. Charlotte says, "but what a miserable wooden system does it become in the hands of ignorant practitioners!...the observing of rules until the habit of doing certain things, of behaving in certain ways, is confirmed, and, therefore, the art is acquired––is so successful in achieving precise results, that it is no wonder there should be endless attempts to straiten the whole field of education to the limits of a system" (p. 9). 

These systems, these books, these artificially-generated things, are "precise" but also "straitened"; there is no room in them for us to move or breathe. I once wrote on our family blog:

... the stuff that gets used the least here is usually something produced specifically for the classroom...Case in point: a music-and-math resource book...which has such classic songs in it as this (sung to the tune of Three Blind Mice): "Let's make a people graph / Let's make a people graph / Of all our friends / In the classroom. / Boys stand over here. / Girls stand over there. / Then line up in two rows / So we can compare, / So we can compare." My daughter says she'd rather sing "Aiken Drum" any day.

Charlotte said the same thing:

The promoters of the kindergarten system have done much to introduce games of this, or rather of a more educational kind; but is it not a fact that the singing games of the kindergarten are apt to be somewhat inane? Also, it is doubtful how far the prettiest plays, learnt at school and from a teacher, will take hold of the children as do the games which have been passed on from hand to hand through an endless chain of children, and are not be found in the print-books at all. (Home Education, p. 82)

Near the end of Home Education, Charlotte discusses the religious training of young children, and she pulls no punches on what we might call un-dimensional teaching: 

There is no more fruitful source of what it is hardly too much to call infant infidelity than the unreal dead words which are poured upon children about the best things, with an artificial solemnity of tone and manner intended to make up for the want of living meaning in the words. Let the parent who only knows one thing from above teach his child that one; more will come to him by the time the child is ready for more. (pp. 346-347)

So, let the parent who knows no more than one prayer-book prayer, one or two good hymns by heart, a couple of folk songs, a favourite tale, and the names of one butterfly, two trees, or three wild flowers, share these things freely.  Let the ideas that are present take flight, and those that are absent also be noticed by their absence. God will surely bless such an education more than He will a whole heap of unreal dead-leaf words, though they be raked ever so neatly into piles. 

As the butterfly said...Amen.

"To work on what has been taken in": this says it all

by Anne White

I've heard the same thought about food a couple of times recently (you may have seen the same video): that it's a good practice to bless the cheese, the eggs, the fresh vegetables, the life-giving meat as these things come into your kitchen, because, sooner or later, they're all going to be YOU and your family.

Consider this quote from Laurie Bestvater's The Living Page:

Parents also need time to assimilate that 'notebook' is actually a misnomer. We are not note-taking at all; by notebooks we simply refer to Mason's various paper activities...[a] child's notebooks are not primarily products...[they are] not so much to directly reproduce knowledge but to allow personality to work on what has been taken in.

This applies not only to notebooking, but to oral and written narration as well: the success of a lesson is not based on perfect reproduction, any more than we are attempting to become carrots and ground beef by eating dinner. The food becomes part of us, not the other way around.

Now read what Denise Gaskins says in Prealgebra and Geometry: Math Games for Middle School:

When we give students a rule, we give them permission not to think. All they need to do is remember our instructions. But it is only by thinking — by struggling their way through mental difficulties — that our students can build a foundation of mathematical knowledge strong enough to support future learning.

The knowledge that is thought for, and fought for, gives us energy and also becomes part of our bones and muscles. The well-studied painting, the narrated story, the notebook-chronicled history event or literary quotation, all become us, as our minds go to work on them. These blessed things we take into ourselves change us, and we change them.

As a postscript, here's something I found in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, by George Saunders.

What is it, exactly, that fiction does? Well, that's the question we've been asking all along, as we've been watching our minds read these Russian stories. We've been comparing the pre-reading state of our minds to the post-reading state. And that's what fiction does: it causes an incremental change in the state of a mind.

So--eat with grace. 

Revisiting A Touch of the Infinite

 

by Anne White

In 2016, Megan Hoyt published a book especially for the C.M. community, titled A Touch of the Infinite: Studies in Music Appreciation with Charlotte Mason.  Mason’s own books recommend composer study, singing, ear training, and instrument lessons, but often in too-brief snippets. The original Parents’ Union School programmes refer to specific music books, or (later on) to detailed term notes published separately, but these have also been hard to access. Hoyt’s book fills in the gaps: it's a how-to, a what-to, but, even more importantly, a why-to.

A few years ago, I planned to use A Touch of the Infinite with a local study group, as a change from Mason’s own books. That particular study, unfortunately, was a bomb, for a couple of reasons: people had to buy copies of the book, which was a deterrent; our group was moving into a low period anyway; but the biggest one, I think, was that people assumed that a book About Teaching Music, even if it was About Charlotte Mason and Teaching Music, would have little to say about Everything Else. For many people, music seemed optional, something to think about once the math and reading were in hand (as we have been told so many times by so many homeschool experts). This was an unfortunate (and incorrect) assumption, as Hoyt points out:

There is beauty all around us and the possibility of experiencing great joy. But in our quest to fill our minds with tiny packets of news and sayings on social media, we have quickened the pace of thought and neglected to slow down long enough to examine meaning or notice the beauty that is so near. And if we are not noticing what our eyes can see, how will we notice what our ears should hear? (Chapter One: Our Reason For the Journey)

Recently I wondered, if I were bringing the book back to our group-study table, what might I do to bypass the objections? The everybody-has-to-buy-a-copy-of-the-book problem is one I can’t help with, unfortunately. But I think I would try to make it clearer that this is a book about Charlotte Mason, and the arts, and education, and life stuff, written by a longtime C.M. educator with a particular passion for music. 

I should not have been, but I was surprised (in a good way) to learn that each book Miss Mason chose for composer study and music education was littered with those same thoughts and principles she placed within her volumes: the importance of relationship, the value of ideas over dry facts, the use of story to engage a child’s mind with the subject at hand. (Introduction)

Talking about music, in a sense, is a doorway into the rest, just as a book about history, literature, or even mathematics could be, with the guidance of the right person.

God can use music in innumerable ways to get our attention. It inspires us, heals us, blinds us with its glory, tears at our despairing souls until we choose to seek Him, for nothing else will suffice. (Chapter One: Our Reason For the Journey)

On the practical side, A Touch of the Infinite is a handbook for the C.M. educator who wants to know more about ear training (it's important!), and composer study, and what sort of piano or violin lessons should be part of the curriculum. But it occurs to me that it would also be a very good follow-up to Anthony Esolen's Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child, which is the sort of teaching/parenting book that makes you want to open the world up a little more for your children, if only in a bit of rebellion: in time spent outdoors, in good books, in human relationships, and in things like art and music that used to be integrated into life.

This life is glorious, isn’t it? All of this—the entire universe of living ideas—belongs to every human being…The world is in desperate need of this universe of thoughts and things. We pine for them and fill our lives with busyness because they are missing. And most of us don’t even realize what it is we’re pining for. (Introduction to A Touch of the Infinite)

I don't know if or when our local group will get another chance to read Hoyt's book together. But in the meantime, I can at least recommend it for the bookshelves of those who want to look at Charlotte Mason's educational philosophy from the orchestra seats. 

Lovin', really livin'

Without it you ain't livin', boy

You're just gettin' up each day

And walkin' around

Your world is cryin' now, my friend

But give it love

And it will mend 

And teach you all the music

(Ian and Sylvia, "Lovin' Sound") 

As Many Begin the School Year

by Anne White

If you are familiar with the priest/poet Malcolm Guite, you may also have followed his You-tube study visits over the past few years. In one of the most recent, he read from the chapter “The Three Sleepers” from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Guite titled the video “At Aslan’s Table,” referring to the way that the scene and certain objects described in it mirror those of older legends and even Scripture. In this passage, a group of  travellers land on an island and are invited to feast from a well-spread table.

But on the table itself there was set out such a banquet as had never been seen, not even when Peter the High King kept his court at Cair Paravel. There were turkeys and geese and peacocks, there were boars’ heads and sides of venison, there were pies shaped like ships under full sail…there were nuts and grapes, pineapples and peaches, pomegranates and melons and tomatoes. There were flagons of gold and silver and curiously-wrought glass; and the smell of the fruit and the wine blew towards them like a promise of all happiness.

However, wary from previous experiences with Turkish Delight and other nasty enchanted things, they hold back. It is the chivalrous and swashbuckling mouse Reepicheep who takes the leap of faith.

…the Mouse, standing on the table, held up a golden cup between its tiny paws and said, “Lady, I pledge you.” Then it fell to on cold peacock, and in a short while everyone else followed its example. All were very hungry and the meal, if not quite what you wanted for a very early breakfast, was excellent as a very late supper.

Lucy (we all know Lucy, don’t we?) asks their hostess (whose name we don’t yet know) why the place is called “Aslan’s table.” “It is set here by his bidding,” said the girl, “for those who come so far.”

Sometimes food, even in Narnia, is just good food.

We may approach the educational table with some of that same nervousness. Are we even supposed to be here? The food looks good, though not what we’re used to; but, on the other hand, those three hairy men sleeping around the table might throw up some red flags. (Later it turns out that their enchanted state had nothing to do with the food.) The sane, sensible, cautious adults may hang back, wondering what they’ve gotten themselves and their children into. We are invited, our children are invited, and yet we hesitate.  This does not look like food from the children’s menu. The peaches and grapes should be okay, but cold peacock?

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'? ("To Prosper in Good Life and Good Literature" by Joyce McGechan, in The Parents’ Review, January 1967)

Even those who have been here before may feel a bit of hesitation, an uncertainty over these new-again pomegranates and pies shaped like ships. But we nevertheless light the candles, bake the back-to-school cookies, and raise our cups of tea.

We bashed--and 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. (Joyce McGechan, same)

We come by invitation, "for those who come so far." Languages are words, and food is food. We eat and drink by God’s provision, and under his protection. And we pray that this small leap of faith will bring others to the table as well.

Thomas Carlyle’s Really Ripping Yarn

by Anne White

In the depths of Charlotte Mason’s Formation of Character (p. 280 to be exact), we are given some life history about someone, apparently fictional, named Diogenes Teufelsdröckh.

This chapter, all by itself, may be one reason homeschoolers quietly slip Formation of Character  to the bottom of the C.M. volume stack.

Why does Charlotte drag this person with the hard-to-pronounce name into the chapter (which, she admits, is an already tenuous comparison of two other obscure German characters)? It might have been because she was discussing a novel by Goethe, and one of Carlyle's chapters is titled "The Sorrows of Young Teufelsdröckh," which is a riff on Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther. Charlotte had the kind of mind that liked to dredge up weird things like that. She would have been a terrific blogger.

However, whether Charlotte intended it or not, her use of Teufelsdröckh as a character pasted on top of other characters is not that far removed from his original appearance in Thomas Carlyle’s un-novelish novel Sartor Resartus, which also contains a story within a story. Diogenes Teufelsdröckh is a professor “of everything,” which tells you something right off. (His name is also an indicator that, as Charles Kingsley said a generation later, you must not take this story as anything other than a fairy tale.) As the story begins, this Professor Teufelsdröckh has written a rather massive book, in German, about the “philosophy of clothes.” An English editor has been given the task of explaining the book to English readers, and he has also been sent several bagfuls of stuff documenting Teufelsdröckh’s so-average-it’s-funny early life. In the best Ripping Yarns style, our editor plunges in, making his best guesses about his subject’s childhood, schooling, love life, and later career. Along the way we get slices of Teufelsdröckh’s magnum opus, carefully translated and cited. If we make it to the end, we ask: was Professor Teufelsdröckh a sane genius, an insane genius, or just a fool? The same might be asked of the editor, and/or the author. Hopefully it won’t be asked of Charlotte for including it in an otherwise serious chapter about how children (even fictional ones) grow and learn from what’s around them.

Here are a couple of other things you might or might not know about Sartor Resartus. Carlyle started writing it in 1831, when he was in his thirties (a good age to be writing satire, or fairy tales). It was serialized in a magazine over the next couple of years—more to public puzzlement than acclaim, but at least it won the admiration of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who arranged for it to be published in Boston in 1836. The first British edition did not appear until two years later. The Latin title (which helped ensure that the book would be forever ignored) can be translated "The Tailor Re-Tailored." In her book English Literature for Boys and Girls, H. E. Marshall gave up on trying to explain it to students, but she did write this:

I do not think I can make you understand the charm of Sartor. It is a prose poem and a book you must leave for the years to come. Sartor Resartus means "The tailor patched again." And under the guise of a philosophy of clothes Carlyle teaches that man and everything belonging to him is only the expression of the one great real thing--God. "Thus in this one pregnant subject of Clothes, rightly understood, is included all that men have thought, dreamed, done, and been." The book is full of humor and wisdom, of stray lightenings, and deep growlings. There are glimpses of "a story" to be caught too. It is perhaps the most Carlylean book Carlyle ever wrote. But let it lie yet awhile on your bookshelf unread.

Did Marshall fully get the gist of the book? Is that what Carlyle was actually trying to say? Perhaps. My take on it is something more like “The world is pretty nutty and it’s full of pompous, presumptuous people who will try and tell you what it’s all about; and in that situation, the most meaningless thing you could spend your life studying might be the philosophy of clothing. However, when you really get down to it, perhaps that tells us all we need to know…and it actually starts to make some sense, in a Fish Called Wanda kind of way.” To extend the John Cleese analogy, Sartor Resartus is believed to be the first literary use of the phrase “The Meaning of Life.”

And if you can read it in that way, it’s rather a ripping yarn.

Stay tuned for, quite possibly, some more thoughts on Diogenes Teufelsdröckh.

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)

Hearts and Zucchini

   by

JoAnn Hallum

It's a new school year and I have seen all the printables and wooden blocks, the panic and the purchases, the general clamor to figure out how to home educate your kid.

A child is a human, and humans have brains, but they also have souls. They have things that interest them, and usually it’s an inconvenient interest. There are often piles of rocks stuffed into pockets and once I had a child who developed an obsession with collecting milk cartons. Three-year-olds are especially wild in their interests. But go ahead. Sit them down. Show them the letter A. We might as well all be bored together. We need to feed the cogs of the global economy, isn’t that why you were born!?

I am reading the Princess and the Goblin to my 8-year-old. Maybe you haven’t read it but you should know, for safety’s sake, the only way to keep Goblins away is to sing silly songs. A poetic chant. A laugh in the face of reason. The data monsters are real, they have come to the surface. They promise you knowledge but you’ll only get information.

You will have a head full of facts while you drown in reality.

Now is the time for poems. Now is the time to grow hearts and zucchini. Now is the time to read the books that kept us human for so long. There are enough computers. We need more harvest mice scampering by. We need more gardens with thistle and dock. We need the charms of the old words to keep the goblins away.

There was a time when people knew the world was full of forests, but they didn’t care enough about the trees to keep them. The Limberlost swamps are gone. We used to know about bread, and how to make it, but now we can find it easily, in its mummified form. We have lost our way, with pure knowledge, fake bread, and a lack of love. The cure is in the books, it’s in the words, it’s in the silly rhyme you learned in ancient times on a knee.

Beware! If you find knowledge, you will fall in love and everyone will think you are crazy for getting emotional about Charles Dickens. But the Goblins won’t get you, and you will have gotten an education. You will care, and you will know the lyrics to the songs that will carry us through. One, two, hit and hew!

This post is written by guest blogger JoAnn Hallum, a mom of four boys who homeschools them using AmblesideOnline. JoAnn writes on her Substack at JoAnn’s Substack | Collections | Substack

Equipping the Power

by Anne White

Charlotte’s primary-level students narrated a little at a time, to fully develop their powers of attention and their skill in telling back.

“[Attention] is the power of bending such powers as one has to the work in hand; it is a key to success within the reach of every one, but the skill to turn it comes of training.” (Formation of Character, p. 95)

They used the same stories for “telling back” as they did for other subjects, from mythology, fairy tales, The Pilgrim’s Progress, and the Bible; and they told about “how we know the world is round and a great deal besides; for all their work lends itself to oral composition and the power of such composition is innate in children and is not the result of instruction” (Philosophy, p. 191). Does that contradict what Charlotte said in Formation of Character? No, it is the attention, or the listening ear, that must be trained; but the power to tell (aside from a few basic instructions in what is expected) is a natural one.

The junior grades “wrote their little essays themselves.” “Little” seems to refer only to length, because oh my, the reading list... “We could do anything with books like those,” said an unnamed headmaster. Charlotte scolded him for missing the point, but I think he was at least half right: the ability to narrate well, and to turn that skill into written composition, does begin with the choice of books. Some writers can start from a point inside their heads, without any outside reference, but for most of us, that’s as hard as being handed a brush and told to paint, without having anything to look at. “Compose something,” my piano teacher once commanded, when I was about ten. But since I knew very little about listening to music, much less about creating it, the result was worthless, a waste of time. I knew my way around the piano keyboard, but I had no musical ideas, nothing to write music about; I did not understand even how to begin with the “major lines,” much less work out the details. And she never asked me to do that again. Why, similarly, do teachers ask children to shape composition bricks, but refuse to give them the right mud for the task, never mind straw?

"For right thinking is by no means a matter of self-expression. Right thought flows upon the stimulus of an idea, and ideas are stored as we have seen in books and pictures and the lives of men and nations; these instruct the conscience and stimulate the will, and man or child ‘chooses.’" (Philosophy, p. 130)

Excerpted from Ideas Freely Sown: The Matter and Method of Charlotte Mason, by Anne E. White

Networking

by Anne White

Education theorists talk about the recognition, strategic, and affective networks of the brain. The recognition network is how you process information, including your receptive skills. The strategic network is how you respond to information and express what you have learned. The third is the affective network, which has to do with how you personally engage with what you’re learning.

What are the most important things you can think of in a Charlotte Mason education? “Living ideas?” We get some of these seeds of inspiration from books or from oral teaching, but they are also a part of our everyday explorations. So for that, we access the recognition network. “Narration?” Probably the strategic network. “Children are born persons.” What does it mean for us to remember that grownups are born persons too? We listen to each other; we acknowledge that we have different points of view; but we try to work together to achieve shared goals and build community. You could say that that requires all three of our neural networks.

“Masterly inactivity?” This relates closely to “born persons,” by allowing learners to make their own connections and take responsibility for their own learning. One of my education textbooks says that the affective network determines “whether or not an individual finds what is being taught to be important, interesting, and worthy of attention or action.” In other words, “does he care?”

What about “Education is the science of relations?” The relationships we build with the world, and with others are also building us; and we don’t stop building just because our children no longer need us to do math with them. Again, I think, all the networks.

One of the things that  researchers are getting better at all the time is admitting how complex our brains are when it comes to learning. Back in the era when doctors started doing lobotomies, they thought it was a genius idea because they had perfectly mapped out (they thought) how the different parts of the brain were supposed to work and what they were supposed to do, and they didn’t see how one little change could affect the other functions. But we now know that it’s very hard to draw a permanent you-are-here map of what connects with what. Things change around, and functions are shared. The limbic system of the brain used to be associated with emotions, but neuroscientists now see it as more of a very complex communications center, and it’s responsible for a great deal of learning and memory. What that means for us is that if we engage with information in a way that stimulates us emotionally, for instance through a story, we are more likely to retain it.

Excerpt from Ideas Freely Sown: The Matter and Method of Charlotte Mason, by Anne E. White (to be published soon)

What if my child doesn't remember?

by Karen Glass

A lot of times, I hear AmblesideOnline/Charlotte Mason moms lament, “What do I do when my child doesn’t remember?”

Maybe children don’t narrate well at the time, and maybe they don’t recall much about a topic later. We all hear the lovely stories and testimonials about the amazing connections that other children are making. What about the child for whom things don’t seem to stick? Who doesn’t remember?

You probably aren’t going to like the answer, but…that’s the way it’s supposed to be. It took me a while to come to terms with this, too, so I sympathize with your reluctance to accept this idea. Who follows an educational method that expects children to forget? And narration is supposed to help with remembering, so surely the children are expected to remember?

They won’t forget everything, of course, but in a Charlotte Mason education, remembering a lot of specific information is simply not the object.

Our first hint that this is the case is actually found in the principles:

Our business is not to teach him all about anything, but to help him make valid as many as may be of—‘Those first-born affinities.’ (From principle #12, A Philosophy of Education, p. xxx)

In other words, education is the science of relations, and relationship trumps information in our educational endeavors.

One day, I was happily reading through A Philosophy of Education, when I was arrested by this paragraph:

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. (Philosophy of Education, p. 109)

My mind suddenly re-shaped that word-fraction, nine-tenths, into a percentage.

 

90%

 

“Probably he will reject 90% of the ideas we offer,” and if you flip that around, “Probably he will accept and remember (only!) 10% of the ideas we offer.”

Those are some staggering numbers—they’d represent failure on graded tests—and this is what Charlotte Mason is offering us? But passing tests isn’t the point of education in this paradigm—our object is to “sustain a child’s inner life,” and the only way that can happen is if he is offered an abundance and allowed to take what he needs. Charlotte Mason tells us that children hang the facts they remember on the ideas they take in, so if they are only taking in 10% of the ideas, they are also likely to remember only a portion of the associated facts.

If you want to educate your children using Charlotte Mason’s philosophy, the wisest thing you can do is embrace this concept. Your children are learning, but they are learning in a relational way, not a remember-all-the-facts way.

It is a great thing to possess a pageant of history in the background of one’s thoughts. We may not be able to recall this or that circumstance, but, ‘the imagination is warmed’; we know that there is a great deal to be said on both sides of every question and are saved from crudities in opinion and rashness in action. The present becomes enriched for us with the wealth of all that has gone before. (Philosophy of Education, p. 178)

It is very easy to lay hold of the idea that “it is a great thing to possess a pageant of history in the background of one’s thoughts” and gloss over the uncomfortable truth that “we may not be able to recall this or that circumstance.” If we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that we would, indeed, like our children to be able to recall “this or that circumstance.” And sometimes, they do. But other times, they do not. In either case, we have laid the foundation of that pageant, warmed their imagination, and enriched them by exposing them to the wealth of all that has gone before. This is true even if they can’t remember a single king from Our Island Story.

Along the same lines, parents often lament that a child doesn’t understand some things, and they feel compelled to explain. This is a fine practice if the child has requested an explanation, but something to forego if he has not.

In a very useful pamphlet shared with a group of PNEU schools (Notes for the Conference on PNEU Methods by H. W Household), quite a severe warning is given about the practice.

There are teachers who are not happy until they have made certain that there is not a line, not a word, that the child does not understand. Of course they are wrong. They are wasting time and hindering the child. The child has many years before [him], and [he] has [his] own times and ways of arriving at understanding. Next year, without our having said one word, [he] will understand much that [he] does not to-day. Let [him] do [his] own work upon the books.

He underscores this point by emphasizing that “it is not expected that the children will grasp everything.”

Viewed correctly, this should take a huge burden from the shoulders of the Charlotte Mason teacher. We should not expect children to grasp (or remember!) everything; we should expect something else, and if we understand the philosophy behind the educational methods we are following, we know what that is. Children are born persons. Education is the science of relations. We’re going to give children every opportunity to form relationships with a wide variety of knowledge. We’re going to ask them to narrate and tell us about the things they read and hear. And then, we’re going to get out of the way and let them go about the business of apprehending that 10% that is going to become a permanent possession for them.

Looking back on my own school days, I cannot remember one thing that I learned in second grade—not one. I do remember that on some days, I was allowed to leave the classroom and be a “helper” in the kindergarten room. That responsibility—I felt so important—I do remember. I don’t remember a single thing I learned in fifth grade, either, but I remember that my teacher read The Hobbit aloud to us, and I loved the story, so I borrowed the book from the library to read for myself…faster. My snippets represent less than 10% of what my teachers must have tried to teach me. Presumably I learned enough to move on the next grade. But the bits that are a possession to me, many decades later, are the things that “warmed my imagination” and caught my heart.

It will be the same for your children. Read the books together. Narrate to each other (it’s a relationship building activity). Take joy in the 10% that your child pockets as a personal treasure, and be willing to accept that the other 90% isn’t what he needed right now. When your child doesn’t remember, the right response is not to go back and retrace the same ground. Instead, go forward, so that your child can find new ideas—the ones that will enrich his soul and sustain his inner life.

Why Choose Charlotte Mason?

As a homeschool mom, do you find yourself dreaming of meandering in the great outdoors exploring nature with your children and snuggling with them on the couch for a good book, but also torn because you desire your children to have the advantages of the excellence that a classical education has to offer with its high standards and discipline? Are you torn between relaxed days where you can simply enjoy life with your children, and a rigorously structured plan that will enable your children to attain to any career goal they set for themselves?

Why choose one or the other? Did you know you can have both?

A Charlotte Mason education offers structure, ease and enjoyment because of its well-rounded, expansive cohesion. It recognizes that the child is a complete, whole person -- not a trainable, formable being who has the potential to be a person "someday," but a full-fledged person right now -- an individual created in the image of God, with a right to know and experience all that's worthwhile in the wide world. It recognizes that education is supposed to do more than prepare a child for a job: education should expose a child to the diversity and vastness of the universe and give him the tools to appreciate all the variety of beauty and delight that the world has to offer. It should prepare him to live a life graced with zest, and full of connections with all kinds of interests, and a wide range of relationships with people -- not just the people around him, but also those in faraway places, and even distant times. His education should encourage him to find joy in being a useful part of his community. It should teach him to know God. Preparation for a career is important, but it's only one part of a full, rich life.

How can an education fill such a tall order? By carefully arranging an unusually wide variety of subjects in brief time slots at regular intervals that make for shorter school days with less tedious drudgery, and yet still cover a wider range of topics every week than a typical school schedule can offer. A shorter school day allows down time for reflection and dreaming. It allows free time for pursuing interests that have been awakened from the vast array of school subjects.

How does a Charlotte Mason education do this? If you imagine school like a huge church pot-luck laid out fresh every day, the curriculum offers carefully planned and arranged dishes such as lush paintings, constellations and planetary orbits, inspiring symphonies, the seed cycle of flowers, a selection of classic literature rotated for freshness, multiplication and division, Scripture, historical heroes, language arts, principles of the laws of nature, hymns that have built the faith of generations, peeks at what life was like in past ages, the beauty of words arranged in poetry, right triangles, a view of how people live on the other side of the world. All of this delicious fare is served in manageable-sized portions that won't cause indigestion, and without rushing or harassment so that the meal can digest and settle comfortably. The parent/teacher isn't there to force feed anybody, but to serve up portions with a smile, to sit down and even enjoy the meal with the child.

Each child's approach to the table is as individual as his personality. Some children take a heaping pile of art and just a little bit of math. Other children return for second helpings of history, or go back to nibble at science later. The only rule is that every child has to at least try a bite of everything every day. These dishes aren't just facts and data to be choked down like a vitamin-enhanced diet shake. They're ideas that spark curiosity, inspire wonder, and perhaps even lead to life-long passions.

Does the number of subjects sound like the makings of a long school day? It doesn't have to be! A Charlotte Mason school day is typically only two to four hours, depending on the child's age/grade. How can that be? Encouraging focused attention makes these lessons effective, even though they're short. Interesting, narrative books take the place of boring textbooks and maximize time by doing triple duty as they teach, inspire, and offer role models. To make the biggest impact in a student's limited school time, only a few of the best books are preferred over a lot of mediocre ones. Children assimilate not only the best ideas from these books, but the language and vocabulary of excellent writers, too -- and without weekly vocabulary lists!

Does it take a lot of memorization for a child to remember what they learn? No! The key to Charlotte Mason isn't memorization, but narration. A child tells back or writes down what was heard or read in his own words, and the process of mentally going over the material as he clarifies, sequences, and re-creates it in verbal form is what transforms reading into real learning. Narration itself is where the learning takes place! Learning isn't a passive activity, it's something the child does himself by wrestling with fresh material. The parent/teacher's task is to set the meal table at regular times; the child's job is to attend, be engaged, and narrate for the short time school is in session. By recognizing that learning is the child's work, and that it's rewarding work (after all, who doesn't enjoy knowing and understanding things?), pressure is taken off the parent/teacher to make the child learn, and school can become a pleasure. A Charlotte Mason education is enjoyable and life-enriching for both the parent/teacher and the student, yet it provides the kind of knowledge that any classical scholar would envy.

Are you wondering whether you could ever afford this kind of education for your child? Yes, you can! AmblesideOnline offers all of this for free. All you need is access to a computer, some books, and an investment of time to grasp this approach to learning.

-- Leslie Noelani Laurio

_________________________________________


To read more about a Charlotte Mason education, see
http://archipelago7.blogspot.com/2015/03/defining-charlotte-mason.html

To learn more about AmblesideOnline, or to view our booklists, links to free texts, schedules, and additional resources, see http://www.amblesideonline.org/

Plutarch comments on things, words, and learning languages

"But I my selfe that dwell in a poore litle towne, and yet doe remayne there willingly least it should become lesse : whilest I was in Italy, and at Rome, I had no leysure to study and exercise the Latine tongue, as well for the great busines I had then to doe, as also to satisfie them that came to learne Philosophie of me : so that even somewhat too late, and now in my latter time, I began to take my Latine bookes in my hand. And thereby, a straunge thing to tell you, but yet true : I learned not, nor understood matters so much by the words, as I came to understand the words, by common experience and knowledge I had in things. But furthermore, to knowe howe to pronownce the Latin tongue well, or to speake it readily, or to understand the signification, translations, and fine joyning of the simple words one with another, which doe bewtifie and set forth the tongue : surely I judge it to be a marvailous pleasant and sweete thing, but withall it requireth a long and laborsome study, meete for those that have better leysure then I have, and that have young yeares on their backes to follow such pleasure."  ~~ Plutarch, Life of Demosthenes

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

by Wendi Capehart

Why is that book in the curriculum?

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

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

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

 Because we said so. (cheesy grin)   No?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 We could say that about any of our literature selections.

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

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

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

Do we teach thinking? (Harvard study meets Charlotte Mason)

by Anne White

Have you seen this Yahoo news article citing research by Shari Tishman at Harvard?  Tishman describes seven "thinking dispositions" that good thinkers not only have but actively use.

"1. The disposition to be broad and adventurous: The tendency to be open-minded, to explore alternative views; an alertness to narrow thinking; the ability to generate multiple options."

11. But we, believing that the normal child has powers of mind which fit him to deal with all knowledge proper to him, give him a full and generous curriculum; taking care only that all knowledge offered him is vital, that is, that facts are not presented without their informing ideas. Out of this conception comes our principle that, [Education is the Science of Relations.] ~~ Charlotte Mason, Philosophy of Education

"2. The disposition toward sustained intellectual curiosity: The tendency to wonder, probe, find problems, a zest for inquiry; an alertness for anomalies; the ability to observe closely and formulate questions."

12. "Education is the Science of Relations"; that is, that a child has natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts: so we train him upon physical exercises, nature lore, handicrafts, science and art, and upon many living books, for we know that our business is not to teach him all about anything, but to help him to make valid as many as may be of––
          "Those first-born affinities
      "That fit our new existence to existing things." ~~ Charlotte Mason, Philosophy of Education

"3. The disposition to clarify and seek understanding: A desire to understand clearly, to seek connections and explanations; an alertness to unclarity and need for focus; an ability to build conceptualizations."

13. In devising a SYLLABUS for a normal child, of whatever social class, three points must be considered:
     (a) He requires much knowledge, for the mind needs sufficient food as much as does the body.
     (b) The knowledge should be various, for sameness in mental diet does not create appetite (i.e., curiosity)
     (c) Knowledge should be communicated in well-chosen language, because his attention responds naturally to what is conveyed in literary form.  ~~ Charlotte Mason, Philosophy of Education

"4. The disposition to be planful and strategic: The drive to set goals, to make and execute plans, to envision outcomes; alertness to lack of direction; the ability to formulate goals and plans."

17. The way of the will: Children should be taught, (a) to distinguish between 'I want' and 'I will.' (b) That the way to will effectively is to turn our thoughts from that which we desire but do not will. (c) That the best way to turn our thoughts is to think of or do some quite different thing, entertaining or interesting. (d) That after a little rest in this way, the will returns to its work with new vigour. (This adjunct of the will is familiar to us as diversion, whose office it is to ease us for a time from will effort, that we may 'will' again with added power. The use ofsuggestion as an aid to the will is to be deprecated, as tending to stultify and stereotype character, It would seem that spontaneity is a condition of development, and that human nature needs the discipline of failure as well as of success.) ~~ Charlotte Mason, Philosophy of Education

"5. The disposition to be intellectually careful: The urge for precision, organization, thoroughness; an alertness to possible error or inaccuracy; the ability to process information precisely."

18. The way of reason: We teach children, too, not to 'lean (too confidently) to their own understanding'; because the function of reason is to give logical demonstration (a) of mathematical truth, (b) of an initial idea, accepted by the will. In the former case, reason is, practically, an infallible guide, but in the latter, it is not always a safe one; for, whether that idea be right or wrong, reason will confirm it by irrefragable proofs.  ~~ Charlotte Mason, Philosophy of Education

"6. The disposition to seek and evaluate reasons: The tendency to question the given, to demand justification; an alertness to the need for evidence; the ability to weigh and assess reasons."

19. Therefore, children should be taught, as they become mature enough to understand such teaching, that the chief responsibility which rests on them as persons is the acceptance or rejection of ideas. To help them in this choice we give them principles of conduct, and a wide range of the knowledge fitted to them. These principles should save children from some of the loose thinking and heedless action which cause most of us to live at a lower level than we need.  ~~ Charlotte Mason, Philosophy of Education

"7. The disposition to be metacognitive: The tendency to be aware of and monitor the flow of one's own thinking; alertness to complex thinking situations; the ability to exercise control of mental processes and to be reflective."

5. Therefore, we are limited to three educational instruments––the atmosphere of environment, the discipline of habit, and the presentation of living ideas. The P.N.E.U. Motto is: "Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life."
 ~~ Charlotte Mason, Philosophy of Education