Turkey Soup

by Anne White

My husband was watching a video by Rick Beato, called "How AI will slowly destroy the music business." Beato did a little experiment with his teenage son, who said that he could pick out AI-created songs, because they just "sounded different." He put together a playlist of five AI songs, and five non-AI, and played them for his son and some friends. Beato's son was able to pick out the artificially-created songs, but the other teenagers could not. Beato's wife also said to him (on another occasion) that a song being played was "obviously" AI-created--she said there was a "weird sound" to it. Beato has quite a bit more to say in the video about the threat of our being flooded with AI content, but one of the most interesting, and ominous things is something else that his son said to him: that "in six months I probably won't be able to tell the difference." He meant that the technology will keep improving to the point where even a pair of good ears can't pick out the true, the original, and the soulful (I am using that word deliberately). The human from the mishmash-of-human that AI draws from, or, possibly in the future, the mishmash-of-AI-and-more-AI. Kind of like roast turkey that becomes a leftover dish and then another leftover dish until there's hardly any real meat left in it.

One of the commenters on Beato's video referred to this quote from George Orwell's 1984: 

The tune had been haunting London for weeks past. It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department. The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator. But the woman sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound.

What does Charlotte Mason have to do with any of this? I'm guessing that most of you reading this can already pick out several things. Here's one thought: if we are born Persons, our education needs to celebrate that Personhood which is not so much about our nature as individuals as it is about our status as human beings, and our relationship with the One who made us in His image. The books, the music, and the art that touch our human spirits must come from other whole human spirits, not from something run through the blender until it is unidentifiable.

For the matter for this intelligent teaching of history, eschew, in the first place, nearly all history books written expressly for children; and in the next place, all compendiums, outlines, abstracts whatsoever. For the abstracts, considering what part the study of history is fitted to play in the education of the child, there is not a word to be said in their favour... (V.1, p. 281)

No one knoweth the things of a man but the spirit of a man which is in him; therefore, there is no education but self-education, and as soon as a young child begins his education he does so as a student. Our business is to give him mind-stuff, and both quality and quantity are essential. Naturally, each of us possesses this mind-stuff only in limited measure, but we know where to procure it; for the best thought the world possesses is stored in books; we must open books to children, the best books; our own concern is abundant provision and orderly serving. (V.6, p. 26)

Like Rick Beato, we may worry that, first, our own senses may become dulled to the point where we can't tell what is real; and, second, that the blenderized versions of things might get so perfect that even the keenest eyes and ears can't tell the difference. And what then?

First, we learn to sing. With our voices. 

Second, I think, we learn to laugh. There is a deeply human (or deeply God-reflecting, if you prefer) understanding of humour that cannot be created by digital means. Why else would C. S. Lewis have titled a chapter in The Magician's Nephew "The First Joke and Other Matters?" Uncle Andrew and his magic rings don't understand the kind of laughter that fills newborn Narnia, that causes Aslan to say, "Laugh and fear not, creatures. Now that you are no longer dumb and witless, you need not always be grave. For jokes as well a justice come in with speech."

Third, we learn to cook. With real food. Because that sense of connection with the Real can carry over into a lot of other things we do. There's a difference between good turkey soup and a frozen turkey T.V. dinner.

And, finally, we try (at least we can try) to turn off the full-powered faucet of all that's coming at us, and spend our time listening, maybe, to fewer (but better) tunes; reading fewer (but better) books--you know what I mean. When "almost pleasant sounds" make up most of what we hear, maybe it's just time to turn them off. Maybe less is going to have to be more. 

May your holidays be seasoned with all these good things.

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.

A Parenting Tip I Learned from Miss Mason

by Wendi Capehart

Many parents may be familiar with the experience of having rather detail oriented children correcting them in public over insignificant details. It is frustrating for several reasons- it can derail a conversation. It's distracting. In some cases it makes it sound like the adult is lying or that the child thinks the adult is lying. Some adults (me, for instance), do not appreciate being contradicted over insignificant details.

 This is the sort of thing I mean:

*You tell somebody you cannot meet them at 2:00 to help decorate for a party because you have an appointment at that time, and your child will say, "No, Mommy, you have an appointment for 2:30."

   You generalized the time because also need time to get the kids to the sitter, and/or you were told to come 30 minutes early, and/or you're going to get some x-rays and labs done first for reasons you are not yet ready to divulge. Whether the appointment itself is scheduled at 2 or 30 minutes later has nothing to do with the point of your statement- it is a fact that this appointment means you cannot commit to something else shortly before hand.

 *While visiting with a friend you say something like "Yesterday at lunch, Riley told me that his favorite storybook character was Beowulf," and the pert 8 y.o. big sister will say, "No, Mommy, remember, it was the day before yesterday, and it was at breakfast?!"
  The precise time and meal in this case are accidental, not essential. It is not necessary for this to be played up as a discrepancy, because it really doesn't matter.

 *You tell a friend you are going to go out to eat after you visit the doctor and dentist, and your child corrects you because 'we are going to the dentist first and *then* the doctor.'

 *I once told somebody we had a white and grey cat, and one of the children instantly corrected me with, "No, it's a grey and white cat."

   It was perfectly true that our cat Lily was more grey than white. But I was just making general conversation, not filling out a description for a lost pet, so it really didn't matter.

Haven't  we've all been witnesses to the uncomfortable sort of conversation where one spouse is telling a story and the other is following along behind with a spritzer of contradictions:

"It was at the grocery store, not the bank. It was at 2, not 3. It was after lunch. It was jam, not jelly. It was actually still raining..."

Or worse, they both do it:

"No, Jane, it was Wednesday night." No, John, I distinctly remember it was Thursday night, because of the pork chops." "Jane, it was Wednesday, because my show was on." "John, you recorded your show and watched it the next night..."

Meanwhile, not one of these tiresome details actually matters to the story.

I wanted them to stop contradicting me over minor details.  More importantly,  I did not want my children to grow up to annoy their spouses and people who listen to them, constantly interrupting others with insignificant corrections.

  Of course, I didn't want to teach them that the truth didn't matter, but I felt like they did need to learn some discernment. It is good, of course, to be in the habit oneself of being precise in speech and recounting of details, but as in many matters, in examining oneself one uses the gimlet glass, while using the mantle of charity in assessing the communications of others.  I just wasn't sure how to go about teaching them not to contradict over insignificant details while not undermining their respect for truth, particularly when part of the problem was just that- being young, they did not yet know how to distinguish insignificant from essential details.

 I was delighted when I found a description and solution to this issue in reading Charlotte Mason:

The Realm of Fiction -- Essential and Accidental Truth. -- What shall we say of fable, poetry, romance, the whole realm of fiction? There are two sorts of Truth. What we may call accidental Truth; that is, that such and such a thing came to pass in a certain place at a certain hour on a certain day; and this is the sort of Truth we have to observe in our general talk. The other, the Truth of Art, is what we may call essential Truth; that, for example, given, such and such a character, he must needs have thought and acted in such and such a way, with such and such consequences; given, a certain aspect of nature, and the poet will receive from it such and such ideas; or, certain things of common life, as a dog with a bone, for example, will present themselves to the thinker as fables, illustrating some of the happenings of life. This sort of fiction is of enormous value to us, whether we find it in poetry or romance; it teaches us morals and manners; what to do in given circumstances; what will happen if we behave in a certain way. It shows how, what seems a little venial fault is often followed by dreadful consequences, and our eyes are opened to see that it is not little or venial, but is a deep-seated fault of character; some selfishness, shallowness, or deceitfulness upon which a man or woman makes shipwreck. We cannot learn these things except through what is called fiction, or from the bitter experience of life, from the penalties of which our writers of fiction do their best to spare us. The Value of Fiction depends on the Worth of the Writer. -- But you will see at once that the value of fiction as a moral teacher depends upon the wisdom, insight, and goodness of the writer; that a shallow mind will give false and shallow teaching; and, therefore, that it is only the best fiction that is lawful reading, because in no other shall we find this sort of essential Truth. Fiction affects our Enthusiasms. -- Not only are morals and manners taught, but our enthusiasms, even our religion, are kindled by fiction, whether in prose or verse.… Vol 4 pg 160-161

Also from the Parents' Review, an article titled "Imagination in Childhood" March 1916 (v. 27, no. 3), p. 202-207 In this article Miss Mason is refuting Maria Montessori's emphasis on facts vs imagination, so should be understood in that context:

"Would we describe the aim of our Lord when He "taught daily"—we ask, was it not to teach men the reality of things unseen, the unreality of the things they laboured for? To this end He used every munition by which the case-hardened imagination of man is successfully attacked, symbol, tale, legend, such consummate poems as that beginning, "Consider the lilies of the field." Mere circumstantial or accidental truth did not come into the question; a tale of the imagination served to hold the essential truth, and we do not stop to inquire whether a certain man did or did not go down to Jericho."

Accidental Vs Essential Truth!  The problem had a name!

Now, Miss Mason was speaking of literature here and addressing a philosophy of education that taught that children should only read things that were strictly true. Yet, as she says elsewhere, education is the science of relations. Essential truths have many applications, and in sharing this truth about literature, Charlotte Mason also put her finger on both the problem and solution for a common issue in parenting. The solution is to teach them discernment and correct judgment (as well as tact and social graces) by teaching them about this difference between accidental and essential truths.

 Enlist your children in addressing their own cure- explain accidental vs essential truths, and ask them to stop and think before they contradict somebody- is this the right time and place for that correction (parents also would do well to learn this), and is this corrective detail important to the story? Does it change anything important, the essence of the story or comment?

Give them little stories to practice on.  While doing the dishes together or riding in the car somewhere or taking a walk, ask them to compare two stories. Here is a tale with no facts in it:

 The Ant and the Grasshopper
 In a field one summer's day a Grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart's content. An Ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest. "Why not come and chat with me," said the Grasshopper, "instead of toiling and moiling in that way?" "I am helping to lay up food for the winter," said the Ant, "and recommend you to do the same." "Why bother about winter?" said the Grasshopper; we have got plenty of food at present."
But the Ant went on its way and continued its toil. When the winter came the Grasshopper had no food and found itself dying of hunger, while it saw the ants distributing every day corn and grain from the stores they had collected in the summer. Then the Grasshopper knew: It is best to prepare for the days of necessity.

 Here is a tale that is entirely factual:

 One morning after I got up and got dressed, I called my mother and discussed a problem regarding our farm key, the electric company, and a new lock. I gave her the key and she talked to the company and worked things out. Then we went to town and bought holiday baking supplies. We went out to eat. We got her glasses fixed. We came home. The children put away the groceries. Then they put out some more Christmas decorations, and we read a book. 

Of these two tales, the entirely fictional one has all the essential truth and the entirely factual one has only accidental truth so far as we can tell. If there is any essential truth in the second story, it would have to be fleshed out a bit more.

Be on guard against being over-earnest and over-talkative (I offer this as a warning from somebody who more often failed at it rather than as wisdom learned from success), a little of this sort of chatter from Mother goes a long, long way.  It's better to stop a little too soon than much too late.

An added benefit to these sorts of discussions is that it also helps the children develop the habit of thinking more about essential truths in the tales they read for school.

How to be a better teacher than Miss Perkins (it's not hard)

by Anne White

I discovered a short story, "Against the Odds" by Martin Gardner, in his book Are Universes Thicker Than Blackberries?  It was first published in the College Mathematics Journal in 2001, but (according to this summary and the Amazon link) Blackberries is the only other place you're going to find it.  I found my copy at the thrift store, but you might check the library.

The plot is almost too predictable, too simple.  Luther Washington is a young African-American boy (so he is described), around 1960, who has a gift for abstract mathematics.  He runs up against a female (white) teacher who doesn't know much more math than her students do and thinks he's just showing off.  Luckily, he eventually gets (more or less) sent to the principal, who does know something about math, and who puts the boy on the road to a college scholarship.  Ten years later, after earning his Ph.D., Luther wins a major mathematics prize.  The teacher, now retired and married to the basketball coach, doesn't recognize the newspaper photo of her former student but mumbles something about "affirmative action."

The story raised some questions for me, besides obvious ones like "could that ever happen?" Actually, that could be taken either way, as that summary points out: the first part of the story certainly could happen.  It is depressingly realistic about ignorance in teaching that kills the desire to learn.  The second part is, of course, a fantasy, a wonderful Cinderella solution, but one that probably doesn't happen often.  It's nice to see Luther's career success, but it's just a bit of luck, really, that he suddenly gets noticed by the right people, and doesn't have to bury his dreams.

It's with the earlier part of the story that we, as parents and educators, need to concern ourselves.  We can even ignore the question of racial prejudice to some extent, though it is largely what keeps Miss Perkins from seeing Luther's brilliance.  But based on the description of the teacher's limitations (an American-history major who got stuck teaching math), is it likely that she would have been more accommodating of a white student whose talent for math surpassed her own?  Would she have been more accepting of a student who showed great aptitude for American history, or would she have been as narrow-minded about the correct response to questions in history and government?  Is it not also something of a stereotype to assume that an American-history major would not recognize vectors, or that she would be so uninterested in her own teaching subject, however accidentally acquired, that she wouldn't go the library that night, or phone up a colleague, and find out what that confounded boy was talking about?  Or ask him to stay after school and show her how his proof worked?  That's what you'd do, isn't it?

Well, you and I aren't Miss Perkins.  She may be a Dickensian stereotype (especially in the "devout Baptist" part), but she's got enough truth in her to make it worrisome.  Stories pop up in the media about teachers who can't spell, can't punctuate, and yes, can't do math.  More stories come up about families who turn to homeschooling after encountering their own version of Miss Perkins. We know there are problems in the public school system.  We know there are bad teachers.  We know that exceptional learners of all kinds, including gifted students, often get shortchanged by "the system." What does all that have to do with Charlotte Mason?

Just one, maybe two things.  Miss Perkins might seem to be mostly racially motivated, but as teacher-detectives we need to look at what else is going on. Stick with me, class...who can tell what educational principles Miss Perkins violated?  What was her biggest mistake?  Pride?  Sloth?  Misuse of authority?  Not recognizing Luther as a born person?  Not giving him the respect due to his personality?  Messing with Luther's desire for knowledge?  Stomping on his living ideas?  Putting all the stress on the idea of the teacher having to put information into the student's head, instead of recognizing that he could figure things out aside from her?  Thinking that if she didn't know something, there was no way that a teenager (let alone a minority-group teenager) could know it?  (It's always a temptation to think "I can't learn anything from this person, because I'm X and he's Y.")  Ignoring the Gospel command (quoted by Charlotte Mason) to "Take heed that ye offend not--despise not--hinder not--one of these little ones?" All of the above?

I think that list covers most of her educational sins, but there's one other point, and perhaps it is a greater problem for some of us...who are, like Miss Perkins, teaching outside of our own fields, or without any "official" teacher training.  Yes, we have wonderful educational resources to draw on; even "scripted" ones that practically guarantee teaching success without having to have deep knowledge of a subject.

And there's the problem.  We are not teaching machines, any more than our students are learning machines.  What kills learning for the student goes double for us, even if we have such thought-out-in-every-way materials that we can now teach on auto-pilot.  Especially if we have such materials.  Charlotte Mason did not approve of too-elaborate manipulatives and models for students; and, by the same token, she would probably not care for lessons that don't let any unscripted learning sneak in.  Especially lessons that go so far as telling us what we, as well as the students, are to think.

If Miss Perkins seemed determined to shut down Luther's learning, it appears that she had already shut down her own. (Ignorance breeds intolerance?)  Her teaching had been reduced to one-lesson-at-a-time, and please don't ask me any questions that might make me look foolish or take us five minutes over the time limit.  This is what this lesson's about, this is how you do it, and this is the right answer.  Some people say they like math because there's always one right answer...but no, it's not true even in math.

Yes, teaching is "easier" if there are lesson plans, assignments, printable tests with answer keys.  "Open the book and teach" brings high praise from reviewers. Homeschoolers are, proverbially, always looking for "curriculum" that does everything but diaper the baby and cook dinner.

Charlotte Mason would say, run from anything of the sort.

A little help, yes.  As someone who has attempted to "help" by writing several AO study guides, I'm sympathetic to all the reasons of our lack of time, lack of background, having several children to teach, and all the rest of it.  The reason I wrote my first Plutarch study was simply because nobody had written one for me to use.  If there had been a set of notes, I would have used them, but I couldn't find any, so I just kept reading and looking stuff up until it started to make sense.  To keep others from having to reinvent that particular wheel, I put the notes online.  And I've been extremely grateful for other people's work in other areas.  But especially with Plutarch, I can't tell you why he says everything he says, what everything means, or what, exactly, to say next.  Or what not to say.

So if we take Miss Perkins as a cautionary tale, let's be careful about thinking that any written lesson or teacher's manual (short of the Bible!) contains complete and final knowledge of anything; and let's also be open to truth wherever we find it.  Even in a murder mystery that turned out to be so graphic I'd never read it again:

"'My mind would make these magic little leaps. You know what I mean?' I nodded. I knew about minds making magic little leaps."  ~~ Sue Grafton, C is for Corpse

Here's to our students' success.  May we not offend these little ones.  May we not take ourselves and our educational materials so seriously that we close our eyes to curiosity and new ideas.  And may we take our desire to learn...and the humility to learn from each other's magic little leaps...out into the world. Because there are still a lot of Luthers out there.