Cultivating Individuality?

I am reading a Kindle book called Guide to the Kindergarten and Intermediate Class and Moral Culture of Infancy. I thought this was interesting, from the preface to the second edition:

The only mistake in idea which I see that I made in my "Guide," was making it the object of the teacher to cultivate the individualities of each pupil especially. This is not even desirable, and would require the intuitive genius of Froebel in every single teacher. In a true art of education, individualities will be tenderly respected; but it is not what is individual, but what is common to all (or that universal of[v] human nature which rises into the divine creative), which is to be cultivated especially. Every process of Froebel's Kindergarten is good for all children, and, interfering with nothing original, leaves their individualities free to express themselves sufficiently. For individual varieties are irrefragable, and give piquancy and beauty to human life, except they are pampered,—when they become deformities. To follow universal laws in their orderly development, ensures a necessary harmony with others, while a margin is always to be left for invention, which is what gives conscious freedom, and makes obedience no longer blind and passive, but intelligent and active; every healthy instinct and affection becoming at last spiritual law.

By the way, looking up the authors, Mary Mann and Elizabeth Peabody, I find they were quite eminent people.   Mary Mann was married to Horace Mann, and Elizabeth Peabody worked at Bronson Alcott's Temple School, while their younger sister Sophia married Nathaniel Hawthorne.  As well as having interesting connections, they were also well known as educationists and publishers in their own right.   

What I thought about this quote was the distinction between teaching directly to individualities and teaching what is common to humans, with respect for individualities.   It seems related to something Charlotte Mason said about not letting children too narrowly follow their own bent.   Though one might find his meat in Plato and another in Peter Pan, it is good to be given access to both.


I think this probably speaks to the learning styles, too.   One child may be more auditory and another more kinesthetic, but keeping everything directed mostly to one learning style seems to do the child a disservice in not giving him practice with the other areas.

I am not sure how much more I'll read of the book -- you see in the quote that there is some of that soft Transcendental type of language.   It takes a lot of energy to read practical books where the philosophy might be out of whack with one's own.    But it was sort of fun to find out that the authors were sisters and had such interesting lives and connections. 

Thinking about Motivation and Teenagers

But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.  Psalm 1

Interesting article posted on Unschooling Catholics -- Teens Respond to Pleasure, Not Pain.

Thus telling a 13 year old that he will fail a test tomorrow if he doesn't study isn't that effective in inducing willing compliance. He knows that. But risk avoidance is not emotionally motivating. And that video game sure is.

Reminding a 13 year old how good it feels to accomplish something, how happy he'll be when he does well, and how much more time he will have to play if he studies efficiently works a lot better.  Those POSITIVE emotions activate their incentive processing center.

 It's easy to over-extend conclusions from limited studies, of course, but in this case the study seems to shed some light on my everyday experience.   It also speaks to some of my questions about diligence as delight and St Jerome translating the passage as "His will (voluntas) is in the Law of the Lord".    Voluntas, then, becomes related to delight rather than what we usually think of as willpower, which usually implies forcing ourselves to do something we would much prefer not to. 

And I like that idea of trying to work towards a positive goal rather than remind the student of the negative consequences.   I can see that temperaments differ here and that some kids thrive on a bit more challenge and even conflict, but my present teenager likes to stay happy and be in tune with the world.  

 St Therese wrote to her sister

‘No word of reproach touched touched me as much as did one of your caresses. My nature was such that fear made me recoil; with love not only did I advance, I actually flew.’

I remember a few years ago, a friend discussed unschooling with me.  She said she didn't think it would work, because the kids wouldn't do math and things like that if they weren't made to.   At the time, though, my daughter was working her way through an algebra book, and learning German, and studying Shakespeare, all because she wanted to.   She wasn't particularly thrilled with the algebra, but she knew she wanted to go to a Catholic liberal arts college and that to do that she would need to know some math.

This study seems to help with the distinction between that "have to" and "want to".   Maybe someone could have said that my daughter was studying algebra because she had to, not because she really loved algebra.  But the point was that no one was standing over her; she knew her goals and what it would take to get there.

Rather than moving away from something, she was moving towards something.... her future, as the person God wanted her to be.  So she did want to do algebra, and she even wanted to love it, because she knew it was a worthwhile subject and would help her develop as a human being, a thinker, not just advance her career goals. 

This year, discussing things with my 15 year old, I've found that he usually wants to do things nobly. So knowing that, I can try to support him through the harder parts, or else help him find a way to make them easier.

St Thomas Aquinas divides emotions up into those two basic categories -- the kind that draw you toward something (love, hope)  and the kind that move you away from something (fear, aversion).   All things considered, it's better to do things for love rather than out of fear.  Fear serves a useful purpose, and is indispensable in our human condition just like pain.   But as Chesterton said:

....this advantage the mystic morality must always have --it is always jollier. A young man may keep himself from vice by continually thinking of disease. He may keep himself from it also by continually thinking of the Virgin Mary. There may be question about which method is the more reasonable, or even about which is the more efficient. But surely there can be no question about which is the more wholesome.

Though the context is different, the principle applies, I think.    Dwelling on large, grand, positive things helps enlarge a teen's spirit as well as helping him do what he should do.     It may not be possible to always do it this way, but perhaps it is more possible than it sometimes seems, especially since along with their love of pleasure, teens usually are quite idealistic and get pleasure from doing the right thing.

Slow Homeschooling?

I started writing this on Friday afternoon, after a week of homeschooling.  At the time I was experiencing a slightly jaded feeling I recognize.  It happens every year sooner or later.   It doesn't matter HOW I'm homeschooling that year.   However I start, I always feel enthusiastic and competent for X amount of time.  Then we get to the end of the week and I realize the inspiration is trickling away. 

I've homeschooled long enough to know that inspiration isn't everything.   With everything important --- your faith, your marriage, your writing, your art or music, your marathon, your studies, your medical treatment -- you get to the ebb tide, the restless or stalled  times when what you are doing seems torturous and burdensome.   Or there are those other times, when it's worse than drudgery; when what you've done so far seems to mock you, because you realize you aren't coming even close to what you envisioned.

Does that mean it was all worthless?  One learns that the answer is no.   You keep at it, and you end up with something not quite what you hoped and dreamed, but something solid.

Still, I've learned with the practice of my Faith that though inspiration and feelings are by no means essential to true devotion to God, still, it doesn't do to just pretend they are unimportant.   I can accept deprivations from God because  I  know He has a purpose, but it seems like a sort of dishonesty to pretend they are trivial.   They hurt.

 Also, desolations (in spiritual terms) or a fume of burnout smoke (in homeschooling terms) can be a symptom of something that is not quite right.    It's like pain when exercising.  There is "good pain" that means you are growing and that "bad pain" you shouldn't ignore, or you store up more trouble for yourself in the future.   It can help you realize that something has gone off track, so that you don't keep going further and further off. 

But that isn't what I was going to talk about, not exactly.

Rather, I was thinking about the art of slow reading.  I started thinking about it after I confessed I had read 153 books in 9 months.  That's a lot of books.   I like fast reading.    It's my speed of choice.  But I thought I should try to slow down, so I was collecting links on slow reading.  Here's a few:

Slow reading:  the affirmation of authorial intent 
(Who would have thought that slow reading could provide an antidote to deconstructionism?)

The art of slow reading
(Is internet skimming hurting our brains?  Probably. )

Going back further in time:

Lectio Divina

and in the old days, before the printing press, school was mostly Lectio --basically reading from great authors -- and memorizing, reflecting upon and learning how to understand what the readings were about.

This still isn't really what I was going to talk about.

Thinking over WHY I feel sort of restless, beyond that it was a bad food week, I have a cold, and the days are getting shorter -- I realize that I always get to a point where I feel like what I am doing isn't enough.  We are proceeding, but slowly.   There is more that COULD be squeezed into the day.

This is the state of mind that I cultivate some unschooliness to combat, because I know it's a deception.  Quantity isn't of first importance.  My homeschool is not a factory.   I know that, because some of our most idiosyncratic, quirkily paced years actually turned out to be some of our richest.   In retrospect, which makes it harder, because it didn't always show up at the time. 

In trying to think this through, I started thinking:   If there is something called Slow Reading, and it's a Good Thing, could there be something called Slow Homeschooling?


Certainly, slowness is a vanishing quality in our world; everything else conspires to hurry us along.   It's hard to even muster a case for it, but when "slowness" is celebrated nowadays, as in Slow Reading or Slow Food, or Slow Language, it is talked about in terms of individuality, and reflectiveness, and focus.   Those are good things.


In that case I should probably keep trying to do what I think is important and not let that inevitable flat feeling stir me into a hastier speed that will become careless and un-deliberate.

As I write this, I ask myself whether I'm just looking for a way to take it easier than I really should.  And sure, that is always a temptation.   But I'm trying to pinpoint something different -- a habit of waiting, thinking things through. dwelling on a book, accepting that we don't have to have a giant stack of accomplishments in order to be successful.

The purpose of the teaching of slow reading is to allow us to enter into conversations with the authors of great works -- those authors whose distinction is that they afford us the opportunity to think things that are worthy of thought.

The teaching of slow reading, therefore, is an experiment that aims beyond itself. In itself the practice of slow reading intends to create occasions for joining in conversations with (not just about) some of the most powerful thinkers who have ever lived -- not merely to learn what they thought, but to think with them and learn from them. But the aim of slow reading beyond itself is to consider whether the practice of slow reading might foster the recovery of a certain art of conversation: that in which listening holds at least an equal place with speaking.

Since homeschooling is so intrinsically connected with reading, listening, conversing and thinking, then surely some of what Lancelot Fletcher says about slow reading also applies to my pace of homeschooling. Charlotte Mason says (about preschoolers, but surely the need doesn't disappear at the same time as that first front tooth is lost)

“In this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social, perhaps a mother’s first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet growing time.”

Part of this, it seems to me, is not to rush through our school times; to give them a chance to be suspended in time,   Or as a Montessori article puts it: 

The Greeks had a name for it-Kairos-- a quality of time without measure. We all know it. The artist and writer know it. We are baffled by it when we ask, "Where did the time go!" after we lose ourselves in a book or in a labor of love. Kairos time returns us to the young child's time without measure, where freedom of movement and freedom of choice-the time-honored icons of Montessori theory-are not hampered by artificial blocks of time, as in traditional school environments.

I really want my kids to have that sense of freedom from time in our homeschool.  I really admire homeschoolers who are always busy driving their kids to activities or doing multiple clever, energetic things in their homeschools, but I can also see that some pauses and spaces can be a positive thing, too, even if in a less obvious way.

A couple of related posts I found at other blogs:

1. Slow Homeschooling from God Made, Home Grown
2. The ultimate burnout survival guide, from Conversion Diary

On Teaching

I was reading Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, to see if I could find anything about poetic knowledge, and found this bit about teaching and learning.

Let us add, in order to have the thought of Saint Thomas in its entirety, that in every discipline and in all teaching the master only assists from the outside the principle of immanent activity which is within the pupil. From this point of view, teaching relates to the great notion of ars cooperativa naturae. Whereas certain arts apply themselves to their matter in order to dominate it, and to impose on it a form which it has only to receive -- such as the art of a Michelangelo torturing marble like a tyrant -- others, because they have for matter nature itself, apply themselves to their matter in order to serve it, and to help it to attain a form or a perfection which can be acquired only through the activity of an interior principle; such are the arts which "cooperate with nature," as, for instance, medicine, with corporeal nature, or teaching (as also the art of directing souls), with spiritual nature. These arts operate only by furnishing the interior principle within the subject with the means and the assistance it avails itself of in order to produce its effect. It is the interior principle, the intellectual light present in the pupil, which is, in the acquisition of science and art, the principal cause or principal agent. -- Jacques Maritain, The Rules of Art

The 4rs -- Writing continued

I mentioned how I realized that my children had naturally been following a very natural "analysis and imitation" program without me really being aware of it.   This was such a relief for me to discover.   I had seen that my older children had become good writers without very much help from me.   But since I didn't really know HOW, I never felt comfortable because I had no way of knowing what had worked.

When I say "analysis" I am not talking about young children formally dissecting works of literature.  Maybe it would be better to say "comprehension" or "participation" -- or perhaps mimesis?   When a child's psychological "cup" is brimming he naturally tends to express it according to the models he is growing up with.  So when a child reads a very good book and puts his imagination and heart into the reading, it tends to come out in some way.  For example, I can usually tell when Paddy has been reading our Paddington Bear treasury because he comes up to me wearing a hat and tips it, and he pays more attention to his manners!  Clare and Brendan would almost live in story worlds, taking on an almost permanent identity of Merry and Pippin, or Tony and Tia, or whoever struck their fictional fancy. 

So it's not surprising that my children would grow up writing stories.   And as I said, narrative is the core of almost all written expression.   Take a look at any blog, or magazine article, or even a presidential address.  

This gives me a way to approach writing this year with Kieron.   The cool thing is that writing is also a natural way of becoming a better reader.   The two processes are linked. I will give more details in future.     Right now I just wanted to think on the screen about why my children generally tended to resist non-fiction writing until high school years when they naturally started developing this ability.   I think it's probably because they didn't read much non-narrative writing until then, and what they did read, they didn't "participate" in enough to imitate it.    Most of what they enjoyed was narrative, whether fiction or non-fiction.   And young children don't make a sharp distinction between fictional and non-fictional narrative.  My 7 year old puts Gilgamesh and the Assyrian army in his games as readily as he puts in Marvel superheroes.  It's all material for the imagination. 

I've noticed again and again the interlude between first exposure and actual assimilation and use.   In fact, if I could go back and do mothering all over again, this is the one thing I'd like to take with me!  A child hears us speaking for 2-3 whole years before he first starts speaking himself, and then it's another 1-3 years before real fluency in expression.    He hears and comprehends me reading to him for, say, 2-3 years before he starts stumblingly decoding the written word himself, and there's another 6 months to 4 years before real literacy.   Then once a child is reading well, it's usually another 2-4 years before he is comfortable writing.   And so on -- it applies almost across the board, like where you have to expose a child about 15 times to a strange new food before he is willing to accept it into his body.   And it takes about 3-5 years before the manners of the household are fully imprinted onto the child's manners... before he fully knows how to behave at Mass, at table, in regard to his siblings.   And so on. 

This principle, which I really wish I could apply retroactively, seems very powerful -- but what it means here is that in junior high or high school is usually where students start seriously reading essays and other non-narrative forms of literature.  For example, I started having my oldest read CS Lewis and other similar things when he was in about 7th grade.   And then, right on schedule, 2-4 years later he started being able to write good non-narrative prose.   My daughter followed a different route when she started reading non-narrative on subjects of interest, but similarly she started spontaneously writing for newsletters, blogs and the Barrowdowns site a couple of years later.

How very interesting!  That seems to be an argument for having kids start reading a variety of literary forms EVEN if they don't entirely comprehend what they read.  The content is not the only thing of importance here -- it's the exposure, if my thinking is correct.   It's reading (and if possible, hearing and memorizing) the form done well.   The corollary seems to be that you shouldn't give the children too much dumbed-down, simplistic prose to read (such as is found in textbooks for kids) because then that's the non-narrative "style" that the kids will tend to develop (and the same goes for twaddly, badly written fiction as far as developing a narrative style).

I can't seem to find the exact article, but Ed Vavra's KISS grammar site had a fascinating anecdotal study of how freshmen's writing had been influenced by syntactically over-simplified content-oriented textbooks.  This is the reverse truth of the truth that when children assimilate complex syntax they are actually refining their mental powers.    From Mary Daly:

clarity of thought is essential to maintaining Catholic Christian civilization. Clarity of thought depends on being able to keep track of the way that words are related in complex sentences

You can see all around us, and this doesn't just apply to Catholics, the problems that come up when ordinary people can't think past basic subject/verb/object constructions.  And unfortunately, this is often all we are exposed to nowadays. 

Nothing really new has been said in this post -- nothing that Charlotte Mason, the Jesuit educators, Andrew Pudewa and Andrew Kern haven't already said better -- but it's still sort of a breakthrough for me because now I understand better what we did right and it will help me to be more intentional when I'm figuring out how to do things for Kieron's (and Paddy's) high school.  It even gives me some insight into how to approach Aidan's education.

This will be my last looong post for a while!   School is about to start, for one thing.   And also, long posts are hard to read.  It will be fun to try to keep it short for a little while.  I think it will help me with simplicity.  I'm not promising to be 100 percent perfect right away!

The 4rs -- Reading Good Books

Because the idea of using good books for most subjects is so simple, it is easy to combine with any booklist I please.   For ideas on good books, my go-to sites are: Mater Amabilis, Ambleside,  Elizabeth Foss's Suggestions Towards a Curriculum,  Classical Christian Education's 1000 Good Books, MacBeth's Opinion (includes a living science booklist for the high school years that I've used again and again), and Paula's Sonlight Books Arranged by the Well Trained Mind Chronological Cycle.  Oh, and Laura Berquist's booklists in Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum (you can see some of her book suggestions for various grades at Mother of Divine Grace).   Then there's Kolbe Academy's course lists, which are mostly living books for religion, history and literature in the high school years.

I also like to browse through Baldwin Online Childrens' Literature.   If you can bear to wade through a mass of choices you can take a look at the huge Rainbow Resource Center which has screened all kinds of books and resources by topic.    You can do what my friend Chari does and borrow books you are interested in from your library system.    And if you like seasonally-themed literature, there is a sweet site that has an online monthly anthology of literature pieces taken from good old books -- Sparrow Tree Square.  It is edited by a formerly homeschooled girl who is now 19 and in college!

As for how we approach the bookish curriculum:   I like the way Ambleside and Mater Amabilis make a division between Free Reading and subject reading, and I like the way Sonlight intersperses easier books with interesting themes alongside with more challenging choices.   When I give my kids things to read I usually try to have them reading a couple of steeper works and some that are easier to read.  And the Free Reading books don't necessarily have to relate to what we're studying -- they can be whatever is appropriate to that age group and that child.  

I don't have to stop with literature booklists, either.  Almost anything that I want my kids to know about can be covered by means of a good book.   The 4Real Forums have many, many threads on almost any subject you can imagine.   Unfortunately the search engine is clunky but if you type in something like 20th century history you are almost sure to find something you can use.  

The problem then becomes one of getting paralyzed with so many choices, doesn't it?  That is where I tend to stick with my tried-and-true booklists and then hunt around more if I need to.    Still, that is one of my ever-present weaknesses -- making decisions on what books to actually use. 

One way to approach this is by "book clusters" or unit studies.  I can't say I have ever had much luck with formal unit studies.  Even when I design them myself, they get too complex and I end up not following through.   On the other hand, I often have a sequence of books on a given topic (say, economics) adding up to a mini-course, or a triad of related books --  say, Greek drama, or CS Lewis books, or on St Thomas More.  This allows natural reinforcement across the books in an interesting way.    My grown kids still do this naturally.  

The other challenge that many people, including myself,  face with a literature-based curriculum is that they feel like it is not really enough. ... just handing the books to the kids and having them read them.  

Discussions and narrations can help with this, and I think RC's comprehension quizzes and vocabulary program are designed to provide some reinforcement and evaluation of understanding in the act of reading.  

I've gotten by in the past with the simple "hand the book to the child and let him/her read" and in fact, my grown children seem to be doing pretty well in college and beyond after growing up mostly on this method.   However, perhaps they would have done even better if we had done more than just read the books and sometimes talk them over or write about them.  I am not sure about this.   Recently I was rereading a book called Effective Study and the author said that studies showed that people who did some sort of a quiz after reading a passage remembered the material better than those who didn't.    He put a sample reading and test in the book and I did it, and indeed, I did remember it better.  In fact, I still remember some of it almost a month later.    Charlotte Mason thought that narration served this same purpose more effectively, since the child does the work of pulling out what's important.  

But I personally find assigning oral or written narration, or writing quizzes, extremely draining to me as a teacher.   I am not using this as an excuse, but this year I want to be particularly realistic about my strengths and weaknesses.   If something drains me, it's simply going to take energy, and I don't have an infinite amount of that.    Molly speaks for me in that regard.   I think this is one reason I had one of my best years ever, last year when we used K12.  It was literature-based in many ways, and also had the back-up of narration, comprehension questions and background information that I often feel we are missing when we do things free-form.

Thoughts on "Less is More" Homeschooling

I've often pondered this article on Simplifying Homeschooling.   Partly because I have often seen it linked on other blogs that I read, so I am often being reminded of it.  And partly because there was a year back around the time Paddy was born that it almost saved my sanity.  


Recently I've been wondering if there can be a minimalist type of homeschooling.   I think I've probably tired myself out by always looking for the absolute BEST way to homeschool; and this ends up becoming a Martha type thing where I run around "anxious and troubled about many things..."  I know our Lord loves the well-intentioned Martha types, but even so, I sometimes feel He is gently reminding me that this is not of the essence.   For some people, complexity is stimulating and manageable, but for me, it leads to a confused daze.   My daughter and I had several interesting philosophical discussions this summer on the topic of keeping homeschool in its place -- that is, doing it well, and having a rich life, but not letting the homeschooling part of one's role swamp one's identity. 

So I spent some time the other day writing out thoughts on the article above, trying to figure out what about it particularly spoke to me and how it can help me.  So here are my notes:

First -- though the most effective educational methods are simple, that doesn't mean that everyone is simple in the same way.  So I have to focus on what makes things simpler for ME and my family.

Second -- it's better not to add unnecessary clutter.  And complicated, expensive teaching methods and materials can be clutter.   There is a lot you can do with a notebook and pencil and a few ideas about what to teach next.  Save the variations for the dull days, or skip them altogether and go out for a walk in the woods.

Third -- don't get in the way of learning.    It's easy to run around being "worried about many things" and lose sight of the goal, and even obstruct it with your efforts. There is such a thing as cluttering up learning with your own personality.

Fourth -- distractions -- entertainment, excessive activity and emotional drama -- are clutter.

Fifth -- too many things, even good educational things, are clutter.   How many games, books and CDs can we REALLY love?

Sixth -- grade expectations can be clutter.   (But I do think it's good to have a rough idea of the sequence of expectations in mind, just as it's helpful to have a general understanding of developmental stages -- then you have a general sense of where you're going.  But by this time I probably have this part down)

Seventh -  the biggest part of quality is priority.   If we do a few important things and take care with those, the rest will follow, or won't be missed.    Literacy, regularity, and a sense of wonder seem like the key roads to wisdom.    By regularity I don't mean bathroom habits but a kind of stability that you want to see in yourself and your children -- something like an internal compass.   It looks different in different folks but it's always conspicuous when it's not there. 

Eighth, record-keeping (and planning) don't have to be complex.    A notebook with lists or even a box where you stuff everything the kids have done (dated, preferably) can work just fine.   Or a blog! 

Ninth, "seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness."    If I keep reminding myself of this every day, and more than once a day, that will be my  prayer.   Honestly, it all seems to come back to that when you think it through, because what good is anything without it?  (I keep saying that, but that's because I keep thinking it more and more as I get older). 

Tenth, a question:   how can I make homeschooling stable, but flexible as well?  I am improving in other areas because I have a clear object in mind, and specific plans that advance me towards that object, and because I try to keep it spare and easy to remember and do.   Is there some way of doing that with homeschooling?

Gordian Knots

Last year, Paddy and I read about Alexander and the Gordian Knot. Given a knot that seemed unsolvable, Alexander raised his sword and simply slashed it through.

Hmmph. I admit that style can be refreshing and that it is the best way to get certain things done. If you simply want to use the carriage or whatever is tied up, then don't bother about the intricacy of the puzzle. There are lots of things like that in life. I have to remember there are times when cutting the knot works. And I do always admire people who slice through things that need to be sliced. There's a gift there.

But if you want the string, if you want to have solved the puzzle and figured out its principles, it's not the best approach. I tend to want to save the string and solve the puzzle and preserve the understanding more than I want to use the carriage or whatever. It's partly temperamental, partly principle.

I can't help thinking that Alexander's approach showed both his amazing strength and his subtle weakness. Near the end, he wept because he had no more worlds to conquer. .... he had cut loose many, many wagons (speaking metaphorically) and all the bits of string were around his feet, but the wagons had come to a stop. He was still young and all he had ahead of him, as they said of Achilles, was the "long, wizening, connubial years". He almost had to die young. Aristotle, his teacher, never had to weep about all the freed wagons with no new worlds to go to. He had the strings coiled up, solved and ready to use again, with the principles of the solution in his mind. He gave future generations the potential to solve many knots.

That being said, though, I want to remember the bit about doing -- SOMETHING -- to resolve a situation that seems difficult to resolve. I think one problem I have with following up on Aidan's therapy is that it seems so scattershot. The therapist sees a problem and addresses it. I am realizing there is wisdom in that. Given that the whole ball of string is unified, solving a part will help the whole situation and maybe even lead towards a solution of the bigger picture.

This is something I'm trying to remember -- that the string is a unity, even if it seems chaotically particular when it's knotted.    In those cases looking at the Big Picture may actually end up only as perceiving a confused jumble, while picking one place to patiently work at may be contributing to a solution or at least to seeing better what might be needed.   I think what I missed with the therapists is that they already had a Big Picture view -- improving Aidan's ability to move or communicate or handle tasks -- and so they are trying different ways to work towards that goal.  

This seems to apply somewhat to education as well -- so often I've tried to find some Big Picture view that would immediately apply to every detail.   I think the big picture IS important and that I've learned a lot from always trying to look for the Best, but at the same time, I think there is value in picking one part of the knot and patiently working through that part.  Sometimes you end up freeing up more of the string than you were even trying to -- sometimes you realize that that bit won't be solved until you tackle it from somewhere else.  But often you learn SOMETHING, whereas if you desert the hands-on altogether, you end up spending more time facing the confused jumble than you need to.

World without Logos

Every created thing has its own logos. So do man made things. The teacher's goal is to discover that logos and then enable the student to see it. The most important preparation for every lesson, then, is to identify the logos of the lesson. The second most important part is to embody it so the student can perceive it.

Modern thought is a crazed effort to build a world without a logos. -- Quiddity

I had to clip this because it expressed so closely something I was trying to think out earlier today.   However, I do not find the "logos" always easy to identify and I wonder if this "seeing" described in the passage is more like a habit of close looking than an actual outcome of having seen.    Having caught a glimpse of the "logos" of something, one is probably better prepared to catch a better glimpse on a future occasion, but I am afraid of the presumption in thinking one has grasped and known even a man-made creation.  Please note that I am not critiquing the Quiddity post here; quite the opposite, since reading Quiddity has helped me think through what education is really all about.  If I'm thinking of anything specific, it's of some of the glib "Christian worldview" type resources that we've probably all seen that seem to reduce philosophy to a set of cliches and slogans that aren't much better than the radio ads of the 50's.  

Aquinas says in a treatise on faith:

..If man of himself could in a perfect manner know all things visible and invisible, it would indeed be foolish to believe what he does not see. But our manner of knowing is so weak that no philosopher could perfectly investigate the nature of even one little fly. We even read that a certain philosopher spent thirty years in solitude in order to know the nature of the bee.

A little child takes it on trust that the evidence of his eyes is correlated with reality.   Yet a child also seems to understand that what he does perceive is only the very rudiments of a great mystery that can be approached but never completely mastered.   For a child, that understanding is delightful because it is like opening a door to a new world and taking the first step through.  So it almost seems to me that what our society has lost is partly that kind of wonder and openness to otherness that allows us to glimpse the "logos" of a given thing.  I don't even think this sense of wonder is destroyed by silly childish Disneyfication so much, though it's perhaps trivialized and commodified in the world of commercial tie-ins.   I think it's the pragmatism of our educational system and the toxicity of the adult culture that has done the worst damage.  

I guess what I am saying is that I wouldn't want the teaching of the logos to become a Gradgrind sort of endeavour.   When I think of traditional paideia I think of teachers patiently forming their students towards the habit of contemplating, of dwelling on things that are not easy or directly accessible, of perceiving subtlety and newness without immediately trying to categorize and "frame" it within the scope of your present understanding.   For some reason the visual image that keeps coming up is that of bird-watching.   You might sit patiently in a covert all day and never glimpse that rara avis or you might be strolling along thinking of something altogether different and suddenly catch a breathtaking serendipitous view of it.   But either way, you are better off than the one who is thinking of how he will spend his next paycheck and never sees the rara avis at all or the Gradgrind-type student who thinks he knows the bird because he knows various quantifiables about it.   Or the one who makes up and relays a lot of mystical esoteric rubbish about the rara avis in order to feel wise or psychically in the know.  Or the one who wears a picture of it on his T-shirt or puts a sticker on his notebook and thinks that somehow that substitutes for seeking it out and hoping to actually glimpse it. 

Simple but not Easy

The Cat followed up on my post with one of her own on Doing Hard Things.   That is what I like about cyber-discussion (actually it applies to IRL discussion as well) -- someone takes something one said and goes in a different but not unrelated direction with it.   She writes of my two stated goals, wisdom and preparation for the world:

If there is a common element to both of these goals, it would be a low common denominator, and when we go low we often find simple effort there, just plain work. What are the grueling tasks of learning? I would say first memorizing, or any other form of retaining information, a task that is like tossing bowling balls at a moving target. You learn again on each toss if your aim was true and all the while your arm gets more tired. Reasoning is pushing through walls and walls of blankets, feeling your way and hoping it's right. Communicating well is willing one's self to float, finding the delicate balance. Forgive me if I am leaving something out here, but I could see taking memorization and reasoning and communicating (or playing the song, or showing your work) as the work of learning.

 That made me think.  When I was decluttering and trying to simplify I soon ran up against myself and the emptiness, the insecurity, I had let all that extra stuff around the house fill.   What is more, I ran into the next step up that dealing with the lower level allowed me to postpone dealing with.   I found this especially with my food issues, I must say, and am still dealing with that part of it.   When I stopped overeating and started exercising I had to confront why I even now was not on top of everything.   I was more fit and healthy but still had off days, still lacked strong motivation, still didn't want to face my fears, still was the same person really.    It's like coming up to what seems like the summit of a hill and seeing a new upwards vista that the former hill had obscured.  However, it feels good to me because I was really tired of fighting those same battles over and over and never really getting further.

Similarly, I think a lot of the schedules and lesson plans I make, the materials I collect, are to make security buffers between myself and the plain work of homeschooling, which is not very complex, but is not easy either.  I'm not saying that schedules and lesson plans are by definition barriers or buffers, but that they can be that way for me.   When I think about what makes them so, it's probably when I make plans instead of resolves.  The plans are empty exercises then.  ( I'm sorry if this makes no sense; I am thinking as I go.) 

A resolve is something I've determined to do, and the plan then is HOW to actually go about it.  A plan that is standing in place of a resolve is like a house of cards or an empty exercise "what I would do if I won a million dollars".   The big planning exercise starts in the exterior and tries to impose order on the interior, which works against simplicity for me, while the other starts inside and works outwards through means of the will, which allows for unity of intention and then allows the disparate details to be organized under that unified resolve. Let me rephrase that.   I think some of my best homeschooling years came when I knew what I needed to do and then had to just figure out ways that this could be done or at least done as much as I could.   Knowing what one needs to do is not really brain surgery.  I can list a few things right away, and start with those few, focusing how to make them work in my particular family.   Fr LeJeune says that it's better to start with a simple Regula and add to it over time than make a complicated one and have to trim it down.  

Working with my kids on memorizing, reasoning and communicating are the hardest things I know how to do.  I like my kids and I like communicating and reasoning but doing this in an educational context is an energy drain.   I think part of it is that I have to listen, and wait, and respond in the best way, and face that my efforts are partly dependent on the efforts of someone besides myself, and that I may, probably will, make mistakes because it is a process and I am not all that good at process.  Those things are very difficult for me.   They are relationship skills, acts of "caritas", I would say of "love" except that this word has so many connotations it is rather useless for precise targeting.  But it was a key insight of the Jesuits -- that education depended on modeling how to think, speak and act; and upon a relationship.   Cat said it more colorfully than I did.  But I agree that this is at the heart of a liberal education. 

Understanding that clarifies some things for me.  But I'm still feeling my way along on this, and trying not to complicate in the name of simplifying.  


A few notes:

• Notice that "memorizing, reasoning and communicating" correspond to "grammar, logic, rhetoric".   They aren't just subjects but basic ways to tackle reality.   
• "Memorizing" isn't just reciting a poem or verse over and over again until you know it.  The operative part is "until you know it", and the "reciting over and over" is just one traditional method.    If you look back at everything you remember, that is by definition what your memory contains.  At least, so it would seem. 
• Communicating is reciprocal.  Part of it is listening to someone else, being "teachable" (Aquinas called it docility, a word that has negative connotations for us, but it means etymologically open to teaching).   So part of communicating for the student is being able to read and listen constructively.   
• When I'm thinking about "hard things" I have to be careful to realize that hard things aren't EXTRAORDINARY things.   It doesn't mean pushing myself or my kids over the top every day.   Often it comes down to little things organized under that unifying principle I talked about in my last post. 

Please just ignore this if it seems like a muddle!  Next time I will talk about the concrete things, but I am giving myself more time to think things through since it is summer.

ETA:  link to a post about Sabotaging Simplicity.

Simplicity in Homeschooling?

Can there be what you might call a "Little Way" of homeschooling; particularly of homeschooling high school? 

I'm just wondering.  With my first 3 high schoolers, I did a "Little Way" by default, you might say.   Aidan was very sick at the time, I was pregnant with Paddy who was also very sick, and I had to homeschool around the corners of our lives.   This was a hidden blessing because it allowed me to keep high ideals while being very realistic indeed about what I could actually do. 

Now, with increased freedom comes increased responsibility.   I no longer have the constraints I did back then, so I can't justify simplicity by sheer poverty of capacity.  Theoretically, I CAN do more.

I have been wondering, though, if there was some intrinsic virtue in that default simplicity.    I did not just start wondering this.   It has been a question on my mind for a long time.

One doesn't want to settle for mediocrity.  That isn't what the Little Way is about.

That isn't what simplicity is about as I've been defining it in my blog.  It's about "Less is More" and letting go what isn't needed in that particular time.   It's a road TO excellence conceived more broadly, not AWAY from excellence.   In other words, with material simplicity, you give up a lesser kind of distinctiveness (having all the goods, etc) for a greater kind of distinctiveness (not being dependent on stuff, letting go of tangled attachments, emptying yourself to be filled, making room for what really is important).   I wonder if there is an analogy to education there. 

I am not looking for ease and comfort (at least, my better self is not!) but more as Dietrich von Hildebrand says, the "Unum Necesssarium", the one needful thing.   Is there such a thing with education?

Chiara Lubich writes:

"Whoever makes unity the goal of life has struck the center of God's heart."

There has to be a unifying principle, something that brings together all the disparate elements under one heading.   If there was I suppose it would be the "philosophical habit of mind" that Cardinal Newman talks about, but that is an ultimate outcome and doesn't always seem very visible in the glacier-slow progress of homeschool subjects.  Secondarily, of course, it would be about fitting a student to succeed in the world.  How does one work towards that in the day-to-day scholarly endeavors of one's life?

And work towards that without confusing unity with a monolith?  They are not the same thing.   Unity is an organizing principle, a monolith is something rigid and single, excluding all else.   

It seems that every year I revisit this and am no closer to having a firm answer in mind than I was the first year we started.   Perhaps it is not necessary to have an answer per se and that is where I am going wrong!  I think I shall leave it there for now, as a Big Question for which I am in quest of the answer.    

One thing I have learned along the way is to be somewhat distrustful of those who claim to have The Answer especially if it comes down to a matter of buying something that they are marketing!  (which brings to mind something Cindy has recently written) .   The real educators point to something past their wares! 

Another thing I have learned is that there is a season to think through these things (usually, summer for me) and there is a season to put the thoughts away and just keep going bit by bit.   After all, there is a lot that can be done "around the edges", as I said before.   Our best years (considered in retrospect) probably were those "around the edges" ones where I kept my ideals while I still did whatever could be done in those 24-hour time frames.    So perhaps there is something real there that I can build on.

• Education isn't a commodity or possession that you can "bank" on or buy or sell; though of course, sometimes a product or method will be a helpful resource.
• Education at the foundational level isn't a scarce resource.  There are a lot of simple ways that it can be furthered.   A lot of problems come from over-complicating and over-systematizing.  

Vernacular as Basis of Instruction

“You should therefore have a great tenderness towards them
and supply their spiritual needs to the best of your ability,
looking upon these children as members of Jesus Christ
and as his much loved ones”
(John Baptiste de la Salle,
Meditation for the feast of St. Nicholas).

John Baptiste de la Salle, known as the Father of Modern Education, lived from 1651 - 1719 and anticipated many of the modern reformers of education. He specialized particularly in primary and elementary "popular" education, meaning by "popular" the children of regular folk, not the intellectually elite or children of nobles.

I thought this section of the Catholic Encyclopedia article on him was interesting in providing a justification for education primarily in the vernacular. It reminded me a little of Charlotte Mason, who was also a believer in true liberal education primarily emphasizing the vernacular literature because of her interest in educating children of the middle and lower class.

De la Salle, furthermore, displayed his genius in giving is institute a distinctive character, that of a teaching body, consecrated to the work of popular education. Thus he became the author of a system of psychologic pedagogy which included the essential principles adopted by later workers in the field of educational reforms, notably by Pestalozzi, Fröbel, Herbart, and others. In making the vernacular the basis of all instruction, de la Salle appealed to the intelligence of the child, prepared the way for the study of national literature, and opened up to the grown man those avenues of real knowledge and delight that had hitherto been closed against the eager multitude. With true scientific insight he perceived the absurdity of retaining Latin texts to teach the art of reading. For this change he gave the following reasons:

* The teaching of the art of reading, in primary and elementary schools, through the vernacular, is of greater and wider utility than by Latin texts.
* The vernacular is more easily taught to children, who already possess some knowledge of it, than the Latin of which they are wholly ignorant.
* It requires considerably less time to learn the art of reading through the vernacular than through a foreign tongue.
* The boys and girls attending the primary and elementary schools, can spend only a few years under instruction. Now, if thy are taught reading from a Latin text, they generally leave school without being able to read the vernacular, and with only an imperfect knowledge of how to read the Latin. Hence, they will soon forget the little they have learned, and, perhaps, even how to read the vernacular.
* Reading is one of he most efficacious means of acquiring knowledge. With due care in the selection of books, children who can read in the vernacular could spread the Christian doctrine in the family circle, and, on evenings, read some useful or instructive books to the assembled household; whereas, if they could read the Latin only, without understanding it, they would be deprived of many valuable benefits resulting from the intelligent reading of a good book.
* It is impossible for children in primary and elementary schools to master the reading of Latin texts, because they are not acquainted with its subject matter. It is, therefore, the part of wisdom to train children thoroughly to theintelligent reading of works written in the vernacular. Thus, having mastered the art of reading in the vernacular, a few months would suffice to make them read theLatin fluently, whereas, if the traditional method were followed, it would require at least several years [Annales de l'Institut, I (1883), pp. 140, 141].

This fact proves that de la Salle was a profound thinker, a genius in the work of popular education. He embraced all classes, all conditions of society. By making the free schools popular, he grasped the growing needs of society in his own day and for all times. No phase of the educational problem escaped his penetrating vision.

If you like browsing through old textbooks and educational manuals, there turns out to be a lot of texts by the Christian Brothers at Google Books (the order he founded was called the Christian Brothers)

Stating the Issue

Very interesting -- at Quiddity -- Adler on the Education Options. A partial excerpt:

A badly stated issue calls for false or extreme solutions. It is important, therefore, to correct the impression that the issue in American education today is between classicism and progressivism.

It goes on and if you are interested in the subject it's well worth reading the whole quote at the Quiddity blog.

I think that today, as opposed to when Adler wrote, the issue is somewhat different because sterile classicism disappeared thoroughly into the woodwork to be replaced by a kind of Back to Basics pragmatism. I liked his mention though of falsely framing the debate. It's something to think of when you are embroiled in some discussion where you find yourself being put into a sort of polarized position. Maybe you are dealing with a false dichotomy and if you restated the issue you could come up with something more durable and defensible. In other words, something that approaches truth, maybe?

There's a Greek word "stasis" which originally meant "strife" or "stopping point" and has been used in the study of rhetoric. It has to do with judicial procedure but seems able to be transferred to other types of deliberations.

When you are boggled in some argument you can consider:

Fact -- What is the subject we are discussing? Do we both frame it the same way or are we talking about different things?
Definitions -- what do the terms mean? Does everyone define the same words the same way? Many, many disagreements are complicated by semantic confusion.
Quality -- this has to do with rights -- maybe since lots of discussions are based on underlying principles, it's important to find out: What are the presuppositions or premises that people are starting from?
Jurisdiction -- Is this is the appropriate place or occasion for the debate? Are the proper people engaged in it (brings up authority issues, prudential issues, among others -- for example, my neighbor can't really tell me whether I should homeschool or not)

Thinking this through can help avoid those looping, unproductive arguments where no one really knows exactly what they are talking about and everyone is getting more and more frustrated. Even if it doesn't help the argument or discussion itself, it can help onlookers make a fair judgment. Especially having several teenagers in the house, I've found it useful in those tricky subjects to try to dig into those different aspects of it. Over time, one finds, the teenagers develop the habit of slowing down and checking their systems for themselves. But definitely it's a process.

Five Areas of Concern

A good article by Father Hardon about "Moral and Spiritual Values in Public Education"

As I see it, there are five areas of basic concern that need study and concerted exploration in order to work out that integration of religious values and the standard curriculum which so many agencies are seeking to promote but that, I confess, is scarcely getting off the ground for lack of clear thinking and strong motivation, such as Catholic teachers in public schools may be expected to provide.

The areas of concern are a correct concept of religion, the meaning of "intrinsic to learning experiences" as applied to religion in the classroom, an understanding of the value of religion on the part of the teacher along with his appreciation of those religious values which he is expected to cultivate, and the methodology or technique by which teachers are to convey these values to students in the public school classroom.

This is relevant to me in my question of what makes the difference between a secular education and a Catholic one.

Why Learn?

The New Classical Schooling by Peter Leithart, by way of Institute for Catholic Liberal Education.

It speaks of the American tendency to see education in pragmatic terms. Which started me wondering: Is there such a thing as religious pragmatism, or are the terms mutually exclusive?

The reason I'm wondering is that if the most important thing (undoubtedly) is to save one's soul and that of other others, then what place does arduous, extensive, painstaking intellectual education have? If "servile" work (ie work to make a living or to make the home or other peoples' lives better, etc) is honorable, as it undoubtedly is, then again, why not just go for that?

Or more subtly, why not "start from above" in one's reasoning process? -- move from conclusion to premises?

I don't precisely have an answer for my questions -- so I will have to leave it there, since I tried to go into more detail and only got myself in a muddle.

My tentative answers would be:

For the first question, that the Church has always valued knowledge, particularly liberal (formative) knowledge. Partly for apostolic reasons and partly because knowledge in itself is good and because of our material nature, higher knowledge (knowledge about principles and first causes) has to derive from lower knowledge (which is built on sensory experience and memory -- more on that some other time).

The second question seems easier to answer -- skeptics often think that believers start from above and work towards the premises, but in fact, the Church has always made a distinction between the two ways of knowing, holding them as separate while calling them complementary and beneficial to each other. Not all believers can keep it so unmuddled, but in this context, of course, skeptics are believers in a sense that they hold certain unverified assumptions, and they tend to miss this very fundamental distinction and blur their methodology as a result.

So, a few quotes as placeholders for now:

from Fides et Ratio

The Magisterium's pronouncements have been concerned less with individual philosophical theses than with the need for rational and hence ultimately philosophical knowledge for the understanding of faith. In synthesizing and solemnly reaffirming the teachings constantly proposed to the faithful by the ordinary Papal Magisterium, the First Vatican Council showed how inseparable and at the same time how distinct were faith and reason, Revelation and natural knowledge of God. The Council began with the basic criterion, presupposed by Revelation itself, of the natural knowability of the existence of God, the beginning and end of all things,(63) and concluded with the solemn assertion quoted earlier: “There are two orders of knowledge, distinct not only in their point of departure, but also in their object”.(64) Against all forms of rationalism, then, there was a need to affirm the distinction between the mysteries of faith and the findings of philosophy, and the transcendence and precedence of the mysteries of faith over the findings of philosophy. Against the temptations of fideism, however, it was necessary to stress the unity of truth and thus the positive contribution which rational knowledge can and must make to faith's knowledge: “Even if faith is superior to reason there can never be a true divergence between faith and reason, since the same God who reveals the mysteries and bestows the gift of faith has also placed in the human spirit the light of reason. This God could not deny himself, nor could the truth ever contradict the truth”.(65)

He mentions the Vatican 1 document which says in part:

1. The perpetual agreement of the Catholic Church has maintained and maintains this too: that there is a twofold order of knowledge, distinct not only as regards its source, but also as regards its object.

2. With regard to the source, we know at the one level by natural reason, at the other level by divine faith.....

4. Now reason, does indeed when it seeks persistently, piously and soberly, achieve by God's gift some understanding, and that most profitable, of the mysteries, whether by analogy from what it knows naturally, or from the connection of these mysteries with one another and with the final end of humanity; but reason is never rendered capable of penetrating these mysteries in the way in which it penetrates those truths which form its proper object.

For the divine mysteries, by their very nature, so far surpass the created understanding that, even when a revelation has been given and accepted by faith, they remain covered by the veil of that same faith and wrapped, as it were, in a certain obscurity, as long as in this mortal life we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, and not by sight [33].

5. Even though faith is above reason, there can never be any real disagreement between faith and reason, since it is the same God who reveals the mysteries and infuses faith, and who has endowed the human mind with the light of reason.

And finally, an interesting article by a Benedictine Love and Knowledge

The Catholic intellectual tradition is a way of thinking about God, humans, and the world in which love rather than methodical questioning is the primary motive force in drawing the thinker to discover the truth that makes all things work together for good. Just as the individual thinker has both a mind and a body in a fruitful, yet tensive interplay, so also Catholic community is a body with diverse members that complement and challenge one another. The bias in the Catholic intellectual tradition is toward wholistic thinking where unity does not equal uniformity. Questioning and debate has been part of the Catholic tradition from the beginning and is an integral part of its dynamic of "love seeking understanding." The truths discovered by other cultures and by science, art, and other disciplines of the academy are prized by the Catholic tradition. Yet those within the Catholic intellectual tradition are convinced that faith, hope, and love in the mystery of Christ enhance our understanding of ourselves and the world rather than blind us to a deeper truth.

What is a Catholic education?

(I'm just trying to organize some of the clips I listed -- so all these quotes can be found there, with references. So this isn't really a post, just some ordering out on a screen)

A Catholic education is not one where subjects become appendages to the faith.

It would be wrong to consider subjects as mere adjuncts to faith or as a useful means of teaching apologetics.

The splendor and dignity which the sacred sciences draw from the profane sciences derive from the fact that human nature is more affected by teaching which is pleasingly presented.

It is not one where knowledge of subjects is held captive to doctrinal truth.

This norm of a just freedom in things scientific, serves also as an inviolable norm of a just freedom in things didactic, or for rightly understood liberty in teaching; it should be observed therefore in whatever instruction is imparted to others.

It is not one where methods in general use for subjects are discarded or co-opted.

Individual subjects must be taught according to their own particular methods.

Nor does she (the Church) prevent the sciences, each in its own sphere, from making use of principles and methods of their own. Only while acknowledging the freedom due to them, she takes every precaution to prevent them from falling into error by opposition to divine doctrine, or from overstepping their proper limits, and thus invading and disturbing the domain of Faith.

Why does the Church encourage freedom in approaching natural subjects?

Not only is it impossible for faith and reason to be at variance with each other, they are on the contrary of mutual help. For while right reason establishes the foundations of Faith, and, by the help of its light, develops a knowledge of the things of God, Faith on the other hand frees and preserves reason from error and enriches it with varied knowledge.

The fundamental reason for this harmony is that the supernatural order, to which the Church owes her rights, not only does not in the least destroy the natural order, to which pertain the other rights mentioned, but elevates the natural and perfects it, each affording mutual aid to the other, and completing it in a manner proportioned to its respective nature and dignity.

The school considers human knowledge as a truth to be discovered.... Discovery and awareness of truth leads man to the discovery of Truth itself.

What are the benefits of profane (ie non-sacred) learning for the Christian and for the Church in general?

a Christian education acknowledges the valid contribution which can be made by academic subjects towards the development of a mature Christian.

They (the subjects) enable the pupil to assimilate skills, knowledge, intellectual methods and moral and social attitudes, all of which help to develop his personality and lead him to take his place as an active member of the community of man. Their aim is not merely the attainment of knowledge but the acquisition of values and the discovery of truth.

It (the school) is designed not only to develop with special care the intellectual faculties but also to form the ability to judge rightly, to hand on the cultural legacy of previous generations, to foster a sense of values, to prepare for professional life. Between pupils of different talents and backgrounds it promotes friendly relations and fosters a spirit of mutual understanding; and it establishes as it were a center whose work and progress must be shared together by families, teachers, associations of various types that foster cultural, civic, and religious life, as well as by civil society and the entire human community.

Therefore the Church has a right and duty to get involved in all the branches of learning:

Therefore with full right the Church promotes letters, science, art in so far as necessary or helpful to Christian education, in addition to her work for the salvation of souls: founding and maintaining schools and institutions adapted to every branch of learning and degree of culture. Nor may even physical culture, as it is called, be considered outside the range of her maternal supervision, for the reason that it also is a means which may help or harm Christian education.

How and by whom is the education imparted?

By parents:

Parents are under a grave obligation to see to the religious and moral education of their children, as well as to their physical and civic training, as far as they can, and moreover to provide for their temporal well-being.

Parents may have delegates, who are entrusted to carry out the educative mission where the parents do not think themselves qualified to teach:

A teacher who is full of Christian wisdom, well prepared in his own subject, does more than convey the sense of what he is teaching to his pupils. Over and above what he says, he guides his pupils beyond his mere words to the heart of total Truth.

This (teaching) vocation demands special qualities of mind and heart, very careful preparation, and continuing readiness to renew and to adapt.

In the measure in which subjects are taught by someone who knowingly and without restraint seeks the truth, they are to that extent Christian.

What does proper Christian education do for the individual and by extension for society?

In fact it must never be forgotten that the subject of Christian education is man whole and entire, soul united to body in unity of nature, with all his faculties natural and supernatural, such as right reason and revelation show him to be;...

Catholics, thus fortified and fittingly instructed, will clearly be able to show that the faith, far from being hostile to human culture, constitutes in fact its apex and summit; that even on points where there is seeming opposition or contradiction, it can be so closely harmonized with philosophy that each enlightens the other; that nature is not the enemy but the companion and helper of religion; finally that the inspiration of religion not only enriches all types of knowledge but also gives literature and the other arts new strength and new life.

Discovery and awareness of truth leads man to the discovery of Truth itself.

Some things to be watchful of in promoting learning and culture especially in the secular arena:

And whoever disturbs the pupil's Faith in any way, does him grave wrong, inasmuch as he abuses the trust which children place in their teachers, and takes unfair advantage of their inexperience and of their natural craving for unrestrained liberty, at once illusory and false.

....it is the duty of parents to make every effort to prevent any invasion of their rights in this matter, and to make absolutely sure that the education of their children remain under their own control in keeping with their Christian duty, and above all to refuse to send them to those schools in which there is danger of imbibing the deadly poison of impiety."

"Alice in Wonderland" math

Winston Churchill sounds like such a Visual-Spatial learner to me, which may explain why he was always bottom of the school during his Harrow years, had to take English three times because he wasn't thought smart enough to advance to the Classics, and had to take his exit exams three times before he passed. His liking for grammar defined by colored underlining, his battle formations of toy soldiers (he apparently had a collection of more than 1500) and his way of thinking about math all seem to show this tendency. Even his sense of humor and his ability to see the big picture seem to me to be visual spatial traits.

In regard to Mathematics he writes:

Of course what I call Mathematics is only what the Civil Service Commissioners expected you to know to pass a very rudimentary examination. I suppose that to those who enjoy this peculiar gift, Senior Wranglers and the like, the waters in which I swam must seem only a duck-puddle compared to the Atlantic Ocean. Nevertheless, when I plunged in, I was soon out of my depth. When I look back upon those care-laden months, their prominent features rise from the abyss of memory. Of course I had progressed far beyond Vulgar Fractions and the Decimal System. We were arrived in an 'Alice-in-Wonderland' world, at the portals of which stood 'A Quadratic Equation.' This with a strange grimace pointed the way to the Theory of Indices, which again handed on the intruder to the full rigours of the Binomial Theorem. Further dim chambers lighted by sullen, sulphurous fires were reputed to contain a dragon called the 'Differential Calculus.' But this monster was beyond the bounds appointed by the Civil Service Commissioners who regulated this stage of Pilgrim's heavy journey. We turned aside, not indeed to the uplands of the Delectable Mountains, but into a strange corridor of things like anagrams and acrostics called Sines, Cosines and Tangents. Apparently they were very important, especially when multiplied by each other, or by themselves! They had also this merit—you could learn many of their evolutions off by heart. There was a question in my third and last Examination about these Cosines and Tangents in a highly square-rooted condition which must have been decisive upon the whole of my after life. It was a problem. But luckily I had seen its ugly face only a few days before and recognised it at first sight.

I have never met any of these creatures since. With my third and successful examination they passed away like the phantasmagoria of a fevered dream. I am assured that they are most helpful in engineering, astronomy and things like that. It is very important to build bridges and canals and to comprehend all the stresses and potentialities of matter, to say nothing of counting all the stars and even universes and measuring how far off they are, and foretelling eclipses, the arrival of comets and such like. I am very glad there are quite a number of people born with a gift and a liking for all of this; like great chess-players who play sixteen games at once blindfold and die quite soon of epilepsy. Serve them right! I hope the Mathematicians, however, are well rewarded. I promise never to blackleg their profession nor take the bread out of their mouths.

I had a feeling once about Mathematics, that I saw it all—Depth beyond depth was revealed to me—the Byss and the Abyss. I saw, as one might see the transit of Venus—or even the Lord Mayor's Show, a quantity passing through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly how it happened and why the tergiversation was inevitable: and how the one step involved all the others. It was like politics. But it was after dinner and I let it go!

It's interesting to me that Richard Feynman, not too different from Churchill in his irreverence and his dislike for abstraction, became a theoretical physicist while Churchill became a politician. But here, maybe family influence plays a big part. Feynman's father used to talk to him about the natural sciences, while Churchill's father was a notable political leader.

Testing -- Help or Hindrance to Learning?

“I had scarcely passed my twelfth birthday when I entered the inhospitable regions of examinations, through which for the next seven years I was destined to journey. These examinations were a great trial to me. The subjects which were dearest to the examiners were almost invariably those I fancied least. I would have liked to have been examined in history, poetry and writing essays.

The examiners, on the other hand, were partial to Latin and mathematics. And their will prevailed. Moreover, the questions which they asked on both these subjects were almost invariably those to which I was unable to suggest a satisfactory answer. I should have liked to be asked to say what I knew. They always tried to ask what I did not know. When I would have willingly displayed my knowledge, they sought to expose my ignorance. This sort of treatment had only one result: I did not do well in examinations.“

Another bit from Winston Churchill's My Early Life -- a very good book, by the way, humorous and elegantly written.

Laura, in her comment to my last post, brought up the emphasis on testing in the "traditional" education circles. This article about ED Hirsch's "Core Knowledge" education notes:

The "Massachusetts miracle," in which Bay State students' soaring test scores broke records, was the direct consequence of the state legislature's passage of the 1993 Education Reform Act, which established knowledge-based standards for all grades and a rigorous testing system linked to the new standards. And those standards, Massachusetts reformers have acknowledged, are Hirsch's legacy.

Certainly there are many, many tests in the charter program we are using. Most lessons have an "assessment" at the end to check for mastery, and there are also more comprehensive assessments after each unit in each subject. In addition to this, there are state standardized tests at the beginning and end of each school year. And if that's not enough, the children are supposed to spend time regularly at Study Island, where they work on state standards through quizzes -- which can be in game format as well as in interactive worksheet or standard test form.

Is it too much? Or not enough, in the sense that it is not about real learning? I certainly think that in the wider public sense, an over-emphasis on testing and assessment can be detrimental to education. It can be stressful, it can distort real education, it can be used to put kids in tracks and thus have a corrupting effect on our democratic tradition. As Diane Ravitch notes, Tests Can Be Misused.

On the other hand, historically it has been somewhat difficult to think of a workable and honest alternative to testing. De-emphasizing testing, on a public level, can be dishonest to the children. Where a virtual monopoly is concerned, a lack of testing can be intertwined with a lack of accountability. (as an outsider, it's easy for me to conclude then that the system is broken; and as a former student, I'd prefer that the schools test academics, given that teaching academics is actually what they are in existence for, rather than engage in creepy subjective personal assessments or just give up any kind of real goal at all).

As a parent who homeschools and has kids in college and high school, I can accept that testing exists and is of real importance in life. College-prep testing is not going to go away. Nor is job-testing. And I don't see anything wrong with that so long as there are alternatives for people that don't test well in narrow academic subjects.

Now, as a homeschooler practicing education in my own home? Personally, I haven't found the heavy emphasis on testing in the K12 charter school to be a problem. In fact, being very honest, the emphasis on tests is one of the advantages of the program for me. I might feel differently if my kids were being brought down by the tests or were the type of kids that don't test well, but as it stands:

1. Both the kids rather like the tests than otherwise.... it gives them a marker of progress, even if slightly artificial.
2. The tests allow me to see where the kids are and where they still need work.

My kids like the tests, I think, because it's a pleasure to go over material that one knows well. And it's a pleasure to do well; and it's not catastrophic, in our environment, to do poorly. The way the system works, if a child falls short on an assessment, he reviews and does it again until he passes. At the same time, falling short is a useful yellow alert for me, as the teacher, that there is a problem with how the material was taught or learned. It has no "real world" effect -- unlike in public schools, where the child who has fallen short on an assessment has to drag a cumulative burden of poor grades and thus adds discouragement or fear to whatever learning difficulty he already had. In our homeschool, it merely means tweaking -- me working with the kid, or the kid working more carefully -- until the material is known.

I think children can feel a bit disoriented when they don't quite know what the expectations are in a subject. So having the expectations clearcut and eminently reachable is a bonus for their confidence level. In some ways, it can be existentially troubling to know you are being assessed but not know exactly in what way or using what standards. Having things clearcut has minimized some of the stress for both me and the kids.

I think it parallels the Montessori system in some ways. In the Montessori system, the children work with the materials many, many times if they need to. They set their own pace and mastery is the goal. I think that for kids, this is very satisfying -- to know the task and know it can be mastered and that they are not "failures" if they don't.

The Jesuits were very firm advocates of testing. They pinned their education on daily, weekly, monthly, and term quizzes, tests and exams. And their students enjoyed notable success in all walks of life. There were other aspects to the Ignatian educational success besides testing. For example, a solid sacramental life, a great intellectual and moral example of well-educated teachers who were also good men.

Something called the Testing Effect has been measured. From this post on The Value of Testing:

The journal Psychological Science noted this outcome in a 2006 report. According to the researchers, “Taking a memory test not only assesses what one knows, but also enhances later retention, a phenomenon known as the testing effect.” They added, “Testing is a powerful means of improving learning, not just assessing.”

For my first grader, the tests aren't really tests for him. They are oriented towards review and overlearning. For my 8th grader, for whom "real world measurements" have become more important, the tests provide incentive and also more reliable remembering of key points that are important for later study.

The Attentive Parent, and Homeschooling

In my Love Homeschooling list I mentioned "family closeness" as one of the Big Things that you sometimes forget you're enjoying when you hit the tougher homeschooling seasons. So it was timely to find this post on homeschooling and intimacy from Homeschooling Research Notes. The whole thing is well worth reading (and the whole blog is interesting) but I thought I would clip out a few of the main points about homeschooling in relation to other kinds of schooling.

Intimacy is a very important aspect of healthy human relationships, especially parent-child relationships. Intimate relationships are relationships characterized by affection, mutual knowledge, shared experiences, open communication, and trust. People who don’t have relationships like this tend toward “loneliness, increased stress and accelerated physical deterioration.” (p.366). But people who do have intimate relationships flourish, especially children, who feel secure and enjoy healthy social development.

Now this sort of parent-child relationship assumes knowledge of what is good for the child. Intimate relationships will be motivated by concern for the child’s well being, not by “unrestrained parental prerogatives or authoritarian parental control.” (367)

The main thesis of this paper, then, is that homeschooling tends to be a tool that will help foster just this sort of intimacy if the proper conditions are met. One condition is that the parent is the right sort of parent.

The study mentions five qualities of the "attentive parent" that, the writers argue, can contribute to making homeschooling a success.

1. Sensitivity to a child’s abilities, knowledge, beliefs, moods, etc., and a willingness to adapt parental expectations to these things.

2. Warmth, affection, and humor.

3. Clear articulation of parental expectations and justification of them so kids understand the rules and can apply them to novel situations.

4. Sincerity (by which they mean that parents don’t make kids do stuff they won’t do themselves–they’re not hypocrites).

5. Talent for helping kids think through their actions so they can learn how to make decisions and reason through the likely consequences of their actions.

Why do schools tend to detract from this intimacy?

Three ways: Failure, bullying, and risk-taking behaviors. In school a student may suffer a psychically damaging failure, be it academic, athletic, social, or whatever. While this could become a positive growing experience, often it leads to a child withdrawing inward in a downward spiral that isolates him or her from the parents who aren’t privy to what has gone on in school.

So with bullying. Merry and Howell cite empirical literature that “clearly indicates that bullying and harassment are widespread in public schools.” (371) Again, such experiences can lead to withdrawal in children and a downward spiral that decreases familial intimacy.

Finally, the peer setting of public schools can often tempt children into unhealthy behaviors like drug and alcohol use, early sexual activity, and so on that again drive a wedge between parent and child and lead to a downward “cycle of depression, failure, and hopelessness.” (372)

The article goes on:

But wait! Aren’t there good things about schools that may trump this good of parent-child intimacy? There are. The authors mention three. At least in theory, public education may foster

1. critical thinking and autonomy in kids,
2. equality of educational opportunity, and
3. public goods such as tolerance and mutual respect of people who are different.

However, in actual fact many schools do not do this as well as many homeschools may. It seems to me that attentive parenting would quite easily lend itself to fostering critical thinking, tolerance, respect and things of that kind. I don't see why not, anyway. (and I just found this post --- Acceptance is Not Taught in School -- that makes the point well)

It's also true that many kids go through school without experiencing the bitterness of failure, bullying or risk-taking behavior. I hope so, at least! I think probably kids have more chance of being successful in school when the home environment is reasonably attentive.