PRINCIPLE 6: NOTEBOOK EDITION
When we say that ‘education is an atmosphere,’ we do not mean that a child should be isolated in what may be called a ‘child-environment’ especially adapted and prepared, but that we should take into account the educational value of his natural home atmosphere, both as regards persons and things, and should let him live freely among his proper conditions. It stultifies a child to bring down his world to the child’s level.
I remember reading in a book on brain-based education, that teachers who want to facilitate memorable and meaningful learning for their students should orchestrate life-like experiences; I penciled into the margin, 'Why not life?' ‘Life-like’ just sounds like educational cheese-food.
The use of notebooks recognizes the value of real-life, real-world experience because it does not require special preparation of the environment. Use of notebooks helps people of all ages and situations to make directed, educational use of their own environment—as it already is.
A lot of what happens in a classroom stays in a classroom—some of those things can't in fact survive outside that rarefied atmosphere. And educational practices used in kindergarten are very soon outgrown. Rather than working only in an artificial construct, notebooks build people up to a new awareness and appreciation for reality—all of it together, the reality of their time and of their place and of their own selves. Notebooks do not bring the world down to the child's level or squeeze parts of it into the classroom's narrow scope; they are companions to the person in his life-long progress through life.
The nature journal, the commonplace, the book of centuries were lifelong companions for Mason, for the teachers trained in her college, and for their students. There is some scaffolding {or building up} along the way; like using a calendar of firsts before the nature journal, the copybook before the commonplace, the century charts before the book of centuries; but the principles remain constant, and the idea that education is a real-life and life-long experience is pervasive—and, by the way, is best modeled by the adults in the child's life.
If something is worth your child doing, it is worth your doing too. That was actually my main impetus for starting my own nature journal, reading ancient literature, and teaching myself to play recorder. I realized {an idea introduced to me by John Holt and reinforced by Mason} that imitation is a main method of true education, that what you really value you will prioritize in your own life. Anything less plays into the popular feeling {ask any child!} that education is for ‘kids’—something to look forward to finishing the way one looks forward to driving, using a credit card, or whatever else is associated with adulthood and autonomy.
A nature journal is as appropriate and helpful to the five-year old who dictates to his mother {or sister} personal observations about an unrecognizable watercolor flower, as it was to a thirty-some year old artist whose nature journal would become a best-seller for years. The results on paper look very different {from a certain, narrow perspective, there's nothing in comparison}, but both of them are persons meeting the same world, and the results in their minds—growing love and wonder for creation—are likewise the same, and no less beautiful and important in the six-year old than in the adult.
Again, we go back to the first principle: children are born persons. And notebooks are ready to meet these people and the world as they really are.
September 16, 2014