WCLTL: DISCUSSION 2
The CM study group enjoyed a great meeting last month, as we have continued to read and discuss the book When Children Love to Learn. It is a privilege to spearhead this growing group of smart and beautiful women digging deep in educational thought and practice; they are an embodiment of that 'thinking love' Charlotte Mason said every mother owes her child.
I will continue to type up and post my notes for each meeting, as requested, though they seem so thin compared to the actual meetings, with their vigorous exchange of thoughts, ideas, questions, and advice. {Not to mention that readers will be missing out on Anna's delicious Greek meatballs with pita, hummus, and tzatziki}.
But for those of you who missed the meeting, or just want to follow along with the book, here is a sampling.
{CHAPTER ONE, p32-49: SUSAN SCHAEFFER MACAULAY}
In last month's meeting, we spent a fair amount of time discussing an idea that was incredibly important to Charlotte Mason and her philosophy of education, an idea which is a major theme of this book. This idea is that 'Children are born persons.'
Our reading closed with a somewhat unusual definition of 'Christian education.' The author of this chapter, Susan Schaeffer Macaulay, defines it as 'an education that has due regard for the individual child.' This is the trunk, as it were, of the flourishing tree whose root is Christ and whose leafy, blossoming, fruitful branches are the wide and generous curriculum we offer to children.
As we continue on page 32 through page 36, Macaulay shares concrete examples of how an educational program may 'duly regard' or else 'despise' {think too little of} the individual child. Mason warned that we can all despise children, even lovingly, so let's take a deeper look at these examples.
First, we have the example of two classes—one a group of students new to the CM method, the other a group of children taught with this method from the start.
The opposite of 'to despise' is 'to respect,' which means literally 'to look at,' or to see it as it actually is.
So, how might we as teachers respect the children in these classes? But there's a set program! What do we do with it? What is the temptation? Is one class better than the other? Is one place in the program better than another {if it's the place that class needs to be}? {Discuss Mason's idea that knowledge is not a store—a quantifiable collection of information, but a state—an attitude, or posture, towards learning.}
If you want a student to move forward, you need to start at the place where he is. It makes no sense to say 'you are there, but I want to teach as though you were over here.' You need to make that journey part of your teaching. John Holt, in his book What Do I Do Monday? wrote 'The child wants to grow, to step forward, to move out into the world. But he has to move from where he is. If we can't or won't reach him where he is, we can't encourage or help him make those next steps. Instead, we freeze him into immobility, into strategies of faking what he doesn't really know.'
Next, Macaulay gives us the example of teachers in 'today's toughest schools.' What are the practical ways that these teachers can respect the humanity of the students while accepting 'where they are'?
•good books {Get shining eyes first.}
•satisfying activities {listening, imagining, thinking}
•not a diet of dry facts, leading to stress and boredom
•a diet of living ideas, leading to intellectual stir and delight
Do you find anything surprising or significant about these suggestions for a 'tough school'? I did! They seem fairly generic suggestion for any CM education. The program for a 'tough school' may look very different in certain particulars {perhaps, though, not so different as we may believe necessary}, but the ideas are exactly the same, because we believe these children are as essentially human as all others.
The next example we have for consideration is younger students versus older students. How might we respect the differences here? You can mention any ideas that occur to you, including those given here on page 37.
•time {length of lessons and school day}
•workload {developmental readiness}
Even more striking, perhaps more instructive in the ways of respect, is this summary of what stays the same for all age groups.
•broad curriculum
•varied lessons
•time for rest
•not underfed or overfed
•no homework
•no busywork
Next, let's consider learning styles. First we have a student with a natural ability for spelling. Macaulay then describes a student whose struggle in this area is not addressed differently than with the first student. She concludes with this striking statement.
{Quote on page 33, from 'After a day in her impersonal school...' to 'Neither, in my mind.'}
{Sadly, Macaulay's reductio ad absurdum regarding grading two-year old children on vocabulary is no longer so laughable.}
The beginning of page 34 describes a very beautiful and valuable aspect of a CM education: Children of various personal abilities are all welcomed to the feast, to take from it the food best suited to them, to feed and grow them at that time.
'[T]hey do not compete against each other but enjoy steady personal progress.' {If you have not already—even if you have!—I urge you to listen to Andrew Kern's interview with Sarah Mackenzie, posted on our Google+ page. He expresses very well the absurdity of so much comparison and competition in education.}
Let's look at pages 34 through 36 to see other problems of disrespect in the classroom.
•'dry sawdust of irrelevant facts'
•constant testing
•lack of teacher authority and humility {'together... under a higher authority'}
•competition and pride
•narrow academic and vocational definitions of success and worth
•gifted children allowed to atrophy
•fragmentation in teaching
•cramming
That last warning—that we do a disservice to children by force-feeding and over-feeding on facts—Macaulay calls a 'chief danger'; and she elaborate on this through page 40.
Macaulay warns that children who are overfed may 'vomit up all their education.' It's certainly a colorful metaphor! What does it look like in real life? {Mason said children vomited their answers on exams; that is, rather than digesting and assimilating knowledge into new forms of vitality, they could only give information back the same way they received it: fragmented and impersonal.}
'Beware,' Macaulay says. 'There is too much information around.' What does she mean? Do you agree? How much is too much? {More to the point, what kind is too much?}
Macaulay suggests a series of repetitions to summarize 'third grade to postgraduate' education. I would suggest that it begins much earlier these days!
Facts, facts, facts
Cram, cram, cram
Forget, forget, forget
What is the relationship of these practices? Does not one clearly lead to the next?
What is the contrast Macaulay gives us, on page 37? Which student is getting more out of his education? {Mason’s goal was the method ‘whereby teachers will teach less, and learners learn more.’ Macaulay says, ‘People today are making a colossal pedagogical error. They are rather like an uneducated person who thinks that if one spoon of medicine will do good, then ten are even better!’}
There is the expectation also that we should {let alone can} be constantly and meticulously aware of what students are ‘getting.’ For this reason, we teach and asses for quantifiable factoids—Does the student know the dates for the American Revolution?—while largely ignoring valuable {but unquantifiable} knowledge and wisdom. Does the student have a whole picture of the era? Does he have a definite idea of the war’s place in time, in human history, in the development of thought, policy, etc.? Does he know the issues, and the people? Does he see how the events or the conduct of historical figures might inform his own thought and conduct in the present?
Not only does a steady diet of mere facts fail to nourish synthetic knowledge, so does the lack of rest, time, and contemplation afforded by a manic ‘education’ of fact-feeding, fact-cramming, and fact-testing.
‘No one can do everything that would be worthwhile,’ Macaulay reminds us. New books, wonderful books, are always coming out to join old classics. But we not not have to do everything; we cannot do everything; even if we could do everything, it would not be the best thing to do. We must safeguard those ‘good long time[s] to play, sing, and experience life-giving activities such as art, picture-study, or dressing up and acting out plays or spontaneous ideas.’
I hope you don’t mind a brief rabbit trail just branching off our main road.
Listening to Jenny Rallen’s interview, reading Josef Pieper’s book Only the Lover Sings, I have been fascinated by the need for contemplation in education and life. In brief, contemplation is a long, intense, deep seeing of something until we become more like it. Contemplation, chiefly, requires two things: SILENCE and TIME.
Silence is not necessarily soundlessness, which is anyway a rare thing in a homeschooling household! But there is a certain reduction of noise, of clutter—auditory, but also visual, social, spiritual. So we turn off the television, pare down belongings and toys, and deliberately maintain and cherish wide margins of space in our daily planners.
The time for free, undirected play which we safeguard for our children is often, unseen—unseen even by children—as a time for contemplation. Most obviously, we might see children reenacting in their play characters or a situation from history or literature. What would happen if . What if... and so they review, connect, ruminate, contemplate, and learn.
And can you do this for a child? Can you dictate this kind of activity in a lesson plan? Can you measure and asses the learning taking place? No, you cannot, and we might recall this idea from Bestvater’s book, discussed last year. In an education that is properly the work of the student, there are very few things you can do for your child, but one thing you can do and must do is give them TIME.
{Quote on page 38, from ‘Overcrowding children’s schedule...’ to ‘We must not quench the joy of living.’}
Especially, we must protect the first six years. Mason wrote that for the first six years we must let them ‘lie fallow,’ an idea that comes from wise and sustainable agriculture. Fields were not kept in constant production; after a certain time of bearing crops, the farmer ‘rested’ the field, let it lie ‘fallow,’ so it would not lose its fertility, become used up and barren.
Look at page 38 and the beginning of page 39. What should young children be doing? When formal education begins, will they be better prepared than their schooled counterparts, or no? Why, or in what respects?
And, when we do get to formal education, after the child has turned six, what does that look like {p 39-40}?
So why did such a wise, beautiful, calm vision almost completely disappear (p 40-41}?
In the face of this dissolution and confusion, Mason's philosophy offers a valuable clarity and stability due to her recognition and acceptance of one true source: God himself.
Recognizing this ultimate source of education, Mason invites us parents and teachers to practice 'masterly inactivity.' Macaulay calls this a 'genius insight,' but there's been some confusion over the term. Have you heard of this idea before? What are different ways you've heard it explained/ described/ illustrated? What do you think it actually means?
Macaulay gives the example of picture study to show how masterly inactivity plays a role, and point out the temptation to get 'in between.' Did anything strike you in her example {p 41-42}?
Macaulay gives a second example more compelling, perhaps, because it is the subject nearest and dearest to our hearts, the ultimate subject in our home-school curriculum, our ultimate goal in parenting: God and the Bible.
How does masterly inactivity work here? What is the temptation {p 43-46}?
I like lists, so I summarized these pages with a series of bullet points: ‘What a child needs from Bible teaching.’ A child doesn’t need ‘moralistic facts or sentimental pap.’ A child needs:
•Simplicity: ‘Too much Christian teaching‘—is such a thing possible? Again ‘too much‘ might be ‘more of the wrong kind.‘ What is the wrong kind?
•Authenticity: ‘It will be genuineness of belief and life... that impacts children.‘ {‘It is not about making a good life for your children; their lives are to be, after all, their own accomplishments. It is about discovering a life worth sharing with them.’}
•Honesty: ‘Children ask probing questions.’
•Humility: This is the key to masterly inactivity and, indeed, of all good teaching. {Quote of page 44, from ‘we are not over the child‘ to ‘the ‘teacher and the taught.’}
•Freedom: {Quote on page 44, from ‘There is no guarantee’ to ‘we must not brainwash them in any way.’} Can you brainwash someone into Christianity? ‘Children... should not always sense they are being got at.’
•Relationship: ‘the living person of Jesus‘ ‘It is terrible to turn this amazing person into a lesson.‘ ‘Love is a great attraction for people.’
•Beauty: ‘Beauty strikes into a child’s awareness.’ ‘Too often in churches today children hear only tunes with snappy lyrics that may not stir awe and wonder at all, let alone give them the best of our language.’
•Community {connection, history}: ‘The child is surrounded by a stream of words and light from long ago... We sing with one voice.’ ‘We are part of the continuum of believers.’
•Creativity: ‘Worship inspires creativity.’
•Memory {contemplation}: ‘They respond to the cadences, the words, the thoughts.’
All these fruits of masterly activity are not only for the gifted children. ‘All children need nourishing. All are hungry.’ We spread a feast for all, welcoming each child to take the food he is ready for.
What a beautiful example we have of this in Marion Berry, a retired CM teacher who spread a feast in her own home for the hungry children.
{Quote on page 47-48, from ‘I can still see people...’ to ‘go straight through.’}
‘The very best should not be for the elite’ in race, class, socioeconomic status, intellect, development, etc. It is for ALL.
‘It is in this spirit of trust and adventure that we invite you to search diligently in the rest of this book for a way forward in teaching the children you know...’
• detail of 1921 cover for Good Housekeeping by Jessie Wilcox Smith •
November 17, 2015