Conference Notes on Narration

Friday of the conference offered a three-part series of workshops on narration - six full hours, and we still could have gone longer. Laurie Bestvater did the first couple of hours, Dr. Carroll Smith did two hours, and the laast session was looking at samples and narrating ourselves. These are the notes I took that day.

Narration is a subset of literacy. It seems too simple to work. But it does work. L.B.'s son used primarily narration throughout his school years and went to college on a scholarship. [My son used narration but with even less creative direction, and also went to college on a scholarship; it does work.]

Definition: Narration is a process of taking information. It's more than mere recall. It requires the internalization of ideas.

Why narrate? CM said, "in the act of narrating every power of his mind comes into play, that points and bearings which he had not observed are brought out; that the whole is visualized and brought into relief in an extraordinary way; in fact, that scene or argument has become a part of his personal experience; he knows, he has assimilated what he has read." (vol 6) Narration is not the same as memory work. When you narrate, you re-create and internalize in your own mind. It's a way of knowing, not of memorizing.

G.F. Husband wrote, "Properly dealt with, it produces a mental transfiguration." ("Some Notes on Narration," Parents' Review, 1924) It requires attention/engagement of the mind. Being able to answer a teacher's questions doesn't guarantee that the student really knows.

Narration is an all-purpose, extremely powerful activity. Transformation occurs that physically changes the brain. "The Power of Retelling: Developmental Steps for Building Comprehension," and "Read and Retell" by Hazel Brown and Brian Cambourne encapsulate all the principles of the wholistic/natural learning model.

Narration has linguistic spillovers: meaning, phraseology, vocabulary, punctuation, spelling. Children can retain phrases, styles, etc. that they pick up from narrating even after a year.

Narration enables learners to "own" their learning. "Learning that is not accompanied by transformation is shallow and transitory." (Cambourne) "Reader-Response" by Louise Rosenblatt. The learner "reproduces such Knowledge touched by his own personality; thus his reproduction becomes original." (CM vol 6)

Narration enables students to:
- write better sentences
- better solve math word problems
- increase vocabulary
- have a much higher level of comprehension

Narration improves concept of story, critical thinking, oral language development.

Critical thinking requires background knowledge and concepts to think critically about.

Narration reveals what a child remembers and what he thinks is important. It shows whether his organization matches the text - and more.

Narration in History: For generations and throughout centuries, history has been passed on through oral narration. People who are forced to increase their oral mind have better mental capacity than those who rely on printed text, note-taking, etc. Jewish Rabbis used oral tradition to relay God's truth to generations. See "The Singer of Tales" by Albert Lord for studies. Oral tradition is as literary as printed text. The art forms of literature/story-telling were already set and styled before any of the tales were ever written down. Songs, stories and poems can be kept in people's minds for centuries - intact - with no notes! The more you rely on notes, the less you use your mind.

Emotion drives learning because emotion is what transforms and engages. When the "amygdala" part of the brain is activated by fear or emotion, learning can enter long-term memory instead of short-term memory. Stories, not dry facts, engage our emotions.

Research on Narration

Olaffson and [Nietfeld?] (1999) said that a child's memory at age two predicts his later reading ability.

Zimmerman, Christakis, Metcalf (2007) found that television and DVD/video viewing in children younger than 2 years hinders later vocabulary.

Wise, Savelli ? -- found that oral language skills relate to later reading skills. Children only know vocabulary they have used - not what they have only heard.

Early listening/comprehension skills help with word recognition later.

When Adam named the animals, language was used as intellectual capacity to order his world; it wasn't just to communicate. "Giving a name is more than labeling. It is, as Gerhard von Rad puts it, "'an act of appropriate ordering, by which man intellectually objectifies the creatures for himself.'" Man conceives and orders his environment through words. He needs language in order for his mind to make things real. Internally, the mind forms the concept and imagines it after he has a word to frame it on.

What about a child who isn't used to narrating? There are ways to engage his active mind before reading:
- Build on prior knowledge by having the child look at the picture on the cover of the book, or maps inside, to et them interested. Go over two or three words they'll come across in the text that they might not know.
- Have the child mentally put himself somewhere in the setting, like in a corner of the room, and watch the story unfold in front of his eyes. Show the child how people in the story would have dressed so their mental image is accurate.
- Have the child describe in detail how he lines up at school to go to lunch. This forces him to sequence events and tell them.
- Read a paragraph at a time for narrating rather than a whole chapter.
- Ask the child to predict how the story will go.
- Before the next reading, ask the the child to re-create the scene read previously.

Oral language is contextual: we say what's going on. But written language is removed from our personal here-and-now reality.

Narration should be done immediately after the reading, before it dissipates. At the high school level, students might be able to narrate later than immediately after reading - perhaps during the next period, or the next day.

Narration is "the act of knowing." (CM vol 6, pg 99)

Information is not the same as knowledge.

"Because knowledge is power, the child who has got knowledge will certainly show power in dealing with it. He will recast, condense, illustrate, or narrate with vividness and with freedom the arrangement of his words. The child who has got only information will write and speak in the stereotyped phrases of his text-book, or will mangle in his notes the words of his teacher." (CM Vol 3 pg 225)

Ours is not to train. "ample ground for discussion not for lectures or for oral lessons, but for following for a few minutes any opening suggested by 'current events,' a feature in the children's programme of work. But they must follow arguments and detect fallacies for themselves. Reason like the other powers of the mind, requires material to work upon whether embalmed in history and literature, or afloat with the news of a strike or uprising. It is madness to let children face a debatable world with only, say, a mathematical preparation. If our business were to train their power of reasoning, such a training would no doubt be of service; but the power is there already, and only wants material to work upon." (CM Vol 6 pg 147)

Critical thinking matures from within. "Therefore children should be taught as they become mature enough to understand such teaching that the chief responsibility which rests upon then: as persons is the acceptance or rejection of ideas presented to them. To help them in this choice we should afford them principles of conduct and a wide range of fitting knowledge." (CM vol 6 pg 139)

Scaffolds vs Bridges: Many a teacher "believes that children cannot understand well-written books and that he must make of himself a bridge between the pupil and the real teacher, the man who has written the book." (CM vol 6, pg 260) But in a CM education, the teacher is not the bridge between the child and information. "Let the boy read and he knows, that is, if he must tell again what he has read. This, of telling again, sounds very simple but it is really a magical creative process by means of which the narrator sees what he has conceived, so definite and so impressive is the act of narrating that which has been read only once." (vol 6 pg 261)

It sounds simple. "All the acts of generalization, analysis, comparison, judgment, and so on, the mind performs for itself in the act of knowing. If we doubt this, we have only to try the effect of putting ourselves to sleep by relating silently and carefully, say, a chapter of Jane Austen or a chapter of the Bible, read once before going to bed. The degree of insight, the visualization, that comes with this sort of mental exercise is surprising." (CM vol 6 pg 304)

As students mature, their narrations become more abstract. "they will respond to such a question as,––"Write twelve lines (which must scan) on 'Sir Henry Lee,' or 'Cordelia,' or Pericles, or Livingstone," or, to take a question from the early days of the War, "Discuss Lord Derby's Scheme. How is it working?"; or, (IV) an essay on "The new army in the making, shewing what some of the difficulties have been and what has been achieved." (CM vol 6 pg 193)

A student's ability to narrate develops over time. And there are many ways to narrate: "But this is only one way to use books: others are to enumerate the statements in a given paragraph or chapter; to analyse a chapter, to divide it into paragraphs under proper headings, to tabulate and classify series; to trace cause to consequence and consequence to cause; to discern character and perceive how character and circumstance interact..." (CM vol 3 pg 180)

Narration is relational: "The teacher's part is, in the first place, to see what is to be done, to look over the of the day in advance and see what mental discipline, as well as what vital knowledge, this and that lesson afford; and then to set such questions and such tasks as shall give full scope to his pupils' mental activity." (CM vol 3 pg 180)

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Samples of one student's narrations over the course of twelve years were shared, and we were given the opportunity to narrate ourselves either by writing, telling or acting out a chapter we read in a book.

How Firm a Foundation: The Life and Works of CM

These are notes taken from a lecture given by Jennifer Spencer, titled How Firm a Foundation. The conference notebook describes this as "an introduction to the ideas behind Mason's methods. The main focus of the lecture is that techniques like narration and picture study are not the nucleus of the Mason model. The paradigm of education with which most of us grew up was rooted in classicism and industrialism, both of which are very humanistic and materialistic. If we simply add Mason's methods to those existing ideas, we fall way short of the mark..."

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This was one of the highlights of the conference; there was a slide show presentation that went with it; these are just the notes I took. I think this lecture is a must for every teacher, especially a teacher in a CM school.

Educational problems are like a leaning tower - everyone has ideas about why it's leaning, but nobody knows how to fix it. If you don't address the problem at the foundation, you won't really fix it. In education, new books, computer programs, adding another new idea/tool without getting rid of bad ideas/tools don't address the foundational problem. Even in many "CM schools," CM's ideas are layered on top of traditional educational methods. This is how hybrids are born; by adding narration or picture study to a traditional program, the school identifies itself as a CM school, when it's really a hybrid.

Following a list of CM methods (narration, picture study, composer study, dictation, history as the hub, copywork, short lessons, hands-on math, classic literature, handicrafts, narrative books) can become like legalistic religion. Where's the relationship?? CM methods should be something that results from her foundational ideas, not something you apply to become a CM educator. It's like doing Christian works to become a Christian.

Here is a short history of education.

(Early?) classical education believed in the "tabula rasa" - the child's mind is a blank slate to be written on. Knowledge is the result of experience. There are three stages: grammar, dialectic, rhetoric. There is an emphasis onrote memorization of facts, and on a body of knowledge to be absorbed by the student. It's a bottom-up model (CM is a top-down model.) There is a dualism because the mind is seen as spiritual and the body is seen as secular matter, so mental pursuits are considered higher than physical pursuits. Pre-Indusrial Revolution, children learned from teachers and recitation. Churches often housed schools. Students often left school early to care for siblings or to go to work. Rich students went on to a university to learn how to use their leisure time responsibly. This kept class lines separated because only the rich had access to culture, while the poor were the workers. Hirsch's "What Your __ Grader Needs to Know" is based on classical ideals.

Then came the Industrial Revolution (1830-1900?). Entire families were often employed, which took children away from school. Books on management by authors like Frederick Taylor showed how to get more productivity from workers. Profit and efficiency were the buzzwords, and this attotude infiltrated even the schools. Dollar economy became the most important aspect of education. Could businesses train employees in schools with their own financing, instead of using school resources? To this day, businesses donate money to educational institutions to make students more useful to their businesses (CM said this was immoral!) The thought of the day was utilitarian: "Whatever helps industry helps the community." Even President Roosevelt supported vocational education/efficiency in foreign trade. People wanted to be productive like Germany and admired Germany's goal of loyalty to the company and to the state.

Charles W. Eliot and David Snedden led the way to American efficiency in the name of patriotism. Masses needed to learn to trust experts instead of themselves. Education needed to train students to respect authority and to be fit for their purpose (in the workplace). Teachers became public servants presenting the ideas of the controlling majority. Standardization was valued over individualization. Lessons were scheduled in rigid time-clock blocks of time. Children were sorted by IQ, social status and probable destiny. We still use many of these sorting techniques: SAT's, uniform textbooks, teacher certification, guidance counseling, mechanical discipline (behaviorism), strict schedules, isolated skills, qualifiable results and grades - all used to sort and diminish the individual personhood of each child.

Two groups opposed industrialization. Humanitarianism was against industrial slavery. They placed people above profit and felt that education should equalize opportunity. The NEA wanted to reform industry because they felt that "teaching is an art, not a science." But they were silenced when WWI demanded more goods and productivity. Then John Dewey took up their cause. He wanted a democratic ideal. Democracy should serve people. His ideas are based on relativism: man is the measure of importance, and a good life on earth is all we can hope for. Sensory experience builds knowledge. He didn't think of mind as spiritual and body as matter. To him, it was ALL matter. He felt that education should improve society, an idea which places society over the individual. Even religion, he felt, needed to evolve through slow social revolution, science and experimentation so that a new morality and new reality would become rooted. This resulted in child-centered teaching and "learning centers" based on inquiry/experience, "learning environments that foster learning," developmentally graded unit studies for thematic integration, democratic atmosphere in classrooms, co-operative learning, character-building lessons. Unfortunately, right/wrong isn't decided by majority vote. Character is internal and grows through ideas; it can't be applied from the outside. Dewey's style of education results in a foundation that shifts like sand. Morality under this atmosphere changes with the times.

CM is different. CM believed that children come to us as complete persons who have an innate desire for justice, and who were created for a special purpose. They already have a fully-developed soul and intellect. It's not our job to trim or prune them to make them conform to society's ideals. Skills are not equal to ideas. With CM, no information is presented without an informing idea. The teacher's job is to provide a rich feast of living ideas via books. The goal isn't cultural literacy, but critical literacy through reading, extracting ideas, weighing them with a constant measure or standard (the Bible), and forming their own judgment. CM is rooted in constructivism. Attentiveness revolves around making connections and expressing the child's own ideas, and partaking in the "grand conversation."

CM is built on --
- The child as a person
- The nature of knowledge as relational
- Ideas as the food for the mind.

CM does not need the bricks of trivium, grades, behaviorism, isolated skills,. But it's not enough to add the good aspects of CM over everything else. You have to also remove the bad in the same way that a gardener removes weeds before letting good plants take root.

The final question is -- should education be based on the changing demands of society/industry, or on the needs of the child?

CLUSA Conference 2009 - A Teen's Perspective

Yes; we are back from a wonderful week with Charlotte Mason friends, full of things to tell about this year's conference and dreaming of plans for the next one. I don't think I can remember ever meeting so many people with whom we had so much in common. From what others have told me, I think the same was true for most of us.

Some of the teens, on the last day

For our family the CM week began a few days before the actual conference, because our mother went early to work on business (which I will let her explain or not as she chooses). Zacharias and I dropped her off and then we had a small adventure, taking a road trip on our own for the first time (and driving in city traffic to boot! yay...). We stayed for a couple days at the house of some friends who live not far from Boiling Springs. I met the eldest daughter at last year's conference, but for the rest of us it was our first meeting; and I make bold to say that we got on well. Honestly, what else could I say when the first evening we found ourselves discussing the various properties of iocaine powder and its effects when combined with the water from Tuck Everlasting (a question which still remains unresolved), and then stayed up--well--later than I wish to say--playing folksongs in an impromptu band comprising a piano, two violins, a guitar, a drum, and several singers? I do not wish, however, to give the impression that our whole time was spent in dissipation. Being Chief Planners and Co-Conspirators of the CLUSA Conference Teen Activities, we were obliged to spend the rest of the visit in serious matters such as Regency dances and music practice and Tolkien readings.

The conference lasts four days, Wednesday through Saturday. Each day there are plenary sessions (which the whole conference is meant to attend), workshops on specific topics, book discussions, and free time for meals or reflection. When we planned the teen activities this year we tried to keep the plenary sessions open so that the teens could attend them. I wanted to keep the teens involved in the main conference as much as possible. The stuff we did on our own was mostly for fun, and it was good for all of us to meet and hang out with like-minded peers. But we are the rising generation of Charlotte Mason students and teachers. I think the CLUSA conference is a great opportunity for the teens, most of whom have been raised on CM, to learn about her ideas from experienced teachers and thinkers and writers. It is a chance for us to learn more about Charlotte Mason's philosophy, so that we can understand why we were raised as we have been, and why CM education is still important for us even as we're graduating and going out into the world. To some extent, I hope that this year's conference did that.

On Thursday I attended an excellent lecture called "The Life and Work of Charlotte Mason," about the history of educational theory and where CM fits into it. I think my mom is going to blog about it, but I might post my own notes as well. After the lecture, two of the teens, along with some CM teachers, were on the panel for the workshop "Exploring CM for the High School Student." Thursday afternoon we had a Jane Austen discussion over tea and cakes, hosted by the local coffee shop. Later that day we attended a lecture "On Time," which was about living life deeply instead of just by a schedule. That evening I went to a plenary lecture about CM's life, specifically the period when she was forming her ideas about education, writing her first books, and founding the PNEU. Afterwards one of the music professors from Gardner-Webb gave a concert/lecture about counterpoint in Bach. (I got to play the harpsichord when she was finished!) That night the teens went to a book discussion about Tolkien's short story Leaf by Niggle.

On Friday two of the teens led matins at 8:00am. I mention the time because it seems extremely early when you've only had 4 hours of sleep. Yes... *cough* well... after matins we went back to our rooms and acted out some scenes from Shakespeare, and then took a traveling production of Pyramus and Thisbe to one of the moms who was alone in her room. Friday afternoon we had a LotR discussion, led by a professor from Gardner-Webb; I've heard some say that discussion was the highlight of the conference. After that we rushed to find music and a CD player for our Regency dance lesson, which went well but took longer than we thought it would. We took a break for dinner and then returned in costume for a ball. Dancing Elizabeth and Darcy's dance from the A&E Pride and Prejudice was another highlight of the week. After the ball we changed out of costume--or not--and went to the Broad River Greenway for a walk in the woods. (The conference does this every year; usually there are trail guides, live music, and an astronomer with a telescope.) That night, after we got back from the Greenway, we met in one of the apartments and read Sherlock Holmes and Edgar Allen Poe.

On Saturday we spent most of the morning packing. Two of the teens performed a piece of music from Swan Lake before the last plenary session, which was about CM's perspective on parenting as discussed in her book Parents and Children. After that we finished packing, ate an improvised lunch, had one last lingering meeting at the local ice cream parlor (see the picture!), and then left and went our separate ways. Some of our friends (who live in Oklahoma) came home with us and stayed a couple of days. Next week we will again be having visitors, as two members of the family with which Zacharias and I stayed will be coming to stay with us. For the moment, however, everyone has gone home, the conference feels quite ended, and as time permits I will be blogging my report of it.

ChildLightUSA CM Conference

I'm back from this conference, which takes place every year in Boiling Springs, NC. I love these conferences because there's always so much CM information shared. Whether you're new to the method or experienced, there are lectures and workshops that people at every level can learn from, and the teachers are dedicated CM students who have earned doctorates in CM study, or are familiar with her books so that the information is usually solid. There are both homeschoolers and school teachers there, and it's neat to see both working together to further their own understanding of the CM method.

Last year a couple of teens were there with their homeschooling parents and met and had so much fun talking about their favorite books and sharing music that they decided to plan their own activities for high school/colleg-aged offspring of CM homeschooling moms. They talked about Jane Austen over tea, read Sherlock Holmes and Poe together, dressed up and had a Regency ball, recited Shakespeare, had a Tolkein discussion with one of Gardner-Webb's teachers, hiked, and played Beatles Monopoly . The Monopoly game was an unplanned event. ;) They're already thinking ahead to next year's conference.

For the kids, I think the experience of finally finding others who were into the same things as them was validating and exhilarating - one mom said it reminded her of the CS Lewis quote on friendship, "What! You too? I thought I was the only one!" And for the adults, the conference was compared to coming home to Rivendell. I suspect that the CM method attracts a certain type of person, so when you meet with CM moms, you already have things in common. At least that's been my experience with online CM friends, my local CM group and those I've met through these conferences.

I took notes on a few of the sessions, which I'll be typing to post here in the next few days. The highlights were a day-long session on narration, and a lesson about the history of education and where CM fits in with that.

A thought about heaven

Some moments, on our earth, we can catch a glimpse of God in creation: in a waterfall rippling over stones; evening light spilling across the grass; mist descending upon distant mountains. I can't say for sure what causes those moments, when we look at nature and see it as if the divine is being poured through it like water through a funnel (to paraphrase Evelyn Underhill): when we look at a sunset and suddenly realize what is meant by the word "glory," or when we see the brown earth covered in snow and suddenly understand what is meant by "grace": when the world is baptized by the presence of God shining through it. Yet some moments are like that. All of a sudden our vision clears, and we can see God through the world, as we can see the world through a window, or an idea through words, or an experience through a poem. Most of the time our minds aren't aware enough, or the world isn't clear enough, for us to see God through it. But what if we always could?

Imagine a heaven where the world is a perfect expression of God, as the physical man Jesus was the perfect expression of Christ, God's son, the second person of the trinity. Imagine a heaven where our minds have the blinders taken off, so that we can understand clearly all the time: a heaven where the beauty of creation declares the glory of God unceasingly, so that God's presence is with us completely at all times: a heaven where language is perfect, so that every word is the ideal embodiment of the idea it represents. Imagine a world where nature is perfect, so that every stone and tree and blade of grass is a perfect bearer of God to us. That I think would be heaven indeed, when the language of the earth is purified so that it perfectly carries the character of God, so that where'er you walk God's presence is fully expressed to you.

One of my favorite verses is Zephaniah 3:9, "For then I will restore to the peoples a pure language, that they all may call upon the Lord to serve him with one accord." It speaks only of language; but how far will that restoration extend?

Obama Says U.S. Could Be Seen as a Muslim Country, Too

Obama Says U.S. Could Be Seen as a Muslim Country, Too (New York Times Caucus blog)

Hat tip to Jihad Watch. Have a look at their post, too. In an interview anticipating his trip to the Middle East this week, Obama said that we could be considered "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world". How does he figure--by law? history? statistics?--because none of those agree with him. I'm not sure whether this is an example of liberal favoritism towards (certain) minorities, dhimmitude, or a real wish that the U.S. would become a Muslim country. Perhaps all three. Whichever it is, it bodes little good for a state when its leader supports a religion that so directly contradicts the ideals of that state.

The Wise Fool Speaks

I kept an orchard once wherein a single apple grew,
As fair as any fruit that any tree has ever borne:
Its skin was firm as willow-wand and golden as the dew,
Its scent was wine and honey on the wind-song morn.

At dawn I came to check the bough and see no leaf was sere;
At dusk I stopped to water all the earth around the root:
So every day I tended it, and stole throughout the year
A thousand careless glances at the slow-ripe fruit.

With every week that passed I waited more impatiently:
The fruit grew daily heavier and brighter in my sight—
Until one day, too early still, I plucked it from the tree
And ate, and found the apple and myself unripe.