Jo's Boys

I just finished reading Little Women, Good Wives, Little Men and Jo's Boys, and I was struck with how much Louisa May Alcott echoed Charlotte Mason's ideas. I think that Charlotte Mason probably didn't manufacture her ideas out of her own head, but these were ideas that were out and about in the minds of many thinkers at the time, and Charlotte Mason organized them into her own school/curriculum in the same way that Jo March Bhaer used them in her Plumfield school for boys.

Jo's Boys has a chapter that deviates from the boys at the school to focus on the girls who were there, and there's no missing the similarity with Charlotte Mason's own section just for girls. So, with no commentary, I'm going to present, side by side, sections of both books so you can compare for yourself.

The books:

Jo's Boys, by Louisa May Alcott, Chapter 17. Among the Maids

Volume 5: Formation Of Character by Charlotte Mason, 2. Concerning The Young Maidens At Home (I used my own paraphrased version for the comparison.)

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Jo's Boys:
Although this story is about Jo's boys, her girls cannot be neglected, because they held a high place in this little republic, and especial care was taken to fit them to play their parts worthily in the great republic which offered them wider opportunities and more serious duties.

CM:
It's not enough for them to learn to cook a little, sew a little, and do laundry. Every one of the girls should receive some definite, thorough training in some art or profession that will enable her to earn her own living doing something useful for the world, and something interesting and enjoyable to herself, as all skilled work of the mind or hands is. I think that parents owe this to their daughters as much as they do to their sons. There is valuable training available in many fields of work suitable for women, and at about the same cost as it takes to support a girl at home.

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Jo's Boys:
To many the social influence was the better part of the training they received; for education is not confined to books, and the finest characters often graduate from no college, but make experience their master, and life their book. Others cared only for the mental culture, and were in danger of over-studying, under the delusion which pervades New England that learning must be had at all costs, forgetting that health and real wisdom are better. A third class of ambitious girls hardly knew what they wanted, but were hungry for whatever could fit them to face the world and earn a living...

CM: [One kind of girl] imagines the great things she could do for some idealistic cause, but she's careless about details of kindness, things she says, and routine chores... a little friendly help and advice might save her from a lot of blundering and regret.
There's another kind of girl who has no interests beyond cute clothes. These girls ... view the world as a place for them to have and get, but never, unless forced, as a place to do, to endure, or to share. ... what can be done for the average graduate whose education is supposedly 'finished,' yet who's still rough and uninformed?

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Jo's Boys:
At Plumfield all found something to help them; for the growing institution had not yet made its rules as fixed as the laws of the Medes and Persians, and believed so heartily in the right of all sexes, colours, creeds, and ranks to education, that there was room for everyone who knocked... the Faculty was composed of cheerful, hopeful men and women who had seen greater reforms spring from smaller roots, and after stormy seasons blossom beautifully, to add prosperity and honour to the nation. So they worked on steadily and bided their time, full of increasing faith in their attempt as year after year their numbers grew, their plans succeeded, and the sense of usefulness in this most vital of all professions blessed them with its sweet rewards.

CM:
School hasn't completed the girl's education, it's only provided a beginning. Now the girl is home to learn how to make the most of herself, and how to succeed in life. How to make the best life is the issue she faces.... A woman who has herself under control, thinks for herself, reserves her judgments, thinks before she speaks or acts, is a woman who will succeed in life. Her success is measured in how generous her heart is, how broad her mind is, and how large her soul is.

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Jo's Boys:
They were busy women, yet on Saturdays they tried to meet in one of the three sewing-rooms; for even classic Parnassus had its nook where Mrs Amy often sat among her servants, teaching them to make and mend, thereby giving them a respect for economy, since the rich lady did not scorn to darn her hose, and sew on buttons. In these household retreats, with books and work, and their daughters by them, they read and sewed and talked in the sweet privacy that domestic women love, and can make so helpful by a wise mixture of cooks and chemistry, table linen and theology, prosaic duties and good poetry.

CM:
Every woman should understand and know how to do every task related to cooking, cleaning, mending or making in the home. A regular instruction time learning to do these things under her mother's guiding eye would be a good way to spend an hour or two every morning. One valuable and extremely useful project is a household book where the young girl writes down exactly how to do specific things, like how to strip a floor, or how to make an omelet. She should write down the exact steps she took herself to do it, or as she observed while watching someone else do it, noting any special circumstances specific to her own house. This kind of reference will be invaluable later because it contains personal experiences, and it will help her to speak authoritatively to her cook or servant who might say, 'I never heard of anyone doing it like that before, ma'am.' Planning meals, setting a proper table, every detail about managing a household for a week or a month, should all be taught and noted in her book.

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Jo's Boys:
...Mrs Amy contributed taste, and decided the great question of colours and complexions; for few women, even the most learned, are without that desire to look well which makes many a plain face comely, as well as many a pretty one ugly for want of skill and knowledge of the fitness of things. She also took her turn to provide books for the readings, and as art was her forte she gave them selections from Ruskin, Hamerton, and Mrs Jameson, who is never old. Bess read these aloud as her contribution, and Josie took her turn at the romances, poetry, and plays her uncles recommended. Mrs Jo gave little lectures on health, religion, politics, and the various questions in which all should be interested, with copious extracts from Miss Cobbe's Duties of Women, Miss Brackett's Education of American Girls, Mrs Duffy's No obtund in Education, Mrs Woolson's Dress Reform, and many of the other excellent books wise women write for their sisters, now that they are waking up and asking: 'What shall we do?'

CM:
Her academic education has hardly gotten started in school, and it needs to progress. She needs to develop her own independent habits of intellectual effort. She should have one or two hours every morning for nothing but solid reading. English literature is still mostly unknown her, so she'll need some of that. She has a lot of history to read--ancient, medieval and modern--and that will relate better when she compares it to her own current history. She probably learned to read some French and German in school, and now is a good time to introduce her to some French and German literature. She'll probably only find time for the best of the novels, the ones that have become classics, except for those occasions when she has a cold or earache or has a spare half hour after dinner. It's very helpful to have a 'commonplace book' or reading journal at hand while reading so that she can jot down any notable thoughts about the author, or her own impression of the book, or a portion of it.
...Give them sincere intellectual work to think about. Let them feel how necessary it is to brace up every faculty of their minds to understand the width and depth of the truths they're called to believe in.

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Jo's Boys:
It was curious to see the prejudices melt away as ignorance was enlightened, indifference change to interest, and intelligent minds set thinking, while quick wits and lively tongues added spice to the discussions which inevitably followed. So the feet that wore the neatly mended hose carried wiser heads than before, the pretty gowns covered hearts warmed with higher purposes, and the hands that dropped the thimbles for pens, lexicons, and celestial globes, were better fitted for life's work, whether to rock cradles, tend the sick, or help on the great work of the world...

CM:
Young ladies should receive some general training and special preparation to help them form fair, just opinions. For starters, a girl should be encouraged to use her common sense to weigh issues that come up...
Young women should also know something about the principles of political economy. ... Any girl who studies it with some thought and effort will be able to form sensible opinions about some of the current issues that are used these days, not just as matters of opinion, but as reasons to justify one social class's superiority over another. It would be good for England if educated women had fair and just ideas about these kinds of issues, not just so they can have something interesting and valuable to say to their husbands and brothers, but so that they can present a different perspective to the men in their lives, and influence them to see a different side of the issue.

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Jo's Boys:
It was good for these girls to hear of the evening-schools supported and taught by women whom they knew and honoured; of Miss Cobbe's eloquent protest winning the protection of the law for abused wives; Mrs Butler saving the lost; Mrs Taylor, who devoted one room in her historic house to a library for the servants; Lord Shaftesbury, busy with his new tenement-houses in the slums of London; of prison reforms; and all the brave work being done in God's name by the rich and great for the humble and the poor. It impressed them more than many quiet home lectures would have done, and roused an ambition to help when their time should come, well knowing that even in glorious America there is still plenty to be done before she is what she should be--truly just, and free, and great.

CM:
..Women have so many rights these days that they can no longer justifiably claim the kind of immunities that secluded harem wives can. We aren't free to say, 'Oh, these things are beyond me; I let the men worry about those kinds of issues.' It's possible that God's Providence has brought women to the forefront in this age so that they'll be ready to act as mediators in these days when there's a dangerous risk of alienation and enmity between social classes. Some thinking people are convinced that we're in the early stages of a revolution. Whether this revolution can happen peacefully without the bloodshed and horrors of other recent revolutions may depend, more than they realize, on the women of England.

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Uncanny, isn't it? One would almost wonder if they were the same person! Jo's Boys was published in 1886, which is about the same year Charlotte Mason was delivering her "Lectures to Ladies" that ended up as her first book.

Last Child in the Woods Summary

I finished Last Child in the Woods, and, to keep notes, started a summary -- one or two sentences to sum up each chapter. And these are the sentences.

1 Most adults have fond memories of being outside climbing trees but today, kids don't go outside much anymore. Why?

2 Kids used to build forts and tree houses but today's kids don't even have grandparents who live in rural farms where they can play and see where food comes from.

3 Parks and open places are no longer places for kids to free-play--too much liability if kids fall out of a tree, and too many flowers they might trample.

4 Vacant lots left untouched can be wild natural areas. Nature relaxes us and can help with mental health.

5 Spending two weeks in the desert helped at-risk inner city teens. Most people today only experience nature as store theme-displays or in sensationalized nature documentaries.

6 Howard Gardner added a 'nature smarts' category to his theory of multiple intelligences. But it can only be developed by being in nature. Building forts teaches lots of other skills, including use of all the senses.

7 Lots of creative people--writers, musicians, etc.--list nature as an early inspiring influence in their creative life.

8 Being outside in greenery seems to calm and ground kids with ADD. Perhaps nature is as necessary for kids' growth as food and air.

9 Organized sports and busy lives can squeeze out time for free play outside. We think of free play as a luxury, but it's necessary for physical and mental health.

10 Emphasis in the news of crime makes parents afraid to let their kids play outside, but the risk is exaggerated, especially considering how much we sacrifice by letting fear confine our kids indoors.

11 Even families who do get out miss the beauty as they tear up the landscape in their ATV's. College science majors no longer know basic life forms in nature because they didn't learn that as children.

12 If kids view nature as far removed and all about abstract global warming and rainforests, how will they ever be passionate about protecting the environment? They need to love the nature near their homes first by playing in it.

13 Adults need to take kids out and share their own awe at nature. As an antidote to too much falsely stimulating entertainment, take them hiking or camping or even just for a walk. Watch bugs, grow vegetables.

14 Teach kids to be alert under your watchful eye to keep them safer in general; nature is great for teaching alertness.

15 Saving stranded turtles, keeping nature notebooks, gathering plants for food or medicine, even hunting and fishing can create a connection with nature.

16 Finland: 'The core of learning is not in the information . . . being predigested from the outside, but in the interaction between a child and the environment.'

Ho hum; I got bored with the book and started speed-skimming. So, I have nothing to say about chapters 17 and 18. I cracked down on myself the day before the book was due back at the library to make myself finish.

19 Nature and animals can coexist with people through innovative plans in urban areas: cities can plan wild, overgrown patches of land or rough, green 'pocket parks' and encourage wildlife to live there by planting native plants they like. ('Pocket parks.' I love the term. I like how it sounds when I say it out loud: 'pocket parks.' And the concept sounds good, too!)

20 Imagine an idyllic world where kids grow up in a natural green environment and a world where buffalo roam once more on the prairie. Can we do it? Yes we can! (MBTI: I sense some INFP here...)

21 For Christians, caring for the environment isn't earth-worship; it's good stewardship.

The End

Last Child in the Woods

I'm halfway through this book (by Richard Louv), and this quote struck me:

"If such joy [in nature] is dormant, we must reawaken it. This is not an easy task for parents who previously missed the chance to connect with the outdoors. But that opportunity is still available, and I believe most parents will do this -- when they fully understand that nature is not just 'nice to have' but a must for healthy childhood development."

It struck me because it's almost exactly what Charlotte Mason said about finding a way to get kids out in nature:

"Impossible! Says an overwrought mother who sees her way to no more for her children than a daily hour or so on the pavements of the neighbouring London squares. Let me repeat, that I venture to suggest, not what is practicable in any household, but what seems to me absolutely best for the children; and that, in the faith that mothers work wonders once they are convinced that wonders are demanded of them."

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And there's this from teacher John Rick, envisioning a change in schools that would bring kids and nature back together:

"The society we are molding these kids toward is one that values consumer viability. The works of John Muir, Rachel Carson, or Aldo Leopold are seldom if ever taught to children in the public schools. Even in the sciences, where nature could play such an important role, the students study nature in a dry, mechanized way. How does the bat sonar work, how does a tree grow, how do soil amenities help crops grow? Kids see nature as a lab experiment.
The alternative? I imagine a classroom that turns outward, both figuratively and literally. The grounds would become a classroom, buildings would look outward, and gardens would cover the campus. The works of naturalists would be the vehicle by which we would teach reading and writing. Math and science would be taught as a way to understand the intricacies of nature, the potential to meet human needs, and how all things are interlaced. A well-rounded education would mean learning the basics, to become part of a society that cherished nature while at the same time contributing to the well-being of mankind. Progress does not have to be patented to be worthwhile. Progress can also be measured by our interactions with nature and its preservation. Can we teach children to look at a flower and see all the things it represents: beauty, the health of an ecosystem, and the potential for healing?"

I like it, but I'm reminded of how people tend to see all of education through the lens of their own interest. For example, the guy who did the Robinson Curriculum happens to be a mathmetician and feels that every child should be required to spend three hours a day on math. "The works of naturalists would be the vehicle by which we would teach reading and writing." I wonder if this means he would replace classic literature for nature books?With some balance, I think his suggestions are good.

Norms and Nobility ch 8 - The Promise of Christian Paideia

No, I didn't forget this book. It's just been busy and I haven't had the time for it. I've also been reading a couple of King Arthur books, which meant that this took a back seat.

8 - The Promise of Christian Paideia (paideia=education)

Why should anyone strive to improve himself through education and morality? The pagan Greeks could never answer this. Their best attempts at self-improvement and balance made them ego-centric, elitist and materialistic. But modern [Christian] classical education has its foundation somewhere between humanism and Christianity, creating a tension between the two. Christ embodied logos (rationality) and mythos (story/parables), which brings both together in a way that I'm skimping too much to explain well.

Greek pagans and Christian both agree that self-centeredness is a big problem. Ancient classical education strived to make students focus on something other than self, like duty and sacrifice. Ancient philosophy tried to help men focus outside the self through reason. Ancient rhetoric sought to build character through literature examples. Ancient art tried to draw man out of himself through focus on a better ideal and inspiration to live divinely. They had the right idea, but they lacked Christ to empower them and make them able to be better people through love.

Christ gave men the 'why;' the purpose for being better: in order to be perfect, like Christ. Christianity answered the questions the Greeks had been unable to reconcile, such as whether man is good or bad (the answer is that he was created good in God's image, but sinned and fell from perfection.) Man can choose to live according to God's law, but he more often chooses to be self-centered. His errors are avoidable sins rather than noble, fated tragedies that are out of his control. Christianity offered hope instead of unescapable fate.

Modern utilitarian education doesn't offer any high-striving idealistic attempt at self-improvement, or a Christian hope-based striving to be better. It offers a value-less secular model of relativism. There's no ancient complexity or Christian mystery; it's all analytical data. In trying to get away from the religious blind faith of a divine God, modern educaton replaces it with the religious blind faith of science that disconnects responsibility from what is learned/known. The student's education doesn't help him live better or be better.

But Christian classical education offers a focal point apart from self (Christ), a reason/purpose for being a better person, and an ideal to strive for (again, Christ). There's a whole-ness to it. Learning isn't an end in itself for the sake of knowledge; it's means to holiness and right living. It teaches love for God rather than egotism.

Modern education doesn't acknowledge any supernatural force; the mind and facts are all that matters. But ancients and Christians recognized something beyond the chemical/physical/material world. Christians relate it to faith and divine revelation. Faith is regarded as an aid to understanding, not a hindrance that opposes fact and intellect.

Ancients wanted the intellect to influence the will - learning truth should make people want to do the right thing. But it took Christianity to connect knowledge with will. After Christ, there were no mythological supernatural heroes because he was the perfect and ideal person -- he couldn't be topped. After him, saints were the new heroes. They were like Christ, the new hero, but not quite as ideal. They combined faith and knowledge with their will by trying to live out what they knew was right.

We can see the final results of ancient classical education in the book of Acts: in Athens by that time, the people only cared to hear the latest ideas. The focus wasn't on truth anymore. Learning had become trivial, and the people had become superstitious. Christianity gave them something worth learning, and something worth learning for. We need Christian classical education today to prevent students from becoming smug in their knowledge of data but incapable of being wise and responsible.

Norms and Nobility ch 6 - On the Necessity of Dogma

Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, harmonics, astronomy) and trivium (grammar, rhetoric, dialectic) were the seven liberal arts of ancient classical education. In the middle ages, logic replaced dialectic because they thought they already had truth and didn't need to continue wondering and searching for it. Teens still go through this process of questioning and re-assessing their beliefs -- that's what dialectic is, though on a smaller and less deliberate scale. Socrates asked his students questions to niggle at their beliefs in a softened way, because anything heavy-handed is rejected without consideration by the mind. In the process, the conscience is fine-tuned. Dialectic helps the student to sort dogma from truth. (Hicks goes into 'dialectic' a lot more in this section.)

Dialectic starts with dogma. It's the opposite of Descartes, which starts with nothing and slowly adds whatever can be proved. A classical student has to accept (and love?) some dogma early on to give him material to be dialectic about later, as he seeks to verify it. The ancient classical student was expected to take on his teacher's beliefs and assess them for himself when he matured. These days, Descartes is our modern educational model (Descartes is analytical; assessing beliefs is based on doubt first) and today's teachers aren't supposed to display any bias, much less expect students to follow suit. Dialectic students never stop questioning their own beliefs and ideas. Unlike Descartes, dialectic questioners must choose one side of an argument before they can dialect about it. Descartes stands aloof, analyzing without committing to any one side, and without making value judgments before analyzing. The Descartes value-free analyzing is useful in science, but not a good way for organic beings to live and find meaning or purpose. Hicks explains how this kind of analyzing encourages knowledge without ethical responsibilty, but I'm not sure how that works, and I don't care enough to re-read to figure it out; I'll trust his conclusion.

Modern teachers sometimes think they can get students to think and reflect dialectically with classical literature, but then they ruin it all by handling the literature analytically, requiring students to tear it apart. (If you're busy analyzing literature, you're not being dialectic or asking the right questions.) Analysis is far too easy for teachers to revert to because it can be tested. Everyone is so afraid of teachers sharing their own belief for students to question, that students are taught nothing and instead asked to analyze everything as if it was all science.

Communists have focused solely on man's class status and material needs/abilities, while Americans (until recently) have accepted every individual's right and ability to think dialectically and ask the important questions about life and meaning -- regardless of their social class. Hegel, Marx and Mao viewed man as all chemical reactions and physical sensations. Education in their opinion, even reading, is to teach utilitarian skills. They ignored man's need to find purpose beyond his immediate utilitarian activity. But man is more than his utilitarian role in society and he has a right to find meaning in life.

Norms and Nobility ch 5 - Saving the Appearances

Science as a school subject is a relatively new concept. Philosophically, the changing nature of the world made the ancients doubt the reliability of repeatable observation, which is the basis for scientific experiment. They put more stock in man's reason than in nature's stability. Truth was to be found in logic, not empirical evidence. They wanted to rationalize a simple explanation for what they saw in nature. Technology and devices were seen as hands-on -- inferior to the mind.

Man's mind and spirituality were seen as being parallel to God (because He made man in His image). Thus, intellect was seen as being on a higher plane than physical. Nature and technology just weren't as important to the ancients, unless you had a need to know (such as a doctor's need to know anatomy). If you had leisure, it was considered more blessed to spend it contemplating than experimenting.

Math was thought to illustrate God's divine mind (example: a perfect triangle), so it was acceptable to think about math because it helped men to understand God. In a classical curriculum, math is not mainly a practical subject you learn to balance your checkbook or double a recipe. Its purpose is to draw men closer to the mind of God.

Ancient thinkers felt that science and technology led to greed and laziness (inventions ease man's work and make him money.) If science was studied, it was to make what they observed line up with what they had reasoned to be true or find a way to make it parallel something in man's Ideal character. Bacon and Descartes were the first to value science for itself. We view technology as a way to control and get ahead; ancients only valued it if it helped inspire worthy character. Modern technology has allowed man to sin more -- birth control, nuclear weapons, media haven't really brought us closer to truth. Modern man hopes that technology will fix man, but ancients thought man should focus on self-improvement rather than ways to ease his workload or increase productivity.

Modern man doggedly tells himself that his gadgets and progress are making the world a better place, but man is really losing something he once had as technology makes us more rushed and confused. We can put a man on the moon, but we're worse than ever at controlling our greed. Our view of education is strictly utilitarian -- to help students get better jobs.

But today's educators see classical education as old-fashioned and irrelevant. They don't care what a student reads as long as he's reading. They never ask whether a student's book is making him a better person, making him ask the right questions. Thinking through issues isn't testable, though, so such learning is deemed not worth doing.

Norms and Nobility ch 4 - The Tyrannizing Image

Ancient teachers strived towards being as close as they could to the Ideal, and everyone knew what the Ideal was, and knew whether the teacher was living up to it or not. Even today, although we don't acknowledge the Ideal, we judge teachers by how well they live up to it. But few can really define what exactly that Ideal is. It's a perfect balance between the mythologized hero and reason. Although we can't always describe it, we recognize it when we see someone who embodies it.

You can't teach it by having student memorize its characteristics. But you can show examples of it in stories -- such as mythological heroes. Discussion clarifies what makes a person heroic and challenges students to imitate. The goal is for students to reach as close to the Ideal as they can.

Times change, and some might argue that the Ideal man changes, too -- but it really doesn't. What's good and right and true in one culture will always be good and right and true. The Ideal has been questioned and challenged over history so that we think it's out-dated. Even truth itself is thought relative. Descartes maintained that only what can be proved scientifically should be believed -- and not all truths can be proved scientifically. An Ideal can't be proved scientifically, therefore, it's considered a relative concept.

Our modern education demands measurable success. Our dilemma is that we can't prove sucess on tests by raising examples of Ideal men so we claim that such a concept has little value, yet in the back of our minds, we admire strive for that Ideal.

Ch 3 - Teaching the Father of the Man

More on Norms and Nobility (David Hicks)

Before the Roman era, classical teachers weren't as caught up in political power and money. Their focus was on ideas and balance and curiousity - much like Socrates. Socrates didn't resignedly accept things the way they were as the Sophists did. Sophists were more concerned with appearances.

Isokrates was another teacher. He rejected the idea that children needed their free, uninhibited childhood sheltered from the demands of adulthoods. Isokrates looked ahead at what kind of adults they needed to be, and focused on preparing their minds for the rigors of thinking maturely. Our own experience tells us that children usually want to be grown-ups, and trying to keep them in childhood is a bad idea. Children cherish memories of progress and achievements they made in childhood more than their memories of carefree play, and that period is the ideal time to instill virtue rather than fritter away their time on idle pleasure. Isokrates gave students an ideal image of adulthood to rise to, not a pampered existance of frivolity -- nor a child-centered education that makes children self-centered.

Ancient people knew which qualities were valued in a man, so they knew what to teach. Teachers had a goal they could urge their students toward, unlike moden man who doesn't exactly know what makes a man virtuous. The period of childhood was just a step towards the all-important adult the child would become. Childhood wasn't an idyllic place to stop and dwell. Teachers would sometimes teach the hardest things first (whereas we would wait until the child was older.) David Hicks remembers his friend's piano teacher who made his friend learn a Mozart minuet as his first lesson instead of learning simple beginner pieces. But his friend went on to playing Bach and Chopin, while Hicks lost interest because of his banal lessons. Knowledge-based education places more importance on the value of what's being learned (and the child's ability to rise to the occasion) than on the child-led concern of the child's readiness to learn it.

Knowledged-focused learning (rather than child-focused) gives teacher and student a common bond of shared content and shared activity as they learn together. Ancient teachers became real mentors; there was a real emotional bond between them. Our perverted society views all bonding, passionate love as physical mating, so we can't understand the love between teacher and student as they did. Within that love, teachers expounded knowledge by talking rather than by having students read books. The teacher was fully trusted to make his students wise and virtuous. Today's teachers learn how to appeal to the immature mind instead of expecting the child to try to grasp the teacher's more educated mind. Today's lesson plans that expound the tiniest details of information give the appearance of knowledge rather than truly helping the student to learn the balanced whole.

A Classical Understanding of Language

My summary of Norms and Nobility by David Hicks

2 - The Word is Truth - A Classical Understanding of Language

Myths show that, however much myths themselves don't make sense, man has a drive to make sense of what he observes in the world. Mythos (man's imagination trying make sense of the world) and logos (man's reasoning attempts to make sense of the world) are two sides of man's mind. Myth, as far as I can make out from this chapter, is like poetry in capturing everyman's feelings and giving them added dignity and beauty. Job's suffering couldn't be rationalized, but in the poetic terms of his dialog with God, Job was able to come to terms with his 'why' questions.

Plato defined and clarified the difference between mythos and logos. It's hard to express reasoning with words because old stigmas and associations stay with words even after their meaning has changed. Words are too fluid and evolving to pin them down and make them express reason, except when words are used in a legal or scientific sense. In education, words have to be used in that precise sense to have any testable standard. So science becomes emphasized over literature, which is more emotional. Schools find it easier to teach scientific principles than vague values like bravery and justice.

Classical education recognizes the power that a word has to inspire, even when the results aren't testable. Character is caught, not taught, through imaginative words rather than rigid scientific terms. Words have power that goes beyond what's observable on a graph.

Norms and Nobility ch 1 Virtue is the Fruit of Learning

Part I - The Idea of a Classical Education

1 - Virtue is the Fruit of Learning (another four part-er)

In Victorian England, only the wealthy received some version of a 'classical education,' so classical education and privilege came to be seen as the same thing. By 1900, others started coming up with various theories (mostly utilitarian) to educate the less privileged, and their models were far removed from classical and its stigma of luxury. But real classical education, which is based on "inquiry" that involves curiosity and imagination, isn't limited to any one time or place or class. It trains the mind to keep asking so that a classically trained student never stops learning, and is able to follow a concept to its logical conclusion and pronounce it good or bad. Since "nature doesn't tolerate a void," the young mind is first filled with a core of knowledge using a set curriculum. That way his mind has raw material to inquire about. The curriculum should encourage logical reasoning and spark curiosity and inquiry. The student will probably be taught the right thing to do according to his culture's highest ideals (which might be considered dogma), but he will be invited to test whether it really is right against alternative viewpoints.

Aristotle is "our best introduction to the idea of a classical education." He thought that the goal of education was to produce "happy, well-adjusted individuals" with leisure time to enjoy a good life, and he saw this happening in state-run schools so that it wouldn't be limited only to the privileged classes. Learning and knowing must result in right actions, because knowing isn't passively collecting data, but actively doing. Happiness comes from recognizing good, loving beauty and pursuing excellence and moderation -- harmony with the laws of the land, and virtue. The community's political system is obligated to provide this kind of education to ensure this happiness for the sake of the community's corporate good, but not for utilitarian uses (utilitarian: making productive workers). The state owes the individual a good life of harmony. It's not the other way around: the individual is not a cog in the wheel of the state to be trained/indoctrinated to be its servant or slave.

Cultures down the ages have always taken it for granted that virtue is something that can and should be learned at school. That was never questioned or doubted. Everything else (math, science, language) was secondary. Today, that's reversed: teaching virtue is pushed aside to make room for facts and disciplines. We tell students that they can have luxuries that will buy them happiness by learning technical skills that will result in a good job. In so doing, society has shot itself in the foot -- virtue and constant self-improvement have given way to practical utilitarianism, and the result is greedy, selfish people who don't care about charitable works that benefit the community. The only virtue we demand and teach anymore is basic reasonable civility so as not to be an annoyance to society.

Ancients cultures debated whether virtue was inherent in man and only needed saving out of flawed society and bringing out the virtue within him, or whether man lacked virtue and needed it to be taught and developed in him. Technology might develop more virtue in man if it's already there, but technology could be dangerous in the hands of men who have no inherent virtue. Plato's dialectic method of questioning was supposed to bring out the wisdom already in men, and it was only the man living the unexamined life, no longer questioning and analyzing his own motives, who unwittingly did evil acts because he was ignoring the virtue inside him. Aristotle, on the other hand, thought that right actions were what developed goodness in man. Just thinking about goodness does nothing; it's the bodily behavior that makes a person good. That debate kept everyone focused on the nature of virtue and how best to produce virtuous people. Today, we no longer debate it. We just ignore virtue altogether and teach uniformity -- everyone the same.

Norms and Nobility Prologue

I've just started Norms and Nobility by David V. Hicks. I think the book is going to make a case for classical education. This is a 4-part Prologue.

David Hicks begins by talking about a book called "The Rector of Justin" by Louis Auchincloss, in which a man tries to build a school where students will learn to know, serve and reproduce what is good and realize that their knowledge carries responsibility. But the school fails. In our materialistic culture, is such an education possible? Social theories, important-sounding scientific research and faddish educational models have replaced life's important questions about truth and justice, and old fashioned common sense. Today's people are more fluent in computer language than with age-old questions about what really matters. Our experts are not only inexperienced about wisdom; they aren't even asking the right questions, but people are too awed by their intelligence to notice. They are like raw college graduates steering a ship who are too full of their books and technical skill to respect time-honored experience. We know schools are failing and students are getting involved in drugs and bullying, but we don't know what to do about it. Hicks is going to offer a solution based on ancient classical education. Science should serve and supplement education, not the other way around.

Education reflects what its culture believes about the nature of man, and, whether stated or not, every person who writes about education is influenced by and espouses what he believes to be man's nature, value and purpose. Ancient cultures had an ideal heroic model that they felt man must aspire to, although they varied about whether that ideal was based on bravery or loyalty or duty or whatever. Art, history, science were tools to encourage bravery or duty in the student. But today's experts call such ideas unscientific. The ancients thought that attempts to improve the world with science were arrogant. It was man who needed the improvement. Even math was thought useful only as far as it helped to transform man. Our modern emphasis on using technology to change the world -- and even society and man himself -- is the wrong priority and "can only lead to mental confusion, physical destruction, and spiritual damnation." The problem isn't the world; it's within man himself. Educating man to fix his opinions or environment or circumstances won't fix the evil nature within him.

Our education strives to control our environment [engineer bridges, re-route rivers, genetically modify crops, cure disease, build a business empire] rather than answer age-old questions about our purpose in life. 'Ought' has been replaced with 'can.' Focusing on what seems do-able with science seems more productive than reflecting over questions that make us uncomfortable. Medieval men saw God as being perfect and far off, and their own world as corrupt, they were looking in at heaven from outside God's realm. Modern man sees himself as enlightened and looking from the inside out. Older cultures saw man as a servant who dared not exalt himself to the heights of his deities. Modern man doesn't feel he is out of place to rule nature and rule others.

Education today focuses on the operation of 'can' instead of the normative 'ought:' we exhaust possibilities without questioning whether such a thing ought to be done. And our lives reflect this - the same thinking was at the root of the 1960's attempt to use technology to subdue inequality in Vietnam without asking whether it was a good idea, or simply presumptuous. We teach communication skills to score well on the SAT (and other utilitarian reasons) and rarely ask why communication is necessary for us as people and as a society. [If a person can get a decent job and raise a family, does it really matter if he's illiterate?] We raise brilliant intellectuals who are too prideful to let a bad idea go. We strive to make men more efficient and productive at building and carrying and figuring, as if this present existence is all there is, and ignore his spiritual side. Good education shouldn't just teach what people want to know -- it should teach them what is right to want.

New Book

I'm starting a new book. For the moment, I'm just going to paste a couple quotes from its Preface without even divulging the title of the book...

Having now had an opportunity to study schools as a headmaster as well as a teacher, I would argue that the teacher, not the curriculum, needs to be the focus of reform. The greatest value of the curriculum proposed in this book, I now believe, is that it sustains and nurtures teachers as practioners of the art of learning while discouraging non-learners from entering the profession. (What non-inquisitive, discipline-bound person would want to teach in such a school as I have outlined in the second part of this book?) The classroom should be no place for teachers who are afraid of change, who are willing to talk about ideas ad nauseum but unwilling or unable to act on them, to experiment, to grow, to absorb new disciplines, to teach beyond themselves, their college lecture notes, their State-approved lesson plans, their textbooks.

[My book] presents a formidable challenge to schools controlled by administrators and teachers who simply want to be left alone and allowed to maintain old habits in the midst of a rapidly changing world. Some will defend their traditionalist stance as a means of protecting time-honored values or of avoiding educational fadism, but underneath, I suspect, indolence and insecurity have not a little to do with it At any rate, this type of conversation is contrary to the spirit of learning. Schools are places where students learn because they are places where teachers learn. Only a school (and by extension a curriculum) that encourages teachers to be always learning will keep its teachers fresh and fearless and its students happy and motivated in their studies, ready to test their lessons against life.

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There is a disturbing trend these days, in this era of hyphenated Americans, to seek to motivate students and to build their self-esteem by devising ethnocentric studies tailored to their race or creed or to some high-sounding social agenda. Until now, the American school -- for all its shortcomings -- has embraced the idea of a common American culture and has acted as a powerful centripetal force in American society. The new craze for ethnocentric studies, however well intentioned, erodes the school's power to help our nation forge out of many, one.

American culture is, like all cultures, derivative. Its sources are sundry and varied, but they are not different for Latinos and Afro-Americans and Euro-Americans. It is one culture characterized by racial and ethnic diversity and, yes, by predominantly Western and European influences, but none of these sources or influences is as worthy of study as the common landscape and history, the shared political creed and social identity, the mutual aspirations and disappointments of the American people. Intellectuals, the media, and ethnic leaders tend to dwell upon our differences, which are often more interesting (for some reason) than our similarities. This makes it all the more important for schools to define in their curricula a common American culture and in this way to frame the debate that will naturally arise in a pluralistic society like our own.

One must ask, if our schools fail to believe in a common American culture and to teach it, what will become of us? This question would certainly perplex the ancient whose language, perhaps wisely, could not distinguish between education and culture. It is -- as this book attests -- the sacred duty of the school not only to believe in our common inheritance, but to teach the unfolding truth of that inheritance. Respect for truth -- not the self-esteem of our students or our regrets about the past or our hopes for the future -- must guide us in the quest for that common inheritance and in our definition of the curriculum.

Imagination, Beauty, and Creativity

This is from an article by poet Luci Shaw; I'm just going to post the second paragraph.

I have come to believe that beauty is something inherent in creation (and by creation I mean the environment, the created universe in which we live). A sense of the beautiful is so integral, so deeply a part of who we are and what we enjoy as human beings, that we may easily take it for granted. Often flawed, or marred, or distorted as a result of human depravity and failure, beauty is still visible in the fingerprints of the Creator on the natural world, in the wilderness, and in human beings who reflect the Creator's beauty.

Only the individual twisted by wrong choices and destructive relationships into perversity and emptiness will create and worship ugliness. Beauty is perhaps one of the few things that constantly calls us back to God, that reminds us of a standard of goodness, vitality, and reality that embodies the beautiful. The Benedictines hold that beauty is "truth shining into being," a principle adopted by John Keats in his famous line "beauty is truth, truth beauty." In this sense beauty is redemptive and powerful. It can motivate us to turn a corner, to pursue a new objective. It awakens a new awareness in us because it is often surprising enough to startle, showing up in unexpected forms and places.

Tim and I are reading The Christian Imagination by Leland Ryken because it was assigned for our upcoming CM conference for a book discussion. The book is a collection of essays; we're just reading Part 2, "Imagination, Beauty, and Creativity," because the theme of this year's conference is beauty, and the essays in this section seemed to go along with that theme.

I suspect that Luci Shaw is getting at the exact point that will be emphasized at the conference, although she comes at it from a poet's perspective, so I felt like I had to wade through a bit of unsettling sentimental fluff to get to what she was saying. Luckily, what she was saying made the wading worth the effort. The gist of it was that beauty seems like an ornamental extra, but it's important enough for God to include in creation and even in decorative elements in the tabernacle, and it seems to be a vital need of humans created in His image.

We also read an essay entitled "The Christian Imagination" by Janine Langan, but that will take a second reading before I grasp enough to have anything to say about it.

The Christian Imagination edited by Leland Ryken

For the upcoming CM Conference, I'm going to be reading The Christian Imagination edited by Leland Ryken; they've also listed an article by Alfie Khon about education (Tim and I read that last night) and a short story by Tolkein. The Christian Imagination is a collection of articles by various authors like Tolkein, George MacDonald, Francis Schaeffer about "the relationship between imagination, belief and words." I'll post a very brief synopsis after each chapter. You can see the list of readings they'll be doing on their blog.

The conference is in a couple months. I'm also reading The Lord of the Rings with our local CM mom's group. I've finished the first book, The Fellowship of the Ring, and I'm re-reading it - partly because I want a second look, and partly because we have a six-week schedule for each book and I don't want to get ahead.

My project of proofreading Parents' Review articles has been neglected the last few weeks.

Poetic Knowledge

I've started reading Poetic Knowledge by James S. Taylor (no, not that James Taylor!) with Katie - she's already posted on chapter 1; meanwhile, I still haven't gotten through the introduction. This isn't any reflection on the book; I just can't get my mind into gear lately. I've been focused on computer issues - I upgraded to a new computer with Linux Ubuntu installed, and installed Xubuntu (Ubuntu Lite) on the old one to make it run faster and prepared that one for dh. And I've been spending a lot of time figuring out what MBTI types everyone is since I read fellow INTJ Merry K's blog post about the INTJ type. So, I've just been too preoccupied to focus my mind on any serious reading. Even my Parents' Review proofreading project has suffered.

After numerous attempts, I've decided to abandon hope about ever finishing the introduction and just jump into chapter 1.

A few weeks ago, when I first got the book and was all excited about reading it and sharing it, I tried to explain to a friend what I thought was meant by the term Poetic Knowledge. I knew it wasn't knowledge about poetry, but I figured it was a sense of the big picture, including all the big questions everyone wonders about - why are we here, what is happiness, what meaning is there to life, etc. I thought it might be tied in with philosophy.

Here's the definition Mr. Taylor gives in chapter 1:

"First of all, poetic knowledge is not necessarily a knowledge of poetry but rather a poetic (a sensory-emotional) experience of reality. . . What must be at the beginning of this understanding is the phenomenon of poetic experience. Poetic experience indicates an encounter with reality that is nonanalytical, something that is perceived as beautiful, awful (awefull), spontaneous, mysterious. It is true that poetic experience has that same surprise of metaphor found in poetry, but also found in common experience, when the mind, through the senses and emotions, sees in delight, or even in terror, the significance of what is really there."

I think I might have been on the right track, but I'll know more when I read farther. And, when I'm clearer about what Poetic Knowledge is, I'll see if I can put it into words I understand.

Madame de Stael's Father

From Mistress to an Age by J. Christopher Herold, 1958Monsieur Necker made himself useful to the King of France, got in some trouble, got out of it . . . here's a quote:

He was by no means a fool, and in some ways he was ahead of his time. His realization that France was rich, that only the government was poor, and that credit was the heart of prosperity--these certainly are ideas that have gained some currency in our times; but his lucidity was balanced by his blindness to the need of taxation, without which the credit was bound to collapse--as indeed it did, burying Europe in its ruins. His opposition to the laissez-faire doctrine, to Turgot's Panglossian notion that 'the general well-being is the result of the efforts of each individual to further his own interests,' was based not on a study of economics, of which he knew little, but on considerations of social justice. Government regulation, he insisted, was necessary to protect the people against lawless exploitation, and in the conclusion to his book on the 'Commerce of Grains' he echoed Rousseau's 'Second Discourse:'

It seems that a small number of men, after dividing up the earth among themselves, have created laws for their common protection against the masses . . . And yet, it must be said that after the establishment of laws to safeguard property, justice, and liberty, almost nothing has been done as yet for the most numerous class of citizens. 'What do the laws of property mean to us?' they well might ask. 'We owe nothing. Your justice? We have nothing to defend. Your liberty? If we do not work tomorrow, we die.'

(This would have been 1781-89)

The Education of Madame de Stael

Tim took me on a tour of his college, including the library, and I found a really interesting book: Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Stael by J. Christopher Herold, 1958. I've seen her name come up in CM's books and PR articles, so, naturally, I was intrigued. I was able to get a library card and check out the book.

Madame de Stael's first name was Germaine, and she was an only child. Her mother (Madame Suzanne Necker) was enamored of Rousseau's ideas and kept Germaine home to educate her herself. Here's a quote from the book. Sorry for the lack of caps - my fingers are tired, I'll go back and fix them later.

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Madame Necker, by some astounding feat of self-delusion, imagined that she was bringing up her daughter according to the teachings of rousseau--'like emile,' she wrote. a greater contrast than the education rousseau prescribed for emile and the education germaine received from her mother would be difficult to imagine.

rousseau, it may be recalled, had emile brought up in the country, isolated from the corrupting influences of society. germaine spent her childhood in a drawing room in the middle of paris. emile's tutor avoided any kind of formal instruction, seeking instead to let his pupil learn only through direct experience and guiding him in the spontaneous development of his natural gifts. 'for madame necker, all education consisted in instruction,' we are told. 'she taught mademoiselle necker latin and english, and she made her copy long extracts from books; but she never spent one hour alone with her in familiar conversation.

emile had not yet learned to read when germaine had read a whole library. emile's tutor reserved the idea of god for the end of his pupil's education; germaine learned her catechism before she was three. emile did not know of the existence of women until he was an adolescent; germaine had listened to discussions of love from infancy on.

emile's body was made strong and healthy by open air and exercise; knowledge and love of nature were the only discipline in his curriculum; and nature was his only textbook. 'the education of mademoiselle necker,' a childhood friend reminisced, 'was directed entirely toward the development of the mind. exercise, walks, everything that pleases and fortifies children did not in the least enter into madame necker's plans. and so her daughter knew how to dance, but not how to run. she recited thomson's 'seasons' but could not tell a hyacinth from a tubarose.'

there is one more striking contrast between germaine's education and emile's. rousseau had emile brought up not merely in solitude but away from his parents. 'oh, emile hadn't any father,' he said to boswell. 'he didn't exist.' he knew, of course, that emile's education was an ideal model rather than a practical possibility; but surely there is a middle ground between being brought up without parents and being, in a sense, married to them, as germaine was. her emotional involvement with her mother and father was the most decisive factor in her formation.

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the result of this education: germaine was starved for affection, because her mother's duty forbid her from showing affection. germaine thought her mother was dull and moralizing. she satisfied her craving for excitement with novels and plays, mostly sentimental. she faked coughing spells and fainted to get her mother's attention. a doctor diagnosed nerves and recommended rest, no exertion. So germaine's education ended at age thirteen, with her and her mother at odds.

Hold On To Your Kids: A Book Every Adult Should Read

Hold On To Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers by Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D., and Gabor Mate, M.D.

I started reading this book because a number of moms on a parenting forum I frequent were reading it, and then I started reading it to dh because it was so good, and now I think this is a book that every parent should read in order to understand the forces creating a generation gap and undermining parental attempts to guide their own children. I'm only blogging each "part" rather than each chapter. This first part actually includes three chapters.

Part I - The Phenomenon of Peer Orientation

It's common for kids to be absorbed in instant messaging, email, hanging out with friends. Meanwhile they keep their parents at a distance, or are even hostile to their parents. Parents feel less confident, less respected, and often resort to harsher discipline in a desperate attempt to bring their children back. Yet children continue to reject their parents' values or have respect for parents or accept guidance from them. Is this a normal part of the maturing process? Hormones? Individuating? The author says no, it's not normal (although it's so routine that we no longer are even alarmed by it) or healthy.

What's happened is that society has changed, and the context for parenting - the context of an attachment relationship - is missing. Parents don't earn respect because they do everything by the right method. They have their children's respect because of who they are to their children - because they're the parents (at least, that's how it's supposed to be, and how it was for hundreds of years). That attachment starts in infancy and develops so that the child isn't even aware of it, but it provides context for parental respect throughout the child's development. The problem is that our culture no longer values or supports that attachment. In fact, it tries to undermine it. In place of parental attachment, children orient to their peers, but peers can't provide the love, acceptance, stability and guidance that experienced adults can.

Orientation is a person's need to find their bearings - we get cues about how to dress, what to say, what to value, our own identity, on whatever we're oriented to. With animals, the young orient to the mother, and she teaches the young how to survive. If ducklings orient to the wrong thing, they may not learn what they need to know. If humans orient to peers instead of to parents, they may not learn what they need to know, either. Humans weren't designed to have other children as the dominant influence in their lives, and to take their cues from other young in the species.

But society, largely motivated by money, has created a youth culture that encourages kids to orient to peers rather than adults, and trends in our society (also motivated by money, as in moving for jobs, and moms needing to work) have resulted in peer orientation in place of parental attachment. The momentum is so strong that even dedicated parents are having a hard time holding onto their kids. Peer dependency fuels aggression, bullying, drug use, depression, even suicide and murder because kids aren't mature enough to guide themselves, much less each other. Dr. James Coleman warned about what he saw coming back in the 1960's, but nobody took him seriously - and now we're living in the midst of it.

People can't have competing attachments: Jesus said we can't serve two masters, and no love relationship can survive if one person has an outside lover. One must be rejected, and become an object of scorn and hatred. When children have an attachment to peers whose values differ from parents, they're placed in a position of having to choose one and reject - hate and mock - the other. They reject their parents and become the opposite of everything their parents are, not to be individuals, but to conform to 'another master' - their peer group.

Parents unwittingly set their children up to form alternate attachments when they force their protesting infant to go to a care-giver without establishing an attachment with the care-giver first. Daycares where infants and toddlers outnumber caregivers forces children to attach to each other, and public schools where children are segregated by age guarantee it. Even our churches exacerbate peer orientation by dividing members into age-appropriate ministries rather than encouraging family togetherness (even church "family activities" usually have adults gathered in one area, and children elsewhere, either playing games or watching videos).

Appropriate parent/adult attachment doesn't have to eliminate schools. In Provence, France, they still have proper parent/child relationships even though the children go to public schools. But lunchtimes are spent at home, and the teachers reinforce the parent bond and support adult attachment; children are never thrown together to fend for themselves and create their own support network exclusive of adults. The whole community encourages bonding among families.

Next section: How Peer Orientation Undermines Parenting

How Does a Poem Mean? ch 1

I started this book with Tim and J yesterday. I'm just going to say a teensy bit about it because I think that to do any more would be more work than I need.

John Ciardi says that a poem isn't about what it means; poets don't write poems because they have something to say. People who put a message into rhyme usually end up writing doggerel. Poets write poems because they like to play with words. And people by nature enjoy tackling challenges, so poets like to the challenge of working within the framework of poetic style. Their playing with words might be likened to a juggler. The more difficult he makes it by juggling more balls, the more pleased he is with himself, and the easier he makes it look, the more people will enjoy watching him. A poet enjoys seeing how he fit words into a difficult set of parameters. And the more smoothly he can make it work, the more his poetry is enjoyed by others.

Good poems often go from specific details to something bigger, and the best poems do it seamlessly. Ciardi uses Rober Frost's poems Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Eve to show this. Robert Frost starts with a specific snowfall in a specific woods, but ends with a broader context ("...miles to go before I sleep.") If asked what he meant by that, he doesn't exactly know, because it wasn't written to say something specific. Yet through Frost's mastery of words, it elicits a feeling in those who read it.

That's why the book is called "How" does a poem mean, because the art is how words are used more than the precise, direct meaning of the poem.

Pride and Prejudice Reading Schedule

My friend Ginger and I finished Jane Eyre this week (my other friend finished weeks ago!). So far, the books we've read have been Sense and Sensibility, Emma, and Jane Eyre.

Today we start Pride and Prejudice. The best schedule seems to be one chapter per day, six days a week. It's manageable, and if anyone falls behind, it's easy to catch up on a weekend.

Pride and Prejudice reading schedule for Jul-Aug 2008

Jul 2-5: Ch. 1-4
Jul 6-12: Ch. 5-10
Jul 13-19: Ch. 11-16
Jul 20-26: Ch. 17-22
Jul 27-Aug 7: Ch. 23-28
Aug 3-9: Ch. 29-34
Aug 10-16: Ch. 35-40
Aug 17-23: Ch. 41-46
Aug 24-30: Ch. 47-52
Sept 1-6: Ch. 53-58
Sept 7-13: Ch. 59-62