Atmosphere in a Charlotte Mason homeschool

Sorry about all the helicopter, guest, and toddler interruptions, haha, but that's life and part of my atmosphere. ;)

Education in crisis: a little pep talk :)

New Term... let's go!

Term two starts for us today.

We have so many great books lined up and are so excited. This is the second year in a row that our term breaks have matched up with the liturgical year almost perfectly (Term 1 breaks for Advent and Christmas, Term 2 breaks for lent and Easter, Term 3 breaks for a month of summer vacation.) It has been wonderful... just enough time to do some serious partying with family and friends, some spiritual reflection revolving around the liturgical season's events, and to get in a good house scrubbing. Had we not also been dealing with my husband's father's death, I think this would have been the perfect situation.

Not making many changes, but I'm cutting down our morning time  a little bit this term in an effort to be more efficient with individual time. They really do work better alone than in a group, I noticed. At least in this stage.
For the kids, I'll be teaching a CM community knitting class each week, and they will resume their bi-monthly Wayside co-op activities.

I'm also scheduling a Great Books study group weekly for the adults in addition to the CM and Bible Study we do each week. My hope is that at least once a month we can keep up getting together to discuss Great Books, too, using the Socratic Method.  On weeks when people don't come, I plan on reading for an hour, and either blogging or discussing what I'm reading in our facebook group.

It seems to me that this is a fun way we can keep the older young people and adults involved in the "education is a life" aspect. I've really enjoyed the times we've had young graduating homeschoolers or college students join us at CM study groups or Bible Studies, and I'm sure they will be equally enjoyable to have around in a Great Books study group. This is also an opportunity for us parents to pre-read books we need to be sending down the line to our high school students. Many parents in the community here have not ever been exposed to the Classics, so this is a great opportunity for growth for everyone.

Anyways, happy schooling to you all! Looking forward to a great term!

Musings on morning time

As our Advent break draws nearer to the end, I've been reading, one by one, the Ordo Amoris posts on Morning Time. I am doing this because our own morning time, which evolved naturally over the last two years as I noticed that we did a lot of great work in the mornings, has a lot in common with hers. Being older and more experienced, I want to learn what I can from her to make it run more smoothly.

Overall, her posts have been very encouraging, and helped to solidify what we were already doing naturally, and to give me a vision for what it was and could be in the future (as my kids are still very young.)

Around here we call our family meetings "Consilium" which means "council" in Latin. It also means advice, wisdom, judgement, plan, and purpose. Seemed like it fit.

On my schedule, Consilium I happens after breakfast and liturgy of the hours but before individual work, chores, or personal hygiene.
Consilium II happens around the lunch table, and Consilium III happens around Fika, our tea / snack time. I'm a big planner, so each section is already pre-planned. We *try* to do each consilium each day, but since we don't always get to it, I also love that consilium is in addition to their normal, everyday work. It's an addded bonus, but it IS where we do the bulk of our growing/learning/family educational culture stuff.

In our house, Consilium I consists of our "calendar meeting" and the Connecting With History work. We open with calendar time, which isn't what other people do with a special time of that same name. Instead, we open our calendar, discuss upcoming events, and record firsts (first snow, first leaves falling, first steps, etc.) in our book of firsts. We also do a quick habits lesson, and a run down of any character type stuff that's been going on and needs to be addressed. Lastly, we go through one section of the Catechism and discuss. It's a family meeting.
Then we either read from a history book or a book of saints biographies as per our CWH day. We discuss what we have read and do map drills and pages in our book of centuries. We might act out a scene from history. CWH basically lays out the program, and we just follow along, doing something different each week. We also might do memory work from our history readings or the Bible. And we discuss the catechism, and it's relation to what we are reading.

Consilium II consists of Arts & Literature. We read a poem and practice reciting a poem we are learning, and then we read some literature, usually something of a "classics" kind of nature like Peter Pan, or Treasure Island. On Tuesdays, it consists of a Shakespeare reading, Thursdays, a Plutarch reading, and Fridays, a Picture Study and Composer study. Maybe a poet study if we have something scheduled for that day. The rest of the week we just continue in  a good lit book, often mythology or an epic poem.

Consilium III consists of Science & Geography. This is when we do nature study or outdoor geography, read geographical poetry and / or do experiments. If it's raining or we are indoors, I do a read aloud from The Story of Science or from a geography book I select that has a bushcraft/survivalism or travel type theme.

Consilium IV is not called that, nor is it official, but that's what it is. Sometime between dinner and bed we read the Bible and discuss it. We also fit in a folk song.

In other words, I break up my "morning time" into small chunks throughout the day, and since we pray the liturgy of the hours as a family (which consists of prayers, psalms, a scripture reading, and intercession) several times a day, we don't really consider it a liturgy. The two are intimately connected though.... praying the liturgy of the hours before Consilium prepares us to head into consilium in a different mindset.

In reading these blogs, I was a bit put off by her insistence that morning times are liturgy and I admit I giggled a little a I read about her frustration with forgetting to say: "the Lord be with you...." at the end.

As a Catholic family, we differentiate between individual actions and communal actions undertaken by the entire church but when we can we attempt to unite to the body of Christ, not divide from it. We already have liturgy, and we participate in the liturgies of the Church daily, so we don't need to innovate new --less perfect, less communal-- liturgies.  But there was something to her insistence that I completely acknowledge and understand. She is trying to emphasize that what happens in morning time is sacred. Something holy is happening as we struggle and endeavor to recite, discuss, and read and debate and grasp in peace. And that, right there, is something I completely understand.

I also understand her insistence on doing it in the morning. I don't know what it is about the morning. All I can say is that we have their attention. Something magical happens in the morning in their minds and in ours. That's why I chose to do history in the mornings. It's the one thing that catechizes them super profoundly, so I wanted to makes sure they got a double dose of catechism in the day via history study in the AM, when they are paying attention.

For me, by the time afternoons come around it's usually the time when they get rowdy, so having outdoor events planned for that moment is really great. It also allows me to do whatever work I want to  accomplish in the house while they flit around outside noticing things and looking them up.  I have thought about switching my focus to make Consilium I longer and more all-inclusive. My children at this time are all so young that I'm not sure they would be able to handle more than one read aloud at a time. All things are possible, but at this time I don't really see how I would do it.

These are some of our most treasured times together, and though it would be easier to just school them individually and move on, it's of infinite worth to me that these times build up the communal/family culture. My children enjoy the individual time they get with me, but they do the bulk of  their growing through our family interactions and work towards a common goal. We have a large family mindset, recognizing the value of interaction between us, and so for us.... that's what it's all about!

There are no breaks from education.

In keeping with AO's idea of "terms," I try to set up our year so that we break for a month during Advent, a month during Lent, and a month for Summer. Breaks are hard on me... mostly because my kids need some kind of routine. By the time break rolls around we are usually ready to stop formal schooling for a while and to focus on the things that matter in these seasons, but my biggest challenge is to keep my kids from going squirrely.... they just seem to thrive on routine.

Yesterday, I resolved to watch them closely to see what kinds of things I could have them focus on that weren't "academic," persay, but involved in their overall character building-- things like good habits. I was surprised by what I saw.

Even though we are "on Advent break" from schooling, and although I have placed zero academic pressure on them during this season, here are just a few things I noticed that the children did either on their own or by asking me to help them.

My oldest (7): Read Act I of Shakespeare's Macbeth with a commentary, wrote a page in her journal about it, recited last month's memory work in science, poetry, math, latin, and catechism, made up math word problems, sang a memorized hymn, named two birds she saw in our yard accurately and looked up a new one, and studied for, took, and passed a classical latin pronunciation exam. With absolutely no pushing from me other than encouragement to "finish what she had started doing" before she moved on. (habits training)

My second oldest (6): Read and copied the names of candy bars from Willy Wonka, regularly spoke to me in French, looked up two science questions about the nature of matter, did math word problems my oldest made up for him, and narrated a Bible story he had just read to me perfectly.

My second youngest (4): Begged to learn Latin, traced and copied letters and correctly pronounced them, identified the letters in her name in various places throughout the house, spoke French to me, correctly identified a bird in the backyard, told me a story she invented that was quite good, used vocabulary that shocked even me, and and used proper math and logic to get out of eating her lentils.

My youngest (1.5): Spoke French and English to me, sometimes in full sentences. Demonstrated an uncanny awareness of her surroundings. Counted to three on her fingers.(!) Laughed hysterically at a line from Macbeth when it was read to her, and then repeated it over and over again. ("By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes...")

My only conclusion can be this: "Education is a discipline, an atmosphere, and a life."
I never cease to be amazed at the depth of wisdom in Charlotte Mason.
If you keep this maxim in mind as you build family culture, not only does education become a lifestyle but your children grow to delight in learning... to thrive in, and create for themselves, an environment that challenges them to learn more and to think better.

On books, joy, and things

There is something I hear almost every day while skipping through Charlotte Mason blogs, groups, and forums that I find troublesome. I want to address it, but since I'm not sure I can put my finger on it, this is only an attempt at grasping at the description of a premonition with words I'm not sure will do it justice.
Charlotte Mason's methods, and homeschooling in general are gaining in popularity. And I admit that popularity scares me a little bit, for many reasons I won't bother with here.
Of the families I have encountered who follow CM's ideas, I find there are two camps of extremes that many people seem to fall into. The first, are those who call their schools CM because they use living books, go outside,  and finish by noon, but who don't bother to look at the other things which make up a CM education. The second are those self proclaimed "purists" who reject all forms of education and curriculum which stem from anything that wasn't explicitly described/mentioned/theorized about by Miss Mason herself in her own writings, to include questioning forms of classical methodology on the basis of a lack of commentary regarding said forms.  The truth, I suspect, like all things, lies somewhere in the middle.

I love Charlotte Mason's ideas, but I am not Charlotte Mason. Her ideas were her own, but came from her interactions with other idea-havers, I take those and try to push them to new places, following the same trail that has been forged, and sometimes glancing off the trail. Looking behind me. Enjoying the scenery. And that's OK.  My identity is secure, But I get the feeling that, while navigating the homeschool world, many women don't seem to have that same security of identity, and seem to be seeking after something more than just a means to provide their children with a delightful, complete Classical education. Women want leadership and practical help, and Miss Mason certainly offers that in a most marvelous manner, with wisdom and patience and great care. But I get the feeling, every so often, that people just "hear about Charlotte Mason" while researching, think to themselves, "I want that!" and then go about trying to purchase what they need to make it happen. They don't understand  that receiving a classical education is a paradigm shift, a thing that will literally require that the whole family get on board and start living what they claim to believe as true, important, and necessary. Charlotte Mason is not a style of curriculum. It's a lifestyle change.

Now, you've heard me blog about classical education, and you've heard me blog about catholic education. You obviously come here a lot to read about a Charlotte Mason education. And recently, I tried to put to rest the idea that these educational theories were at odds one with the other. The pursuit of truth and beauty is not UNIQUE to a CM education, although CM does it particularly well. At the same time, without the ability to *reason* no student will arrive at truth or beauty. The value of the Classical / Catholic education, on which CM's ideas are based, is that it formally teaches this skill. But the value of that lesson is only as meritorious as the teacher who has instilled in his student the love of learning, the reason for needing reason, and the purpose of life-- Catechesis.

CM students who have parents that don't get this are bound to have problems. The students will form in themselves an ability to discern and connect with the true and beautiful that is handed to them, but they will be lacking the ability to sort through ideas themselves and come to their own conclusions.... and to join in the Grand Conversation in a way that adds to the conversation and doesn't just take away from it.

CM's techniques can help all children to appreciate truth, beauty and goodness, but it takes the ability to think like a philosopher.... to think and parse and organize...... to be someone who can attack the status quo. She knew this! And she advocated the teaching of logic, only in her time she felt that it was adequate to surround the child with good books, and then to allow him to absorb critical thinking skills from his interactions with the authors. Her reasons for doing this were two-fold.

First, students raised using her methods had been taught to carefully notice, mentally organize, categorize, and express information as it came from the very beginning of their education. They had little need of formal teaching in doing so by the time they were older because this was how they had been trained. Critical thinking was a habit. Hard mental work was a habit.
Second, her students had read ONLY the best books. And these books had become as friends to them, mentors and guides. Many of the classical educators of her day were uninterested in the persons they were teaching.... only enamored with the method of classical education. Because of that, they failed to inspire a desire for truth and a love of knowledge. This is huge, because it was through the reading of the world's greatest authors, often in the original languages,  and through knowledge of the scriptures, combined with the respect of the teachers towards the children on the journey that children grew to become critical thinkers.... students who desired to know more, and who were able to work with the information they were given in such a way as to organize it and come to logical conclusions. The Bible itself helps us to understand this:  

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:5)

It does not say that God will do the work here. It says that WE will do the mental work.
CM parents who don't understand this will be raising lovely people who are self-motivators, hard workers, and beautiful citizens. But they won't be world-changers. They will still be followers.

Education doesn't happen by osmosis. The child himself must absorb and fiddle with and-- not regurgitate--- but process information. Recently, on facebook, I saw that an article written by a pope-hating schismatic condemning the Church-approved Divine Mercy devotion had begun making the rounds. I was distraught to find that in a group of homeschooling Catholic mothers, a woman posted the article. What was even more disturbing was to find that more than 2/3 of the comments from the beginning were from women who read the article and responded to it in this way:
"Oh my! I had no idea! I will stop saying the Divine Mercy Chaplet at once!"
None of them thought. Not logically. They were lemmings. Never mind that the very pope who leads their Church had handed out copies of the Divine Mercy prayers to visitors at his audience that week and exhorted them to pray it. Never mind that the Divine Mercy prayers are approved by the Church, and for a logical reason. No, they were satisfied to completely give it up-- indeed, to call it EVIL-- because they had read a convincing-sounding argument on the internet that said so. My mind was boggled.

In our day, things are much more complex than they were in Victorian England. Technology and the advent of the information age has made "knowledge" cheap and easy to obtain. But somehow people are more stupid now than they were when there were no smartphones to google questions. Their attention spans and ability to discern the underlying truths or lies of what they read are practically non-existent. It is maddening for the student of logic to walk through the clamoring earth, turning his ear to the left or to the right because illogical, false, and ridiculous conclusions are being formed in every direction and shouted from every hilltop.  Literally maddening. I'll get to that in a minute.

Suffice to say that logic is critical. Thinking is critical. Habits are critical.
The reason CM succeeds particularly well at speaking to my generation is because she lays out a map for the journey of the home educating parent. Not only does she vision-cast, but she gives practical advice. Not only does she theorize but she comes alongside her reader an expounds upon her theories. Her books are a compass and scale, her words a trail of delight through the dangerous and often confusing world of education.

Which brings me to my four-fold issue.
Daily, I come across women who, motivated by the promised joy that a CM education brings, attempt to "purchase" that joy-- or worse, steal it!-- without any hard work. And those who do have completely missed the memo.
Miss Mason's methods work because:

Life should be simple.
Work should be hard.
Prayer should be constant.
Only the greatest minds should be our friends and teachers. (Good books)

Life should be simple.
No, I'm not suggesting you buy a farm, although I'm quite sure that doing so would benefit every one of us. I am suggesting that a true classical, and therefore Charlotte Mason education requires a simple life. Gone are the excessive "extras" of modern life and back are the basics: good time management. attention to detail. remembering what's important. getting rid of stuff, clutter, and baggage. finding work that is meaningful. making do with what you have. Not taking on more than you can handle. Finishing what you start.
In following this idea, CM's student's are done early because we don't have endless piles of curriculum and things to sort through and accomplish each day. We don't switch it up every two weeks or every few months or even every year. We stick with ideas, and ride them through to the end.

Work should be hard.
A simple life is best lived in hard work. This is why people yearn for the family farm. We have work, we do it, and we are satisfied. This goes for mental work too, and Charlotte's students know this. We don't reward or punish the children as they work. We allow natural consequences and the satisfaction of a job well done. This builds confidence and.... surprise... joy.
Today people are lazy and obsessed with entertainment over work, chocolate and wine over sacrifice, naps and jammies over clean homes and diligence. This is not the way of the saints, and it certainly is no the way of joy! Is it any surprise that so many people in our world are medicated for depression?? Our minds AND our bodies are rotting away. Perhaps worse is the rotting of our minds, as mental laziness creates a seat for stupidity. A disciplined mind, no matter how simple, will always be superior.
In Chapter III of Ourselves, Charlotte Mason lays out quite clearly the enemies if the intellect: Sloth, poor intellectual habits, inability to stay in one field of thought, and an inability to connect ideas because of a lack of "well-rounded" knowledge. We all know that hard, physical work is good for our children, and even for ourselves. But let us never forget that hard mental work is the cornerstone of a truly CM education.

Prayer should be constant.
The elements of a simple life are perhaps best laid out in the monastic rules of Catholic religious life. I hear the Rule of St Benedict is excellent at demonstrating this, but I'm not as familiar with it as I should be. I live by a version of the Rule of St Albert of Jerusalem, who wrote it for the Carmelites.
Regardless, most of the monastic rules are perfect examples of a simple life lived, based on this principle: work, and pray. (You may have heard Catholics say: "Ora et labora!") I would add.... "detach," but this is not something that lay people can do in the same way that monastics do it. That being said, I assure you we can come closer to what they do than what we are doing now. Wink, wink. A life of prayer starts with a habit Charlotte Mason calls "thought of God," and which Catholics recognize as a contemplative life, one in which our awareness of God's presence brings about a change of heart and attitude. Prayer is sustaining, and food for our souls.... a way to acknowledge this "thought of God." And so we pray. Basing our schedules and routines off of prayer times rather than eating or playing times is a great way to discipline the mind and a practice of those who historically have achieved the greatest ability to think clearly.

And good books should be teachers.
I add this point as a fourth and most important point because it was so dear to Charlotte herself. Miss Mason's ideas about books should be read by each individual educator. Her methods can not be followed casually with any measure of success, as evidenced by the scores of unschooling "CM" educators busily fluttering around the internet desperate for new curriculum or new CM ideas "that work for them." 
We learn by imitation. I see my children do it every single day. If we do not give them the Great Minds, the Masters to imitate, who will they imitate? Would you rather your daughters imitate Penelope or Amelia Bedelia? Saint Joan of Arc or Judy Blume's Margaret? Would you rather your sons imitate King Arthur and Caractacus, or Harry Potter?
We who have heard Charlotte's thoughts on literature and who have smiled and agreed, what business do we have putting twaddle in the hands of our children? Why read a compilation created by a disordered thinker over a whole work written by a master? (Omnibus and Story of the World, I'm looking at you!) Discovering twaddle is tricky in a world full of books, but the best guideline I can give, and one I use in my own home, is this:
1. Does the book capture the interest of the adult as much as of the child and it is written in language that will not only delight, but also teach and instruct the reader(s)?
2. Does the book require that even the adult concentrate to extract it's full meaning?
3. I might even add an additional guideline: Is the book the original source of the ideas it conveys, or does it expound upon an original idea? And if it expounds upon that idea, does it do so in a logical way or is it building an illogical idea on top of the mental work of others?
And if you are following the other guidelines-- committed to a life of prayer, hard work, and simple living--- will you really have TIME to read twaddle, even "not quite" twaddle? Not a chance.
I was recently involved in a discussion between a group of protestant women and a group of Catholic women regarding the nature of the Church. It was a very upsetting conversation to me on many levels, but mostly because these are women who I have very much fond affection for. We had both read the Bible. They were sure of their position because of how they were reading the Bible, but I was certain they were reading the Bible incorrectly. I attempted to prove it with good books... by quoting the earliest recorded Christian writers like Ignatius of Antioch and Justyn Martyr. They remained unconvinced, I'm quite sure, because they couldn't even fathom the paradigm shift required in their thinking skills.... they had been taught one way: to follow rabbit trails of ideas, and I was trying to teach them TO THINK (to follow one logical trail of ideas) because if I could prove that Christians believed a certain thing HISTORICALLY, then surely they had to acknowledge that things had changed somewhere along the way.
These are "well-read" women, but they couldn't think because all their lives they had been reading books that were less than perfect, so that when they finally found themselves faced with logic, they couldn't recognize it and in fact, vehemently rejected it in favor of a fallacy they had repeated and repeated and repeated to themselves time and again by reading books which were good, captivating, interesting, etc..... but which weren't THE BEST BOOKS. They were used to reading books in the Christian Living section of the Bookstore. I was trying to point them towards the Church Fathers, original sources of ideas in their original form. Whole different animal. (It was reading the Church Fathers that led me to Catholicism, of course! I took them as my RIGHTFUL teachers.... and so should we all, not because I did but because they have the authority and place in history to teach us the BEST and TRUEST living ideas from which have sprung all other ideas about faith and Christianity!)

It seems like every day I read a new post by a homeschooling mother looking for ways to purchase.... or steal..... a CM education for their children, to secure joy without being willing to actually do the work of reading CM for herself and then applying it, keeping these four principles in mind. And yet these four principles are what constitute the bulk of a classical liberal arts education. These four things--- simplicity, hard work, prayer, and good books/teachers--- will lead to good thinking, and therefore to truth and beauty and the transformation of the world. I have even met people who felt satisfied and accomplished giving their children a list of "living books" to read each week and who all but ignored the foundations of good thinking--- grammar and arithmetic and logic! DESPITE Charlotte's own ideas, which I'm quite sure they never read for themselves.

So let me say it again, and I say it as much to myself as to anyone who might be reading:
You cannot purchase a CM education in a box. You cannot teach the classical liberal arts without setting up a culture of simplicity and order, hard work, prayer, and submission. You cannot be less than perfect, and then expect perfection. You cannot have children who love the outdoors, and not go outside yourself. You cannot have children who are kind, and not be kind. You cannot have children who are wise, and not seek after wisdom yourself. And you cannot be a Saint unless you seek to "be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:48) God will help you.

Follow the advice of St Josemaria Escriva who said: "Work, and things will change! You will yield more fruit, and it will be sweeter than before."

"Classical" educators, in my mind, who enroll their children in sing-songy memory work co-ops in the hopes of creating something they refuse to be themselves will not succeed. Charlotte Mason educators, in my mind, who allow their children to read twaddle disguised as literature, and to lounge around reading and playing all day rather than taking their studies and their responsibilities seriously, will not succeed. This is NOT a statement against any particular program or book or series, but rather against sloth, laziness, and intellectual suicide.

I leave you with these brilliant words, even more important in our day:

"Nothing is more common in an age like this, when books abound, than to fancy that the gratification of a love of reading is real study....there are many, who certainly have a taste for reading, but in whom it is little more than the result of mental restlessness and curiosity. Such minds cannot fix their gaze on one object for two seconds together; the very impulse which leads them to read at all, leads them to read on, and never to stay or hang over any one idea. The pleasurable excitement of reading what is new is their motive principle; and the imagination that they are doing something, and the boyish vanity which accompanies it, are their reward. Such youths often profess to like poetry, or to like history or biography; they are fond of lectures on certain of the physical sciences; or they may possibly have a real and true taste for natural history or other cognate subjects;—and so far they may be regarded with satisfaction; but on the other hand they profess that they do not like logic, they do not like algebra, they have no taste for mathematics; which only means that they do not like application, they do not like attention, they shrink from the effort and labour of thinking, and the process of true intellectual gymnastics. The consequence will be that, when they grow up, they may, if it so happen, be agreeable in conversation, they may be well informed in this or that department of knowledge, they may be what is called "literary"; but they will have no consistency, steadiness, or perseverance; they will not be able to make a telling speech, or to write a good letter, or to fling in debate a smart antagonist, unless so far as, now and then, mother-wit supplies a sudden capacity, which cannot be ordinarily counted on. They cannot state an argument or a question, or take a clear survey of a whole transaction, or give sensible and appropriate advice under difficulties, or do any of those things which inspire confidence and gain influence, which raise a man in life, and make him useful to his religion or his country."

Cardinal John Henry Newmann
On the Idea of a University

Setting the Classical Question to rest once and for all (maybe)

I've been doing a ton of thinking about the differences and similarities between a typical Charlotte Mason education and a typical Classical education in a practical (not theoretical) sense. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't think a Charlotte Mason education was superior. But I find it important to note that Charlotte's vision was achievable within the framework of the classical education.... because though what I received was basically a Charlotte Mason education, my parents were classical educators, and had never heard of Charlotte Mason. In other words; they have the same goal, use many of the same methods (albeit slightly differently), and if the parents are themselves thinking people, they will probably come to the same conclusions.

Children have different personalities, evident almost right away in their upbringing. I have a son who could stand in a corner all day but never learn his lesson, but take away something that he cares about and he straightens right up. I have a daughter who is very logical for her young age, and needs parents who constantly uphold the standard without slipping. I have another daughter who reacts with pain and horror when she is disciplined by an impatient parent, but who tries her best to do what she ought right away when we remain calm and affectionate. I could go on. Though these children are different, all of  them are helped by Charlotte's ideas, because she taught the respect of children as persons. This idea is a given to Catholics, who are taught from the beginning to respect the human dignity of children, but may easily be missed by people in other faith traditions or who have no religious background at all.

I have many friends who are fence - sitters, drawn to Charlotte's ideas but resolutely remaining on the classical side of the question for many reasons.  For many Catholics, this happens out of fear. We know and understand that a classical education is our heritage, and the pursuit of the liberal arts our sacred duty as human beings. We fear that Charlotte Mason, not being quite fully Catholic, can't understand the nuances of a truly Catholic education. I think that's a little silly, although I can appreciate the concern. Now, if Charlotte was good enough for GK Chesterton, she was good enough for me, but maybe I don't know anything. (One day I will blog about CM compared to the Jesuit educational model, and that of Don Bosco.... it's a fascinating topic that deserves to be explored, since each of these were so similar!)

For others it happens out of pride or anxiety. In the early years, CM is certainly more "gentle," with children, and though they catch up quickly and in some ways excel if pitted against their classically-educated peers, it can be disconcerting seeing children in a classical school spouting off long lists of president's names or timeline dates they have memorized when our own children aren't.

But in my experience, most people reject CM once they hear about it and stick to the modern classical method (a paradox!) because CM is just too complicated... there are no ready-made curricula that actually provide Charlotte's methods, and those that do are quickly abandoned as we read her work ourselves and realize the principle of integration.

We have to read her ourselves, think for ourselves how we are going to do it, and implement it ourselves. We (the educators) have to be willing to change, to grow, and what's more amazing-- to discipline ourselves in surrender to this great ideal: the education of our children. CM is not just for kids, it's for parents, too.

Those of us fortunate enough to have CM schools in the area, and there are a few, still have to learn her methods so we can remain consistent with their education at home. In a CM education, the parent takes full responsibility for the student's education, and so does the student, as he grows in awareness. CM is self-education, if nothing else. In fact, if I had to pick just one major difference, that would be it: Charlotte Mason taught children to educate themselves in the liberal arts, learning from the original great thinkers. The Classical method teaches the liberal arts TO children. Many classically educated children go on to be great thinkers themselves, make no mistake about it. But a hunger for knowledge--- that's a sign of a CM education. It's a given that Charlotte Mason had one goal: that children love to learn.

Most of us CM educators agree that Charlotte Mason provided a "type" of classical education to children... she certainly taught them the liberal arts. In my case, I was given what amounts to a CM education growing up.... and certainly I am full of ideas and connections between ideas. In fact, connections between ideas are what I tend to call "God moments" when lightbulbs go off in my brain, and you usually hear all about them right here, as you well know.
I certainly can say I have a passion for learning.

I have a vast knowledge of names and faces and friends throughout history and out in the wild. I am familiar with most of the great works and an excellent writer myself. And I've even studied philosophy-- I majored in it in France. Philosophy: the ability to think and reason,  as you know, is the end-all, be-all of a Classical education. Knowledge of God in a Christian education.... combine the two and you have a Classical, Catholic education.... one which many protestants are attempting to reproduce in some ways through programs like Classical Conversations. (Other well known protestant curriculum providers, like Heart of Wisdom (ironic name much?), are working hard in the homeschool world to eradicate any classical/Greek influence in their children's education, choosing to provide a purely "spiritual, Hebrew" education. Watch me LOL.... but that's another blog for another day.) When I look at my own education, I see that I was given a catholic, classical education in every sense of the word: a grounding in the seven liberal arts with a CM twist: my parents were respecters of persons. I have a hunger for learning, and my mind makes connections between living ideas. Success, right?

But even with all that under my belt, one thing I can NOT do is understand philosophy in the terms used by the great minds. Sometimes, I can understand it, but not reproduce it or add to it. When I read the great books, I often feel like an outsider looking in. Though I can comprehend the ideas therein, I cannot add to them anything constructive, just absorb in awe and wonder.

Now this may be because I am not that bright, but I have come to believe that this is also because my education in grammar, arithmetic, logic, philosophy and rhetoric was not formal in the sense of a course in which I learned to use language or terms a certain way, and then build upon that knowledge in any kind of a framework (what the French call "encadrement.")

Rather, my understanding of arithmetic, logic, philosophy, grammar, etc. comes from a large, feast-like banquet in which I picked and chose what was interesting to me and connected to other ideas I was learning about. I lacked structure, and the lack of structure is NOT an impediment to me as a wife, mother, and journalist. However, I have noticed that my husband is a more clear, less muddled thinker than myself. And he himself was given a FORMAL education in logic, for example, which later helped him to not just *understand* philosophy, but participate in the great philosophical dialogue in a way that I never can without that same formal dialogue.

Let me give you an example:

I can read Peter Kreeft, find it moving, apply it to my life, and make something beautiful come to life with what I've learned. I can even teach a class on Peter Kreeft's ideas to others, or share what I've learned through him in a small group setting.

My husband, however, can hold his own in a debate with Peter Kreeft. He might be invited to lecture alongside him one day. He is capable of holding a debate or conversation with him, and from time to time, point out a logical flaw in an argument he might make. (not that this has ever happened, nor would it.... just giving an example of how the end-product of our different educations might look.)

So what does that matter in a practical sense for those of us who aren't aspiring to be debaters?

Well, in my house, for example, the husband leads and the wife and children follow. (Most of the time, haha.) Imagine how that looks... my husband, with his trained eye for the logical/ reasonable, etc. is VERY qualified to lead us. He hears a problem and immediately breaks it down into parts, analyzes each part, sees how it fits into the whole, and repositions the problem parts so that he finds a reasonable solution. (I liken this to doing a complex math problem or diagramming a complicated sentence.)

Me? I hear a problem and instinctually sense right or wrong responses, feeling my way through it, and perhaps even using experience or evidence to guide me. I can point out where the bits are that need reworking. I can even come up with solutions that are viable. But I often miss the "bigger picture" or "long term" application, and nearly make very big mistakes because of it!

Now, of course, this takes natural ability. But I do believe that our educations come into play here, and I keep that in mind when planning out my children's educations. In fact, I read a FASCINATING article the other day about women's educations in the middle ages, that demonstrated exactly why and how women were educated classically...
For tasks like running a nation, the ability to think, debate, reach for the stars, etc. is critical. For tasks like running a household, other abilities come into play. Now, I probably would have had better luck with some of these issues-- with learning logic, for example--  had I been better at follow-through as a child.... with finishing what I start. But CM addresses that, and had my parents been followers of her method, they would have made sure to help me follow through until this stuff was as natural to me as breathing. My point, though, is that I am OK in my own role without it.

What do our kids need? Each of them is different. Each of them demonstrates a propensity for certain types of thinking. My eldest is a philosopher, already. My second child an engineer. My third an artist. My fourth? We will see. Will all of them need to learn formal logic and formal rhetoric? Perhaps. Perhaps not. It will take discernment, to see which ones are called to "higher" tasks, and which ones are called to ordinary-- although no less important-- tasks.

Many of us younger CM educators frequently experience sidetracks into the realm of the Classical World as if it were foreign territory.... interesting and exciting, but also different and slightly fuzzy and unclear. And it is. In the younger years, CM children seem to have a finger in every pie, but Classical children seem to be adept at things that make us insecure and awe-struck.... we watch them spewing off long lines of memorized work and think.... "OUCH!! My kids are NOT doing that!! I must be way behind!"

To understand what a classical education actually IS, I recommend first looking at what it is NOT. It is not what we imagine when we think of students in classrooms today, filling out lists of spelling words and math terms, taking home worksheets, and other such nonsense. It is not workbooks, or textbooks, or fact-sheets, or sing-songy memory work.

William Michael, director of the Classical Liberal Arts Academy, wrote an excellent article about the Dorothy Sayers phenomenon here. While I do believe Mr. Michael's point is a good one, the reality is that practically speaking, this means not very much. Dorothy Sayers' ideas about stages really just facilitate the classical education for children. In the past, an education was begun at 6 and ended when it ended.... with the study of what was true, right, good, and beautiful from throughout history.

Insofar as the language arts go,the emphasis on grammar, latin, etc. is really about ordered thinking. Learning practical and classical arithmetic helps us to think clearly.

In practical terms, most classical schools tend to follow a similar sort of path as CM students.
"The Well Trained Mind," was the first how-to-homeschool book that I read, and re-reading it once I had a grasp of Charlotte Mason's methods reminded me of why I liked it in the first place. Practically speaking, the curriculum looks very similar and the ideas are very close. WTM recommended more textbooks and didn't have the same standards for living books that were 100% twaddle-free, but ultimately, school "looks" sort of the same. The notebooks used in WTM were not used in a CM education (more on notebooks in this blog soon!) There was more writing at an early age in WTM. In most classical schools, the teacher teaches and the students listen... something that is not happening in a CM education, where the teacher facilitates and the student and book interact. Charlotte Mason's method is self-education. WTM and other classical methods make heavier use of the teachers' knowledge (or in the case of homeschool, the curriculum writer's) knowledge.

Both do narration, copywork, and dictation. Both read, hopefully mostly from living books. Both emphasize grammar and latin, arts and sciences.
In a practical sense, the differences are so subtle.... subtle enough to be almost imperceptible. But they are important distinctions, and make up a truly "Charlotte Mason" education.

What are these differences?

In the younger years, grades 4-6 in a modern classical education, for example (or when they are ready, in a truly classical education, begun whenever and building upon itself) a formal composition course is given in three stages, commonly called the "fable stage," the "narrative stage," and the "chreia or maxim stage." Charlotte Mason, on the other hand, did not do ANY formal instruction in composition, but rather used written narration (built upon a foundation of oral narration experience in the younger years) and excellent copywork/dictation , along with grammar (formally begun in grade four, but taught throughout in gentle language lessons.) Charlotte's students can use living books here.... such as Strunk & White's "The Elements of Style," or the classic work "On Writing Well."
Similarly, we can teach a formal grammar course for one or two years, but then leave it to living books such as "The Transitive Vampire" alongside some formal recitation of the rules of grammar.
A PhD thesis I recently read used a preliminary study to demonstrate that a Charlotte Mason education with no formal composition instruction at all provided a more than adequate skill in composition. I myself am a writer, having never received formal composition lessons in the classical manner. I like to think that I'm a good one. ;)
My thought for the fence-sitters here is that should you realize when your child reaches this level that s/he has not had adequate narration experience, then you might consider a formal composition course. Should your child already be a strong writer, as outlined in Charlotte's works, then feel free to skip this step and to trust her.

Outside of this, there are very few differences between a CM and Classical education in these stages other than the approach to memory work (which I will discuss momentarily.)

The only other practical consideration is that in a traditional classical school, in grades 7-12 traditional logic, material logic, and rhetoric are taught. Again, these are not formally taught in a CM education, but rather acquired through reading the great thinkers. Thus Ambleside students, for example, read Mortimer Adler's "How to Read a Book" for logic, and read some of the best works of apologetics out there. This method is perfectly suitable, but again it is worth noting that should a particular student demonstrate a propensity for debate or especially a need for improvement in communication, debate, or critical thinking skills, then certainly a formal logic course could be taught, and these are readily available to homeschooling families. However, the necessary use of these formal courses is another story. Not every child will need one, and if Charlotte's methods are adhered to closely, especially from the beginning, I believe the need for these courses will show itself to be greatly reduced, if not eliminated. It possible to teach ordered thinking and communicating using the great books alone.

Especially should you sense that your student has a particular call to leadership, careful consideration of the child's ability in these areas (communication, critical thinking, debate) should be given. But of course, the whole goal of a classical education and of the teaching of the liberal arts is that all students be ready and able communicators, thinkers, and debators. So there you have it, the only differences in practical terms are the endless hours spent in the formal teaching in textbook or teacher-to-student format of the subjects of composition, logic, and rhetoric, much of which should be evaluated as the child grows. The main goal, in a CM education, is for the teacher to get out of the way... and that should be considered when one considers adding a formal course in any of these subjects.

Now there is an other area which deserves some thought, and that is the area of memory work. Charlotte's students recited, of this we are sure. The emphasis in recitation was not at all on facts, dates, etc but on what was true, beautiful and real.
To this end, memory work should consist mostly of poetry and scripture, passages from great speeches, and be done in such a way as to be virtually painless-- Charlotte describes a method of memorization "by accident" in which the child is exposed to the poem each day at varied times and during other events (hair brushing, eating, etc) and thus the poem is learned painlessly.  I know this is how I have memorized things in the past, poems that still stay with me!
Charlotte's students also recited those necessary facts they must know in the areas of math, grammar, catechism, etc. This was undoubtedly in question-and-answer format and was perfectly necessary, but kept short-- five minutes before or after class, unlike in the modern classical method where the bulk of the class is spent in recitation / memorization "work."

One thing is certain: Charlotte's students would not have learned their memory work with daily exposure to "fun" sing-songy versions of facts, which differs greatly from the modern classical method employed in courses like classical conversations. That being said, if the child enjoys this exposure,  I personally don't see any harm in teaching memory work in this way.... particularly if their friends or siblings are also doing it as it gives them a sense of big-ness / importance to be able to do what they see their siblings or friends doing.

One last thing to consider for me has been in the methods of evaluation, namely tests and records of work accomplished. For the first few years of my children's schooling, despite having rabidly doused myself in Charlotte's ideas from morning til night, I still felt compelled to keep binders full of *proof* that my children were learning. I can't say if this concept came to me naturally or through my reading of The Well-Trained Mind, but my children had notebooks we filled with evidence that they had worked. They enjoy going through these notebooks, but I noticed they enjoy most looking at copywork, narrations, maps, and art work they have designed. I've never seen them stop on pages of math problems, worksheets, or word lists that weren't created by themselves. As a result, I've stopped wasting a lot of unnecessary time on record keeping. For example, almost all of our math work is done orally right now. I write down our narration to encourage them to narrate better, but not when we narrate in a group. Our grammar is done mostly orally as well.

I have plans to write a different blog post about notebooking in a CM education, so this clearly isn't the place, but I did want to give an example of the difference here between a Classical concept of examination and a CM concept of examination.

Charlotte's student's exams consisted of telling back something they had learned throughout the term, something very different from the multiple choice, formal essays etc. of the Classical and traditional methods. There were no comprehension questions, no three paragraph responses, no diagrams.... just an oral or written explanation to the teacher of the subjects studied and what knowledge was acquired. A conversation.

Looking back at some of the teaching techniques the two methods have in common is important. A sample copybook employed in the classical method often contained a line or quote from a poem, for example, at the top of the page. Below, on each line, the student would labor to re-create the phrase over and over in his or her "best writing." I did this as an adult in the Spencerian Script copybook series from Mott Media and found it tremendously boring after the first line.... despite the fact that I thoroughly enjoy penmanship.

Charlotte's students had copybooks which were quite different-- each line was a copied piece of literature, scripture, or a poem from the child's own reading which s/he had found delightful. The lines were copied using the habit of perfect execution (ie. perfectly from the beginning) and were not repeated over and over, so that when one went back to look at the copybook it became a commonplace book... a carefully kept journalistic record of the child's mind and a map of the world of ideas s/he was building. What a difference! One copybook might be seen as building the habit of perfection for perfection's sake... the other for the sake of later delight and enjoyment... and even further reflection. Powerful! This is the stuff I love about Charlotte Mason, and the reason she has my heart.

Rest assured that I will have plenty more to say on the subject, but for now I feel confident that there is enough evidence in these few paragraphs to show that a Charlotte Mason education is indeed a classical education, and more. At the same time, it is perfectly possible to provide a traditional Classical education with the end result being children who grow into self-educating adults who love to learn if we are careful to adhere to some of Charlotte's ideas about parents and children... ideas which are a part of our heritage of ideas should we be blessed enough to be Catholic.  I can say I was given a Charlotte Mason education despite my parents having never heard of Charlotte Mason because my parents were classical educators, respecters of their children as persons, outdoorsmen, and lovers of ideas. They were thinking people.

There is truly no need to pit the two against each other or to bounce, conflicted,  from one to the other in the hopes of creating "thinkers," but just as in all things, an actual, careful study of Charlotte's ideas in her own words and of the history of education as a whole is the best way to understand her methods and the reasons why she did what she did. Producing children who love to learn, and giving them a classical education, ultimately requires that parents provide what Charlotte called "a thinking love." This thinking love .... we owe it to our children.

Happy educating!

More thoughts on integration

I wrote yesterday about the integrated life.

The topic has been sticking around in my mind all morning as I experienced what is a typical Monday in my home.

My husband called from work around 6:30 am to ask me to prepare my son to join him when he got home. My son got ready. When my husband walked in the door, my daughter asked if she could join them, and he said yes.

I had a neat pile of books sitting on the dining room table ready to tackle, but the only people I was left with couldn't even name letters, so I sighed.

I set about doing my morning chores with the little ones following close behind me undoing everything I was doing. Grateful for the time to train them despite the annoyance of having to take the time, I got down on their level and began to do the work of instilling habits in them from the start. "Can you help mommy pick up that sock?" and "let's see if we can make this look nice and neat..."

In an hour or so my older children will come home, tired and happy from their activities out of the house, which included daily mass and a visit to their grandfather.
I will make lunch, and we will eat together. Afterwards I will settle down with them and read a story or two, and we will take naps. Then they will work on the things they left behind this morning: math lessons and map work, grammar and a science activity. If we're lucky! There's a good chance someone may pop up at the door, and then lessons will be for after dinner.There's also a good chance hospice will call and let us know it's time for us to gather bedside around my Father in law. Then maybe we'll have to skip lessons tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day..... life is happening. Every day. But I am armed with a list, and with a method, and ready at every moment if  the opportunity should present itself.

THIS is what I meant by "integrating," not the other way around, where life dictates what learning will happen. That is unschooling, and this is an academic education. We integrate learning into life, but we aren't rejecting formal lessons. We are just being malleable... allowing the day to dictate the right place and time for those lessons, and keeping them a priority without falling to pieces when they have to shift a bit.

We didn't have to be homeschoolers long to learn a few things that have shaped how we look at homeschooling.

1. When you homeschool, there is INFINITELY more "housework" that needs to get done because you are actually living IN the house. This requires a plan and some initiative. Good habits are critical.

2. When you homeschool, life gets in the way. Every time. This is important, because it ties into our philosophy. People will think you don't do anything all day and pop over at random times. All your children will get sick at the same time. You will have family emergencies. New babies will come. Your husband will be home some days. People will ask you to babysit.
The reasons "not to get things done" are vast and wide, and it takes a firm vision and adaptability to overcome these challenges. Some people respond by shutting in the children from 8-2 and forming a "school-like" environment (desks, a classroom) in the house. We don't. We are at home, and not at school, so our lessons take place at the kitchen table and on the living room floor. Other people respond by saying "well, they still learned something." And calling it a day. We don't. We believe it is our duty to provide a strong academic life to our children, AND to be flexible.A lack of one thing doesn't mean we can let EVERYTHING go. It just means we need to keep calm and educate on.

Similarly, when I refer to integrating, I mean subjects. We are used to thinking in compartments because in school, this is how we learned. Not so with a Charlotte Mason education. People often look at the lists of subjects covered in regular CM week and balk--- "WHAT??! I could never have the discipline to do all that!!" I hear that all the time, and get frequent, frustrated phone calls from new-to-CM families who are struggling to fit every subject in, but wanting to.

A CM education isn't like that..... we aren't stuck at our desks all day. When we read good books, we learn ALL the subjects, and this is an idea that has struck me so powerfully that I am considering re-thinking our one-subject-per-day method... and even our future.

Normally, I read science books on Mondays and Literature on Tuesdays and Geography on Wednesdays and History on Thursdays and Arts books on Fridays. But lately it has seemed that I am reading history books every day and science books three times a week,  or that some of my subjects are deeply overlapping.
When we read Aesop, it is literature. But it is also history--- and even bring out discussions about science! Plutarch is civics and history. I read Le Fabre's insects the other day to the children, and they noticed the religious lessons, the lessons of "the back then" way of life, and the lessons in science and nature study and even religion! Jenny Wren in the Burgess Bird Book is a gossip. Should we gossip?  On and on it goes.
It's becoming harder and harder to compartmentalize, And I'm becoming conflicted about where to schedule certain books... and that's a good thing. It means I'm starting to get this CM thing right.
It also causes me to reconsider our future plans. As a Classical home educator using the Charlotte Mason method, I myself am steeped in the Great books and in the experience of life-long learning. Suddenly, twelve years of school doesn't seem enough to go on to really "educate" my children. Suddenly back and forth emails I am having as an adult with my parents on the topic of a book we've both read are reminding me that learning is still happening NOW. Suddenly the entire concept of a "children's book" seems a little silly, really.
I'm also surprised that instead of "sending the kids off to college" I am seeing something different in my mind's eye: maybe a campfire visit with my kids and maybe even their kids, after a hard week's work, singing some treasured folk songs, and reading some John Muir, discussing it late into the evening and solving the world's problems as the world settles around us and the cicadas buzz.
Anyways, I used to think about how my kids were going to grow up really good scientists or really good historians and how something was going to stick. But now I think... my kids are going to grow up really good THINKERS, and then the whole world is their oyster.

Lately, too, I've been getting rid of all my books that don't make the "perfect" cut. And that has often included books that are so clearly subject-oriented that other subjects are excluded. In the end, I find, I'm reading history when I read a living book about a plant and the one who discovered it, or reading science or arithmetic when I read the biography of a philosopher. Everything seems to mesh into this big, beautiful "story of the world."  I love it, but it makes it so hard for me to compartmentalize when I am planning books for the family to read aloud! This is also an integrated education--- although it seems more complex, there is something so beautifully simple about reading a classic and saying: "let's see what we dig out."

I hear parents ask a lot of questions about how we lesson plan. The real answer is that we don't... we read incredible books, and we discuss them. Sometimes we use them for reading practice, other times for memorization. We might copy portions of them in our own hand, or dictate portions of them to each other. If they contain a potential activity that we think sounds important or interesting, we might re-create it using materials we have at home, to better understand it. That's really the extent of our "plans."

I hear parents say a lot of things on facebook. Here is one of the most common complaints I hear in the homeschooling realm:

"When will my child be ready to do this stuff on his/her own?"

I believe that children will branch out when they are good and ready, and that our job is neither to stifle them nor to push them, but just to observe, encourage, support, and model until they figure it out. When we make this stuff important to everyone in the family, people tend to NOT fall by the wayside. I learned by having a co-op with a dear friend of mine that the stuff we do not get to still gets done when we commit to doing it regularly even when life gets "in the way" and it is imperfect.
The growth still happens.

Ultimately, when I talk about integration I am thinking of how we ALL begin to connect the dots and how the material we study affects our day and how our day affects how we study and everything in between.I mean--- not unschooling--- but flexibility and learning-across-borders. I mean that our learning has become a lifestyle, and that it just feels.. whole.
I have friends whose kids don't even realize they are IN school-- they are constantly telling people that they aren't. Which is embarrassing, but hilarious. And kinda what we want, in the end.

2013 Term I Daily Routine and Reading Schedule

   Appian Way Academy Term 1 2013

CM Principles 3 & 4

Today's principles are a hot topic and a favorite parenting device of mine.

3. The principles of authority on the one hand, and of obedience on the other, are natural, necessary and fundamental; but--
4. These principles are limited by the respect due to the personality of children, which must not be encroached upon whether by the direct use of fear or love, suggestion or influence, or by undue play upon any one natural desire.

I am firmly convinced that principles 3 and 4 cannot really be separated in that though we can focus on one, we always need to keep it in the context of the other, so I determined to put them both together in my own study of the 20 Principles.

This question has been heavy on my mind much lately as I re-evaluate my parenting techniques and styles which have evolved tremendously since the days of having just one little one.

Growing up in parenthood in Christian circles, we all passed around the same books. You know the ones--  the ones that you mention on a facebook status and lose friends over. The ones that have upwards of 5 000 negative reviews on amazon from grumpy hippies with hilarious screen names like gentlemama or heartsong. The ones I recently read that some of my friends who are into attachment parenting actually go to the bookstore and move around so that no one else will chance upon them and read them. o.O

The fundamental issue at stake in the hatred of those well-intentioned books is a philosophy of parenting revolving around teaching the child to become others-centered rather than the entire family being subject to the child's whims.

And there is one majorly "controversial element" involved-- the act of SPANKING, a topic which my husband has forever banned me from discussing on my blog or in other social media because the very fact that I approve of the use of spanking and was willing to say so on my blog once got CPS sent to our door (what a world.) So, by the way, did Charlotte Mason.

So instead of talking about the logistics of spanking, we'll let the bad guys win here and talk about the reason those kinds of books elicit that kind of response... because very rarely do  we hear from anyone that discipline and training and guidance are CRITICAL to the education of a Child. Modern blogs, articles, classes and educators focus extensively on the need for kindness, empathy, affection, "attachment" etc... But rarely training. And that is where they go wrong.

In my experience, those things go without saying to those of us who feel motherhood is the highest calling, and to those of who regularly try to live our lives anchored on a rock who is Love-Come-Down-to-be-with-Us. Therefore books written by and for Christians of the sort I described above don't actually spend much time on these topics-- instead focusing on the methodology of training and correction.

When people who DON'T have the mindset of truly embracing motherhood and our families pick these books up, they find them jarring and horrific. They see only harsh words and "mean" ideas. In a word... they see abuse. Thus, especially in American circles where we wander through the land of Either/Or, the Mommy Wars continue.

And I have been guilty! Oh how I have been guilty. Only recently has God really granted me the grace to see that in many ways I was perpetuating the problem instead of focusing on the obvious through common ground, through focus on what's right and true and beautiful.

So it was refreshing for me to note that  here in these pages, CM develops for us a vision of parenthood which is very balanced and addresses both sides.

3. The principles of authority on the one hand, and of obedience on the other, are natural, necessary and fundamental; but--

(in other words, it should go without saying that children are to learn obedience, that they are subordinate to the parents in their parental authority, etc.)

AND

4. These principles are limited by the respect due to the personality of children, which must not be encroached upon whether by the direct use of fear or love, suggestion or influence, or by undue play upon any one natural desire.

 

(in other words, it should go without saying that children are persons and should be treated with human dignity.)

One hallmark of a Charlotte Mason education is that we neither manipulate, threaten, coerce, or otherwise force children into compliance. Instead, we expect and we model. We train in habits.... and we watch them rise to the occasion.

This type of parenting is not for the faint of heart, because it requires that we live what we preach, and that we accept our own limitation and work on them. It requires that we find a source of patience and strength outside of ourselves. And it also requires that we remember our calling: our vocation to education.

As outspoken as I am against attachment parenting as a cultural norm, I stumbled across this blog last night and found myself nodding in agreement with all of her points... these are the things which people need to hear and reflect on. The author, like most Attachment fans,  focuses entirely too much on feelings, a subject which I won't touch on here. Suffice to say that our feelings should not rule our world.
That being said.... her points are so relevant to the ideas we are discussing here, and some are things which I've had to learn by experience and which I wish were included more often in my "so now you're a mom" type tutorials.

Once you've all recovered from the fact that I just posted a link to a super pro-attachment parenting blog, you can laugh with me and enjoy the CM-centered peace that comes from leaving the so-called mommy wars behind. They are over. They are useless.

Mothering is always right so long as we are doing the best we can AND at the same time acknowledging that we are not doing the best we can. Period.

CM is really good at giving a general vision or a sense of how things should be.  And when it comes to curriculum or methodology in education, she can be very specific. But in this case, she does not provide all that much in the way of practical examples.

So what are we to do?
Hint: when she repeats herself over and over.... it's gonna be on the test. ;)

1. Get your self in order. (In Vol I, p 15 she mentions allowing the child to see that you also are law-compelled and that we can offend children by disregarding laws of health, intellect, morality, and need for love.)

2. Train in good habits and never let a bad habit slip past. When you have, retrain with great attention and patience, redirecting as often as needed.

3. Allow law to ensure liberty. Once the child demonstrates a reasonable amount of proper response and effort, allow him the freedom to enjoy his liberty.

4. Do not make many rules, and do not give a command you don't intend to see through to the end. This prevents us from being overbearing but also from being wishy-washy pushovers. (Dr Ray Guerendi said something to the effect of leaving a child alone to do as he will unless he is infringing upon the rights of others and/or likely to hurt himself. These are good guidelines.)

5. Punishment by consequences, particularly natural ones, is very effective.

6. Be good-natured, and have confidence in the children's ability to respond to this training. Don't be anxious, domineering, interfering, or demanding.

7. Keep at it patiently until you see SELF-discipline in your child. Self-discipline is the only kind of discipline that works.

With those in mind, I believe you are equipped to follow principles 3 and 4.

Book of Centuries

There is a wonderful PNEU article about how to set up a book of centuries which I fully intend to use with a simple composition book once my children are older. I have often had to fight the urge to scrap this one and make one of those, but I'm going to wait a few years.

Since they are young right now, we are using a family Book of Centuries, which is primarily my responsibility to fill in because I'm super type-A and like things to be pretty and orderly... and if my children had charge of it I can only imagine the number of hobbits and butterflies and things I'd find drawn in the margins, which would drive me nuts. Charlotte wanted the child to make the book of centuries HIS OWN, and I assure you that when my kids are old enough, they will. But for now, in the young stages, I keep this family version, and they have their own composition books we call books of centuries but which are actually just books in which they record their narrations or narration maps for every history book they read.
This one stays out and on the table as long as it's a school day, and sometimes even when it's not. On Thursdays (our history day) at tea-time I take it out and we drink tea and eat cookies and go through it, talking about things they like.

As of now, there is not much filled in because we have only covered creation and early civilization alone in a formal way. But I've been asked how I do it, so here are some pictures and an explanation of our own book.

I used a three ring binder with a pattern that spoke to me about history (kinda greek), and printed out the free book of centuries template from Simply Charlotte Mason, not using facing pages and not printing on both sides of the sheets.
I made a nice cover for it and ghetto-laminated it using packing tape (my specialty!), and instead of dividers I use a printed page in papyrus font (my go-to history font!) in sheet protectors for separating the four eras that correspond with the four volumes/years of the Connecting With History  Program that we use for studying world history as a family. We make an entry for each of our lessons if appropriate, and it takes less than five minutes to do each time, if that.

On the inside cover, I pasted a key to the codes we use on each main century overview page.:

These include things like wars and conflicts, massacres, rise and fall of a nation, important events in church history, etc.

There are two main sections. One is World Chronology and the other is Geography.

I placed a world map (modern) at the very front for quick access, and then began placing dividers and centuries for each volume of Connecting with History, century by century.

World Chronology has three pages per century, plus some additional pages in the front.

The additional pages start with the story of before the world began. I made these, although one of the pages contains an idea I snatched up about the beginning of time from my favorite Fisher Academy blog.

Then the centuries really begin. There are three pages per century. The first is a grid with 100 squares representing years in each century. We use the codes from above to mark up the overview grid so that we can see it in a kind of at-a-glance way. (bear in mind that ours are not very full yet because we haven't even reached Christ's birth in our family study.)

After that is a written overview page with categories and dates we can fill in that I made based on a template I saw and liked on Simply Charlotte Mason's site.

Last, I placed the page from the download of SCM's basic timeline book, on which we will be drawing artifacts we see throughout the year in museums on field trips  (prehistory doesn't have a lot of representation here in our local museums, so these are-- for now-- blank for the most part at the moment.) The dates are written at the top and the rest of the page is blank for drawing. (sorry about the fuzzy picture.)

Behind the centuries, I have a geography section which includes historical maps we have used, either printed out from the Map Trek program we use for Connecting with History or from random places around the internet for whatever purpose we have used them for, organized in chronological order. These are in plastic sleeves also so that my kids can take them out and use a dry erase to trace a route or whatever if need be. (Doesn't happen much since I hate dry erase, but in theory, it seemed like a good idea. They mostly just use their fingers. I am full of good ideas that hardly ever end up getting used, haha.)

That's it! Let me know if you have questions, and I hope it helps someone.
And if perchance you find this post to be discouraging rather than helpful, you might enjoy this.

Final (I hope!) schedule for next school year

   Combined Prep 1B 1A Final

Enjoy!

Some grown-up reading

Right now I'm reading....

Daily:

Thomas Dubay's Fire Within
The Bible
The Catechism of the Catholic Church

In addition to reading aloud to my children weekly in the following subjects, right now I'm reading:

Mondays (Science and Nature Study)- The handbook of Nature Study
Tuesdays (Literature, Poetry and Shakespeare)- Jane Eyre, the Oxford Book of English Verse, and Shakespeare's King Lear
Wednesdays (Geography and Travel) -Peeps at Many Lands Ancient Egypt
Thursdays (Salvation History)- Scotland's Story and A History of the American People
Fridays (Fine Arts and Philosophy)- Bertrand Russel's The Problems of Philosophy
Saturday (Torah and Plutarch) - Salvation is from the Jews and Plutarch
Sunday (Gospel and Good Works) - Scale How Meditations

What about you?

20 Principles of a CM Education: #1

I'm following along in my CM study group on facebook with Ambleside's 20 Principles of a CM Education study. If you'd like to join us and have a blog, please post a blog by the deadline with your thoughts on each principle, and then join the discussion either in the Ambleside Forum or in my CM Study Group on facebook.

Today I'll be focusing on Principle number one:

Children are born persons.

 This realization had such a huge effect on my parenting very early on. If you've been following this blog from it's beginnings you will remember that I often felt so completely frustrated by the ultimate Mommy War in Christian circles: the question of parenting "style."

In one corner we have well intentioned so-called "gentle parents," followers of a parenting style called Attachment Parenting which you've heard me rail on time and again. I watched them cosleep and affirm their children and ignore temper tantrums for years and thought to myself..... that's not for me.
It seemed to me that Attachment parenting did great harm to a child, allowing them freedoms children should have to act up or express wishes and seemed to me a breeding ground for selfishness and later problems.I based this not on the methods-- which I liked (extended breastfeeding, cosleeping, expression of affection, babywearing, etc.) but on the results. Quite frankly, most of the children I met whose parents considered themselves fervent adherents of this method were wild.

In the other corner we have well-intentioned opposite of AP parents (what do we call those? Ezzo/Pearl people?) where I have sat firmly and happily for many many years. This camp advocates putting marriage and the good of the family before the desires of the child (highly agree!) and also advocates training and discipline (if needed) to rectify personality problems and bad habits. (agree!)
However, it seemed to me that many of the moms I met who were very verbal about this method of parenting still had children I found questionable in their behavior.And it didn't allow for things which felt natural to me: holding babies. gentle, affirming words (well, maybe not natural, but right!) etc.

I was looking for a parenting style that I felt fulfilled my biblical objectives to train my child in righteousness, but which was a tried-and-true technique.

And while many of ezzo/pearlized children I met who were grown turned out wonderfully, there were some parents who appeared to have used every technique recommended in those books and who really, truly were mystified as to why their children had grown up and walked away from the behaviors they had been trained in.

In other words, the AP families I knew tended to have an abundance of love but little discipline, and the Ezzo/Pearl families I knew tended to have an abundance of discipline but were often lacking in tenderness. There are many exceptions that come to mind, but those were the norms as I saw them.

I'm a very black and white person, so armed with this knowledge I opted for the Ezzo aproach and it worked quite nicely. People constantly marveled that my children were well behaved and enjoyable.
I tried to always remain firm in my resolve to keep them from selfish behaviors and to squash their wills. And I thought I had it made!

Until my child turned five or so and STILL had not outgrown some of her problematic behaviors, like veering towards a meltdown when we had to leave a place she wanted to stay at. What what what?? You mean I had painstakingly done EVERYTHING right according to all my go-to parenting books and my child STILL demonstrated willfulness from time to time? I had not completely squashed that willfulness??
Yes.

It became apparent to me that even though I had all the answers.... I didn't have all the answers.
Which lead me to this idea, this snippet, really, of Charlotte's. Children are born persons. Around the same time as I first discovered it, my husband and I were con/reverting back to Catholicism. And studying the Catechism, which specifies that human dignity -- treating the person, made in God's image--with respect-- was not optional. This greatly affected our marriage. We were persons.  We should treat each other as such.

In Charlotte's philosophy, a child was not a thing, but a person, and as such worthy of every human dignity, respect, kindness, etc.
This was so beneficial to me, because instead of thinking of my child as a machine which I just needed to figure out, I began to think of my child as a person that I needed to enjoy discovering. And also to begin affording them a respect that I had only heard AP people (and my husband, if only I had listened!) preach.

I loved this middle-ground approach, full of tenderness and compassion but also firm and guiding. I think this is part of Charlotte's universal appeal-- that she is both gentle and firm, and also one of the reasons it is so important to read her own work and not just what others have said about her: it's easy to take some of her quotes out of context or to misunderstand her greater meaning. (One of my biggest peeves in life is hearing Unschoolers rave about how they love using Charlotte Mason, who was a very very far cry from advocating unschooling.)

To take it further, the idea that children are born persons is the answer to the greatest evils which we in the Catholic Church daily battle here on planet earth.
Chief among them is objectification-- objectification which leads to abuse, neglect, pornography, abortion, euthanasia, sex-selection, gender confusion and a host of other issues which relate to the Culture of Death.
Yes, you read that right. Charlotte Mason's first principle is the CURE to the majority of the ills of this world.

And it isn't something she came up with on her own. It came to her because of her deep faith. Reading scripture daily and nourished by it she would have often meditated on this maxim:

Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
-Matthew 22:36-40 (KJV)

I leave you with the thoughts of Charlotte herself with regards to the personhood of Children... thoughts which have provided much meditation and delight for me over the last few years. It is because of this principle that I can say I finally walk that peaceful middle ground, finding a healthful tension between love and affection and order and discipline. Giving children their natural rights as persons creates an atmosphere of education. It frees the children to grow in security and confidence, but also in gratitude and good will. It further enables us to honor that personhood in ALL people around us, because if we see it in children, who are often most trying, we will surely see it in our difficult neighbor, or that challenging family member. Most importantly, it is a foundation for the House of Education which we desire to build over these little persons in our care.

We do not recognise 'Child-Nature.'––We endeavour that all our teaching and treatment of children shall be on the lines of nature, their nature and ours, for we do not recognise what is called 'Child-nature.' We believe that children are human beings at their best and sweetest, but also at their weakest and least wise. We are careful not to dilute life for them, but to present such portions to them in such quantities as they can readily receive.

We are Tenacious of Individuality: we consider Proportion––In a word, we are very tenacious of the dignity and individuality of our children. We recognise steady, regular growth with no transition stage. This teaching is up to date, but it is as old as common sense. Our claim is that our common sense rests on a basis of Physiology, that we show a reason for all that we do, and that we recognise 'the science of the proportion of things,' put the first thing foremost, do not take too much upon ourselves, but leave time and scope for the workings of Nature and of a higher Power than Nature herself.

We think that Children have a Right to Knowledge––Much guidance and stimulation are afforded by another principle. We are not anxious to contend with Kant that the mind possesses certain a priori knowledge; nor with Hume that it holds innate ideas. The more satisfying proposition seems to be that the mind has, as it were, prehensile adaptations to each department of universal knowledge. We find that children lay hold of all knowledge which is fitly presented to them with avidity, and therefore we maintain that a wide and generous curriculum is due to them.
--Charlotte Mason, Vol II ch 21