Is education the filling of a pail or the lighting of a fire? I think almost all home educators would agree that children are not simple pails to be filled, but complex human beings with the capacity to relate to a great many things. Thus, education is the lighting of a fire. But what is meant by ‘lighting fires’, anyway?
Well, I was going to write a blog post defining it, but I found someone else had already done the research, so read this, and here are my thoughts in addition:
Another way to say, “education is the lighting of a fire” is “education is helping kids become engaged”. What do we want them engaged in? Learning, certainly, but it goes beyond that. Charlotte Mason said the goal of education is to give students– people– a full life: ”The question is not,––how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education––but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?” (CM Vol. 3 p. 170-171)
Mr. Pychyl, in the above link, says it is necessary for the student to have both “the will and the skill” in order to be motivated to learn, and that teachers commonly make the mistake of assuming either one or the other must be supplied by the student. But kids are different– one child may be like wildfire, while another may be like slow-smoldering coals that need nurturing attendance. (Great imagery, that.) The teacher must observe and aid the student in generating interest and learning skills as necessary.
Charlotte Mason also addresses “will and skill”, considering them to be intimately related; only she calls skills “habits”:
“Knowing that the brain is the physical seat of habit and that conduct and character, alike, are the outcome of the habits we allow; knowing, too, that an inspiring idea initiates a new habit of thought, and hence, a new habit of life; we perceive that the great work of education is to inspire children with vitalising ideas as to every relation of life, every department of knowledge, every subject of thought; and to give deliberate care to the formation of those habits of the good life which are the outcome of vitalising ideas. In this great work we seek and assuredly find the co-operation of the Divine Spirit, whom we recognise, in a sense rather new to modern thought, as the supreme Educator of mankind in things that have been called secular, fully as much as in those that have been called sacred.” (CM Vol. 3 p. 172-173)
So, how do we inculcate these inspiring ideas and deliberately develop these habits? How do we teach the children?
Sometimes there is a disconnect between the idea and the development of the skill or habit. A person can be inspired to have beautiful penmanship, or to learn the piano, or to read the Bible through in a year, and still not sit down regularly to practice and accomplish the task. There is one thing lacking: strength of will. This is too often the cause of the breakdown between inspiring ideas and habit-development at our house.
Charlotte Mason’s student motto is a resolution of will:
“I am . . . a child of God, a gift to my parents and my country. I’m a person of great value because God made me.
I can . . . do all things through Christ who strengthens me. God has made me able to do everything required of me.
I ought . . . to do my duty to obey God, to submit to my parents and everyone in authority over me, to be of service to others, and to keep myself healthy with proper food and rest so my body is ready to serve.
I will . . . resolve to keep a watch over my thoughts and choose what’s right even if it’s not what I want.”
These are inspiring ideas, but how does a person develop the will in the trenches of everyday life? I think key in the process is what the parent allows and does not allow. Notice, above, Miss Mason says “conduct and character, alike, are the outcome of the habits we allow…” She is writing to educators and parents here, showing that ultimately, we, by what we allow and disallow, are responsible for the lighting of the fire.
So what about resistance? That might be the result of weakness in the will, or else the lack of inspiring ideas. If the will is weak, we must strengthen it. The only way I know to help a child strengthen his or her will (outside of the intervention of the Holy Spirit, which we must always pray for) is to seek understanding– to try to understand the child’s point of view before even attempting to persuade the child to ours. The best way I have discovered to accomplish this is to keep the lines of communication open, to make sure the child can come to you with concerns and dislikes and complaints. When I know one of my kids is struggling, I call her to me and invite her to just gripe for awhile. We agree to apply scriptural truth to the complaints to keep ourselves on track, but first I want to see what we are dealing with. After I find out the issues, I am in a better position to present the right inspiring ideas.
I have to be completely honest and say that there are times when the only thing I can think of is, “You just have to.” Believe it or not, that is an inspiring idea, but it takes a somewhat mature believer to be inspired by it!
More often, I have to go in search of new ways to explain things, new metaphors and analogies to help my young believers to serve the Lord with gladness, even when it means diagramming sentences, sorting laundry and reducing fractions. The constant reading of good books is a big help– it is gratifying to live vicariously through a historic or fictional character as he struggles and succeeds nobly. But we mustn’t stop with the idea– this is so often the issue at our house– it must be carried through and lived in our lives: “Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking––the strain would be too great––but, all living…” (CM Vol. 3 p. 170)
I don’t know how to wind up this rambling post, but suffice it to say I am looking for some inspiration myself as I plan for the new school year, and knowing that we fall down most often in the consistent ‘doing’ of good habits is very helpful to me. Often, I do not want to be the bad guy and make the child do something she doesn’t wanna do. Or I allow experience to be the teacher, although sometimes the stakes are too high and the process too long for experience to be a good teacher. I find that I still have a lot to learn, myself, and wonder why the Lord puts sinners in charge of His beloved children. But here we sit, and can only move forward, correcting errors as they are revealed and He provides grace to continue.
My oldest and I are slowly reading through Mortimer Adler’s classic, How to Read a Book. By slowly, I mean we have been reading the book for two years and are on schedule to finish it in two more. It is a book about, you guessed it, learning to read books.
The term ‘read’ in this context means something more significant than decoding phonics and basic comprehension, which Mr. Adler considers the first type of reading. The other types are inspectional reading, analytical reading, and the ultimate process, syntopical reading.
Inspectional reading includes reading the back, the flyleaf, the table of contents, skimming through the book looking at subheadings, sidebars, emboldened words, reading occasional whole passages, and then perusing the index. Mr. Adler says after a proper inspectional reading, a reader ought to be able to determine whether the book deserves more careful consideration.
Analytical reading is going through the entire book from beginning to end, determining the propositions, arguments and solutions offered by the author, and agreeing or disagreeing with him/her.
Syntopical reading, that shining star of the reading world, is analytically engaging several books at once, drawing logical conclusions that may be inferred by the reading of the several books, but not singly contained in any one of them. We aspire to syntopical reading. :O)
This book is listed in the Ambleside Online curriculum’s House of Education section under the subject heading, “Logic”. I wondered about that for the first year. The first section of the book basically defines the term ‘reading’ for the reader, and although Mr. Adler thinks in a logical manner, I didn’t see how this was instructing us in Logic. But we are almost through the second section now, and I begin to see the logic coming through in his detailed explanation of analytical reading. In fact, his emphasis on defining terms, determining important sentences, and drawing out arguments reminds me of the year Triss spent in debate.
A friend lent us a proper Logic Program to use this year, as Triss is going on fifteen and has never been formally instructed in logic (except that brief foray into debate). I think the workbook exercises will be good for Triss. But this book on reading might help her even more. What better exercise is there than reading a worthy author, discovering and delineating his propositions, arguments, and solutions, and ‘talking back’?
Memorial Day weekend marks the beginning of summer for many students. At our house, we officially hit the summer schedule in a week. The kids are looking forward to travel, rest and lots of fun. I am looking forward to preparations for the next school year and a lot of time for reading and cleaning out closets. But our entire household must look forward to a few weeks of school this summer, in order to finish this year’s reading assignments.
As I have mentioned before, we use Ambleside Online Curriculum, which utilizes the Charlotte Mason method of slow reading and narration. Because I have the kids each following their own Ambleside Year, and allow them to participate in several extracurricular activities, it is not surprising that we have readings left over at the official end of the school year.
So how does a mom provide for the finishing of schoolwork over the summer and still leave time for fun? In this post I will share two different schedules I have come up with—a half-schedule of schoolwork every day the family is home during summer, and one or two multi-week ‘sessions’ of regular school days during the summer.
First, let’s look at the half-schedule plan. Mom takes the remaining schoolwork and divides it out so that the kids are doing schoolwork for around two hours per day, maximum (a half-day, or a little less than a half-day, of school), every weekday except when the family is out of town on vacation. The advantages of this system are as follows:
1) The kids are doing just a little bit of work each day,
2) The schedule is the same every day the family is home—horizontal scheduling—which makes it easier to stay on track, and
3) Half of each day is available for work or play or spontaneous outings.
The cons of this system include:
1) The necessity of staying home for part of each day makes it more difficult to do day-long things like go to the zoo (you can just give up a half-day here and there to do day-long activities, but you must be careful not to break momentum or the kids may not finish their schoolwork by the end of summer), and
2) There is less of a ‘break’ feeling, because the kids have to focus on schoolwork every day until it is done.
We used this plan last year to finish our Ambleside readings. We went swimming almost every afternoon we were home, and that provided an impetus for the kids to get their half-schedule done each morning. I tried allowing them to swim in the morning as it got hotter, but they were usually so tired afterward that their schoolwork suffered. For us, the best way to use the half-schedule of school is to get it done in the morning.
The idea of doing multi-week sessions occurred to me this year as I realized we would need to extend our school year into the summer. Although we had time to play each day last summer, I felt that we were overburdened needing to think about school every day we were home, and I wanted to provide larger blocks of down time for the kids because they have many outside interests they would like to pursue. Also, I wish to have longer blocks of time to devote to planning for next year, as well as cleaning and organizing.
I adapted the multi-week session idea from my memories of summer school classes in the public school system where I grew up. There were three intensive sessions of summer school, each one representing a full term of work in one or another subject. Students could opt for one or more sessions. My plan for this summer is to have two three-week sessions in which we complete the remainder of the schoolwork for the year. I do not plan to have ‘intensives’, nor to allow the kids to opt-in or opt-out, but simply to have fifteen regular school days within each of the three-week sessions. These will be fitted between vacations and family visits, and we will also have two or three weeks with nothing particular scheduled.
I foresee the following advantages with the multi-week session system:
1) We will have more of a summer vacation during the non-school weeks,
2) We will be very school-focused on the days we do schoolwork, and
3) I will have more down-time for reading and planning for next year.
At this point, I can only think of the following negative:
1) It will be harder to jump into the routine at the beginning of each session
After this summer, I may have more to add to the ‘con’ side of the list, lol.
The multi-week session plan and the half-schedule of school each day we are home are two ways I have figured out to deal with schoolwork left over at the end of the school year. I see good and bad points in each system. But either way, we still find time to swim, visit family and friends and take part in activities that are not available during the school year, while completing last year’s school and getting ready for the new school year.*
*(We have had years where we came to the end of summer with readings left over, so I integrated those into the new school year. Not as much fun as finishing ahead of time, but still doable.)
Paper is the bane of my existence.
But it does exist, and it exists in this house. I have worked hard the last several years to eliminate the need for paper where possible, and to streamline our paper usage (with bound notebooks, etc.) when we have to use it. This has kept the kids from losing many important assignments (although we have lost entire *notebooks* at times, which is a little more traumatic than losing one assignment).
However, we still have lose papers floating around the house, as well as lost pencils and scissors, pencil sharpeners that mysteriously vanish, and disappearing glue sticks.
It is really my fault more than the kids’, because the teacher sets the tone, and while I am good at helping them get their work *done*, I am not so good at teaching them how to store their work. I do better at storing school supplies, but even these things need some reorganization. So I found _The Organized Student: Teaching Kids the Tools for Success in School and Beyond_ by Donna Goldberg, and am using it to revamp our schoolroom and other home study areas. I appreciate her accommodating and understanding tone—she suffered from dyslexia as a child, at a time when that learning difference was hardly understood, and was helped by a strong and tenacious mother who would not give up looking for solutions for her daughter. When Ms. Goldberg had her own family, one of her children suffered so from disorganization that, using her mother’s example, she went to work to find solutions for him, and eventually developed a home business. She is naturally organized herself, but has much sympathy, as well as practical advice, for people who struggle, and that came through in her writing.
This book is written with public/private school kids in mind, so some of the advice seemed unnecessary at first, but then I realized that certain things, such as the school locker, have parallels in the home school environment. Also, many homeschooled students attend co-ops or other outside classes. My oldest daughter has two outside classes this year. And you can’t forget extracurricular activities—sports, church, Girl Scouts, music lessons, etc. All these enrichment activities generate paper.
I am giving the highlights (as I see them) of each chapter in the book. Since I am rather longwinded, I will post each chapter in a separate blog post. ;o)
Ch. 1: Understanding the Organized Student
“An organized student can find what he needs when he needs it.” This is the crux of the chapter. Basically, she says that a student can be organized even if he doesn’t look organized to *you*, as long as he is able to lay his hands on what he needs in time. There are different styles of organizing, and some are a little messy. She says that is fine, as long as the student “can find what he needs when he needs it.”
She does point out that a disorganized child often has a room, locker, backpack, etc., that looks like a disaster area– *and* will be always frantically looking for something he needed yesterday. (I sometimes feel that way when my house is tidy. Can anyone say stash-and-dash?)
Kids are oriented toward different ways of organizing. Some kids do well using colors; others do not. Some kids think alphabetically; others don’t. You can figure out where your kids fit regarding organizational style by thinking about which style of learning comes most naturally to each.
She talks about what the typical disorganized child goes through in school beginning in elementary, with very organized teachers who don’t necessarily explain why they have the class do things the way they do. They have cubbies and folders and rules about coats—but they don’t instruct the child in how to apply principles of organization on his own. By middle school, children are expected to have internalized this organizational skill, but many haven’t. And by high school, they are drowning in a sea of paper and disappointed expectations.
(How does this fit into the home school environment? We as mothers, who want so badly for our children to succeed, certainly may organize their work and storage for them. Because we teach in a tutoring style, the child may get more of the “whys and wherefores” of organizing techniques, but that hasn’t happened sufficiently in my house. Organization as a habit often needs to be addressed specifically, because many children do not have the “innate ability to organize themselves”.)
She ends the chapter by talking briefly about executive dysfunction, of which physical disorganization is only one symptom. Many children are just plain disorganized, but some may additionally struggle with the learning difference she calls “executive dysfunction”—otherwise known as ADHD. I have also heard it called executive function disorder. She offers a list of things the child ought to be able to do (sequence, perceive cause and effect, focus, apply old lessons to new tasks, etc.) even if physically disorganized. If the child struggles with many of these mental skills, she recommends seeking professional diagnosis and help– although I must respectfully and humbly insert here that very often, even the professionals do not understand what is going on.
A little side note: I have gone through the experience of seeing ADHD everywhere I look, including in my entire family, but when it is really there, it is quite obvious. We are all “cerebrally disorganized” at times, but the child with true executive dysfunction has these symptoms consistently and in a debilitating way. I mean, you can just tell something is wrong. And when I say “you” I really mean the parent. That is why diagnosis for ADHD depends almost completely on understanding patient history. You are the expert on your own child. The “experts” ought to help you sort through things rather than taking the matter out of your hands. They are experts at understanding generalities in their field, which is why it can be valuable to seek the assistance of a professional. But it should be a partnership between the parent and the professional. Obviously, this is a blog post for another day, lol.
And another side note of my own: the growth that occurs in the brain during adolescence can mimic some of these symptoms without the child actually having ADHD, as an incredible blossoming of grey matter in the prefrontal lobe—the seat of executive function—undergoes pruning and connecting of neural synapses. For more info on this, I recommend reading _Why Do They Act That Way? A Survival Guide To The Adolescent Brain for You and Your Teen_ by John Walsh. I hope to review this book at a later date.
Stay tuned for Chapter 2: Getting Started.
Written by a homeschooling husband and wife team, College Prep Homeschooling is a handbook meant to prepare parents to teach through the high school years. Byers is a college professor, and homeschooling was the topic of his doctoral dissertation. This book is the result of his research and experience, as well as his wife’s day-to-day experience and wisdom.
They state in the first chapter that their purpose was to report the facts of homeschooling objectively in order to help others come to their own conclusions on the matter, although they make no bones of the fact that they wish to encourage parents to homeschool through high school. By the end of the book I decided they must be Christian, but they do not present any kind of religious slant or agenda.
The other day I was making the bed when my hand hit something hard. I reached between the mattresses and pulled out a chunky plastic toy ring– the kind you might get from a gumball machine. Wondering a little, I set it on my husband’s nightstand and finished making the bed.
Eight-year-old Cornflower walked in a little later and picked it up, asking, “Is this Daddy’s ring?”
“No,” I said, “I don’t know who it belongs to– but I pulled it out from between the mattresses. Isn’t that funny?”
“Yeah,” she said, big grin on her face. “I put it there. I was going to ask him this morning how he slept.”
I started laughing. “Oh, you wanted to see if he was a real princess, eh?”
“Yep! I was going to use a pea, but I was afraid it would be too messy!”
Score one for Cornflower, who never feels like she has had a good day unless she makes someone laugh.
Pray a lot.
(That’s all I can say. )
“My help cometh from the Lord, which made Heaven and Earth…”
Homeschooling requires lots of prayer– and here are some other places to look for help:
We are a reading family. We love books, and would simply sit and read aloud or quietly to ourselves all day long and call it school, if it weren’t for such “non-essentials” as penmanship, spelling, grammar, writing skills, map-reading lessons, math. Math– the kids spend an hour or more on it every day—hardly CM, but she didn’t have to get her students through advanced algebra or beyond before graduation. (At age eight, Cornflower is the exception, spending around thirty minutes on math.)
I aim for a CM-type education for my kids (with the exception of that blasted math), so we have quite a few books we are currently in the process of slow-reading.
The kids and I are reading Oliver Twist aloud in the mornings. We are also reading through the book of Daniel in the Bible and have just finished reading the book of Luke. (For our next New Testament readings, I am taking them through some humorous and accurate Bible doctrine essays written by a preacher friend, and then we will start on Philippians—it seems we come back to Philippians again and again.) We finished reading Shakespeare’s Love’s Labours Lost last week and started on Richard II last Thursday. And we are currently reading Plutarch’s Life of Theseus, which is very interesting. At first I thought, why read Plutarch’s version of Theseus? We have read about Theseus many times already and have the myths down pat. But once we began, we realized he retells several versions of the stories one hears about him that we had never heard of, and applies it to the political climate of Archaic Greece, showing how this or that story rose to prominence or sank to obscurity, based on the spin the ancient pundits wished to give it. (Greek civilization was on the rise, so it was considered right that the narrative be as flattering as possible to Athens.) Theseus (who, it is only fair to say, is considered legendary) lived hundreds of years before Christ, with Plutarch writing his chronicle of Theseus’ life in 75 AD. Politics—the same down through the ages. How about that?
The tulips and irises are out, and redbud trees covered with blooms. The daffodils have been and gone already, and snowy blossoms fall from the pear trees, replaced by the bright green of new leaves.
I just love going past a wooded area and being surprised by gorgeous flower branches in the midst of all the winter trees. Spring is here!
The next few months are my favorite time of year for flower-focused nature study. We live in Texas, which is home to a wide variety of wildflowers, and it is fun to see which kinds bloom each year– sort of like greeting new friends and making old ones. I have lived here thirteen years, but the kids and I have only been actively watching the wildflowers for four years, so we are still learning the flowers. It’s amazing what you see when you are paying attention.
We checked “our” meadow—a wild area in our neighborhood– for wildflowers earlier this month. No flowers yet, but we are hopeful! I did see evening primroses along the road on Monday night. I think those must be the first wildflowers of spring.
One of my favorite books from Triss’ toddlerhood is _Happy Birthday, Moon_ by Frank Asch. It is about a little bear who tries to talk to the moon. He climbs the tallest tree on the highest mountain and yells hello. His voice echoes back. He gets very excited to be “talking to the moon.” (I used to tear up at this point in the book. Triss says she never noticed.)
After visiting awhile, the ‘moon’ always answering back in echoes, the little bear decides to ask the moon a question:
“When is your birthday?” he cries.
The echoing “moon” replies, “When is your birthday?”
“My birthday is tomorrow!” says the delighted bear.
“My birthday is tomorrow!” answers the echo.
So the bear decides to get the moon a birthday present. (Isn’t this the sweetest story?)
He figures a hat is just the thing, then realizes he has no way to get the hat to the moon! So he climbs the tallest tree on the tallest hill and sets the hat on the highest limb. And waits. The moon rises slowly through the branches and “tries on” the hat. The bear is delighted.
His innocence is never betrayed by cold, hard fact. He has been allowed to feel the joy, undisturbed by rationality, of connecting with something bigger than himself and his world. I love it. Later is soon enough to discuss whether moons talk or have birthdays or try on hats.
The protected wonder of this little book is contrasted with the hard reality portrayed in another child’s storybook, _The Carrot Seed_, written by Ruth Krauss. In this story, an inspired and determined little boy finds a carrot seed and decides to plant it. He gets the tools he needs, prepares the ground, plants the seed and cares for it, awaiting the growth he is sure will occur.
His parents, older siblings and other adults in his life inform him in turn that, “It will never come up.”
(They remind me of Job’s miserable comforters.)
He waits and waits. It doesn’t come up.
Undeterred, he continues caring for the seed, and continues to wait.
And then it comes up, and is such a large carrot that he needs a wheelbarrow to harvest it!
Although he has been confronted by harsh reality all along, he perseveres in his faith and receives this beautiful vegetable. Sometimes hard fact is not the sum total of reality.
These contrasting stories have the same outcome– the reward of belief and faith– and have their place in the child’s world. Our kids’ minds are full of possibilities because they haven’t lived on earth long enough to realize what can’t be done. Because of this, they are able to look at the world with fresh eyes. Let us cherish this vision in our children.
The man who misses all the fun
Is he who says, “It can’t be done.”
In solemn pride he stands aloof
And greets each venture with reproof.
Had he the power he’d efface
The history of the human race.
We’d have no radio or motor cars,
No street lit by electric stars;
No telegraph nor telephone,
We’d linger in the age of stone.
The world would sleep if things were run
By men who say, “It can’t be done.”
Author Unknown
