Notes on Physical Nourishment

One of Charlotte Mason's principles appears to have been that "grace builds upon nature and does not destroy it" This is a traditional Thomistic formula. It is not enough for a child to be just a "fine animal" as they used to say in the 19th century, that is clear. Yet being in good physical condition is still important in laying the groundwork for natural virtues and for good habits.

Divine Grace works on the Lines of Human Effort.––In looking for a solution of this problem, I do not undervalue the Divine grace––far otherwise; but we do not always make enough of the fact that Divine grace is exerted on the lines of enlightened human effort; that the parent, for instance, who takes the trouble to understand what he is about in educating his child, deserves, and assuredly gets, support from above....

She believed that the mind and body are closely connected. There is of course much contemporary research confirming the connection, which was always intuitionally understood -- that emotional problems can affect physical health, for instance.

She mentions various practices considered healthy for children of her day. Some sound quaint -- children should have cocoa but avoid cheese and fruit preserves with the leathery rinds; they should wear wool instead of cotton; etc. However, the principles seem sound.

1. Principle of rest and nourishment and variety for the brain and body.

Since the brain uses a lot of energy, it is important to replenish it by proper physical food, and by intervals of rest.

the more educable powers of the child––his intelligence, his will, his moral feelings––have their seat in his brain; that is to say, as the eye is the organ of sight, so is the brain, or some part of it, the organ of thought and will, of love and worship. Authorities differ as to how far it is possible to localise the functions of the brain; but this at least seems pretty clear––that none of the functions of mind are performed without real activity in the mass of grey and white nervous matter named 'the brain.'

Strenuous mental activity should not take place right after a solid meal. And a child should be fed after he has studied seriously. Here's a general sketch of a possible schedule based on these ideas:

It follows that the hours for lessons should be carefully chosen, after periods of mental rest––sleep or play, for instance––and when there is no excessive activity in any other part of the system. Thus, the morning, after breakfast (the digestion of which lighter meal is not a severe task), is much the best time for lessons and every sort of mental work; if the whole afternoon cannot be spared for out-of-door recreation, that is the time for mechanical tasks such as needlework, drawing, practising; the children's wits are bright enough in the evening, but the drawback to evening work is, that the brain, once excited, is inclined to carry on its labours beyond bed-time, and dreams, wakefulness, and uneasy sleep attend the poor child who has been at work until the last minute. If the elder children must work in the evening, they should have at least one or two pleasant social hours before they go to bed; but, indeed, we owe it to the children to abolish evening 'preparation.'

The same goes for changes of pace in the school day itself, because the mind does best with a rhythm that emphasize different roles at different times:

this much is certain, and is very important to the educator: the brain, or some portion of the brain, becomes exhausted when any given function has been exercised too long. The child has been doing sums for some time, and is getting unaccountably stupid: take away his slate and let him read history, and you find his wits fresh again. Imagination, which has had no part in the sums, is called into play by the history lesson, and the child brings a lively unexhausted power to his new work. School time-tables are usually drawn up with a view to give the brain of the child variety of work; but the secret of weariness children often show in the home school room is, that no such judicious change of lessons is contrived.

She goes on to talk about the proportion of bodily circulation given over to the brain -- that a child uses a large part of his nourishment to support the function of his growing brain. This is still considered to be true, from what I find.... the adult brain uses up to 20% of the body's resting metabolism. A newborn's brain may use up to 50% of the BMR. The energy comes, as she said, from food (basically glucose) and from oxygen. The brain cannot store energy but it can co-op whatever energy is available from the body -- it takes top priority in energy allocation.

2. Good food to eat and good air to breathe are important nutrition for the body and brain.

Regular, good food plus fresh outdoor air are key features in promoting conditions of healthy brain activity.

the quality of the blood is affected by three or four causes.

In the first place, the blood is elaborated from the food; the more nutritious and easy of digestion the food, the more vital will be the properties of the blood.

The food must be varied, too, a mixed diet, because various ingredients are required to make up for the various waste in the tissues.

But it is not the food which is eaten, but the food which is digested, that nourishes body and brain.

The quality of the blood depends almost as much on the air we breathe as on the food we eat.

3. Mealtimes should be joyful -- the emotional and spiritual aspects of eating are as important as the physical aspects:

If the child dislike his dinner, he swallows it, but the digestion of that distasteful meal is a laborious, much-impeded process: if the meal be eaten in silence, unrelieved by pleasant chat, the child loses much of the 'good' of his dinner. Hence it is not a matter of pampering them at all, but a matter of health, of due nutrition, that the children should enjoy their food, and that their meals should be eaten in gladness; though, by the way, joyful excitement is as mischievous as its opposite in destroying that even, cheerful tenor of mind favourable to the processes of digestion. No pains should be spared to make the hours of meeting round the family table the brightest hours of the day.

... Here is the parents' opportunity to train them in manners and morals, to cement family love, and to accustom the children to habits, such as that of thorough mastication, for instance, as important on the score of health as on that of propriety.

Of course, modern studies have affirmed the importance of these things:

• Make Family Meals a Habit
• The Power of Family Meals
• Developing Habits of Healthy Eating (moderation, balance, variety)
• Joyful Eating (for children, Let Them Eat Cake is interesting in discussing the emotional element in eating -- how important it is not to get locked into eating power struggles, and how rich food has always evoked celebration across almost all cultures)

I didn't do more than mention the "oxygenated air" requirements for the brain because it comes up in more detail later on, in "Habit of Outdoor Life" and "Nursery Habits".

Summing Up So Far

So far this is what I've managed to blog so far from Charlotte Mason's Home Education -- basic overview and preface and first chapter:

• List of Habits from Home Education
• Serenity and Vigilance
• Laying the Basis of Education by the Habit of Reading
• System and Method, or the Limitations of Habits
• Keeping Watch
• Exercise and Effort

To sum up so far, Charlotte Mason seemed to divide habits into three types of categories:

• Moral
• Intellectual
• Preliminary or Nursery habits, which might be said to be environmental and partly physical, partly passive and partly active.
  

She gives more details on these later in the book.

In the category of habits for mothers -- vigilance and serenity are two things to balance. For me that is a hard balance. How to keep alert, and still serene?

Right now I've been trying to cultivate the habit of vigilance, without running to try to fix every little thing, at least not at first. I don't want to get overwhelmed and start "riding off madly in all directions". I want to be present and awake in the moment. Of course, "keeping watch at the place of the letting out of the waters" does involve a certain attitude of caution. When some new behavior crops up, or an old one escalates, just being attentive is helpful in dealing with the issue. This means that I need to mostly stay away from things that distract me from paying attention.

Habit is of real but limited value, Charlotte Mason says. "System" is codified habit. It is great for certain things that only require training, like secretarial skills. But it is insufficient for education, which involves more than routine. Education involves the will, and the intelligence, which need to be free to exercise; habits are supposed to support the freedom of a human, not detract from it.

Therefore, Charlotte Mason advised that children should always be allowed to exert themselves, to exercise mentally and morally. This, among other things, ensures that habit does not become like an exoskeleton, closing you in like a hard shell.

I want to focus there on the "allow" part -- she used the phrase "LET the children brace themselves to understand; let them compel themselves to do and to bear; and let them do right at the sacrifice of ease and pleasure:". Is this semantics? a euphemism for "MAKE them do these things?" I don't think so. The etymological meaning of "let" is "to allow, let go, bequeath, leave."

The fact is that children like to work, they crave some effort as outlet for their energetical developmental process. Very often, I am aware, I can hinder my children from meaningful intellectual and moral efforts. It's not always said, but it can be an implicit message. "Don't work so hard -- be a less energetic worker so you can be easier to manage."

I think also that when CM says "let" she could be meaning "make the conditions right for...." Sometimes my children hesitate to do something difficult because they are afraid they will initially fail, or find it unpleasant. I am the same way. So sometimes, positively encouraging an effort can have good results.

Bequeathing, as part of the etymology of the word "let", seems to evoke a heritage or gift which we pass on to our children by letting them partake of responsibility and effort. Doing good things intellectually and morally involves effort, but it's a wholesome kind of effort.

The next section, still in Preliminary Considerations, is about Conditions of Healthy Brain Activity, is about the ties between physical and mental health, and about some of the preconditions for habits proper.

Exercise and Effort

Most of us have met with a few eccentric and a good many silly persons, concerning whom the question forces itself, Were these people born with less brain power than others? Probably not; but if they were allowed to grow up without the daily habit of appropriate moral and mental work, if they were allowed to dawdle through youth without regular and sustained efforts of thought or will, the result would be the same, and the brain which should have been invigorated by daily exercise has become flabby and feeble as a healthy arm would be after carried for years in a sling....

The outcome of which is––Do not let the children pass a day without distinct efforts, intellectual, moral, volitional; let them brace themselves to understand; let them compel themselves to do and to bear; and let them do right at the sacrifice of ease and pleasure: and this for many higher reasons, but, in the first and lowest place, that the mere physical organ of mind and will may grow vigorous with work.

From "Exercise" in Preliminary Considerations in Home Education.

Etymology of exercise.

"condition of being in active operation,"

This is the next mention of "habit" in the preliminary considerations. This whole chapter is about the groundwork of moral and intellectual formation, and about the link of body to mind. Here I think she is analogizing the mind and will to muscles. A person confined to his bed for a long time will become atrophied in muscle, and similarly, a person who never really has to exert himself mentally or morally will tend to have trouble doing so when the time comes. Since as she said the large active brain is not contented with entire idleness (and I think this goes for the will, too) it will tend to strike out fitfully in various odd directions. Thus you get the eccentric, not really bad but not able to direct energies to positive good, either. l

Now, the way I am approaching this habit study is to figure out first how it applies to me, an adult. Since children are persons, the application will be somewhat the same for them, or this is my hypothesis. For children, whose brains are more plastic, the *effects* of atrophy or exercise will be more formative... that is, they will engrain themselves in the growing organism in a way that is not so much true of middle-aged adults, who are already formed. Or so I understand it.

For adults, too, though, continual mental and volitional effort is important. You see a lot of middle aged and elderly people who are basically coasting on their childhood formation. But since the natural tendency is to actually lose muscle density (and this seems to be true of mental function, too) -- coasting will actually lead to loss. The surface may continue to look all right, but it becomes a brittle shell of habit and the status quo. In order to avoid this, I think it's important to follow the example of Socrates and keep striving, examining, questioning, enduring, .... not in a sterile rigid way, but because it's truly important as a person ages to become prepared to undertake a good decline and death. Studies show that elderly people who continue to physically and mentally exercise retain function longer and there is no reason why this shouldn't apply to volitional, moral function as well (it's just that this area isn't customarily researched so far as I've seen, though I have seen studies that show that people who continue to be altruistic and socially minded into old age are healthier and happier).

I've been trying to be more conscious myself of daily striving in some area. I realize that if I am not careful, I can let several days slip by without effort. It may LOOK good, even BE good in a way in that I'm doing all the "right things" but it has become reflexive. That is not enough. I know the difference inside myself, even if it isn't apparent on the surface (though a family is a good conscience-check because children and spouses tend to sense emptiness inside even before one is fully aware of it oneself).

See, the point here isn't what you started with.... your natural temperament or upbringing. That is water under the bridge. CS Lewis says that the moral effort required for one person to be a hero might be the same as for another person to smile and be civil first thing in the morning. It's difficult to tell from the outside, but God can see what is going on. Jesus criticized the successful Pharisees but brought the Thief on the cross to Paradise with him. One statement of faith gloriously overbalanced a whole bad life, while lives that were superficially correct could not mask, for Him, an essential sterility and foulness.

Each of us has the same duty to, as St Maximilian Kolbe says,

not permit that evil remain without reparation and destruction;
or that good be without fruit or increase.

So this advice of Charlotte Mason has been a good reminder to me that if I am not making efforts daily, I am doing something equivalent to the man in the parable who buried his coin in the ground. That is, I'm keeping what I have but in the process losing out on real value.

I thought I wouldn't have enough to say about this topic but instead I wrote a lot and still have more to say : ).

You Are What You Think and Do

If you google "habit brain" you can come up with any number of hits relating habits to neurobiology. These range from the popular self-help pieces to scholarly articles. Just a few here. More scientific evidence that Charlotte Mason was on target with her thoughts that habits form pathways in the brain. All this is very interesting to me. I had always half-wondered if CM's concepts about the physiology of habits had gone the way of phrenology but it appears not.

From The Thinking Business: Thinking Habits you find:

"You are what you think!"
This quote is scientifically proven to be true! The neural pathways discussed earlier in the tour, create patterns of thought.. Once these pathways are created, the thoughts are likely to be repeated. This is because, the repetition of a thought decreases the biochemical resistance to that thought happening again and the connections between to brain cells on the neural pathway become stronger.

From Break Bad Habits in 14 Days you find:

But how exactly do you turn lifelong bad habits inside out? How do you get over the rationalization and justification that lead to small unhealthy decisions that rack up toward an increasingly unhealthy, unhappy-about-it you?

Dr. Rice says it takes as little as 14 days to "rewire your brain" or create new brain pathways that make habits easier to follow, so the habits become more effective and long-lasting. Will it be hard? Yes. But "the mind is much more powerful that we've ever given it credit for," he says. "Wellness is an integration of mind and body, and allowing yourself to change for the better" is the first step. But you have to be honest with yourself. If you define yourself prematurely, you won't be able to change the behavior.

(this article goes on to list several specific steps to replacing a bad habit with a good one)

On a grimmer note, "Brain researchers explain why old habits die hard"

Habits help us through the day, eliminating the need to strategize about each tiny step involved in making a frothy latte, driving to work and other complex routines. Bad habits, though, can have a vise grip on both mind and behavior. Notoriously hard to break, they are devilishly easy to resume, as many reformed smokers discover.

And in Can You Become a Creature of New Habits?

HABITS are a funny thing. We reach for them mindlessly, setting our brains on auto-pilot and relaxing into the unconscious comfort of familiar routine. “Not choice, but habit rules the unreflecting herd,” William Wordsworth said in the 19th century. In the ever-changing 21st century, even the word “habit” carries a negative connotation.

So it seems antithetical to talk about habits in the same context as creativity and innovation. But brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.

Rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can instead direct our own change by consciously developing new habits. In fact, the more new things we try — the more we step outside our comfort zone — the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives.

But don’t bother trying to kill off old habits; once those ruts of procedure are worn into the hippocampus, they’re there to stay. Instead, the new habits we deliberately ingrain into ourselves create parallel pathways that can bypass those old roads.

Some Habits of Mind are listed here. A lot of these, I notice, are to do with the executive function mentioned in earlier links, which has to do with the prefrontal cortex. But keep in mind that this frontal lobe does not fully mature until about age 25, according to what I have read. And it increases in richness in later maturity. So I'm taking that to mean that children won't display these traits consistently and richly and that this is normal. We are looking for plantings of habits, not the full fruit of them, at these younger ages, and particularly if our child happens to have a learning disability, patience and tact is important.

the physiology of habit

The particular object of this volume, as a member of the 'Home Education' Series, is to show the bearing of the physiology of habit upon education; why certain physical, intellectual, and moral habits are a valuable asset to a child, and what may be done towards the formation of such habits.

I beg to acknowledge my indebtedness to Dr Carpenter's Mental Physiology for valuable teaching on the subject of habits contained in some two or three chapters of that work. Also, I would renew my grateful thanks to those medical friends who have given careful and able revision to such parts of the work as rest upon a physiological basis. Charlotte Mason, Preface to Home Education Series

Here we find laid out the scope and goal of the book Home Education, which mainly deals with children up to the age of 9. So you can see that "Habits" will be very important in reading that book, and the approach I am taking is to search through the book for all her references to habits and try to ponder it with regard to my two boys who are still in that age group.

If you follow the link you can see a facsimile of Dr Carpenter's book. I thought I would go through it looking for mentions of habit, in order to see if I could get some of the context for Charlotte Mason's views on "habit" and its place in education.

On page 16 and the following pages, Dr Carpenter gives an overview of his positions on habit and the relation of mind to body. He says there are two kinds of habit, automatic and volitional. Automatic habits are physiological ones like breathing and heartbeat and reflexes. Volitional ones he says were originally put into effect by the Will (thus the term volitional) but have become what he calls "secondarily automatic". He uses the example of walking to show degrees of acquired habits. Insofar as a person has learned to walk and doesn't have to think about it at all, he can walk automatically (still an acquired skill, but does not require any real thought). If the person is walking along, his will is guiding and permitting the walking towards some destination -- this he terms "voluntary". Now say the person is very weary and has to consciously force himself along for whatever reason. This is what Dr Carpenter would call "volitional" activity because the will is overmastering the bodily reluctance to continue.

He goes on to say that when we will to act in a certain way, we don't will the minute physical processes (like the act of walking). Rather, we will to "produce a certain preconceived result". What does it matter how we will? He says it is important because (1) it implies that we have to act in order to produce the habit of that kind of action -- for example, as he says, someone with a detailed knowledge of anatomy will be no better than a complete ignoramus in making a certain kind of trained movement, say rowing a boat. You have to form the automatic nature of the habit by repeated action -- what they call now "muscle memory" . As for (2), it is not enough to will when the body is for the time being incapable of the carry-through. For example, a stammerer may have the strongest will in the world and yet be unable to cease stammering unless he is able to learn to master the mechanics of stammer-free speaking. The walker if he keeps walking will come to the point where not even his efforts of will can keep his exhausted muscles working.

The point of all this? He says that the Will is brought to bear upon what the "Ego" (the spirit or interior self) proposes as worthy of its attention. It is by the volitional direction of its attention that the Will "exerts its domination".

"It is thus that each individual can perfect and utilize his natural gifts; by rigorously training them in the first instance, and then by exercising them only in the manner most fitted to expand and elevate, while restraining them from all that would limit or debase.-- In regard to every kind of Mental activity that does not involve origination, the power of the Will, though limited to selection, is almost unbounded."

In other words the Will can't propose ideas for itself -- it has to select ideas from what is presented in the form of some kind of reasoning or experience -- and it can't make the body or mind do what it is simply not capable of, but within those conditions it has any amount of power.

I notice that people in the later 19th century often talked in very "strenuous" terms, and in this Dr Carpenter is similar to Charlotte Mason and William James and probably others I have not read. I am not a very strenuous person myself, and even writing out something like "rigorously training" makes me feel like crawling under the covers and dozing for a few moments. It makes me feel like I am being "Organdized" as Winnie the Pooh felt when Rabbit was scurrying around Looking for Small. My natural reaction aside, this is interesting because I can see definite reflections of Charlotte Mason's ideas here, and I think knowing this context will help me study her thoughts on habits in a slightly clearer light.

Freedom and Creativity

Specialization is the separation of tasks within a system. In a multicellular creature, cells are specialized for functions such as bone construction or oxygen transport. In capitalist societies, individual workers specialize for functions such as building construction or gasoline transport. In both cases, specialization enables the accomplishment of otherwise unattainable goals. It also reduces the ability of individuals to survive outside of the system containing all of the specialized components.

From another essay in Creativity and Learning, by Nevitt Sanford, on the value of the general liberal arts education:

.... the most creative people in architecture, literature, mathematics, and engineering science are distinguished from less creative ones by, among other traits, their greater flexibility of thinking, breadth of perspective, openness to experience, freedom of impulse, breadth of interest, autonomy, and integrity. .... the argument from this is that, in general, the creative person is above all a highly-developed person, and that education programs can have an effect on such development in college.

Observational evidence suggests that outstanding work in many areas is favored by breadth of education. Creativity is little understood, but it seems to be in considerable part an ability to combine ideas form diverse areas of experience, and thus connect things that are ordinarily treated separately. This would seem to depend heavily, at least in fields such as literature, psychology, and social science, upon breadth and richness and complexity of personality and background..... It is risky to constrict or to speed up liberalizing education in the interest of hastening a student's ascent of a professional ladder....

and this about the problem of too early specialization for the human person:

... Specialization has even deeper implications for the student (than it does for the research professor); it tends toward the fragmentation of him. When everything in nature is conceived as being susceptible to abstraction from its context for purposes of intensive study the student himself does not escape; he too is conceived as an aggregate of part-processes.... each of which can be studied separately from the rest, and each of which is to be dealt with by special machinery set up for that purpose. If a teacher has this conception of the student it is easy for him to say that he is interested only in the student's intellect, which is categorically separated from the rest of him; or, it may be the other way around; if one insists that education is only a matter of transferring specialized knowledge and skills to the student, then the student comes to be viewed as the embodiment of bits of knowledge and particular skills.

In The Latin Centered Curriculum, which I just got in the mail the other day and have been reading, Drew Campbell says of classical education:

"... Whenever possible, subjects are taught in relation to one another and in the context of broader intellectual concerns.... one of the key 'intelligences' is lateral thinking, the ability to make connections between seemingly disparate fields and ideas.."

This makes the case that the classical curriculum, by focusing on the priorities and integrating the different subject areas, allows time to focus on the important things, developing the ability to connect subjects; and that this is an important thing.

Philip Abelson, who I quoted yesterday from the article "Relation of Group Activity to Creativity in Science", wrote:

....The crucial element in creativity in science today is not dramatic illumination; it is judgment. When an experimental scientist seeks to be creative, he must make and implement a series of judgments. The complexity of his needs can be seen by looking at some of the prerequisite steps. First, he must decide upon an are to investigate. .. Having selected the major topic, the investigator must decide what to read, and how intensively. Some research scientists get lost in the morass of the literature, unable to make proper judgments about what to read, what to skip, what to believe, what to be skeptical about.

This seems to argue that one of the key factors in creativity is a breadth of knowledge and a sense of what is more or less important. This judgment, too, requires a general base of knowledge which can be built upon. Cardinal Newman says that the object of liberal education is the philosophical habit of mind, which enables the educated person to make order of different branches of learning and keep a sort of mental framework. This seems to me to be not too much different from what the article above called "judgment", the ability to be aware of and avoid false trails or over-immersion in a less important facet of the subject.

In his Seventh Discourse, Newman quotes a Mr Davison, who says in part:

"Judgment does not stand here for a certain homely, useful quality of intellect, that guards a person from committing mistakes to the injury of his fortunes or common reputation; but for that master-principle of business, literature, and talent, which gives him strength in any subject he chooses to grapple with, and enables him to seize the strong point in it. .....

..... it will not be denied, that in order to do any good to the judgment, the mind must be employed upon such subjects as come within the cognizance of that faculty, and give some real exercise to its perceptions. Here we have a rule of selection by which the different parts of learning may be classed for our purpose. Those which belong to the province of the judgment are religion (in its evidences and interpretation), ethics, history, eloquence, poetry, theories of general speculation, the fine arts, and works of wit. ...

"If these studies be such as give a direct play and exercise to the faculty of the judgment, then they are the true basis of education for the active and inventive powers, whether destined for a profession or any other use. Miscellaneous as the assemblage may appear... they will all conspire in an union of effect. They are necessary mutually to explain and interpret each other. The knowledge derived from them all will amalgamate, and the habits of a mind versed and practised in them by turns will join to produce a richer vein of thought and of more general and practical application than could be obtained of any single one, as the fusion of the metals into Corinthian brass gave the artist his most ductile and perfect material. ...

...a person cannot avoid receiving some infusion and tincture, at least, of those several qualities, from that course of diversified reading. One thing is unquestionable, that the elements of general reason are not to be found fully and truly expressed in any one kind of study; and that he who would wish to know her idiom, must read it in many books.

"If different studies are useful for aiding, they are still more useful for correcting each other..... History, for example, shows things as they are, that is, the morals and interests of men disfigured and perverted by all their imperfections of passion, folly, and ambition; philosophy strips the picture too much; poetry adorns it too much; the concentrated lights of the three correct the false peculiar colouring of each, and show us the truth.

Now I think there are many creative people who have "specialized" at an early age in some area -- perhaps Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein are a couple of examples that come to mind. I am not quite sure how to express it, but I think "freedom" can stand in for "generality" of understanding. Knowledge is in some ways ever a potentiality for human persons; there will always be things we don't know, but freedom allows for the possibility of continuing to learn.

In other words, I think one of the disservices a faulty education can do us is to implicitly or explicitly shut out certain avenues to knowledge, usually the "less useful" kind.

Again quoting The Latin Centered Curriculum, which in turn is referring to Tracy Lee Simmons' book Climbing Parnassus:

"Most public schools in America now strive to be cut-rate educational malls for the intellectually lame -- whether or not students first darken the school doors that way, so most of them leave -- while even some private schools pose as little more than colorful felt boards for the earnestly shallow, commonly confusing pious or patriotic piffle with real education."

I happen to think that no child is born "intellectually lame" except in a very technical sense to which no blame can be attached. They become that way through their educators' and later, perhaps, their own bad choices. To me, perhaps "intellectually hobbled" would be more expressive of what a poor education can do to a mind. But that being said, I think the purpose of education is to free the mind from its ignorance and reliance on faulty methods, as much as its capacities will allow.

And freedom to range through possibilities, to incubate mentally, to keep mental balance, to pursue knowledge without being forced to "consent" to something not yet understood, seems to be of value, judging from looking back at the historical times when intellect and creativity seemed to hit high points. Another thing that seems to be important is a certain core curriculum of liberal arts, as explained above, that are held in high esteem by the community. The last thing that occurs to me, though actually it needs to be on the ground floor, is an essential sense of safety in the learners' environment -- not that there aren't dangers out there, but that the forces of good are constant and stable; "that dragons exist, but ... dragons can be beaten” as Chesterton says.

In our society we don't generally seem to have any of these to a strong degree, in the usual way things are done. Which is probably why homeschooling seems to have an advantage that makes up for its amateur nature.... it can provide freedom of intellect, a consensus of value, and a stable foundation that make creativity and learning possible.

more on creativity and learning

More notes from Creativity and Learning: this time from an essay by Philip H Abelson called "Relation of Group Activity to Creativity in Science". I thought these four stages of creativity, apparently formulated by one Herbert Fox, were interesting.

1. Preparation, involving thorough investigation of the problem by reading and experiment.
2. Incubation, involving a conscious and unconscious mental digestion and assimilation of all pertinent information acquired.
3. Illumination, involving the appearance of the creative idea, the creative flash.
4. Verification, involving experimental testing of the creative idea.

Recently Harold Hughes has added two steps which should be included. His list is

1. interest
2. preparation
3. incubation
4. illumination
5. verification
6. exploitation

This was interesting to me because the stage of "illumination" is what is commonly thought of as creativity, but these "stages" take into account the work before and after the moment of illumination. Creativity thus seems to follow upon plenty of quality input AND time to process and connect seemingly disparate things, and the creative illumination is then followed by working out the details and validity of the creative discovery.

This article called No school like home talked about the value of informality in the homeschool in developing this creative process.

..A book just published by academics at the Institute of Education, University of London, is highly controversial. It argues that home education is a viable alternative to school up to the age of 14.

Alan Thomas, a visiting fellow in the institute's department of psychology and human development, and Harriet Pattison, a research associate, conclude that informal learning at home is an "astonishingly efficient way to learn", as good if not better than school for many children.

"The ease, naturalness and immense intellectual potential of informal learning up to the age of middle secondary school means they can learn certainly as much if not more," they say in How Children Learn at Home.

Thomas and Pattison interviewed and observed 26 families who home-educated, between them, more than 70 children. Some had been out of school for a couple of years, others had never been inside a school. Most were British, but a handful were Irish, Australian and Canadian.

The authors discovered that these children absorbed information mainly by "doing nothing, observing, having conversations, exploring, and through self-directed learning". They liken the "chaotic nature" of informal learning to the process that leads to scientific breakthroughs, the early stages of crafting a novel, coming up with a solution to a technical problem, or the act of composing music.

"Its products are often intangible, its processes obscure, its progress piecemeal," they say. "There are false starts, unrelated bits and pieces picked up, interests followed and discarded, sometimes to be taken up again, sometimes not... Yet the chaotic nature of the informal curriculum does not appear to be a barrier to children organising it into a coherent body of knowledge."

Thomas and Pattison acknowledge that critics will say home-educated children are likely to pick up information peppered with misunderstandings or inaccuracies, and parents may unwittingly pass on their own misconceptions. "Yet the lack of information quality-control does not appear to lead to muddled, confused children," they say.

"In some ways, it may be an advantage because, rather than presenting knowledge in neat packages, the informal curriculum forces learners to become actively engaged with their information - to work with it, move it around, juggle ideas and resolve contradictions... It is not a static thing contained in a series of educational folders. It is alive and dynamic."

The article went on to say that:

Contrary to expectations, the home-educated children had no difficulty entering formal education, the authors found. The informal curriculum is "as good a preparation as any" for college, university or academic correspondence courses, they say. "The young people had the personal skills to make the transition with apparent ease."

This seems to be in line with what I've noticed about my homeschool through the years. There has been sort of a mystery in the spaces. Sometimes nothing seems to be happening, but it is usually not so. Aidan is suddenly spelling words and asking what they say, and can read the time off a digital clock, and can count to 100 with a little help. Paddy is comparing the tale of the Woozles, in the Pooh story, to the Thompsons getting lost in the desert in his Tintin book. And these are just the intellectual things I happen to notice because they are on my "list" in some way. There are all sorts of other things happening in quiet. Understanding this, I've tried to allow silences and spaces or tried to tolerate them, at least, though they sometimes make me uncomfortable.

The "stages of creativity" seem to echo in some ways the process of what goes on under the surface of our home life in the way of learning. I can sometimes see the interest and preparation; I don't always see the "incubation" or even the actual moment of illumination; I sometimes only know what has been happening at the verification or "exploitation" stage, when the child is able to demonstrate or use his knowledge in some way.

Online:

• Working Paper: Creativity Models
• Seven Stages of Creativity
• Wikipedia article on creativity

A Love of Nature from Earliest Days

Intimacy with Nature makes for Personal Well-being.––But to enable them to swim with the stream is the least of the benefits this early training should confer on the children; a love of Nature, implanted so early that it will seem to them hereafter to have been born in them, will enrich their lives with pure interests, absorbing pursuits, health, and good humour. "I have seen," says the same writer, "the young man of fierce passions and uncontrollable daring expend healthily that energy which threatened daily to plunge him into recklessness, if not into sin, upon hunting out and collecting, through rock and bog, snow and tempest, every bird and egg of the neighbouring forest . . . I have seen the young London beauty, amid all the excitement and temptation of luxury and flattery, with her heart pure, and her mind occupied in a boudoir full of shells andfossils, flowers and seaweeds, keeping herself unspotted from the world, by considering the lilies of the fields of the field, how they grow."

Charlotte Mason is quoting from Charles Kingsley's Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore which seems to be about the advantages of taking Natural History seriously in one's lives. He lists many more benefits to the mind and to physical health, and ends in this manner:

And so I end this little book, hoping, even praying, that it may encourage a few more labourers to go forth into a vineyard, whichthose who have toiled in it know to be full of ever-fresh health, and wonder and simple joy, and the presence and the glory of Him whose name is LOVE.

I don't agree with everything Kingsley says but the bit CM quoted rang with me ten years ago when I first read it and it seems to have been borne out in our lives since.
Today's Lesson has a post on Expend Healthily that Energy.

Aidan stacking firewood in front of our house.