Be Not Afraid (to Read Great Books)

Spring is the time to plan, declutter, and read articles on homeschooling philosophy : ). Even though it snowed yesterday and FEELS like December around here, I know spring is just around the corner even up above the mile-high marker.

We bring Liam down to the Amtrak station this afternoon to return for his last month of college before his, yes, his GRADUATION! Right after he gets back to college, tomorrow in fact, he has to present his senior thesis defense so any prayers or good wishes for his success would be appreciated. His topic is upon the proper end of fiction/literature. The title is "Felt Life" from Henry James' introduction to Portrait of a Lady:

"There is, I think, no more nutritive or suggestive truth in this connexion than that of the perfect dependence of the 'moral' sense of a work of art on the amount of felt life concerned in producing it. The question comes back thus, obviously, to the kind and the degree of the artist's prime sensibility, which is the soil out of which his subject springs. The quality and capacity of that soil, its ability to "grow" with due freshness and straightness any vision of life, represents, strongly or weakly, the projected morality. That element is but another name for the more or less close connexion of the subject with some mark made on the intelligence, with some sincere experience."

Or as Flannery O'Connor wrote in an essay called "The Church and the Fiction Writer":

What the fiction writer will discover, if he discovers anything at all, is that he himself cannot move or mold reality in the interests of abstract truth. The writer learns, perhaps more quickly than the reader, to be humble in the face of what-is. What-is is all he has to do with; the concrete is his medium; and he will realize eventually that fiction can transcend its limitations only by staying within them. Henry James said that the morality of a piece of fiction depended on the amount of 'felt life' that was in it. The Catholic writer, in so far as he has the mind of the Church, will feel life from the standpoint of the central Christian mystery: that it has, for all its horror, been found by God to be worth dying for. But this should enlarge not narrow his field of vision.

Anyway, changing the subject but perhaps not altogether, here are three articles I just linked to on a Great Books Reading group I am on (designed for Kolbe Academy parents to read the jr high and high school books before their kids get to them). The articles are about reading difficult but rewarding literature, and continuing to learn and study through life -- basically on the theme "Be not afraid.. anything worthwhile you read with a sincere effort, you will get something out of" (There's something wrong with that sentence but I have to get off the computer so I will let it stand for now).

• How to Read a Hard Book
• Teaching Classical Literature Classically(it seems to relate a bit to our own self-teaching efforts)
• How to Be a Student

History as Story -- "Man at the Cross-roads"

I once read a mention by CS Lewis of one of the history books used in Ambleside's early curriculum, Henrietta Marshall's Our Island Story:

I think it is possible to be strengthened by the image of the past without being either deceived or puffed up. The image becomes dangerous in the precise degree to which it is mistaken, or substituted, for serious and systematic historical study. The stories are best when they are handed on and accepted as stories. I do not mean by this that they should be handed on as mere fictions (some of them are after all true).

But the emphasis should be on the tale as such, on the picture which fires the imagination, the example that strengthens the will. The schoolboy who hears them should dimly feel - though of course he cannot put into words - that he is hearing saga. Let him be thrilled - preferably "out of school" - by the "Deeds that won the Empire"; but the less we mix this up with his "history lessons" or mistake it for a serious analysis - worse still, a justification - of imperial policy, the better.

When I was a child I had a book full of coloured pictures called Our Island Story. That title has always seemed to me to strike exactly the right note. The book did not look at all like a text-book either. What does seem to me poisonous, what breeds a type of patriotism that is pernicious if it lasts but not likely to last long in an educated adult, is the perfectly serious indoctrination of the young in knowably false or baised history - the heroic legend drably disguised as text-book fact.

I thought that was interesting.

The point, I think, is that when history is taught through narrative, through Story, it becomes personal and elevates one's thinking. One doesn't think of it as straight objective fact, though one draws a general sense of how things are from it. Whereas when propaganda is taught in standard textbook form, taught as plain fact, it can lead to a narrow parochialism that pretends to be patriotism, or to cynicism when the child grows up and realizes things aren't really that way.

Though CS Lewis assumed that books like this wouldn't be used for actual history lessons, I wonder what he would have thought of Charlotte Mason's PNEU if he had been acquainted with it. I know he rather disliked school the way it was done to him, though he got a lot out of his relationship with his tutor, a Scottish skeptic who Lewis called the Great Knock, who questioned almost everything.

Lewis was an admirer of GK Chesterton though, and his thoughts on patriotism and its attribuest had some overlaps with Chesterton's (scroll down) .

Chesterton's wife, Frances Blogg, worked as the Secretary at PNEU (editing notes, for one thing, writing articles, giving talks and so on) before her marriage to GKC (scroll down). It looks like Chesterton spoke at least once at a PNEU meeting, according to this biography written by Maisie Ward:

Gilbert.... speaks for the Richmond and Kew branch of the P.N.E.U. on "The Romantic Element in Morality"

I couldn't find that talk or any version of it online, to my regret but this is nice.

To a Christian existence is a story, which may end up in any way. In a thrilling novel (that purely Christian product) the hero is not eaten by cannibals; but it is essential to the existence of the thrill that he might be eaten by cannibals. The hero must (so to speak) be an eatable hero. So Christian morals have always said to the man, not that he would lose his soul, but that he must take care that he didn't....

All Christianity concentrates on the man at the cross-roads. The vast and shallow philosophies, the huge syntheses of humbug, all talk about ages and evolution and ultimate developments. The true philosophy is concerned with the instant. Will a man take this road or that?--that is the only thing to think about, if you enjoy thinking. The aeons are easy enough to think about, any one can think about them. The instant is really awful: and it is because our religion has intensely felt the instant, that it has in literature dealt much with battle and in theology dealt much with hell. It is full of danger, like a boy's book: it is at an immortal crisis.

Laying the Basis of Education by the Habit of Reading

This period of a child's life between his sixth and his ninth year should be used to lay the basis of a liberal education, and of the habit of reading for instruction. During these years the child should enter upon the domain of knowledge, in a good many directions, in a reposeful, consecutive way, which is not to be attained through the somewhat exciting medium of oral lessons. Charlotte Mason, Preface to Home Education

First, it's interesting about the "oral lessons". I could find nothing more about her caution about their use in Home Education, but in School Education you find, under the heading of "means of destroying the desire for knowledge" (p 214 School Education)

(a) Too many oral lessons, which offer knowledge in a diluted form, and do not leave the child free to deal with it.
(b) Lectures, for which the teacher collects, arranges, and illustrates matter from various sources; these often offer knowledge in too condensed and ready prepared a form.

A little later in the book (p 226):

Thus it becomes a large part of the teacher's work to help children to deal with their books; so that the oral lesson and lecture are but small matters in education, and are used chiefly to summarise or to expand or illustrate.

Too much faith is commonly placed in oral lessons and lectures; "to be poured into like a bucket," as says Carlyle, "is not exhilarating to any soul"; neither is it exhilarating to have every difficulty explained to weariness, or to have the explanation teased out of one by questions.

and a bit later (p 227):

Oral lessons have their occasional use, and when they are fitly given it is the children who ask the questions. Perhaps it is not wholesome or quite honest for a teacher to pose as a source of all knowledge and to give 'lovely' lessons. Such lessons are titillating for the moment, but they give children the minimum of mental labour, and the result is much the same as that left on older persons by the reading of a magazine. We find, on the other hand, that in working through a considerable book, which may take two or three years to master, the interest of boys and girls is well sustained to the end; they develop an intelligent curiosity as to causes and consequences, and are in fact educating themselves.

and on p 229

The lecture must be subordinated to the book. The business of the teacher is to put his class in the right attitude towards their book by a word or two of his own interest in the matter contained, of his own delight in the manner of the author. But boys get knowledge only as they dig for it. Labour prepares the way for assimilation, that mental process which converts information into knowledge; and the effort of taking in the sequence of thought of his author is worth to the boy a great deal of oral teaching.

Do teachers always realise the paralysing and stupefying effect that a flood of talk has upon the mind? The inspired talk of an orator no doubt wakens a response and is listened to with tense attention; but few of us claim to be inspired, and we are sometimes aware of the difficulty of holding the attention of a class. We blame ourselves, whereas the blame lies in the instrument we employ––the more or less diluted oral lesson or lecture, in place of the living and arresting book. We cannot do without the oral lesson––to introduce, to illustrate, to amplify, to sum up. My stipulation is that oral lessons should be few and far between, and that the child who has to walk through life,––and has to find his intellectual life in books or go without,––shall not be first taught to go upon crutches.

I know these quotes are hard on the eyes, and I apologize. I think it's interesting that this emphasis on books rather than oral lessons was actually a very traditional concept. My favorite manual on Ignatian education warns against lectures and too much talk in very similar terms, and for very similar reasons. The activity of a student's mind is very important, and oral lessons tend to be received in bits and pieces.

I am not quite sure what CM meant by oral lessons being "exciting". I was looking back over all my school life and realized I can hardly remember a word of most of the classes I sat through, though I suppose I must have retained bits and pieces. But I do remember other things like the tumbleweed rolling across the playground, the way a teacher's glasses caught the fluorescent light, the skinny boy with the buzz cut in first grade who couldn't sit still for the life of him. Those things don't have much to do with the content of the lessons. But listening involves only one sense, the hearing, leaving the other senses more or less idle or in actual competition with the listening.

I wonder if oral lessons disconnect you from your brain processes in a way that reading does not. And what would Charlotte Mason think of educational DVDs and tapes?

Now what about reading aloud or listening to audio-tapes? Most of my children have trouble listening to books on tape. Because of the way they learn, they find the unfamiliar voice and sound effects very distracting. Reading aloud to them has a different effect. It's mom, and there is a relation-bonding aspect to it which associates beautiful language with deep affection and comfort. Now, reading aloud is not quite the same as an oral lesson because part of CM's criticism of the oral lesson was its mediocrity. Most teachers of grade school and secondary school are not great minds in their own right. Their words will not have the force, clarity and grace of a good book. Reading a good book aloud is a sharing of appreciation (though Charlotte Mason thought that doing this should not distract from her primary goal of getting kids directly in touch with books for themselves).

Now this brings us back to the habit of reading for instruction. She has a lot more directly to say about that in other parts of the book, but the primary emphasis in this preface is that nothing else should be allowed to interfere with that habit. The school talk should be centered around the book -- the teacher's comments can introduce or sum up or point out sections of the book, but the reading is the central focus of the lesson.

You find that reading, in many ways, is unavoidably at the core of a liberal education. Our heritage comes to us largely through books, though also through art and music. How else can the dead people of past times speak to us? Nowadays there is cinema, which is a form of drama in my opinion, and I believe it will over time become part of the stream of culture to an even greater extent than it has already. If the Greeks could have filmed their tragedies, would they not have? (sure, there is an element in the audience gathering personally that is lacking in the modern video viewing at home, but to replace that there is a wider possibility of transmission comparable to the wide transmission of books begun by the invention of the printing press).

OK, really rambling now. Just a few thoughts. I didn't even get to "reposeful and consecutive". But that is obviously important to her in dealing with an excellent book -- the fact that it can easily take a year or two years for the children to work through it. This is a plus in her opinion because it's like visiting a wise person over a long course in time. You get familiar with their approach, their thinking, their whole persona. Since education is "by intimacy" not by quick superficial exposure to different concepts, in her view, the careful reading of a challenging book is an apprenticeship in a way of thinking and seeing and expressing.

I just read Frank Smith's quote in James Taylor's Poetic Knowledge to the effect that children learn to read from an author, not from a technique. I handed the book over to my son at college and I can't seem to bring up the exact quote, but here are a couple of parallel ones:

“Learning to read is a complex and delicate task in which almost all the rules, all the cues, and all the feedback can be obtained only through the process of reading itself”

This one is about writing, but in a lot of ways the thought is the same:

If you aspire to be like a particular author, you read what the author has written. You don't study how the author writes, you participate in the author's writing. There is ample evidence that children are sensitive to what they read, even if they -- and their teachers -- are not aware of the fact. It doesn't always work in the learner's interest. Children whose reading primers were mindless three-line stories..... wrote similarly mindless fragments themselves when asked to compose a story. Children who were reading rich, complex, meaningful material produced stories that were creative and interesting. As computer programmers say: Garbage in, garbage out.

Gilbert Highet in The Classical Tradition points out that complex, rich language actually develops a person's structure of thought. He writes in the context of how introduction to the Latin and Greek languages allowed barbarian peoples with simple, concrete languages to actually become capable of thinking and creating at a much higher level than they would have been able to do otherwise. Often the Greek and Latin words entered their own language and made the languages higher. Again, it is "participation" in the writer's thoughts. This is something that cannot happen so effectively when the teacher becomes an intermediary between the child and the book. You lose the participation; the book and the author become "objects" of thought, not "co-thinkers". The difference is subtle, but has wide ramifications (and now that I think of it, it explains something that puzzled my daughter when she encountered it in her high school peers -- that they dislike books like Dickens' and Brontes' and Shakespeare's, because they have been taught to objectify them by much discourse on "literary techniques" and "author's intention" which is fine AFTER a student has learned the "one thing needful" in the literary response, but is devastating and almost permanently injurious if it is done PRIOR to it).

Perhaps another strike against the "oral lesson" is that it tends to talk down to a minimal level of competence. I think a teacher faced with a class of children of various intelligences and background will try to communicate so that even the most disadvantaged children will have a possibility of understanding. This is tactful, and proper in circumstances such as instructing children how to tie shoes or behave at mass, but does not give these children a chance to rise above their current levels of competence in intellectual and emotional response. Beautiful, poetic, narrative DOES give the children something to be attracted to and respond to even when they don't totally understand it yet.

One final note: when she uses the term "medium" of oral lessons she is speaking precisely. A "medium" is something that comes between two things. To CM, the "medium" should be mostly the child's own perceptions and attention.... the child develops a relationship with the book, so the relationship itself is the medium. If a teacher interferes with this (instead of supporting it with well chosen words) then the child may become dependent upon the medium, and then when it is taken away, the child either has to learn for himself to do without that crutch, or else is left helpless and without his own tools.

CS Lewis quotes about literature for children

After I quoted Charlotte Mason on the importance of good literature for children and not "talking down", I remembered I had read some similar things said by CS Lewis (from a a collection of essays on literature by CS Lewis called Of Other Worlds., which Liam has at college with him right now, so I clipped the quotes from this interesting online essay called The Childlike in CS Lewis and George MacDonald.

"I never met The Wind in the Willows or the Bastable books till I was in my late twenties, and I do not think I have enjoyed them any the less on that account. I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children's story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children's story. The good ones last"

it certainly is my opinion that a book worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then"

'for children' only in the sense that I excluded what I thought they would not like or understand; not in the sense of writing what I intended to be below adult attention"

Particularity and Philosophy of Literature -- quotes

Flannery O'Connor

"It is the business of the artist to uncover the strangeness of truth"

"The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location."

Aristotle

Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular.... It clearly follows that the poet or 'maker' should be the maker of plots rather than of verses; since he is a poet because he imitates, and what he imitates are actions.

Tolkien

Literature works from mind to mind and is thus more progenitive (compared to the pictorial arts). It is at once more universal and more poignantly particular.

Plutarch

Wherefore those that would give their minds to philosophical studies are not obliged to avoid poetry altogether, but rather to prepare themselves for philosophy by poems, accustoming themselves to search for and embrace that which may profit in that which pleaseth them, and rejecting and discarding that wherein they find nothing of this nature. For this discrimination is the first step to learning.

Jacques Maritain

The poet has realized that he has his own way, which is neither scientific nor philosophical, of knowing the world. Thus the fact of that peculiar kind of knowledge which is poetic knowledge has imposed itself upon philosophical reflection. And it would be no use to try to escape the problem by considering poetry a set of pseudo-statements -- with no meaning -- or a substitute for science intended for feeble-minded people. We must confront in a fair manner the fact of poetic experience and poetic intuition.

..... Because poetry emanates from the free creativity of the spirit, it is from the very start oriented toward expression, and terminates in a word proffered, it wants to speak; whereas mystical experience, because it emanates from the deepest longing of the spirit bent on knowing, tends of itself toward silence and internal fruition. Poetic experience is busy with the created world and the enigmatic and innumerable relations of existents with one another...

Lucille Ball:

That's what a writer does... takes the truth and TWISTS it a bit.

(sorry, couldn't resist that last one -- my kids are watching I Love Lucy and Lucy is trying to write a novel to win a 10,000$ prize).

Messing About, and Opening Windows to the World

"Nice? It's the only thing," said the Water Rat solemnly, as he leant forward for his stroke. "Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing-absolutely nothing-half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing," he went on dreamily, "messing-about-in-boats-messing-"
Kenneth Grahame

This quote from Wind in the Willows heads up a famous article by David Hawkins called Messing About in Science, available online in pdf . I read a quote from the article in another book. My library didn't have any of his books, so instead, I requested a book called Creativity and Learning from the library -- essays written in the late 60's by various scientists and educators. These quotes are from his essay in the volume called The Informed Vision; I wanted to type them out before I returned the book from the library.

On the Schoolroom with Windows to the World

In my own way, then, I agree with the present emphasis on a "return to subject matter." In the newer science curriculum developments, there has often been an emphasis on individual work, by children, that is laboratory-like in its style. This seems to me to be of very great importance. It constitutes a delayed recognition that the subject matter of science is not, except in a derivative sense, to be found in books. The subject matter of "the liquid state of matter" is the liquid state of matter, and we had better sometimes have some of it in the classroom. Along with aprons and mops as needed!

I have tried to suggest what laboratory style might mean in elementary school contexts. Peter the Great said he would open a window onto the West, and the elementary school laboratory might do as much, onto the world. But nowadays the pressures are toward the windowless school, and I have very honest doubts. The laboratory traditions, in high school and college, are in many ways not encouraging. Nor do I wish to underestimate the difficulties in avoiding a style of laboratory work limited, as in fact our laboratory traditions mainly are, to the attempt to certify the truth of previously announced proposition, not yet understood by the majority of students who, recipe book in hand, dutifully perform.

...It is certainly possible to program work, in some kinds of laboratory science, so as to rob it of almost all romance and reduce it, nearly, to the status of rote -- perhaps not quite, if only because a student very soon discovers that the experiment seldom works the was he has been told it will, that the "best" answers still come from the book rather than from his data. In some secret way, perhaps, he learns to mistrust the book. Or does he draw the opposite conclusion, that, in this great world he is being educated into, nature is to be taken with a grain of salt?

On the Difficulties in Teaching Science

A partial explanation of these difficulties can be found, I think in the psychology of us who teach science. In some measure, by some accidental pathways not commonly followed in our age, the culture of science has penetrated at least a little into the subsoil of our minds; we have pursued it much beyond the average.

But from this there are two results, contradictory to each other. One is that we have some art in scientific inquiry; we have been absorbed in scientific subject matter and we know the fruits in our enjoyment of them. The other is that we have proven or declared ourselves, and are certified to teach. The consequence is social caste. We are the knowers, the explainers. Nothing moves us to such generous efforts as to be asked for explanations. Shrewd children, even shrewd adults, learn to ask these flattering questions, though their interest is slight and passing. For the deeper the perplexity, the more burning the curiosity, the less children or adults seek prompt explanation. When you have exhausted your own resources and still fail, then you will go for help. If you go too soon to an explainer, he does best to turn you back on your own resources, or to direct you towards acquisition of new ones.

What is true of the initiates is true, also, of those who misfortune it is to teach science without any conviction of inner illumination. Here is the book, they are told, or the syllabus, or the teachers' guide. Now teach! The style is set for them; they know they are supposed to teach, to give explanations. And we, alas, the devotees, the mystics, have set that style.

On the Failure of Progressive Education

... and this leads me to my practical conclusion from the failure of progressive education to win its way into a permanent place in education. Where that movement succeeded, it did so because the world of children's exploration was amply provisioned with subject matter they could explore well, could penetrate deeply. Where it failed, it did so because the freedom for active involvement was inadequately provisioned. This inadequacy was often concealed by a preoccupation, illegitimate in the absence of provisioning, with the maturation of the child personality. "Freedom of expression" was often seen as a good in itself...

I wonder if we've gotten a bit more disillusioned nowadays about the limitations of the progressive school. At least, while reading these two essays, I was thinking that this is exactly the sort of thing that I do think works in a homeschool fairly well, but would be very difficult to manage properly in a regular school. In a home, a child is free to putter about in the kitchen or outside, mixing this and messing about with that, meanwhile getting a good sense of how things work. Because he is in a close relationship with his home environment and his family, there are natural opportunities for a constructive, healthy freedom. In the school -- I think Hawkins is right that the successes have been few, for more reasons than one can list here. He seems to think that the path back can be found, while I would doubt it more; most of the progressive educators that I know of who were serious about education have moved towards advocacy of homeschooling.

I think the same difficulty with well-meaning "over-teaching" arises sometimes with teaching literature. The Ignatian educators used to warn against "erudition" and caution the teacher to express it sparingly. The Ignatian teacher was to keep his eyes fixed on the goal of "self-activity" on the part of the student. That is, much as most teachers would like to simply impart the wisdom he has gained directly into the veins of the student, this simply isn't doable. The knowledge thus gained will be second-hand -- that is, not knowledge but what the ancients called "belief". Belief is fine in certain areas, but it is simply not the same as knowledge. Say I learn a certain way to factor. It will do me very little good unless in some way I understand, even if incompletely, what a factor is and how numbers work.

Of course, the teacher does have knowledge that the student doesn't. His role isn't unnecessary just because it is secondary. But it does seem to me that a good deal of "messing about" is important in laying the foundation for further, more focused work in any field. For philosophy, a lot of questions discussed and thought about; for literature, plenty of reading and listening and imagining; for science, plenty of experience in the natural world.

Style as a Reflection of Thought

from Idea of a University -- Literature.

Literature is the personal use or exercise of language. That this is so is further proved from the fact that one author uses it so differently from another. Language itself in its very origination would seem to be traceable to individuals. Their peculiarities have given it its character. We are often able in fact to trace particular phrases or idioms to individuals; we know the history of their rise. Slang surely, as it is called, comes of, and breathes of the personal. The connection between the force of words in particular languages and the habits and sentiments of {276} the nations speaking them has often been pointed out. And, while the many use language as they find it, the man of genius uses it indeed, but subjects it withal to his own purposes, and moulds it according to his own peculiarities. The throng and succession of ideas, thoughts, feelings, imaginations, aspirations...... the faithful expression of his intense personality, attending on his own inward world of thought as its very shadow: so that we might as well say that one man's shadow is another's as that the style of a really gifted mind can belong to any but himself. It follows him about as a shadow. His thought and feeling are personal, and so his language is personal.

Thought and speech are inseparable from each other. Matter and expression are parts of one: style is a thinking out into language. This is what I have been laying down, and this is literature; not things, not the verbal symbols of things; not on the other hand mere words; but thoughts expressed in language. Call to mind, Gentlemen, the meaning of the Greek word which expresses this special prerogative of man over the feeble intelligence of the inferior animals. It is called Logos: what does Logos mean? it stands both for reason and for speech, and it is difficult to say which it means more properly. It means both at once: why? because really they cannot be divided,—because they are in a true sense one. When we can separate light and illumination, life and motion, the convex and the concave of a curve, then will it be possible for thought to tread speech under foot, and to hope to do without it—then will it be conceivable that the vigorous and fertile intellect should renounce its own double, its instrument of expression, and the channel of its speculations and emotion

There are some more quotes at About on What is Style?

let him be as one that serves

Summer was dead, but autumn had not yet been born when the ibis came to the bleeding tree.....

Sean had to read The Scarlet Ibis today and answer questions on it for his Language Arts class at high school. He asked me if I'd read it and said "it was about someone a little like Aidan". From this particular teenager, that is as much as to say that it made an impression on him. So I went and looked it up.... it's a very short story, and the link above contains the whole text.

Today, I understand, is the International Day of Persons with Disabilities so I wonder if Sean's teacher (or the book he is using for Language Arts) planned the timing. According to this study site, the story of the Scarlet Ibis "explores the conflicts between love and pride and draws attention to the effects of familial and societal expectations on those who are handicapped".

On December 3, 2000, Pope John Paul II gave a homily on the Jubilee of the Disabled. He said:

In your bodies and in your lives, dear brothers and sisters, you express an intense hope of redemption. In all this is there not an implicit expectation of the "redemption" that Christ won for us by his death and resurrection? Indeed, every person marked by a physical or mental difficulty lives a sort of existential "advent", waiting for a "redemption" that will be fully manifest, for him as for everyone, only at the end of time. Without faith, this waiting can be tinged with disappointment and discouragement; supported by Christ's word, it becomes a living and active hope.

Looking at Aidan, I often think how bright he is. Every few minutes he comes to tell me something he's accomplished. "I made a G!" "I put all the numbers in order!" His day is a succession of victories, and he brightens our days with his sense of humor and his buoyant interest in life. Who could resist his charm? Yes, he is cognitively disabled. He is nine years old and these milestones are usually accomplished in the 5th or 6th year. It seems irrelevant though except when he is compared to others in his age group.

I am not trying to be simplistic about the difficulties of having a disability or taking care of someone who is disabled. Of course, there are many struggles, and there is also a spectrum of disabilities. Some are cognitively normal but physically disabled, like the author of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (a beautifully written book by a man who was completely paralyzed by a stroke -- he communicated by blinking, and each word of the memoir took about 2 minutes to accomplish). Some are physically and cognitively fine but have behavior problems, and so on.

I don't mean to minimize the sorrows or difficulties. I mean to say that the comparisons (the narrator in the short story was concerned his disabled little brother would be a school failure) can add a burden not necessary. In the story:

"Aw, come on, Doodle. You can do it. Do you want to be different from everybody else when you start school?"

"Does that make any difference?"

"It certainly does. Now, come on."

There is a good kind of expectation and a destructive kind. One is a"living and active hope", a willingness to work and watch and wait for progress. The tragic kind, it seems to me, is the kind that holds a bar or standard that is disassociated from the other person's reality. It comes from pride in appearances, and a desire to control, and as in the story, it can lead to hurt and damage.

Advent probably is a good time to reflect on how the wrong kinds of expectations can be a kind of distraction, and a destructive force. Pope Benedict says in today's homily:

“In the language of the Church the word Advent has two meanings: presence and expectation. Presence, the light is present. Christ is the new Adam, he is with us and among us. Already the light shines and we must open our heart to see the light. But Advent also means expectation. The dark night of evil is still strong. Therefore, we pray..."

Presence and expectation -- Maria Montessori taught:

There are two sins, in particular, which tend to distort our true vision of the child. They are pride and anger. Hence humility and patience- their opposites are the virtues most needed by the would-be directress.

...She (the directress) must study how to purify her heart and render it burning with charity towards the child. She must put on humility ; and, above all, learn how to serve. She must learn how to appreciate and gather in all those tiny and delicate manifestations of the opening life in the child s soul. Ability to do this can only be attained through a genuine inner effort towards self-perfection....

This is no less true of the child with disabilities than of the "typical" child, if there really were such a thing. With that approach of humility -- the expectancy and vigilance to serve -- one becomes aware of the presence of Christ in the child, and one is less tempted by the flaws of pride and anger that in the Scarlet Ibis seemed iconized by frequent visuals of crimson and blood. Montessori often quoted Our Lord's words:

"He that would be the greatest amongst you, let him be as one that serves."

I also think of the Gospel from the November 23 mass readings, which though they are familiar to me made a deep impression:

`Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.'

It may sound like I am saying that disabled children are "less" but of course, I am using the phrase in the way that Jesus used it. He did not mean that the people we are to serve are truly less valuable, but that they are too often less valued. The potential of a child is greater than our own, but a child is vulnerable in a way adults are not. Montessori taught:

On the other hand the adult, who lives continually in the presence of small children, is without this social control. They are so young and in experienced that they take everything the adult says and does for granted having no standard of comparison. Thus they do not reflect back to the teacher his own defects. It is therefore, says Dr. Montessori, a real relief to be able to mix with people who are incapable of defending themselves or recognizing our shortcomings. Such a situation naturally tends to develop a certain type of character...

Small children have had so little experience that they will even justify the teacher s actions at their own expense. They will believe themselves to be in the wrong, when they are not really so at all, just because the teacher has (unjustly) accused them.

Again, the Scarlet Ibis vividly depicts this vulnerability along with its strength, as when the narrator's young brother has pity on the ibis even though his brother is not demonstrating the same compassion in regard to him.

Let me remember presence and expectancy, humility and patience, service and vigilance, during this Advent season!

Wisdom Begins in Wonder

In lieu of a real post I thought I would put up John Senior's words on the value of the Good Books -- taken from this site called Great Books Academy, the quote is originally from a very thought-provoking book called Restoration of Christian Culture. Here is a review of the book from Alicia, who was the first to mention the book to me years and years ago:

"The Great Books movement of the last generation has not failed as much as fizzled, not because of any defect in the books - 'the best that has been thought and said,' in Matthew Arnold's phrase - but like good champagne in plastic bottles, they went flat.

To change the figure, the seeds are good but the cultural soil has been depleted; the seminal ideas of Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine and St. Thomas thrive only in an imaginative ground saturated with fables, fairy tales, stories, rhymes, and adventures: the thousand books of Grimm, Anderson, Stevenson, Dickens, Scott, Dumas and the rest.

Taking all that was best of the Greco-Roman world into itself, Western tradition has given us the thousand good books as a preparation for the great ones - and for all studies in the arts and sciences. Without them all studies are inhumane. The brutal athlete and the foppish aesthete suffer vices opposed to the virtue of Newman's gentleman. Anyone working at college, whether in the pure arts and sciences or the practical ones, will discover he has made a quantum leap when he gets even a small amount of cultural ground under him: he will grow up like an undernourished plant suddenly fertilized and watered.

Now just notice how that copia of metaphors -- champagne, soil and seedlings, quantam leaps -- still manage to evoke a unity. I think it's interesting how he brings in "quantam" when he discusses how even the scientific mind can benefit from the "cultural ground".

Albert Einstein said:

"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales."

"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking."

Other quotes on the value of imagination and fairy tales at Sur La Lune.

I went and hunted for the quote because of a discussion going on at Real Learning about the role of Great Books and Good Books in the high school years in the home school.

Oh, that's about all I have time or mental focus for right now. Aidan and Paddy are trying to play SET; Liam, who came home this weekend, is sitting opposite me in front of the fireplace with his laptop; Kieron is constructing with pattern beads; and everyone else seems to be asleep. Aidan's IEP is today. More little details of life in the homeschool over at Every Waking Hour.

total effect and literature

A bit more on a similar topic from Flannery O'Connor (Mystery and Manners: --- Total Effect and the Eighth Grade). She is writing about a couple of cases where books, specifically Steinbeck's East of Eden and Hersey's A Bell for Adono, were assigned in 8th and 9th grade, and parents objected, and a teacher was subsequently dismissed, and Hersey wrote to the state school superintendent to protest. (This was in 1963, by the way). The issue of whether it is to be parents or teachers who decide what schoolchildren should read is not her main concern, though. The whole article is at the second link above.

This is the part that reminded me a bit of what I was writing about yesterday:

The total effect of a novel depends not only on its innate impact, but upon the experience, literary and otherwise, with which it is approached..... the fact that these works (she is talking about the English novels of the 18th and 19th centuries) do not present him (the student) with the realities of his own time is all to the good. He is surrounded by the realities of his own time, and he has no perspective whatever from which to view them. Like the college student who wrote in her paper on Lincoln that he went to the movies and got shot, many students go to college unaware that the world was not made yesterday; their studies began with the present and dipped backward occasionally when it seemed necessary or unavoidable.

She defines the term "total effect" as:

that principle followed in legal cases by which a book is judged not for isolated parts but by the final effect of the whole book upon the general reader.

I think the term "total effect" is still used today. First, here is an English lesson plan version which seems a bit reductionistic and overly subjective to me. Don't you think?

Firstly, we are affected by literature -- we love it, hate it, or
are indifferent. This is the total effect.

"Meaning" is the total effect -- the sum of all of the parts is
what it "means" to you. A work may have made a didactic point or
not but you responded to it.

Here is one I like somewhat better --from Writing an Analysis of Literature

Assume everything is significant. In good literature, nothing should be an accident. Each word, each character, each thought, each incident should make a contribution to the total effect the author is trying for. The contribution is sometimes obvious and direct: the author casually mentions that a car is nine years old because later on the car will break down. At other times, the contribution is indirect: the author spends a paragraph describing a glowing fireplace in order to establish a homey mood that fits in with the story's central idea -- the joys of family life. As you think about the material you are going to analyze, as you brood about what you are going to say and how you are going to say it, keep in mind that nothing is beneath your notice. Assume that everything serves a purpose and that you have not reached a full understanding of the story, poem, or play until you clearly see the purpose that everything serves.

Finally, an essay on Literature and Science by Matthew Arnold. He starts with Plato and proceeds to a defense of the value of Greek literature with very brief and respectful excursions into the territory of Darwin, Faraday, and Ruskin. What could be better! But here is what he says about "total effect":

Fit details strictly combined, in view of a large general result nobly conceived; that is just the beautiful symmetria prisca of the Greeks, and it is just where we English fail, where all our art fails. Striking ideas we have, and well-executed details we have; but that high symmetry which, with satisfying and delightful effect, combines them, we seldom or never have. The glorious beauty of the Acropolis at Athens did not come from single fine things stuck about on that hill, a statue here, a gateway there;—no, it arose from all things being perfectly combined for a supreme total effect.

I think I've diverged a bit from the original point, with these various definitions of "total effect". But Flannery O'Connor's point was that the principle of total effect could and ought to be conceived more broadly than when talking about the education of a child. Part of the total effect of a book is going to be what the student (of any age) brings to it. So I am staying to my point after all -- that it is the context and backdrop of the child's reading that affects his perspective on the new ones that come his way.

All Literature is Dangerous

This is what Martin Cothran writes in The Classical Teacher sent out from Memoria Press. He quotes Chesterton, who says in "On Reading":

To be merely modern is to condemn oneself to an ultimate narrowness; just as to spend one's last earthly money on the newest hat is to condemn oneself to the old-fashioned. The road of the ancient centuries is strewn with dead moderns.
Literature, classic and enduring literature, does its best work in reminding us perpetually of the whole round of truth and balancing other and older ideas against the ideas to which we might for a moment be prone.

Cothran writes about young college students who read some of Ayn Rand's work and were "swept away", not having read enough or thought enough to realize that books like Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead were not great literature or thought. You could probably substitute whatever book or idea you could imagine. The best insurance against a disproportionate influence of one book or idea is a broad, deep environment of them.

Of course, CS Lewis says something very similar in his famous Introduction to Athanasius:

It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones. Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook - even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny.

Cothran goes on (he is talking about the Harry Potter series):

"To a child who is not well-read, Harry Potter is dangerous -- and so is any other book he or she may read. But the best defense against one idea is not fewer ideas but more of them....being widely read, in other words, is the best inoculation against the dangers of literature. Being widely read enables a person to not only see an idea, but, as Chesterton put it, to see through it."

"Literature is dangerous-- except when taken in large doses"

I read Ayn Rand in my freshman year of university, so that is why the example particularly rang with me. The friend who gave me her books was an enthusiast who took her philosophy as truth. As for me, I admired Rand's vigor and a sort of cool sweeping bleakness in her tales of striving, dispassionate men and women. But I knew it was not great writing and I knew it wasn't great thinking. When I reflect on how I knew, I think it was because of my mother reading Winnie the Pooh to me, among much else, and I knew that Rand had left a whole lot out that needed to be accounted for at least implicitly.

John Senior writes:

"The seminal ideas of Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Thomas, only properly grow in an imaginative ground saturated with fables, fairy tales, stories, rhymes, romances, adventures-the thousand good books of Grimm, Andersen, Stevenson, Dickens, Scott, Dumas and the rest."

I think that if children have explored the territory of these "thousand good books" (you could probably add others to the list) then they will have some means by which to measure the books and ideas that will inevitably come their way. The virtues and the limitations of the Hogwarts world will be clearer against a context of Middle Earth, Narnia, Sherwood Forest, and Ravenhurst, to mention only a few.

I like what Theresa at La Paz Learning wrote some time ago about Living Dangerously. She writes:

Far better to teach your child how to appropriately handle the dangerous things he may come into contact with, like power tools, knives, or fire. It is actually safer than trying to keep your child in a sterile, “safe” environment in hopes of keeping him from harm. Rather than forbidding a child to touch these things, teach him (age appropriately, of course) to use “dangerous” things safely, and you no longer need fear him coming across them (because he inevitably will) and then hurting himself. I contend (though I admit I have not done the research to back it up) that most accidents happen due to lack of knowledge, not because of the possession of too much of it.

I think this mastery of danger has ramifications in the literary sphere too. A lot of the most worthwhile things have an element of risk. We don't read them or do them BECAUSE they are risky; but because of their very value or power, there is some danger in their handling. This would include our faith, of course. A constant theme in CS Lewis's Narnia Chronicles is that "he (Aslan) is not a TAME lion". Our faith is not tame, or at least should not be; our lives are not tame, unless we have insulated them to the point of vacuum-sealing; nor is tameness all we should expect of our literature, even for our children.

Of course, this is not about letting kids have free rein with the matches or knives or guns or books with adult themes, either. I think our society tends towards a dichotomy -- XTreme precautions, to the point that you can't buy a real chemistry set anymore and laws are being proposed to restrict fast food; and on the other hand, simple neglect or indifference to a toxic environment. Everyone has to find their own balance for their own family and children. But there is a golden mean between any two extremes, and it seems to me that children learn more about risk by learning to handle it to some extent according to their maturity than by being kept from it altogether.

This passage, towards the end of the short story Revelation, has been on my mind recently since I wrote about Flannery O'Connor a few days ago.

There was only a purple streak in the sky, cutting through a field of crimson and leading like an extension of the highway, into the descending dusk ..A visionary light settled in her eyes. She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extended upward through the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling towards heaven.... And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right. She leaned forward to observe them closer. They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away. Flannery O'Connor, Revelation

Lectio -- Extensive and Intensive, Cursiva and Stataria

The following are quotes from Francis Crotty's book called Implementation of Ignatian Education in the Home. Bear with me because this is groundwork for talking about lectio cursiva and lectio stataria. Funny, when I go Googling, the only things that come up with regard to those terms are my own posts and a few texts written in German or Latin ;-). So here are the quotes and then I've tried to paraphrase them in my own words since I know it's really difficult to read quotes taken from context:




Selective Emphasis

In respect to the treatment of subjects in the curriculum, home teachers must avoid attempting to cover wide areas of subject-matter with equal emphasis on all of its phrases. They must rather select salient aspects for intensive treatment and cover subsidiary phases in summary form. For example, general courses in history and literature are of little or no educational value unless they are conducted on this basis of selective emphasis... p 24

The short version -- it's effective to combine in-depth treatment of a topic with a survey-level approach. This is particularly true in courses like history and literature, because you want both an awareness of the "big picture" AND a method of delving more deeply into particular aspects of the whole. A century book or timeline is a nice way to do this with history and for literature, a cluster of books on a topic can be a good way to go.

Lectio Cursiva and Lectio Stataria:

Depending upon the stage of the lesson, the teacher may develop a few aspects of the lesson thoroughly (lectio stataria) or go into many aspects by way of introduction to a new subject of preparation for a review or wide and rapid teaching of subject matter (lectio cursiva).

My short version -- decide what is best in a particular lesson -- either a "big picture" survey or approach, or a more in-depth treatment. What you decide on may depend on many factors -- I decide based on what we have available, what I know about the subject personally, whether the little ones are cranky that day, or based upon whether one of the other assignments for that day is cursory or in-depth (I like to balance those things so the kids are using different parts of their intellectual equipment for different lessons -- as Charlotte Mason says, variety in lessons during a day).

More on Intensive and Extensive Treatment of Subjects

In view of the pedagogical problem created by the immense growth of knowledge, there is needed a principle of selectivity of subjects, of limitation of subject-matter, and a technique for both intensive and extensive treatment of this subject matter....

The principle of the limitation of subject-matter is based on the formational function of education....

..The principle of intensive-extensive treatment of subject matter rests on the fact that merely extensive treatment would lead to superficiality and too restricted treatment would prevent a sufficiently broad view and result in lack of student interest and stimulation. Hence, there must be both intensive and extensive treatment of subject-matter: intensive within the home-class, to fulfill the formative function, and extensive, in required and independent reading, apart from home-class, for the adequate knowledge appreciation, eg of literary works and their historical setting.

This part explains the disadvantage of too shallow or too in-depth an approach and suggests that "teacher-time" ought to be spent conveying a method -- analytical or synthetic. Analysis is breaking things down into parts -- categorizing or parsing or translating. Synthesis is putting things together -- discussions or compositions or narrations. Reading aloud is definitely a premium use of teacher time since there are few ways to better set an example for comprehension, enjoyment and even elocution than by reading with a child, and if you can cuddle up on a couch together while reading that is even better, truly an almost- perfect "whole" way to educate.

Education is meant to be formative -- that is, teaching habits and methods and an attitude that will last throughout life. When in doubt, that is the aspect to consider first, so it doesn't usually work to push through the checklist at all costs to the point of tears and bitterness (this is my paraphrase of what he is saying).


Types of the Whole

A practical solution for the teacher (who is short of time) ...is to combine the intensive and extensive system in teaching the matter for the first time. Some parts of the subject, some periods of history, some scientific principles, warrant careful and detailed explanation and study, while other phases can be summarized, or typical segments can be treated thoroughly and shown to be representative of the whole.

Personally, what I do is try to glance ahead at my children's reading to see what areas I would like to consolidate in their minds and which are less key. A more relaxed way to do this is to "discover" together and go on rabbit trails based on interest or availability of resources. To be honest, this is my default mode of operation and it does work but ideally, the Ignatian method calls for a bit of preparation ahead of time.

Now to leave the Ignatian Education and move onto the one other place I found the terms "lectio cursiva et stataria" mentioned in a book written in English online. Here is a bit from a book called "Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic" and this is the relevant section:

The third rule under this head is "Accommodate the intensity of the reading to the importance of the work. Some books therefore are only to be dipped into; others are to be run over rapidly; and others are to be studied long and sedulously." All books are not to be read with the same attention; and accordingly, an ancient distinction was taken of reading into lectio cursiva and lectio stataria. The former of these we have adopted into English, cursory reading being a familiar and correct translation of lectio cursiva. But lectio stataria cannot be so well rendered by the expression of stationary reading. "Read not," says Bacon in his Fiftieth Essay, "to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books, else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things. " (The whole quote from Bacon is here) ...

You will notice that when this Hamilton is discussing "reading" it looks like he is talking about the kind of reading a person does when he is already educated. But in Ignatian education, the way I understand it, a large part of the coursework was based on "readings", so the terms "cursiva" and "stataria" in that context referred to how the material was studied and taught. (of course, the goal for the teaching was that the student would eventually be able to carry this out on his own). Basically the class would go through a book and study specific sections in great detail, while reading larger sections at home in their own time and then reviewing/discussing their independent reading in class. They also memorized sections of the works they were studying, and wrote themes -- compositions -- based on them. There is a lot more detail about the process in this excellent article by Robert Schwickerath called The Method of Teaching in Practice. I think I have mentioned it before but it really is a great resource.

Oh, and that reminds me that I finally found the CS Lewis quote I've been looking for for the longest time -- here it is, since it seems to relate a bit to the quote above:

“An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only. There is hope for a man who has never read Malory or Boswell or Tristaram Shandy or Shakespeare’s Sonnets: But what can you do with a man who says he ‘has read’ them, meaning he has read them once, and thinks that this settles the matter? … We do not enjoy a story fully at first reading. Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid asleep, are we at leisure to savour the real beauties. Till then, it is like wasting great wine on a ravenous natural thirst which merely wants cold wetness."

But I'd better stop now, I see. For one thing, Paddy wants me to read to him... again! More on this lectio subject another time.

North and South

My daughter had the idea of spending a few moments writing out a response whenever she read a book for her reading goals this year. I am going to try to do the same -- like her, I am not going to try to write out a full review, just a few thoughts, so that is my disclaimer.

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (here is my daughter Clare's view of the book)

Why I read it Clare received the book as a gift from a friend -- she read it recently after watching the BBC version which I got her for Christmas -- and she passed it on to me to read after she finished it. Plus, it seemed to fit in a bit with this economics reading I am doing since it is about the contrast between an industrial economy and an agrarian one.

Circumstances of Reading -- I started it two days ago but read the bulk of it yesterday and finished it last night. Kevin, Aidan and I escorted Clare by train partway to Thomas Aquinas College where she is going to visit her brother and the college. This gave Aidan a chance to ride the Amtrak, which he has longed to do ever since the first time Liam departed for college by that means. So I'll always remember looking up from the book and seeing a freight train flash by next to us -- painted-metal-freight-car -- then farmland -- painted-metal-freight-car -- then farmland -- in rapid intervals. Also the GIANT bales of cotton in a huge grey field (we were going through the San Joaquin Valley at the time). Not at all like Gaskell's North and South, but evocative anyway.

Reading Thoughts --

"So between masters and men, the wheels fall through"

This book takes a look at a specific historical time through a filter of change. Changes in society as expressed by the tension between the new North and the traditional farming South; changes in religion (the events of the book are precipitated by Margaret's father's crisis of conscience which leads him to give up his position as a minister in a small country village); changes in life circumstances; and changes in opinion (Margaret moves towards respecting the Northern virtue and practices while Mr Thornton moves towards a less harsh and distant treatment of his workers, and the workingman Higgins moves towards a better understanding of the challenges faced by the "master").

This is what I noticed most. The novel form allows the author to take a time frame of three years and show the changes in society reflected through the lives of the main characters. It is well done -- you can see the movement in many symbolic details of various subplots -- for example, the worker Boucher's downward movement to final drowning in a stream, of all things, is countered by both Higgins (the Union man) and Thornton (the master) taking responsibility for raising and educating them.

In the end, the "solution" proposed to the turmoil caused by changing social conditions is a human one, not an economic or political one -- a matter of acknowledging that no man is an island, that we are bound to each other, that human contracts go beyond economic ones.

There is also a strong theme that an acknowledgement and acceptance of reality as it is will lead to better results than a denial of reality. This plays out through Margaret's father's gradual recognition of his wife's fatal illness, and through Mr Thornton's changes of fortunes through the strike and the price changes in fortune, and Margaret's own acceptance of the reality that there may never be a chance for her brother to vindicate himself in the eyes of English law.

Related to that is the emphasis on truth in perception and integrity in action -- a major plot line is concerned with a falsehood told by Margaret and what that reveals to her about her own lack of faith and courage.

There is a chapter near the end of the book where Margaret goes back to the village that she remembers as a sort of earthly paradise and finds it changed during the years of her absence:

All night long too, there burnt a little light on earth; a candle in her old bedroom, which was the nursery with the present inhabitants of the parsonage, until the new one was built. A sense of change, of individual nothingness, of perplexity and disappointment, over-powered Margaret. Nothing had been the same; and this slight, all-pervading instability, had given her greater pain than if all had been too entirely changed for her to recognise it....

And a bit later:

'After all it is right,' said she, hearing the voices of children at play while she was dressing. 'If the world stood still, it would retrograde and become corrupt,.... Looking out of myself, and my own painful sense of change, the progress all around me is right and necessary. I must not think so much of how circumstances affect me myself, but how they affect others, if I wish to have a right judgment, or a hopeful trustful heart.'

She realizes that change is inevitable in an imperfect contingent world, and that a right personal response is required. Once she realizes that she is able to take responsibility for making decisions herself rather than simply letting herself be guided by what others seem to need from her, and this is a step on her road from girlhood to taking a place in society as a mature woman.
--------------

I found myself reading the book to Paddy, who is five, and this is how it came about --

I had already read Paddy's bedtime stories and was trying to settle him down to sleep. I told him it was my turn to read while he went to sleep and he asked me, "Can you read your book out loud and put your finger on the words as you read?" So I did -- I was reading chapter 13,

'Fluff,' repeated Bessy. 'Little bits, as fly off fro' the cotton, when they're carding it, and fill the air till it looks all fine white dust. They say it winds round the lungs, and tightens them up. Anyhow, there's many a one as works in a carding-room, that falls into a waste, coughing and spittingblood, because they're just poisoned by the fluff.'

'But can't it be helped?' asked Margaret.

'I dunno. Some folk have a great wheel at one end o' their carding-rooms to make a draught, and carry off th' dust; but that wheel costs a deal o' money--five or six hundred pound, maybe,and brings in no profit; so it's but a few of th' masters as will put 'em up; and I've heard tell o' men who didn't like working places where there was a wheel, because they said as how it mad'em hungry, at after they'd been long used to swallowing fluff, tone go without it, and that their wage ought to be raised if they were to work in such places. So between masters and men th' wheels fall through. I know I wish there'd been a wheel in our place, though.'

and Paddy was fascinated with the fluff, and a bit fearful. I was surprised that he would listen for two or three pages to such a discursive book, which alternates between detailed description, and equally painstaking dialogue, with not very much action that would seem interesting to a five year old boy.

Hilda Van Stockum and Trinity College

While I was looking for the picture of our "Little Kings" for my last Christmas post (our last name means little king and so for the purpose my daughter counts as a king too, and indeed why not?) -- I found this picture I took at Trinity College in Dublin last summer. It was absolutely pouring rain that day in June, and they didn't let you so much as bring out a camera inside the college, but I did get this one outside shot.

Since I know Love2Learn Mom likes Hilda van Stockum (our family is combination Irish Dutch just like theirs and HVS's) I thought she and perhaps some others of my Catholic and/or Irish and/or literature-loving friends would like this photo. Unfortunately, I must have had trouble maneuvering my umbrella so I didn't get a complete good shot of the insignia on this bench, but I guess you can abstract the universal from the 2 particulars, at least a bit. And you can click on the pictures to make them bigger.




You can see a photo of the wedding of Spike Marlin, who is memorialized here on the bench in the photo, and Hilda Van Stockum, in 1932 at Trinity College, if you go here (and scroll down a bit)

This has nothing much to do with Hilda Van Stockum, but outside of Trinity College I also got this extraordinary building title:


I had to get a picture of that, though I didn't know at the time that it is the oldest charity in Dublin (I'm thinking they mean the oldest bourgeoisie/layman operated one, or the oldest one still in existence).

To tie in the charity building photo with Van Stockum, here is a St Nicholas Day Message by Hilda Van Stockum. She writes (about the advertising /consumerist rush at Christmas, I suppose):

In a sense, how we use our money determines not only our own lives but those of others too. If we wish for foolish, vulgar or ugly objects, and make others want them, a certain number of people will spend their lives making them. What we ask for, will be supplied. What we make, others will be induced to ask for. But is there no place in these transactions for a thought as to their usefulness, or moral value?

This is a very complex and difficult question. What one person considers good and necessary, may be despised by another. There are no hard and fast rules. But I do suggest that this side of the matter is worthy of attention.

I think we all have a responsibility, whether we like it or not. We will be answerable one day, I believe, for the way in which we spent our money, or caused others to spend it.

Hilda van Stockum died only last year in 2006, on All Saints Day.

One of her six children remembers her saying:

'If you aren't hungry for an apple, you aren't hungry at all!'

That makes me laugh, because my mother used to say exactly the same thing to us.

She also loved dressing up as St Nicholas for his feastday, according to another one of her children.

And she thought the world needs more Catholic philosophers (I am just reading Pope John Paul II's Fides et Ratio which makes the same point!)

Here is a cute story about her conversion (she was brought up by atheists and became a Catholic after her marriage).

St. Thomas Aquinas, G.K. Chesterton, Fulton Sheen, Ronald Knox. but it was Arnold Lunn's "Now I See" that finally brought Mother to the Catholic Church. She always said that when she closed the book it suddenly hit her: "I'm not thinking about being a Catholic, I am a Catholic!" With that she went out into the street and asked the first passer-by "Where is the nearest Catholic Church?" She went up to the rectory door, knocked, and said to the priest who opened it: "I'm a Catholic and I want to be baptized!" After a few enquiries he said: "You're a case for Fr X." It turned out that this was an elderly priest, a bit confused, but eager to make converts. After talking to Daddy, Mother went through the classes and the time came for her to be received into the Catholic Church. "What about the children?" she asked. And Daddy said "You better look after them". So we were all baptized together. The priest was a bit harassed with three children and Mother to baptize, and in the end he asked anxiously: "Have I done them all, or have I done one twice?"

Painting Our Children’s Hearts With Beauty and Color

Cay at Cajun Cottage had a good post about the Advanced Child trend. She also linked to some other interesting posts on the subject, but they were more about books that are "reading level suitable" but not "maturity level suitable" for kids . I have some thoughts about that issue, but I'm not sure if it's one of the posts I really need to write. I am sure it's been written well by someone else.

But I like what Cay says:

Goodness! isn't life complicated enough without funneling books down their neural tube? Let's lighten up a bit. Let's paint our children's hearts with beauty and color. This isn't an argument for dumbing down or building up. It's an argument for touching our children's hearts with the first things that came out of our mouths and into their ears...Words!

She goes on to talk about how she will be sharing Patricia Pollaco and Jan Brett and eggnog with her children today, not pushing them into reading Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice; there are years ahead for that. "Pushing" is the operative word here, of course; if one of her children picked up Jane Austen, or if Cay wanted to invite a child to read it with her, that would be a different matter. But it wouldn't be about "reading levels" or "advancing" – it would be about an invitation to share a great book.

Ruth Beechick said something I read many many years ago, about how it wasn't necessary to be always "challenging" your kids in reading. Did your kid check a book out of the library and read a couple of chapters and then drop it? Why force him or her to finish it? Do you force yourself to read every single book you start? Maybe it would be a richer experience for the child some other time. Is your child reading at a supposed 5^th grade level at age 6? For one thing, this is not that uncommon. Really, it's not. It does not mean super-geniuis, any more than heaving a Nerf Ball across the room at 9 months means you have the next Joe Montana. Those things tend to even out over time. Some plants bloom quickly, and others bloom over time. The quality is not measured by the quickness. But even supposing you have a genius on your hands, why would she necessarily then want to read only books from Sonlight's Year 5 at age six? Why ought she to have to? There are so many wonderful books out there suited for 6 year old – not dumbed down, but not accelerated either – with creative, poetic use of language, first rate illustrations and perceptive understanding of life's truths.

Ruth Beechick recommended a variety – easier books to let the child consolidate his skills and for age-level enjoyment and understanding; more difficult books for challenge and growth. Most kids naturally gravitate towards a mixture if this is encouraged. My kids went from The Hobbit and Beowulf to Frog and Toad and Peter Cottontail and back again. The key here is no twaddle. The picture books should be ones that a grown-up could find delight in reading, as CS Lewis said. As Cay says, they should be books that paint hearts with beauty and touch them with words.

Reading levels aren't really the key. I know kids who weren't really reading at age 10, who could read the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, with understanding and joy, at age 14. I know kids who were reading bits of Romeo and Juliet and the Hobbit at age six, who also had a heart of joy and wonder for Hans Christian Andersen and Beatrix Potter, and needed time and space to develop a relationship with those things.

James Taylor said that everyone should read the Pooh books. If you missed them when you were six or seven, you should read them at nineteen or forty. They are not "accelerated" – they live outside of sequence at all, in eternity. That is almost the point. Acceleration implies sequence, doesn't it? So does "advancement". They are transitive terms, leaving in question the end goal: advancement towards what? If it is towards "superior mental function" then it is the wrong goal. Children and books and their relationship shouldn't be locked into sequence like tracks in the service of academic superiority; books – particularly speaking of literature, here-- should open doors to eternity. This is a greater thing. You can be advanced and accelerated towards nothing; it happens to kids all the time. On the other hand, you can be a "bear of very little brain" and participate in eternity.

I always feel a bit sad when I walk into the local school's resource room, where Aidan has his speech therapy. The room is stacked with piles of books. … sets all of the same books. You might see a pile of Berlioz the Bear, along with a stack of The Black Cauldron. A few feet away is Tom Sawyer and on the other side is Ghost Town at Sundown by Mary Pope Osborne. When I was a child I would have thought this was a treasure trove, except.. except.. it is not so much a trove as a warehouse. And what they do with these stacks is horrible. I have a hard time writing it, because it seems so well intentioned and yet so misguided. They put them on a list with grade levels and point systems. A school kid reads one of them. Then he takes a multiple choice test to ensure that he has really read them. Then, if she passes the test, she is eligible to pick little prizes according to how many points the book is "worth". Oh, my. I feel so sad for these stacks of paperbacks stuck in the resource room. Just the fact that they are in these stacks seems to dehumanize them, relativize them, temporalize them. This is not eternity; it is like exile, or like exploitation. I feel so sorry for the kids who encounter Lloyd Alexander and Jan Brett in a context of "reading levels" and "points" for "prizes" and stacks of paperbacks just sitting there, in a side room. Surely that kid has not at all the same experience as a child who hears them while cuddled in the arms of a parent, or picks them up while browsing quietly through a home library on a snowy afternoon.

Now such is the power of a child's heart and mind, and the power of a great book, that even this conclave of prisoners can have wonderful results, I do not doubt. One good thing about this warehouse of books is that I can see a little child browsing the warehouse, choosing a book, passing the test, even acquiring the cheap prize, and in spite of all these hurdles still connecting with a book in a real, life-changing way. Because the human spirit, of authors and children, is bigger and better than all those hurdles are small and mean. But it's not the best way. And using books as fodder for "acceleration" is not the best way, any more than it would be a good thing to shovel books into the fuel compartment of a new kind of high powered locomotive. Travelers' guides to your journey ought not to be used as your fuel.

Freedom is Always New

I am still thinking about The Village, which I watched Friday night with my older children. CS Lewis said that one ought to have read a poem at least three times before making a judgment, and I would think that applies somewhat to cinema as well, so I don't want to make an evaluation too soon. Besides, you probably have read a lot of those already. Many critics don't seem to have liked it, and I can see why. One, their own slightly pagan literary sensibilities tell them that anyone who has been touted fervently needs some kind of "fall" to balance out the picture. Being in the position of obligation to churn out movie reviews constantly, the "fall" of Shyamalan provides them with a glib readymade template. Two, the movie depicts an 18th century style village hidden from the 20th century world, which offends their sense of realism. Three, it doesn't tie up very neatly, so you can't say "the theme is...." or pull an allegorical message from it. There are a lot of unresolved notes; for that reason, it seemed to evoke meaning rather than encapsulate it.

The dialogue that seems to be a key part to the theme is frustrating because it has a slightly trite ring to it (there, I am evaluating even when I said I would not). The actual scenes, the colors and details, and the positioning of the characters and how they are filmed, even the musical score and sound effects, seem to have more poetic depth to them than the words. But here are the words that seem to sum up the way the movie seems to change direction (whether it actually changes course or just adds new light that retrospects towards the beginning -- a recurrent device in Shyamalan's movies --- I haven't figured out yet).

Anyway, here is the dialogue that seems to be the pivot:

---Who do you think will continue this place, this life? Do you plan to live forever? It is in them that our future lies, it is in Ivy and Lucius that this way of life will continue. Yes I have risked, I hope I am always able to risk everything for the just and right cause. If we did not make this decision, we could never again call ourselves innocent, and that in the end is what we have protected here, innocence! That I'm not ready to give up.
---Let her go. If it ends, it ends. We can move towards hope, that's what's beautiful about this place. We cannot run from heartache. My brother was slain in the towns, the rest of my family died here. Heartache is a part of life, we know that now. Ivy is running toward hope, let her run. If this place is worthy, she'll be successful in her quest.
---How could you have sent her. She is blind.
---She is more capable than most in this village. And she is led by love. The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.

This evoked for me the Pope's words in Spe Salvi:

Let us ask once again: what may we hope? And what may we not hope? First of all, we must acknowledge that incremental progress is possible only in the material sphere. Here, amid our growing knowledge of the structure of matter and in the light of ever more advanced inventions, we clearly see continuous progress towards an ever greater mastery of nature.

Yet in the field of ethical awareness and moral decision-making, there is no similar possibility of accumulation for the simple reason that man's freedom is always new and he must always make his decisions anew. These decisions can never simply be made for us in advance by others—if that were the case, we would no longer be free. Freedom presupposes that in fundamental decisions, every person and every generation is a new beginning.

Naturally, new generations can build on the knowledge and experience of those who went before, and they can draw upon the moral treasury of the whole of humanity. But they can also reject it, because it can never be self-evident in the same way as material inventions. The moral treasury of humanity is not readily at hand like tools that we use; it is present as an appeal to freedom and a possibility for it.

If the theme in The Village ties together in some way, it seems to me it would be something along these lines. Before the time frame of the movie, the elders have made a radical decision to withdraw from the world, in light of their horrific experiences with human evil. The "monsters" are their device for making this horror both vivid and vague, to protect their children and provide them a haven.

At this turning point in the movie, where they allow Ivy to go on her quest, to leave the haven, they are deciding to turn towards the future in a new way; to hand over the active role to the next generation. In order to preserve what is valuable to them -- the essence of its value -- they must be willing to accept the possibility of change, even disruption, of its outward form. In some real way, otherwise, they will "become the monsters" themselves.

Cardinal Newman said (quoted here by then-Cardinal Ratzinger) that "to live is to change". In the context of the essay he wrote, it goes like this:

But whatever be the risk of corruption from intercourse with the world around, such a risk must be encountered if a great idea is duly to be understood, and much more if it is to be fully exhibited. It is elicited and expanded by trial, and battles into perfection and supremacy. .... It seems in suspense which way to go; it wavers, and at length strikes out in one definite direction. .... old principles reappear under new forms. It changes with them in order to remain the same. In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change....

So something like that would be my reading. I still haven't figured out if it coheres throughout The Village, which certainly has several puzzling and thought-provoking elements that aren't quite contained in this idea. My kids and I had fun discussing these yesterday, and will probably continue to ponder more upon it in the future.