This is an interview with Kay and her husband, Jack, who had thought it would be good if people in our local area could hear a lengthy conversation about what makes Kay’s Story, Rhyme, & Song classes special. It’s split into 5 segments, the first one being a short introduction, and the others getting more into the details.
Segment 1. Introduction to the 3 Levels of Story, Rhyme, & SongSegment 2. More About Kay’s Journey and EducationSegment 3. On Losing Our Humanity and Finding It Again Through StorySegment 4. More about NarrationSegment 5. More About Level 3–Middle and High School
I was just about to write about “For the Love of the Art or the Love of the Utility?” (stay tuned for that), when I see the following Facebook post from my husband with an accompanying video. I’m going to share his post first because he says several things very much related to my thoughts this morning and what I was wanting to write about. And then I’ll get to writing the little bit he’s left me to say. (By the way, the younger of the two people that he speaks of in paragraph 6 is our son. More about that in my coming post.)
This jibes with research on rationality tests, where people with high IQs score only slightly better on average than those with lower IQs. It’s not a matter of one’s processing speed, but of one’s willingness to apply effort to the problem at hand.
High-IQ people still have to CARE. The caring is the CORE need. And if you frame somebody’s life—anybody’s life—as being about being gifted/talented, you’re sending a signal that that’s more important than their willingness to TRY.
And think about the danger of taking a view that everything in life is about ME and about being praised/noticed/acknowledged, or about ME being sharp/keep/alert/smart/gifted/talented. This tends to distract people from the beauty of the things being learned or of the solutions being devised.
It’s not a fulfilling/rewarding way of life, and the small lift one gets from such praise/attention can either be deflating to some (compared to appreciating the beauty of the non-me thing we were working on), but it can also become addictive, causing a constant drive to get more and more of it.
But when people can be outward-focused, whether it’s about appreciating the complexity of a problem to be solved or about the beauty of a book or a piece of music they’re working on, that’s such a different psychological exercise than the me-focused talk about how smart I am.
I’ll never forget seeing two very special geniuses sit at a table discussing high-end math one day. Both were fascinated with the subject matter and how it works. They were 30 years apart in age, and both were quite energized in the talk. Neither had anything to prove, nor any position of rank to establish with the other. No, it was just a genuine fellowship of two math-loving people. And because of this quality, they are two of my dearest life-long friends. (I know I can trust them to decouple from self in order to consider something outside of themselves honestly, rationally, and responsibly. And that means that I can pretty much talk with them about anything—whereas not just anybody would be trustworthy and useful in such a talk.)
This video will really make me think about how I praise my students and friends. I do have some friends who are highly capable people, and who are probably fighting inner “voices” that say otherwise. With those, I definitely tell them that they’re capable, because it’s the truth and they need help countering the voices. But it’s the TRYING that’s the real goal. And the students that can decouple from the voices long enough to do the trying—they get to participate in the beauty of the art (or the subject), and are rewarded by the participation itself.
It all brings to mind so much of the discussion of Narcissus I’ve been paying attention to for the last year or two.
Is there nothing in this world that may be appreciated for what it is, without having to stop and focus on SELF, and how great we are???
I’ve been working some on this website since my last blog post in May, so I thought I should make another post here since all my work doesn’t show up there in the sidebar.
I’ve added Course Descriptions for my Story, Rhyme, & Song classes. Click on the ‘What I Offer’ tab above, and on that page you’ll see the link to the descriptions. So exciting! It’s like a treasure hunt!
For five days in July I was in mugglicious North Carolina for our HHL Fellowship retreat. The weather was hot and sticky, but the learning and fellowship was even hotter, and I hope most of it stuck. It is such a privilege to be in this company of women, and I am honored to have been asked to come back for another year. We’re all already mourning that there will not be a third — they just must allow another group to have their chance — but we are plotting ways of staying together and continuing to learn and encourage each other on this journey full of delight and intrigue. What a Fellowship!
Hmmmm….what can I add for the ‘maybe more’? I’ve been enjoying some of the ‘time off’ from more intense readings (although I have a hard time staying away from that) by reading detective novels. I’ve been getting a kick out of how all my ‘how to read’ instruction from Angelina and Kelly is making the images and metaphors just fly out of this lighter reading, the best of which is written in that great literary tradition.
I’ve still been teaching piano this summer. Pray for me as I do my fall schedule. I might have gotten myself into some trouble taking on several new students with hopes to shove them and my returning students into those few after school hours. It always seems to work out; hopefully, my luck hasn’t run out.
In the past month I have been redesigning and restructuring my blog to facilitate my new ventures since my retirement as a homeschool mom. It’s still a work in progress, particularly with my course descriptions.
In case you came here via a link to a specific post, you may want to click on Welcome at the left of the menu bar to learn more about me. Under that heading are a few other pages, but clicking on Welcome itself will take you to my main front page.
I will still be writing thoughts inspired by my readings and discussions of educational philosophy. I just can’t stop even though I’m officially retired as a homeschool mom. I do remain active in teaching piano, and I am hoping to grow my story and reading teaching life. My intent is to focus more on posts inspired by my readings and discussions of the literary tradition, as well as my continued involvement with music.
So please click on Welcome and tell me if it makes you feel that way.
A terribly unflattering picture of me with my successfully schooled son, enjoying our more free time since his graduation. That is, until he became gainfully employed, being both a blessing and a curse of our successful Charlotte Mason education. I really miss spending all day with him.
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I am currently working on course descriptions, scheduling days and times, and lesson planning for my Story, Rhyme & Song classes that will be held at my studio in Laurel. The information about the classes will be found under the ‘What I Offer’ tab above.
My decision for providing these classes is motivated by my desire to make sure that children experience the building blocks of story (Bible stories, myths, fairy tales, fables, and legends), as well as the songs and poems that connect them with their own heritage and cultures from around the world. I do not wish to replace the rightful role of the mother (or father) in all of this, but rather I hope to inspire and give direction to parents to make story, rhyme, and song a regular part of their family culture.
In order to facilitate both the teaching of the children and training of the parents, I am revising the structure of my Story, Rhyme & Song class to include any parents that would like to join us. And I would hope that most would.
No day of the week has been chosen at this point, but you can expect them to be morning classes since my afternoons are filled with teaching piano.
The children should have the joy of living in far lands, in other persons, in other times––a delightful double existence; and this joy they will find, for the most part, in their story books. ~Charlotte Mason
Sometimes, perhaps most times, plain descriptive words cannot express an idea well enough, and so we use metaphor and images, or word pictures, to convey our thoughts. In my previous post, I shared how when my son was very young, he would often end a discussion with “…because look!”, showing how even then he knew that he had ideas in his head for which he didn’t have words, but he wanted to find a way for his hearers to see what he meant.
The Bible ends with a document we call The Revelation, but really that is what is happening from the first words in Genesis until those final words of The Revelation — a revealing, an unveiling, an apocalypse. Through the narrative from beginning to end, we are getting to see ‘behind the curtain’ to much of what we would have missed even had we been there ‘in the beginning’, or with Joshua at Jericho, or in Bethlehem circa the year 0, or at that Pentecost 33 years later, or with John on Patmos.
Literary critic and teacher, Northrop Frye, did a series of 25 lectures in the early 1980s at The University of Toronto titled The Bible and Literature, in which he shows, amongst many other things, the Bible’s use of narrative and metaphor and images, universal ideas that can be found in much of literature and other mythologies. In his book The Great Code, made from the lecture series, Professor Frye says:
Traditionally, the Bible’s narrative has been regarded as “literally” historical and its meaning as “literally” doctrinal or didactic; the present book takes myth and metaphor to be the true literal bases. (p. 64)
If the Bible is not a history, or a doctrinal or morality guide, what is it? I believe and have become convinced even more through listening to and reading Professor Frye that its purpose is to give us eyes to see. To see a reality that is beyond our physical world. To see a reality that is existing with us right now in this physical world. The Bible doesn’t argue. It shows.
From Professor Frye’s final words in the lecture series:
The Bible is not interested in arguing, because if you state a thesis of belief you have already stated its opposite; if you say, ‘I believe in God’, you have already suggested the possibility of not believing in him. …..
What I think it divides are the two elements of reality as they are exhibited in the New Testament, the elements that we call heaven and hell, the kingdom of life, the kingdom of death. It is that which is divided, and divided by an eternal separation. That means that the language of the Bible has to be a language which somehow bypasses argument and refutation. And again, it is very like the language of poetry, because, as Yeats says, you can refute Hegel but not the Song of Sixpence. You can’t argue the poetic statement because it is not a particular statement. It is not subject to verification. So that is why, I think, the Bible presents what it has to say within a narrative and within a body of concrete images which present a world for you to grasp, visualize and understand. The end that it leads you to is in seeing what it means rather than in accepting or rejecting it, because by accepting it you have already defined the possibility of rejecting it.
So the Bible uses the language of symbolism and imagery because the language of symbolism and imagery, which bypasses argument and aggressiveness and at the same time clearly defines the difference between life and death, between freedom and slavery, between happiness and misery, is in short the language of love, and according to St. Paul, that is likely to last longer than most other forms of human communication.
Many in the Christian world have reduced the Bible to a logic study, or a means to hone their debating or proving skills, often showing off their students that have been trained in ‘defending the faith’ with oratorical and rhetorical flair. They, sadly, miss the whole point. Ever hearing, but never understanding. Ever seeing (it is before their eyes), but never perceiving, never really seeing.
I want to tell you a homeschool success story about a perfectly normal student who was born ready to learn, and turned into an amazing young man—under the tutelage of an imperfect and inexperienced homeschool teacher. (That’s me.)
When my son James was preschool age and developing his verbal communication skills, he made it clear that his mind was already busy with reasoning, because when he was telling us his thoughts about some object, he would often end his story with “…because, look” as he gestured to the thing in question. Obviously, his mind had long been at work with processing and reasoning, even if his spoken words had not yet caught up. It seems he knew that something in the ballpark of reasoning or proof or demonstration was part of discussion, so when his words had run out, he would simply point to the evidence supporting his claims or observations! “…because look!”
“…because look!” James would frequently explain.
And now let’s fast-forward to a few nights ago, when my soon-to-be twenty-year-old son was standing before my husband and me as we sat on the couch. James was going on about a particular computer programming matter that he and his dad had been working on. Well, that’s where he started, at least, but before long he had moved on from there, waxing philosophic about how things and people work in general, throwing in some excellent illustrations from higher math and programming.
I sat there just listening to the words coming out of his mouth. And I must admit that I was not understanding most of it. But I sat there in amazement, thinking, “He went to my school!”
Seriously! I often marvel at the fact that I gave birth to this person. I mean, Jack and I did a lot of imperfect work with James, but he is far more than can be explained by just being like his parents. He is so obviously his own unique person, knowing and caring about so many things that are so far out of my lane. And now here we are two years after he has graduated, and I’m already seeing big evidence that we did indeed choose the right educational path for him. He’s such an impressive and good man. And he went to my school!
James at about 17, discussing programming and math with a high-end IT Security expert (family friend). It was a beautiful conversation to witness!
But I have to reiterate: “My school” was far from perfect, and hardly Instagram-worthy—ever! But even so, here’s this intelligent young man who cares about many things and is making his way in the world, and still learning today on his own, and probably at the same rate as in the schooling years, if not faster! And he went to my school!
As much as I think I messed up over the years of James’ homeschooling—and believe me, I do have a few regrets—here are some things that I think I got right. Brought to you by some selections from Charlotte Mason’s 20 Principles, along with my comments:
1. Children are born persons. A child comes with all the mind he needs to learn and a hunger for knowledge. Just watch the newborn exploring the world around him. He is looking and learning with those eyes and ears and those first movements of his arms and legs. I never treated my son as incapable of learning. He was not ignored, and it is hard to remember a time prior to him being a part of the family conversation.
4. These principles are limited by the respect due to the personality of children, which must not be encroached upon whether by the direct use of fear or love, suggestion or influence, or by undue play upon any one natural desire. The principles referred to here are authority and obedience. As best as I could, I allowed natural rewards and consequences to occur with both his school work and home life. I did not coax or manipulate with prizes or ‘make mommy happy’ or ‘you don’t want to see mommy mad’. (Well, it was ‘mom’ by the time he was 4.)
James and his most excellent violin teacher, circa 2018
6. When we say that “education is an atmosphere,” we do not mean that a child should be isolated in what may be called a ‘child-environment’ especially adapted and prepared, but that we should take into account the educational value of his natural home atmosphere, both as regards persons and things, and should let him live freely among his proper conditions. It stultifies a child to bring down his world to the child’s level. This is self-explanatory, and it has one of my favorite lines. ‘It stultifies a child to bring down his world to the child’s level.’ There’s no stultifying in this house!
11. But we, believing that the normal child has powers of mind which fit him to deal with all knowledge proper to him, give him a full and generous curriculum; taking care only that all knowledge offered him is vital, that is, that facts are not presented without their informing ideas. ‘Living books’ was the majority of our curriculum, though we used textbooks for math and some science. Living books are in a narrative style, generally written by one author who has an obvious love for the material. The full and generous curriculum was not hard to come up with, thanks to the work of AmblesideOnline.
20. We allow no separation to grow up between the intellectual and ‘spiritual’ life of children. I don’t know what else to say about this. It’s just the way our family of three lives.
If you are curious about the principles that I didn’t mention, you can find them here. But before I finish, I would like to highlight one more principle because I think this may be the place where most of ‘the magic’ happens. I had considered it my job simply to provide the wide and generous feast. And that really was simple, especially with the help of AmblesideOnline having already gathered so many of the resources for me. I did not have to spend time planning unit studies, nor did I have to put out big money buying them. Rather, unit studies had absolutely no place in our school, because, as Charlotte Mason said,…
12. “Education is the Science of Relations”; that is, that a child has natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts….. This goes back to Principle #1 — ‘Children are born persons’. They come equipped with a mind that naturally makes connections between things. Constantly in our readings and looking at art or listening to music or being in nature, my son would say ‘this reminds me of…’ or ‘this is like….’, often referencing something else he had read, seen, or heard. Charlotte Mason said several times, in one form another, that all education is self-education. The child must do the work. And they will do it! That is, they’ll do it if allowed—if we get out of the way, and if we don’t stultify with a “childish” atmosphere—if we don’t do the thinking work for them by planning connections or pushing them to make judgments with leading questions typical of Sunday School lessons.
I spent way too much time worrying about my own shortcomings in James’ homeschooling. I had been told in the beginning, but truly am seeing now, that humans are fearfully and wonderfully made, with minds that are willing and able to do the work. And when they do that work, what needs to stick in their minds and hearts will stick! And that practice of making connections will be there for life. Having provided that wide and generous feast, the home educator’s work is done, and the student’s mind has lifelong access to all that richness as they go on with life, experiencing new people and places and ideas.
One of my ‘proudest’ achievements is that I taught my son to read and write. Other than that, I mostly let the books (and art, music, and nature) teach him. As a young mother I had been encouraged to be confident that I would be making a huge difference simply by bringing his education home, and building the bond between us, and now I see how right they were….because look!
…because look! James and me, 28 April 2023 [photo credit to ‘the Dad” who apparently couldn’t photoshop out my extra chin. Maybe I should grow a beard, too.]
Quick thought that will maybe get fleshed out or expanded or whatever you want to call that. Here’s a couple of quotes from some great minds:
But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do. ~C.S. Lewis
It’s magic, really. Don’t go looking for yourself in a story (mirror, mirror on the wall), but in losing yourself in the story, you end up finding yourself better than you would have had you gone in making it all about you.” ~the not as eloquent Kay Pelham
There is a modern trend that seeks to find one’s self in a story. It’s practically become a mania to be represented in story. And then there are those that are madly looking for ‘what can I learn about myself’, even the seemingly noble ‘how can I be a better person?’, from this story.
But that’s just not how story works. Real stories, that is. Not that propaganda not well disguised as story. Real stories have never worked that way, and never will.
Stopping to wonder on one of our cross-country trips.
Recently, while doing a crossword puzzle, of all things, I thought again about the big picture of why we studied geography in our homeschool, and how that really applies to all the studies. Here’s what I shared with one of my Charlotte Mason moms groups:
It [the study of geography] is about being aware that there are humans living all around this planet in different cultures and climates, and when we hear current stories about events there we can make a connection and feel a connection. It opens our world, keeps us from being self-centered, and helps us to remember that God so loved the whole world that he sent his Son.
Charlotte Mason said that the study of modern foreign languages is in order to communicate with people. It’s all about loving your neighbor. Students in her schools studied French, German, and Italian, the languages of their neighbors. It was not about looking good on the transcript (for the student or the school) or for high scores on vocabulary tests. The study of Latin was not even for that. It was to be able to read classic works in their original language. There’s a love connection there, too.
I suppose I’m a big picture person and wonder if I annoy people when they ask for help with details, and I keep bringing them back to the philosophy, the Why. I just feel strongly if we keep in mind that none of it (the History, the Literature, the Math, the Science, the Grammar, the Music, the Art) is for passing tests or getting scholarships, but it is for Caring, for Love, for being fully Human, then it helps with making those schedules, carrying them out daily, being at peace when it all doesn’t all get done, being at peace when your extended family criticizes your choices and results that they are seeing (or not), that they think you ought to be achieving, being at peace when other children are exhibiting skills that you don’t see in your own students.
I know that’s hard to see when you are in the midst of the daily grind. I know; I was there. I wish you could see things from my vantage point now. If I could do things differently, it would be to listen and believe the words of those having gone before about what really matters. It would have saved me a lot of grief and personal anxiety. But the good news is that “however imperfectly” I did it, I didn’t give up in laying out the feast for my son, and I am already seeing the fruit in a very caring young man about to leave his teens. In my early years of mothering and teaching, I didn’t have a lot of those experienced homeschool moms in my life, but I did, and still do, have Charlotte Mason. Although never a mother, she spent years examining and reexamining her educational philosophy, applying it in her schools, and observing children in school and at home with their families. Here’s what she said in her third volume (of six) of writings on education and the raising of children:
Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking––the strain would be too great––but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest. We cannot give the children these interests; we prefer that they should never say they have learned botany or conchology, geology or astronomy. The question is not,––how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education––but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him? I know you may bring a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink. What I complain of is that we do not bring our horse to the water. We give him miserable little text-books, mere compendiums of facts, which he is to learn off and say and produce at an examination; or we give him various knowledge in the form of warm diluents, prepared by his teacher with perhaps some grains of living thought to the gallon. And all the time we have books, books teeming with ideas fresh from the minds of thinkers upon every subject to which we can wish to introduce children.
For an interesting study, you should do a search on words such as wonder and care through Charlotte Mason’s volumes (free online at AmblesideOnline), and you might find yourself overwhelmed by how important these ideas were to her.
Where science does not teach a child to wonder and admire it has perhaps no educative value. (Vol 6, p. 224)
On Thursday I watched the funeral for my friend Lynn Bruce, and today I watched her graveside service. On this day 17 years ago, also a Saturday, we had the graveside service and burial of our daughter Virginia Grace, who had died the day before at 3 weeks old, almost to the very minute.
AmblesideOnline and our daughter Grace, they keep being connected. Last year on the 3rd of February, her 16th birthday, I wrote about how Grace brought me to AO and Wendi Capehart, who had died 2 days before. And now Lynn and Grace are ‘laid to rest’ on the very same day.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.
‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved; how precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed!
Through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come: ’tis grace has brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.
James at not-yet-3 and his daddy helping to bury his baby sister Grace
