It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

Hardly a “once upon a time there was a girl who…” opening. The reader of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is aware instantly that this is going to be a story about ideas, with a great deal of ironic humor, and not just facts about events that happened. Perhaps it is “Once upon a time there was a notion that….” What follows this is another sentence along the lines of the first, and then dialogue begins between Mr. and Mrs. Bennet. It is some time into the novel when the author first gives us a physical description of any character. She lets them do the talking to illustrate the truth of her opening idea. The structure and style of the story, with its immediate presentation of an idea and then development through story of that idea, is reminiscent to me of Charlotte Mason’s 11th Principle: “But we, believing that the normal child has powers of mind which fit him to deal with all knowledge proper to him….taking care only that all knowledge offered him is vital, that is, that facts are not presented without their informing ideas.”

I had said during my re-reading of Pride and Prejudice at the time of the Austen renaissance in the mid 1990s that Jane Austen’s works reminded me of Mozart. They did live during the same period in history, so there’s obviously some reason for their similarity in style. I was a different person reading Pride and Prejudice in my 30s than I was at my first teen-age reading, and this experience of reading coincided with my more mature appreciation of the music that I loved. I definitely had moved away from pure sentimental romanticism to being struck by structure and style and higher forms of humor. Austen is light as Mozart, but with that playful lightness develops some very human ideas. And you don’t have to strain yourself to discover the ideas; they come as you are letting yourself enjoy the music.

Years ago a friend and fellow-educator shared her frustrations about Austen — “They don’t do anything; they just go around and visit.” Yes, Pride and Prejudice is hardly Little House on the Prairie with their year round having to fend for their existence with hunting, farming, preserving, sewing, building, but Austen wasn’t telling a story about events, but rather ideas. It is tale of the inner-life of people rather than the outer-life. Nor did Austen write an in-your-face didactic, moralistic tale. Not that that is what Laura Ingalls Wilder did in her stories, but it is the style of so many novels, particularly in the Victorian period which came after Austen — the kind with which many may be more comfortable and think more effective for the moral cause. Austen wrote in such a way that lessons can be learned without the author pointing her finger at the reader. As Charlotte Mason said of novels –

…it is a serious question, what can be done to fortify these against the special temptations that belong to their time of life. Excellent help is to be found in novels. Here is the very knowledge of life the young person craves; the personages of the novel play their parts before him, and he is admitted to greater intimacy with them than we often arrive at with our fellows; there is no personal attack upon the reader, no preaching… He is not preaching to the young reader, to whom the lessons of life come home with illustrations never to be forgotten.

I think that Austen is most effective in these “lessons of life” for the reader who will allow himself to enjoy the ride, to be swept along with the lilting phrases and themes. And laugh. She is hysterical. She knows us. What better way to have your foibles exposed than with humor.

In the past couple of years I read Pride & Prejudice again with my teen-age son. Although my son was far less impressed than I’d hope, I, on the other hand, found myself even more in awe of her skills. And how she knows us. Still today. 202 years after her death, her observations of human psychology are spot on.

I am currently re-reading Northanger Abbey, and as my friend Cindy Rollins says, there is one good line after another. Bam bam bam. Funny. Insightful. Aptly and perfectly said and placed. Like beautiful music. And as someone who struggles with putting things into words, I come close to envy of that woman. Wouldn’t it have been something to be inside her mind. But, then, maybe that’s what a trip inside one of her novels is.

Thank you, dear God, that I get to live in a world where there was a Beethoven and a Mozart. And a Jane Austen. Truth. Goodness. Beauty. Humor. And we are changed.

I have been homeschooling my now 16 year old son from birth. Our homeschooling has involved a lot of reading out loud. Interestingly, although I’m not a nature and sciency kind of person, some of my favorite things to read to my son over these years has been the nature stories. We’ve read many books by naturalists who share their stories of being there, and I’ve enjoyed “being there” with them as I’ve read the stories to my son. I’ve enjoyed reading our school literature selections, as well as our “free reads”. Over the years I’ve judged good writers, such as C.S. Lewis, by how good it feels (literally!) to read their sentences out loud.

As the years have passed, and my son has become an independent learner, I have increased my piano studio and have had far less time to be with him during his school hours. The thing I miss the most is reading out loud to him. In scheduling his days this year, I have reserved one hour before I start my piano teaching day (and some days that means 7 a.m.) to read to him. (And whenever I have a block of cancellations during the day, you might find me running home, rather than staying at the studio, as I ought, to practice my cello and clarinet, and saying, “I’m here! Can I read whatever you’re reading right now to you?”) For that precious “morning hour with Mom”, this year I have chosen to read books such as Plutarch’s Life of Alexander (just a bit each morning), Charlotte Mason’s Ourselves, C.S. Lewis’ Abolition of Man, and when I can steal it from his after-Mom schedule and squeeze it in before I dash to the studio on Fridays, Seven Men Who Rule from the Grave, which is a book not about politicians or business-leaders, but philosophers whose influence is still very evident today. I also do some Grammar, Latin, or Diagramming with him as a part of that hour. Do you really think that those 3 things are not like the others? You have not spent enough time with James, then. The study of language, which involves logic and the need for clear communication, generates a lot of discussion with us.  It’s a bonus for me when I can steal away and read History and Literature and Economics with him, as well, because those “subjects” are full of ideas well worth contemplating and discussing.

Truth be told (as one should), it is perhaps the discussion of ideas and the connections James and I make with them, and then with each other, that I miss even more than the reading out loud of the beautiful words. Sometimes I feel anxious about all the things that I’ve left undone or completely missed in the education of James Dewey Pelham. But then I sit with him and read C.S. Lewis or Thomas Sowell, or simply work on analyzing a sentence or translate some Latin, and I realize what a mature and honest thinker has been raised in our home. Sometimes I think I have harmed him with my concern about the wrong things, that I’ve not focused on filling his heart with ideas rather than his head with facts, and then I listen to this young man who picks up quickly on a logical or economic fallacy or grammatical error because he cares. He cares about Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Ordo amoris – somehow, in spite of his anxious mother, through the years his affections have been properly ordered. His conscience has been trained. He is not a Man without a chest.

From James’ “Commonplace” book

This will be my attempt in the true meaning of Essay to explain what I have learned over these 16 years about Science and the teaching of it. I will be sharing in some kind of orderly fashion many ideas (but not all, by any means!) in my head that have accumulated over the years from studying about teaching and the actual teaching of my son. References will be made but no actual quotes will be made or cited. However, I’d imagine that whole thing will end with a Proverb. It’s inevitable. I cannot help myself.

I stole the title of the post from Wendell Berry. It is the name of a documentary about him and comes from what he would tell his children as they would walk about the land. One of the things that has been made evident to me over and over is that regardless of (or perhaps, because of) how advanced we (think) we are technologically in the 21^st century, most of us have lost connection to nature — to what is real. We do not notice what is right before our eyes. We don’t take time to stop and look….deeply. To ponder. To wonder. To be humbled by it all. When you take time to look deeply, you realize how vast is the microscopic. You realize that it all began and continues without you. And the more you connect, the more you realize that although it began and continues without you, that what you do have is the power to destroy — and hopefully, that connection compels you to take personal responsibility to not destroy. Which brings up another point that I didn’t plan to address in this post, but here it goes. Some philosopher type that James and I have read recently made reference to the truth about global environmental issues, but noted that rather than being so focused globally, a person would do better to pick up the trash in his own backyard, as it were. James thinks this idea is from “that poet dude that Mom’s been reading”, as reported by his Dad, and that “poet dude” I’m almost certain would be Wendell Berry. (I said I would have no actual quotes, so forgive me for quoting my son.) I had wondered if it was Thomas Sowell, but I think James is right about the “poet dude” Wendell Berry. Anyhow, I was reminded of this idea when I saw a picture of the trash supposedly left behind on grounds where people were protesting about the lack of concern for global environmental issues. We love a cause. Especially when it’s way bigger than ourselves. But just Look and See, people. It’s all around you. Love your neighborhood.

Charlotte Mason has been our chief educational guide for the past 14 years. After years of research, discussion and application in her community of educators and parents, she summarized her philosophy of education in 20 principles. Karen Glass has proposed that two of those principles are “the most vital”, those two being that Children are born persons and that Education is the Science of Relations. Relations. Connections. How the various subjects naturally connect with each other. (No forced unit studies, my people! Oh, dear, No! Stop interfering with the natural process!) And how we as persons ought to make a connection with the ideas of the various subjects. Look and See, people. Education is not the filling up of the head with Facts; it is making connections with the Ideas in stories, history, nature, art, music. We ponder. We wonder. We connect. We are changed.

So we come to the subject of Nature Study/Natural History/Science in a Charlotte Mason education. We find ourselves reading “old books”. Some people balk at this idea. The “science” is old. It’s wrong. It’s “bad science”. Aren’t we doing a disservice to our students to teach them these wrong facts? And I realize that these people have little understanding about the teaching of “science” — or really, “science”, for that matter. They may think that they do, but this reaction shows me that they do not. I think being opposed to “old books” with their “old science” is arrogant. As if the facts presented in 21^st century textbooks are the absolute truth, never to be overturned. Pardon me, but I’m fixing to quote myself. I said this in a recent discussion: “Perhaps we should teach our children from the beginning that ‘science’ is really our best guess at the moment, and that what we think we know currently should never be presented as absolute fact, never to be overturned. James and I just read the second chapter in Seven Men Who Rule from the Grave where the author goes on about how we can never claim to really know it all — Science can never prove the absolute origin of life, for instance.”

When people oppose the old books they have failed to understand the purpose of teaching science. Perhaps if someone wrote books in the style of these old books, these old books could be replaced. But any new information in the newer books really doesn’t matter. What matters is that we are encouraged to Look and See. And that is what these old living science books do. What we Know at this hour, or think we Know, will be overturned — sometimes in a matter of minutes. And we can never Know absolutely. But we are built to be curious about everything. Even the origin of the species. So we Look and Ponder and Wonder and Connect and Care. That is what we want for our children. That is what we want for ourselves.

And once again:

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? ~ Charlotte Mason

Great are the works of Yahweh,
    studied by all who delight in them. ~ Psalm 111

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. ~ Paul, an apostle of Jesus

Stay tuned. I just know there’s an appropriate Proverb.

In the woods

In the city

Anywhere at any age.  Nature is worth pondering.