Poetic Knowlege Chapter 7 ( Fini)

This is the second half of the last chapter of Poetic Knowledge. It's been a very interesting journey. I like this book, struggle to understand some of it, and think that James Taylor is on the right track. He suggests starting small schools with a couple of like minded teachers. They would carefully read a book, somehow creating a whole curriculum from it and pass on a liberal education to their few students. Well....maybe for a literature class. I agree with Charlotte Mason that a curriculum should be varied and not go off on (too many!) rabbit trails. What Taylor describes sounds very much like A Thomas Jefferson Education. This also sounds good in theory, but unless we hope all our kids get jobs as liberal arts professors this is not enough. The facts are that our children and especially our sons will have to get jobs that hopefully will support a family. This means math and science, and not just what can be picked up by reading Carry on Mr. Bowditch. We are not independently wealthy here and my kids have relied on scholarships to get through college and to get the good scholarships you have to score well on the SAT and to do that you have to study algebra, geometry, and Latin! Those subjects are hard and require work to master. But learning to work hard is a great skill for college and life!

That said, I think this is a wonderful method for a literature or history class! To read a book carefully, discuss its fine points, place it in time and geography, analyse its characters and plot, this is the best part of homeschooling! Especially with teenagers who definitely have opinions and want to share them! We didn't do this with many books. With my daughters it was Pride and Prejudice and with my oldest son it was With Fire and Sword by Henryk Sienkiewicz. This one was especially interesting as we knew next to nothing about Polish history but we learned alot reading this very rich trilogy: politics, religion, military strategy, even farming, but not much math!

I once had a teacher like this in Junior High. Our regular English teacher suffered a heart attack and was replaced by a young woman right out of teacher's college. She led our class through The Odyssey and then Great Expectations. It is one of the few classes I remember. She made all the characters come alive. Sometimes she read out loud and sometimes we took turns reading. I can still picture Odysseus tied to the mast to hear the sirens or Pip walking down a foggy street to Miss Haversham's house. Just once though in 12 years. The rest of my teachers were a pretty bland bunch. I think homeschooling is one of the very few options for our kids to have this kind of discussion. Even in college it is rare.

To quote Taylor,"The end of education is the cultivation of the senses, the imagination and the will." I whole heartedly agree with that. But, I think it can and should be done in a family and a community. For an education to be "something very much like perfection" it has to be like a banquet, and a banquet is carefully prepared. It definitely is not a rush of activities and media diversions. I hope we have time enough to have both lively literary conversations and still get a handle on algebra and Latin translations.

More on this discussion at A Healer's Geste.

Nature Study--Snapper

The boys found this guy (gal?) in the road this morning. Actually, I think it might be a female as I read that they tend to migrate a bit (for a turtle) to lay their eggs. We relocated her (him?) in the pond out back. I'll let you know if we have little turtles later!!

Poetic Knowlege Chapter 7

This is the last chapter of Poetic Knowledge and all the previous threads are coming together. I am enjoying reading what James Taylor has to say about teaching and schools. I've been homeschooling for quite awhile now and am still looking for ways to tweak the process. Is there a better way to teach Latin? Immersion is not an option! (and my kids enjoy chanting conjugations anyway!)Is there a biography we just have to read? What about map work?? It's constant. But reading the first half of this chapter has been soothing to my home school spirit. I think homeschooling is poetic by nature. I even believe that the parents who home school with workbooks (oh! the horror!) are poetical in the way they keep their kids wrapped in family life.

I particularly liked this quote,"If poetic experience first plays upon the beautiful, the wonderful, the proportionate thing that is intuitively pleasing to our senses, where are we to find this beauty in the noise, glare, and glitz, the noxious air, the tasteless food, the vulgar democratization of manners, the desensitization of emotions and resulting wanton violence from suburbs to cities to nations, that so inform the life of the twentieth century." Where indeed, if not in our homes? Certainly not in our public schools which drain our resources filling themselves up with computer labs and gyms and sports arenas but defund the art room and the library (Oh, I mean media resource room!). I was reminded of my old elementary school which was recently torn down and replaced by a much more modern facility of steel and cement blocks. The old school was built in the early 1900's and made of mellow red brick. It had huge windows framed in walnut.Most of the classroms faced the maple lined street. What I remember most from those days is sitting in class and watching the seasons change from those windows. And also the play ground games that are forbidden now--Red Rover and Dodge Ball. But mostly I remeber being bored and wishing I could just go home and play!

Poetic Knowledge and the Integrated Humanities Program

This week we started chapter six which describes the Integrated Humanities program instituted by professors Quinn, Nelick, and Senior at the University of Kansas during the 1960's. This gets to the nitty gritty of how they tried to return poetic knowledge to the university system which was lacking then as well as now. Forty years ago these professors realized that their students had been deprived of a poetic childhood and were in need of poetic experiences. The program they began seems a model of gentleness to me. To quote Taylor," The professors knew that a materialist society, with all its utilitarian goals that suffocate the poetic nature of the human being, had rushed many of the students through childhood, that time of leisure in which the wonders of reality are encountered simply as wonders." The pragmatist in me understands why parents would complain that the classes provided in these programs were hardly necessary for a college degree but the romantic in me would loved to have attended!

As the discussions between the professors about various classics (carried on during a leisurely lunch, pg. 149) was described I was reminded of listening in to conversations conducted by my parents and aunts and uncles around the dinner table when I was a young girl. Not that they discussed the great books! But, they were all raised in a time before electronic media (my mother was born in 1917) and they were all expert conversationalists and were filled with stories of a childhood that moved mostly at horse speed. A ride in the rumble seat was still fondly remembered in the 1970's! I think we have TV to blame as well as Dewey's ideas for the mess our national education is in. We just don't know how to converse anymore. Our story telling abilities have atrophied.

I will end with this quote by Professor Quinn,"Mistake me not: wonder is no sugary sentimentality, but, rather, a mighty passion, a species of fear, an awful confrontation of the mystery of things." This program was bold as well as gentle. We can't recreate it in our homes but it is a valiant example to us for what can be done!