Poetic Knowledge Chapter Two/the second half

In this half of the chapter James Taylor wraps up his apologia for poetic knowledge. To be honest, it is pretty tough going in spots! But a few things resonated with me. This quote from page 31 states:"Unlike the scientific mode of learning that proposes methods and systems for acquiring knowledge, the tradition that has been thus far reviewed reveals rather a way of knowledge, like a path or winding road, with interesting detours off the road, more than the super highway of modern education." Now, this sounds like a discription of rabbit trails to me. I love rabbit trails...but I've learned to keep them to summer months or other slow learning times.What Melissa Wiley calls Tidal Homeschooling. This is in keeping with my mentor, Charlotte Mason's advice. In A Philosophy of Education she lays out some guidelines in the introduction that include," There is no selection of studies , or of passages or of episodes, on the ground of interest. The best available book is chosen and is read through perhaps in the course of two or three years." And also this," No stray lessons are given on interesting subjects; the knowledge the children get is consecutive." So in my homeschool I now resist rabbit trails and also stick to a slow schedule of reading. This is harder than it sounds because there is a great temptation to race through good books, and also to feel bogged down in a book, as in, will we be reading about the Kon-Tiki voyage forever?

But this quote from Poetic Knowledge seems to validate Miss Mason's curriuclum,"The pre-Christian audience of the Homeric and Virgilian epics and the unlettered peasants of the Christian pre-modern world could never have grasped, as they did, the spirtiual dimensions of the poets in the first case and the supernatural teaching of the apostles and disciples in the second, had they not already read deeply in the book of nature." I chose to believe this gives me licsence to take time off when the weather or the mood (oh, but don't call it a rabbit trail!) hits us to tramp outside for nature study. It is the keystone to all learning!

James Taylor goes on to discribe monastic learning and this quote about Saint Thomas Aquinas struck me,"Certainly to be considered is the fact that Thomas was placed with the Benedictines of Monte Cassino at an early age. This would have been largely a musical education in all the respects spoken of by Socrates. Music was all the monks taught young boys, the Latin and chant of the schola cantorum, a school of song drawn from Psalms and history of the Old Testament..." I confess, here is an area where I feel our homeschool is realy lacking. We dabble in singing folksongs and the odd Latin chant but it has no consitency. My music ability is sadly non existant and I never could go much beyond F A C E or E G B D F in reading music, so this beyond my ability to teach. The hobbits have chosen sports over music lessons so I have to let this subject go. Alas.