Memorial Day 2011

The Color Guard.


Our veterans.

Poetic Knowledge Book Club--Chapter 5

This chapter is called Voices for Poetic Knowledge After Descartes. It describes a private French school run by Andre Charlier, the poetic research methods of Henri Fabre, and the musings of an education professor and Catholic priest, Dr. Thomas Shields. I was most interested in Dr. Shields insights. He wrote an autobiography called, The Making and Unmaking of a Dullard which is now on my to-read list. He brings up a very good point, that growing up on a farm gave him the best possible preparation for his academic life. My one regret as a homeschool mom is not being able to raise the kids on a small farm. I think this is the healthiest way to raise children, especially boys.

To answer Mystie's question,"What are some conditions of life we can create so that 'souls can bloom'?" I can only write about what we got right looking back on the beginnings of this ongoing journey. Certainly, these were not all conscious choices on our part but God worked with us anyway and a lot of things fell into place almost perfectly.

First, we bought a home on four acres of mixed ecosystems in a small and very friendly town. Our "yard" consists of lawn, woods, a small field, a marshy wetland, berry brambles, crab apples, larch ( a favorite of nesting orioles), maples, birch and beech trees. We don't have room for a cow but we do keep chickens. Our boys do get the seasonal work experience mowing lawns in summer, cutting wood in autumn, shoveling snow in winter and vacuuming mud in spring!

Second, we filled the house with nature books, field field guides, butterfly nets, flower presses, cages and aquariums for observations. We tried to keep up with their questions and interests and to also take them to other wild places to explore and hunt for salamanders or sea shells.

Third, and maybe most importantly and most providentially, we live in a very small town that still keeps seasonal festivals. There will be a Memorial Day parade with a gathering in the center of town and the list of all the people from the community who served in the military and have dies will be read. This list starts with our town founder who served in the Revolutionary War. Next will be the 4th of July when we will have a boat parade on the lake and fireworks at night. There is also a weekend long Harvest Festival in September which is mostly a crafts fair and farmer's market.

And last but not least is our entering the Catholic church as a family and living the liturgical year together. It's not easy in a secular world to keep the Holy Days and to remember the seasons of the Church but it makes it all the more meaningful, I think, when you abstain from those Christmas cookies until the Christmas Octave! Not that we are always successful at that! Or hold off decorating for Easter until after Lent is finished.

I think family life in general is very poetic and souls will bloom anywhere they are loved and nurtured!

Poetic Knowledge Book Club--Descartes Part two

I've been pondering what to write about for this second half of the chapter on Descartes and his legacy. How nature study is fundamental to a poetic vision of the universe? How nature study grounds us and makes it harder for the promoters of scientific theories to waylay us on our journey to Heaven? My healing from my own public school education? None of these really formed a cohesive theme.

Then something in the readings took hold. It was this quote by Emerson,"I advise teachers to cherish mother-wit. I assume that you will keep the grammar, reading, writing, and arithmetic in order; 'tis easy and of course you will. But smuggle in a little contraband wit, fancy, imagination, thought." Now, Taylor considers this a reactionary statement, but it reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from G.K. Chesterton," As long as wit is mother wit it can be as wild as it pleases." This is from Orthodoxy, the chapter called The Ethics of Elfland. Frankly, Taylor was beginning to depress me so a foray into Orthodoxy seemed a good antidote and I re-read that chapter.

Still, I wasn't sure what I wanted to say here but as I opened my Google News homepage I saw this article about Stephen Hawking Heaven is a Fairy Tale?? In the interview Hawkings states,"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is just a fairy story for people afraid of the dark." It seems to me that Stephen Hawkings represents the logical conclusion to Descartes reliance on the mind. Living in the mind has certainly been his experience and I think he is very brave, but also very wrong and lacking an understanding of fairy tales and (I hesitate to say this!) the universe in general. I just don't understand how anyone can look at the complexity and creativity of the universe from cell regeneration to the spiral of a galaxy and not see a Creator. I just can't. I have never been able to envision no God. Just like Chesterton says of elfland, 2 + 2 must equal 4 and the universe must have had a creator. It defies reason to think it is random. Chesterton, of course, says it best," There are certain sequences or developments (cases of one thing following another), which are, in the true sense of the word, reasonable. They are, in the true sense of the word, necessary. Such are mathematical and merely logical sequences. We in fairyland (who are the most reasonable of all creatures) admit that reason and that necessity." But to return to mother -wit or what we would call common sense I'm going to thank Rousseau here. He, I think, saw through Descartes sterile rationalism and sensed ( and promoted, although certainly didn't live himself) an education for children that Incorporated the family. As a homeschool mom I've come to appreciate educating my own children and realize what a great opportunity it is for healing and educating myself and for grounding my children in the "laws of elfland" and so protecting them from the "laws of educational theorists".

I'll close with a quote from Charlotte Mason, "Whatever extravagance he had seen fit to advance, Rousseau would still have found a following, because he had chanced to touch a spring that opened many hearts. He was one of the few educationalists who made his appeal to the parental instincts. He did not say," We have no hope of the parents, let us work for the children!" Such are the faint-hearted and pessimistic things we say today." Parents and Children.

Poetic Knowledge Chapter 4--part one

This chapter is called Descartes and the Cartesian Legacy and here I feel I'm on firmer ground. The previous chapters have been like wondering in an unknown forest but this chapter describes the beginnings of the education I was subjected to and after all these years of homeschooling I now see why I hated it and thought it was sooooo boooriing. It was! Things have not gotten any better in the public schools since, either. What boggles me is how this way of thinking came to permeate everything. To quote Taylor at the end of this section,"It is only when an exaggerated and isolated status of the mind is assumed, and removed from its proper integration within the knowing powers, that Descartes and his legacy gain prominence." It's hard to imagine how this theory took root and especially as developed by Dewey. But then Americans are frequently dazzled by "experts" and as Taylor says,"Deweys' so called pragmatism, as it filtered down to the masses who largely never read a word he wrote, fit neatly into the American view of education for the good life."

While reading this section and especially about Dewey's "pragmatism" I have been reminded of a series of events that happened when my oldest daughter was in 4th grade. We had homeschooled since 1st grade. I had not discovered Charlotte Mason yet but I had read John Holt and I held the belief that she would learn (and retain) what she needed to know without much help from me. Her education consisted of a math workbook and library books strewn in her path. I used the newly issued What Your First Grader Needs to Know as a guideline and would pick a topic, glean picture books from the library and let her have at them. I was accountable to the local school and provided them with quarterly reports. The local principal approached me at the beginning of the 4th grade year and asked if I would be willing to let her be tested in science with the other 4th graders at the end of the year. The school had been experimenting with a new science curriculum composed of hands-on science project kits. These had been introduced to the kids in kindergarten and continued through the 4th grade. It was in-system testing meaning that the results would not go on students' records or be released to parents but used to judge the effectiveness of the curriculum. I asked if I would be given the kits to use. The answer was no, he was just curious to see how she would compare to the public school kids. I laughed and said no. But circumstances intervened and for a variety of reasons I ended up putting her in school mid-year and she took the test. The principal came to me afterwards and told me she had the highest score of all the students. I was surprised to say the least since her science curriculum was mostly books on tape read by Franklin Bramely! Any science experiment we tried more complicated than vinegar and baking soda volcanoes was a disaster. I asked her about the test and she said it was easy, you just had to think about the questions. Ah! There is was! I had inadvertently let her learn to think! I didn't read Charlotte Mason for a few more years but she explained it to me in number 12 of her short synopses of education subsection c,"Knowledge should be communicated in well-chosen language, because his attention responds naturally to what is conveyed in literary form." It was not that the other kids didn't understand how an electrical circuit works but they couldn't put it into words. We are made to use words for learning. In a PNEU school students learned by language. Nature was observed closely and copied but not dissected! Books were read and narrated and absorbed to the best ability of the individual student. How grateful I am to homeschooling I am that I could give this type of education to my children and recapture some for myself!

The discussion continues at Mystie's Poetic Knowlege Book Club.

Poetic Knowledge Chapter Three /second half

What jumped out at me in this part of chapter three is this quote,"So, with the loss of poetic knowledge from serious consideration in modern theories of knowledge, it follows also that the proper notions of leisure and education are lost along with the proper conditions in a society for mirandum; for "wonder (from which all knowledge begins)does not occur in the workaday world," either from the modern idea of work (living to work, instead of working to live) or in modern education that has turned even play into a kind of work that it is usually conducted as a means to learning something else rather than as an end in itself." {and no, I wouldn't want to diagram that sentence!} I have been reflecting on time a lot while re-reading this book. Over the course of twenty plus years of homeschooling it is good to look back and see what was accomplished. The best was the time our family had to be a family, to relax with each other and spend true leisure time together. The second best was the time to read all those classics of children's literature that I somehow missed as a child. to wander and wonder with Pooh, not just once but again and again! Narnia, Toad Hall, Avonlea, were all new to me. I am still working my way through the Lucy Maud Montgomery oeuvre!

It has been insightful watching my daughter with her newborn son, that time out of time with a new baby. What Madeleine L'Engle calls Kairos as opposed to Chronos. At the end of A Circle of Quiet she writes," Chronology, the time which changes things, makes them grow older, wears them out, manages to dispose of them, chronologically, forever.
Thank God we have kairos, too: again the Greeks were wiser than we are. They had two words for time: chronos and kairos.
Kairos is not measurable. Kairos is ontological. In kairos we are, we are fully in isness, not negatively, as Sartre saw the isness of the oak tree, but fully, wholly, positively. Kairos can sometimes enter, penetrate, break through chronos: the child at play, the painter at his easel, Serkin playing the Appassionata, are in kairos.
I sit in the rocking chair with a baby in my arms, and I am in both kairos and chronos. In chronos I may be nothing more than some cybernetic salad at the bottom left-hand corner of a check, or my social-security number; or my passport number. In kairos I am known by my name; Madeleine.
The baby doesn't know about chronos yet."

That's were we are. Living in kairos while chronos relentlessly moves us forward--marriages, births, deaths. It's the heart breaking beauty of homeschooling, learning along with our kids, watching them grow up but not away no matter how far they travel. I bet the Greeks have words for that too.

Ocular Athletics

The Crazy Cat on the Deck
by Ken

There is a crazy cat on the deck. Sadly, it is our cat which means she is the terror of the household. Right now she is outside so we are safe. She's chasing leaves. "She is crazy." Now I will describe her. She is a tabby, her eyes are green. Her name is Moppet.


The Vicious Cat
by Adam

The cat stalks about a windy day,
Looking for some form of play.
She spies a leaf swirling round,
And pounces like a king's royal hound.

The leaf is no match for a vicious cat,
and soon the battle is done.
There is no doubt in my mind
That the vicious cat has won.

She sees another,
Stir up trouble,
And soon it is on its way.
The vicious cat has ripped it up,
Upon a windy day.

The cat stalks about a windy day,
Looking for some form of play.
She spies a leaf swirling round,
But is too tired to chase it down.


On Volume
by Joe

Volume is the area of the base of a figure times the height. (Try to guess what we are doing in math) It is not very hard until you do something that doesn't have a base. If that is the case then you have my sympathies. I will try to explain how to find the volume of a sphere. The volume of a sphere is 2/3 of the area of a cylander that has sides twice the length of the radius of the sphere. Volumes are kind of fun if you don't have to do it all the time.

Poetic Knowelge--Chapter Three (first half)

In the first half of this chapter James Taylor continues his apologia for poetic knowledge. As he explains on page 74,"The deliberate treatment of poetic knowledge by Maritain and others becomes necessary only after the 17th century and the ascendancy of science as the preeminent method of learning."

It has become needful in our time to advance this lengthy and deep explanation of poetic knowledge because in our hurried society it is seldom experienced. This is nothing new. As a homeschooling mom I frequently experience what Taylor calls connatural learning. What I believe Miss Mason would call the science of relationships or the habit of attention. But as a child my life was regulated by school schedules and the non-stop presence of the TV. I played outside but I never paid attention to nature. I read books but none that made me think. Certainly, electronic entertainment is even more prevalent today and kids frequently have no time to ponder nor anything interesting to ponder if they had the time.

I first read this book a dozen years ago. I don't remember having trouble understanding or following Taylor's definitions and defenses. I was pregnant with my youngest, my oldest was 16. We were preparing to enter the Catholic church. My recollection of this book is positive. I loved the premise and felt that my homeschool was fairly poetic. The girls memorized a lot of poetry, anyway! But re-reading this I realize I really didn't get the full effect of what Taylor is saying here. I'm sure I related it mostly to homeschooling and not to education in general. I now see that this applies to all education and that all children need to begin their education in a poetic mode. Something human is lost when early education is dissected into subjects and facts. I don't see a major overhaul of the public school system happening on this level but it would be awesome if it did. Something along the lines of when my grandmother attended the little one room school with its body of knowledge to be learned. When you could be in the 4th reader but the beginning math book. When you spent two hours of the school day playing. (This is true! A half hour of play in the morning, an hour for lunch and another half hour of play in the afternoon. How much ADHD do you think this would cure today?) The more I read this book the more I am in awe of Charlotte Mason and what she accomplished with her schools! How I wish I had had such an education myself and could recreate it for our stressed nation of school kids!