You all know what I should be doing. The college boys are home and our first round of company arrives tonight. We should have 25 around the Thanksgiving tables. When one family of 11 invites another family of 11, it isn’t hard to reach 25. I have spent the weekend wondering how awful it would be for the little kids to eat off of plastic plates but you will be happy to know I rejected that idea. I have plenty to do today which is why I am sitting at the computer thinking about poetic knowledge.

Over the last few months I have been evaluating my stance on the subject. A couple years ago at the Circe conference, I was happy to find out that what I had majored in with my older children was actually a form of classical education. Poetic knowledge was IN. I felt so lighthearted after that conference. How often does a homeschooling mom get to feel like she is doing something right? Don’t we usually go to bed at night rehearsing what we should have accomplished rather than what we did accomplish?

This Fall James and Nathaniel went to college with pretty big academic scholarships based on their SAT scores. But the truth is that I knew that while they weren’t afraid of writing, their grammar skills were weak. How would poetic knowledge hold up at college, albeit not the most difficult college? At first things looked bleak. Their English professor was a stickler for grammar. That is what they needed but they also had to keep high GPAs. I started feeling horrible. I had let them down. I have to admit that it sometimes seems like their grades and their test scores are mine. I have been known to say, “What did we get on the paper?” This is warped and I am afraid it is the unique struggle of the overachieving mom. I don’t have a therapist; I have a blog.

Surprisingly, both boys rose to the occasion, paid attention in class and learned from their mistakes. Now they are getting high marks on their papers which I attribute to their use of metaphor and allusion along with their newly found grammar skills.

It takes a lifetime to pick up poetic knowledge, it takes a semester to pick up grammar. Things are easier in my life now than when my older boys were small. I can do grammar and continue with our heavy emphasis on Bible, literature, history and poetry but if I had to err, I have concluded that I would err on the poetic side.

Poetic knowledge feeds the soul. It makes you a better writer. It gives you hooks on which to place everything else you learn in life; without those hooks we lose much of what we learn. Poetic knowledge paves the path of wisdom. It helps you relate to other people. It helps you to understand that there are consequences. It makes you look smart.

Our society has replaced poetic knowledge with pop culture. True poetic knowledge is an antidote to pop culture. It even allows you to participate in some forms of pop culture with some level of immunity.

The Bible says that the knowledge of the God is the beginning of wisdom. If you are teaching your children to read and love the Bible and memorize it, you have a head start on poetic knowledge.

This brings me back to my new homeschooling priorities:

Reading & MT (poetic knowledge), Latin, Math & Grammar (skills) but the greatest of these is poetic knowledge.

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