Dominion Family

My philosophy of education in a nutshell as stated by David Hicks in Norms and Nobility.

“General curiosity, imagination in forming hypotheses, and method in testing them, then, mark the classical spirit of inquiry. This bent of mind allows the educated man to go on educating himself or extending the realms of knowledge for his fellows. In the process of asking a wide range of questions, of forming hypotheses and of testing their consisitency with known facts, the student learns about the nature of his subject and about the methods appropriate for mastering it. This process- because it is the indispensable tool for unearthing all human knowledge- is the only true basis for a classical, or universal education.
Only the person whose mental habits conform to this generous pricess can be said to be “educated” in a universal sense. This is the person who, as Aristotle writes in his essay On the Parts of Animals, ’should be able to form a fair off-hand judgement as to the goodness or badness of the method used by a professor in his exposition,’ This is the person competent to judge what the experts say without being an expert. “

Prize for the first person to stumble upon this and comment.

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Whatever happened to the National Do-Not-Call Registry?
It seems my phone rings off the hook. What gets me is that I pick up the phone and they expect me to wait while their computer kicks into gear. Why would I do that?

Lately, about every 30 minutes, Dish Network calls. They also write. Yesterday a man speaking very fast wanted to talk to me about entertainment.
“Sir you are wasting your time. We don’t even have a television.”
Silence. “What do you do for entertainment?”
“Read.”
“What do you mean? What do you read?”
“Everything, Sir as you can see we are not the kind of people you are looking for.”
He then starts where he left off on his sheet and begins rambling about entertainment. I said goodbye.

We got rid of our TV 19 years ago. I remember thinking to myself, “What will I do now?” At the time we were traveling all over the country. I felt the TV was my life line to any new area we lived in. Still for some reason I wanted to try living without it. It worked!!! In the last 19 years I haven’t been bored once.

What do we do for entertainment? More than just read.
We play. We talk. We work.

Give my family a ball…any size.. and a game of some sort will begin…inside or out. My dad is notorious for helping the children think of new indoor ball games.
We have been known to pitch pennies for fun, too.
We play Rook. Spades. Kings-in-the-Corner. Solitaire. Canasta. Rummy.
We play Axis and Allies. Monopoly. Sorry. Risk. Taboo. Scattergories. Blurt.
We have bonfires. Invite people over. Play tennis ball. Croquet. Races.
We build tree houses. Roads for our little cars.
We listen to music. Bach. Tim McGraw. Alison Krauss. Michael Buble. Sarah Mclachlin. Paul Overstreet. Creed. Mozart Harry Connick. Jr. Keith Green. Nickel Creek. Fernando Ortega. Bryan Adams. Jars of Clay. Steve Camp. Vivaldi.
We argue. Debate. Fight. Discuss.
We chop wood. Rotate laundry. Vacuum. Rotate laundry. Make beds. Rotate laundry. Rotate laundry. Rotate laundry. Who has time to watch TV when there is laundry to rotate? Of course at the laudromat you can watch tv and rotate. And I do have pleasant memories of watching my mom fold laundry while watching Days of Our Lives.

Pretty much anything the Sugar Creek Gang did, we do.

You don’t have to get rid of your TV to do any of those things. I am not telling you to get rid of your TV. Some of my best friends have TVies. I am just saying that around here it hasn’t been missed. Besides, if we did have a TV it would be stuck on Sportscenter and that truly would be boring.

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I wanted to be clever and say, “Wisdom & the Rollins,” but then I would have had to say, “Wisdom & the Rollinses,” and I can’t bring myself to it.

The theme verse for our homeschool is Daniel 1:17a, ” As for these four children, God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom…” That became our verse when we only had 4 children but it still applies today. It really is a wonderful homeschool verse to remind us that all that we gain or learn comes from God.

Foremost on my mind this summer, as I plan the coming school year, is how can I impart wisdom to my children. How can I keep our life and our school days from being so full of projects, assignments, field trips and lessons that our knowledge to wisdom ratio is askew?

One area that hangs heavy is the children’s morning devotional time. How can I help them to make that time meaningful and not just completed?

It is abundantly clear to me that I am in way over my head and I am going to need some HELP.
The goals that I have for my children cannot be met by me. I can’t take a big shovel and pound these things into their heads, although I have tried. I am forced to admit that without a Helper I am unable to homeschool. Thanks be to God who has sent me a Helper, the Holy Spirit.

Charlotte Mason says that education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life. In the next few days, Lord willing, I will be writing on how our family succeeds and fails in our atmosphere, discipline and life.

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I wanted to be clever and say, “Wisdom & the Rollins,” but then I would have had to say, “Wisdom & the Rollinses,” and I can’t bring myself to it.

The theme verse for our homeschool is Daniel 1:17a, ” As for these four children, God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom…” That became our verse when we only had 4 children but it still applies today. It really is a wonderful homeschool verse to remind us that all that we gain or learn comes from God.

Foremost on my mind this summer, as I plan the coming school year, is how can I impart wisdom to my children. How can I keep our life and our school days from being so full of projects, assignments, field trips and lessons that our knowledge to wisdom ratio is askew?

One area that hangs heavy is the children’s morning devotional time. How can I help them to make that time meaningful and not just completed?

It is abundantly clear to me that I am in way over my head and I am going to need some HELP.
The goals that I have for my children cannot be met by me. I can’t take a big shovel and pound these things into their heads, although I have tried. I am forced to admit that without a Helper I am unable to homeschool. Thanks be to God who has sent me a Helper, the Holy Spirit.

Charlotte Mason says that education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life. In the next few days, Lord willing, I will be writing on how our family succeeds and fails in our atmosphere, discipline and life.

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Have you heard the beautiful Josh Groban song Remember from the movie Troy ? I just love that song because it truly captures the ancient pagan’s pathos-filled quest to be remembered. Now the real word for pathos-filled would be pathetic but then you would have probably missed the point.

I have been suffering with a cold this week: sore throat, coughing, misery-at-night. The last few nights I awakened to Horatius at the Bridge running through my mind. I have been reading big portions of it out loud every morning to the children and now my brain has taken over the memory job.

Tall are the oaks whose acorns
Drop in dark Auser’s rill;
Fat are the stags that champ the boughs
Of the Ciminian hill;
Beyond all streams Clitumnus
Is to the herdsman dear;
Best of all pools the fowler loves
The great Volsinian mere.

And in the middle of the night I begin to wonder what a rill is. And I come up with a few ideas. Maybe a rill is like a ridge of hills. And in the morning I do a search and find that:

a rill is:
1. A small brook; a rivulet.
2. A long narrow straight valley on the moon’s surface.

Ah, that begins to make sense.

In the night, as the verses unbidden repeat themselves, I begin to take joy in their language.
I begin to consider the words, to feel mesmerized by their beauty. I didn’t feel that way the first 15 times I read the poem. But now I begin to appreciate the difficult task before us to memorize Horatius. It is a lovely task which will bear fruit the entirety of my children’s lives.

And in the morning I awake to find my internet working again and an email with this link: In Defense of Memorization by
Michael Knox Beran.

I can’t tell you how often someone has mistaken my older boys for genuises because they can recite poetry and do when appropriate.

Whether your children learn that Christopher Robin goes hoppity, hoppity, hoppity, hoppity hop or whether they learn what happened on the 18th of April in ‘75, the melodies will be forever in their minds.

Remember

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I know, I know, you aren’t going to read a long quote but I can’t help it. I am still reading the very tiny book, The Great Conversation, about a chapter a day. In Chapter 6, Education for All, Mr Hutchins says almost exactly what I said a few weeks ago, so of course, I totally agree with him.

” For example, if it is admitted that the few can profit by liberal education, then we ought to make sure that they, at least, have the chance to get it.
It is almost impossible for them to do so in the United States today. Many claims can be made for the American people; but nobody would think of claiming tht they can read, write, and figure. Still less would it be maintained that they understand the tradition of the West, the tradition in which they live. The products of American high schools are illiterate; and a degree from a famous college or university is no guarantee that the graduate is in any better case. One of the most remarkable features of American society is that the difference between the “uneducated” and the “educated” is so slight.”

That was written in 1952; before I was even born, before you or I even darkened the doors of the village Kindergarten or went to college.

Ok, one more for the road:

” We should not linger long in discussing whether a student at the age of eighteen should be permitted to determine the actual content of his education for himself. As we have a tendency to underrate the intelligence of the young, we have tendency to overrate their experience and the significance of the expression of interests and needs on the part of those who are inexperienced.”

” The art of teaching consists in large part of interesting people in things that ought to interest them, but do not.”

Amen!!

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I’ve been in the car more lately and since I can’t read while driving I usually listen to the radio, unless I have a new Plain Talk CD.

Sometimes when all the country songs sound corny, all the pop songs too familiar, all the classical stations out of range, and Sean Hannity is on, I turn to NPR. ( I don’t do Christian stations.)

NPR for all its self-consciousness is not great radio. Still even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes. Today I heard a insightful essay on NPR about pace. If you are feeling frenzied, if you are wondering if your plans for next year are overblown, take a minute to listen to Phil Powers speak about the art of the rest step. This essay is perfect fodder for the end of the year sprint to the finish and even better grist as we plan our next year’s journey.

And by the way, when NPR asks for money as they did several times today, I shout at my radio that I already gave them quite a bit of money this year through my income taxes. Whiny children should be punished not rewarded.

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Except for the fact that all my children are different, they are all alike. That is the weird sort of Chestertonian world my brain lives in.

All my babies looked alike even on their ultrasounds. I used to say to the technician, “Yep, that’s the baby.”
All my newborns were old friends.

I have homeschooled each of my children in a strongly CM way. Once in sheer desperation I went out and bought Lifepacs for everyone but I don’t think we even finished 2 books.

This fall Andrew went to my parents’ house for 2 weeks. My mom and dad had to homeschool him without any of his materials. Andrew really blossomed under all the individual attention. My parents did such a good job with Andrew and Benjamin I felt I should send them a child to homeschool or beg them to come help me.

At our house Andrew doesn’t have any trouble at all with any of his assignments but he has a terrible time staying focused. I catch him wandering all over the house and when I tell him he needs to do his schoolwork he answers, “oh,” like that’s a new thought. There is a reason we call him Winnie the Pooh. Andrew shares almost all of Pooh’s characteristics.

He also enjoys the concrete more than my other children; we are an abstract family. So I decided to switch gears with Andrew. He would still be in Morning Time and Ambleside Time (when I manage to squeeze it in), but his other studies would be less CM and more traditional. I bought him several subjects from Rod and Staff, gave him a daily check-off sheet, and he is doing very well. I even bought him a set of their Artpacs which he just loves. The whole family is enjoying helping him learn to draw with the Artpacs. It is interesting that drawing is something the Mennonites do very well. Years ago we subscribed to Nature Friend Magazine and the drawing lessons were the highlight of the magazine.

I bought Penmanship, Reading, Grammar, Art, and Science. He already had R&S math and we do spelling on the computer with a program sold by The Timberdoodle called Dr Aardsma’s Spelling. I have generally avoided all elementary science texts because of time factors but I thought Andrew would enjoy this book.

Now I will tell you a secret. I don’t care how long it takes him to finish his textbooks, a year or 2. He doesn’t do every subject every day. My philosophy is if we have had a full day learning and growing then it is a good school day no matter what we didn’t cover.

Well, that is my philosophy; in real life we all know that homeschooling moms are far more aware of what they aren’t doing that what they are. I can at least pretend to be a normal, well-adjusted person on my blog. I will let you know in March if we stick with the R&S.

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The connections never cease.

I had been working with Alex on phonics for several months. He had read a whole stack of Bob Books and could pronounce several columns of phonograms but he just wasn’t progressing well. Progressing Well that was the term used on my 1970’s report cards. No such thing as A’s and B’s in the 70’s. Progressing, Progressing Well, Not Progressing.

Anyway, we got sick and then all kinds of hard things happened and I didn’t have time to teach Alex his short phonics lesson everyday. 2 months went by and then I started to see the light of day and felt guilty. I grabbed Alex last week, sorted through his phonics box and pulled out a few Sing, Spell, Read & Write readers. Alex whizzed through the A book and is almost done with the E book. He appears to have learned how to read in the 2 months I was not teaching him.

Whenever my children are struggling with a subject my first line of defense is usually to throw money at the problem. I will buy the biggest, best piece of equipment for that subject, make them work night and day, skip baseball practice and LEARN. I do this in spite of the fact that I have noticed over and over and over again over the years that rest and change are the real facilitators of learning.

I wonder if our forefathers learned more because they didn’t have so much schooling. Education, yes. Schooling, no. I need to learn how to pace our school with seasons of rigor and rest. Usually that happens naturally as things happen but I would like to try planning a season of rest for the children and see what happens. Can you believe I have been homeschooling for 23 years? Talk about SLOW!!

Have you ever noticed this in your house?

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In the previous post someone mentioned that distractions keep our children from learning. I suppose Solomon might say that there have always been distractions but it seems that in the last 5 years they have become more insidious. When all we had to do was not have a TV or Nintendo it was pretty easy to keep our children focused. Now we are attacked on every side by electronic diversions.

We can watch TV shows on our computer. We can buy a song within seconds of hearing it on the radio. I can even wave my cellphone in the air when a song is playing that I don’t know and it will identify it !? I can watch Who’s On First or Dave Chappelle in seconds on YouTube. I can play Scrabble with my friends in Maryland or Idaho. I can look at a Da Vinci or a recipe.

Today my 9yo wanted to memorize the poem we were reading, The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats. He walked into the room and was holding a printed copy of the poem. He had Googled it and printed it without ever consulting me and we are not a computer literate family.

Today during our MT I started to say, “Friends, Romans…”
Suddenly the 6yo pipsqueak sitting next to me grabbed his ears and said, “….countrymen lend me your ears.” I was shocked. Where did you learn that? I was not prepared for the answer: “Robin Hood: Men in Tights!” This is called having older siblings.

And then I find myself on the couch reading The Snow Queen to at least 2 children with several others hanging about the edges of the room. I’ve never read The Snow Queen before. I was scared to death by the TV version of it I watched as a child. Vigen Guroian has hooked me.

I find myself reading Story One:

The Devil has a mirror and it distorts everything, makes everything good look bad. All the devils love it and think it is jolly fun until one day they accidentally drop it. It falls to the Earth and shatters into a million little slivers. Some of the shards lodge in people’s eyes causing the same effect the original mirror had and some lodge in hearts turning them to ice. That is how the story of Kay and Gerda begins.

I am not having trouble understanding the metaphor today.

Some of my children are struggling. They are distracted but they cling to the shard in their heart just like little Kay. I must be Gerda today. I must help them but it is hard to see. I have a sliver too. I ask hard things of my children. I must ask hard things of myself.

We are calling it “cleansing the palate.” We will remove the distractions for a while and see if our vision clears, our taste improves.

Hopefully, we will return in a month or so with our discernment heightened. In the meantime, the comments are here and I will respond, the archives also and you can always email me. I don’t plan to read blogs either. It’s a nasty business, clearing the mind. Thankfully it is the work of the Spirit and not of the flesh.

Romans 12:1
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

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