At Home in a World of Books

At Home in a World of Books

  
Home teachers are most free to provide an education that makes children at home in a world of books. The books are the teachers.

Parents need not be especially talented or skilled in any one subject because we who take the step of faith are gifted the moment we put one foot in front of the other.

God gifts willing hearts. Those who seek, shall find. We can learn along side our children what we might have missed in our own childhood. This is how Dean and I did it. 

Reading the 19^th century writings of Charlotte Mason who can miss her ardent plea for better schoolbooks? She repeats her theme that children ought to have “living books.”

How do we recognize a living book? 

“A single page will elicit a verdict,” she claims. Thus, my suggestion in A Charlotte Mason Companion for at least a “one page test.” Watch whether or not the writing opens or closes the door of a child’s mind.

Varied Relationships with Books and Things

My search for living books was a quiet but constant quest and experiment. I couldn’t help but be wary of the typical textbook after reading Miss Mason’s plea. More than one hundred years later, classroom textbooks haven’t changed much. We are still faced with their devitalizing effect.

But “a book serves the end of education only as it is vital,” Miss Mason observed.

I placed this book in my parent's garden and those above.

Classrooms haven’t changed much, either. A flood of talk from a teacher’s paraphrasing – put together from hasty notes - cannot possibly do what the carefully chosen words of an author can do.

“Ideas must reach us directly from the thinker,” Miss Mason says, “and it is chiefly by means of the books that they have written that we get in touch with the best minds.” A teacher must talk to give a lesson but this talk “must be subordinate to the book,” she insists.  When education is predominately lecture, commentary, note taking, test taking, after-hours homework, cramming to memorize, preoccupation with making-the-grade, the result is that students leave twelve years of school blasé.  

Dean took this at the New Jersey shore,

Where are These Living books?

Miss Mason uses the phrase “large room” figuratively when she says that we are to set children in a large room of varied relationships. In her country of England, really large rooms are only found in the manor houses. I’ve taken a tour of one or two and I can assure you that such rooms are well and finely furnished. But where are the books that draw a child to establish relationships in many directions – take an interest - be impressed – inspired – delighted – become absorbed – books that satisfy the efforts of attention that he must give to the reading - whether it is listening to a chapter read aloud or something he reads silently – in solitude? (In solitude one can be meditative.)

     Please Miss Mason, will you choose the books for us?

Nigel painted a creek rock to be an owl after reading a naturalist's diary.

Alas, she tells us she will not. “I should not like to play [the part of] Sir Oracle. The One Hundred Best Books for the Schoolroom may be put down on a list, but not by me.”

Instead, she lays out the principles for selecting books while she leaves “the far more difficult part, the application of those principles” to us.

Grandsons wearing Granma's knit vests

1. Something to Think About

Firstly, “The children must enjoy the book,” she simply states. Look for signs in your child that the book is making a delightful impact. Or in some small way it is giving some intellectual stir to the mind. Living books are alive with ideas that spark interest. If the book is interesting it is probably because it gives us something to think about.  

Endowed with Detail
The book needn’t always be a first-hand source. And we needn’t get hung up on whether it’s a short book or a long book, whether it is published in the 19^th, 20^th, or 21st century. The book is suitable providing it isn’t facts-only, that it is endowed with detail, that it is of literary language, is touched with emotion. It should carry away in the reader a feeling that “I’ve learned something new.” 

In the case of books let’s do get carried away. Maybe not today, but down the road, the student may impulsively pass on what he’s learning with a “Mom, Dad, guess what?” 

Library discards, "How and Why" series from the 1960s

2. A Prized Possession
Secondly, Miss Mason thinks “we owe it to children to let them dig their knowledge . . . for themselves . . . for two reasons: What a child digs for is his own possession; what is poured into his ear, like an idle song of a pleasant singer, floats out as lightly as it came in, and is rarely assimilated.” A teacher needs only  “give impulse and to order knowledge;” not to convey it. 

Teachers can “rouse their students with a appreciative look or word” but beware of a flood of talk. “Intellectual sympathy,” Miss Mason says, can be stimulating “but we have all been in the case of the little girl who said, ‘Mother, I think I would understand if you did not explain quite so much.’ ”

Knowledge is Personal

Here is where the value of narration enters the room – where a child puts the reading in his own words – orally or in writing.

With narration the child does the digging. The freedom to dig and delve makes knowledge a personal thing. (Chapters are dedicated to the art of narration in, A Charlotte Mason Companion.)

As a blogger I am always glad to hop on a blog where children are being set in large rooms and are feeling at home in a world of books.

Over the last twenty years home teachers have expressed a desire for better schoolbooks. Better texts are being published here and there and old texts republished. Look for those with truth, beauty, and goodness. 

An enthusiastic photographer mentioned on the pages of Pocketful of Pinecones

Miss Mason says a child is “in the world to lay hold of all that he can of those relationships proper to him so that he may live a full, happy, resourceful life with initiative and serviceableness.” Isn’t this what our educating efforts are about?

Happy New Year

Karen Andreola

End Notes

During the holidays I spent time in School Education by Charlotte Mason (Now published by Simply Charlotte Mason) highlighting passages on pages 177, 228, 229, 231 in preparation for writing you this article. Those who are keen may visit these pages to read what surrounds my quotations. If I post less-often it is because it takes me awhile to carefully say what I think you will be encouraged by. When it comes to Charlotte Mason I write by inches.   

In order of appearance:

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell

Time of Wonder by Robert McCloskey and his One Morning in Maine

Columbus by D'Aulaire

An Owl in the House by Bernd Heinrich 

The Biggest Bear by Lynd Ward

Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and CD by Anna Harwell Cekenza

Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare for Children by E. Nesbitt

Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin