Another Cadillac Course?

Another Cadillac Course?

You might recall the homeschool product reviews the Andreolas wrote. Who knew anything about the quantity of stuff we didn’t review?     No one.    Until now.

Letting the dishes soak I decided to tackle instead, the box that sat on a chair at the far end of the kitchen table. I tucked some hair behind an ear. I straightened my glasses. I meant business. I always gave boxes of sample curriculum a sober and honest appraisal.

Landis Valley. The white doors lead to the basement. 

This time, it was a science curriculum. Wow. What large, beautiful photographs of the animal kingdom and their habitats. The kit came with two thick, hardcover textbooks; shiny and durable enough to last 100 years. The teacher’s book contained the identical text of the student’s book but with an added paragraph or two. This way the teacher could be “one-up” on the animal at hand. Why? Was the added information too difficult for a child to comprehend? Too boring? The text was expected to be livened-up by the teacher. The teacher’s edition said it was “an aid to formulating lectures.”

Our wild rabbits eat dogwood berries for breakfast.

It supplied dozens of questions on each animal. Added to this was a pack of animal-fact-check cards, a softcover quiz book and test book. 

It was an expensive package, impressively school-ish in the modern-classroom sense of the word. 

Following this course who could possibly say a child wasn’t doing school? (Charlotte Mason. That’s who?)

My decision was firm. I would not review it. Time to wash the dishes.

At the sink I stood. Motionless. Mesmerized. I was staring out the window, a wet dishcloth in my hand. I wasn’t looking at anything outside. It was dark. I was seeing something in my mind’s eye. I saw a young mother, new-to-homeschooling, less-than-confident, well-meaning, hardworking, tired. I could relate. I’d been there. A little whirlwind of emotions swirled within me. It rose to the surface and I sighed just as Man-of-the-House entered the room. He wanted to know what was the matter. 

 

I finished a little quilt for a bedroom wall with early American scenes and scrappy stars.

“It’s this new fancy-dancy Cadillac course,” I blurted out, my back to him. I began filling the dishwasher. “It involves hours upon hours of teacher-preparation for giving lectures, a sort of spoiler, you-might-call-it, because much of the same information is repeated . . . as it’s supposed to be read by the student afterward. Then, repeated for the quiz. And repeated again for the test. It’s riddled with review questions, multiple choice, cross-word puzzles . . . and those dreadful match-the-columns.”

“I always hated those,” he said. “Are they meant to throw a child off?”

“I dunno,” I said weakly. But I revved up again. “The quizzes teach for the test. It all goes to substantiate a final grade. I can just see it.”   

“See what?” he said.

It's mushroom season in our front garden. 

“I can see this classroom busy-work, marketed to homeschoolers, leading to burn-out in Mother and tedium in student - if followed exactly as the course objectives advise,” I said, eyes widening. 

“And conscientious moms wanting the best for their children, who’ve just spent 300 dollars on it, might do just that – attempt to do it all. 

If all her courses are the biggest and best, the family will be doing “school” ‘till 5 o’clock. (I almost said “midnight," which on second thought, might not have been too inaccurate.)  

“So . . . this kit has all the earmarks of what Charlotte Mason advised NOT to do?” the Man-of-the-House asked, knowing the answer.

“Yup,” I said, emptying the sink of the last fork. I rinsed the sink of all its suds and squeezed out the dishcloth with unusual vigor.

When I finally turned around, I saw the Man-of-the-House squinting down at the books and rubbing his beard. He, too, was impressed with the pictures. He said, “A committee of Ph.Ds wrote this course, you know.”

I made a little face. 

He missed this. He was still reading. “Hmm . . . it’s as if the writing has no voice. It’s impersonal. Like a computer wrote it . . . not a person enthused with his subject.” He paused while he drew his conclusion. “It requires a gallon of teaching, doesn’t it?” He smiled at me.

“Yup,” I said, smiling back. Hanging up the tea towel for the night it struck me how glad I was for a husband who understood. Softened by this thought, I put a hand on his arm. 

“Okay. That’s that,” he said. 

There was one thing left to do. 

Knowing how much I disliked cardboard boxes strewn about the place, he carried the impressive-looking course to the basement. 

There it sat. Until it was given away with boxes of other material that had had their turn at cluttering up our keeping-room that year – our last year of writing catalog reviews.

Young George Herbert (Christian Poet) and Mother. Painting by Charles West Cope

A Different Story

One day, Charlotte Mason observed a PNEU class of girls, age 13, read an essay on George Herbert with 3 or 4 poems included. None of the girls had read either the essay or the poems before. They narrated in full paragraphs. 

“No point made by the poet was omitted and his exact words were used pretty freely,” Miss Mason says. “The teacher made comments upon one or two unusual words and that was all. To explain or enforce (other than by a reverently sympathetic manner, the glance and words that showed that she too, cared), would have been impertinent.”

“It is an interesting thing,” she says, “that hundreds of children of the same age [following the PNEU syllabus] . . . scattered over the world, read and narrated the same essay and no doubt paraphrased the verses with equal ease. I felt humbled before the children knowing myself incapable of such immediate and rapid apprehension of several pages of new matter . . . In such ways, the great thoughts of great thinkers illuminate children and they grow in knowledge, chiefly the knowledge of God.”

Yet usually, the work of education, she says, “is drowned in torrents of talk, in tedious repetition, . . . in every sort of way in which the mind may be bored and the affections deadened.” *1

    

Read the living book. Narrate. This is mostly what’s necessary. But it’s a BIG necessary. Children are brought up acquiring powers of self-education, by this method. They want opportunity and direction. Not mental gymnastics for storing information. Rather, their mind comes alive when it ponders ideas conveyed in literary language. Are the children free to make their own associations, follow a train-of-thought, draw conclusions? This is how persons truly become knowledgeable. By it, they enter a state of knowledge, like friendship.

Dean fondly remembers "Stones & Minerals" from his boyhood.

Example: “Tell (or add to your notebook) what you’ve learned about Australia’s amazing kangaroo from its birth to adulthood. Draw a series of 3-4 illustrations for it.” An ounce of teaching, for a gallon of learning. Not the other way around.

Today, some call this “minimalist-homeschooling.” Call it what you like. I call it “The Gentle Art of Learning.”

Label stitched to back of quilt written in fine point laundry marker. 

End Notes
For preparation for year-end tests children need to be familiar with multiple-choice. Sample test-booklets are available and can be worked a month or two before the test, 10 minutes a day. But mostly, multiple choice can take a back seat.  

*1 Charlotte Mason, Philosophy of Education, pages 64-65 (Italics mine)

Comments are Welcome,

Karen Andreola

(I'm working on the log-cabin table runner at present. Nice to have you for a visit.)