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June 11 - August 5, 2018
So Sarah is right to break the spell of our amnesia and tell us that curriculum is not something we buy, but something we teach. She brings this up because she knows that we have not only forgotten the meaning of the word, but with it have forgotten the aims of education. She knows that we are tempted to follow closely, even slavishly and with a great deal of anxiety, the specifications of a published resource (our “curriculum”). We cover material, we rush to keep up or catch up, and what is lost in the process is a love of mathematics and our perception of its truth, goodness, and beauty. We
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curriculum is not something we buy, but something we teach. we have not only forgotten the meaning of the word, but with it have forgotten the aims of education. we are tempted to follow closely, even slavishly and with a great deal of anxiety, the specifications of a published resource (our “curriculum”). We cover material, we rush to keep up or catch up, and what is lost in the process is a love of mathematics and our perception of its truth, goodness, and beauty. We instead simply get through the book. Ah, yes, let’s just get through it.
scholé—restful learning—approach
scholé—restful learning—
AmongstLovelyThings.com
AmongstLovelyThings.com
(CirceInstitute.org)
He meant that we ought to enter into God’s rest and then serve Him wholeheartedly—not out of anxiety, but out of love and trust.
ClassicalAcademicPress.com
ScholeGroups.com.
Amongst Lovely Things:
I can almost hear him inverting the message to me—turning my obsession with productivity on its head: “Don’t just do something; sit here.” As homeschooling moms, we
We feel small and insignificant because we are small and insignificant.
After all, our job is not to be successful—success itself is entirely beside the point. It’s faithfulness that He wants.
The true aim of education is to order a child’s affections—to teach him to love what he ought and hate what he ought. Our greatest task, then, is to put living ideas in front of our children like a feast. We have been charged to cultivate the souls of our children, to nourish them in truth, goodness, and beauty, to raise them up in wisdom and eloquence. It is to those ends that we labor.
What are those existing conditions? What is keeping you from speeding through the reading curriculum, flying through the math book, checking off the lesson plans, and maximizing efficiency? Usually the answer is: people. Can you hit the pause button on your frustration long enough to realize that people rank infinitely higher than anything else on the list?
If we are aiming to order our children’s affections, learn to love what is lovely, join in the great conversation, and cultivate a soul so that the person is ready in every sense of the word to take on the challenges around the corner and on the other side of the college entrance exams; work toward “diligence”
What we are really aiming for in giving our children a rigorous education is not just doing hard things, but cultivating a habit of focused attention. The word “student” comes from the Latin studium, meaning “zeal, affection, eagerness.” A diligent student, then, takes delight, eagerly and with great zeal, in what he loves.
When I focus on being diligent rather than rigorous, my measure for success is not, “Did I check off lesson 97 today?”
When she doesn’t understand the day’s lesson, it isn’t a setback; it’s just God showing us our marching orders for the day.
My child doesn’t need me to fret and fear; she needs me to love and guide her with grace.
In fact, unshakable peace is not tied to my success at all. It’s tied to faithfulness.
Rest is the virtue between negligence and anxiety, but many of the homeschooling moms I have met, myself included, find themselves more likely to fall prey to one camp or the other.
The Greek historian Plutarch once wrote, “The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.”7
cannot serve two masters, and neither can you. Whose “well done” are you working for?
Most of my own frustration comes from forgetting what my real task is in the first place. He’s called me to be faithful, yet I’m determined to be successful.
Smile a lot. Lavish him with love. Because whether or not he becomes an excellent writer or a proficient mathematician is not your business to worry over. Your business is that single assignment today and loving him through it.
23). Our task is to love God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to do it in front of and with our kids (see Deuteronomy 6:5; Matthew 22:37). To do it when we rise up and when we walk along the way (see Deuteronomy 6:7). Each and every one of those little moments are part of something beautiful you are making for God—you are building a cathedral.
It is easy to forget that teaching is holy work. The building up of the intellect—teaching children to really think—does not happen by the might of human reason, but rather by the grace of God.
It is the building up of our children’s minds and hearts,
The builders of medieval cathedrals knew what it meant to work their entire lives to please God without ever expecting to see their work completed. Many cathedrals would take more than a hundred years to build—more than the span of a man’s lifetime. I once heard a story of an artisan who worked tirelessly for many years to carve a beautiful bird into the wood of a portion of the cathedral that would be covered up. When someone asked why he was working so hard on something that no one would see, he replied, “Because God sees.” God sees your little wooden bird too. Just as the artisans and
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An aspiration is a short prayer sent up throughout the day.
Here are a few to get you started: O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Jesus, my God, I love Thee above all things. Jesus, I trust in You. My God and my all. My Lord and my God! God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me. (This one is my personal favorite) O Lord, increase my faith. Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
Consider printing the Ante Studium (“before study”) of St. Thomas Aquinas and praying it as a family at breakfast. Taking a few minutes to pray this together may help everyone—teacher and students both—approach the day mindful of the eternal nature each ordinary home-school day presents. Ineffable Creator, Who, from the treasures of Your wisdom, have established three hierarchies of angels, have arrayed them in marvelous order above the fiery heavens, and have marshaled the regions of the universe with such artful skill, You are proclaimed the true font of light and wisdom, and the primal
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We beg God to use us to fulfill His purpose, and then we see that every frustration in the day ahead is an answer to that very prayer.
Of course we will use such resources to reach our goals, but the resource will be our servant, not our master.
How you teach is just as important as what you teach. What does your pacing or your lesson say to your student?
the trouble arises when we value the timeline over the child God gave us to teach.
A stack of books. Hours of reading. Poetry. Long walks outside. Bike rides. Spelling words. Visits to the orchards. Sitting for hours with toddlers on laps, flipping through picture books, singing silly rhymes. Algebra problems. Library visits. Outings. Winter evenings spent huddled around a board game or listening to a story. Phonics. Handwork. A five-paragraph essay. Baking soda-and-vinegar volcanoes. Mapwork. Drawing. Music. Conversations about everything under the sun. A garden. A grammar page. A memorized fact. A meal eaten with grandparents. A camping trip in August. Live your life,
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In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis warns us against running around in a flood with fire extinguishers.11 Isn’t that what we do? We notice a child is behind in a certain subject, that chores are not being done efficiently or well, that we aren’t making progress like we want to be. Instead of assessing the real problem, we grab the closest fire extinguisher and start spraying the heck out of our kids. We’re behind in math? More math! We’re tired and overwhelmed? Revamp everything!
We feel turbulent when we try to facilitate this kind of frenzied, quantifiable learning. Often, we either become disconnected slave drivers or we give up altogether, accepting the illusion that happy, healthy relationships and rigorous home education simply cannot coexist.
Which words, phrases, or sentences do I want my child to use when describing his or her homeschooled childhood?
When I’m looking over my curriculum trying to decide what might need to go and what ought to stay, trying to shuck some nonessentials from my backpack, I can use those words I’ve chosen as a kind of litmus test.
But as Dr. Christopher Perrin has taught me through the Latin maxim, multum non multa (much not many), true breadth is achieved through depth. Our children get a broad education when they go deep into a few carefully selected subjects, not when they dabble in ten.
survey of everything and mastery in nothing, so our children get an education that is a mile wide and an inch deep. That’s
For example, in our home, we do geography the Charlotte Mason way.
If I did not already have this resource on my shelf, how much trouble would I go through to obtain it? If the answer is “not much,” it can likely be left off the plan.
This is why in our family we choose to study Latin, prioritize reading aloud over almost everything else, and why I’m not a fan of time-consuming “hands-on” projects that eat up entire afternoons without allowing for mastery of material or engagement with big ideas. The nitty-gritty of this is going to look a little different for everybody, but the principle remains: Our lives are, by nature, integrated. Our school day should reflect that.
Remember that the published resources are to be wielded by you, not to rule over you.
embrace the true goal of education: to order a child’s affections and teach him to love that which is lovely. The point, then, is to put true, good, and beautiful ideas in front of our children and then to let them feast on them. To sit alongside them and model how one might go about dipping into the feast. We share a giant meal of ideas—contemplating, beholding, loving. We allow ourselves to be transformed by what we come in contact with. Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any
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They tell me to focus on relationships, to help my children preserve wonder and perceive truth, and to do each day’s work as diligently as I can.
Will this help her remember? Will it help her think? Will it teach her to speak?
Keep it simple. Don’t fall for gimmicky curricula that complicates what should be common sense.
