“[S]ome artists look at the world around them and see chaos, and instead of discovering cosmos, they reproduce chaos, on canvas, in music, in words. As far as I can see, the reproduction of chaos is neither art, nor is it Christian.”
The art, the cosmos, of writing—this is where language (the 2018 Classical Conversations Practicum theme), rhetoric (the third art of the trivium), and community (the third “C” of “Classical Christian Community”) all come together.
Rhetoric (speaking, writing, creating, communicating) is incarnational, an embodied idea.
“[T]o paint a picture or to write a story or to compose a song is an incarnational activity.” [Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water]
“What’s the point of ideas if those ideas are never made flesh?” [N.D. Wilson, The Rhetoric Companion]
“Rhetoric is a productive art, the principled process of making a product.” [Scott Crider]
We participate in the Imago Dei through these human activities.
Rhetoric is an art we practice in community with others.
“Rhetoric is “the care of words and things”; that care is associative, a practice one learns—and never stops learning—in the presence of others, the ones you lead and are led by.” [Scott Crider]
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How does the art of rhetoric apply to the writing component (IEW) of Essentials? And how does it create a bridge to the Challenge program?
The Art of Rhetoric
Invention (What)
Arrangement (In What Order)
Elocution (How)
Memory
Delivery
Institute for Excellence in Writing “IEW” (Essentials)
** IEW prepares students for Challenge by introducing them to structure and style. Challenge students move on to LTW, but they will use their IEW research essay skills for their many science papers in Challenge A and B as well as the story sequence skills for their short story in Challenge B.
(Grammar concerns itself with the form of sentences, and we put those sentences together in writing to create the form of paragraphs, which then form essays and stories.)
Beauty:
Vocabulary Dress-Ups Decorations
Order + Beauty = COSMOS!
Writing Quotes
“In art, the Trinity is expressed in the Creative Idea, the Creative Energy, and the Creative Power—the first imagining of the work, then the making incarnate of the work, and third the meaning of the work…” [Madeleine L’Engle in the Introduction to Dorothy Sayer’s The Mind of the Maker, which compares the making of art (particularly writing) to the Trinity in metaphorical terms. The Trinity being Book-as-Thought (Father), Book-as-Written (Incarnate Son), and Book-as-Read (Holy Spirit). Dorothy Sayers is the author of the essay ‘The Lost Tools of Learning.’]
“The pen indeed is mightier than the sword, for it is in written word that we do most powerfully preserve that which is noble and expose that which is evil. And so in great part, the very future of society rests with those who can write, and write well.” [Andrew Pudewa of IEW]
“The discovered matter has to be shaped, given form. Organization gives form to the argumentative matter, providing a beginning, a middle, and an end to the small universe of the essay. The ordered substance must them be communicated through the medium of style, the words and sentences that carry the reader through that small universe.” [Scott Crider, The Office of Assertion] [Invention, Arrangement (structure), Elocution (style). Form! Order and Beauty! Universe = Cosmos]
“The study of rhetoric educates one in a particular liberty, the “liberty to handle the world, to remake it, if only a little, and to hand it to others in a shape which may influence their actions.” Through this “office of assertion,” the writer is a leader of souls… Rhetoric is “the art of soul-leading by means of words.” …Rhetoric is “the care of words and things”; that care is associative, a practice one learns—and never stops learning—in the presence of others, the ones you lead and are led by. Such soul-leading is a liberal power, one which in its finest and fullest manifestation is a form of love: the finest rhetorician not only loves wisdom, but also loves others who do so. The finest rhetor, then is a friend… The purpose… is to teach… how to live within such a community with words so full of care that they release the light of brilliance.” [Scott Crider] [Rhetoric! Words! Community! Loving thy neighbor!]
“Variety pleases. And a pleased reader is more attentive to an argument than a bored one, more likely convinced that the time spent inside the cosmos of your essay will be worth the time… A writer who fulfills his or her obligation to please the reader with variety persuades the reader that the reading is time well spend making the sun run.” [Scott Crider] [Beauty! Loving thy neighbor!]
“Play with words. Juggle them. Write them down. Roll in them. Bake them into cookies. Quote them. Remember them. And such richness in the vocabulary of discourse does accumulate.” [Wilson, The Rhetoric Companion]
Why Liberal Arts?
“All liberal arts, in both the sciences and the humanities, are animated by the fundamental human desire to know, the fulfillment of which is a good, even if it provides no economic or political benefit whatsoever. An education for economic productivity and political utility alone is an education for slaves, but an education for finding, collecting, and communicating reality is an education for free people, people free to know what is so.” [Scott Crider] [The Trivium is for people who are free to know truth!]
We use LANGUAGE to think about and communicate IDEAS.
We use GRAMMAR to think about and communicate IDEAS about LANGUAGE.
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** Grammar prepares Challenge students for the study of Latin.
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Essentials English Grammar (Essentials of the English Language (EEL))
GRAMMAR FLOW CHART:
Letters and Sounds [The smallest building blocks of our English language are the 26 letters. Letters and combinations of letters represent sounds called phonograms. The EEL guide includes spelling rules and lists for at-home use, but they are not used in Essentials class.]
Words [We use letters to create words. Words are magic! We use vivid and precise words to think about and communicate ideas clearly. Essentials students are introduced to and encouraged to use new vivid and precise vocabulary during the writing (IEW) portion of class.]
We might have a million words in English, but we have only 8 Parts of Speech! (Noun, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb, Conjunction, Interjection, Preposition, Adjective). Dionysus Thrax, a Greek who lived in 100 BC, was the first to categorize words into parts of speech. This is not a modern idea, and it doesn’t apply only to English! Not only are there only 8 parts of speech, but there are only 2 main parts of speech (noun and verb) and the other parts modify and support them.
Phrases and Clauses [We put words together to create phrases and clauses.]
Independent and Dependent Clauses [Clauses contain both a subject and verb. We have two types of clauses. An independent clause contains a complete thought, and every sentence contains at least one independent clause.]
SENTENCES [Sentences are the FORM of grammar!]
Every sentence has five parts. (Subject, Verb/Predicate, Capital Letter, End Mark, Complete Sense/Thought)
All sentences have structure (4: simple, compound, complex or compound-complex), purpose (4: declarative, exclamatory, interrogative, or imperative), and pattern (there are 7 different patterns, but every pattern contains a subject and a verb).
This means that we have 112 different possible combinations!
Grammar Quotes
“Grammar is based on the link between something that exists and something that applies to something that exists. God "exists." He called Himself, "I Am." He made us, putting us in the garden to steward it. As stewards, we need to know what we are stewarding, so he made us able to know the world we live in. The world around us exists as things that act or are acted on and have properties or qualities. In other words, the world is full of subjects with predicates. To know the world around us we must think it. When we think something, we always think something about it. In other words, the mind thinks subjects and predicates. Predicate comes from the Latin and means "to say about." All thought and all existence revolve around the relation between subjects and predicates (substances and properties if you like).” [Andrew Kern]
“Why is grammar fun and valuable? Grammar reveals to us the beauty and power of our own minds. With only eight kinds of words and two sides (subject and predicate) of each idea, we can make the plays of Shakespeare, or the novels of Toni Morrison, or the poems of Elizabeth Bishop. No system, so gorgeously elegant, could be expected to make such a language. Through grammar we see the simple form of our binary minds; in all of our sentences, however elaborate, we are making a predicate about a subject, and this reveals the meaning of clarity. For each sentence or idea, I must know both of these two things: what you are talking about, and what you are saying about it. For each paragraph of sentences, I must know what the paragraph is about, and what you are saying about it. For each essay of paragraphs, I must know what the essay is about, and what you are saying about it. A sentence, with its two sides, is a model of the mind.” [Michael Clay Thompson of MCT Language Arts] [Form! Beauty!]
“We study grammar because a knowledge of sentence-structure is an aid in the interpretation of literature; because continual dealing with sentences influences the student to form better sentences in his own composition; and because grammar is the best subject in our course of study for the development of reasoning power.” [William Frank Webster, The Teaching of English Grammar, Houghton, 1905]
Why do we study English grammar?
1. Interpretation
2. Composition
3. Reasoning
4. God revealed himself in human language.
“….God humbled himself not only in the incarnation of the Son, but also in the inspiration of the Scriptures. He bound his divine Son to human nature, and he bound his divine meaning to human words. The manger and the cross were not sensational. Neither are grammar and syntax. But that is how God chose to reveal himself. A poor Jewish peasant and a prepositional phrase have this in common: they are both human and both ordinary. That the poor peasant was God and prepositional phrase is the Word of God does not change this fact. Therefore, if God humbled himself to take on human flesh and to speak human language, woe to us if we arrogantly presume to ignore the humanity of Christ and the grammar of Scripture.” [John Piper, Reading the Bible Supernaturally]
“Language is the house of being. In its home man dwells.” [Martin Heideggar]
“Where language is weak, theology is weakened.” [Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water]
“We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually.” [L’Engle]
“We cannot Name or be Named without language.” [L’Engle]
“When language is limited, I am thereby diminished.” [L’Engle]
“I now regularly meet students who have never heard the names of most English authors who lived before 1900. That includes Milton, Chaucer, Pope, Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, Tennyson, and Yeats. Poetry has been largely abandoned. Their knowledge of English grammar is spotty at best and often nonexistent. That is because grammar, as its own subject worthy of systematic study, has been abandoned. Those of my students who know some grammar took Latin in high school or were taught at home. The writing of most students is irreparable in the way that aphasia is. You cannot point to a sentence and say, simply, “Your verb here does not agree with your subject.” That is not only because they do not understand the terms of the comment. It is also because many of their sentences will have no clear subject or verb to begin with. The students make grammatical errors for which there are no names. Their experience of the written language has been formed by junk fiction in school, text messages, blog posts, blather on the airwaves, and the bureaucratic sludge that they are taught for “formal” writing, and that George Orwell identified and skewered seventy years ago. The best of them are bad writers of English; the others write no language known to man.” [Anthony Esolen (author of Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child), Exercises in Unreality: The Decline of Teaching Western Civilization]
“Numbers are a map of the beautiful order of the universe, the plan by which the divine Architect transformed undifferentiated Chaos into orderly Cosmos.”
From Merriam-Webster, the definition of MATHEMATICS: the science of numbers and their operations, interrelations, combinations, generalizations, and abstractions and of space configurations and their structure, measurement, transformations, and generalizations. [Whew!]
Another source defines math as the study of relationships using numbers.
The quadrivium consists of arithmetic (pure number), geometry (number in space), music (number in time), and astronomy (number in space and time) [Beauty for Truth’s Sake].
Our focus in Classical Conversations Essentials is arithmetic.
There are only are 3 (three!) basic things to learn in arithmetic. Everything else is just more complex combinations of these three categories:
Numbers (8), operations (6), and laws (4). That’s it!
This is our FORM!
Math in a nutshell: “There are digits, you do things with them, and they follow laws.” Leigh Bortins
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Math as Language
Number symbols are like nouns. They represent things. There are many ways to represent numbers.
39% 4.75 5/6 -92 IV llll
Operation symbols are like verbs. They represent actions.
+ - x ÷
Grouping symbols make associations like punctuation.
( ) [ ] { }
Relation symbols make comparisons.
= < >
Placeholder symbols work like pronouns. They take the place of numbers.
X y a b ? __
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My Personal Focus for the Year
** Learn and use math vocabulary in class so that students are better prepared for math conversations in Challenge. [Dividend, divisor, quotient, addend, sum, subtrahend, product, etc.]
Ask students to attend to details and name what they know in math equations.
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Math Quotes
“[The universe] cannot be read until we have learned the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language.” [Galileo Galilei]
“The world is God’s epistle written to mankind. It was written in mathematical letters.” [Plato]
“The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God.” [Euclid]
“Math teaches you to see what other people see. It teaches you to see what another author has written down. When we read, we don’t see the words ‘a’ or ‘the.’ Math makes you stop and say, I have to see the decimal, I have to see the exponent. Math is just good practice for being a human being who sees the world. Just think how an artist can see… shapes, colors. Our kids should see a math formula better, if someone would just show them. It is the same as artistic endeavors. If you can see the numbers, if you can see the operations, if you can see the laws, it will all change your ability to see complex ideas.” [Leigh Bortins]
“When I was a boy, we had to memorize the multiplication tables in the second grade, up to 12 x 12 = 144. Let’s set aside the fact that it takes a deal of intelligence and some ingenuity to accomplish that task. Forget that you would have to learn that anything multiplied by 5 ends in 5 or 0, alternately. Forget that if you were sharp you’d see that odd times odd is odd, and everything else is even. Forget the patterns showing up among the 2s, 4s, and 8s. Forget the nice progression in the 9s, with the tens digit gaining one and the ones digit dropping it: 09, 18, 27, and so forth. What that memorization did was to free you up to become comfortable with numbers themselves, and with the structure of arithmetic. Once you had done that, you could play with numbers creatively, long before you’d ever suspected the existence of algebra or calculus, with their toboggan curves and their infinite series and their radio waves, their transcendental numbers and the mysterious i, the square root of -1, whose existence we must leave to philosophers to determine.” [Anthony Esolen, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child]
“The study of mathematics should instill in students an ever-increasing sense of wonder and awe at the profound way in which the world displays order, pattern, and relation. Mathematics is studied not because it is first useful and then beautiful, but because it reveals the beautiful order inherent in the cosmos.” [from The Education Plan of St. Jerome Classical School, Hyattsville, MD, quoted by Thomas Teloar in The Purpose of Mathematics in a Classical Education @ The Imaginative Conservative]
I was asked to lead a local Classical Conversations Essentials Academic Orientation this past month. I have spent three years in Essentials class as a parent and another three years as a tutor (and parent), but this was my first opportunity to lead Tutor Orientation at a CC Practicum.
As I was preparing to lead the orientation and then spending time in discussion with the tutors and directors during the orientation, I was reminded (again) why I love Essentials.
It is the class in which students are beginning to play with Cosmos. They are learning FORM.
I’ve written about some of these ideas before, after speaking at the math practicum and then as I was preparing to tutor Essentials the first year, but I re-organized my notes to correspond with the three elements of an Essentials class: math, English grammar, and writing. I’ll be sharing these thoughts in a 4-part series, beginning with this introduction.
“Cosmos” is the thread that ran through the three days of training and connects all three class elements together.
Let’s begin here.
A cosmos is an orderly, harmonious system or “world.” The word derives from the Greek word “kosmos,” meaning “order” or “ornament.” Cosmos is diametrically opposed to the concept of chaos.
While we’re at it, let’s look up the definition of ornament: (Merriam-Webster) 2a. something that lends grace or beauty 3: one whose virtues or graces add luster to a place or society
(We’re really starting at the very beginning, here.)
Genesis 1:1-2 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
Formless. And what did God do? Created form: separated light and darkness, waters and sky, land and seas.
Empty. And once the form established, he filled the place with beauty: plants, stars, birds, sea creatures, animals, man.
Genesis 2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.
(Words matter!)
Array: verb (used with object): 1. to place in proper or desired order 2. to clothe with garments, especially of an ornamental kind; dress up; deck out.
And, as Leigh Bortins says, that’s how you teach everything to everybody. Figure out what the form is, and then you have all the content in the world to make it creative, beautiful.
Sentence forms Latin ending forms Math formulas The structure of story
You can put in whatever content you wish once you know the form. The content is what makes it unique and interesting.
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In Classical Conversations communities, Essentials students are learning the FORM of three arts.
Math: Learning the Form of Numbers, Operations, Laws
Grammar: Learning the Form of Sentences
Writing: Learning the Form of Paragraphs (Reports, Stories, Essays, and Critiques)
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Orient and Invite
As tutor trainers, tutors, parents, and fellow students, we have the opporunity to “orient and invite.”
Orient Our Tutors, Parents, and Students to Essentials and the Arts of Math, Grammar, and Writing
Review Past Concepts
Introduce New Grammar
Invite Our Tutors, Parents, and Students to the Conversation
Begin Dialectic Discussion in Class
Point to Available Resources
Continue Grammar and Dialectic Discussion at Home
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May I invite you along on my learning journey?
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“The reason you study math, science and art is so that your imagination will be filled with wonder and awe at the Creator of the most mind blowing project ever: the world. And whether you are learning to read music or playing an instrument, whether your hand is holding a pencil or gesturing in the theater, you are training yourself for the warfare of worship. You are teaching your body gratitude; you are teaching your soul thanksgiving. There is hardly an adequate evaluation of your progress, but the best grade you can receive is the outworking of a thankful heart. If you have truly learned Algebra, if you have mastered the story of Western Civilization, if you can tell me the names of the constellations that whirl about our heads, then you will do it with laughter in your voice, you will do it with joy in your heart and gratitude in your bones. Worship is the point of learning because worship is the point of life.” Toby Sumpter, in response to the questions ‘Why are you in school? Why are you reading this page? Why are you reading Mein Kampf?’ This is an excerpt from Veritas Press’s Omnibus III Textbook.
If I say a word, an image or idea from my mind magically appears in yours. For instance, I can say (or write) the word "house," and the image/idea of house appears in your mind. But the house in your mind may look very little like the house in mine. What if I add vivid modifiers to the word house? With each modifier, the image in your mind more closely resembles the one in mine. Brick. Two-story. Colonial.
Alternatively, I can replace the word house with a more precise noun, the definition of which includes the idea of house + modifiers. Chalet. Mansion. Cottage. Yurt. Nest. Now a single word from my mind builds a vivid, precise image in yours.
Do you know how many words we have in the English language? Depending on the qualifications of "word," we have between 200,000 and a million words in English.
We use language to think about and communicate ideas.
The more words I know, the better able I am to think and reason abstractly. The more words you and I share, the better able we are to communicate, vividly and precisely.
Yesterday, my young son was feeling emotional about something. I asked him if he was concerned. He said no, that wasn't accurate. Stressed? Distressed? Worried? Apprehensive? On edge? No, those weren't strong enough. Panicked was the word that best communicated his emotions.
Give yourself the gift of language. Give your children the gift of language. Give your community and culture the gift of members who can communicate with others in a vivid, precise way. With knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. And heaps of grace.
I plan to share more about Luke and his Challenge B year in an upcoming post, but these are a few photos from Luke’s mock trial experience with his Classical Conversations class. The class was divided into prosecution and defense teams. Luke was assigned the role of bailiff for the defense team and prosecuting attorney with the prosecution team.
Most of the kids were able to attend and observe a high school mock trial competition early in their preparations, and a local attorney met with the kids to share his experience, answer questions, and inspire them. The teams met together outside of class for two months leading up to the mock trial competition.
Luke said this experience was his favorite class and activity of the year and he would consider joining a mock trial group in high school. That’s high praise from him. He also said he’d be interested in a career as bailiff.
Mock trial is an invaluable experience for these kids, and I am so proud of them!
This morning I re-read an old article at First Things, A Curriculum of Life. The author asserts that a child’s curriculum should enlarge his current life, not be a self-serving means to an end (diploma, employment). He proposes structuring a curriculum using the “Three L’s”: Logic, Literature, and Love.
"But we must never allow a curriculum for school to replace a curriculum of life; schooling mustn’t take over the education of living. When it does it becomes deeply mis-educative and disenchanting. It robs our children of the present gift of life they have been given by God.
"If—heaven forbid—they die young, I hope they will have lived beautiful lives even in their youth, perhaps even more so than those who survive them."
This reminded me of beautiful discussion this month with my Scholé Sisters, led my my brilliant friend Mindy Pickens. We gathered, about twenty of us, to talk about why we take time to read, take time to contemplate, take time to gather and discuss, when we are busy homeschooling moms with endless to-do lists.
What is the use of spending a year on Hamlet or a year on Flannery O’Connor or a year on Tolkien or a year on Pride and Prejudice (our upcoming year)? What do we have to show for our time? Why should this pursuit take up space in our lives that could be used for something more productive or practical?
Let’s contemplate those questions.
In our modern American culture, we tend to divide pursuits or activities into two categories: productive/useful and pleasurable/wasteful. These two categories often carry a moral designation as well: productive, good; pleasurable, bad.
In some ancient cultures, however, different categories of thinking were used: self-focused/utilitarian and truth-focused/non-utilitarian (pursuits that were worthy in and of themselves and not as the means to an end). These weren't moral designations. Both of them were necessary for life.
The interesting thing about self-focused and truth-focused categories is that they are more fluid than our productive and wasteful categories and it often depends on a person's mindset while doing them. We talked about how monks turned the most routine labor into a means of worship.
We can clean our homes so that we can check that task off our list or we can clean our homes in service of the people we love who live there or visit there.
We can stand and eat a protein bar so that our bodies will function for all of our tasks that day, or we can use our meal time as a time to reflect or practice gratefulness. We can make an artful meal or a beautiful table. We can eat in community with others. We can use a meal to bless our families. There is nothing wrong with fueling our bodies quickly with a protein bar, but there are other ways to make meals and fuel our bodies that are less utilitarian.
One of my friends talked about how shifting her mindset to thinking of all the mundane tasks of motherhood (breaking up fights, cleaning up vomit, carpooling to activities) as truth-seeking and service was instrumental in saving her sanity as a mom to many little children. Those aren't big time-drains that take away from our ability to be productive. They have value beyond what they lead to or produce.
The word "school" itself comes from the word "scholé" which means leisure. In the past, leisure was synonymous with activities that were truth-focused and non-utilitarian. Leisure wasn't the absence of work. It wasn't vacation. It wasn't consumerism. It wasn't non-activity such as sitting in front of the television. It was work that was worthy for its own sake, not as a means to an end (a diploma, a good job, a position in society).
When we say we are pursuing truth, goodness, and beauty in education, we mean that we are learning because truth, goodness, and beauty are worthy pursuits in their own right. Cultivating virtue (self-discipline, commitment, perseverance, compassion, cooperation, patience...) is also a goal of education and an end in itself.
I like the three categories in the article: Logic, Literature, and Love. I can fit all of the Classical Conversations Challenge content into those three categories. I can fit all of it into truth-seeking and true leisure—living a beautiful life now and not as the means to an end.
The difficulty lies in thinking of the curriculum in that way, pursuing it in that way, and especially helping our 8th and 10th grade boys to see it that way, rather than as an obligation, a drudge, a check-list, and a stepping-stone to a diploma, which is a stepping-stone to a good job, which is a stepping-stone to vacations and possessions and savings, which is a stepping-stone to retirement.
I also struggle with habit-forming and teaching my boys and myself to love what we ought and not just what is pleasurable. Virtue formation is hard, and often requires doing something repeatedly until we grow to love it.
So I'm saying all this not to be preachy, but to remind myself (because I forget every minute of every day) what a beautiful education can be. It doesn't have to be CC—absolutely not—and it can (and should) be a tailored version of CC, if that’s the path you’re on, but I believe Challenge is full of logic, literature, and love (and leisure!) that can enlarge our students’ present lives. It happens to be a good fit for us at this time.
Figuring out what a beautiful life looks like for ourselves and our children and our families is always going to require constant prayer and consideration. Implementing it in reality is going to be even more difficult (especially with teen boys). There is no formula. It’s complex and messy and hard and beautiful. It also requires a magnitude of faith.
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How can we operate under a truth-seeking mindset rather than a self-focused mindset?
How can we pursue leisure and virtue and truth, goodness, and beauty rather than a utilitarian outcome?
Do our pursuits enlarge our humanity or diminish it?
What skills are we learning? My friend Mindy thinks in skills rather than subjects. Attending, listening, speaking, reading, writing, remembering, and reasoning.
How can we serve others in this pursuit?
Where is the truth, goodness, beauty, and order in what we are viewing and contemplating?
What virtues are we striving toward? Self-discipline, patience, compassion, wonder?
How can we turn this pursuit into truth-seeking or leisure?
How can we practice re-creating in this endeavor rather than consuming?
How can we delight, attend, worship, contemplate, or build relationships in this moment?
As my friend Sara Masarik said, “A monastery strives to serve with feet on earth and hearts and heads in heaven. And that, I think, is what our homes [our educations, our lives] can be as well.”
I’ve been working on mapping out Levi’s high school courses and schedule. (Though we are not bound by credit requirements for our homeschool transcripts, I’ve used these Oregon requirements as well as the requirements from our local public high school as general guides.) Levi has no specific post high school plans at this time. We will consider a gap year before any college plans.
[You’ll notice that his courses are reading-heavy. Levi is a strong reader and enjoys discussion and content-based learning, but his struggles in other areas balance out his hefty reading list. I promise.]
Levi is participating in the Classical Conversations Challenge program, in addition to a few other courses. I’ve tried to indicate what courses are CC specific, and I’ve put any additions I’ve made to the CC course specifics in parentheses.
Shakespeare/Drama [CC] 1/2 credit (Language Arts - Elective) Dramatic radio reading and discussion of play; Oral presentation on topic relating to Shakespeare Shakespeare presentation (memorization of three monologues--comedy, tragedy, history) (Attend plays [The Comedy of Errors, Hamlet])
Music Theory [CC] 1/2 credit (Fine Arts - Elective) Introduction to music theory, including reading and analyzing a musical score Math in Motion Score Analysis Project
Latin [CC] 1 credit (Language - Required) Includes basic parts of speech, verb tenses, translations, and Roman history Henle I National Latin Exam (Intro)
American Literature and Composition [CC] 1 credit (Honors Language Arts - Required) Read texts, discuss and analyze literature, writing assignments (persuasive and comparison essays) The Lost Tools of Writing [persuasive essays] CC Literature, Poetry, Speeches, Essays, Autobiographies, and Sermons [unabridged texts]:
The Sign of the Beaver (Elizabeth Speare)
The Call of the Wild (Jack London)
Johnny Tremain (Esther Forbes)
The Red Badge of Courage (Stephen Crane)
The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
Gold-Bug and Other Tales (Edgar Allan Poe)
Billy Budd, Sailor (Herman Melville)
Through Gates of Splendor (Elisabeth Elliot)
Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain)
Harvey (Mary Chase)
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (Barbara Robinson)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
Born Again (Charles Colson)
Up From Slavery (Booker T. Washington)
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Douglass)
The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway)
Self-Reliance (Ralph W. Emerson)
Walden: Or, Life in the Woods (Henry David Thoreau)
Starship Troopers (Robert Heinlein)
An Old-Fashioned Girl (Louisa May Alcott)
The Witch of Blackbird Pond (Elizabeth Speare)
Short Stories, Poetry, Sermons, Documents, and Speeches
Additional Novels:
Pudd’nhead Wilson (Mark Twain)
Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (Twain)
Good Books II: Tolkien [Roman Roads] 1/2 credit (Language Arts - Elective) Weekly online live class discussion Weekly online written discussion Memorization Essays
Algebra I [CC] 1 credit (Math - Required) [He participates in math discussions and presentations in his CC class but uses Khan Academy at home rather than the CC recommended Saxon.] Khan Academy Algebra I (Life of Fred)
American Government [CC] 1/2 credit (Social Studies - Required) Read, annotate, and summarize original government documents, essays, and speeches; discuss historical significance; oral presentations American Documents Memorization [U.S. Presidents, Preamble to the Constitution, Outline of Bill of Rights] Speech memorization/recitation [Individual Event] (“Spirit of Liberty” by Judge Learned Hand) Timeline notebook (Crash Course U.S. Government and Politics video series) (U.S. Citizenship Civics Exam)
Economics [CC] 1/2 credit (Social Studies - Required) Read texts, discuss current economic policy, oral presentations Cost of Living Project Stock Market Project
Policy Debate [CC] 1/2 credit (Language Arts - Elective) Study basic elements of policy debate; Conduct research for resolutions and participate in live debates An Introduction to Policy Debate by Christy L. Shipe Two formal debates [Death Penalty—affirmative team, Immigration Policy—negative team]
Physical Science [CC] 1 credit (Lab Science - Required) Read text, discussion, demonstration/experimentation labs, text assignments, unit tests, lab journal, formal lab reports Exploring Creation with Physical Science by Apologia (Life of Fred: Pre-Algebra with Physics) [research paper for health credit] Additional reading (not scheduled through CC)
4-day leadership camp at state capitol Homework: send letters to state senator and representative, memorize bible verses, vocabulary, write a one-page bill, state political fact sheet, read or listen to governor’s most recent State of the State Address and take notes, complete a bill analysis worksheet, constitutional analysis (Leadership TED Talks)
Swim Team [High School Team/YMCA] 1 credit (Physical Education - Required) (+hiking)
Volunteering at student camp(s) during CC Parent Practicum(s) and vacation bible school
Tentative Plan for the Remainder of High School:
10th Grade [CC Challenge II]
Henle Latin 2 [CC] 1 credit (Language - Required)
British Literature and Composition [CC] 1 credit (Honors Language Arts - Required) Socratic dialogue, persuasive essay writing CC Novels:
Beowulf
Selected Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Retold by J.L. Weston)
Paradise Lost (Milton)
The Pilgrim’s Progress (Bunyan)
Gulliver’s Travels (Swift)
Pride and Prejudice (Austen)
A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
Jane Eyre (Bronte)
Animal Farm (Orwell)
A Passage to India (Forster)
Something Beautiful for God (Muggeridge)
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll)
Robinson Crusoe (DeFoe)
Favorite Father Brown Stories (Chesterton)
Out of the Silent Planet (C.S. Lewis)
The Hobbit (Tolkien)
The Screwtape Letters (C.S. Lewis)
Short Stories
Additional British Literature:
Far From the Madding Crowd (Thomas Hardy)
Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)
Lorna Doone (Blackmore)
Ivanhoe (Sir Walter Scott)
North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell)
The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins)
Lord of the Flies (Golding)
Three Men in a Boat (Jerome)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Robert Lewis Stevenson)
And Then There Were None (Agatha Christie)
The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Windermere’s Fan, An Ideal Husband (Oscar Wilde)
As You Like It, Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Lear (Shakespeare)
All Creatures Great and Small (James Herriot)
The Time Machine (H.G. Wells)
The War of the Worlds (H.G. Wells)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Adams)
Watership Down (Richard Adams)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Arthur Clarke)
Kim and others (Rudyard Kipling)
The Once and Future King (T.H. White)
Pygmalion (George Bernard Shaw)
Jeeves (Wodehouse)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (Arthur Conan Doyle)
Short Stories and Poetry
European Literature:
Don Quixote (abridged) (Cervantes)
The Count of Monte Cristo (Hugo)
Les Miserables (Dumas)
The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Jules Verne)
Pinoccio (Collodi)
Swiss Family Robinson (Johann Wyss)
Russian novel selection
[I will be posting a final master list in chronological order with links at the beginning of the school year.]
Western Cultural History [CC] 1 credit (Social Studies - Required) Artists and Composers Philosophy Historical Timeline Debate Research, exposition, and logic Books:
Biology [CC] 1 credit (Lab Science - Required) Exploring Creation with Biology by Apologia [I’ll be adding to his reading list and possibly adjusting his work load with the text book.] [Additional reading:
American History [CC] 1 credit (Social Studies - Required)
Chemistry [CC] 1 credit (Lab Science - Required) Exploring Creation with Chemistry by Apologia [We may cut way back on what is required with Apologia Chemistry through CC and supplement with the following living books and additional documentaries.] [Additional Reading List:
He will have all his required credits so this will be a flexible year depending on his needs and desires. I’d love to have him go through Challenge 4, but he will likely choose something else. He may need to complete or retake a math or science class scheduled in previous years.
Latin Literature [CC] and/or Spanish 1 credit (Language)
The Aeneid by Virgil
Henle 4
Ancient Literature and Composition) [CC] 1 credit (Language Arts)
[Physics and Pre-Calculus are on the CC schedule, but he would likely opt out or complete/re-take a math or science course schedule in previous years.]
After such a great first week, I knew that we might have a few bumps during week two. I was correct, but it was still better than I expected. I had thought about all the reasons the first week was a success, and that helped me understand what we needed to continue in order to have a strong week two.
Last Week (Week 2):
It was a busy week, which made it more difficult to keep up with formal family dinners, exercising, and reading aloud, but I still managed to get up by 6:15 every morning, have a smidge of quiet time, start symposium by 8 sharp, and stick with our school schedule during the day.
Sunday: Church in the park, Leif baptized in the river, BBQ (no formal dinner)
Monday: Week 2 of Challenge, Foundations orientation, Formal family dinner (even though Mondays are usually casual night)
Tuesday: Dinner with friends
Wednesday: Russ in Portland for meeting, Formal dinner with the kids
Thursday: Cleaned house all day so I could host an IEW DVD viewing party for Essentials parents in the evening, Hair cut, Russ took kids to fun pool at the YMCA and then out to dinner
Friday: Errands, Ivy’s 50s Diner birthday party
Saturday: Early to Renaissance Faire with friends (until the HOT afternoon), then last outdoor movie night of the summer with friends (The Princess Bride)
[It was our 8th or 9th visit to the Shrewsbury Renaissance Faire. We started attending when Leif was only a year old, but we’ve missed one or two years.]
[I think I need a pillory at home. Leif had so much fun getting hit with “potatoes” (potato-shaped, water-soaked sponges) because it was a hot afternoon and he was the only one who stayed cool.]
This Week (Week 3):
Sunday: Church, Errands, CC prep (finishing up the last of Levi’s Ch 1 work, planning and prepping for tutoring Essentials)
(No formal dinner)
Monday: Week 3 of Challenge and week 1 of Foundations for Lola and Leif and Essentials for Leif and me (tutoring)
(No formal dinner (because I was in bed between CC and book club, ha!))
Challenge A book club in the evening with Luke and friends
Tuesday: Russ gone fishing with friends
UPCOMING:
Wednesday: Piano lessons for Leif and Luke; Levi at Char and McKinnon’s house for Latin
Thursday: Ortho appointment for Levi
Friday and Saturday: Nothing on the schedule (hallelujah)
Sunday: Work in nursery, Lola tumbling class, Errands, Prep for CC community day
I’ve been open and honest about my apprehensions about this coming year. Homeschooling, while beautiful and lovely in so many ways, has also been hard and we haven’t been doing as well as I have wanted, particularly the past two years. And we’ve done almost nothing for five months. FIVE MONTHS. We’ve stayed up late. We’ve slept in. We’ve adventured. We’ve relaxed. We’ve skipped all semblance of a home routine. I was sure re-entry was going to be painful.
This past week was a miracle. An honest to goodness miracle.
It was perhaps our most successful full week of homeschooling and home life that I can remember.
Usually when we have a good day or two of homeschooling, everything else falls apart. This week we managed to do most things well—or at least keep most things from going backwards. OR we usually have one good day and then two rough ones. This week we managed to have seven decent days!
Again, miracle.
Monday I was up by 6:15, we were out the door for Levi’s and Luke’s first days of Challenge, I co-led an Essentials Parent Orientation Meeting, and I managed to get some exercise before going to bed.
Tuesday-Friday, we managed to stick fairly closely to this schedule (minus swim practice and some of Leif’s independent work since he hasn’t yet started Foundations and Essentials).
We sat down to a formal family dinner 4 nights in a row (Monday night was casual pizza night).
I managed read-aloud and prayers before bed 3 nights in a row (Levi was gone last night, so we took a break.)
I read to Lola every day.
I blogged every day this week.
I exercised every day. I drank tea and took all my vitamins and supplements.
I had quiet time/Bible reading every day.
I kept up with laundry and dishes.
My house is NOT clean, but it’s cleaner than it usually is.
Lola played well independently. She even sat at the table for a long time and drew several pictures using the Usborne Step-by-Step Drawing Book. She painted. She played with Legos. Who is this child?!
I remembered to play classical music in the mornings between 7-8 am.
I got to bed before 11 pm every night (though Poldark was really messing with my earlier-to-bed intentions).
I was up by 6:15 every morning (the alarm goes off at 6, but I’m terrible at bouncing out of bed), and made my bed and showered and had quiet time first thing (before getting on my computer).
I still managed to hang out on Facebook and Instagram occasionally.
I read! After a couple months of slipping in my reading habits and inspiration, I read a little each day.
We had treats. Homemade Italian cream sodas. Luke made marzipan.
The kids swam in the fun pool at the YMCA two evenings.
Levi had a pool party with his classmates at his tutor’s home and an overnight gaming birthday party at a friend’s house.
We added to our symposium schedule in the mornings. We picked up a nature specimen on our short walk and the kids drew in their nature journals while I read a short portion of a Shakespeare retelling.
We’ve had a lazy Saturday. We went to the local farmer’s market as a family and ate goodies and purchased bread and veggies for dinner. We did our weekly Costco shopping.
Who is this family?!
Luke is THRIVING. The kid loves his computer time and struggles with non-concrete learning and any writing/pencil work, but the kid LOVES routine. I scaled his Challenge A work back a bit so that he would feel successful and confident. He had time to read at least 4 other books and play on his computer this week. He had all Friday afternoon off.
Levi had a great week. He still has some work to do this afternoon and tomorrow, but he worked independently and with a great attitude all week. (Who is this child?!)
I know this was a light week, and we’ll have more to juggle as the month goes on. The Challenge work will increase. Foundations (Leif and Lola) and Essentials (Leif and I am tutoring) begin on the 12th. Piano lessons for Luke and Leif begin on the 14th. Tumbling class for Lola begins on the 18th. Swimming for Russ, (Levi, when his foot is healed), Luke, and Leif begins on the 19th. Music class for Lola begins on the 19th.
We have evening meetings for the Essentials IEW DVD viewing, Challenge A book club, and Scholé Sisters [finishing the last Flannery O’Connor meeting and then beginning Tolkien]. We have birthday parties and the Renaissance Faire, and dinner with friends, and Choc Lit Guild book club.
We have a new family membership at the beautiful new YMCA facility since Russ is coaching swimming there now. I’m not sure what opportunities we’ll avail ourselves of there.
Levi is planning to swim with the local high school this winter.
But we’ll adjust week by week.
For now, I’m THRILLED with our successful start.
Here’s to a new week. Let’s see if we can keep our momentum.
[I’ll be posting soon with details about our scholé week and how we are implementing the CC Challenge A and 1 work.]
Today, I am practicing Lectio Devina. I am taking what I’m reading and hearing, what I’m contemplating and synthesizing, and sharing it with you.
This series has three parts, because all good thoughts have three parts, right?
We’ll begin with a look at Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. (See? Three!)
For those of you familiar with the Myers Briggs personality types, I am an ISFJ. This means that I’m concrete and sequential, but I’m very emotional about it. [grin]
This also means that I have to digest philosophical ideas in a concrete, practical way. Maybe this is the “caricature” learning, as Andrew Kern calls it. First, the broad and basic outlines, a child’s drawing. Later, the nuances. I’m still in the stick-figure stage.
I am sharing here in humility. Much of what I share with you is what I have organized from excellent thinkers, writers, and speakers. (“I’m a synthesizer, not a generator,” as one of my friends said recently.) Or we can call it curating: select, organize, and present (hey, that’s the three stages of Lectio Devina!). Consider this a peek into my commonplace journal. Or, to state it more correctly, this is my commonplace journal.
The above quote is beautiful, isn’t it? We can let the words wash over us, but I don’t think we can begin to apply them unless we truly contemplate the meaning of the words. When I begin to contemplate, I almost always start with definition.
We will start our series with Truth, Goodness, and Beauty (vision), then move on to Cosmos (form), and then finish with Liturgy (routine and content). This won’t be anything close to an exhaustive contemplation, but merely a jumping off place.
These are our WHY, our principles. Our vision for education.
If you are like me, you’ve heard the words truth, goodness, and beauty often, particularly in the context of defining Classical Education. But what exactly do they mean? What are they? Where did they come from? How do we know them? Why are they important? How do we pursue them?
What are they?
Truth, Goodness, and Beauty transcend our reality, which is why they are known as the transcendentals.
They point to or reflect something beyond our physical reality (God). They don’t explain themselves. They require a first cause, a reason outside of themselves for their existence.
If there is no first cause, then the universe is like a great chain with many links; each link is held up by the link above it, but the whole chain is held up by nothing.
The most famous of all arguments for the existence of God are the "five ways" of Saint Thomas Aquinas. One of the five ways, the fifth, is the argument from design, which we looked at in the last essay. The other four are versions of the first-cause argument, which we explore here.
The argument is basically very simple, natural, intuitive, and commonsensical. We have to become complex and clever in order to doubt or dispute it. It is based on an instinct of mind that we all share: the instinct that says everything needs an explanation. Nothing just is without a reason why it is. Everything that is has some adequate or sufficient reason why it is.
C. S. Lewis put it, "I felt in my bones that this universe does not explain itself."
Greg Wolfe gives us some helpful particulars about truth, goodness, and beauty:
They have qualities of being:
· Truth being knowable.
· Goodness being lovable.
· Beauty being admirable and desirable.
They are equal. A trinity.
· Truth without beauty is propaganda. It is moralism (rather than mystery). It is fleshless abstraction. Only beauty can incarnate truth.
· Goodness without beauty is moralism (a “better than thou” mindset).
· Beauty without truth is a lie and a mask, empty and hollow.
· Beauty without goodness is frigid, lifeless virtuosity. It is form without meaning.
David Hicks connects the transcendentals with the person of Christ:
Christ is the incarnation of the transcendentals, the transcendentals embodied in a person. They are not ideas, laws, or art.
· Christ expresses truth not in precepts but in parables.
· He expresses goodness not in laws but in love.
· He expresses beauty not in majesty but in humility, holiness, obedience.
David Hicks goes on to say that our modern culture has tried to convince us that truth is relative, goodness is situational, and beauty is subjective.
[Awakening Wonder] “We cannot teach our students that Truth is relative and expect our politicians to be honest; we can’t claim that the Good has been replaced by situational ethics and expect our bankers to ground their business decisions in anything other than profit, greed, and expediency; and we cannot relegate Beauty to personal preference and then feign shock when we encounter a urinal as part of an art exhibit.”
Where did they come from?
[Awakening Wonder by Turley, roughly quoted/paraphrased] “The concept of the transcendentals first emerged in the early Greek world, around the 5th century BC, but we don’t find the concepts of truth, goodness, and beauty converged until the writings of Plato around 400 BC in what has been termed the ‘Socratic trinity’ or ‘Platonic triad.’ The first clear presentation of truth, goodness, and beauty comes from a 15th century commentary on Plato’s writings by an Italian scholar. For Plato, they were divine concepts, and he believed that the individual human can mirror, reflect, or image the virtues of the transcendentals and thereby participate in divine life. It is philosophia, the love of wisdom, that seeks to recover human perception of truth, goodness, and beauty so as to restore the human soul to its participation in divine life.”
“The Christian tradition (notably expressed by Augustine and Aquinas) asserts that truth, goodness, and beauty are divine attributes by which the whole of creation is endowed with meaning and purpose, and focused particularly in microcosmic form in the distinctly human manifestation of the image of God… and that all that is true, beautiful, and good finds its fulfillment in Jesus Christ.”
Why are they important?
[Awakening Wonder] “By encountering Truth, the human intellect is awakened to the infinite wisdom of God revealed in Christ; by encountering Goodness, the human volition is directed to act in accordance with the divine purposefulness of creation and our own created nature renewed in Christ; and by encountering Beauty, the human soul is awakened to the inexhaustible wellspring of diving love revealed in Christ. In short, the Christian vision of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty is an invitation, a divine call, to awaken the fullness of our humanity as the entire cosmos is incorporated into the transformative life, death, and resurrection of Christ.”
How do we know them?
Greg Wolfe says that we use human faculties to know them:
· The faculty by which we perceive or apprehend truth is reason.
· The faculty by which we perceive or apprehend goodness is faith or holiness.
· The faculty by which we perceive or apprehend beauty is imagination.
A faculty is an inherent mental or physical power.
Imagination is the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses. Essentially, it is the ability to “picture to oneself.”
How do we pursue them?
So anything that helps us develop our faculties of reason, faith, and/or imagination serves us in our pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty.
We actively praise (beauty), serve (goodness), and contemplate (truth).
And, in imitation of Christ, we seek parables (truth), love (goodness), humility/holiness/obedience (beauty).
"Everything they remembered had this in common: it was memorized in a community. What they had crammed for on their own was lost. What they had worked at together stood a far greater likelihood of clinging to the mind."
“The scholar derives his excitement and motivation at first from snapping discrete pieces together and, in time, from seeing the image of the whole puzzle begin to emerge. His excitement, as well as his chances for completing the puzzle, however, depend on his being given a sufficient number of pieces from the same puzzle”
[Scroll down if you want to skip this conversation and just see a few more pictures of our trip to Mount Angel Abbey, our local Benedictine Monastery. CC Friends, sing it with me: “Benedict and Monasticism…” Can you stop there?]
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Metaphor is POWERFUL. It ignites the imagination. It allows us to form images, to “picture to oneself.” It allows us to hold an image in our heads that is simple and concrete but so profound and nuanced that we can contemplate its meaning for a long period of time.
Metaphors are VIVID.
One of the ways in which we create metaphors is to ask comparison questions.
How is _______ like _________.
Comparison is one of the 5 Common Topics. You do not have to compare two seemingly similar things. Metaphor, particularly, is the comparison of two unlike things. A pen is like a pencil is not a metaphor. A pen is like a sword is a metaphor.
Recently Andrew Kern asked "If the model for a school isn't the home, what is it?" He's known for his ambiguous, open-ended questions, but I had been pondering this a bit after watching The Liturgical Classroom and Virtue Formation with Jenny Rallens, so I timidly answered "a monastery?" Dr. Christopher Perrin chimed in a bit later with "A garden, museum, table and church--which is to say a monastery." This is a much fuller and more beautiful (and certainly less timid) answer. (And he tagged me in his answer, so I know I've "arrived." [wink])
I've been avoiding organizing and planning for the coming school year (paralyzed, really), but those four words have been running though my mind and heart: a garden, museum, table, and church. What do these mean? How would you model a school after these four elements? How would they inform your day or the content of your lessons? Are they physical realities or metaphorical? Both? How?
As these questions were swirling in my brain, I asked them on my Facebook page. Many friends joined in the discussion, and I wanted to share a bit of it here so that I could return to it again and again. It’s a long discussion, and I’ve only shared a portion here, but I hope it speaks into your life as you learn and teach your children (whether you homeschool or not).
[After this Facebook conversation I attended a Lost Tools of Writing workshop with Matt Bianco. He began our day by asking each attendee to share a metaphor for education. There was no time for explanation or discussion, but just reading all the metaphors on the board (more than thirty) was a powerful beginning to our day. We were able to make our own images and thoughts from the words. Journey, garden, window, feast. Climbing a mountain.]
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One of the questions that came up in discussion is whether the home is a better model for a school and whether a monastery is modeled after a home.
I realized that the reason “a monastery” feeds my imagination in ways that “home” does not is that it is outside of my own reality.
For me, the idea of home is maybe too close to home—it’s more difficult for me to be metaphorical and imaginative about something that is so much a part of my every waking moment that I can't see it from the outside. Harder to make a model out of home when I'm not currently "doing home" in the way that I should.
I do struggle with my own disobedience and the messiness of ordinary life. I feel like I need an image in my head to inspire and encourage me despite my failings. When I picture a home, it's either my home with its failings or a home that is not my home. When I picture a garden, a table, a museum, a church in the context of a monastery, they are not my home but can be applied to my home. It is a vivid metaphor for me.
My friend questioned whether those things are metaphors or real things.
I think they are both metaphorical and physical realities. The metaphorical meaning of garden might be a right relationship with all of creation, but certainly we could also have a physical garden at our own home and that may be the best way to practice interacting with nature rightly.
Sara Masarik:
I think that the metaphors are correct because when the esoteric or imaginative value is applied properly, we get a physical result that resembles the original idea.
Say a garden, for example. When I am taking care of my garden, I am doing physical work with living organisms. I am stewarding all of the life that is in my care. That is a physical act of obedience for a spiritual or metaphysical principle. So part of why I garden, because I do, is because that physical work puts me in touch with the metaphysical truth, in both physical and spiritual ways.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that it is a spiral. By physically caring for the garden, I am honing the spiritual principle which then further enables me to be a better caretaker of the physical obligations.
What I am not communicating effectively is that I loved it when he mentioned monastery because I think that's what monasteries do. They seek to pair the physical realities with the metaphysical realities in a way that is deeply obedient.
Me:
I think you just hit the nail on the head, Sara Masarik. A monastery takes the physical model and realities of home and connects them to the metaphysical realities. In that way, I think a monastery is a perfect model for a school (particularly a classical school) with a student moving from the concrete to the abstract, his studies culminating in philosophy and theology.
Sara Masarik:
Yes! That! A monastery is a garden. And a home. And a school. And a hospital. But all for the soul as well as the body. A monastery strives to serve with feet on earth and hearts and heads in heaven. And that, I think, is what our homes can be as well.
Jennifer Bascom:
I've noticed in my faith that the monasteries seem to represent a place between Heaven and Earth. The monks and nuns are like intercessors, praying all the time. They do some light work to keep things going but their main focus is prayer. In a home we can imitate that ideal by praying the hours and everyone pitching in to make the work light on everyone, and we can follow the same calendar and fasting/feasting rhythm but there will be more of a focus on worldly things like working outside the home and activities that accompany family life. The home is a perfect place to imitate some of the aspects of a monastery for peaceful godly living and a perfect place for school and learning I think.
Stacy LaPointe:
I don't think of a monastery as involving light work. Maybe I'm wrong, but I see it as very much about the discipline of hard work in the important aspects of life—in personal habits and labor, in relationships and seeking godly ways to be with your fellow community members, and in spiritual study and prayer. That is exactly like a family, or it can be. I like the idea of imagining it in that setting too because it helps me to abstract it from my very messy home monastery.
Jessi Caca:
Our Home: A garden, museum, table and church. I feel comfortable leaving school out completely with those five words connected. Home, garden, museum, table, church. That's what we're doing. We're not homeschooling, we're lifeliving. And what is that? "A garden, museum, table and church."
I admit I'd not naturally have ever come to the idea of museum, had I thought about this for my whole life, but I do see it fits. Or I want it to fit. We are concerned with treasuring the best of civilization and curating the beautiful, true, and good. That's museuming.
Mindy Pickens:
Rudy and I are discussing this in the car on our way to star watching. He says he thinks garden, museum, table, and church make him think of categories of learning: learn with your hands, from labor and observation, nurturing and growth in a garden; Learn from the past, and particularly beautiful things from the past as in a museum; learn from each other, from community and relationship being nourished at a table; and learn from God, from sacred history and tradition and scripture as in a church.
Tracy Evans:
The garden...Creation that points to a creator. The table....fellowship, communion. A museum...history..standing on the shoulders of those who came before us, traditions. The Church..living the liturgy in our homes.
Danielle Cyrus:
[Regarding resistance] And then I think, creating the vision amongst my little people (or students in a school) maybe starts with these images? Invitation to the table; invitation into the garden to cultivate beauty and order; invitation into worship; invitation to look into the past?
Lynn Wilcox:
A monastery is PERFECT, just as a home from a previous era, as both were expected to be self-sufficient from income, to food, to education, to worship, etc.
Joellen Armstrong:
Surrounding the kids with beauty from nature, giving them guidance to the Father, giving them good things for life (table - food, stories, knowledge rooted in Truth, friendship), and being, & providing for them, spiritual mentorship...
Holly Karstens:
Cultivate, contemplate, nourish and glorify. Cultivate wisdom, contemplate beauty, nourish the soul and glorify God through it all.
Me:
Charlotte Mason says that there are three branches of knowledge: knowledge of man, creation, and God. Philosophy is split into three branches: moral, natural, and divine. Maybe a museum, a garden, a church correspond respectively. And a table represents community, communion, and celebration. All of these are practiced in obedience and worship.
Stacy LaPointe:
“In my literature classes we look at books through these philosophical lenses here--man versus self, man versus society, and man versus God.”
Rebecca McAllister:
“If school is a garden, a museum, a table and a church, then learning is to grow, to observe, to partake and to worship. How often do we neglect one or more of those components when attempting to teach?”
Rachel Goodman:
We often we find great truth in what *isn't* as well as what *is*. So...wee brainstorm...what does a monastery NOT have? I think the similarity is a good start to begin intentionally adding those things to our home and home education but I'm thoughtful about what intentionally needs to go.
In TLAT it says "The musical (coming from the same root word as "museum") education was an education in wonder. It formed the heart and the moral imagination of the youth... They taught passions more than skills and content. They sowed the seeds which would grow into a lifelong love of learning." "It is a total education including the heart—the memory and passions and imagination" and it is "an education in wonder through engagement with reality as a delightful living museum—engagement with...the songs, stories, and art of human culture."
The word museum comes from the "muses," right? And the muses deal with human endeavor/creativity. This video names 9 muses: history, poetry, epic poetry, astronomy, song, dance, tragedy, comedy, history, and hymns.
Imagine a table lacking no good thing: beautiful in its own right.
But man shall not live by bread alone. As indispensable as physical nourishment is, we need more. Our appetites yearn for more than meat and drink, for more than bread and cheese. Our natures yearn for knowledge and understanding, for something to learn and something to say.
“At the heart of any culture worthy of the name is not work but leisure, schole in Greek, a word that lies at the root of the English word ‘school.’ At its highest, leisure is contemplation. It is an activity that is its own justification, the pure expression of what it is to be human. It is what we do. The ‘purpose’ of the quadrivium was to prepare us to contemplate God in an ordered fashion, to take delight in the source of all truth, beauty, and goodness, while the purpose of the trivium was to prepare us for the quadrivium. The ‘purpose’ of the Liberal Arts is therefore to purify the soul, to discipline the attention so that it becomes capable of devotion to God; that is, prayer.”
"Liturgy therefore starts with remembrance. We do not make ourselves from nothing. To be here at all is a gift... The liturgy...is the ultimate school of thanks. In the circle of giving, receiving, and being given, the one divine essence is revealed as an eternal threefold liturgy of love, prayer, and praise. When we come to Mass--or to the nearest equivalent of that liturgy our faith permits--we should be able to experience a sense that here, at last, all the threads of our education are being brought together. If we don't, something is wrong with our education or our liturgy. Science and art, mathematics and ethics, history and psychology, the worlds of nature and the spirit, are all present in a liturgy that gives them a home and a meaning."
“Education begins in the Trinity. Praise (of beauty), service (of goodness), and contemplation (of truth) are essential to the full expression of our humanity. The cosmos is liturgical by its very nature.”
