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Neo-Classical Education and CM Education
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Thanks for posting this. I’m not new to CM, but new to SCM. I recently went to a CC Practicum to learn more, and I couldn’t shake that something was off. I had read the Bluedorn’s Teaching the Trivium and what CC was preaching didn’t line up, except for in the later years. Still, it was beneficial to go, as I was able to set my goals for my children firmly in my mind.
Sonya – Thanks for sharing about this new book that is coming out! Can’t wait to read this. God has really been answering my prayers lately thorough this forum. What a joy homeschooling had become.
I just came across this article and was reminded of this thread….
http://www.circeinstitute.org/2012/01/towards-a-defense-of-charlotte-mason
Blessings,
Melissa
Here’s another wonderful article, Ideas as Soul Formation by Brandy Vencel – http://scholesisters.com/2014/classical-homeschooling-ideas/
So appreciate this thread, thanks Christie for posting the article! That quote about humans being data machines makes the difference so clear to me now.
I’m at a CC practicum right now and I just don’t think it’s accurate to say that CC just teaches facts that aren’t in their context. Some facts are like that (math, latin and English), but many are very much in context. Last year the kids learned things like lots of heavenly bodies. But it wasn’t *just* rote memorization. Their tutors read them books about them, they did science projects about them and presentations. Each child was even assigned a constellation and we built a solar system.
Of course, while sitting in practicum today, I also got them impression that my campus might not be the norm, but I just hate having misinformation out there.
CC does recommend living books for keeping the history facts in context, too.
So, while I know that memorizing facts like that isn’t exactly CM, it also isn’t accurate to say that none of the facts are connected to their context.
MissusLeata, I’ve seen the cc memory work and honestly it is a lot of facts. Even if it’s facts within context of living books, it’s still facts. Facts do not speak to the soul. Math facts I’ll give a pass as those are a necessity to life, but knowing Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 (an example from my childhood) does nothing for me. I can look up a fact if I need it. Contrast that with memorizing the dwarves’ song from The Hobbit by Tolkien. (http://heirsofdurin.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/lyrics-misty2-copy.jpg). That speaks to my soul and inspires in a way that facts never can. (If I were able to pull out a Columbus bio and share an idea passage at the moment, I would. Neo-classicism uses facts for pegs where CM uses ideas for pegs. I’m sorry, but the two just aren’t the same. Obviously you’re happy with your mixture, that’s great.
I think my biggest disagreements with classical as set up by CC or Susan Wise Bauer are the predigested facts chosen by some arbitrary person as the ‘important’ facts to know and the sheer volume of facts or information that they force feed the student in a year.
I know some people love it. It works for them and that’s great. It is one way to pursue educating a child. However it is not how we choose to educate our children because it essentially does what the public schools have done, decided what bits of information were important for a child to be considered ‘educated’ at a particular age/grade and enforced learning those items as the most important things in the year. One thing I love about the Charlotte Mason method is the inherent trust that the child is a whole person who can interact with ideas and form relationships with them, in essence allowing them to decide what information is important to their life. I may read aloud or offer a living book to my children but following Charlotte’s methods I do not predigest those books down and test or expect the student to memorize a list of facts and definitions that I, as the teacher, deem the most important. Instead I listen to my children’s narrations to hear what relationships they formed, what they deemed to be the important information.
An example. We read Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne aloud last month. If we had been classical educators in the CC or Bauer tradition I as the teacher would have selected the things I wanted the children to remember/learn and prepared lessons, tests, memory work, etc on those items. Perhaps on that list I put the workings of a geyser, the workings of a compass, the main points of the story, and some facts about the author and his time period. It’s one way to approach the material. However, as a Charlotte Mason educator (as imperfect at that as I am!) my role was completely different. I read aloud and listened to my children narrate their relationships with the characters and information. Several children were fascinated by geysers and went on to seek out more information, but it was their relationship. One child wanted to know more about Jules Verne (we had previously read Around the World in 80 Days) so they looked up information. My oldest compared the two Verne novels and the characters, especially that of Passpartout in Around the World in 80 Days and Axel in Journey to the Center of the Earth. But it was HER narrations that brought out this line of comparison as she formed a relationship with each character. There were many different relationships formed as we read, but none of the relationships were facts predetermined by me as important.
Again, I recognize that there are many ways (methods) to educate a child and many goals for that education. I am trying to do my best at following Charlotte’s methods, but I have quite a ways to go! For those who embrace the classical method that is promoted by CC and others I say, if it’s working for you then enjoy it. I do see significant differences between the two.
I love CM methods. But CC has saved our homeschooling by giving us community.
But that aside, I just don’t like to see things that aren’t true being said. I don’t push all the memory work at home. We do more with living books. I like to use 2 guidelines at home. One, remember that it’s the “gentle art of learning” and the other is to “give them something to love, something to do and something to think about.” So, though we aren’t as big on the rote memory as what CC encourages, i just wanted to point out that the CC memory work isn’t all out of it’s context. Memorizing the planets alone would be. But reading books about the planets, making constellations, doing presentations on the planets and memorizing them isn’t.
This year, they will learn body systems, but also create them in science projects. The “grammar” that they are learning is all about learning the scientific method and the facts. But the ideat that it’s “only” filling their bucket and not lighting a fire just isn’t true. At least not with my sons. The projects and the in context work they do at CC very much lights some fires.
MissusLeata, I think you must be referring to this bit of the linked Schole Sisters article. Correct?
“James Taylor goes so far as to consider the child fed on a continual diet of facts to be in danger:
Alone, though armed with Facts, such a student is likely to become arrogant.
(Poetic Knowledge, p. 105)
Why would he say such a thing? It goes back to the vital, life-giving nature of ideas, especially when compared to isolated facts as dry and deadening. It is ideas — as they are necessarily presented in the whole forms of things like story, myth, poems, or history tales — that form the soul. They do this first by raising the question of “ought.” No one is inspired to ask, “Ought Christopher Columbus to have sailed the ocean blue in 1492?” Facts in isolation don’t raise those sorts of questions. But many ought questions can be raised when reading a biography of Columbus.”
I can’t highlight on my phone, but this is the part of the article that mentioned facts in isolation. I hear what you’re saying. Your kids are getting living ideas around the facts. That is fantastic! I suppose like CM I question the need to memorize history sentences and science sentences and so-on. My husband has a nearly photographic memory he holds tons of facts in his head (which is why I never ever play trivial pursuit with him and why we say he has a head full of trivia facts, the man should go on jeapordy!) However, the facts in his head didn’t come from memorization of a list determined by others but by what he simply remembered. Those facts are interesting but more so are the ideas and their impact his reading has had on him. Is it the facts that your kids learn that are lighting the fires or is it the living ideas they are getting along with? I’m guessing it’s the living ideas. Once hooked by an idea and we begin self learning and doing the work for ourselves (the thinking work, I mean), then it isn’t unusual to commit details and facts to memory as it forms an important part of the whole picture. It sounds like you do a great job with living ideas and use the cc program for fellowship and some structure to your studies perhaps. That’s what my co-op moms do. However, as they are becoming more confident in Charlotte’s methods and trusting them, then they find that cc structure is no longer as good a fit.
And I completely understand the need for community, as I mentioned previously, which is why I lead a CM co-op. I have 3 co-op members who also do CC and one is even a CC director at the moment. I have a pretty good understanding of what CC offers and is from my research and these sweet ladies. Community is wonderful and cc is one excellent way to meet that need and sometimes that need may take precedence over other things.
Please know that I am not criticizing your choice with this thread. I just find the topic fascinating and the more I grow and learn, the more differences I see between CM and neo classicism.
Warmly,
Christie (please excuse typos as it’s late and I’m using my phone)
MissusLeata, again, if you have read these articles, the point isn’t really whether you read a living book or do a project when you memorize your list. That isn’t the basic point here. The underlying difference in the philosophical view of who a child IS, of how to educate, of what it means to learn and be educated, can be very, very different. Especially between neoclassicism based on the Dorothy Sayers speech. Is the point to learn lots of stuff? Or is it something else? Here lies the fundamental difference.
I’m another person who does a CC-type co-op (called CCM) while using the CM methods at home. I’ll be honest: my first year with the co-op I felt a lot of guilt for somehow not being a “purist,” like I must not value my children’s minds if we did this memory work. I think the generalizations and misconceptions about the program fuel that gult for a lot of CM moms.
Well, I can share with you that, like MissusLeata, I find the two styles complement each other very well. My kids don’t resent the memory work. In fact, they embrace it. My oldest, in particular, loves the challenge. I’ve found that the memory work sparks interest in various topics. There have been many times when my kids, because of something they learned at co-op, have come home and researched a topic. Just last week when I opened a short book about the Vikings, my 8YO said, “Oh, I know about the Vikings. They were sailors and warriors during the Medieval times” as he settled into the couch next to me. The book was of some interest to him because he had learned a litttle about the Vikings in the memory work at CCM.
Perhaps it is possible to learn lots of facts and still maintain a love of learning and a love of new ideas, Maybe, despite the reality that my kids learn dry facts, they will still read living books, understand relationships between the facts, and develop virtue. I suppose it remains to be seen, but my prayer is that I will prepare them well to love and serve others and love and serve the Lord. In the meantime, I set the philosophies aside and teach my own children in the way that works for us.
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