This article is astounding!

Great article, thanks for sharing!  I love the final bit where she states: “We were not tricked into learning, nor enticed with colourful puppets or worksheets. Instead, we were treated as intelligent persons and, in being given well written and interesting books, were encouraged to love learning for its own sake, thus beginning the process of self-education.”  Very inspiring and true!

Rachel

This reminds me so much of the CM primary school I attended in England from age 5-11 – it was idyllic and I remember very happy days, especially the afternoons of nature walks and study.  I did not know it was CM until recently, when I went through my old school papers.  Sadly, the school is now closed and I feel childred are missing a great deal in the more modern school that took its place.  I saddens me that from very early ages children are now expected to go through testing and such – the gentle approach of CM is a far superior method.   Thanks so much for sharing that article, it brought back very joyous memories for me.  I wish I had been able to go onto a CM Upper School, but sadly in my town there was just a regular school, and it was a hugely different and far less memorable.

Here is a very short version of my younger years in school.  I too would like to hear about other people’s experiences with a CM school if there are any out there.  I often think how nice it would have been to continue my upper school years with CM, but alas, I was thrown into the harsh reality of tests and workbooks.  It is odd that I did not thrive in that environment, I passed my exams, but it was not until college, that I found my feet again so to speak – I had a college lecturer who taught history and geography and he  liked us to narrate to him and he would have us copy famous passages from original sources.  Our English teacher was the same way, and it was very comfortable to me.  I did far better in college than just barely scraping through upper school.  I am sure it was because the college was so much more like my early years learning. 

The things I am most grateful for in those early years, is that I was given the opportunity to think for myself, to read really good books, and to love history and nature.  Those things live in me today and in my daughters, and those years between 5 and 11 years old gave me blessings that I could not have imagined back then. The school had two main rooms, one for the littles 5-8 and the big room as we called it for the 9-11s.  Mornings were for bible, foreign language, reading, writing and narration.  We also had math lessons and our history and geography – the lessons ranged from 10-20 minutes depending on subject.  Our foreign language was initially learning songs in German, French and Italian.  We had lunch and then in the afternoons, we would spend at least an hour outside walking around our village and in the fields and hedgerows doing our nature study.  We had little handbooks so that we could recognise the various things we saw, and a little sketchbook and pencil ao that we could illustrate our findings.    We would also spend time on some afternoons learning simple sewing skills and listening to music and either paint or make something for art.  In the older rears, we did more elaborate sewing, studied artists and their paintings in more depth and the same with the composers and their music.   We were encouraged in sports and most of it was just being outside running, jumping climbing and playing various outdoor games. School started at 9am and I only had to walk about 100 yards from my house to the front gate, then it finished at 3:30 pm.  Our school lunch was at 12 noon for 30 minutes eating and 30 minutes playtime outside.  All the children in the room whether it was the big room or the small one had the same education – we worked on our own levels but the readings all came from the same books, and I actually think that was a huge advantage looking back.  We heard the older children narrate and had a good idea of what we were supposed to do, even though we seldom accomplished it, but I think it must have helped.  Our seating arrangement was such that the 5 year olds would have a couple of older children at their table, the tables were large and 4-6 children could sit around them.  For our reading and narrations we all sat on the floor cross legged!  I hope that gives an idea of my days in a little village school.  One other thing, there was one teacher for the small room, and the headmistress taught the children in the big room.  There were 12 or 13 children in each room.  Blessings  Linda