Killing Pride

St. John of the Ladder says: "He who in his heart is proud of his tears [of repentance] and secretly condemns those who do not weep is like a man who asks the king for a weapon against his enemy and then commits suicide with it". If your heart is softened, be it from repentance before God or be it from knowing the boundless love of God toward you, do not become proud toward those whose hearts are still hard and calloused. Remember how long it has been since you had a hard and calloused heart. There were seven brothers who were ailing in a hospital. One of them was restored to health and rose to his feet. He hurried to serve his other brothers with fraternal love and concern so that they too would recover. You be like that brother also. Consider that all men are your brothers, sick brothers. If you feel that God has given you health before them, know that it was given to you through mercy, so that even you as a healthy person may serve others who are sick. Of what do we have to be proud? As though good health comes from ourselves alone and not from God. As though a mud hole can cleanse itself and not from a source deeper and cleaner.

From the March 31 reflection in The Prologue of Ohrid (web version)

Thoughts on Teaching History - High School

Regine Pernoud, after laying the groundwork in her thoughts for teaching young children and middle school children, discusses her view of high school history:

"Finally, when the possibility of analysis and abstraction arrives, one could tackle visions of history that are at once more general and much more precise through subjects put back into their chronological and factual framework, by referring to the documents and texts of the period studied...  Textbooks can then be used with much profit, in the class library."

I love that last sentence.

Hurry, Cram and Long Hours

For all of the blessings of the Classical education movement, in my experience there is still too much emphasis on hurry and cram, and not enough on contemplation and rest (see the 2007 Circe Conference A Contemplation of Rest).  Apparently, this is not a new problem and was addressed in a fine article from the 1892/1893 Parent's Review.

The article has many good points, but my favorite is on how to write a cram-proof test:
"When an examiner is drawing up his questions, if he would ask himself: Are these tests of real knowledge? What effect will this paper have upon teaching? And if he would then erase all such questions as can be answered by "cram," that is by unreal knowledge, he alone could deliver us from over-pressure. How? Real knowledge is digested knowledge, digested knowledge means leisure."

And another great quote:
"The teacher would soon discover that hurry, cram and long hours, are fatal to the acquisition of real knowledge; that only a comparatively small amount can be digested and retained; that there is no rumination of any subject that is taught without interest and enthusiasm; that part of every lesson must be given to quiet observation and reflection, to the drawing of conclusions and comparisons, to careful accurate, well-weighed expression; that is to the exercise of all those faculties by means of which knowledge takes an abiding hold of the mind."

Poetic Knowledge Book Club

One of my favorite books on education will be the subject of an online book club.  Go here.

Shh - I'm Teaching

In a very odd little book by Josef Pieper, I came across this quote and have been puzzling over it ever since:

"Educated people and those who work at the education of others spend their lives without noise." - Goethe

The Risk of Education - Chapter I

Guissani writes that the young need to be immersed in a unified view of the world which he calls "tradition".  Without such a unified vision the young person will be "disconnected and worn down".  A neutral education leads to either "fanaticism, bigotry against a certain position, or an 'anything goes' indifference".  The single criterion, or tradition,  turns out to help even those who ultimately reject it because only when questioning from total security and from comparison with heartfelt truth will any conversion to another view happen.  A skeptic can't approach a problem in the same way as the person with such a unified vision.  The skeptic simply says "whatever" and remains indifferent to reality.

Real authority comes from a person who embodies the tradition or hypothesis of reality.  (This is a real challenge to parents and teachers.)

True conviction in the student arises from stimulating the adolescent to personally commit to verify the tradition (hypothesis) in his own life.  Without this personal verification true learning has not taken place.  This risk of personal verification of the tradition is the source of the adolescent coming to his age of true freedom.  Hence the "risk" of education.

More on Aesop

The Circe Institute drew attention to my post "Aesop's Fables at Table."  Here are a few more ideas to make this work with a range of age levels (we have ages 3, 6, 7, 10):

1. Parents and older children can serve as models for the younger children in both the narrations and the formulation of the moral or lesson of the fable.
2. Younger children can narrate with the older children providing the lesson or moral.
3. Take your time before looking at the editor's moral - its very tempting to want to look immediately - it might even be good to ruminate on the fable for a few hours or a day, though it is hard to wait
4. Discuss the fable before formulating the moral, asking basic questions about the characters or repetitive elements in the story
5. Discuss the differences in the morals formulated - could more than one be correct?
6. Have a competition for forming the best moral - it should be short, memorable, and demonstrate some art at language (this is for the advanced Aesop scholar)

Questions or further suggestions are welcome in the comments.

Thoughts on Teaching History - Middle School

In my last installment , Regine Pernoud, gave some suggestions on teaching history to young children.  Her overall goal was to get children to actually do the work of the historian in later years.  She says,

"Around nine to twleve years, any educator can greatly stimulate the social sense that is awakening and also show his students how to see what surrounds us by having recourse to local history.  The study of history could then be mixed with that of the environment.  This is, moreover, what the masters formed in active methods have long called "the study of the milieu".  In order for this to be done well, it demands a reference to history and also some explorations that could be extremely beneficial: visits to museums, of course, but also to archives, even if merely those of the town mayor, as well as the study of land registers, of the civil state, of the census ...  Finally the study of monuments of the past, of people and events that marked the locality, eventually of excavations that might exist nearby - all that should be subject matter of a history course and would obviously be more educational than having to learn a textbook summary."  from Those Terrible Middle Ages (pg 165)

Norms & Nobility Quotes

“Virtue is the life that knows and reveres, speculates and acts upon the Good, that loves and re-produces the Beautiful, and that pursues excellence and moderation in all things.” – David V. Hicks

“The end of education is not thinking, but acting.” – David V. Hicks

Thoughts on Teaching History - Young Children

Regine Pernoud closes her book on the middle ages with a chapter titled Simple Remarks on the Teaching of History.  Combined with my own teaching experience and now a familiarity with the approach of Charlotte Mason the suggestions seem better than ever.  Here is her advice for teaching young children:

"Why not teach history in small classes through the use of anecdotes, solely through anecdotes, destined to leave great names in the memory and unimaginable facts in the imagination, as only history can furnish, well beyond any fictitious legend.  And do so, of course, without any concern for chronology:  everyone knows that up until the age of nine or ten years, even later for many children, succession in time means nothing; it is thus completely useless up until that age to encumber the memory with dates, quite as useless as to persist, as was done for so long a time, in making it do "analysis" at a stage when intelligence is precisely incapable of analyzing.  On the other hand, there is not a child, no matter how young, who does not love stories, especially when they are "true".  Now at an age when what is recounted takes root for the whole of one's life, it would be of first importance to fill minds with a historical repertory whose human interest is inexhaustible."

What is the End of Education?

The Other Window – John Senior

Two letters in the morning post
dressed in blue and white.
Who can tell which smiles most
envelopes the day or night?

“Dear Alum: The College needs etc.”
and then the fiscal operative clause.
This Dean sees, looking out his front fenetre*,
“Fighters for the Christian cause!”

Brave young leaders of tomorrow
in business, medicine and law.”
Conquistadors of sorrow
building all that golden prophecies foresaw.

…just a note that said,
“So sad, I hesitate to bother,
but Margaret, my fiancée, is dead
and I shall not recover.

I don’t expect your consolation.
All I want is that you know how hard
it is to live without sensation,
crawling towards my broken God.”

What is the end of education?
What really is the seed we teachers sow?
A crop of leaders for the Church and Nation,
or the one outside the back window?

*French for “window”

What Students Like

The students, indeed, were happy; all students are when they are being given the facts, any facts, which they may later recite singly or in combinations on examinations.  Unfortunately, it is often that class which concentrates on data, regardless of how extensive it may be, which the student feels “he got most out of.” Bright students  are keenly aware that when a professor opens a lecture with a statement like, “Lear has often been accounted Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy, but without some knowledge of the Elizabethan Playhouse its triumph remains obscure,” they are being told the answer to an examination question which reads: “How is some knowledge of the Elizabethan Playhouse necessary to an understanding of Shakespeare’sLear?” Intelligent students suffer from this abuse more than others because they are not only responsive but singularly adept at memory games. They are, however, capable of a much more demanding and exciting kind of education.

The Darkling Plane of Poetry by Frank Nelick

The Risk of Education - Preliminary Comments

Giussani begins his work by describing the situation in Italy in the late 1950s; schools had catechism classes, tradition was generally kept alive in the family, and there was still a fair attendance at Sunday Mass.  Yet, he says there was no motivation for belief, faith was irrelevant to social behavior, there was a general skepticism that prevailed.  He then points out a few things that will be developed later in the book to help answer this disconnect; the need for risk or verification, the common path of the student and educator before the mystery of God, and the human's double structure of person and community.

Giussani's advice for the teacher and formula for everlasting youth: have "a life that as time goes by maintains its youthful attitude, remains open to learning, is filled with wonder and is moved by things."

Orthodox Christian Taxonomy of the Person

"In Orthodox theology we say that there are some men who have noetic [heart, conscience] energy developed to a high degree without having comparable brain power at their disposal; others have rational energy developed to a high degree, but their nous is darkened; others have a high degree of noetic energy and a high degree of rational energy, while there are others who have neither rational power nor an illuminated nous."
- from The Person in the Orthodox Tradition (page 306)

In light of the above taxonomy where do we commit the most time, energy, and resources - rational faculties or the heart?  What are the implications for schooling?

The Work of the Teacher According to St. Symeon

St. Symeon suggests to Stephen [of Nikomedia] that he give up being a busybody and lay aside the blasphemy of words [this was concerning the relationship between person and essence in the Trinity].  He urges him to tell what the Christians should do in order to gain their salvation or preferably to tell how he himself was saved, so as to teach the people not by words but by works.  He urges him to keep Christ's commandments because in that way, through action, he will attain the vision of God.  Otherwise it is as if he wanted to drink wine before the harvest.   He should teach about the judgement of God and the things which will happen at that day and hour. He should philosophize about death, which is useful for everybody.  He should speak about the creation, heaven, earth, the stars, the animals, and see the divine wisdom.  He should concentrate his nous within himself and see all the passions that are there, and take thought for his cure.

"And while you are explaining with everyone, you will have enough to say about such things till you die, and these things will be useful to you after death."

- from The Person in the Orthodox Tradition (pages 189-190)

The Risk of Education - Intro

When I last read The Risk of Education I thought it was an important, though little know work on Christian education worth carefully considering.  Now that I have had experience teaching high school at a Christian classical school and now that my own children are growing older (ages 4-10), I thought I would blog through each chapter of the book over the coming weeks.

Here is a bio of the author: Luigi Giussani

A 7 year old boy's favorites

I asked my 7 year old to give me a list of his favorites.  Hooray for this discerning reader:


1. Pilgrim's Progress
2. The Hobbit
3. The Little Duke
4. Ozma of Oz
5. The Wizard of Oz
6. TinTin (series)
7. Asterix and Obelix

A 10 year old boy's favorites

I asked my 10 year old to give me a list of his favorites.  Hooray for this discerning reader:

1. The Hobbit
2. Watership Down
3. Chronicles of Narnia
4. Swiss Family Robinson
5. Swallows and Amazons (series)
6. Redwall (series)
7. The Treasure Seekers
8. Harry Potter Series
9. 100 Cupboards
10. The Martian Tales Trilogy
11. The Space Trilogy
12. The Freddy the Pig Series

Aesop's Fables at Table

I learned in a couple of lectures at the Circe Institute that the "morals" of Aesop were added later by an editor.  So, as a family at dinner time we began to read Aesop's Fables with sticky notes covering up all the morals. Then we each took turns narrating the story back and coming up with our own moral. It was fun and we actually had to read carefully and think.  After we all had come up with our own moral, we would uncover the editor's moral and read it.  Many times we agreed with the editor's "moral", but there have been times when we thought he/she got it completely wrong.  Wow - real learning!

Update:  I have added some more here.

First Principles

In a fascinating podcast on home schooling, John Granger makes an important point about first principles in education. Namely, that education follows the questions of what is man and what is his purpose.  In that light I am reading the following:

- The Person in the Orthodox Tradition by Metropolitan Hierotheos
- Person and Eros by Yannaras
- The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis

Also, be sure to check out this year's Circe conference.