On Fairy Tales

I've been doing some research on fairy tales and came across this helpful site.  It has a page of great quotations.  Here are a couple:

"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales."

"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking."

~Albert Einstein~

"Think what you would have been now, if instead of being fed with tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history!"

Charles Lamb to Samuel Coleridge 

Sir Philip Sydney on the End of Education

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) wrote a spirited argument in favor of poesie (poetry, stories, fables, dialogues) as the greatest teacher of the virtues in his Defence of Poesie.  The work also has much to say about classical education and its proper end.  Here are a few quotes to whet you appetite for the rest of this great book:

On the goal of education:
"the finall end [of education] is, to lead and draw us to as high a perfection, as our degenerate soules made worse by their clay-lodgings, can be capable of."

"...with the end of well doing, and not of well knowing onely. Even as the saddler's next ende is to make a good saddle, but his further ende, to serve a nobler facultie, which is horsmanship, so the horseman's to souldiery: and the souldier not only to have the skill, but to performe the practise of a souldier. So that the ending end of all earthly learning, being verteous action."

"I affirm, that no learning is so good as that which teacheth and moveth to vertue, and that none can both teach and move thereto so much as Poetry, then is the conclusion manifest that incke and paper cannot be to a more profitable purpose employed."

On Aesop's Fables:
"Whereof Esops Tales give good proofe, whose prettie Allegories stealing under the formall Tales of beastes, makes many more beastly than beasts: begin to hear the sound of vertue from those dumbe speakers."

Contemplative Imagination

"Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, thousands can think for one who can see." - John Ruskin

Laura Fry Kready in her 1916 book,  A Study in Fairy Tales, describes "contemplative imagination" as the power with which "the child realizes the meaning of particular tales.  He learns: that Cinderella means that goodness brings its own reward; that Three Pigs means that the wise build with care and caution, with foresight; that Star Dollars means compassion for others and kindness to them; and that Red Riding Hood means obedience."  The rest of her discussion sounds a lot like poetic knowledge.  The entire book is available free here.

The Gardener

One of my criteria for determining the value of a children's book is whether the adults enjoy it as much as the children.  Tonight's read-aloud was especially beautiful and enjoyed by young and old alike.

The King's English

If you had any doubt, this video demonstrates the powerful influence of the KJV on the English language.

How the Irish Saved What?

I don't intend in any way to disparage Mr. Cahill's book, which I haven't read, or the work of great men like St. Patrick, but I have heard it told that without the Irish monks and monasteries, all classical knowledge would have been lost.  I'm trying to square this with the existence of Byzantium and the schools and monasteries of Constantinople which existed at least from 425A.D. until 1453A.D..  Byzantines then brought ancient manuscripts into Europe to help begin the Renaissance.  Maybe I'm missing something, but could it be that the Byzantines saved civilization?

University of Constantinople 425-1453A.D.

Overcoming Psychological Torture with Geometry?

I can’t recommend a book more highly than the Interviews, Homilies, and Talks of Father George Calciu.  Father Calciu was sent to a communist re-education prison in Romania in 1948 where he suffered unspeakable torture.  He survived and was released from prison in 1965.  Then in 1978 he courageously preached a series of sermons to the youth of Romania which he knew would lead to his arrest.  This time he was sentenced to ten years in prison – much of it in solitary confinement.  The whole detailed story is amazing; filled with courage and grace. 

What does this have to do with geometry?  Father Calciu was having difficulty remembering his prayers (after days of interrogations), and when he tried to write them in chalk in his cell, his guards would beat him.  Here is what he says during the difficult period of interrogation at the beginning of his second stint in prison:

“Then I started to do something else.  Pascal was a French philosopher and a mathematician.  In his childhood he loved mathematics very much, but his father wanted to make him a lawyer and confiscated all his books of mathematics.  At twelve years of age he remade in his mind the geometry of Euclid.  So I said, I am fifty years old; I can remake the geometry that I learned in high school.  I started with a point: what can I do from this point?  Two points, a line; three points a triangle.  Thus I started to remember geometry.  This put an order in my mind!  I was oblidged to think logically, to imagine, and this ordered my mind completely…  There was great purity in this; it was like a prayer.  This order – not with three but with two dimensions – made in my mind a spirituality.  Since there was no flesh in this, no third dimension, there was nothing outside of the spirit in my mind.  So I succeeded in remembering geometry in two dimensions.  The profit of this was very great for me, not because I remembered geometry – I have forgotten it now – but because it put my mind in order.  I was able to think logically, and was able to go out of the passions – the psychological passions. 

As a result, I started to remember all the prayers.  Before I was arrested I learned the Liturgy by heart… So I was able to recite the Liturgy in the cell.”  

For an introduction to Father Calciu's life go here.