S7 E8 | Knowledge of Man, History, and Citizenship | Virtual Book Club: A Philosophy of Education, Chapter 10 (Julie Ross with Shay Kemp)
Show Notes:
Julie and Shay Kemp discuss Chapter 10 of Volume 6 where Charlotte Mason gives us the "how" of teaching history and citizenship as well as reasons that these two subjects are vital parts of a child's education.
About Shay
Shay is a homeschooling mom of five who loves enjoying the learning journey with her children and encouraging others in their paths of faith, parenting and homeschooling. She believes the best conversations happen when you are comfortable on the front porch and loves to share her own journey from there!
About Julie
Julie H. Ross believes that every child needs a feast of living ideas to grow intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. As a former school teacher, curriculum coordinator, and assistant director of a homeschool academy, Julie has worked with hundreds of students and parents over the past 20 years. She has also been homeschooling her own five children for over a decade. Julie developed the Charlotte Mason curriculum, A Gentle Feast, to provide parents with the tools and resources needed to provide a rich and abundant educational feast full of books, beauty, and Biblical truth. Julie lives in South Carolina. When she’s not busy homeschooling, reading children’s books, hiking, or writing curriculum, you can find her taking a nap.
Resources
Narration: The Foundation of A Charlotte Mason Education
Shakespeare and Plutarch Don’t Have to Be Scary (with Rachel Lebowitz)
Connect
Shay Kemp | Facebook | YouTube
Julie Ross | Instagram
A Gentle Feast | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Website
Homeschooling.mom | Instagram | Website
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Show Transcript:
Julie Ross:
Welcome to The Charlotte Mason Show, a podcast dedicated to discussing Miss Mason's philosophy, principles, and methods. I'm your host, Julie Ross, and it is my hope that each episode will leave you inspired and offer practical wisdom on how to provide this rich living education in your modern homeschool. So pull up a chair. I'm glad you're here.
Here's a riddle for you, parents. Homeschoolers, love them, enemies of freedom hate them. What are they? It's the Tuttle Twins books. With millions of copies sold, the Tuttle Twins help you teach your kids about entrepreneurship, personal responsibility, the golden rule, and more. Get a discounted set of books with free workbooks today at tuttletwins.com/homeschool. That's T-U-T-T-L-E twins.com/homeschool. All right, now on to today's show. Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Charlotte Mason Show. I'm your host, Julie Ross, and I am so privileged today to be here again with my dear friend, Shay Kemp. Hello, Shay.
Shay Kemp:
Hello. How are you?
Julie Ross:
I'm hanging in there. I'm glad it feels like spring, that's for sure.
Shay Kemp:
Yes, it's lovely outdoors.
Julie Ross:
And we are continuing with our book club of volume six, and we are on the section titled Knowledge of Man, and there is a lot of subjects that are covered in this section, and so we're going to do what we can and we'll finish the other ones in another episode. But I think it's really interesting that we've been doing this for a year now, I think, and we are now just getting to how to actually teach X, Y, Z.
Shay Kemp:
Yes.
Julie Ross:
So, this much of the book, well more than half, has been on just laying this foundation. And so I think some people, they just want to jump in and just be like, tell me how I teach geography according to Charlotte Mason, and you haven't taken the time to lay this whole foundation. And then you know what happens if you build a house without a foundation, the wind comes, the rain comes that little pre-school song, right?
Shay Kemp:
Yes. That's right.
Julie Ross:
And the house falls down. So there is a reason why Charlotte Mason had all these things before that. So if you are just jumping into this episode and you have not gone and listened to some of the foundational episodes, I really encourage you to do that, to kind of wrap your brain around where she's going. And then when she actually gets to the how of her philosophy, it makes so much more sense.
Shay Kemp:
Yes, it does. And I think people get frustrated about that sometimes when they ask questions about the how, and I'm constantly directing them back to the why, to see what their understanding of that is. Because most of the time, if the how is, like you said, falling apart, it's because you need to go back and adjust your why, and then the other things really do tend to fall into place a little easier. So this is an important section, but no more important than all the deep thinking that we've done over the past year and deep discussions.
Julie Ross:
Yes, for sure.
Shay Kemp:
You got to have it both.
Julie Ross:
All right. So we're starting off with my favorite subject, history.
Shay Kemp:
Which she says is extremely important. Right?
Julie Ross:
Yeah. She doesn't say it in this volume, but in another one, that history is the spoke of which the wheel of the whole entire curriculum is turning around. And I love that. And it's not a unit study where everything's all cutesy and it all fits together around history. It's very different. You'll see this kind of thread of a certain time period and then everything kind of coming together around that, which I really love. Well, because it is my favorite subject. She starts off with really talking about the why do we need to teach history in this manner? And so volume six was written after World War I, so she's really focusing on the need for a rational patriotism.
Shay Kemp:
Yes.
Julie Ross:
Did you catch that?
Shay Kemp:
I did get that. And there are several places where she talks about how we lead to patriotism and what it actually means to be patriotic instead of just saying, oh, I love my country. It's a knowledge of the people and the things that led to where you are that's much deeper than just saying, well, I'm proud of this country because I live here.
Julie Ross:
Right. And I think her reasoning is just so spot on, even with what we see in today's world, that to be an informed citizen, you have to have an understanding of history, why people do what they do. The old saying, those that don't know history are doom to repeat it is very true. And it's not just though learning a bunch of information, because that doesn't actually give you the ability to think critically about historical events, people, and then analyze the current events of today and make those connections. You can only do that through a living book and the way that she teaches history.
Shay Kemp:
Yes. Because she talks about we quicken children with the knowledge that always and everywhere there have been great parts to play, and almost always great men to play those parts. And I love that passage, because I think that helps you when you're choosing what you're going to include in your history. Does it talk about a great part that was played or a great man that played that part? And those are the things we're telling them instead of just to [inaudible 00:05:28]. I did not get this kind of history education. I had mostly coaches for my history teachers.
Julie Ross:
Yes, right?
Shay Kemp:
And it was always these timelines. And like she says here, our knowledge of history should give us something more than impressions and opinions. And that's all I really got, was just sort of an idea of who this person was in the pageant of history and maybe an opinion on this war or something like that, and how in the timeline, well, this war was before this one. But that's really all that I got until I started homeschooling my own children. I didn't learn anything other than that.
Julie Ross:
Yeah. And she says, this is kind of standard that teachers are just covering a skeleton of history. And she says, teachers say, well, I just don't have enough time to do any more than that and I can.
Shay Kemp:
She said, yeah.
Julie Ross:
Yeah. I mean, I can relate to that, right? And being a former school teacher, yeah, we got to cover all this other stuff too. We don't have time. And I love that she explains that she's actually going to help you multiply time.
Shay Kemp:
Yes.
Julie Ross:
She says it helps you quadruple time.
Shay Kemp:
I love that line.
Julie Ross:
Don't we all want to multiply how much time we have and how much we're able to cover? And she says, this is how you do it. So this is going back to the why. So if you've understood everything I'm saying so far, when you go to teach history, your time is going to multiply, and you can teach it this way. If you just start trying to teach it this way without understanding all of this, it's not going to work. Like I said, the house is going to fall. So she says we're multiplying time because one, we're using living books. So if you're using a history textbook, this isn't going to work. We're not lecturing our kids, so we're not trying to digest it ourselves and figure out what's important, and then trying to spoon-feed our children this.
It includes narration, so the ability to be able to know and then to tell back. And then she says, we use a single reading. We don't allow them to keep going back and find answers and not really pay attention the first time. She says, if you do those four things, you'll be able to cover history in a much more detailed and in-depth manner than just a skeleton view. You're going to be able to multiply the time. And I've seen that, because when you look at some of the other approaches to teaching history, they added all this other stuff. There's all these workbook pages or we're going to build a salt map or we've spent two hours on history, but what do my children actually know?
Shay Kemp:
Yes. Yes. And that's why when people ask questions, well, where's the hands-on stuff in Charlotte Mason? That stuff does come in, and I find my kids have always made connections to history, but it's not in the lesson itself. That stuff is the add-on. After we have read the living book and we've given a good narration, are you interested in the houses that the Native Americans lived in? Okay, great. Go build one. But I'm not going to set up a particular activity for you that is going to be considered our history lesson. And that is a difference in the philosophy.
Julie Ross:
Right. And that does make it ability to cover a lot more history and a lot more in depth too.
Shay Kemp:
Yes.
Julie Ross:
So was there anything else you wanted to point out before we get into going through the different Forms?
Shay Kemp:
I do think this is just such a great explanation of narration that in these few pages that I think would be great for people to go back and read on their own, just some really important things. And also the difference between narration and telling and the act of memorizing, where she says the mind is not at work in the act of memorizing.
Julie Ross:
Oh, okay. So she kind of talks about what you're saying here in the Form 1 section.
Shay Kemp:
Yeah. Is that Form 1 section?
Julie Ross:
Yeah. So she starts off, and I know my pages are different than yours, but saying-
Shay Kemp:
Yeah, they're a little different, yeah.
Julie Ross:
Around age six, okay, we're starting our formal lessons here. And their history lessons should come from a well-written, well-considered large volume, which is also well illustrated. Children cannot force themselves to read a book, which is by no means written down to the child's level. So the teacher reads the passage and the children tell paragraph by paragraph, passage by passage. So she's starting off here, okay, very beginning of formal lessons here for history. Choose your books wisely. I love that she says well illustrated too, because I include in [inaudible 00:10:08] a lot of picture books in Form 1, and a lot of other places do not do that. And I love the art in some of these beautiful, amazing picture books. And I think you're missing a ton when you just jump into chapter books for history with children, honestly.
Shay Kemp:
Yes, I do too. I even use those illustrated books with my Form 2, and sometimes even my Form 4, because if they're well written, you can introduce a topic of history that that child does not need to take an entire, or maybe a person of history, you do not need to read an entire chapter book on that, unless they're interested. But we can talk about that person in a book full of ideas that's well written, a living book, that they might miss out on in a chapter book. So I still use those. I'll include them in morning time. I'll still include those picture books and I always learn something from them. So that's a great advertisement for look at that Form 1 list.
Julie Ross:
That's a good point.
Shay Kemp:
Even if you have older children, it's worth checking out some of those books on that Form 1 list to include morning time or afternoon reading or something like that.
Julie Ross:
Yes, for sure. That's a great point. And so at first, with your younger kids, you are reading it to them. Don't try to find little history readers. Those are fine for supplemental reading. That is not what you should be reading for your history. They are able to comprehend so much more here. And then like you're saying, she goes on to talk about narration. So to me, that makes so much sense, because your child is just starting out, right? And now is the time to really wrap your brain around what narration is, what are we doing to build this habit and build this narration muscle. So you want to talk a little bit about what are some of the things she touched on here on narration?
Shay Kemp:
I think one of the points is that you are not correcting faults in your child's narration. And we get a lot of questions about that. What do I do if they get things out of order? But I think in order to understand that, you do have to back it up and understand that narration is not just a retelling of the events that happened. So it's a retelling of the ideas that your child attached to made connections with, had questions about, that kind of thing. So if you think it's a retelling like, oh my gosh, they missed this step, or they got this backwards, you're going to be frustrated. So I'm glad that she, I think this line, of course, she always kind of throws in funny things, but she says the teacher's own really difficult part is to keep up sympathetic interest by look and occasional word, by remarks upon a passage that has been narrated by occasionally showing pictures and so on.
And I so relate, because sometimes you get a narration and you feel like you're going like this, your eyes are crossing. So she's saying, okay, you want to keep a sympathetic look. If they're getting everything wrong, you don't want to be like, what? That wasn't in the book at all. She knew what our natural inclination would be, right?
Julie Ross:
Yes.
Shay Kemp:
But the next one is what's important and why it goes back to the whole philosophy, that she will bear in mind that the child of six has begun the serious business of his education. That it does not matter much whether he understands this word or that, but that it matters a great deal that he should learn to deal directly with books. And so that's almost like a quote, you need. When your child is there, is he learning to deal directly with books? Yes or no? And then you can let those other things, they will work themselves out as you go. And that's really a powerful passage right there about narration, I think.
Julie Ross:
Yeah, I think everybody needs to read this multiple times, especially if you feel like you're frustrated with the quality of your child's narrations or you're just starting out. Because she even says, the first efforts may be stumbling, but presently, the children get into this stride and [inaudible 00:14:16] at length with surprising fluency. So again, you're building this muscle here, and I use the analogy of making a trail in the woods. At first, it's really, really difficult. But as you've gotten rid of all the branches in the bushes, it becomes easier and easier to clear that trail off. Same thing with the neural pathways that your child's developing around narration. So it is building this mental muscle. It is not going to be easy. She's saying it will be stumbling at first. So if it feels like you're stumbling or your kid's stumbling, you're doing it right. Okay?
Shay Kemp:
Yes. Right.
Julie Ross:
So take a breath, and you're starting small, passage by passage. And so many people are like, what? I read them the whole whole chapter and they couldn't remember it.
Shay Kemp:
Right.
Julie Ross:
Yeah. Okay. You have to start small here, especially depending on what you're reading and the difficulty of it. Aesop's Fables are great. Those are my first place to start with narration with young ones, because they're so short.
Shay Kemp:
Yes. And I think too, it's given people the permission to say, sometimes a paragraph is enough.
Julie Ross:
Right.
Shay Kemp:
Sometimes two paragraphs is enough. Sometimes two pages is enough. And your quality is going to go up. Your quality is of narration is going to increase if your child is struggling. I mean, I have some kids that could have read a chapter and narrated it, and I have some children that struggled with that. So it's okay to bring it down in the amount.
Julie Ross:
Yeah, for sure. We'll link to that. I did a whole episode on narration, and we could link to that in the show notes as well if you want to go more in depth into this. But you can't teach history the way Charlotte Mason said to do without understanding this concept of information. And like you're saying, we get so many emails from parents who are like, yeah, my six-year-old, I don't think this is really working, because I read them this passage from history and they narrated and they didn't tell me anybody's names or understand the name of the battle that was happening, so I don't really think they're understanding it. And I'm like, because they're little, they're not going to pick up on those things.
Shay Kemp:
Right. Right.
Julie Ross:
There's going to be one idea, like you're saying, that's going to stand out to them and that's what they're going to focus on. Those other things are going to come. They don't need to name all the major generals that were in the battle that you just read to them at age seven. That's going to come. You're building this mental habit of narration. That should be the focus and teaching them how to come to the book and grab the ideas for themselves. Those names and things, they're going to come eventually, so don't stress about that.
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And then can you talk a little bit here where she's touching on this differences in our kind of memory?
Shay Kemp:
Yeah, so she talks about memorization, and we do get a lot of questions about this, about the difference between Charlotte Mason and some forms of classical education that are more focused on memory. And I think we do include memorization. It's important, of course, but she makes the point that the mind is not at work in the act of memorizing. It uses a different set of neuro pathways that are important, yes, but the mind itself, which is what she calls these connections in other places that we make between people and things and groups and events, that is not something that is being used in memorization. And I don't know, we had to learn Bloom's taxonomy when we were learning to teach, but the memorization is a much lower-level thinking skill, right?
Julie Ross:
Right. Oh, yeah.
Shay Kemp:
I can memorize something and not understand a word in what it says, and it might still be valuable, but it doesn't connect ideas. And so it's really important to make that difference. Your kid could do all the battles in the Civil War and have them memorized, but do they understand the ideas behind why this was being fought or can they talk about a person there?
Julie Ross:
Yes. Right. That's a really [inaudible 00:19:53], yeah.
Shay Kemp:
Big difference.
Julie Ross:
Yeah. Right. And she gives us an example in one of her other volumes where a child that's full of facts appears like they have a lot of knowledge because, she says, it's like stuffing a scarecrow. So you're stuffing your child with all this sawdust and so it looks like they're very educated, but they're not. They're not able to think [inaudible 00:20:12], they're not able to connect ideas. And like you're saying, that's much higher level thinking. That's way more important. So don't bemoan the fact that your child may not be able to recite all these historical facts. That will come later. They're getting the ideas in this mental muscle built, which is really important. And that this memory, it's theirs when they're able to visualize it. She says they're able to turn the sentences in the frames and they're able to form their own opinions. They're chewing on it. They're doing this work of their self-education here. She says it's more important than yesterday's dinner.
Shay Kemp:
I know, I love that.
Julie Ross:
Because several months later, they're still able to narrate and talk about it.
Shay Kemp:
Yes. It's the long-term connection that you can make, other than just something that, okay, well I learned it to say that I learned it. And I get it. Sometimes when you homeschool, you may have family members or people who say, oh, well do you know all the presidents? Wonderful. Do you know all 50 states in capitals? And we get those questions, but this is much deeper than that, and it has longer lasting connection in the brain.
Julie Ross:
Right. And then she goes on to say, in Form 1, that they should have some kind of historical spine. She used our island story and biographies, learning about, like you're saying these people, and picture books are great for that, because you can cover lots of different people, but it's still very well written. And that they're starting with the history of their own country. This is so important, because a lot of people are like, I thought it was supposed to be chronological? Why aren't we starting at the beginning of time? It's like, no. We're starting with the history of your own country, and you'll see this throughout all the subjects that we're going to talk about here. And I love that this is her philosophy across the board. It's not just [inaudible 00:22:03] we teach this way, but we do something completely different for science. That everything is starting with what you can observe and know right around you.
Shay Kemp:
Connected.
Julie Ross:
And then as the child's mental capacity expands as they grow older, so does their understanding of the world around them. So children understand that I live in America and I see this flag and we sing this song and here's this place, and they understand that. They don't understand 5,000 years ago in Ancient Egypt, this was happening. They just can't understand that. So starting with the history of your own country is so important.
And then in Form 2, she says adding on the history of another country that's at the same time period. So she covered the history of France in A Gentle Feast. We do England, because England and the United States were so tied since England was controlling the colonies, especially at first, but then throughout history, we partnered with them for so many things. And then I do kind of expand that to somewhat world history as well. And that has been one of my favorite things about doing this approach, because I learned so much about what was happening here in America. Some of it I already knew from my own history in high school, but I had no idea what was happening in the rest of the world at that same time.
Shay Kemp:
Me either.
Julie Ross:
I was like, wait, Mozart and George Washington lived at the same time. Why didn't anybody ever tell me that?
Shay Kemp:
That's one of my favorite things is the beauty loops. And we're like, wait a minute, this person in history could have listened to this music, and the contemporaries of the people that you study are huge. And I'm still getting educated in that. We're in cycle three this year in the 1800s, and it blows my mind to think of, okay, well this person was living then and this was going on, industrial revolution, and I certainly did not understand those connections growing up. And you can see the lights go off in your kids' eyes as they get those things, that you definitely don't get when you're talking about, I mean, we do ancient, so I'm not saying that, but it's not the same connection of something we can go on a field trip to, right?
Julie Ross:
Right, right, right. Yeah. And she says it's important to start that in form two, because we don't want to only learn the history of our own country, because that can make you very arrogant, very insular thinking. And I think about in public school, where I think we had two years of world history and all the rest was American, growing up.
Shay Kemp:
That's right. And I didn't have world history until I was in high school.
Julie Ross:
Oh, really? Okay. We had one year in sixth grade.
Shay Kemp:
I don't think.
Julie Ross:
And we had one year in high school.
Shay Kemp:
If I had it, it was so impactful that I don't remember it.
Julie Ross:
I [inaudible 00:24:45] tests, right?
Shay Kemp:
Yeah. I made an A because I was determined not to make anything but As but yeah, I don't remember it, so.
Julie Ross:
So that's why it's important to add that on. And then, like you're saying, it's not until they're around fifth grade when they're abstract reasoning has developed around age 10 that she's bringing in ancient. And we get asked about this constantly, why? Why wait for the ancients? And when I wrap my brain around how Charlotte Mason approached history, I'm like, this makes so much sense. Because again, that abstract reasoning to be able to conceptualize something that's so long ago and so foreign from your life, but also just in terms of the Romans were just nasty. I mean, we're talking about pagan religions and people here, that do I really want my six-year-old reading about?
Shay Kemp:
It's so important. It's so important. And we're doing Romans this year, and I have a sixth grader. And I think it's so important for me to realize she was not ready. We can have conversations and discussions about things I would have had to skip over if she was in the second grade. Now we have some foundation. We can have a conversation about it. We're reading about these rulers that were just brutal to each other. I mean, we just go in and murder everybody and take their wives and all this stuff.
And I mean, no, I get it. It's not important to tell a second grader that, a first grader that. But as a fifth grader or sixth grader, they start to understand, wait a minute. So this pageant of history, like she talks about over and over again, it's a continual thread of humanity that started back in the Romans and oh, and then we see it in cycle three, too, we're talking about the Civil War. People are still being horrible. You know what I mean? I mean, it's just this line that you can start to connect, but it needs to be at an older age that they begin to connect those lines.
Julie Ross:
So history is still chronological, and I think that's really important. But you're jumping in with the history of your own country first and you're cycling through to modern times. So she says in here, when you get to 1920, what do you do? Oh, you start back over again. Okay. So when we get to today, we start back over again. And then whenever they came into the school, they would jump in with whatever time period everybody else was doing. So it's not like I'm starting at the beginning of American history with this child, but in two more years, I'm adding this child into school. Am I going to have to start all over? No. Okay?
Shay Kemp:
Yes.
Julie Ross:
And that's really important too, because I think some approaches, they're not family style. And so this kid's doing this time period and this kid's doing this time period. And to me, that was so overwhelming. And I'm like, wait a minute. Charlotte Mason doesn't even say that. The whole school, her schools will be doing the same time period together. It's meant to be that way. And it makes your life as a mom so much easier, so why not do it? But you get to see these beautiful connections.
I can bring in a picture book that I think is really beautiful and I'm reading it to my little ones, but I could ask my eighth grader to come listen to this, because it's super awesome. And we can go on these family field trips to all these places. I mean, it just makes life so much easier when you're all doing the same time period, in my opinion, too.
Shay Kemp:
It does.
Julie Ross:
So I think that's why she did that. Or I'll get questions like, are they going to be confused since they have two days of American history and one day of British history? And that's all the same time period. But then they're also doing ancient history. Are they going to be confused? And I'm like, well, that's one of the reasons why you wait, right? So the 10-year-old can grasp the connections.
Shay Kemp:
Right.
Julie Ross:
But when they're reading their Greek history book, they're not like, oh, where's George Washington? Shouldn't he be in this story?
Shay Kemp:
Yes, yes.
Julie Ross:
It's so removed from each other.
Shay Kemp:
Right. And I think those questions, really, just doubt the capability of a child's brain. Those kind of questions are not respecting the intelligence of a child. I mean, I get it if a second grader would get confused. But my sixth grader has no problem understanding the difference between the Romans building the aqueducts and the Civil War general that we're discussing. There's no problem there. So I need to respect her brain and respect her capability of self-education to be able to read both of those. That's my little [inaudible 00:28:53].
Julie Ross:
Yeah. And then the other tool that she mentions in this chapter is a book of centuries. So along with narrating history, they would have kept a book of centuries, and she says, in which children draw such illustrations as they come across of objects of domestic use of art, et cetera, connected with the century they're reading about. So once they are in Form 2, and they're doing these multiple, I call them streams of history here, with different days doing different things, this book of centuries does help. And it does help if you're putting a Roman event back at the beginning and you're flipping to 1800s, you realize they're not connected at all.
Shay Kemp:
Right, exactly.
Julie Ross:
And we get questions about these too, this is not to be something that's stressful. It's not a timeline. You could put events in there.
Shay Kemp:
Or a craft project. Or a craft project.
Julie Ross:
Yeah, it's not a crafty thing. They're drawing some pictures in it. It's what is important to them. Let them pick. What event from this week do you think was important that you want to put in your book of centuries for American history, for ancient history? Pick one thing. And if your book doesn't tell you when it happened, we have Google.
Shay Kemp:
Which I use all the time. And I think this is also an element of control that it's hard for parents to give up, because we want some kind of little product that looks really cute on the end. But this is a process activity. It's very much about the process, about the what did you take away, what did you notice, what do you remember? And one thing I noticed here that I've never noticed before when I've read this, is she talks about objects of domestic use of art, et cetera. We tend to put in our book of centuries, so this encouraged me in my own homeschool, we normally just put events or people. I mean, that's just normally what we sort of tend to. But I thought, now this is a great thing to consider that, especially, I mean, we're doing the Romans, so we're studying all these different things about their domestic use and all these things. I hadn't considered putting that in my book of centuries, so I'm going to encourage my kids in that, to do those things.
Julie Ross:
Yeah, to draw some pictures. And my girls love drawing pictures of the fashions from the different time periods, and that's really cool to see, okay, how do clothing change? How does clothing reflect history and cultural events and things like that?
Shay Kemp:
And there are some great living books out there about that, because I have a daughter who's very interested in fashion. So I'll go and pull in just some books, literally, I just looked for at the library. And it's letting her connect to that in a way that she, well now, but I didn't think about putting that a book of century. So that was a great idea for us. I'm going to start [inaudible 00:31:34].
Julie Ross:
Yeah. My son wants to do weapons every time. It's all weapons.
Shay Kemp:
Oh, yeah.
Julie Ross:
It's his book of weapons. You got the Roman chariot, you got the civil war cannon.
Shay Kemp:
There's a lot of stuff in there.
Julie Ross:
Yeah.
Shay Kemp:
Whatever you connect to.
Julie Ross:
Exactly. So that's good. And then in high school, she's saying we still have these different streams. She's adding in European history. She said the ancient history would be more like a survey through more of it at this age. She said it's really important to high school that history coordinates with literature. But again, it's still progressing here. So your ancient history is on a four-year rotation. Your American history is on a four-year rotation. Your world or British, they're all in this kind of four-year cycle as well. Did you have anything else you wanted to add about history before we move on?
Shay Kemp:
I don't think so. It's so much-
Julie Ross:
I really like so much this one quote. Oh, go ahead.
Shay Kemp:
No, go ahead. Yeah.
Julie Ross:
This is probably my favorite. She said, "It is a great thing to possess a pageant of history in the background of one thoughts." Is that what you were going to read?
Shay Kemp:
Yes. Yes.
Julie Ross:
You're nodding your head. "We may not be able to recall this or that circumstance, but the imagination is warm, and we know that there is a great deal to be said on both sides of every question and are saved from crudities in opinion and rashness in action. The present becomes enriched for us with the wealth of all that has gone before." And that's just a beautiful thing.
Shay Kemp:
It's so powerful.
Julie Ross:
We so worry about do they know this or that and this fact or this name or this thing, but she's saying that's not the focus. The focus is their imaginations are stimulated and they have this pageant and this view of history and people. And it's this imagination that she's even saying is going to make people magnanimous citizens, that's going to help society. Can we imagine what's possible? And she goes on to say, "It's never too late to mend, but we may not delay to offer such a liberal and generous diet of history to every child in the country as shall give. So here's we're our aim here. It'll give weight to his decisions, consideration to his actions, instability to his conduct. That stability, the lack of which has plunged us into many a stormy sea of unrest."
Shay Kemp:
That quote is one of my favorites in this entire chapter, because it goes back to the goal that we're trying to get to and how do we get to that goal? And this is where the why holds hands with how. We want our children to be able to be people who give weight to their decisions, who consider their actions, who are stable in their conduct. I mean, there's not a parent out there that's not going to say that they don't want that for their children. But how do we do that? We have to back up and have these conversations and consider the way that we are educating them and let go of that control of, okay, well, I know that they got it, because they answered 10 questions on this short answer, or they answered this true or false.
And we leave it to the divine teacher to put them in contact with these deep, rich ideas in history. And I've seen the fruit, now that I have older children who are graduated from college. And it's just such an encouragement, I think, to people who are starting and they have those questions. Does this is work? Is this going to be? Yes, it does. It does work. It does where you stay the course. And even in just that one subject.
Julie Ross:
Yes. And I think she did devote so much of this to history because it is so important and it is such a easy way to explain narration and these other really foundational tools for she [inaudible 00:35:28] for her philosophy overall. And it makes so much sense with history. She doesn't talk about it in this volume, but she does in others, about having them draw their narrations or having them act out their narrations for history. Let them play out their narration. It doesn't have to be all this formal, what did you get from this chapter?
Shay Kemp:
That's right. And I find that sometimes you think you don't have time for that, but there are days that if you really will let your children, when you were talking about the time factor she mentions in the beginning, how to do it more efficiently, you can do that stuff in your afternoon in your masterly inactivity. It doesn't have to be connected to the history lesson. You can say, okay, we've got an hour and show me something you learned from one of your lessons today. Act it out, get your legos out, get the puppets out, or something like that. Yeah, it makes it not so stiff. And if you're like, everything has to be a written oral narration or that, I think people tend to think that it needs to be. And we do a lot of the fun stuff in the afternoon.
Julie Ross:
Yeah, because we have time, right? Let's skip narration and go to citizenship. Is that okay? Because I think that ties a little bit better with history. We can put these two together.
Shay Kemp:
Sure.
Julie Ross:
And she even says that. Citizenship is connected to history. So you're learning about these historical people. You're not just reading a bunch of facts. You're reading biographies where you can actually see what were the choices this person made. And I love that she emphasizes in here that our children need to see all of life, obviously at age appropriate levels, but all of a person. We're not having this cleaned up little version, shiny picture of some historical figure and everyone in history was perfect.
Shay Kemp:
Right. And when she's discussing in citizenship, she connects Plutarch to the Bible. And I thought that was really powerful, because she says Plutarch is like the Bible in this. He does not label the actions of his people as good or bad, but leaves the conscious and judgment of his readers to make that classification. So it's so important for people, as you read that, for your kids to see, okay, well how did they come to that conclusion? Is this person a bad person or did they make a bad choice? Big difference. And then as you begin to connect that to other people that you read about, you start to see that commonality of humanity, which points us back to God every time. This is why we need God. There is no perfection, perfect person out there that got all their choices right, all the way through.
Julie Ross:
Yeah. She says, "Perhaps we are so made that the heroic which is all heroic, the good which is all virtuous, palls upon us, whereas we preach little sermons to ourselves on the text of failing and weaknesses of those great ones with whom we became acquainted in our reading. Children like ourselves must see life whole if they are to profit. At the same time they must be protected from grossness and rudeness by means of the literary medium through which they are taught." So she does use Plutarch for citizenship. And I have a whole episode where I interviewed Rachel Lebowitz from A Charlotte Mason Plenary on Plutarch, so we'll just link to that in the show notes if you're interested in that.
But that's not all she used for citizenship. So she does teach it through Plutarch, but she's saying we see this also in history, right? And so I think as parents sometimes we want to jump in whether we're reading a biography for history or we're reading Plutarch or tales of Troy and Greece she had in here. One of the books I include is lives of the mens who signed the Declaration of Independence and bringing history too, where we want to bring out all the morals lessons. And she'd say, nope. You need to let your children come to this and chew on this and make these kind of conclusions for themselves.
Shay Kemp:
Yes. And once again, that's where we have to let go of the control and let it be a self-education and let them pick up what they pick up. And we don't give that little moral talk. I mean, I have to close my lips, lock them down. Shay, don't say it. Don't say it, Shay. Don't say it. Let them. And let them pull it up for themselves.
Julie Ross:
Yeah. Another book that she uses for citizenships is Ourselves. So that's a book that she wrote. Not all of it applies today, some of the lessons and things, but so much of it does. And it is meatier. It is written by Charlotte Mason, so if you read her volumes, hopefully you're reading along with us, in Ourselves, but it's something that she believed children were able to handle and go through. And it's worth going through with your children if you want as well, even if they're in Form 3, reading it along with them, because there's so much. I learned about habits and myself by reading Ourselves.
Shay Kemp:
Yes. And when she talks-
Julie Ross:
Yeah, go ahead.
Shay Kemp:
She talks about how powerful it is, but that it's an ordered presentation of the possibilities and powers that lie in human nature. And I really found that when I read that book, the way that she lays it out, it is deep and it is rich, but the way that she lays it out and connects each of the parts of ourselves is something that is so original that I have never found in any other book.
Julie Ross:
Yeah. I love this example here where she says, "'Oh, dear,' said a little girl coming out of [inaudible 00:41:16]. 'I'm just like Julius Caesar, I don't care to do a thing at all if I'm not best at it.'" And it's those kind of connections that is what makes this style of education so beautiful. It's not like you were teaching them a lesson on how to deal with perfectionist tendencies and you found this Julius Caesar story, and so today, that's what you're going to focus on. It's like, no, you just read them the story of Julius Caesar and they picked out the good or bad, and that was something that they made a connection to. And then later on, at some random point, like getting out of the swimming pool, they're like, oh yeah, that reminds me of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That means that knowledge is theirs, and that connectivity, that higher level thinking is what you're aiming for as well.
So she says, "In unlikely ways, and from unlikely sources, do children gather the little code of principles which shall guide their lives." So that's part of the beauty of giving them this wide and varied feast. They're going to take it, what they need, and then they're going to be able to put some of these principles together based on what they see about people's decisions, what the consequences were, what kind of choices did they make. I think it's interesting that in here, she says citizenship is morals and economics, but didn't really touch on economics. Did you pick up on that?
Shay Kemp:
No, she did not mention that. So I would be interested to see in other places that she has written what her thoughts were on that. I don't know if there's other writings that she has that connect those two things. But yeah, I did notice that.
Julie Ross:
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I guess being a good citizen, you need to understand economic principles, but she doesn't really expand on it, really. She really just focused on the world part.
Shay Kemp:
No. She doesn't. Not here.
Julie Ross:
Yeah. And in other places too, I found she doesn't expand much on how to teach economics or what her view was or anything like that, which I think is interesting as well.
Shay Kemp:
Well, and the economics now are so different from what the economics are there, that really, it's based on the morals and principles of how you would handle money anyway.
Julie Ross:
True. That's a good point.
Shay Kemp:
I wonder if that would be her connection, that maybe it's the way that you would approach it, in a moral way, in a way of justice. So I'm not really sure.
Julie Ross:
Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. All right, well, we are going to stop there for today. So we covered history and citizenship, and next time we'll talk about literature composition. I think those kind of go together better anyway, in my opinion.
Shay Kemp:
Yeah. I think so too.
Julie Ross:
Yeah. Especially with composition, we get a ton, so that'll be great to have a whole episode to it of that. So, [inaudible 00:43:52].
Shay Kemp:
We get a lot of questions about that too, so that'll be great to have that together, yeah.
Julie Ross:
That's what I'm saying.
Shay Kemp:
Yes.
Julie Ross:
We have a lot to talk about next time. So thanks for joining us. I hope this was inspiring and helpful to kind of practically, how do I approach these subjects? How did she approach them in their curriculum? Why do we even include citizenship? What in the world is that and why do I even include that now, because that's not as subject we have anymore at all. And we had government and econ, but we didn't learn about these people and their choices and learn to form our own opinions or think for ourselves. We were just given a bunch of terms to memorize when I was in school.
Shay Kemp:
That's right. That was it.
Julie Ross:
Yeah. All right. Well, thanks, Shay. And we'll put the links to those other episodes, if you want to dive deeper, in the show notes as well. So thank you, everyone. We'll see you next time.
Shay Kemp:
Thanks.
Julie Ross:
Hey, thanks for listening to today's episode. If you'd like to know more about the Charlotte Mason style of education, check out agentlefeast.com and click on the learn more button for a free four-day introduction course. If you'd like the show notes for today's episode, you can find those at homeschooling.mom and click on The Charlotte Mason Show. If you haven't already, please subscribe to the podcast. And while you are there, could you leave us a quick review? This will help other homeschooling parents like you get connected to our community.
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