Lately I have been reading a book by the Christian Swiss psychologist, Paul Tournier. A couple of days ago I came across an interesting section on "the inner conflict of modern man." Here is an excerpt from the book:

"Jean Piaget has shown the considerable role that symbolism plays in the child... People in the infancy of their culture make use of symbols as much as or even more than children themselves. If we reflect upon this hunger for symbols in the child, this yearning for poetry, we understand why it is that the modern school, which is directed wholly toward the world of facts (even in literature, which has become nothing more than philology), corresponds rather poorly to the child's real needs; and also very poorly to the needs of the masses of people who, though they are filled with popularised knowledge, have a secret nostalgia for that which would set their souls to vibrating.

"True, there are still poets and artists, but, like the philosophers, they stand outside of society. Poetry is relegated to the role of a means of diversion. Children are no longer told the legends that are filled with eternal truths; they are given 'factual instruction' on how oil is extracted from the earth. Children are no longer required to learn poems by heart; they are taught the history of literature. And at night they read the poets, in secret. And yet man's need for the mysterious is so great that we now are seeing the trashy symbols replacing the ancient symbols. We no longer speak of the Christmas angels singing to the wondering shepherds; we talk about Christmas trees and Santa Claus. And this humanity which believes that it has outgrown the age of naive credulity swallows journals of astrology and acclaims the heroes of sport or the dictators."

In his classic work, Brave New World, Aldous Huxley said that the Brave New World had "gone a long way to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness." It is our responsibility as parents to give our children opportunities to embrace the beauty of truth, to wonder at the symbolism of a great poem or a lovely work of art, to acknowledge the creative splendour of a sunset or the song of a robin. (Charlotte Mason's educational principles gives all kinds of help in each of these areas.) In doing this, we awaken the spiritual dimension of their lives and allow them to understand the power, beauty, and value of ultimate truth.

Bruce Garrison

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Posted by educatingmummy

is something we are moving toward in our learning as a family, I am becoming more and more inspired by a Charlotte Mason approach. I think this is what was meant for The Garden.
Thankyou for an inspiring post!

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Posted by jayfromcleveland

Bruce, Old Chap! You keep coming up with great observations. Can't wait til you write your own book on homeschooling! You're spot on about symbols and poetry. Kids do grasp and retain information better in those forms. In the visual realm, iconography helps memory association, as the meter and rhyme of poety assist in verbal comprehension. After all, how would we learn our ABC's without the song? UK culture is full of such mneumonics (like Mother Goose) for remembering the days of week, months of the year, the English kings, etc.

In the youth of a culture, the bards would recall the oral tradition through poetry. Imagine -- the Greek bards could recite Homer and many others through the reinforcement of meter. Remember Socrates lamenting the invention of writing, understanding that the oral tradition would perish. Or how about the Nordic sagas that the Vikings would tell? Who reads them now that they are written down?

Kids always hate history (at least we sure did). But history isnt a collection of facts and dates. Its a story of men and women, and passions and emotions and such motives. I always taught my kids history in the form of a bedtime story, or a campfire tale as an ancient bard would tell it. World War II makes a great bedtime story -- a classic tale of good versus evil, with the villains vanquished, and the epilogue of the atom bomb serving as the prologue for the next tale. How about in Star Wars, how C3PO tells the movie trilogy as a saga to the primitive Ewoks in their jungle huts? Surely our modern culture is self-empovershed for forgetting our roots. It surely explains declinining academic performance.

By the by, Old Bean, is your clan still planning to grace our heathen shores this coming season? Sorry I havent followed up, I'm frantically busy finishing the book. (Have you ever looked over that draft?) Please advise if you'll be around, we'd love to meet you guys somewhere between here and Tennessee.

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