3.24.2006 - Ideas and Initiative- Chapter 5 Self-Education
"Although children will pick up ideas,
they will also run out of them unless they are given a regular
supply." Karen Andreola in A Charlotte Mason Companion, pg. 42.
Her son had picked up "the idea of a numeral representing dots in a
particular formation on a cube" on his own, while she was cleaning the
kitchen. My second son picked up the idea of addition all on
his own one day counting fingers. Having never had a formal math
lesson (nor much in the way of informal) he declared one day "Hey
mom, 4+4 is 8." I was quite delighted as I watched him count some
more fingers, "and 3+3 is 6." Right again! I'm not even
quite sure where he'd picked up the word 'plus' having never cracked a
math book. Not only had he picked it up, but he knew quite well
how to use it. I was amazed.
Thinking more about this comment though I am convicted about the
regular supply part. Children do indeed run out of ideas, I did
as a child. Mrs. Andreola goes on to mention that Charlotte
(Mason) said that most schools graduate many clever young persons who
are lacking initiative. That was me, clever, but lacking
initiative. Oh, if I could go back and do it all over again,
hindsight is 20/20, right? My
children are naturally quite clever. I know I'm biased, I think
they're cute, too. I think most children are naturally quite
clever, and sadly, most of them will grow up lacking initiative.
So will mine if I neglect to give them a steady diet of ideas. A
worksheet here, a bland textbook there, make for educational
malnutrition, and a future void of initiative.
Not every child is destined to make such a mark on the world as Bill
Gates, but I do hope that my children do much more than go along to get
along, go with the flow, or simply drift into the background of society
with no zest for life. How many more Bill Gates might be out
there having their imaginations drummed out of them day after day
sitting in a desk in a room full of other kids being pushed into a
mold? Traditional schools offer little in the way of proper food
for an educational diet. "A child's mind feeds on ideas. We
give him food for thought and expect him to do the thinking."
Most schools give very little food for thought and when they do expect
the child to do some thinking it's usually along the line of "how does
that make you feel?" "We feed upon
the thoughts of other minds, and thought applied to thought generates
more thoughtfulness. No one need invite us to reason, compare,
imagine. Like the body, the mind digests its proper food; it must have the labor of digestion or it ceases to function."
It is labor to digest meaty works such as Shakespeare, Josephus,
Kipling, Homer, and so many others my children have already been
exposed to. But without that labor the mind would cease to
function. It is so easy to think "this is just going to be over
their heads" and shy away from the heavy classics. My children
are far from done digesting many meaty works, but they have been
exposed and they've liked what they've tasted and it is my
responsibility to feed them more. That's a big responsibility,
and it's one I've taken upon myself as I don't believe the public
school system can handle it. But by the Grace of God, and with
the example left for me by women like Charlotte Mason and so many after
her successfully implementing her techniques, I will succeed and as a
result, my children will succeed.
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