So I read volume I of the Home Education series last "school year" and I really only had time to read it while my son was in gymnastics class.  I kept a commonplace book w/o realizing that's what I was doing.  I have several post on a different weblog that I do not wish to continue posting on because the gal that introduced me to that weblog domain via a file in one of the AmbleSide yahoo groups has of late been very nasty to me and I don't wish to go there anymore.  Hey if something hurts stop doing it right?

I will also continue to read through Volume I over the next 3.5 years or so as my son is 6 and that book deals with the lessons of the 6-9 year old (that's 4 years not 3, do the math ... count with me 6  7  8  9  how many #'s do u c?  that's right 4....)

anywho back to Rousseau...or some guy you've never heard of unless you like me are reading through Volume 2 of Charlotte Mason's writings better known as Parents and Children.  I was sitting in Managerial Accounting class today (talk about mother culture) and on our midway through the 3 hour class break I opened up the book and read the section on Rousseau.  After reading that Miss Mason would always compliment another's work before stating what she didn't like about it, her writings are taking on a pattern to me.

Here are my author's quotes for my commonplace book for volume II:

page 2 - Under the spell of his teaching, people in the fashionable world, like that Russian Princess Galitzin, forsook society, and went off with their children to some quiet corner where they could devote every hour of the day, and every power they had, to the fulfilment of the duties which devolve on parents. Courtly mothers retired from the world, sometimes even left their husbands, to work hard at the classics, mathematics, sciences, that they might with their own lips instruct their children. 'What else am I for?' they asked; and the feeling spread that the bringing-up of their children was the one work of primary importance for men and women.

page2-3 - What he said was, in effect, "Fathers and mothers, this is your work, and you only can do it. It rests with you, parents of young children, to be the saviours of society unto a thousand generations. Nothing else matters. The avocations about which people weary themselves are as foolish child's play compared with this one serious business of bringing up our children in advance of ourselves."

p3 - People listened, as we have seen; the response to his teaching was such a letting out of the waters of parental enthusiasm as has never been known before nor since. And Rousseau, weak and little worthy, was a preacher of righteousness in this, that he turned the hearts of the fathers to the children, and so far made ready a people prepared for the Lord. But alas! having secured the foundation, he had little better than wood, hay, and stubble to offer to the builders. { or laying a foundation with nothing proper to build upon it with...or uh the furches get 'em saved and leave'em syndrome....oh did I type that out loud?}{Miss Mason was probably saying, don't just stir them up give them something they can work with}

p3 - He perceived that God placed the training of every child in the hands of two, a father and a mother; and the response to his teaching proved that, as the waters answer to the drawing of the moon, so do the hearts of parents rise to the idea of the great work committed to them.

and that will do it for Rousseau