Archive for June 29th, 2009
science of relations
i’ve been slowly reading through karen andreola’s “a charlotte mason companion”. this summer i’ve decided to gradually prepare for the school year ahead, instead of my usual time-crunch-cram method. i thought i would share some insightful passages that i found inspiring.
“Rather than feeling it is our duty to pass children through a system, it should be our duty to ask ourselves how our children can acquire knowledge. ” p. 36
“It should not be ‘How much has our child covered?’ but ‘How much does he care?’ and ‘About how many things does he care?’. p. 37
“A true intellectual life is not achieved by exercising children’s minds as if they were nothing but memory machines.” p. 43
“Self-education by means of real books, narration, first-hand experience, and observation is such a very satisfying and rewarding process that it naturally continues throughout life. Self-education is not dependent on a system of artificial rewards, prizes, and grade scores, because it is not bound to a system of education, but a method of learning. A system and a method are two different things. A system depends on a cycle of tedium: read the textbook chapter, find the facts, and record them as answers to the chapter’s list of questions, take the test, get the grade, get it over with. A system makes the process more important than either the information or the learner. On the other hand, a method emphasizes the process by which the goal is attained. If the goal is an educated child, a variety of means will best achieve it.” p 44
