Instead he finds he’s in a procedural maze within a maze, devised by those faceless, burdensome powers, all purporting to make things clearer.
He vaguely expects to grapple with unknowns that may turn out to be ions or elephants charging over the Alps. Thus, a lot of a student’s time is taken up with process. These “how-to” lessons are redundant anyway to an already desiccated textbook that presents as its first lesson instructions for use (“fundamental concepts will be highlighted in bold, red type each chapter contains a review read headings first” etc). They aim at digestibility, but with the sad result of many such projects: rendering something otherwise tasty, unpalatable. Since most of education has already devolved to that state of tastelessness, the attempt becomes akin to elaborately interpreting the menu of a fast-food joint. These attempts are managerial in nature: that is to say, they strive to break down a difficult project into many small steps. If your child does go to school and you are paying attention, you may find that they inflict on him from the start a sort of meta-text or other type of tutorial, the putative object of which is to teach him to how to approach books - especially textbooks. Title: How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent ReadingĪuthors: Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren
Which brings me to today’s book for our Library Project. And its corollary, observing the ways that smart people teach other smart people. So there’s another analytical tool for you: Observing the different ways smart people learn. Now, some dead people are smarter than others, just like living people. It’s worth noticing, when you are in mid-curriculum-flippage (made worse by all that’s out here on the internet, a big place, as I’ve mentioned), who the smart people are and how they get educated - especially once we realize that no one actually knows how children learn. Which is another way of saying that the dead have voted on them and found them worthy. That is why you choose good books for your children - living books, books that have stood the test of time. That tool is tradition - the democracy of the dead, as Chesterton calls it, in a book that I need to put in the Library Project - Orthodoxy. Still… I think I will! In the spirit of talking it over at the kitchen table… You will find every possible approach to every possible issue you might have. Right about now I have the sense that many of my dear readers are possibly flipping out ever so slightly about a) homeschooling or b) not homeschooling and thus c) putting together good curriculum and/or d) warding off bad curriculum. We will probably celebrate tomorrow, as we are just funny that way and don’t plan our anniversary very well. It’s also our little grandson Francis’ birthday, and Sukie’s nameday, so it’s a good one.
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