This morning I took a longer walk than usual, because after all, it is Sunday. Even though this was Independence Day Weekend for the vacation crowd, and hot down in the valley, I only met 2 people on the trail, both with amiable blond dogs of the retriever type. It was cooler out there, which was nice.
Today I listened to a Circe Institute podcast on Finishing the School Year Strong, an interview with Christopher Perrin. Perrin is a classical teacher and writer of books and curricula.
The topic was about the springtime school blues and how to deal with them.
The answer wasn't at all what you would have expected if you lost touch with the classical education movement about 15 years ago when I was a new homeschooler. Back then, classical education was the province of (mostly) guys who believed in rigor, which is something that always evoked rigor mortis to me. You would probably have gotten advice about original sin and keeping the young scholar locked to his desk.
The classical education mainstream model has decidedly grown up since then. I remember a junior doctor (they were called residents) at the PICU where Aidan, my sixth, spent long periods of time in infancy. This doctor was cold. Whereas the general medical culture in the teaching hospital was to welcome parents into the ins and outs of their child's usually serious and chronic medical condition, this guy would try to chase us away from reading Aidan's flow chart (we kept in close touch with our child's bloodwork results, vital statistic measurements and what they meant, and occasionally that made a difference in his care). Whereas the general medical culture there was to encourage parents to stay by the bedside and even, if they could tolerate it, for procedures like blood draws and biopsies, this doctor told me to leave the room when he was having trouble with a blood draw, adding that "crying makes the veins stand out better." (Kevin would always parody this guy with a German accent "ve VANT them to scream." )
He was in the top five of my Worst Doctors Ever. Then 7 years later Aidan had to go back to this hospital for neurosurgery, and this guy appeared again on the scene as one of the anesthesiology team. I recognized him, but I am not sure if he recognized me or my child. He was a completely different person. His whole face was different. Rather than a Nazi with glasses reflecting fluorescent light sparkles, he looked like a kindly nerd. He briefed me respectfully about the anesthetics process, told me how soon I could be there after the surgery was over, and added that pain and distress management was a high priority and that they wanted to make sure Aidan was as comfortable and felt as safe as possible during the whole thing. He was like the previous guy's benovolent twin.
I have no idea what happened in the interim. I do know that the anesthesiology attending physician (the head of the pediatric team at the hospital) is a rare soul, gruff on the surface but one of the most kind and decent men ever. And I know that young doctors are heavily influenced by the head doctor in their specialty. I got so I could tell which "specialty" each resident who poked his head in the door belonged to just by his persona. The neurosurgery team were sweeping, detached and kindly in an amused fashion, like the less convivial type of elves. The neurologists were cold and did clueless things like wake Aidan out of sleep to tap his knees with their reflex hammers (until they were scolded by a senior nurse). The liver transplant team was friendly, blunt and related on equal terms with the parents. The anesthesiologist team was careful and ethical and deeply concerned with well-being.
These weren't necessarily characteristics of the specialties themselves, but characteristics reflected down from the individual persona of the guy in charge. Perhaps the influence of the head anesthesiologist formed this young doctor -- humanized him, one might say.
Anyway, my cold doctor became a benevolent physician, for whatever reason. The change in classical education hasn't been so extreme (I just got carried away reminiscing) But there has been a very perceptible change in direction, from rigor to excellence, from training to cultivation of virtue. ... in other words, a humanizing. I think the movement acquired some scholarly mentors, and got access to Wisdom, which playeth before Him at all times;
Playing in the world:
and my delights were to be with the children of men.
So the talk wasn't at all about how to get those little noses back to the grindstone for the last couple of months before summer, but rather, how school season should not be so grueling that teachers and students are gasping for a break by April. And more than that, how one test of education is what the kids do doing their summer break. And also, how mastery tends to build motivation, while superficial "get through the book" haste leads to alienation, hurry and fatigue.
Perrin mentioned that CS Lewis basically only studied two subjects from ages 14 to 16, with his tutor "The Great Knock." But he studied them deeply and his whole time with his tutor was a kind of curriculum in dialectic and logical reasoning, since the Scottish scholar would dispute basically every proposition no matter how banal or casual.
This made me think of at least two things as I plan for next year:
- How can I order things so that we are neither "getting through things" or "letting things slide"? Would it help if we did something like block/trimester scheduling (as was discussed in the podcast?) I plan to think about that today.
- Much of education is about a relationship. The primary unit study for the learner is the relationship with the teacher (and more widely the learning environment). Perrin talked about avoiding fluorescent light and cheap primary-colored posters, and drinking cocoa while discussing, which of course, homeschoolers can manage quite naturally. My son who went to public school liked and respected some of his teachers and learned from them, but his general impression of the system and institution made him cynical. My older three kids had a different experience. They didn't feel the tension between the stated and actual agenda of the teacher and environment.
- If the teacher is going to be such an influence on the learner, it means that the teacher needs to be what he aims for. In that sense, if I have 15 minutes free, it might be better to spend that time praying, or educating myself, or even taking a walk, than shopping for curriculum or reading blogs about how other people do nature study. That doesn't mean that there is no place for researching curriculum and methods (after all, that is a form of education too). It's just that some things that seem of lower urgency might actually be higher priority and pay off better.
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