I don‘t think botany is a standard high school course today, but AP Biology still includes a chapter (or equivalent) on the names of the parts of a plant, which most students have to memorize. You can see someone’s flash cards here, for instance. And whatever we might think of the Robinson children’s education overall, it’s evident that they were successful in learning all the scientific concepts they needed for success in related fields, even with starting in high school. So the idea that it’s necessary to start earlier, because “times are different now,” doesn’t seem valid to me.

Continuation of the above passage (pp. 156-8): —- Without a consistent preliminary training in observation, in the study of Nature, and the in- cidental learning of the facts met in every day's life, the beginners in laboratory or science classes find themselves embarrassed and confused before a striking array of information and detail, each part of which is simple enough in itself, but yet so interwoven with other information and related detail as to present a solid wall of complexity. The most necessary condition for the solution of a problem, the understanding of the data, is lacking. Let us take the study of botany as another example. Here is a class of high-school or college students, well advanced in their teens and passably intelligent. If they are given to study a chapter on the parts of a plant, to many of them nearly every technical term used in the assignment is new and strange. Nothing seems to have a bearing upon anything else. How do they study that lesson? By a muscular effort, repeating over and over each definition and description, word for word, and holding the collection of facts securely in their memories until the desired opportunity of committing what they have memorized to a test paper. Now consider the student who has learned to observe and trained himself to notice weeds and flowers. The assigned page is a delight to a student of this kind. The definitions are no longer meaningless, since in another style and phrasing they tell him what he has known and thought before. Does he passively set about committing to memory the words of the text? Never. He does more. He give their meaning, their relationships to other definitions; he puts interest and vitality into the work. He proves again and again that he who brings something to the book is the one who gets something out of it. He shows the maturity of mind that comes from long thinking. Because he has thought, he is able to face a complex assignment, whereas the beginner must deal with the single idea, which is the primitive basis. The boy or girl who has been taught to use eyes and ears is admirably fitted for scientific studies. Science is based on facts. Research does no more than classify or arrange in an orderly manner certain facts so that conclusions may be drawn. These conclusions are again and again tested by facts until research becomes science. The boy whose early life has been observant has the basis of facts and the skill in drawing conclusions needed by science. Such a boy meets with no difficulty in studying mathematics, astronomy, physics, or chemistry. —-

I just remembered this passage, from Educating the Child at Home (pp. 155-6). —- There was culture before there were books, and education should first aim at culture. Mere book knowledge is not culture, nor will it produce culture. Not only does home training prepare the child for useful life and good citizenship, but it gives it a working knowledge that opens the door of understanding to academic subjects. For instance, while the girl beats the eggs and you answer her questions she gets a practical chapter in organic chemistry. Washing dishes with her mother as a teacher she finds out the properties of water, the hardness and softness; the actions of acids and alkalis as combined in soap; the effect of heat and cold on certain bodies. Was there ever a better laboratory than the kitchen to teach a girl all she need know about chemistry? She learns about mould, mildew, rust, fermentation, freezing mixtures, temperatures, salt, and baking-soda. She learns of what materials different utensils are made, and how and why that material is used. Here are more of the things a child can learn from you or with your help in the kitchen: food-stuffs, their constituents and where they come from; the making and uses of glass, pottery, iron, steel, brass, nickel, silver. Using the garden hose teaches the pressure of water. The child learns as it helps at home about coal, metals, alloys, coins, clouds, rain, snow, ice, springs, brooks, lakes, wells, canals, sea-water, salt, winds, storms, familiar animals and plants. A child who learns these and related things and uses his eyes may later on really get something worth while from a high-school course in chemistry and physics, because he knows what the book and the instructor are talking about, while the student without this home training does no more than get through the examination. The making of useful, thinking, worthy citizens depends upon the early teaching of the humble facts and duties of every-day life. The one great question in a child's mind is “What ?” The importance of "How?" and "Why?" should also be firmly impressed. The habit of finding the answers to these three questions constitutes the training in observation. —- Of course, the challenge with this, as with so much of EFL, is that it tends to show up the gaps in our own education. Still, it does make a lot of sense. We had talked in the past about TOPS being perhaps the closest commercial equivalent to this sort of learning. My children so far haven’t taken to those books, though, or really to any books of experiments that don’t have a kit included. They probably would if I made the materials more accessible, but toddler energy has precluded that so far. Something to think about changing for this school year.

Just to clarify, I linked to the Robinson article because his thinking on this issue seems to have a lot of overlap with EFL’s, and LostCove was looking for suggestions that would support EFL’s approach. We‘ve compared and contrasted the two of them before on these threads, so I didn’t think to spell out the connection. I’m sorry for not being more clear.

You’ve probably read what Art Robinson has to say about this, but I’m going to link it here anyway. Basically, no formal science until after introductory calculus, but hands-on science-related hobbies are encouraged. The parent can also give the children real (not dumbed-down) books on subjects they’re especially interested in, so they can see how much there is to learn, but shouldn’t try to explain the contents. When the children are ready to learn, they will be able to understand the material on their own. I don’t have much to offer from our family’s experience. My eldest didn’t do science as a subject until high school, but spent a lot of free time on nature study and reading science books (both for adults and children). This child didn’t move very quickly in math, though, and has just ended up doing math and science subjects in the conventional order. These have mostly been done online or via outside classes, so I’m not doing much of the teaching or evaluation, but lack of real comprehension does seem to be an issue, even when grades are okay. Sad to say, I’m definitely seeing these subjects more as hoop-jumping at this point.

I’m not sure if it’s because they’re using textbooks. She does have individual teaching time scheduled with each of the school-aged children. She just seems okay with having the little ones be supervised almost entirely by their older siblings (who might be as young as 4 or 5, or as old as high school age). I guess she’s putting a considerable amount of energy into teaching them how to do the supervising. I’m not sure I’d be capable of this even if I wanted to. They do seem to have different academic standards from most on these boards, though. Their 11th grade daughter had 3 hours of school scheduled a day, covering 4 subjects. (A bit more if you include Bible, which they might be counting as a credit.) She didn’t do much general housework, but spent a lot of time on devotions, helping younger siblings, and miscellaneous projects. And their son, at 17, seemed to be going for a GED and spent 3 hours a day on mowing. Which I suppose is quite compatible with EFL, in its way. 🌱🌱🌱🚜

In other news, I re-bought MOTH (yes, I’ve arrived at that point!) and am looking at the sample schedules. There are only a few that include middle or high school aged children, and they’re mostly from the author’s own family. The schedules do tend to have about two hours of chores per child, starting around age 6 or 7. The mother is usually supposed to be doing other things during that time, though. For instance, the children do “room chores” in the morning, while she takes a shower. Also, from 5:00 to 6:00 pm, the 7 and 9 year olds do “helping jobs” while she starts dinner. It’s not clear to me what’s happening there. Is she just sending them off on small tasks? Assigning longer tasks and checking on them periodically? Something else that stands out to me is that the author didn’t schedule any one-on-one time with her preschoolers and toddlers. Both EFL and Ed Ford (author of the book I mentioned above) would consider this essential. The little ones do have many individual playtimes with older siblings, which is lovely, but it’s not the same. Maybe she works in little snippets of time with them? It’s weird, the sample worksheets in the middle of the book all include something like “1/2 hour of mom time per child,” but then when you look at the resulting schedules in the back, that time isn’t always there. Looking at another family’s schedule, from 10:30 to 11:00 am: - Mom does English with 12 year old - 6 and 7 year olds do spelling and writing - 2 and 3 year olds do “assigned activity” - 4 month old naps Then from 11:00 to 11:30, Mom works with the 6 and 7 year olds, while the 2 and 3 year olds are on the computer together, apparently without supervision. I’m finding that hard to imagine! But maybe it just means they’re watching videos. It seems to me that all of the above is kind of EFL-ish in some ways, but not in others. The second family’s schedule also seems precarious, with the little ones expected to manage themselves for quite long periods. If anyone knows of a sample schedule for a large family, with ~30 minutes of daily one-on-one time with each child, and more “assigned activities” and closer supervision than the (rather free-form) ones I posted a couple of years ago, please share it. Even completely hypothetical ones would be welcome. DH isn’t sure about this scheduling business, and doesn’t want me putting a lot of time and energy into planning something that might not be workable, so I could really use some sort of example.

I’m not sure what it would mean to be an EFL mother. If it’s a group with admission requirements based on specific achievements, then I’m not likely to be joining either. But if it’s a set of principles and suggestions that we’re trying to apply, within the limitations of our circumstances, then perhaps I sort of am. It’s not even clear to me how closely EFL’s correspondents were following her advice, a century ago. It would be very helpful to know more about this. I enjoyed reading Florence’s columns, and wish she had written more about her experience. But it’s also worth noting that Florence chose to put most of her children in parochial school at age 8 (right at EFL’s lower age limit), and my impression is that the majority of teacher-mothers stopped homeschooling around that age as well. This would certainly have lowered the demands on their psychic energy. BTW, I found obituaries for most of Florence’s children, and for better or worse, they were like a poster family for the “greatest generation.” The men mostly had military careers. All of the women became nurses, and most of them served in the military as well. The women tended to keep working as nurses after marriage, which I found interesting. Again, I wish we had more data points, to give an idea of what became of the thousands of other children whose mothers were influenced by EFL’s ideas. Of course, it would also be interesting to know whether any of them chose to continue those methods with their own children. But looking at the state of things in the decades since she wrote, even if her writings were very helpful for some individual families, they certainly didn’t spark the national rebirth of family life that she considered essential. Where does this leave us? For me, at this point, rather than aiming for any particular EFL-ish outcome for my own children (which has proven hard for me to predict or control), I hope to do a little to continue the spirit of her work. It seems to me that if she were alive today, she would be keenly interested in new research and insights that would help us adapt traditional methods of education to all of our more or less complicated personal, societal, and technological circumstances. As we’ve discussed earlier, I‘ve been thinking especially about changing habits for myself and the older children (and let’s not forget the younger ones too; given my track record so far, they’ll probably need it 😄). While cleaning up, I found some books I was reading a few years ago that made a lot of sense. They’re based on perceptual control theory, a branch of cybernetics that seems to work remarkably well for explaining human behavior. The book I’ve found most helpful is this one, written by a Catholic social worker and father of eight, who worked for many years helping schools and families. While the underlying theory is complex, his advice is quite simple (and often obvious, when you think about it). Since I started trying to apply it recently, it’s been working just as described. I’m going to try to come up with a bit of a summary of these ideas, and how they fit with EFL’s thoughts about habits, learning, and self-control. There are some interesting parallels.

Thinking about the cap example, I just realized that my children often bring in things that a sibling left in the yard. What’s more, they don’t always tell anyone that they’ve done so. So “I left it in the yard” might be the most accurate answer one of them can give. 😉 This is almost emblematic of my whole experience with EFL. Her exhortations to precise and disciplined order are very often at odds with our family’s small but precious examples of spontaneous order. I’m loath to sacrifice the latter, especially when I’ve had so little long-term success in implementing the former. I’m very glad to have read the whole book in order, without skimming over the hard-to-grasp bits. It’s allowing me to think more clearly about what changes might be both feasible and desirable in the near future. Ultimately, though, I‘m still left with hardly any idea of how her parents (and others) managed to keep such carefully ordered homes and homeschools, even with many more children than we have. I have an ominous (or maybe ironic) sense that “not spending hours and hours reading vintage educational writings found on the Internet” might be a necessary factor.

Most of this chapter makes sense to me, and seems quite doable (which isn’t to say that I’ve been following it consistently). On p. 234, though, I feel as if EFL is promoting literalism over contextual understanding. In our day, if someone were asked, “can you tell me promptly how much nine times seven is,” and he answered “yes,” I think this might be taken as a smart-aleck response or even as as a sign of autism. And I can’t get my head around the idea of asking “where is your cap?” and rejecting the answer “I left it in the yard” as insufficiently precise. Was this a common attitude among old-fashioned educators in EFL’s day, or before? I guess I’m willing to accept that my misgivings might be a sign that I’ve picked up the intellectual equivalent of slouching (i.e. modern-day laziness and sloppiness). For all I know, sitting properly at all times might be seen as a sign of some disorder today as well. But I’m amazed at how much her advice here goes against everything I’ve read about social communication.

I don’t mean to rush anyone, but I’m going to move on to the final chapter this week (“Language Culture in the Home”), because the suspense is getting to be too much. 😄

Her advice on religious education is, I think, fairly similar to what’s being done in a lot of church-going families today. The advice on lying is quite different from what I’ve seen elsewhere, though. I’m not sure how we’re supposed to avoid making a big deal out of suspected lying, while also ensuring that they never feel that they’ve fooled us, or get any benefit from a lie. Some of my children are clever at lying, and I’m not a mind-reader. Any thoughts?

Okay, on to chapters 10 and 11, “Religious Education” and “Morals & Manners.” On the American children of her day: ”Their brains are sharpened to the doing of two things: making money and having a good time.” This reminds me of something I was just reading about how board games have changed. This is from the Wikipedia page on Milton Bradley (1836-1911): “While the structure of play in ‘The Checkered Game of Life’ differed little from previous board games, Bradley's game embraced a radically different concept of success. Earlier games, such as the popular ‘Mansion of Happiness’ created in Puritan Massachusetts, focused entirely on promoting moral virtue. Bradley defined success in secular business terms, depicting life as a quest for accomplishment with personal virtues as a means to that end. This complemented America's burgeoning fascination with obtaining wealth, and with ‘the causal relationship between character and wealth,’ in the years following the Civil War.” That game first appeared in 1860. And from the page about Parker Brothers: “Parker Brothers was founded by George S. Parker. Parker's philosophy deviated from the prevalent theme of board game design; he believed that games should be played for enjoyment and did not need to emphasize morals and values. He created his first game, called ‘Banking,’ in 1883 when he was 16. ‘Banking’ is a game in which players borrow money from the bank and try to generate wealth by guessing how well they could do.” So this pattern seems to go back a very long way.

Looking back over the last several years, I think I seriously underestimated the amount of involuntary work (both academic and practical) that my children would need to do, day in and day out, to develop a work habit instead of a play habit. Some time before coming across EFL, I had picked up the idea that they would become accustomed to “doing hard things” through time spent in high-quality play and intelligent hobbies, and that this would carry over to other tasks. As it turns out, though, my upper elementary child who very often memorizes and copies poems for fun, and has been choosing to read some of the most challenging literature we have, is also the most inclined to grumble and protest about chores. This all seems to fit with the theory about two different types of attention (called voluntary and involuntary, or natural and artificial), which I posted about a while back. My little ones aged 2-3 have always enjoyed helping, so I don’t know if their chores were doing much to strengthen involuntary attention at that age. Though maybe I just wasn’t a hard enough taskmaster. 😄 But I do wonder if they would have been so ready to follow instructions for playing. Maybe I should just try this a few times with my youngest (who’s usually tagging along with the bigger ones), and see how it goes.

Sorry, I should have given a reference. I’m thinking of pages 143-5, where EFL talks about giving play tasks to the two or three year old child (such as building a log cabin out of sticks), and making sure they’re completed. From the context, I’m not sure if this is something she’s only recommending for children who can’t seem to amuse themselves, or if it’s supposed to be beneficial for all children at times. I have some vague memories of reading articles from very organized homeschool mothers who did this sort of thing with their toddlers and preschoolers. It seemed odd and unnecessary to me at the time, as mine have generally been happy to play on their own. But maybe there’s something I’m missing.

Sorry it’s taken me so long to get to the next two chapters (“Play” and “Work”). We’ve had a lot of distractions recently, and my posts keep getting deleted before I’m finished writing them. Have you all been “assigning” your little ones to play with specific things at certain times? I’ve never done this, because it seemed extremely opposed to Montessori, and also weirdly unlike anything I’d experienced. Now I’m wondering if it might be a key to developing both obedience and the work habit, without resorting to early academics (which probably wouldn’t even make much difference, since the lessons are so brief at this age). It’s not as if I have a functioning Montessori set-up here anyway. I’m also on the lookout for the equivalent of St. John Bosco for remediating work habits and the general inability / unwillingness to stick to a schedule. Mostly for myself at this point, but also for the children, in turn. Will put this out there now, before it gets eaten, and add more thoughts later. 🙂

There was a discussion of curiosity several years ago, in a thread on David Hicks’ Norms and Nobility. LostCove and I were there, among others. It starts about halfway down the page, or you can just search for the word “curiosity.” If that’s not what you’re looking for, I’ll dig through the EFL threads when I have a chance. (Looking through that old thread was tiring! I seem to have had a lot more energy for theoretical conversations back then. 😄)

LostCove, I’ve been thinking the same thing about the older ones, and have been trying to get my thoughts together enough to post about it. I knew EFL said that people who were starting later would have to look elsewhere for answers, but maybe didn’t take this remark to its logical conclusions. The thing that clarified this the most, for me, was looking at the “Godly Tomatoes” site (which I haven’t visited for years), and finding that the author’s advice for remedial discipline in adolescence is very similar to St. John Bosco’s. It’s basically “tomato staking,” lots of positive discipline and emphasis on the relationship, and high expectations. There’s little talk of punishment, especially in cases where mutual respect isn’t established. This was somewhat of a surprise, given that her advice for the little ones makes much heavier use of punishment. So this got me wondering: did St. John Bosco give advice about raising toddlers and small children? If he did, I can’t find any. Like you, I’ve found several pages written by people who assume that his preventive system is meant to apply equally well to children of all ages, but this seems questionable. It was developed for boys aged 12-18 years (not 12-18 months!), and “reason and religion” are supposed to be major motivating factors. All children develop at different rates, but I’m starting to think roughly in terms of four stages of discipline: Infant/Toddler Ages 2/3-ish through 7 Ages 7 through 12 Ages 12 and up For all of these groups - and especially for the oldest ones - the situation is going to look different for “remedial” cases than for those who successfully applied EFL’s advice from the beginning. Ironically, I think I now have the *best* idea of how to handle the oldest group. Which doesn’t mean that it’s easy. How on earth do you “tomato stake” multiple children of a wide range of ages at the same time, while doing engaging and challenging activities with the older ones, without resorting to screens or workbooks for any of them? Nobody seems to have an answer for that part. On top of that, I’ve just been reading some advice from St. John Chrysostom, who seems to assume that the family has a small army of tutors and nurses. 😄

Apropos of nothing, I had been wondering why EFL compared slate pencils to chewing gum. (I think this was in “Educating the Child at Home.”) It turns out that circa 1900, slate pencils were made of chalk rather than slate. People in some places are still using (and eating) them. The things you learn on the Internet! I think it makes sense to discuss chapters 6 and 7 together. The first is on observation, and the second is on object lessons. And I don’t seem to have much to say about either one. Anyone else?

I finally had a chance to talk to DH about the compulsion question. On hearing about Trumbull’s view that the child should never be made by repeated punishments to do anything against his will, DH (Catholic) immediately said, “Is this about God, and the idea that the believer should never be made to go against his convictions?” He then gave a negative opinion of the effects of certain theological movements on American society, while acknowledging that Roger Williams had his good points, LOL. And thus EFL’s view was ratified in our household. It occurred to me recently that without “outlasting” and subsequent compliance, which contributes to the formation of habits, punishing the young child only serves as a negative stimulus. The 19th century no-compulsion approach seems to put the focus of the interaction on the punishment itself, rather than on obedience and correct behavior, where it belongs. I’d be very interested to learn more about the history of this - was it prevalent in certain regions? Certain denominations? But I suppose that will have to remain a mystery for now.

I’ve just looked through Educating the Child at Home, and EFL did leave open a lot of issues that she later addressed in Bookless Lessons. For instance, in the earlier book: She didn’t give an age guideline for learning to read, but left it to the parent’s judgment. She said that the five year old child should be being trained in “unquestioning obedience,” but didn’t say how to get there, or how far along he should be. She didn’t talk about scheduling the child’s day. This does seem much more compatible with Montessori. It also just makes sense to a great extent, as there are usually many “right ways” to do things. On the other hand, there are many “wrong ways” as well, and in trying to fill in the details of her broad outline, I’ve certainly discovered plenty of them. 🙄 EFL wrote Bookless Lessons to answer mothers’ most common questions. I don’t suppose she gave the best possible answer for everything, but at this point I’m willing to acknowledge that her answers are probably mostly better than mine. So maybe the right way for my family to approach this is, once again, to be methodical - i.e., to start by making changes in areas where her advice seems to have the most solid foundation, and where my methods (or lack thereof) have had the least success. Her third book, Beginning the Child’s Education (1926), is even more closely focused on Q & A for mothers of preschoolers. It’s still in copyright, but most of it was also published in her columns that have been linked to on these threads. (The mother is “Mrs. Wilson,” and the child is “Esther.”) The advice is similar to that in Bookless Lessons, but the tone is more conversational. That sort of content probably would have been best for me to start with, even though I wouldn’t have been drawn to it back then. Like the mother in the book, I was looking forward to academics, and tended to be vague about the rest of it.

Here are the main Internet Archive pages for Bookless Lessons and Educating the Child at Home. Each of them is available in several formats.

Ausmumof3, there should be text and epub versions at the Internet Archive. Maybe you have to click on something to get back to the main page for the book. Let me know if you can’t figure it out. This is from Educating the Child at Home (p. 7): “"What connection has your plan with the Montessori system?" I have been asked by many other mothers. The work, as outlined in the following chapters, though not necessarily presupposing Montessori training, will be greatly facilitated and furthered thereby, especially if the child has had such careful and thoughtful training from babyhood as any good mother, with the help of such a book as the Montessori System, is qualified to give.” The book she’s referring to is The Montessori System in Theory and Practice (1912), by Theodate L. Smith. This is one of the earliest American books on the subject. Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s A Montessori Mother came out the same year. Many others appeared in the next few years; this page has links to online versions.

It’s fine with me if we stay where we are for a while. These chapters cover a lot. I understand about not being too ideological, but the differences between MM and EFL include practices that are fundamental to each one’s approach, such as how and when obedience should be developed, free choice vs. scheduled activities, and whether reading and math should optimally begin at around age 4 or 8. It doesn’t seem feasible to just take a middle ground on these questions, or even to do much picking and choosing, because the different aspects of each method work together. (One can’t do oral lessons reliably with small children without firm obedience, for instance.) And while we all have to make modifications from time to time, I’m not interested in experimentation writ large. I still have hope of reconciling them, though. Just putting my problems on the table!

I’m up for moving on to chapter 6, “Training Children to Observe,” but I don’t want to rush anyone. Let me know what you think.