Thanks, 8; I really appreciate that. LostCove, I’m sure EFL gave practical advice to many mothers who were indisposed, even if the subject is never mentioned in her books and articles. I suppose nobody really talked about such things publicly back then. She probably also wanted to focus on the positive. Speaking of articles, I recently came across another bunch of her newspaper columns online, via scans of the Catholic Northwest Progress newspaper. They’re quite readable, but the OCR had a hard time and they aren’t all showing up in a search. The site does allow editing, so I’ve looked through all of the available issues for 1934 and 35 and corrected her name as needed. Maybe someone else can help with the other years. Her column appears from 1934 to 1940, but it isn’t in every issue. In 1940, there are also a few very interesting contributions from Florence A. Burke, one of her teacher-mothers. Some examples of the columns: 9 February 1934: “Mothers as Educators: Children Need a Home Course in Observation That Revolves Around the Throne of God” (I think this is the first one; it’s on the importance of astronomy, and how to prepare the child for it.) 16 February 1934: “Mothers as Educators” (continuation of the above) 23 February 1934: “Mothers as Educators:” 9 March 1934: “Mothers as Educators” 6 April 1934: “Movie-Thrillers and Childhood” 13 April 1934: “Parental Appreciation of Study” 20 April 1934: “Beginning the Child’s Education” 25 May 1934: “Education’s Disciplinary Function” 10 August 1934: “Lefthandedness and Other Topics” 5 March 1937: “Educating the Child at Home” 21 October 1938: “Teacher-Parents” 3 February 1939: “The Spoiled Child” One of them contains her review of Fr. McGucken’s The Catholic Way in Education. She went on to mention this book often in her columns. She seemed sure that the US Catholic establishment would build his proposed classical school system (the Vittorino Schools), and that the children who had been homeschooled by her system would be found to be the most qualified for it. Of course, his plan was never put into action. More broadly, it was during these years that the NCWC and CUA crowds won out decisively over EFL and the Jesuits. I’ll stop there, to avoid getting ranty, LOL.

Hello! I’ve been off the boards for a while due to some difficult circumstances; it’s good to be here again. The “rigor” threads from last December were interesting to read. I thought there might be some interest in a new thread on Ella Frances Lynch’s ideas about education. Here’s EFL thread #2, which contains a link to the first big thread. Other related threads might come up in a search. Feel free to add links to those, to her books, etc. I subtitled the thread “new frontiers” because I’ve been thinking a lot about questions that she either doesn’t address in her books, or addresses in ways that don’t seem to work for some present-day families (such as mine!). For instance: 1) How to develop good habits in ourselves and the children if we’re starting late, or just haven’t been doing a great job up to now. Especially if, due to various influences, we can’t achieve the “simplicity of surroundings” that’s supposed to be a sine qua non. 2) How to establish a backup plan, or a partial implementation of her ideas, for times when we’re not capable of the sort of personal attention that her system requires. 3) How to form alliances for personal support, since EFL’s network of teacher-mother groups is no longer, and DIY homeschoolers of any kind are becoming hard to find. 5) The place of modern technology in all this. These are just a few possibilities for discussion. Anything EFL-related would be welcome!

I agree, but can't figure out how to explain it in any effective way. I think I'll just take it as a sign that this person, for whatever reason, isn't really open to the advice. Which is too bad, because this is one of a vanishingly small number of homeschoolers I've found IRL who are somewhat open to discussion of vintage educational writings. Most just glaze over when they realize that this will involve reading the book and thinking it through for themselves. This is giving me a little insight into how EFL must have felt when she was rejected by the Catholics, and had to take her message to the Quakers.

Will look at the Amy Chua book as well. I feel as if there are still some gaps in my understanding of this. It’s even starting to seem that my practical and intuitive ability to raise children has become *greater* than my theoretical grasp of the subject. I realize that this is very normal and good, but it’s also unfamiliar and unsettling, LOL. More seriously, it means that I’m not able to communicate about it very well to other parents, even if our circumstances are similar. For instance, I recently gave someone a copy of “The Renegade Home.” This person has taken EFL to be saying that, since our children’s faults mainly come from imitating us, we shouldn’t presume to correct them (especially the older ones), but rather just accept that it’s our fault and keep “working on ourselves.” This interpretation seems to go against both Scripture and common sense, but I don’t know how to argue against it. I suspect that this line of thinking is precisely how “permissive parenting” got its first toehold. Any thoughts?

In trying to talk to fellow homeschoolers about Model English and so on, I've noticed a pattern. "It's based on imitation." "Hey, so is IEW!" "It emphasizes style, not just structure." "So does IEW! Have you tried it? I can lend you some materials! My kids are learning it in a co-op; would you like to join?!" <hauls out binders> "..." :leaving: ;) In our area at least, IEW seems to have become the default writing curriculum for academically serious homeschoolers -- i.e., the ones who might otherwise be interested in Fr. Donnelly's books. I'm going to have to come up with a not-too-wordy, not-too-polemical description of the differences between them. I've looked at some of the materials in the past, but there are so many bits that I always felt I was missing the big picture. Just came away with a general sense that it A) wasn't classical, and B) wasn't what I was looking for. Can anyone help me out?

Physical Education here, too. PE-related driving also has the greatest impact on my time and energy (as I realized when we took a break over the holidays). And my children are only doing a few activities, all close to home, and none of them at a competitive level. "Backyard PE" is free, but it requires even more of my attention. Otherwise, it tends to result in expensive doctor visits. :tongue_smilie:

Just noticed that this was never answered. As I understand it, the "art" is the doing of an embodied skill, which is learned mainly through observation and imitative practice. The "science" is the theory and terminology that enables us to talk abstractly about the art. Fr. Donnelly goes with the definition of rhetoric as "the art of using all the available means of persuasion." Thus, the study of rhetoric as an art could include the reading, hearing, and imitative practice of well-constructed examples of persuasion. Reading and hearing take place in the traditional grammar course, and also in the student's social and media environment. Imitation is practiced in the progym exercises, which were given by the rhetorician as a preliminary to the formal rhetoric course. This also fits with his statement that the formal study of rhetoric isn't necessary, if the student reads widely and well enough. As the old saying goes, "All the rhetorician's rules / Teach nothing but to name his tools." Fr. Schwickerath -- or was it Fr. McGucken? -- pointed out that the Grammar course also included practical logic, via the study of classical languages. Thus, it helped to prepare the student for the study of logic as a science, which took place in the "invention" stage of the Rhetoric course (as well as in the Philosophy course that followed, for the minority of students who kept going that far). Hope that helps a bit. And this is casting some new light on my recent question about formal grammar, in the current EFL thread. Still not clear on that one, though!

I was looking for Lenten advice on forming good habits, and came across some 1820s "how to homeschool" books by the English author Elizabeth Appleton. As with similar US books from that era, they seem strangely more current than late Victorian ones. What I've read so far is compatible with EFL, but much more detailed. For instance, there are two full pages of advice about reading books to sensitive children, all of which I found sensible and helpful. The books are on archive.org, and you can find them by searching for "Appleton" and "Private Education" or "Early Education." The first book deals mostly with the needs of older girls, and the second one mostly with younger children, though there's some overlap. She's big on reading lists, which is unusual in older authors. I don't want to get distracted hunting down her recommendations, but maybe I'll look for a few of the best-known ones to give to the children at Easter. (Likely only dodgy-looking reprints available; will have to cover them with pretty fabric or something. Could be a good craft project to do with eldest DD. :001_smile: )

My children are about the same ages and spread as the OP's, minus her eldest ones. (Similar to maize's. Her signature always makes me want to say :seeya:.) I really like your advice. Just wanted to add a few more thoughts on this. I think it's inevitable that homeschooling families generate more chores, because we're using our houses more, and in more varied ways, during the hours that people are awake. Mom doesn't just have to be the teacher and principal -- she also has to be the school janitor, secretary, yard monitor, cafeteria staff, etc. (This is backed up by my conversations with mothers of larger families who have tried both school and homeschooling. The mess was the #1 difference they talked about. "My house was never clean.") And I think it's very reasonable to expect the children to help with this. Especially as they're still likely to have significantly more time to pursue their interests than children who are in school. Family size is a trickier one. Large homeschooling families do have more helpers, but I think there might be more mess created per person, especially once you reach a tipping point (you know, the point where the jar of paint inevitably tips off the table :laugh:). This is mainly a result of having different age groups, with different needs and materials, playing and working in the same area. The smaller siblings get into the big ones' stuff. Things go missing, or get stepped on, more often. I was just looking at photos from the years when we only had babies and toddlers. In hindsight, we had far more "kid stuff" than we needed, but at least we could keep it confined to a couple of areas of the house. And the children could clean up, because there were fewer types of stuff to sort through. Compare to today. If a little one goes on a spree, not only the amount of mess, but its complexity, can be disheartening even for me. Which leads to another factor: in larger families, the younger children often aren't disciplined as carefully, or supervised as closely, as the older children were. So they can be much quicker to get into trouble, and slower to learn to do chores themselves. I was aware of this pattern, and felt sure it wouldn't happen in my family, but it did anyway. The traditional answer -- and perhaps the only one, short of hiring a team of nannies -- is to give the older children some authority over the younger ones. Not just responsibility, but actual delegated authority. I grew up in a small family, though, so I don't know what this is supposed to look like, and like many traditions, I've found it nearly impossible to learn about today. Depending on the person I've spoken to, it's either 1) a dreadfully backward practice that can't even be considered or discussed, or 2) such a normal part of family life that they don't know how to explain it. We have a book on large family life by a Catholic physician and father of 12+, and he mentions it offhand -- in the context of saying that much present-day advice on discipline was developed for small families, and is completely unsuited to large ones -- but doesn't give any advice on the subject himself. Well, thanks! :huh: On top of that, even if I had a stronger sense of how this was supposed to work, it might be difficult to introduce, as we've been doing things otherwise for so long. But it's something I'm thinking hard about, especially when I'm around families for whom it seems to come naturally. Sorry, not much help to the OP here, but it might be an interesting line of thought, at least. So getting back to chores, here's where my thinking is now. If the tasks in question really are just an inevitable part of life for the sort of family that we (the parents) have consciously chosen to have, then we should just divvy them up and get on with it, without hand-wringing. "This is what needs to be done; everyone helps out." Same as if we had consciously chosen to live on a boat, or in Botswana. On the other hand, if we realize that we have large amounts of chores that are being caused by our ongoing failure to do what we know we should do -- e.g., in my case, to plan ahead each day, to limit possessions, and to discipline carefully every time -- then we shouldn't just dump them on our children. We should think hard, and make changes where needed. For everyone's sake. Hmm, that last bit sounds just like good management in general! Funny how it takes me so long to figure this stuff out!

Well, now this is interesting. I've happened upon a piece of circumstantial evidence for the compatibility of linguistic methods with EFL's thinking. The previous EFL thread has a bit about Richard Mott Gummere (pronounced GUM-er-ee), a Quaker and classicist who served as the headmaster of William Penn Charter School, a Latin teacher at Haverford College, and the Dean of Admissions at Harvard. He wrote a textbook (Junior Latin) that EFL recommended in her column, and he also sent his own children to her school. John Flagg Gummere also taught at Haverford, and was the headmaster of William Penn Charter School from 1941 to 1968. The NYT published his obituary on January 28, 1988. He was evidently a relative of Richard Mott Gummere, though perhaps not a close one. The family has had many noted scholars. In 1946, Waldo Sweet was hired to teach Latin at Penn Charter, and John F. Gummere introduced him to new ideas in linguistics. Sweet originally "bristled" at Bloomfield's criticism of standard ways of language teaching, then got to work on seeing what could be done. The first textbook he developed was specifically intended to cover the first year's work at Penn Charter. This is described in "The Continued Development of the Structural Approach," 1969, at eric.ed.gov. Really interesting stuff. For instance, he didn't start out intending to use real Latin literature; the sententiae were just added in to fill up empty space at the ends of chapters. They turned out to be so popular that he decided to base the course around these and other readings. Later, in the early 1970s, Penn Charter was a demonstration school for Artes Latinae (source: "New Approaches to the Teaching of Classics," eric.ed.gov). Again, this is circumstantial, but it's bolstering my sense that AL is a respectable option, and the best choice for our family right now. In fact, I'm going to try to make time to go through it myself, so that I can help my SN child in particular. After a few years, maybe I'll be semi-competent. Then I can teach the little ones "properly," using the Fr. Stephenson books, and the materials that LostCove is preparing in her copious spare time. ;) While I'm at it, maybe I should try to encourage my eldest to attend CUA, as that's starting to seem like the only way I'll get a chance to look at the Orbis Vivus. :D ETA: While I'm feeling all right about the linguistic approach of AL's lessons, the format -- "programmed instruction" inspired by Skinner -- isn't EFL-friendly at all, and it's always bothered me. But it's just for one part of our homeschool day. Once it's done, my little pigeons can exit their boxes and do more normal things.

Some related questions: How many "mind-training" subjects do we need, at the secondary level? It's my understanding that algebra, natural sciences, and English grammar were all added to the curriculum for their perceived mental disciplinary value (not their practical value). English grammar and science were emphasized for students who weren't taking Latin and Greek. In other words, they generally weren't all taught at the same time. Given that college prep students have to do so much math and science these days, is it okay to just consider those to be the formal "mental discipline" subjects, and take more of a culturally focused or eclectic approach to language and literature studies? Or is this going to mess our students up somehow? In general, what were EFL's ideas about "mind-training," and how did she differ from others on this subject?

What do you think of formal grammar in an EFL context? (sorry, that posted too soon - this computer is quite aggravating!) She writes that "technical grammar" is a fine subject for "mind-training," but not suitable before age 10. TBH, I'm thinking about limiting it for some of my children, even in middle and high school. We might use a few books that have more of a linguistic approach to understanding language. If we were doing traditional Latin grammar, I'd feel as if we were better placed to minimize traditional English grammar, but we're still doing Artes Latinae, which is based on structural linguistics to start with. If you have a guess as to what either EFL or Maria Montessori might think of the linguistic methods, please share!

What do you think of formal grammar in an EFL context?

The Secret Garden What Katy Did The Little Lame Prince and His Travelling Cloak are a few that come to mind. I would just have these sorts of books available for leisure reading. (Heaven forbid that someone turns my post into an "elementary literature curriculum" that instructs children to analyze the main characters' moral and spiritual development. :tongue_smilie:)

:seeya: We're still going, doing a bit better, and I didn't end up having to resort to video games after all. I just wanted to share that I've had a mental leap in thinking about the role of fiction in our homeschool. And it even relates to some of what I learned in university. - The "novel" is a literary form that arose in an early modern/modern context, and is associated with individualism. Most often, a novel is the story of a single protagonist who goes through some sort of new (novel) experience or adventure. - When we evaluate a piece of literature, we have to do so with attention to the structure of the literary form, rather than just saying "it has these good points" and "it has these bad points." Form and content go together, and have to be looked at together. So the question I'm asking is: during the events of this novel, does the protagonist grow in such as way as to become more prepared for heaven? (Even if they're not eligible, because they're, say, a mouse. ;)) If so, it goes back on the shelf. If not, or if it's unclear to me, it goes in a box for later sorting. This simple test has revealed a great deal. Most of our books are ones you'd find on selective homeschool book lists -- described as classics, full of wonder, wholesome, educational, etc. -- but nearly all of them flunk. The ones most likely to qualify are either allegories, or books in the tradition of the Bildungsroman ("coming of age novel") that take place in a context of at least residual Christianity. Going by what I've looked at so far, the bulk of our children's fiction consists of secular coming-of-age or fantasy stories, fictionalized works of fact-teaching, and lightweight series in which the characters don't change much between books. It's likely that we'll end up keeping some of those, but it seems important that they don't outnumber the books that are really formative. Note that I'm not expecting the main character to be a shining model of virtue the whole way through. This wouldn't be enough, and at the same time, it would perhaps be be too much. If a child's main job is to grow, then surely modeling growth is the really important aspect. Old-time Catholic writers, such as Father Finn, recognized this. Their novels included some characters who were really saintly and admirable, but they were somewhat removed from the main action, and if they were children, they often died young. This doesn't happen so inevitably in real life -- well, I hope it doesn't, anyway -- but the novel isn't synonymous with real life. It's just a story written in a way that fits with the literary form. Hagiography is a separate type of literature, and it's intended to be about real saints, not made-up ones. Hmm. Perhaps this is why I'm a bit uncomfortable with some popular saint books that are presented as "amazing stories" and "once upon a time tales," and seem to de-emphasize the spiritual virtues. I guess that subject has to be left for another day, though. I still can't post links, but there's a relevant NYT article from 2015 that's titled, "Can a Virtuous Character Be Interesting?" One writer says "no;" another says "yes." When you look closely, though, the "no" writer acknowledges that some of the most memorable moments in fiction are those in which a weak or bad character apparently grows in virtue, and performs a heroic act. Meanwhile, the "yes" writer suggests that it's interesting to read about the challenges of maintaining virtue in the face of outside pressures. These both seem to be grown-up versions of what I've described above, though I tend to think that even virtuous adults will need to keep growing, not just maintaining. Which isn't to say that I'm going to apply the same criteria to adult fiction. But it's interesting, and it has me thinking that perhaps the reason I like KN so much is that her heroines model the process of pursuing the good, not just a static picture of it, IYKWIM. Anyway, maybe this will help someone. :001_smile:

Just bumping this; sorry I can't help. (We have a vintage set of Scott's works, which is lovely in some ways, but it seems likely that the more popular volumes will fall apart sooner or later.) It's often occurred to me that we could use a thread for reviewing Print on Demand editions. Maybe even a sticky. So many books, so little quality control!

:001_smile: Hello, Manora; glad you've found some things helpful. LostCove, I've done very little reading in the last several months, though I did indulge in a bit over our Christmas break. The last author to make it onto the pile was Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I didn't get through much of his work before having to stop, but some of his ideas relate to what we're discussing here. In particular, he'd agree with your thinking re consistency. He thinks that living systems can be made more "antifragile" (= able to benefit from unexpected adversity) by including the extremes, rather than trying to chart a perfect middle course. Sounds a lot like what Melissa Wiley calls "tidal homeschooling." This seems to be more or less the norm in large families that aren't sticking firmly to a specific curriculum. What you say about children being formed by their culture also seems true, though sort of depressing. There's no changing the outside culture in any big way, and it seems as if I spend so much energy trying to mediate between it and our family's culture, that I haven't got much left over to nurture the family itself. I don't know if this is inevitable, or if I'm doing it all wrong. My impression is that most families in our circles either just allow pretty much anything that's not obviously immoral, or else allow things that have some outside stamp of approval (e.g., Bethlehem Books, church-sponsored activities, anything on a curriculum list). They also don't seem very concerned about age-appropriateness, so the olders and youngers have access to the same media and events. Over here, though, I'm still trying to look at everything on a case-by-case basis, and make use of my understanding of traditional moral and literary standards -- even if the latter are still more often honored in the breach than in the observance. Nick Carter is actually a good illustration here. It's a pulp fiction detective series that was popular with young people around the world circa 1900, but was criticized by the older generation as "sensational" and "brutalizing." A brief search of Google Books reveals that academic papers have been written on its reception in Sweden, of all places. (Yes, the US was known for exporting trashy pop culture even before Hollywood. :001_rolleyes:) You can find some scans of the late 1800s ones online. TBH, they don't seem substantially worse than some of the stuff that's recommended today as "real books," "wholesome family reading," and "heroic tales for boys." Of course the writing isn't great, but it's marginally better than, say, some of the Redwall books -- which, in turn, are marginally better than some of the children's fiction series in our local Catholic bookshop. So, yes, depressing all around. And this isn't the worst of it. Even if there's a lack of social support for older literary standards, at least we can get some idea of what they are. For the unwritten aspects of homeschooling and family culture -- self-direction, schedules, speech, the dreaded slouching ;) -- it's still unclear to me what our standards should be. I mean, EFL and other authors might say such-and-such, but is that just an ideal that we're supposed to approximate, or a norm that any family would be expected to match? And, if the latter, does that mean we still can achieve it in our time, or should I aim somewhat lower, on account of there having been several intervening generations of muddle? This is similar to the problem I had with Montessori, but at least there are some pretty authentic AMI schools to look at. Sorry, this is rather bleak. I'm feeling torn between the desire to run a tighter ship (or at least get rid of several more boxes of "highly recommended" and perhaps even "beloved" books, with the excuse of making room for Christmas presents), and the definite need for some angst-free family relaxation and enjoyment. Will probably end up getting out the video game system that's been stashed away for months. Not great, but low-clutter, and better than a mommy meltdown. :tongue_smilie:

:) Hi ltlmrs! Happy new year! Thanks for the update. It sounds as if we're dealing with a lot of the same challenges as you are, though there's not much risk of my overdoing the younger children's lessons (due to a "fortunate lack of time," as Fr. Donnelly might say). There's a thread elsewhere on the boards about whether or not we've become better at homeschooling over the years. This is relevant to our family, since on the surface, it seems to me that I'm doing a lot worse. As I've been peeling away more and more of the spoon-feeding methods and mediocre media -- adults' as well as children's -- I wish I could say we're left with pure simplicity and quality of the EFL type, but that isn't really the case. It's more of a mish-mosh, with some great bits and some dodgy ones, and not much apparent order. In that other thread, someone said that she evaluates her homeschooling by whether or not she'd be comfortable charging money to teach someone else's children the same way. Put that way, I'm surely a miserable failure. There isn't even anything to advertise, IYKWIM. Then there was another suggested line of thinking: "Would I be willing to pay to have someone else teach my children the way I'm doing it?" Looking at it that way, I realized that the answer was "yes," for the most part. Given the options for outsourcing that really exist around here, it seems fairly likely that I'd choose to have the children spend their days in someone else's minimally structured but culturally enriched home environment, rather than in any given school. In choosing a place, my criteria would have little to do with the other teacher-mother's ability to give lessons on particular subjects, or to use certain methods (even EFL-approved ones), and much to do with her personal qualities and the organization of the environment. These latter areas are what I'm still mainly working on here, and while progress is slow, it helps to know that I'm focusing my energies in a logical place. I haven't been reading much from EFL herself recently, but one of her articles led me to look up the meaning of "moral insanity." I'm not sure if she even uses this specific term, but it turns up quite often in 19th century writings, and the concept seemed to be implicit in her advice. A brief search revealed that present-day academics tend to find it confusing as I did. So, down another rabbit hole I went, until it made sense. This is the best article I've found, by the preacher Charles G. Finney: [ETA: Argh! For some reason, I can't paste text. Sorry. It's a sermon on BibleHub.com, titled "Moral Insanity," and shouldn't be hard to find with a search.] This all hit a bit close to home -- both in terms of my own failings, and in terms of the lack of fundamental Christian understanding in today's social thinking (even among many in the Church). So I took a break, and read a few more Kathleen Norris e-books. This seems to be working, once again. :) I especially liked "The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne," and would be interested in comparing KN's implicit homeschooling advice to EFL's. Mrs. Burgoyne seems to be more of a hands-on and "fun mom," but now I'm wondering if perhaps I've been misreading EFL (as I've tended to do with Montessori). Maybe EFL herself would have encouraged this sort of direction, if the mother had a bit of extra leisure, as Mrs. Burgoyne did -- and as we do today, with our mechanical servants. Or maybe she wouldn't have. My efforts do tend to bear more fruit when I add those sorts of things, in small measure, into the homeschool ecosystem.

I haven't read this book, but it might answer some of your questions: The Study of History in American Colleges and Universities, by Herbert Baxter Evans (1887) https://books.google.com/books?id=gJSdAAAAMAAJ

In the US, students would pick up some modern history from their elementary readers, from the study of oratory, and from the activities of the literary societies. In England, as I understand it, the traditional classical curriculum didn't include the formal study of oratory, or of any modern material. Instead of writing speeches, the students spent their time composing prose and verse in Latin and Greek. In those times and places where history was part of the curriculum, it was taught in the usual way for modern subjects, through lectures and textbooks. Father Donnelly did write a bit about the teaching of history. IIRC, for those below university level, he saw it as a matter of cultural literacy, rather than as an opportunity for academic rigor. For elementary students, he suggested that teachers could make the subject more appealing through the use of pictures and even movies.

In the traditional Jesuit prelection, "erudition" is the background information given by the teacher, in the context of reading a piece of literature. It's a necessary part of the lesson, but it should be just enough to help the students understand the text. "Excessive erudition" is basically what we would call "rabbit trails" -- I.e., using the text as a springboard to teach all sorts of interesting but non-essential content knowledge. It might help to look at Cardinal Newman's Idea of a University, in the chapter on elementary studies. The boy is being tested on a very brief passage from the Anabasis. In order to really understand it, even on a grammatical level, he has to have the geographical locations clear in his mind. Coming at this from another direction, there's also the description of the "Miles Standish" lesson in EFL's "Educating the Child at Home." Since this is for a young child, the parent might have to take quite a bit of time to explain the references, perhaps with illustrations. At the same time, though, we aren't supposed to go all FIAR with it. ;-) EFL thought that we should limit ourselves to answering the child's own questions. (This is a standard Montessori approach. I don't know if it's also a traditional one.)

Here's a recent article by Fr. Pavur on "The Historiography of Jesuit Pedagogy." Fr. Donnelly is mentioned. http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/jesuit-historiography-online/the-historiography-of-jesuit-pedagogy-COM_194129 His work also turns up in Fr. William J. McGucken's proposed plan for the "Vittorino School," a six-year elite secondary school that's described in The Catholic Way in Education (1934). This book isn't online, but you can find a brief description of the plan in the Jesuit Educational Quarterly. It was never put into practice, as far as I can tell. In a footnote to an article on Latin teaching in the Classical Bulletin, Ella Frances Lynch endorsed the "Vittorino School" model, calling it the ideal classical Catholic school for our time. It looks as though my references to Fr. Donnelly in the EFL threads are now officially on-topic. A question, then. Do you think that the classical humanistic approach to teaching writing is suitable for everyone, or just for the most academically capable? Fr. Donnelly seems to imply the former, especially in the teacher's guide to Model English, but I haven't found anyone, in any era, who explicitly recommended or used it on a mass scale. The regular 1940s Catholic school textbooks (e.g. VIE and the Kammer/Diebold high school series) did use some of the methods, but with much simpler contemporary models, rather than with classic literature. A while back, after much digging, I came up with a recent series of UK primary composition texts that use passages from literature, mainly children's books. They're designed for "differentiated instruction," though, with the weaker students focusing on mechanics and vocabulary, and only the advanced students doing some imitation exercises. Even in top US prep schools that still offer this sort of writing instruction (in English, and, more rarely, in classical languages), it's typically found only in one or two upper-year courses in the honors track, not in the standard curriculum. Not sure what to make of this. I'm confident that my children can benefit from the approach, and our limited experience supports this, but is it something we should be recommending to others?

Corbett's is a comprehensive classical rhetoric text. The 4th edition also includes the progymnasmata. The emphasis is on rules and terminology ("rhetoric as a science," as Fr. Donnelly would say), and the exercises often contain mature content drawn from legal cases. Some homeschooling parents have had success by studying the book themselves, then making up more suitable exercises for their children. Model English is a set of books for the elementary and secondary years, based on imitation ("writing as an art"). It's the same sort of thing as the progymnasmata, but the literary forms and models are drawn from English classics. Fr. Donnelly's belief -- shared by some of his fellow Jesuits -- was that this sort of study and exercise should be the core of the English course. It would be supplemented with other works of literature, which would be read for appreciation and cultural knowledge, but these wouldn't be subjected to literary analysis. The two approaches could be referred to as "intensive" and "extensive" reading. (There were older Jesuit terms for this, but they've slipped my mind.) With Model English, you'd still need an actual rhetoric text, if you chose to teach it later on. Fr. Donnelly wrote one called Persuasive Speech, but it's hard to find. There's also one online by Fr. Charles Coppens SJ, from the late 1800s, that looks promising.

Just up to feed the baby. Was thinking about the way discouragement and boredom seem to go together, and push me toward either inaction or distraction. I’ve come to the realization that what I need most right now is perseverance. EFL uses that word a lot, but does she ever say how we can strengthen ours? I mean, we can obviously strengthen it just by practicing it, but that seems circular, since perseverance itself is the virtue that allows us to keep on exercising a particular virtue. LOL. From the little I read earlier, St. Thomas considers perseverance to be a part of courage. This fits with the connection with discouragement. As it happens, I’ve been thinking about fear in an EFL context for the last few months. Mainly just wondering if our anxiety-promoting modern environment is making it harder for us all to follow such deeply relational approaches to teaching and family life (due to the incompatibility of fear and love). So maybe this all fits together. Hmm.

Thanks, LC. The problem isn't so much that the little ones interrupt us during lessons, but more that I get so bogged down that I forget to hold those lessons in the first place. I wasn't anywhere near this muddled at this stage with previous newborns. But it does seem to be improving now that baby is sleeping for longer stretches. Probably just my age making me less resilient to physical stress (that was the story of the whole pregnancy, pretty much). On the up side, I have much more peace of mind than in the past. It's required a whole lot of babies and toddlers to get me to feeling experienced and nearly always confident, but whatever, I'll take it. :-) After a few toddler incidents and much purloining of pencils, I've given up on keeping all of the necessities in sight, and dedicated a locking file drawer to hold my teaching supplies for our traditional style lessons. Now I just need to figure out what to put in it. I'm realizing that many of my current "essentials" really aren't, and would be better kept somewhere else. BTW, did you ever get a planning and record-keeping system figured out?