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In place of Hiawatha, would memorizing a Psalm (a long one like Psalm 119 or several shorter ones) be equally useful?

One would obviously lose the patriotic angle, and I'm guessing the geography/history teaching.

 

Just musing, if we need to add this to the Latin prayers I've planned.

 

(Or Psalm 119 in Latin :svengo: :lol: )

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To the PP who discussed her child's attachment to My Little Pony.  One way that we've managed to avoid the pop culture trap is by providing alternatives rather than just removing the offending item or reference.  For example, instead of Disney we do real fairy tales and I try to find the most lavishly illustrated editions that I can.  DH has spent a lot of time retelling them the myths everything from the Greeks to Beowful to tales of Daniel Boone.  This gives them a completely other frame of reference so that even when encountering the pop culture toys/stories they interact with them in ways that are familiar to them through the stories they hear.  Ladybug's ballet recital last year was to the tune of some Disney theme song (Frozen, maybe?) and although it was really annoying to me it didn't really seem to affect her negatively because at this point she knows the music of the Nutcracker so well that to her that is ballet music and when she turns on music to dance to at home, it's always classical even though we have some pop tunes around. But, that process of replacement takes time and a great deal of patience.  All that to say, over time as you give your child things of substance you may very well find that she prefers the meaty to the saccharine.

 

 

I wanted to chime in here to say that we have approached the pop culture question a little differently, but in line with this. As older parents, my honey and I are very out of the loop with pop culture anyway, but temperamentally, we weren't really in the loop when we were young. 

 

That means that Caboose Boy is exposed to very little of it at home.  At home, he is exposed to classical music and classical literature of every era.  We ready fairy tales and and myths of every culture along the way.  We don't have a television, but when we sit down to watch a movie on one of the laptops together, you can be sure that it's something that we consider worth out time and intellectual investment.

 

That said, we have a very dear friend, significantly younger than we are, who is very much involved with popular culture. She has a home educated son near Caboose Boy's age, and we rely on her to introduce CB to popular culture.  She recommends books, takes him to the movies, and shows him "important" television when he stays the night at her place.

 

CB's impression of pop culture is very moderate - just the way I would have hoped it would be. Some of it, he says, is fun.  But most of it is pretty shallow and meaningless fun. 

 

I'm glad that she is willing to handle that side of the boy's education...it would make me nuts.  :p

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ElizaG, thanks for clarifying and elaborating - sounds like a great plan. Let us know how it goes! 

 

In a way, it might be good that there's so much left unanswered -- as those who try this are all going to have to fill in the blanks for themselves, so it's unlikely to turn into a cult sort of thing. 

 

At least until we get access to those archives and use them to write very specific books describing the only pure and authentic EFL system, causing Hunter to go  :willy_nilly:

 

In place of Hiawatha, would memorizing a Psalm (a long one like Psalm 119 or several shorter ones) be equally useful?

One would obviously lose the patriotic angle, and I'm guessing the geography/history teaching.

 

Just musing, if we need to add this to the Latin prayers I've planned.

 

(Or Psalm 119 in Latin  :svengo:  :lol: )

I think a long Psalm could work. EFL has her specific recommendations (ETA: for Americans! I doubt she advocated for Hiawatha when she was speaking in Europe), but she also writes more generally in approval of the memorization of "long and difficult poems, whole chapters from the Bible, speeches of the world’s great orators, books of the Iliad and Odyssey—things that have literary content, fine pictures for the mind’s gallery, and lessons for life." If this approach works out for us, I could see doing some Homer in translation when the kids are older, since I don't think we'll get to any Greek in our home school. 

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Thanks for the link to the schedule. The other links aren't working, btw.

 

 

Sorry about that; they seem to be working for me.  Maybe it varies by country.   How frustrating.   (A double black hole?)   

 

In place of Hiawatha, would memorizing a Psalm (a long one like Psalm 119 or several shorter ones) be equally useful?

One would obviously lose the patriotic angle, and I'm guessing the geography/history teaching.

Psalm 119 (which is 118 in the Douay-Rheims) would be great for the length, and the Hebrew alphabet would be an interesting addition.   You could always use other, shorter poems for the sort of cultural knowledge and poetic meter you'd find in an epic.   

 

Depending on their age and temperament, though, I'm not sure if the content would be the best choice for keeping their attention.  For younger ones, I might go for something with more action.  Maybe one of the Gospels?   But I'm also just musing here.   :001_smile:

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I do not want to derail this thread, but these latter posts are related to another topic, prelection. A modified form of prelection has totally changed our homeschool for the better. If interested, here is a thread with more about it. The link is int the first post. I thought about just giving the link to the document, but so many people offered great ideas in the thread that I thought others might like to see the suggestions.

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/481435-rejuvenating-our-homeschool-teaching-batteriesfill-in-the-blank-helped-me-be-a-better-teacher/

 

Thank you, I downloaded the pdf you linked in the other thread and I'm excited to read it.

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Thanks for the link to the schedule. The other links aren't working, btw.

 

:laugh: at the black hole at 10yo comment. I read EFL's books with my 10yo in mind, because I was desperatey looking for what to do with her, so that didn't go so well. I think I got dd10's stuff figured out (although obviously nothing EFL worthy), so now I'm going to reread with my younger dds in mind.

 

Potatoes...I completely glossed over that. I wonder what marvels I will discovers next :D.

 

 

The links are from google books, which doesn't have the same content in every country.  I thought I'd put down the page numbers in the actual books so our friends outside the US can look up the passages themselves. The passage with the information about the poetry notebook starts on pg. 188 of Educating the Child at Home, and the passage about using composition notebooks starts on page 186 of Educating the Child at Home.

 

HTH!

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In a lovely coincidence, there's currently a four-part series on Ella Frances Lynch in a local paper in the Adirondacks, where she lived.  I'm not sure I agree with all of this author's take on her educational philosophy, but the historical information is very interesting.

 

http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2014/08/ella-frances-lynch-minervas-maven-of-early-education.html

http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2014/08/minervas-ella-lynch-the-importance-of-learning-to-learn.html

http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2014/08/minerva-educator-ella-lynch-goes-international.html

http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2014/08/minervas-ella-lynch-defender-of-parental-rights.html 

 

The last article mentions the court case in the 1930s.  

 

Three cheers for local historians!   :001_smile:  

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The links are from google books, which doesn't have the same content in every country.  I thought I'd put down the page numbers in the actual books so our friends outside the US can look up the passages themselves. The passage with the information about the poetry notebook starts on pg. 188 of Educating the Child at Home, and the passage about using composition notebooks starts on page 186 of Educating the Child at Home.

 

HTH!

 

Google book is often a problem for me :glare: , links to Archive.org like in other posts work well fortunately.

 

Thank you for taking the time to write down the page numbers!!

 

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Psalm 119 (which is 118 in the Douay-Rheims) would be great for the length, and the Hebrew alphabet would be an interesting addition.   You could always use other, shorter poems for the sort of cultural knowledge and poetic meter you'd find in an epic.   

 

Depending on their age and temperament, though, I'm not sure if the content would be the best choice for keeping their attention.  For younger ones, I might go for something with more action.  Maybe one of the Gospels?   But I'm also just musing here.   :001_smile:

 

Psalm 119 in Hebrew....nah, let's not do that :lol:.

 

I agree that for young kids something with a story line, something epic, would be the way to go. Still looking for something in Dutch....

 

In English though, one could use the Lays of Ancient Rome by Macauly. Which is probably not really classical-classical, but seems to have been a staple in Victorian times. (My dd10 will have a nervous break down even looking at it.)

 

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The Hebrew alphabet organises this psalm,

 

so you have Aleph (A}, ten verses, Beet (B} nine verses etc.

I'm not sure if all Catholic Dutch translations stick to that, but the 'NBG-vertaling' has still these letters in the psalm.

 

I just checked the Willibrord translation all Dutch Katholic churches use and you are absolutely right! Man, do I feel ignorant now :lol:.

 

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In a lovely coincidence, there's currently a four-part series on Ella Frances Lynch in a local paper in the Adirondacks, where she lived.  I'm not sure I agree with all of this author's take on her educational philosophy, but the historical information is very interesting.

 

http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2014/08/ella-frances-lynch-minervas-maven-of-early-education.html

http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2014/08/minervas-ella-lynch-the-importance-of-learning-to-learn.html

http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2014/08/minerva-educator-ella-lynch-goes-international.html

http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2014/08/minervas-ella-lynch-defender-of-parental-rights.html

 

The last article mentions the court case in the 1930s.  

 

Three cheers for local historians!   :001_smile:  

 

What interesting articles! Great find!

 

Now I really wish we had an archive with EFL materials, like we have from CM's PNEU.

 

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Here's a bit more historical context: 

 

The Child Prodigies Who Became 20th Century Celebrities -- Smithsonian Magazine

 

This article says that 1926 was "the height of the prodigy craze."  That's the year after Ella Frances Lynch wrote her last book, in which she gives her correspondent "Frances" advice about practical and character-building things to do with her bright preschooler.   (Unlike her previous two books, this one isn't in the public domain, but a lot of the material was reprinted in her newspaper columns in the 1930s.)   

 

The advice to "never say 'don't' to a child; never say 'must' to a child" -- which she quotes in Bookless Lessons, calling it a "soul-destroying principle" -- comes straight from Natural Education by Winifred Sackville Stoner, whose daughter was one of the children mentioned in the article.  

 

ETA:  Winifred Jr. passed the entrance exam for Stanford at age 9, and had many other intellectual achievements at a very early age, but had quite the series of train wrecks in her personal life.   "In a 1930 article she described her youth as being 'puffed to the skies and then pitch-forked.'"

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  • 8 months later...

I followed this thread when it was first started and I have FINALLY begun to read  Educating the Child at Home. I really love what EFL had to say and I'm wondering how things are going for those of you who were using her methods. Are you still going that route? How is it working? 

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I stopped trying to use EFL as the core. I switched up to going back to using Ray's, Strayer-Upton, McGuffey and Harvey as the core, with EFL as the supplement. I feel more steady.

 

Do you have thoughts as to what made it feel unsteady to you? I already love Ray's, but I'm thinking that ds could use some supplemental ideas to help solidify his understanding.... 

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EFL follows the German/Waldorf/Grube's method order of presentation, of presenting all 4 processes at the same time. Rays works on addition and subtraction before starting multiplication and division. If EFL was a little more fleshed out, I don't have a problem with the Grube's/Waldorf presentation, even though I do have a slight preference for Ray's order.

 

I prefer mastery to spiral curricula. Ray's is mastery. Also I prefer to work on addition facts and then multiplication facts. Strayer-Upton is more EFL friendly in some ways, but it is more spiral, so I decided to use Ray's as my core.

 

It's too hard to stuff Ray's into EFL. But it's easy to supplement Ray's with EFL. I didn't go for "best"; I went with "easy".

 

I also think the Grube method works better with 7 year olds, than 5 and 6 year olds. Germany/Waldorf starts school at 7 years old.

 

Recently I really hammered out my arithmetic scope and sequence. It's "lite" and "behind" but it's realistic in my opinion, and it's what I'm going to do. EFL explains some of what I was noticing about delaying algorithms and I now have complete confidence delaying them and have more ideas about what to do while delaying them.

 

I read the Eclectic manual for like the 50th time, and leveled out the readers and the arithmetic. I made myself a nice spreadsheet. I actually started this spread sheet last year, but before reading EFL, I just didn't have it hammered down, or have complete confidence in it. I'm getting to the point where no matter what math text I use, I know what order I want to present things.

 

I like the EMoM for math as follows

 

EMoM Year 1: grade 1

EMoM Year 2: grades 2 and 3 (Primary))

EMoM Year 3: grades 4 and 5 (Start Practical)

EMoM Year 4: grades 6 and 7 (Fractions and Decimals)

EMoM Year 5: grades 8 and 9/10 (Percents, Application, Business and Consumer maths) supplemented with Strayer-Upton Book 3 chapters on graphs, geometry, Equations, Ratios, Proportions, and Triangles.

 

"Lite"? "Behind"? Probably. I don't care. Life is just too short to be raising student to be soldiers in the Internationally Competitive wars. I'm not instruction soldiers. I'm instructing civilians.

 

And growing up the way I did, READING is what I push. I'm stuck in Reformation/Colonial style thinking that if a student can read the KJV Bible, then everything else will fall into place. I'm not a Christian, but I know what happens when a kid can read a KJV. I've seen the results in slums and beyond. They might hack their way through life with just those reading skills and not much else, but they make it. The KJV can probably be substituted with McGuffey or any book as long as they student is READING. I don't know, though. That's theory.

 

I'm kinda writing all over the place. Sorry.

 

EFL left a lasting impression, but I'm using EFL as the supplement, not the core. I needed a net to hold me up, that was more familiar and tested. All the holes in the net are getting filled in with EFL and bits from other vintage authors, but I need that net, and am willing to discard anything that doesn't fit into the net.

 

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I found Todd and Powell's How to Teach Reading helpful in using EFL nature study ideas to teach language arts. I first found this text last year, and didn't really use it until after I read EFL, and remembered it. I decided NOT to use the reading series, though, and am sticking with McGuffey's.

https://books.google.com/books?id=8x8BAAAAYAAJ&dq=powel+how+to+teach+reading&source=gbs_navlinks_s

 

And as I mentioned in the EFL arithmetic thread, I have used the KJV and hymn books instead of the suggested poetry, decades before reading about EFL.

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Another book that I read a couple years ago, that is one of my bedrocks is

 

Train Up a Child: Old Order Amish and Mennonite Schools.

https://books.google.com/books?id=1MSzboiBfrkC&dq=amish+education+children&source=gbs_navlinks_s

 

If any educational ideas stray too far from the Old Order methods, I tend to drop them after awhile, when I get overwhelmed and real life sets in. No matter what new thing I read and temporarily adopt, I find myself drifting back to the old order and rural vintage methods. Most of EFL complements my fall-back methods and methods I didn't even know were methods but were just part of everyday life.

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Mrs. A, did you see this thread when it happened?

 

I just started a re-read of Educating the Child at Home as I prepare for next year. In the months since this thread, we've done some work on chores and Hiawatha -- but also had a baby, so with varying consistency. Aaaaaannnnd I can hear said baby stirring, so I'll have to come back and finish my thoughts later. 

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Lost Cove, I did not see that thread when it happened. Thanks for pointing it out! Looking forward to taking the time to read it later today when everything settles down. (Also looking forward to your thoughts if you find the time later :) )

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Ok, here are some things we've done since this thread that were wholly or partially influenced by my reading of EFL (with the usual pinch of salt given the age of my children, etc, etc): 

 

We are gradually increasing the chore expectations for our kids. This is hard because I'm a pretty random housekeeper myself, so I'm working on my own self-discipline. We did a big round of decluttering during Advent to help with this. I'm trying to stop chasing them away when they want to tag along with me when I'm trying to get stuff done.

 

We gave our daughter a pile of dirt for her 4th birthday this fall (our clay soil is pretty lame to try to dig in) and our six-year-old, "bookish child," a whittling knife for Christmas. I love the ideas EFL gives for sense-training activities (estimating weights, making a sundial, etc, etc), but have utterly failed to actually set the kids up to do any of them, so I’m just continuing to try to maximize their time to muck about in nature and opportunities to do things that require careful use of the senses, refinement of movement, etc (chores are a part of this). In the future, I would really like to work more on sense-training and observation skills - as a part of that, next year I want to try and get us doing some more formal drawing with one of the vintage texts Hunter has linked to.

 

We are going through Hiawatha VERY slowly as I try to figure out what we are actually doing. I have managed to memorize it all as we go and present all our lessons orally. As I mentioned in the other thread, I'm trying to put together a scope and sequence for language arts that I can use to lesson plan next year. In the meantime, I've continued with ElizabethB's multi-syllable phonics for the well-taught phonics student, and I've pulled in some things from Hiawatha for copywork. Turns out, I really like Longfellow!

 
We down-sized our children's book collection - especially non-fiction - but probably could and will do more at some point. I want us to do more learning about trees from trees rather than books about trees, and I'm trying to take to heart what EFL says about children actually learning things very slowly: â€œFrom the particular knowledge gained little by little through the senses, the pupil arrives in due time at general notions, to which there is no safe and sound short-cut. A child must learn the same thing about a great many separate things before he can combine this knowledge into generalities. Contrary to the general impression, children learn slowly. You must repeat the simplest lessons day after day, always varying the point of view.â€
 
So, for "nature study" this spring, I asked the kids to describe every single flower that bloomed in our yard. We did this very casually, usually when my four-year-old brought me whatever she picked that day. We didn't try to identify any of the flowers we didn't recognize. After we had done this for a few weeks, I started using the "nomenclature" for the parts of the flower - I think maybe "sepal" has stuck.  :laugh:

 

We haven't done much formal math - not a huge priority here at the moment, as we are content with the stuff our oldest has picked up from real life and messing around with our Montessori bead cabinet. I'll probably start thinking more about that once I feel good about our language arts and sense-training plans.

 

I’ve thought a fair bit about the difference in things I personally have learned via greater mental effort and direct experience vs. things I’ve "learned" via the “elevator†metaphor that EFL uses to describe our educational system. As a result, I’m at much greater peace about washing out of grad school, haha, and I’m much more concerned about whether our homeschool choices will amount to such an elevator.

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Another book that I read a couple years ago, that is one of my bedrocks is

 

Train Up a Child: Old Order Amish and Mennonite Schools.

https://books.google.com/books?id=1MSzboiBfrkC&dq=amish+education+children&source=gbs_navlinks_s

 

If any educational ideas stray too far from the Old Order methods, I tend to drop them after awhile, when I get overwhelmed and real life sets in. No matter what new thing I read and temporarily adopt, I find myself drifting back to the old order and rural vintage methods. Most of EFL complements my fall-back methods and methods I didn't even know were methods but were just part of everyday life.

 

Hunter, I tried to get this book via ILL after you mentioned it a while back, but our library system is...not the greatest, and my loan never came through. But I just noticed the publisher has it on sale much cheaper than Amazon and bought it. Looking forward to reading it!

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Hunter, I tried to get this book via ILL after you mentioned it a while back, but our library system is...not the greatest, and my loan never came through. But I just noticed the publisher has it on sale much cheaper than Amazon and bought it. Looking forward to reading it!

 

Wow!!! Thanks for mentioning that the publisher is selling it so much cheaper! I have only used library copies.

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  • 3 months later...

We are a couple of weeks into our new school year here, so I thought I'd give an EFL update.

 

For the seven-year-old: We are still working on Hiawatha - interest was flagging (my fault - I think maybe I was moving a little too slowly - figuring out pacing has been quite a learning curve for me), so in addition to memorizing the lengthy passage about Hiawatha's childhood, I went back to the start of the poem and started reading it all aloud and discussing as we go. I am totally sold on EFL's poetry methods at this point and her very traditional "literature-based" method, in which the literature actually determines the curriculum, as opposed to most modern lit-based methods, which seem to swap "living books" in for a textbook, but generally preserve the same topical approach to the curriculum.

 

This year, we are adding in EFL-style math. We're using black beans, not pebbles, although in a few more weeks when the acorns start falling from the giant oaks in our backyard, I'm going to have the kids collect a basket for our math work. When we started (with counting by twos), my son wanted to rush ahead and keep working the first couple of days because it felt so easy, but I pulled out some of EFL's favorite proverbs about heaven not being reached in a single bound and the like and explained that each step must be absolutely solid before we move on to the next because it is like we are building a house and a poor foundation will make for an unstable building. He totally bought it and even solemnly repeated my (short, I swear) lecture in response to something his father said on a different topic at the dinner table that night. I know talking to children like this comes naturally to some moms, but not me, so I'm pretty pleased with my own progress on this front.

 

I just got I Speak Latin in the mail this week and can't wait to add that in.

 

The next piece for me to figure out for this child is handwriting. I think I'm just going to order us some fountain pens and start with the exercises EFL suggests.

 

For the almost-five-year-old: I'm doing some language lessons with her that are a kind of mash-up of Montessori and EFL methods. She is interested, but does not have the attention span for this that my oldest did at her age, which is fine. We're memorizing Mother Goose rhymes and sometimes she chooses to listen in on Hiawatha.

 

All of the above takes up about 30-40 minutes of our day, I'd say. We also have morning devotions for everyone and a short read aloud time in the afternoon. We do casual observation lessons everyday, usually when we are outside to hang up the laundry in the morning. I've started reading more about the ecology and natural history of our region (I didn't grow up here - actually, I grew up in a big city so my general nature knowledge is pretty pathetic, too) to be a better guide. I still haven't but would still like to work in some of the sense-training activities EFL suggests.

 

Something that is working really well for me is that the two oldest alternate being the "helper of the day" (maybe we could come up with a better title for this, haha). The children had successfully mastered a few regular, daily chores (unloading the dishwasher, making beds, putting away laundry), but we then we plateaued. I was really getting frustrated trying to improve my own housekeeping skills simultaneously with training everyone in All The Chores and making it all work together in some kind of system. Now, the only system is my own housekeeping routine which I am slowly getting better at sticking to. One child is assigned to be my assistant for each day, and however well I execute it that day, that child gets that amount of training. They still are resistant to the work some times (but so I am some days), but they are also realizing that it's their chance to get some one-on-one time with mom, so they are mostly willing to help and occasionally even eager. My hope is that by the time the toddler is ready to get his turn as helper, the oldest will have enough experience to start working on more assigned chores independently.

 

All in all, I'm very happy with how things are going these days. EFL's methods are helping me to grow as a "mother-teacher" in so many ways I knew I wanted to but had no idea how to get started on.

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Thanks for the update, LostCove.  I got a little teary-eyed, thinking about how much easier things might have been if we'd started this a few years ago -- but I'm over that now.    :001_smile:

 

We still have some things left to add, but I hope to be on the full schedule next Monday.   It involves about 2 hours of focused teaching time, and looks crazy on paper, but is actually fairly mellow (other than discipline issues with a couple of children, which I'd have to be dealing with anyway).   Will try to report back in about a week. 

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Thanks for the update, LostCove.  I got a little teary-eyed, thinking about how much easier things might have been if we'd started this a few years ago -- but I'm over that now.    :001_smile:

 

Ha, well, I feel the same way! I guess we always wish we knew then what we know now, even when I also know now that I probably wouldn't have been ready for it then anyway.  :001_smile:

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Ha, well, I feel the same way! I guess we always wish we knew then what we know now, even when I also know now that I probably wouldn't have been ready for it then anyway.  :001_smile:

What's interesting is that looking at my old posts (here and other places), I was searching for this sort of education all along, but couldn't find it.  Now that I've got more of an inside view, I'm constantly seeing references to it in old books -- "preparing a schedule of recitations," "Johnny wasn't able to get his lesson," etc.   And those pictures of children sitting on benches around the walls, studying their books, while one child recites, are looking very familiar.  

 

So it was buried in plain sight.  Like so much stuff around my house!   :laugh:

 

Do you mind if I post here about the similarities between EFL and Ivan Illich, or would you rather I started another thread?

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Argh, I spent quite a while on what seemed to me to be a coherent explanation, and it disappeared into the void.  Oh well. 

 

Will just post these links, and come back to comment as time permits.  :001_smile:

 

 

The Prophet of Conviviality (article about his thinking, written shortly after his death in 2002) 

 

The Educational Enterprise in Light of the Gospel (transcript of lecture given in Chicago, Nov. 13, 1988)

 

Ivan Illich with Jerry Brown (transcript of radio interview, March 22, 1996)

 

In Search of Ivan Illich (more of a biographical article)

 

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So I started by noticing the similarities in their respect for traditional ways of learning, and their emphasis on direct interaction (especially eye contact).   Then it occurred to me that there's a similar overall pattern:

 

- raised in a very literate family with a connection to the land, relatively privileged, but aware of historical oppression

- trained in the conventional way for a career of service (teaching/priesthood)

- went to work with a marginal population of non-English speakers, authorities didn't know what to do with this group (both were in NY state, as it happens)

- set aside standard methods and tried to respond to needs they observed, which led to success, but the authorities weren't happy with their experiments

- left the institutional setting, and started a school to teach adults how to work with others on a local level (family/community)

 

At this point, they diverge.  EFL limited her criticism to issues related to schools and child-rearing, and always gave suggestions that were feasible, even if they were very different from the current norm.   Illich ended up taking on just about everything -- medicine, transportation, the bureaucracy of the Church -- and didn't usually have an alternative to offer.  :001_rolleyes:  But I think he's right on a lot of points, and his work is helping me to understand hers. 

 

It's also worth noting that they both valued classical learning, as well as the study of multiple modern languages -- though they were against imposing a specific "liberal arts" curriculum on children in general, and didn't think of formal schooling as a requirement for being an intelligent and generally worthwhile person.

 

And as a final point, for situations in which specific instruction is appropriate, Illich recommends old-time intensive rote teaching, very much like EFL's.  From Deschooling Society:

 

"But the fact that a great deal of learning even now seems to happen casually and as a by-product of some other activity defined as work or leisure does not mean that planned learning does not benefit from planned instruction and that both do not stand in need of improvement. The strongly motivated student who is faced with the task of acquiring a new and complex skill may benefit greatly from the discipline now associated with the old-fashioned schoolmaster who taught reading, Hebrew, catechism, or multiplication by rote. School has now made this kind of drill teaching rare and disreputable, yet there are many skills which a motivated student with normal aptitude can master in a matter of a few months if taught in this traditional way."

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It turns out that our older children are still on a partial schedule this week, due to illness.  I'm going to take the time to firm things up a bit more with the younger ones.

 

We stopped doing any sort of preschool phonics a few years ago, and now have a young 6 year old who's just starting to learn to read.   I have to admit, it's a bit anxiety-producing, since the older ones took off on their own by age 5 and were reading chapter books by this point.   But people keep mentioning how observant and hard-working he is, so maybe he'll turn out to be a data point in favor of "better late than early."   In any case, I've decided to keep using CHC's Little Stories for Little Folks, and the handwriting practice books that go with it, which we started last year.  I'll add EFL's suggestions about the practice with letter tiles, and have him copy the words he's made into the blanks on the backs of the readers.   (CHC uses a "word family" approach that's similar to her recommendations, but they emphasize the act of reading.  EFL puts the emphasis on spelling in the beginning, as Montessori did.)   We'll go on to the written language work with "Hiawatha" some time later. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Sorry for the deletions. I decided not to post about what my older ones are doing, since they haven't been taught with anything resembling EFL's approach until recently, and even now I'm kind of making it up as I go along! But in general, we're all doing okay.

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  • 3 months later...

Still chugging along here. For the older ones, I've pretty much settled on LOF for math, the old spiral bound LLATL for English, and the basic text + audio Artes Latinae for Latin. We're also getting into a routine with physical activities, music, and hobbies (the latter being the closest we're likely to get to a "productive homestead" in our current circumstances).

 

On the decluttering front, I'm finally psychologically ready to toss out all workbooks aimed at the younger set, and the vast majority of those aimed at the older ones. Have also done a Robinson and cut out all refined foods and sugar - they weren't really a big part of our diet, but it seems to be making a difference anyway.

 

Next step will be to renew my efforts at establishing a more truly EFL-ish routine for the littlest ones, including the soon-to-be-toddler (ack! how did that happen??? :-) ).

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Just wanted to add that I gave up on combining children in LLATL, so we have multiple books going at once. The eldest is fully independent with the Green book. The others still need more direct teaching, which works out well, as it gives me the chance to substitute other literary selections as desired.

 

The old LLATL has a bit of the same feel as Fred, in that each lesson only has a few exercises, but the answers have to be written out in full and tend to require some real thinking. For my children, this seems to have more value than a whole column of fill-in-the-blanks drill, which can generally be done by pattern recognition.

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ElizaG, thanks for the update. I've been meaning to post one myself, AND just this very morning I received a scan of the Fr. Donnelly teacher's guide, so I will try to post that soon.

 

How do you see Fred matching up with EFL-style arithmetic? Would you do the early Fred books concurrently with that or wait and start Fred later? I'm intrigued that you've cut out sugar. We're planning on doing an elimination diet for Lent for various reasons, and I'm pretty curious to see what, if any, effects we see.

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Well, take this with a big grain of salt, because I only have one who's the right age for EFL's arithmetic, and that child started doing very light workbook math at age 5 or so. (This was mostly for diagnostic purposes, as said child was at risk for learning disabilities, and we wanted to get an idea of how significant those issues would be.). So it will be a couple more years before I can hope to have a proper experimental subject. 😉

 

We do have the Fred elementary books, but they aren't part of the author's original plan, and thus aren't at all essential. I think they'd do fine going straight into Fractions at around age 10 or 11, after doing EFL's suggested activities.

 

That said, my children like the elementary books, and I think they probably have some value. If you wanted to use them, my inclination would be either to leave them out for free reading, or to have each child do the whole set (maybe doing the first few books with them) just before starting the middle school books. The earlier volumes will probably only take a week or two each, if that, so there's no reason for concern about being "behind." It's not unusual for an older child with consistent work habits to get through all of the books up to Mineshaft - or even Decimals - in less than a year.

 

Looking forward to seeing the Fr. Donnelly booklet! Thanks for getting hold of it. 🙂

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  • 2 weeks later...

I was just re-reading the famous Sayers essay, and noticed how similar her underlying goals were to EFL's. The last few sentences could have been written by either one of them.

 

BUT...

 

There are so many differences in how they try to get there, it's as if they're coming from different planets!

 

First of all, Sayers has nothing to say about the education of children from infancy through age 8. They're EFL's main subject, but for DLS, they might as well not have existed.

 

Nor does she write about the development of character and work habits, at any age.

 

Similarly, there is nothing about religious education, whether formal or informal.

 

For 9-15 year olds, she believes that content is of negligible importance. She compares the child's development of skills to the craftsman learning to use a tool by doodling on "any old material."

 

She does think they should memorize classic literature - a rare point of agreement with EFL - but she's against the traditional use of literature to teach English or foreign languages. (I guess those are to be taught with "any old" passages?)

 

The thing I'm noticing about DLS is that, for all her talk about integration, she does a great deal of dividing up. Age ranges are parceled out, skills are split up and taught separately from content, literature is off on its own, and academic instruction is (or at least can be) kept apart from character development.

 

She imagined her plan to be more efficient than what schools were doing in the 1940s, and perhaps it was. But EFL's plan seems a great deal more efficient than hers, and also far more organic and respectful of the God-given potential of children. Not surprising that those would go together, I guess. But - speaking for myself - I've spent so much of my life buying in to false technological notions of "efficiency," that it's still sometimes hard to recognize and trust in the real thing.

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I've been doing a lot of reading of EFL the past few days.

 

I made the choice not to let her run the curriculum and let some textbooks and books that are in print be the spine, but reading EFL again has been very interesting.

 

I don't have a printer, and I know some others also do not. And some of this stuff is best studied printed out and scribbled on.

 

I decided to let Ruth Beechick's 3R's be THE spine, for better and for worse, mainly because it is in print. There are pros and cons to all these methods.

 

Some of those Longfellow poems have dead children. An unsuspecting mom reading through Longfellow is going to have some kids with nightmares. Modern American children are not as desensitized to death as Longfellow is supposing. I got some nice Longfellow books from my library and on the way home a woman saw me carrying the books and regaled me with heartwarming stories from her childhood of her grandmother reading Longfellow to her. But the reality was that I was jolted time and again as I was reading these poems.

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Some of those Longfellow poems have dead children. An unsuspecting mom reading through Longfellow is going to have some kids with nightmares. Modern American children are not as desensitized to death as Longfellow is supposing.

That goes for a lot of literature that was standard in school readers in the early 20th century.  Eugene Field's "Little Boy Blue" comes to mind.   Or that "We Are Seven" poem.  It just goes along with using classics.  

 

Of course, with EFL's system, the mother is supposed to read the poems herself, and offer them to the child when they seem appropriate.  Which could be "never," I suppose, if something goes against the family's value system.   EFL's lists of books and poems are meant as suggestions, not a ready-made curriculum schedule.

 

Just as a general note - from what I've seen, old Catholic school readers and children's books (before about 1920) had quite a few scenes of deaths of children, perhaps more than Protestant books.   I'm no longer bothered by reading these to my children, especially once they've reached school age.  It's not that we're "desensitized;" these passages do affect us deeply.  It's more that we've internalized the traditional Christian perspective regarding death.   I wasn't raised this way -- I had to come to this understanding as an adult -- but I'm glad that my children are learning it from the beginning, as past generations did.   :001_smile:

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I totally get what you are saying. It mostly came down to bulk and expense. There were too many Longfellow poems I wanted to skip with beginners, so I didn't want to invest money and storage for a book I wasn't going to use more of. And I don't want to buy or own a computer to print out just a few pages.

 

I took the easy way out.

 

There are pros and cons to Beechick, CM, EFL, Waldorf, etc. I wanted to just go easy, not grand. For now. This year. Easy is where I'm at. One too many dead kids last night, and I packed up Longfellow to bring back to the library and took him off my Amazon wishlist.

 

We have access to so much good stuff, it is hard to choose our SPINE. I'm so thankful to be able to read about all the methods and absorb the GENERAL ideas. The poetry memorization ideas can be applied to everything from Hymns to Rap music to the Communist Manifesto. But I brought Mr. Longfellow back for now.

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And EFL suggested the child/student have their own copy of Longfellow? I don't disagree in general or in theory. Not at all. I'm just not buying copies of Longfellow this year for any of MY beginners this year.

I thought she recommended having one copy, for the family library.  Some of the families she worked with had nine or ten children.  That would be a lot of books!   :laugh:

 

I'm not clear on your current media situation.   I thought you were using a tablet, and were looking for public domain e-books or plain texts (which would allow you to copy/paste selections as needed).  But now it sounds as if you want to have hard copies that can be marked up, but don't want to print anything.   So all of your literature selections have to be currently in print, in a compact, inexpensive format.  With no potentially nightmare-inducing scenes included.

 

Am I getting this right?

 

That's a much taller order, especially for poetry.  There are some short, inexpensive anthologies that would work well with DIY language arts, but unless it's a childrens book, it's unlikely that all the selections are going to be tame.    

 

I'm also not sure what you mean about using The Three R's as a spine.  Does RB have a book list?  The only one I can remember her recommending specifically is the Bible.  Which has some scenes that are every bit as disturbing as "The Wreck of the Hesperus."  :huh:

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All my literature in print? No! Longfellow was suggested to be used as a reader for the child, and if only one book, to be the book.

 

The Bible is disturbing. Very disturbing. But page for page, more of it is useful, to ME than any volume of Longfellow I am aware of, and I looked at a lot of them.

 

EFL books are more than booklists. Yes? One of the books is called Bookless Lessons? But EFL's main book for children is Longfellow, yes?

 

Beechick teaches methods that work for Bible, and that is her main book. CM is known for HONS and Plutarch and Shakespeare. Waldorf is known for Grimms and Aesop, and myths. But many of the methods of each can be applied to the pet books of the others.

 

I was just sharing my struggles and thoughts and choices this week, as I explore my way through reading these authors. I didn't mean to make you feel anything negative, but I think maybe I have.

 

I've really enjoyed reading about EFL and like talking about her, but maybe I better not, here, now. I'm sorry. I was talking as freely about EFL as I do Waldorf and others.

 

No, actually :lol: I talk even more freely about Waldorf. :D I really prefer not to use their fairies-are-real and anthroposophy stuff. And the myth books are just too big and bulky for me. The beeswax crayons melt all over our hands.

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I don't think you're being negative in your approach to her ideas.  Just more literal than I'd be, and maybe even a bit reductionistic.   (The shadow side of minimalism!  ;)) 

 

That said, it's also true that most of her advice wasn't intended for tutoring older learners, and I can see how it might require too many adjustments to make it useful in your situation. 

 

All my literature in print? No! Longfellow was suggested to be used as a reader for the child, and if only one book, to be the book.

I didn't think she was seriously suggesting using just one book.  It seemed more like a hypothetical scenario, by way of expressing the richness of his work.  And again, this was supposed to be adequate for children "until age 10" -- not for teenagers or adults.   My sense is that the choice of literature for a given student will vary as much with maturity and changing tastes, as with their academic level. 

 

EFL books are more than booklists. Yes? One of the books is called Bookless Lessons? But EFL's main book for children is Longfellow, yes?

 

It's only the main book for the first couple of years, around age 5 or 6.  She lists a pretty wide range of works after that (and again, those are only suggestions).  She does suggest dipping back into Hiawatha now and then, and recommends several other poems, but it's not the main text [ETA: by which I mean that there isn't one; no single author or book dominates the list at this stage].  And again, this is for children starting with her method from the early years, and wouldn't necessarily transfer to older beginners.  

 

I would actually be very interested in discussing what she's written about remediation.  Among other reasons, it might provide ideas to help with some areas where we seem to be a bit stuck.  :001_rolleyes:

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Eliza, I am interested in educational theory far past my most typical tutoring student at the present time. What I sometimes do, in this phase of my life, doesn't define MY interests and ALL the people I interact with. And what I do with adult beginners needs to fit into context of my greater belief system. And my adult students constantly want to talk about educational theory and how to learn with materials that they can use to teach their children/nieces/nephews.

 

And then I have the students that still play with toys. I kid you not that I have one that plays cash register, walks around with toy guns stuck in the back of her belt, and has toy boats in her bathtub. And I forget the name of of that Disney tow truck character and the people in Frozen; she gets upset when I forget and get confused, but I'm just not a big Disney fan.

 

When possible, I love it when every book I plan to use comes in ebook, audio, inexpensive paperback, and a beautiful hardcover. Obviously that is not always possible. But there are lot of great books that do come in all those formats.

 

Teacher manuals usually need to be printed out or purchased in hardcopy to be used effectively. So do 3R books. Content is fine in ebook, but works in ebook better when it is a narrative.

 

I don't have a hardcopy of EFL right now, to underline, mark up and stick tabs in. I evaluted my different options that would support the McGuffey readers, and it was almost neck and neck, but Beechick won over EFL to meet my current goals for a general curriculum, to then tweak to whatever I'm trying to deal with in the moment. Buying one thin cheap paperback was preferable to trying to study several pdfs or buying a printer.

 

Whether I'm talking about health, home decorating, or curriculum, before dealing with a problem or special case, I like to deal with the big picture. I have found it imperative before dealing with remediation, to first know what I think is best in general. And some of my students are going to grill me on that, and expect an answer.

 

Reductionist, over-literal, OCD, and probably a whole lot more--I'm not arguing or defending about that. But I'm at where I am at. When I get that knot in my stomach, because I'm trying to do "better" without the tools or interest to do "better", I need to stop and relook at my options.

 

I love what I have learned from Waldorf, EFL, CM, Montessori, The old-order Amish, Beechick, and Blumenfeld. I don't think one is superior to any of the others. I think some just work better for different people and in different environments.

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