Today is our 35th wedding anniversary. It's also our little grandson Francis' birthday, and Sukie's nameday, so it's a good one. We will probably celebrate tomorrow, as we are just funny that way and don't plan our anniversary very well. We're happy, though!
Right about now I have the sense that many of my dear readers are possibly flipping out ever so slightly about a) homeschooling or b) not homeschooling and thus c) putting together good curriculum and/or d) warding off bad curriculum.
The internet is a big place. You will find every possible approach to every possible issue you might have. Who am I to tell you what to do?
Still… I think I will! In the spirit of talking it over at the kitchen table…
You need an organizing principle. You need a tool for discernment. That tool is tradition — the democracy of the dead, as Chesterton calls it, in a book that I need to put in the Library Project — Orthodoxy.
That is why you choose good books for your children — living books, books that have stood the test of time. Which is another way of saying that the dead have voted on them and found them worthy.
Now, some dead people are smarter than others, just like living people. It's worth noticing, when you are in mid-curriculum-flippage (made worse by all that's out here on the internet, a big place, as I've mentioned), who the smart people are and how they get educated — especially once we realize that no one actually knows how children learn.
So there's another analytical tool for you: Observing the different ways smart people learn. And its corollary, observing the ways that smart people teach other smart people.
Which brings me to today's book for our Library Project.
Title: How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
Authors: Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren
File Under: Foundational; Education
Age Group: High school and older
If your child does go to school and you are paying attention, you may find that they inflict on him from the start a sort of meta-text or other type of tutorial, the putative object of which is to teach him to how to approach books — especially textbooks.
These attempts are managerial in nature: that is to say, they strive to break down a difficult project into many small steps.
They aim at digestibility, but with the sad result of many such projects: rendering something otherwise tasty, unpalatable. Since most of education has already devolved to that state of tastelessness, the attempt becomes akin to elaborately interpreting the menu of a fast-food joint.
These “how-to” lessons are redundant anyway to an already desiccated textbook that presents as its first lesson instructions for use (“fundamental concepts will be highlighted in bold, red type; each chapter contains a review; read headings first” etc). Thus, a lot of a student's time is taken up with process.
He vaguely expects to grapple with unknowns that may turn out to be ions or elephants charging over the Alps. Instead he finds he's in a procedural maze within a maze, devised by those faceless, burdensome powers, all purporting to make things clearer.
In his confusion, he may not recognize the process for what it is, and thus he will be in the dark about what he doesn't know. He better not betray his confusion, lest a well meaning adult assign him a course on how to navigate the how-tos.
It's not that we don't need a guide.
We just need a good guide.
So I recommend that you read How to Read a Book. Adler and Van Doren are great intellects*, and frankly, too much of what passes for educational theory today is written by hacks. Instead of grinding the whole enterprise of learning into mush, thereby betraying it utterly, this book encourages the student to be unafraid of facing something greater than himself, even if he is alone.
I will let you read about the contents of the book here. Note the reading list. Don't be afraid of it. Just let it challenge you not to waste your time with curricula that don't prepare a child to engage with what is best and highest in our tradition.
I suggest you read this book yourself if your kids are little. I suggest you get as many copies as you need and read it together if your kids are old enough to have awareness that they are indeed grappling with a text.
If we could sit at the kitchen-table and discuss these things and more, wouldn't that be great? That's what I will continue to do in the coming weeks, chatting about educating our children, in school or out.
What is the Like Mother, Like Daughter Library Project?
________
*Charles Van Doren was the brilliant professor who committed the fraud of cheating on a TV quiz show in the late 50s, demonstrating that intellect alone doesn't provide fortitude in moral matters.
elizabethe says
Great book recommendation.
I read this book before I went to graduate school on the recommendation of one of the professors there as a good way to prepare for the kind of thing you do with books in grad school. I was amused to discover that it was how I already read books. i was a vociferous reader who was unafraid to read anything and who read a lot of good literature (and a lot of junk too, don’t get me wrong) just by dint of my parents always having it laying around the house. I also never really paid attention to what I was taught in high school beyond getting through tests. I don’t consider myself to be particularly brilliant, so I tend to think what they describe is actually a quite natural process that you can’t help but engage in if you just read a lot and have a basic understanding of the history timeline (most of which I got from my father who was always talking about history in casual conversation) so are able to place the books you read in some kind of basic relationship with each other.
Kate says
At first glance, I thought that was a photo of one of your daughter’s weddings, but when I saw the mustache on the groom, I realized it must be a different generation. Congratulations! May you have many more healthy and happy years together enjoying your children’s children.
We’re funny with celebrations too. I told people at mass this weekend when they found out it was my husband’s 50th birthday and I hadn’t planned anything big, that we’re into low-key celebration at our house (I did take him out for breakfast and bought him an expensive German beer later. Go me!)
Patty says
I was wondering – who is that guy with Deirdre?
Took me a minute. Haha
Melissa Diskin says
Me too. 🙂
Also: that is one rockin’ mustache!
corina says
Congratulations for everything you celebrate today! I’m so glad you are going to write about education in the coming weeks, I have discovered it’s an excellent way to keep my mind busy in this third trimester of pregnancy (although I should be probably nesting in a more practical way). I’ve never heard of this book, added it already to my Amazon list.
Kathia says
YAY!!! I need some “how to foster good learning” chat.
Mrs. B. says
Congratulations! I second the comment about mistaking you for Deirdre – like mother, like daughter indeed! Did she use your veil perhaps? Or was it Rosie who did? Your girls all had beautiful weddings!
This may be the final nudge I need to read Adler’s book, since both my husband and I have had it in mind for a long time: judging from the cover (a very feminine thing to do, if you ask me!), it must be quite good! When I read on the cover image “Completely revised and updated” my conservative soul balked – but then I saw he was involved in the revision, so whew, no worries this time 🙂
And I AM flipping out about homeschooling… not the what, but the how… as in, oh my, now there’s a baby in the mix!! I’ll go through your archive and look for gold nuggets 🙂
dhoff says
Congratulations! May you all be blessed with continued joy!
Kimberlee says
Congratulations! May the good Lord grant you many more happy years together!
(ps everyone here thinks the mustache is so fabulous! straight out of another century)
Kiera says
Congratulations, God’s blessing and many happy returns!
Leila, today’s recommendation isn’t available at my local library. Several other titles by the author are, however. Would you recommend any of Adler’s other works as helpful, too?
Thank you!
Hafsa says
Admittedly I was very unnerved by the book list suggestions but I have to start somewhere right? Luckily the book is sitting on one of our bookshelves and I have plenty of time to dig into it since my oldest kids are only four. Happ anniversary to you and wow your daughters looks so much like you in that wedding photo.
tracy says
Quiz Show is one of my favorite movies. When I came across this books years ago I just had to check up on that name, Charles Van Doren. Sure enough. This book has been on my shelf for years, unread, but I will get to it eventually. In the meantime I’m trusting in the MODG literature selections. Happy Anniversary!
Leila says
Tracy, How to Read a Book isn’t so much about selection as what the title says — how to approach a book you find difficult.
I highly recommend that you take a peek 🙂 So helpful for oneself and one’s student. A WAY of thinking about books — a way of getting the most out of a book.
Mama Rachael says
Yes! I love that book. I first read it back in the 90s, either late high school or early college. It helped me *so* much, since all I’d ever learned was ‘elementary reading’, which is all anyone learns these days if they don’t take it upon themselves to learn the higher levels of reading.
SW Bauer’s “The Well Educated Mind: the guide to the classical education you never had” presents much of the same material, with a slightly different format/organization. Having read both, perhaps it is a generational thing (?) Bauer’s book was much less intimidating. Yeah, even though its the same stuff! She, Bauer, doesn’t talk nearly as much about ‘synthesis’ as Adler and Van Doren do, but that’s where I got bogged down when reading Adler and Van Doren’s book.
Congratulations! May the Lord bless you with many more years together!
Theresa Anne Korte says
The last few weeks I have been reading Bauer’s The Well Educated Mind and am contemplating reading through the books listed in the autobiography section using the guidelines in the book. I have asked a friend if she would be interested in undertaking this together. Has anyone used this book in that way and if so do you have any suggestions for how to proceed? Reading the beginning of this book helped me to see that I do have the intelligence to read these books I just need to have some asssistance and be willing to stretch myself.
Tia says
congrats on the wedding anniversary, and what a beautiful wedding photo! Look at that great ’70s mustache :).
Kathy@9peas says
So good to finally be catching up on all the great LMLD I missed while my computer was being difficult. We JUST started reading Orthodoxy out loud with our oldest boys, and what great discussion it launches.
elizabethanne says
I love this post. I absolutely fall into that camp of “yes yes awe and wonder, but how do we measure their comprehension?!” It is tough to walk away from my few years of public school teaching as we begin our home school journey. A good friend suggested that I try the Five in a Row curriculum, and we have had such fun with it. It has helped type-A little me chill out and still feel some sense of direction and assurance that someone else “out there” approves of these books, etc. It is sort of a paradox but I think that’s where I live much of the time. The FIAR method translates to any good living book, so at some point I assume we’ll choose our own books but keep the trend going of making connections between what we’re reading and what we make or paint or cook or research, etc.
carrie says
very intriguing post – the link for “why doing so is a good thing” is dead, could you renew it, or tell me what video series it was pointing to? thanks!
Leila says
I don’t know now which one it was. I took out the paragraph because it refers to the site for Mortimer Adler’s videos, and I don’t see the relevant links there. They must have changed the site around since then.