Paying Attention to Dead Books

I want to share this post from one of my sons with you.  I think it might encourage those who wonder whether a Charlotte Mason education in the high school years measures up.  Jack wrote this a few years ago while studying English at the University of Minnesota in the University Honors Program.  He gave me constant feedback while in college about how his relational CM education served him  – which was usually quite well.

“ The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way.” –Keanu Reaves

Despite being on the study of life itself, my college biology
textbooks are anything but what one might consider living books. They
are devoid of any kind of narrative: a joyless compendium of facts,
figures and informational graphics. Fortunately, I haven’t been required
to read many textbooks in college. The few that I have read provide
some interesting thoughts on trying to make subjects or methods that
appear incongruous with a typical Mason background become more
palatable.

First of all, I think that a relational education based around
Mason’s methods and using living books as the primary vehicle of
instruction prepared me extremely well for studying “dead” books. While I
did not find the method of presentation particularly appealing, I was
able to quickly learn the material in one reading. I believe that this
was due to the way a Mason education trains the student in the habit of
attention and in the practice of absorbing material in a single pass. In
addition, I think that I took the ideas-the foundational concepts and
big picture-away from the course, rather than temporarily being able to
recite the approximate dates of geological periods.

“First, we put the habit of Attention, because
the highest intellectual gifts depend for their value upon the measure
in which their owner has cultivated the habit of attention.”  –Charlotte
Mason, Vol. 1 Pg. 38

This aspect of a Mason education is invaluable in a college
environment, where hundreds of pages of reading per week are not
uncommon. While perhaps textbooks were not the intended subjects for
this habit, attention can still be applied to them. Through the
attention developed elsewhere and by taking in the information as a
question asked and answered within the mind, I could reap some of the
benefits of the Mason method in an entirely different context. Instead
of having to ceaselessly reread, memorize, work out flashcards, and make
lists of facts before midterms and finals, I could read the textbook
and have the information become my own.

The second valuable aspect I want to look at a little closer is the
taking away of ideas rather than facts. While facts are certainly tested
on and important to know for the class, I think we can agree that it is
the ideas that prove worth remembering. A Mason education focuses on
these ideas as the pegs on which facts are hung, rather than the
reverse.

“For the mind is capable of dealing with only one kind of food; it lives, grows and
is nourished upon ideas only; mere information is to it as a meal of
sawdust to the body; there are no organs for the assimilation of the one
more than of the other. ” –Charlotte Mason, Vol. 6 Pg. 105

The number of caribou required to sustain a given
population of wolves is a fact. The dynamic relationship between
predation, overgrazing, and disease in a closed population is an idea.
One of these things can be found with a quick perusal of a textbook or
even a Google search; the other requires digestion, understanding, and
immersion. While the fact might be interesting or necessary, it has
little meaning or use outside of the context of the idea.

A Mason education prepares the mind to look for the ideas behind a
story, parable, or example and take it in as one’s own. The facts can
then be hung on that idea to create a total picture. Memorizing the
facts does not allow one to grasp the greater idea: you lose the forest
for the trees. Memorizing the facts helps one pass the test;
understanding the ideas allows one to actually own the concepts and
apply the lessons found there.

“As a matter of fact, the difference between educated and
uneducated people is that the former know and love books; the latter may
have passed examinations.” –The Parent’s Review Vol. 12, no. 9, pg. 968

Can a Charlotte Mason education prepare someone for studying a
subject not taught with living books, and is it a viable preparation for
a typical, public, higher education? Can habits and principles learned
through the art of narration be useful in a lecture-and-textbook
context?

I was most excellently prepared for my studies of literature and
culture by my high school experience in a Mason homeschool. I don’t
think that a Mason education’s excellence in this area is a revelation
to anybody. I was surprised at how well the method equipped me for the
dead books and dry lectures, however. I didn’t need to pretend to
narrate to somebody or read extra living books on the subject. The
habits developed were enough on their own: Mason’s methods and
techniques are not a gimmick or mnemonic that requires continual
application in order to function. The methods used in higher education
today might not the same and might not be as effective, but reading a
textbook does not destroy the way a Mason-trained student takes in
information and develops a relationship with the material.