Cultivating a Scientific Habit of Mind

Flannel Flowers (Actinotus helianthi) 

Charlotte Mason's Ourselves, which is Volume 4 of her Original Homeschooling Series, is fast becoming one of my favourites in the series, although I tend to say that every time I read one of her books. I've been reading Ourselves aloud over the last four and a half years and have enjoyed sharing her wisdom with my children whilst gleaning some for myself at the same time.

One of her ideas that impressed me recently was her connection between the inability to form a scientific habit of mind, and the habit of generalisation in our speech.
There are behaviours or attitudes in my children, and in myself also, that I don't automatically connect to other areas of life or learning. Some aspects of learning seem to be dependent on individual ability or innate talent and the tendency is to conclude that a lack in certain areas stems from the fact that there is no natural affinity for them. Charlotte Mason turns that idea on its head.

So what does it mean to generalise?

The habit of generalising, of stating something about a whole class of persons or things which we have noticed in only one or two cases, is one to be carefully guarded against...'All the cups are cracked,' when one is so...'Oh, no, I can't bear Rossetti's pictures': the critic has seen but one. 'I love Schumann's songs': again, the critic has heard one.

Charlotte Mason called it 'loose' talk, and observed that it disables us in accurate observation:

Let us stop generalisations of this kind before they escape our lips. They are not truthful, because they give the idea of a wider knowledge or experience than we possess; and by the indulgence of this manner of loose statement, we incapacitate ourselves for the scientific habit of mind - accurate observation and exact record.

At times I've talked to a couple of my children about not embellishing their nature or science notebooks with art work, or using unrealistic colours - a pink butterfly when the one they'd seen was orange and black etc. My aim is not to stifle their creativity but to teach them to accurately observe and record what they are, in fact, seeing. The embellishments were a sort of generalisation; a space filler. By drawing something they are not actually observing, in a notebook designed to depict what they have observed, allows the habit of inattention or 'looseness' to develop.

                                                                                            

With the increase of the habit of observation comes an increase of the power of observation, that is, in fact, the power of accurate observation. More is seen, and the ability to discriminate between similar objects rapidly develops. Use of the power increases the power, even as the muscles of the body are developed by their frequent employment.

The Value of Scientific Training

 

 

Commonplacing in the Nature Notebook

On Monday morning I went for an early morning walk and as I walked up the stone stairway through the bush I heard a butcher-bird singing up in a tree. I looked up to the sound and could see him clearly, his head tipped up, singing and welcoming a new day.

Today I was reading a chapter from 'I Find Australia' by William Hatfield, an Englishman travelling and working in the outback of Queensland just prior to World War 1. He, too, saw and heard the butcher-birds in the early morning and said that they, '...gave out their clear sweet call, on surely the most beautiful notes in the range of music.'

November and the Jacarandas are flowering and magnificent... 

The softest mauve carpet
That ever was spread,
The deepest mauve canopy
Over my head.

A haze in the warm air
Of loveliest hue
That seems to envelop
The garden and you.
A.S.H. 1931
 

 And so are the Hydrangeas...

This morning I had another early walk and apart from the lack of corellas (I saw crimson rosellas instead) I could have lifted Hatfield's description out of his book to recount what I saw and heard:

Butcher-birds warbling their throaty, flute-like song, magpies chortling back at them in derision, galahs screeching above the trees and down at the edge of the waterhole, pigeons cooing and yodelling back in the scrub on their dainty approach towards the water, big white cockatoos and cheeky corellas putting in their harsh screams...

From the flower in the crannied wall to the glorious firmament on high, all the things of Nature proclaim without ceasing, "Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord, God, Almighty."

Charlotte Mason, Ourselves 

Together Time Plans

I'm fairly relaxed with planning for our times together in that I don't have set subjects or books on particular days but rather have a weekly list of what we will do, with some priorities determined beforehand so that if we have unexpected interruptions I know certain things will get done.

Our schedule has morphed over the years as we've made allowances for music lessons and instrument practice, which take up a good chunk of time at our place, part-time work for the older ones, and other practicalities. Ideally, I would like to do this part of our day in the morning but I've just had to be flexible so what happens is that I decide in the morning when we'll all get together for the day and then give everyone notice. This seems to work quite well.

Some of what we do is daily (Bible, memory work, poetry), others weekly (read alouds, Shakespeare, Plutarch). Some other things get done monthly and others intermittently. And then there's the occasional day when we don't do any of it!

This is what we're doing together at this point:

Bible

Bible Memory Work - you can see here how we do this.

Greenleaf Guide to the Old Testament. Every few years I go through this so the younger children get a historical sweep of the O.T. It's simple to use and good if you have children of various ages. This time through I'm thinking of also using parts of the Greenleaf Guide to Ancient Egypt when we get to the book of Exodus.
We're also using these books.

 

 

 Poetry 

William Blake; review of previous poems. I have a post here of poetry we've memorized or just enjoyed and some ideas for sharing poetry with children plus some books we've used here.

Read Aloud

Pilgrim's Progress: Christiana's Journey by John Bunyan. My copy is a lovely old hardback with gold embossing but it's a little hard to read aloud as there's no quotation marks or helpful quotes such as, 'Christiana replied, "..... " so I have to add those bits as I go.

Herodutus and the Road to History by Jeanne Bendick

Ourselves by Charlotte Mason. I started reading this aloud about two years ago. It is very rich and I'm taking it slowly.

Plutarch

Fabius. We're continuing this from last year and then I'd like to do Cicero which is a relatively new addition to the Ambleside Online Plutarch studies. http://www.amblesideonline.org/PlCicero.shtml

Shakespeare

We have audio recordings for The Winter's Tale and Twelfth Night so we'll do those unless I find a production of another play that we can see live.
The Arkangel CDs are difficult to find in Australia. I used to always try to borrow them from the library but they had a limited selection and then I found an Ebay seller who was cheaper than anywhere else I looked.
Some of the Naxos Shakespeare audios are good also but I don't know if they are as consistent across the board as the Arkangel productions.

      

Composer

Mozart - even though we'd listened to his works about two years ago. One of the boys is learning this piece for his music exams which we were able to find sheet music for at the wonderful free online site at the Petrucci Music Library. They also have audio files.

Artist 

Johannes Vermeer. I've put together some of his work on Pinterest.

Nature Study

Every month I read from A Bush Calendar by Amy Mack.

Manners

I haven't used this book for a number of years but thought I needed to bring it out again...

Folksong: I've Been Everywhere Man (Aussie version)

Hymn: Oh the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus

Ourselves by Charlotte Mason

I'd read part of this book aloud last year, despite the moans and groans that the appearance of the book seemed to produce. I'd put it aside for awhile and a few weeks ago I started reading it aloud again from where we'd left off previously. This time the audience was more receptive; perhaps the subject matter was more practical.

Kindness, Generosity and Gratitude are the three chapters we've been reading through and we've had some good discussions about what they look like in our everyday lives.

Kindness

But there is a curious principle in human nature, best described perhaps as vis inertiae, which makes even the benevolent, pitiful, and sympathetic person slow to do the little everyday things about which Kindness concerns himself. The office of Kindness is simply to make everyday life pleasant and comfortable to others...

The 'vis inertiae' idea was interesting, especially as one of the boys was reading about inertia in his science work. It basically means the 'force of inactivity.' I'd never really thought of inactivity as a force, but it does push against us and make us slow 'to do,' and requires some sort of physical response to overcome it.

Acts of Kindness are things we do to make life pleasant for others and they require action as opposed to Sympathy which is a feeling of the heart.

Generosity

The nature of Generosity is to bring forth, to give, always at the cost of personal suffering or deprivation, little or great. There is no generosity in giving what we shall never miss and do not want.

We were talking about this one Friday about a week ago and that same night we had the pleasure of going to a Sons of Korah concert. This group of musicians has been setting the Psalms to music for the past twenty years and the lead singer shared his thoughts about true generosity having a cost associated with it. My eight year old leaned across to me, very excited, and whispered, 'Mummy, that's what we read this morning!'

The generous man escapes a thousand small perplexities, worries, and annoys; he walks serene in a large room. There are so many great things to care about that he has no mind and no time for the small frettings of life.

Man is not for himself, and to get out of ourselves and into the wide current of human life, of all sorts and conditions, is our wisdom and should be our care.

Gratitude

To make use of other people, to serve ourselves of them, is the sin of ingratitude. The grateful man has a good memory and a quick eye to see where those who have served need service in their turn.

A grateful heart makes a full return, because it rejoices not only in the gift but in the giver.

Gratitude spreads his feast of joy and thanksgiving for gifts that come to him without any special thought of him on the part of the giver, who indeed may himself have gone from the world hundreds of years ago. Thus he says his grace for a delightful or helpful book, for a great picture, for a glorious day, for the face of a little child, for happy work, for pleasant places.