Nature's Role in the Disposition of the Mind

I've been reading aloud the Australian classic, I Can Jump Puddles by Alan Marshall, the story of a young boy who contracted polio in the early 1900's when an epidemic swept through Victoria.

Alan had been taken to hospital to have surgery on his lower body. He was encased in a plaster cast but there were some nasty complications and he was in misery from the constant pain he suffered.

One day his dad, desperate to cheer him, came to visit with a little new pup hidden beneath his jumper. He tucked the little dog into bed with Alan while the other patients kept a watch to warn of approaching nursing staff. It was a brief moment of contact with the world outside, but Alan soaked up the warmth of the little creature snuggled up beside him, and the sweetness of that filled him with strength and hope.

Later the day came when he could be wheeled outside:

As we passed through the door leading to the garden, the fresh, open air and the sunshine poured itself over me in one immense torrent. I rose to meet it, sitting upright in my chair, facing the blue and the sparkle and the gentle push of the air against my face, like a diver rising from the sea.

For three months I had not seen a cloud or felt the sun upon me. Now they were returned to me, newly created, perfected, radiant with qualities they never possessed before.

I was struck with the power of Alan's words. He was seeing things in a whole new way after a long separation. A common bird's call was a gift to him. Even the grains of gravel upon which his chair rested took on a beauty and their 'strange little hills and hollows' were delightful to him.

Sometimes it can be hard for a mother to get outside. There's washing to get done, dinner to be made, maths to be corrected, the bathroom's a mess, there are other more important things that need to be done...

Nature...gives us certain dispositions of mind which we can get from no other source, and it is through these right dispositions that we get life into focus, as it were; learn to distinguish between small matters and great, to see that we ourselves are not of very great importance, that the world is wide, that things are sweet...

 Ourselves, Book II by Charlotte Mason

I usually try to get out and have a good walk a few mornings a week but I haven't been sleeping well and it hasn't happened for about two weeks. My motivation for walking was mostly fitness, but I've been aware that the omission has affected the disposition of my mind more than it has affected my body. 

It's not the walking I need so much, although that is beneficial. It is the contact with the natural world that helps me to get my life into focus and helps me to distinguish between the great and the small.

Yesterday I sat in the sunshine for two hours reading and writing in my commonplace book while my children were having swimming lessons and later played with friends. I felt like Alan on that day he described above,

I hung my head and closed my eyes and the sun wrapped itself around me like arms.

Linking up at Stronghaven for A Mother's Feast
https://stronghaven.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/a-mothers-feast-april-2015/

Playing with Plutarch with the artful aid of alliteration

After I had read our Plutarch lesson & Bengy and Moozle had taken turns narrating sections, I had them both write out a number of words starting with the letter 't.'

'T' was the obvious letter to use as we're going through the life of Timoleon and just about everyone involved in the narrative has a name starting with that letter.

Then I asked them to write a short paragraph or verse relating to our reading using alliteration.

This was just a quick & rough exercise but they had a bit of fun.

Alliteration is enjoyable for a younger child to try - it's one of the more obvious and easiest poetic devices to use.

Bengy wrote:

Trustworthy Timoleon trusted
Tumultuous, tyrannical Timophanes
Who had a tendency to terrify
Tremendously true citizens
But Timophanes turned traitor
And Timoleon tried to tell him
To give his crown to the people
But tumultuous, tyrannical Timophanes
Laughed the trusted warnings aside
And so Timoleon, with tremendous tenacity
Therein killed Timophanes!

This is Moozle's (unedited) version where spelling goes out the window:

Timoleon tried to peswade his brother Timophanes to stop his tyranicall tyranny and thinking that his traterus tyranny would sucsed. He would be tyrannicly traiterus to the people, Timoleon said.
He already had a tyrannical aditude towards the peoples and it would not turn out well.

Edited copy:

Timoloeon tried to persuade his brother Timophanes to stop his tyrannical tyranny and thinking that his traitorous tyranny would succeed.
He would be tyrannically traitorous to the people, Timoleon said.
He already had a tyrannical attitude towards the peoples and it would not turn out well.

Madame How & Lady Why by Charles Kingsley - Part 1: The Glen

". . . it is by watching the common natural things around you, and considering the lilies of the field, how they grow, that you will begin at least to learn that far Diviner mystery, that you have a Father in Heaven."

Charles Kingsley (1819-1875)

Madame How & Lady Why (MHLW) is a literary Natural History book spread over Years 4 & 5 in the Ambleside Online Curriculum. If you are a latecomer to AO with older children who haven't read the book, there is also a schedule for the book to be read over the course of a year. There are twelve chapters in the book & the link is to the older 2011 Ambleside Online schedule. One of my children did this a few years ago when we first started with AO.
Charles Kingsley, one of the most prolific authors during the Victorian era, was at one time Chaplain to Queen Victoria and also a friend and admirer of Charles Darwin. I read up on Kingsley because I knew that he sympathised with the theory of evolution and I wanted to know more about him. I found some interesting articles.

1) This one (from an Intelligent Design perspective) included the quote below from another source:

'Kingsley had misunderstood that the main point of Darwin's book was to remove the Creator from nature.'

2) An article on The Victorian Web.

3) Written from the viewpoint of a professor of palaeontology this is a review of a book in which the author discusses the literary foundations of a scientific discipline. Charles Kingsley's books are included.

So why bother to use an outdated book on science written by a person who clearly was enamoured with the work of Charles Darwin when I don't hold to the theory of evolution?
For me there are a couple of reasons.

* Home education allows me to discuss everything in the light of God's Word and there have been many situations which have come up in all sorts of areas, not just in books, which have needed to be clarified, discussed or explained. These situations have been some of the most valuable and teachable times we've had. I've become more comfortable talking about other ideas that might not fit with what we believe as the years have passed. We have to have these conversations at some stage and I'm beginning to think, the earlier the better. With older kids around the younger ones get to listen in to conversations & I usually end up having to explains things anyway.

We allow no separation to grow up between the intellectual and 'spiritual' life of children, but teach them that the Divine Spirit has constant access to their spirits, and is their Continual Helper in all the interests, duties and joys of life.

A Philosophy of Education by Charlotte Mason, Pg xxxi

* At first I didn't like the fact that some of Kingsley's ideas were out of date but that can be said of other books on science and even the knowledge of a few years ago can become outdated. In fact, this 'disadvantage' has been beneficial in many ways as it has made me research areas of science I've been unfamiliar with. I love anything to do with life science but geology/earth science has always been a bit of a mystery, partly because when I did it at school it was just presented as information. There were no ideas that I could assimilate.

 Now that life, which we call education, receives only one kind of sustenance; it grows upon ideas.

Parents & Children by Charlotte Mason Pg 33

My daughter has just turned 10 years of age and is a very good reader but I'm reading MHLW aloud so that I can discuss things with her and demonstrate how some ideas have been replaced by others. So some history is thrown into the mix.
The knowledge of science has changed and will continue to change. Man doesn't know everything. Scientists will get things wrong and so will professing Christians such as Mr. Kingsley.

* Charlotte Mason stated in A Philosophy of Education that we need to,

present ideas with a great deal of padding - and that,

the books used are, whenever possible, literary in style

There is no shortage of beautifully presented books on science but they are often just full of facts. There is no padding and children run up against walls of information which they read and then promptly forget. No ideas are presented and nothing is assimilated.

I love this quote from Hard Times by Charles Dickens. When I started reading Charlotte Mason's ideas on education, especially in relation to the books used in teaching children, I recalled Dickens' words: 

Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!' said Mr. Gradgrind, for the general behoof of all the little pitchers. 'Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals! Some boy's definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours.' 

Bitzer,' said Thomas Gradgrind. 'Your definition of a horse.'...

'Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.' Thus (and much more) Bitzer.
'Now girl number twenty,' said Mr. Gradgrind. 'You know what a horse is.' 

Definitely not my idea of how I want my children to be educated!


Katie Barr and Anne White have written guides to MHLW for Year 4 and Year 5. They include suggestions for further study, background information with the occasional suggestion that a short section could be omitted.
I've put photos, videos, etc on Pinterest and will be adding to that as we continue the book. I've also included some things below that I couldn't add to Pinterest for different reasons.

The book is written from an English perspective and Kingsley mentions parts of Southern England in the book.

A Bog, South Dartmoor

The Glen

Glen - a deep narrow valley, especially among mountains




Chine - this word is peculiar to the south of England (eg on the Isle of Wight) and it refers to a valley or ravine that leads down to the seashore.
From what I've gathered from various dictionary definitions, the words canyon and gorge are basically describing the same thing, whereas a ravine is narrower and not as large. All three are formed by water erosion.
In Australia the word, gorge tends to be used.

Gorge - a deep, narrow passage with steep rocky sides formed by running water.
Canyon - a narrow chasm with steep cliff walls formed by running water.
Ravine - a deep, narrow steep-sided valley formed by running water

Barron Gorge, Kuranda, Queensland

See 27 of the Deepest Canyons You Can Explore here. Some of these are called gorges.

 White Cliffs of Dover - erosion

Glacial erosion - a very good pdf on the Matterhorn (It has one mention of millions of years.) The name Matterhorn comes from the German words matte, meaning meadow, and horn, meaning peak.

I'll be adding separate posts on the different sections in the book.

Update: these are the posts for the first half of MHLW:

Chapter 1: The Glen
Chapter 2: Earthquakes
Chapter 3: Volcanoes
Chapter 4: The Transformation of a Grain of Soil
Chapter 5: The Ice Plough
Chapter 6: The True Fairy Tale
Chapter 7:  The Chalk-carts

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)

Madame Bovary was written over a period of five years and first appeared in France in 1856-1857. The book caused great controversy at the time and Flaubert was made to stand trial on the charge of writing an immoral novel, but was later acquitted.

Madame Bovary is Emma, a young, beautiful woman who 'escapes' from life on her father's farm by marrying Charles Bovary but finds only mediocrity where she expected passion and romance.

'And all the time, deep within her, she was waiting for something to happen. Like a shipwrecked sailor she scanned her solitude with desperate eyes for the sight of a white sail far off on the misty horizon. She had no idea what that chance would be, what wind would waft it to her, where it would set her ashore, whether it was a launch or a three-decker, laden with anguish or filled to the portholes with happiness. But every morning when she woke she hoped to find it there.'

One day the Bovary's receive an unexpected invitation to La Vaubyessard, the home of the rich Marquis and his wife, but the visit only serves to make Emma more unhappy with her own situation and,

  
'made a gap in her life, like those great chasms that a mountain-storm will sometimes scoop out in a single night.'

'Love, she believed, must come suddenly, with thunder and lightning, a hurricane from on high that swoops down into your life and turns it topsy-turvy, snatches away your will-power like a leaf, hurls you heart and soul into the abyss. She did not know how on the terrace of a house the rain collects in pools when the gutters are choked; she would have continued to feel quite safe had she not suddenly discovered a crack in the wall.'

Escaping into sentimental novels and fantasy she begins her downward spiral which ends in adultery and her destruction.

'Her attachment to him was a thing of idiocy, full of admiration for him, full of voluptuous pleasure for her, a drugged blessedness; and her soul sank deep in its intoxication, drowned and shrivelled up in it like the Duke of Clarence in his butt of malmsey.'

Flaubert certainly has a beautiful lyrical quality to his writing and there are parts of the  book where his phrases and descriptions leap from the page with precision and power but his underlying Realism casts a bleak and sometimes sordid shadow over parts of the narrative. But then again, adultery is a sordid subject.

'She seemed to have all the bitterness of life served up on her plate; the steam of the stew conjured up like fumes of nausea from the depths of her soul.'

Although I'd heard of this classic, it wasn't until I read a section about the author and Madame Bovary in the book  Invitation to the Classics that I decided I should read it:

'What makes Madame Bovary so powerful is not any mere accumulation of detail for its own sake. Rather its power comes through Flaubert's faithful observation of the physical, through which he mysteriously illuminates the spiritual. Every particularity lends insight either into the soul of Emma or the inadequacies of the world in which she lives. Herein lie the challenge and reward of the novel: nothing is superfluous; everything reveals meaning.'

Some other thoughts:

*  The fatalistic combination of social and environmental factors which dominates Thomas Hardy's writing is apparent in Flaubert's work, as is Fyodor Dostoyovesky's pre-occupation with the internal and psychological struggles of his characters, although Flaubert is less intense in this regard.

*   Madame Bovary is often compared to Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, which I haven't read so can't comment on, but Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton (1862-1937) is a book I have read which has a similar theme. In this compelling and haunting story the act of adultery never takes place, but that would have been the inevitable outcome had not circumstances intervened. 

I was quite happy to finish Madame Bovary and be done with Emma, although Flaubert's writing in itself was beautiful, but Ethan Frome ended too quickly for me. The story still lingers in my mind and I'll read it again one day but I don't think I'd return to Madame Bovary in a hurry.

This book is my choice of  A Classic in Translation in the Back to the Classics Challenge.