Feed Them on Things Worth Caring For

If you are familiar at all with the writings of the 19th Century educator, Charlotte Mason, you will know that one of her signature ways of illustrating a liberal education is to compare it to that of a feast that is spread before the child.

As educators we are responsible for choosing the food for the feast. If we provide a variety of excellent food and allow the child liberty to choose what appeals to their taste, nourishment will take care of itself.

I think the feast metaphor is very apt. A child’s food preference can change over time and they can acquire a taste for things they rejected in the past. One of my sons would have lived on bread alone if I’d let him, but it wouldn’t have been a healthy diet. His tastes in food developed much more diversity as he grew, as did his intellectual tastes and appetite, because he was served nourishing food – literally and metaphorically.

The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton was published in 1922 a year before Charlotte Mason died. I read it recently and was impressed by a couple of passages that touched on education as they shared a close similarity to Mason's educational ideas.

Wharton was American but she spent much of her time in Europe (The Glimpses of the Moon was set mostly in France). During WWI she remained in Europe and established schools for children escaping from Belgium after the German occupation. She had a 'gift for languages and a deep appreciation for beauty - in art, architecture and literature': Edith Wharton | The Mount | Edith Wharton's Home

Merry Family by Jan Steen, 1688

'Take care of five Fulmers for three months! The prospect cowed her.'

The Fulmers were an artistic couple living in a cramped cottage and both Susy and her husband to be, Nick Lansing, had spent time with them and their noisy family before they had considered marriage. They couldn’t understand how the Fulmer’s lived as they did - bad food and general crazy discomfort -  but they had more amusement in their company than they had with any of their rich friends and their opulent house parties.

The Lansings married some time afterwards after hatching a scheme whereby they’d live off their wedding gifts of money and accommodation but with the understanding that if either of them found a way to climb the social ladder, the other would not stand in the way but agree to a divorce. Barely a year later their plans had unravelled and out of desperation Susy agreed to look after this ‘uproarious tribe’ while their parents were in Italy.

'But in these rough young Fulmers she took a positive delight, and for reasons that were increasingly clear to her. It was because, in the first place, they were all intelligent; and because their intelligence had been fed only on things worth caring for. However inadequate Grace Fulmer’s bringing-up of her increasing tribe had been, they had heard in her company nothing trivial or dull: good music, good books and good talk had been their daily food, and if at times they stamped and roared and crashed about like children unblessed by such privileges, at others they shone with the light of poetry and spoke with the voice of wisdom.

That had been Susy’s discovery: for the first time she was among awakening minds which had been wakened only to beauty. From their cramped and uncomfortable household Grace and Nat Fulmer had managed to keep out mean envies, vulgar admirations, shabby discontents; above all the din and confusion the great images of beauty had brooded, like those ancestral figures that stood apart on their shelf in the poorest Roman households.'

Charlotte Mason believed that children should be given the best going on the subject - really good books; that we should try, however imperfectly, to make education a science of relationships. These thoughts from Edith Wharton on education - feed children only on things worth caring for - were an unexpected surprise to me and echoed the ideas that I've been reading in Charlotte Mason's writings.  

The tentacles of the science of relationships are far reaching.

We're using The Glimpses of the Moon instead of The Great Gatsby for Literature in AO Year 11.

In The Steps of the Master by H.V. Morton (1934)

H.V. Morton’s In the Steps of the Master is a wonderful mix of travelogue, history, archaeology, and adventure. He wrote the book in an attempt to express the thoughts and the encounters that a traveller through Palestine ‘with the New Testament in his hands’ would have experienced.

At the time the book was written in 1934, Palestine and the neighbouring territory of Trans-Jordan was administered by Great Britain after they had been taken from the Turks in WWI. The country was divided into provinces headed by Commissioners and under them were the village headmen. A British Inspector General of Police commanded a highly respected police force that was made up of British, Jews and Arabs. 

The country and its way of life had remained remarkably unchanged over the centuries and even the law of the land was a modified form of Ottoman Law. In the time of Christ three official languages were recognised - Latin, Greek and Hebrew. In 1934 the Mandate for Palestine stated that the official languages of Palestine were English, Arabic and Hebrew.

The book begins with the author boarding a boat on the Suez Canal in Egypt. From there he crossed to El Kantara where the railway that was constructed by Allenby’s troops during the War followed an ancient route through Gaza, Lydda, Jaffa, and into the mountains of Judea. 

‘As the train climbs and winds into the hills towards the mountain capital of Jerusalem, you are aware of something fierce and cruel in the air. You have the same feeling in Spain when the train crosses the Sierra de Guadarrama towards the mountain capital of Madrid. But Judea is fiercer than anything in Europe. It us a striped, tigerish country, crouched in the sun, tense with a terrific vitality and sullen and dispassionate with age.’

Morton visited many different places mentioned in the New Testament such as Galilee, the Mount of Olives, Golgotha, Samaria, Bethany, the Dead Sea, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Jerusalem:

‘My first thought was amazement that Jerusalem should ever have been built. A more unlikely place for a famous city cannot be imagined...There is a splendid defiance about the situation of Jerusalem, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that no people who did not believe themselves to be in the special care of God would have dared to have built a city in defiance of all the laws of prudence.’

Everywhere he went he saw around him people unconsciously illustrating the Bible and he often delved into aspects of the Bible that a person who had never been to Palestine would overlook. From his travelling experiences he was able to make interesting connections and comparisons. For example, having seen the ruins of Ypres after WWI he likened them to what the Christians would have faced upon their return to Jerusalem after the siege of Titus in 70 A.D. 

Herod the Great, Saladin, the Emperor Julian, Pontius Pilate, Tiberias, and the Crusades, besides many other lesser known people and events, were vividly described. Lady Hester Stanhope was one of these. She makes an appearance in Alexander Kinglake’s Eothen and Morton gives us a sympathetic cameo of her life and her tragic end.

The artist William Holman Hunt also gets a mention. He painted one of his best known paintings, The Scapegoat, while living in Palestine.

These cultural insights and the exploration of history and archaeology are extremely helpful in understanding the background of the New Testament.

‘The Gospel accounts...are always meticulously accurate.’

‘The hideous instability of mind which the Passover mob shared with all mobs in history is clearly seen in the Gospels when the people one say cried, “Hosanna!” And the next “Crucify Him!”

We are using In the Steps of the Master this year for Geography (Ambleside Online Year 11) but it covers so much more than geography. It is beautifully written and captures Palestine very much like it would have been when at the time of Christ.

The Talisman by Sir Walter Scott (1825)

 

‘All Scott’s work is marked by three characteristics: a genius for enriching the past; a love of Nature; a sturdy humanity. He loved the pomp and pageantry of a bygone age. His imagination lived naturally in the stirring tales of yore. He was a historical novelist by temperament rather than by profession... There have been historical romancers more accurate than Scott in the details of the story, but none so true to the inmost spirit of the age depicted.’ - from the Introduction by Robert Harding 

The Talisman is set in the Levant (the historical name for the region of the Eastern Mediterranean) towards the end of the Third Crusade. In 1187 A.D. Jerusalem was captured by Saladin and the Third Crusade was launched in 1189 to retake the city. The book, a work of historical fiction, focusses on Richard I, the ‘Lionheart,’ Saladin, and a fictitious knight by the name of Sir Kenneth. 

The Crusaders were encamped in the Holy Land and in disarray. The Lionheart was very ill with a fever and partisan politics were threatening the progress of the Crusade. Meanwhile, in the desert of Syria, Sir Kenneth meets a Saracen and after fighting and neither winning, they acknowledge each other’s prowess and continue on their travels together. The Saracen leads Sir Kenneth to the hermit he had been seeking and they then go their own ways. 

There are twists and turns, double identities, misunderstood prophecies and plenty of adventure as the story continues. 

'...the unfortunate Knight of the Leopard, bestowed upon the Arabian physician by King Richard rather as a slave than in any other capacity, was exiled from the camp of the Crusaders, in whose ranks he had so often and so brilliantly distinguished himself. He followed his new master...to the Moorish tents which contained his retinue and his property, with the stupid feelings of one who, fallen from the summit of a precipice and escaping unexpectedly with life, is just able to drag himself from the fatal spot, but without the power of estimating the extent of the damage which he has sustained.'

Scott gets a little theatrical and the chivalry is over the top at times, as you might expect of the writing from this time, but he really brings Richard and Saladin to life. Their characters are realistically portrayed and Edith, one of his main female characters and a relative of the King, is interesting, intelligent and plucky. 

Scott doesn’t glorify the Crusades in any way and Saladin is treated very positively. It was interesting to read Scott’s description of him as I had just finished a chapter in another book, In the Steps of the Master by H.V. Morton, where the author stated that Saladin was ‘...the one enemy of Christendom whose name runs through all the history books as that of a brave and chivalrous foe.’

I have to say that I used the dictionary fairly regularly when I was reading The Talisman! There are quite a few obscure words and although a glossary is provided at the beginning, it looks like it's the original from 1825 and doesn’t include all the words that have gone out of circulation since. 

The Talisman is scheduled as a free read for the Ambleside Online Year 7 curriculum and is a book all my children have enjoyed at some point. A great book to add to your Charlotte Mason high school.

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Breathe: A Child's Guide to Ascension, Pentecost, and the Growing Time by Laura Alary

Breathe: A Child's Guide to Ascension, Pentecost, and the Growing Time, a new book for children written by Laura Alary and illustrated by Cathrin Peterslund is due out in April of this year.

Breathe retells the biblical account of the Ascension of Jesus and the Day of Pentecost in a lyrical and practical way for children. 

'The season after Pentecost lasts for a long time...

In church we call it Ordinary Time...

There are no big holidays during Ordinary Time,

But life in the Spirit is not ordinary.

Amazing things are happening.'

Breathe looks at the natural growing time of the Northern Hemisphere’s spring and summer that coincides with Ordinary Time in the church calendar and connects it with the movement of the Holy Spirit. Seeds that had been buried in the earth have come to life and flowers are blooming. Everything is growing and changing in the natural world which makes it a good time to reflect on what the Spirit is doing in our lives. 

'Am I growing the fruit of kindness?'

'I wonder what kind of fruit I will bring to the world?'

I like the practical aspects of this book. The author puts them alongside the retelling of the biblical account to show us how we may apply them to our lives. 

Breathe is a lovely book to be shared with a child and I think an adult who does this will be refreshed too. It’s always good to examine ourselves to see if we are growing the fruit of kindness and children help to give us a fresh perspective as they see things we often don’t.

If you are, like me, in the Southern Hemisphere, the book is still applicable but like the Christmas books we read that depict snow, we have to use our imaginations a little more.

Laura Alary also wrote two other children's books I've previously highlighted - Make Room: A Child's Guide to Lent and Easter and Look! A Child's Guide to Advent and Christmas. They have a similar format to Breathe but a different illustrator. I think Breathe is pitched a little more to a wider age range with more textual depth but they are all well done.

All three books are published by Paraclete Press.

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall (2015) Non-Fiction

Tim Marshall is a British journalist and author who has been on the front line in the Balkans, Syria and Afghanistan. He witnessed close hand how international conflicts and civil wars have arisen out of past decisions. He has seen how history has shaped the future events of a country and the role geography has had in that shaping.

In Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need To Know About Global Politics, Marshall gives some very interesting insights into the major factors that determine world history. He examines the international affairs of ten regions of the world to show that geographical factors - the physical landscape, climate, demographics, culture and the availability of natural resources -  have an important impact on civilisations. He considers that these geopolitical factors are often overlooked.

‘Seeing geography as a decisive factor in the course of human history can be construed as a bleak view of the world, which is why it is disliked in some intellectual circles. It suggests that nature is more powerful than man, and that we can only go so far in determining our own fate.’

Marshall discusses the following areas in this book:

Russia, China, USA, Western Europe, Africa, The Middle East, India & Pakistan, Korea and Japan, Latin America, and The Arctic.

I borrowed this book from my eldest son who recommended it. He reads mostly nonfiction, especially politics and current affairs. I don’t read much of this genre and expected it would be a little dry and heavy going. It definitely isn’t like that at all. I found it hard to put it aside at times - unlike a lot of nonfiction titles that I have had to read in small doses. 

If you enjoy history, I expect that you would enjoy this book. 

I liked it enough to include it in our  Australian version of Ambleside Online Year 11 which  covers the 20th Century. It would fit well into not only geography and history but also current affairs especially for those implementing a Charlotte Mason High School. Most of the issues the author discusses are still being worked out.  

Here are some extracts from the book that I found interesting and helpful:

Russia - the Arctic and the fact that Russia has never had a warm-water port, limits Russia’s ability to be a truly global power. Its most powerful weapon is gas and oil, where it is only second to the USA. Russia has a hold on Europe’s energy needs and the better a country’s relationship with Russia , the cheaper its energy costs. The closer a country is to Moscow, the more dependent it is on Russia. This plays into foreign policy - for example, Russia supplies about half of Germany’s gas needs so German politicians are slower to criticise the Kremlin for aggressive behaviour. 

China - although it has always been a land power, in wasn't until the 1980’s that China began to be major trading power. Until recently the country has been limited due to its lack of a global navy. With its huge population, lack of arable land and the affects of pollution, it is looking to expand. The author believes that the Chinese are not looking for conflict or seeking to spread Communism (not sure I agree with this??) but are concerned with keeping ocean access open as they depend upon imported resources. Recent maps published in China show almost the whole of the South China Sea as theirs and they have been building deep sea ports around the world as they seek to establish a ‘blue water’ (ocean going) navy.

USA - due to the shrewd decisions it made in the past to expand its territory in key regions, the USA became a two ocean superpower and is now close to being self sufficient in energy. This will change its policies in the Middle East as it will no longer need to rely on their oil.

Europe -  flat land and rivers that can be navigated have been key factors for Europe’s place on the global scene. The UK has been advantaged by its location with access to the North Sea and the North Atlantic. Its relative isolation has provided protection from European wars and unrest. 65 years of relative peace due to Europe’s unity may be threatened due to the financial crises they have been going through.

Africa - this continent is an example of the effects of isolation. Maps are deceptive and don’t allow for the hugeness of Africa. It is three times bigger than the USA!

‘Africa’s coastline? Great beaches, really, really lovely beaches, but terrible natural harbours. Rivers? Amazing rivers, but most of them are rubbish for actually transporting anything, given that every few miles you go over a waterfall. These are just two in a long list of problems which help explain why Africa isn’t technologically or politically as successful as Western Europe or North America.’

In the 15th and 16th centuries, at the height of the Ottoman Empire, thousands of Africans, mostly from Sudan were taken cross the Arab world as slaves. The Europeans did the same to a greater degree later on. 

In European cities artificial borders were drawn with new countries created on maps. The same was done for the Middle East, and India/Pakistan (Partition!) - artificial borders on paper, drawing lines on maps & disregarding cultural distinctions & topography. This led inevitably to ethnic conflicts.

Japan and Korea - although they don’t have the ethnic problems of some other countries there are other problems. Japan is an island with basically no natural resources. Korea's division into North and South was a decision made in the USA by two clueless junior officers in the White House. It left Seoul, South Korea's capital, very vulnerable and only 35 miles south of their unstable Communist neighbours. 

Latin America begins at the Mexican border and stretches all the way down to Cape Horn. None of its coastal area has many deep harbours so trading is limited. South America is cut off geographically from just about everywhere else with mountains and the Amazon jungle. Bitter relations between countries such as Bolivia and Chile and border disputes add to their problems.

Arctic - as the ice in this region melts, new energy deposits have been found, but it’s a dark and dangerous place: ‘It’s not a good place to be without friends. They know that for anyone to succeed in the region they may need to cooperate...’

Modern technology and air power is helping to break down geographical barriers; ‘bending the iron rules of geography,' as the author puts it, but it is still a major factor for many countries.

Marshall has written a follow up book that looks at other countries, such as Australia, that I’d be interested in reading. I appreciated the author’s very readable, conversational style, and his knowledge of history and international affairs, and highly recommend this book.

A Gentleman in Moscow (2016)

It was 1922 in Moscow and Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov stood before the Emergency Committee of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs. After a self-imposed exile from his homeland, Rostov had returned to Russia. He was in his early thirties and was accused of returning to the Motherland in order to take up arms against the Revolution. 

Due to his reputation as a hero in pre-revolutionary days, he escaped the death penalty and was sentenced instead to house arrest in the Metropol Hotel where he had been living for four years.

If he ever stepped out of the Metropol he would be shot.

The Metropol was built in 1905

He was assigned to an attic instead of his elegant suite and denied his usual luxuries. His world had shrunk considerably.

But the Metropol was the world in miniature and in this world Rostov began to establish relationships and close bonds with a swathe of people. He learned that small things were important. As his physical life contracted into a tiny sphere, he had time and opportunity to make his soul. The relationships he cultivated grew him as a person and the lives he touched had far reaching implications in later years.

His has been a life of privilege and convenience but his reduced circumstances enlarged his life in ways that his prosperity and freedom never had. 

"I’ll tell you what is convenient," he said after a moment. "To sleep until noon and have someone bring you your breakfast on a tray. To cancel an appointment at the very last minute. To keep a carriage waiting at the door of one party, so that on a moment’s notice it can whisk you away to another. To sidestep marriage in your youth and put off having children altogether. These are the greatest of conveniences, Anushka - and at one time, I had them all. But in the end, it has been the inconveniences that have mattered to me most."

I’ve always had an interest in reading about Russia during the heyday of Communist rule, but A Gentleman in Moscow takes a different route from my usual sorties into this time period. During his confinement within the Metropol, Rostov was shielded from much of the chaos and change that was happening on the outside, learning of it secondhand and intermittently, but the changes in Russia were reflected in the interior life of the hotel. It’s a unique way to view history to show the ripple effect that change and upheaval have on a society. 

"By the smallest of one's actions one can restore some sense of order to the world."

The kindness and friendship he had shown to people such as waiters, bellboys, the hotel barber, a  seamstress, and a precocious young girl, would be returned in ways he would not have imagined.

"Who would have imagined, when you were sentenced to life in the Metropol all those years ago, that you had just become the luckiest man in all of Russia."

The author sprinkles the story with many literary comments and references, which I enjoy in a book, but sometimes it felt like a display of knowledge for its own sake, which might be a harsh observation...

An interesting and engaging story with a nice bit of adventure later on. I wasn’t sure about the very end, though. If you have read it, did you wonder what his plans were and if he was going to get away with them??

2021 Challenge - Reading Europe: Russia 

Narrative Non-Fiction Books for Young Readers: Australian Animals

I'm always on the look out for good narrative non-fiction books for children. I really like some of the Australian Natural History picture books that are available now that combine factual content within a story. I've previously written about one of these books, 'Emu' written by Claire Saxby and illustrated by Graham Byrne, that is very good. The same author and illustrator have collaborated in Big Red Kangaroo.

The illustrations in this book are large and were created with charcoal and digital media, capturing the dry, hostile beauty of inland Australia. The narrative storyline is accompanied by a section in italics on the opposite page that gives more information in factual form. The book was published in 2013 and has 29 fully illustrated pages. Recommended for Primary School aged children but an interested younger child would enjoy it, too.

Another book about Australian native animals by author Claire Saxby is Dingo. This book is illustrated by Tannya Harricks and though at first I wasn't that enamoured with her style, it grew on me as I looked at it more closely. The illustrations were created with oil paint in loose, broad brush strokes. This gives Dingo a very different feel to the Big Red Kangaroo. It has a lighter, softer background and the storyline is simpler with less narrative and larger writing.   

Dingo has the same format and page numbers as Emu and the Big Red Kangaroo and was published in 2018.

3 or 4 year olds and up would like this.

Bilby's Secrets by Edel Wignell; illustrated by Mark Jackson (2011) has a very similar format to the books above with lovely bright illustrations that evoke the Pilbara region of Western Australia - deep, rusty reds and brilliant sky blues. I've included some links below about this endangered Australian mammal.

This is a lovely book for younger children to pour over and observe closely as the illustrator includes many other creatures in the background.

The narrative is excellent and has a literary quality with a broader vocabulary than the books above.

Bilby - WWF-Australia - WWF-Australia

The Greater Bilby - Bush Heritage Australia

About Bilbies – Save the Bilby Fund

If you're looking for some Australian Natural History books for the younger years I would recommend any of these publications. Some children aren't ready for chapter books (such as those written by C.K. Thompson). These pictorial but realistic non-fiction books are a great way to start introducing them to Australian animals.

The Castle on the Hill by Elizabeth Goudge (1941)

 

Many of Elizabeth Goudge’s books have historical settings. The White Witch takes place during the English Civil War, Green Dolphin Country and The Dean’s Watch are set in the 19th Century. I expected The Castle on the Hill to be set at some remote period of time and was surprised when I started reading it that it was written at the beginning of WWII when England was being hammered by the Germans during the Blitz.

The outlook was grim and many people were feeling quite hopeless. It is into this insecure and desolate setting that Elizabeth Goudge weaves her story of loss and despair, love and hope, duty and sacrifice. There’s a good deal of sadness, as you would expect. No one quite gets what they were hoping for and have to settle for circumstances that weren’t their first choice. But, in typical Elizabeth Goudge fashion, sacrifice and duty are redemptive decisions that grow people’s souls. As one of her characters decided after surviving a bomb blast that crippled him, 

‘The other way would have been too easy a death for a man who had too easy a life. Now he would have time to make his soul.’ 

One of this book’s most likeable characters is Miss Brown, a nondescript woman of forty-two years who had nothing about her that stood out, ‘nothing to catch hold of.’ She had a gift for protective covering and managed to blend into the background wherever she was. She was a woman who loved more than she was loved. 

She had had to give up her home for military use and had just learnt that it was obliterated in a bombing raid and the news caused her to lose hope.

‘Her loss of everything she had hitherto known was making her feel as solitary as though she were the only human creature alive in the world. And what a world! It was June nineteen forty. Yesterday was gone, burnt up in the blazing inferno of its suffering. There was today, a tiny patch of foothold, but there was no to-morrow...Memory of the past and hope for the future are companionable things.’

Sitting outside the Free Library in London, feeling herself to be on the edge of a great abyss, a small thing lightened her despair. A violin played by a street musician began to reach her,

‘And she knew it was the truth she was listening to. She heard no words, she saw no vision, but she was slowly made aware that she was one of a multitude that went upon pilgrimage to something or other. She had no idea what the something was, or how they were to get there, all she knew was that the way was stony and painful, dreadful, terrifying; yet worth daring all the same.’

The music was Delius’ Song of Summer and hearing it played helped her transcend her circumstances. When one of Dostoevsky’s characters said that 'beauty will save the world,’ I think he was referring to this ability of beauty to reflect truth, inspire us with a sense of awe, and point to something beyond ourselves. 

Some favourite passages:

'Orderliness of life and thought must be maintained as far as possible. When these chaotic days were passed what was left of it would form the scaffolding upon which the new order could be built. “Order.” A good word. How passionately sane men longed for it, and how incapable they seemed of achieving it with any permanence. How passionately the insane hated it and how easily they could destroy it. Hitler’s contemptuous sneer at “the bourgeois virtues of peace and order” was typical of all the anarchists through the ages.'

'England, from the days of Ethelred the Unready onwards had never been ready for anything, and never would be, had not been ready with proper shelters when the Blitz came.'

'I wish I could live that afternoon over again and do it better...one ought to be given the chance to live certain scenes in ones life over and over again until one gets it perfect.'

As with every book I've read by this author, I found her characters very well described. Her writing progresses slowly because she spends so much time exploring personality and setting, which I enjoy. Her work is perceptive and reflects a deep understanding of human nature, much of it shown through the conversations and reflections of the characters in her books. 

She was living in Devon when World War II broke out and you get the sense that her own personal experience of vulnerability permeates the book.

Linking to Reading Europe: United Kingdom and British Isles Friday

Charlotte Mason Simple Spanish - a Curriculum for Young children

 It has been very encouraging to see new business ventures emerge within the home education movement in recent years. Downloadable products are especially helpful to those outside of the USA who pay a premium for postage and this format lends itself well to learning another language. 

Charlotte Mason Simple Spanish is a Curriculum for teaching Spanish to young children. So far the author has downloadable resources that may be used with very young children to help expose them to the language and also for Year 1. She is planning a Year 2, a program that will focus on learning to read Spanish as well as introducing copywork and dictation to learn to write Spanish and will be following the Scope and Sequence of the PNEU (scroll down) for formal lessons and for when to introduce reading and writing.  

The author recommends the lessons be woven into your days, e.g. the poetry informal lesson could be done during tea time, the challenge (replacing an English sentence with Spanish) when they wake up and so on. 

For the early years, two lessons of five minutes a week where the child learns a very short song for a month through play and exploration is suggested.

For the formal lessons for Year 1, two lessons of ten minutes each week are recommended and one ten minute lesson a week for the poetry recital. In addition, a lesson of fifteen minutes a week for song study is suggested.

Audio links to Spanish music, stories, songs, and pronunciation are given via QR codes which are very easy to link to with a mobile phone. Nature walks, poetry and Bible verses are included in each unit.

As you can see, this is a very immersive and gentle method of learning a foreign language which is very consistent with a Charlotte Mason approach.

The home page of the Charlotte Mason Simple Spanish website has a link, Expectations by Age, which has ideas on how to use the curriculum with different ages.

Charlotte Mason Simple Spanish is an economical and attractive curriculum. There are some free resources to download and if you subscribe to the website you get 15% off your order.

Non Fiction: A Woman in Berlin (1954)

A Woman in Berlin is a firsthand account of the Red Army’s entry into Berlin during the last days of World War II. The anonymous author was a thirty-four year old female journalist who was living in the city at the time. Berlin had been bombed extensively and ninety percent of its buildings were destroyed. There was no running water or electricity. 

Hitler had rejected any idea of evacuating the two million civilians left in the city, thinking that his troops would defend the city more bravely if their wives and children remained there. The civilians were mostly women and children and included 120,000 babies and infants - young boys and old men had been forced into the German army as the Allies gained ground. 

The author recorded the events that occurred in Berlin during the time period of the 20th April 1945 up until the 22nd June, 1945 in a notebook. 

The diary was first published in an English translation in the United States in 1954 and not long afterwards in seven other languages, but when a German language edition was published in Geneva six years later it was very controversial and had a hostile reception in Germany. As a result, the author decided the book should not be published again while she was still living.

Her writing is considered important as a firsthand account as many of the atrocities committed against women, in particular, at the time have been repressed by both the Soviets and Germans. Not to mention the fact that history is often rewritten to fit in with current agendas.

‘This chronicle was begun on the day when Berlin first saw the face of war.’

The author’s account is harrowing and dreadful but she wrote in an objective, almost dispassionate manner at times which lessened the initial punch for me...for a little while, at least. Thinking back on her story, I almost wish I hadn’t read it. It's a book I'd be hesitant to recommend unconditionally because of the nature of the content so I'd suggest checking out these websites to know what you're in for if you do read it:

Here & here.

‘Our radio’s been dead for four days. Once again we see what a dubious blessing technology is. Machines with no intrinsic value, worthless if you can’t plug them in somewhere...At the moment we’re marching backwards in time. Cave dwellers.’

The author found some flowers growing and took them to a Frau Goltz, a lady she knew:

‘“What flowers, what lovely flowers.” The tears were streaming down her face. I felt terrible as well. Beauty hurts now. We’re so full of death.’

The author observed that she was ‘...coming down a level in way I speak...these are strange times - history experienced first hand, the stuff of tales yet untold and songs unsung. But seen close up, history is much more troublesome - nothing but burdens and fears... 

We are debasing our language in expectation of the impending humiliation.’

Before the Nazis surrendered, Hitler and Goebels sent out handwritten notices to rally the inhabitants of Berlin, but the residents were so used to the noise and fanfare of Nazi proclamations that these handwritten commands were ignored. One woman was heard to comment, “Well, just look what those two have come to.”

‘The handwriting looks pathetic and inconsequential, like something whispered.

Yes, we’ve been spoiled by technology. We can’t accept doing without loudspeakers or rotary presses...

Technology has devalued the impact of our own speech and writing.’

‘The cold doesn’t want to go away. I sit hunched on the stool in front of our stove, which is barely kept burning with all sorts of Nazi literature. Assuming everyone is doing the same thing - and they are - Mein Kampf will go back to being a rare book, a collector’s item.’

Linking to Reading Europe: Germany and Nonfiction Challenge: Wartime Experience

2021 European Reading Challenge (Belgium): William - An Englishman by Cicely Hamilton (1919)

 

This book is a gem!

Cicely Hamilton worked in administration in France during World War I and served at the Front as the Germans were advancing and the area was being bombed. Incredibly, she wrote this novel during that time, probably in a tent, and in between evacuations and mopping up efforts. The book was first published in 1919 and reprinted by Persephone Books in 1999.

I don’t want to give too much detail about the storyline except to say that its ending is very different from its beginning.

William- An Englishman tells the story of William Tully, a very nondescript young man of twenty-three living under the strict rule of his mother. According to his office colleagues William was ‘a negligible quantity’ and he remained so until a crisis occurred in his life and changed the direction of his life.

William’s crisis led him to unburden himself to one of his work associates, a young man by the name of Faraday, who tended to keep to himself. Unbeknown to William, Faraday was a passionate Socialist and before long William, hitherto clueless about social issues, wholeheartedly embraced the same cause and devoted himself to it. Within a year he was in demand as a speaker and campaigner. He also became involved in the suffragette movement and it was in one of their meetings that he found his perfect match in Griselda. Like William, Griselda ‘had found peace of mind and perennial interest in the hearty  denunciation of those who did not agree with her.’

William and Griselda held to identical idealistic creeds. They were Pacifists when it suited them but knew next to nothing of history, science, literature or art.

They believed in, ‘a large, vague and beautifully undefined identity, called by William the People, and by Griselda, Woman; who in the time to come was to accomplish much beautiful and undefined Good; and in whose service they were prepared meanwhile to suffer any amount of obloquy and talk any amount of nonsense.’

William and Griselda believed their own intentions were pure and therefore the intentions of those who did not agree with them must be evil and impure. No dissent was permitted. The author played on this belief and the pernicious idea of isolating ourselves from those who hold opposing views. (There is nothing new under the sun, it seems.)

‘They were, in short, very honest and devout sectarians - cocksure, contemptuous, intolerant, self-sacrificing after the manner of their kind.’

William and Griselda were married and travelled to the Belgian Ardennes for their honeymoon where a fellow revolutionary had made her cottage in the forest available to them. There, in a foreign country, where neither of them knew the language and had no knowledge of or interest in world affairs, their narrow and idealistic thinking was shattered. For, the day before they had planned to return home to England, World War I was declared and the young couple were oblivious that the world had changed overnight.

Cicely Hamilton wrote with a brilliant combination of irony, sarcasm and humour about those on the sidelines of the war effort. William, Griselda and their associates were combatants in their own War; waging battle in scuffles at Cabinet meetings, suffragette protests, stirring up revolt and distributing pamphlets. Caught up in their own view of international affairs, armchair critics of everything military, they were completely unprepared for what awaited them.

I mentioned earlier that the book’s ending is very different from its beginning. As the story progresses there is a gathering intensity. The author keeps the sardonic tone but as their slightly ridiculous behaviour becomes pathetic rather than laughable, I felt a growing sympathy for the two of them.

‘So they trotted down the valley, humiliated, dishevelled, indignant, but still incredulous - while their world crumbled about them and Europe thundered and bled.’

‘...it is one thing to brave ridicule with an approving audience in the background, another to face it unapplauded, uncrowned with the halo of the martyr...’

I’ll leave my thoughts at that. I think William - An Englishman is a neglected classic that deserves to be noticed. I’ll be adding it to my daughter’s free reading for this year’s study of the 20th Century as I appreciate the way the author looked at the folly of dogmatically cutting oneself off from the views of others. The book is unusual in that it views World War I through the eyes of noncombatants. Another book I enjoyed in this vein was ‘Pied Piper’ by Nevil Shute, set in World War II.

 

Linking to Reading Europe 2021 Challenge at Rose City Reader: Belgium