Convention Season: In Which I Understand The Will and The Appetite (or Why It's Hard to Teach Kids to Read)

Teaching Reading in the Screen Age - Andrew Kern

I chose this seminar because I was so inspired by Kern's seminar on writing. I also am concerned about the difficulties in not only teaching reading nowadays but also in sustaining interest in reading.

Six pages of notes! I apologize because I wrote down the nuggets I found memorable or interesting, but they don't always connect to the things I wrote down before or after. Kern does tend to speak like this, but it all makes sense in the end. I found a lot of meat in this talk, so here goes:

Use books!

Teach a child to....
...pay attention.
...remember things.
...bring it into harmony.

Do you pause when reading to allow images to form in your mind? IMAGE-ination....

Teach your child to handle the screens. (in the sense of creating good habits) Make a distinction between will and desire.

Nietzsche - everything living wants to live.
Humans have the ability to know what we want is bad.
There is a difference between what we want and what we will.
The screens appeal to the appetite. They are market-driven.

Capitalism (Marx) - desires will lead to centralization of big companies. Centralized economy --> socialism.

Strengthen the will and not the appetite. Train the will. Coaches know this. We accept this idea in sports.

Strong-willed people are actually weak-willed people with strong appetites. -Charlotte Mason

Discipline = legalism in some people's view

We tend to encourage the teaching of reading by exciting the appetites.
Instead, use white paper, black text, no distractions.

A child is a symbol of God. The eternal and unknowable "ikon".

Only the expert knows the basics of a subject. Kids can handle what is most obvious but not what is most basic.

Three Stages of Reading

1 - Dependent

When? Begins in the womb. Unborn babies can hear. Read to them. Choose adult books with good language.
Understanding is over-rated at this stage. Feel the flow of the language. It's complex.
Wind in the Willows contains the best sentence ever written. The second best is in Brideshead Revisited. (He did not tell us what they were.)
If you only read Cat in the Hat type books to children, the child will not be able to handle a complex thought.

2 - Decoding

This is an agonizing process of how the symbol = sound.
Only a symbolic creature could invent symbols and phonics.
Get to the point where you ignore the symbols for the meaning.
Study a foreign language with a different alphabet.
When you teach phonics simply, you are strengthening the will.
Discipline!

3 - Independent

The will keeps us going when the desires fade.
Reading is not a "subject." Not only is reading not a subject, there is not much difference between reading and writing.

Same Five Common Topics are for Reading and for Writing. (See notes from other seminar: The Five Topics of Invention aka The Common Topics.)

Use the rules like toys you get to play with.

What do these things teach us about how we learn?
1 - We don't know how we learn.
2 - No elemental sequence to reading.
3 - We read with the mind using the senses.

GOALS

1 - Transcendent Insight
2 - Think Analogously (relating to analogies)
We are made to be like Him but it frustrates us that we can't be. We are analogies of God living in a creation, a work of art. The means by which we see truth is by analogies - stories. The best are the most universal.
3 - Information Gathering
4 - Disciplined Thinking - Translating is reading in slow motion. It focuses you.
5 - Community - Friendship is more important than your job in life.
6 - Wisdom. Even from the ancients.
7 - Harmonic Perceptions

THREE PRINCIPLES

1 - Reading incarnates truth.
2 - Reading must not be moralistic. Instead be transformed by the text.
3 - If you're not willing to submit to the work of art, don't experience it.

Teach Three Stages of Reading
Phonograms
Practice narration.
Always read above grade level.
Learn a foreign language.
Put story over information. Verse over prose, Aurality over silence.

FOUR ISSUES

1. What should we read?
2. Why should we read?
3. What are the dangers inherent in reading? (immorality, moralism, laziness)
4. How should we read?

Well, that's it! A lot of food for thought, although much of it seems disjointed when I type it all out. I recommend listening to this if you can find a recording or listen to anything by Andrew Kern.

Convention Season: In Which I Learn to Ask Questions (or What are the Liberal Arts, Really?)

Why Writing is Not a Subject and Why Every Subject Needs Writing To Be Properly Taught - Andrew Kern

Last year was the first time I'd heard Andrew Kern speak. His seminar I heard then was called "How to Read a Good Book and a Hard One" which used Anna Karenina as an example. I'd never wanted to read Anna Karenina until hearing that talk and I was blown away by Kern's thoughts. So, I wanted to hear him again this year. When I saw he was speaking on writing integrated into the whole curriculum, I knew this was the seminar for me.

Andrew Kern is founder and president of the CiRCE Institute, the founding author of The Lost Tools of Writing, and a co-author of the best-selling book Classical Education: The Movement Sweeping America.

Andrew seems a bit scattered as a speaker, but really that is not the case. He just takes a while to tie everything together. Let's see if I can do any justice to the six pages of notes I took in this meaty seminar.

He began with the image of a tree with its branches broken on the ground. He then mentioned the tree of learning and asked what is the trunk of that tree.

Next, he discussed "subjects" which at present we usually describe as the things we study in school. Do we learn subjects though? Our educational vocabulary has been hijacked.

What we actually should be teaching is not random subjects, but the deliberate, imaginative, and patient teaching of the seven liberal arts. (Since he mentioned the list of seven a few times, but never gave the complete list, I looked it up. Here it is:  grammar, rhetoric, and logic (the trivium) and geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy (the quadrivium).)

Aspire to the truth, gaze upon the truth. The soul of your child needs to perceive the truth. You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.

Use logic well. Think coherent clear thoughts.
Rhetoric: push the argument and specify the disagreement, but be a harmonizing person.

A liberal art is different from a subject.
Science - is knowing ("to know") an area of knowledge. Branches of the tree, a domain of knowledge.
Art - a way of *making* something. Taking something abstract and making it visible.

The glory of humans is that we are made in the image of a God who creates. We have not instinct, but artistry. We are incarnating a Logos.

Homer described "winged words" flying between souls. Those words still have the power to change us 2700 years later.

Humans are imitators. We are all always artists. We are expressing something always.

The liberating arts make knowledge of the truth.

So, the trunk of the tree of learning is the seven liberal arts and writing (rhetoric) is the pith (the center of the trunk), Another definition of 'pith' is the essence of something.

Writing - if you can't write, you can't succeed. In modern society, you can't do anything if you can't write. "Writing is the life-giving core."

The most important thing you can teach children is to ask questions. The quality of your learning (and your life) is determined by the questions. The questions are simple, obvious, God-given.

• What is this I see?
• What is it for?
• How did it become what it is?
• How did we get here?
• How does it change?
• How is this like that? (comparison precedes thought!)
• How are things related?
• What was happening around it?
• Who has something to say about this?

Our souls are asking these questions before we think them.

Coaching may slow you down at first. You look at what you are doing. You over-think, repeat the behavior. In the long run, you get better.

Writing is thinking in Super-Slow Motion.
When you do it more slowly, you are thinking about what you are doing.

Write before bed.

Most writing is subconscious. When you write, in a way you are studying yourself.

CATEGORIES FOR ANY LESSON
The Five Topics of Invention aka The Common Topics
(a 'topic' is a place to go to get thoughts)

1 - Comparison
How is this alike/different from that?
Quantities, qualities

2 - Definition
Who or what is that?
What kind of thing is that?
What are its parts?

3 - Circumstances/Context
What was happening at the time?

4 - Relation
Cause/Effect
Why did you do that?
Why is that what it is?
What caused that to be?
What were the effects of that?

5 - Authority
What do the experts say about that?
What do the witnesses say about that?

These questions are the heart and soul of human thought. They are the life of every subject.

Learn to enjoy thinking.

Dante's Paradiso (written while he was in exile by the sea)
Much worse than uselessly he leaves the shore 
(more full of error than he was before) 
Who fishes for the truth but lacks the arts.

Every soul fishes for the truth and NEEDS THE TOOLS.

We owe this to our children.

Convention Season: In Which I Reflect on the Experience

Vendor Hall BEFORE it opened

One of the highlights of my year is attending the Great Homeschool Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio. For the past five years, I've made the five-hour journey down I-75. Even the car ride is fun, since I travel along with good friends.

A few days spent with some of my favorite people is one of the main reasons for loving the convention. A getaway is such a blessing. We laughed together more than I've laughed in months and months.

Of course, there's the convention itself - a huge vendor hall filled with curriculum and learning materials and some of the most motivating homeschool speakers. BLISS!

This year I attended ten seminars. Over the next few weeks, I'll share what I learned. My goal was to attend seminars that will help me in the writing and literature classes I teach to homeschoolers, as well as motivate me to finish the last four years and 2 months I have left before my youngest graduates. (Not that I am counting or anything!)

1. Getting Words on Paper: Strategies for Reluctant Writers - Kathy Kuhl & Janice Campbell
2. Nurturing the Writer in Your Child/Nurturing the Writer in Yourself - The Writing Family
3. Beauty and Delight in the Ordinary Chaotic Homeschool - Sarah Mackenzie
4. Witches, Wizards, and Wands, Oh My! A Parent's Guide to Fantasy, Fiction, and Faith - Adam Andrews
5. Why Writing is Not a Subject and Why Every Subject Needs Writing To Be Properly Taught - Andrew Kern
6. How We (Mis)Read the Bible: Being Biblical As We Try To Be Biblical - John Stonestreet
7. How to Mark a Student Paper Like a Pro (Only Better) - Brian Wasko
8. The Socratic Method for Dummies - Become a Great Teacher - Adam Andrews
9. Teaching Reading in the Screen Age - Andrew Kern
10. G.K. Chesterton and the Metaphysics of Amazement  - Martin Cothran

Wow, strong inspirational teaching in every seminar but one. (You'll have to stay tuned to find out which one was the stinker!)

I rarely attend the keynote speakers and this year was no exception. None of them was compelling enough to skip our evening hijinks. On Thursday night, my friends and I gathered at a restaurant on the nearby city square and laughed and ate (tasteless) burgers. Friday night we ventured on the trolley across the river into Kentucky to have much better burgers and see a movie at the mall.

One of the things I've learned to expect is that I "hit the wall" so to speak after hearing so much valuable information. It's just mentally exhausting. So, I've learned to plan for that ahead of time. Four seminars in a day is usually all I can manage, along with a stint in the vendor hall. Now that I've learned to expect that, it's much easier to get through the weekend.

For those newbies, one thing that has made my experience easier is to bring a rolling cart. If you're heading to a convention, that's my tip!