The concept of banning mobile devices in schools should be thought of first and foremost about the learning environment. As we consider the role that phones play in the lives of children, there are good reasons why families might consider placing a phone in their child’s hands. There is a feeling of safety to be able to contact one another at a moment’s notice. Parents have the ability to find their location through tracking apps. Not only is there a feeling of safety, but there is also a feeling of technological advantage in a world that is so driven by devices. Or to put it another way, parents feel that by not entrusting these devices to children, they will fall behind their peers in ways that might have implications for their education and careers.

However, more and more parents, teachers and leaders are waking up to the idea that mobile devices are harmful for children. Haidt highlights four ways that phones have harmed children: social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, and addiction. There is much onus on parents to lead the charge in the battle to save children from these harms. But there is equally a burden of responsibility on schools to not only protect children from these harms, but also to educate and train students to rise to the challenge of our phone-based society. To that end, we need to talk about phone-free policies for our school. On top of that, we need to go beyond restrictions to encourage healthy face-to-face interactions within the school environment, to train students in gaining deep focus, and to provide a holistic framework that equips students to understand the role of technology in their lives.

A Review of The Anxious Generation

The 2024 release of Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation has swept the nation, appearing on the New York Times bestseller list for nonfiction every week since its publication in late March. This is not the first time he has written on topics pertaining to mental health and its modern causes, having co-authored The Coddling of the American Mind with Greg Lukianoff. What is not in question is that children today are describing themselves as experiencing greater depression and anxiety than previous generations. The debatable matter is what exactly has caused this increase to occur. Haidt’s answer is what he calls the “phone-based childhood.”

Without a doubt, the presence of smart phones in the pockets of our children has dramatically changed the experience of being a child. Haidt spells out the factors that contribute to the rising anxiety among children, adolescents and young adults. There are serious psychological implications for children growing up in a world that is hyper-connected to the internet. In particular, there are “four foundational harms” associated with a phone-based childhood, according to Haidt. First, children are deprived of face-to-face social interactions. Social media is often consumed in isolation within a virtual world at the expense of being physically present with others in the real world. Haidt writes, “Children need face-to-face, synchronous, embodied, physical play” (121). The absence of this kind of in-person interaction means that children lose out on the opportunities to learn the skills of social exchange and personal identity within groups where you have to navigate complex human dynamics.

Second, children are deprived of the sleep they need not only to support healthy physical growth, but also to consolidate their internal selves. When we sleep, there is a tremendous amount of activity that processes our experiences of life, be that what has been learned in school or the social interactions with friends and family. Haidt cites a study by Jean Twenge that found that “heavy use of screen media was associated with shorter sleep duration, longer sleep latency, and more mid-sleep awakenings” (124). Screen use, then, comes at a cost that can go unseen. Reduced hours of sleep and poor quality of sleep will have a dramatic impact on aspects of children such as concentration and mood.

Third, children are deprived of the power of attention. Smart phones increase the number of notifications and interrupts linear thought constantly. Haidt spells out the implications:

“Attention is a choice we make to stay on one task, one line of thinking, one mental road, even as attractive off-ramps beckon. When we fail to make that choice and allow ourselves to be frequently sidetracked, we end up in ‘the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state’ that [American psychologist William] James said is the opposite of attention.” (127)

Such deprivation of the power of attention has an obvious and significant impact on learning. The importance of attention has recently been expressed as the key factor driving excellence. According to Daniel Goleman in his book Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, attention connects to every aspect of life and achievement:

“In very recent years the science of attention has blossomed far beyond vigilance. That science tells us these skills determine how well we perform any task. If they are stunted, we do poorly; if muscular, we can excel. Our very nimbleness in life depends on this subtle faculty. While the link between attention and excellence remains hidden most of the time, it ripples through almost everything we seek to accomplish.” (2-3)

For this reason, the deprivation of attention strikes a blow at a core level, crippling the ability to students to shape their lives through the application of skills they might acquire.

Fourth, children suffer from the addictive nature of the apps on their smartphones (and in many cases other screen-based devices). Haidt is clear that the addictive nature of these devices does not mean that students are therefore addicted. He does, however, point out that “their desires are being hacked and their actions manipulated nonetheless.” (130) To put it another way, the pings, notifications, and alarms have a Pavlovian effect on children at a stage when they are most neurologically maleable. Social media and online games are often created to trigger addictive responses by teenagers, leaving them vulnerable to techniques that cause the them to spend more and more time in social media apps like Instagram and online games like Fortnite.

Additional Recent Research

Haidt’s book is well written making it an engaging and fairly easy read. This can potentially mask how well researched The Anxious Generation in fact is. Looking at the long list of references in the back, it is clear that Haidt has spent considerable time poring over the data. Even so, there does remain some amount of research that in the main corroborates Haidt’s perspective that smart phone are detrimental to children and adolescents.

One such corroboration is found in a review study published the summer of 2022 in the journal European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. The authors reviewed 25 studies published between 2011 and 2019 finding that the use of mobile phones and wireless devices “may be associated with poorer mental health in children and adolescents.” (Girela-Serrano, B.M., et al. “Impact of mobile phones and wireless devices use on children and adolescents’ mental health: a systematic review.” Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry 33 (2024), 1621–1651.) What I find interesting about this review is that for the first decade of the existence of the iPhone, scientists were already aware of potential detriments to children and adolescents.

More recently, Bora Colak, in an essay published in 2024, explores recent data to examine the association between the use of smartphones and social media and problems children and adolescents experience in mental health. Similar to Haidt, Colak recommends increased awareness and policy initiatives to protect children and adolescents from harm. (Bora Colak, “Potential Harms of Excessive Social Media and Smartphone Use on Youth Mental Health,” in Dancyger, et al., eds., Pediatric Nonadherence (Springer, 2024), 59-70).

Granting that not every child experiences smartphone addiction in the extreme, the potential for continual harm for children and adolescents exists. One recent study looked at potential molecular and neurological pathologies associated with smartphone addiction, suggesting the implementation of anti-addiction therapies to mitigate the impact of smartphone addiction. (Faijan, et al. “Smartphone Addiction among Students and its Harmful Effects on MentalHealth, Oxidative Stress, and Neurodegeneration towards FutureModulation of Anti-Addiction Therapies: A Comprehensive Survey basedon SLR, Research Questions, and Network Visualization Techniques,” CNS & Neurological Disorders – Drug Targets 22 (2023), 1070-1089.)

Taken together, these and other recent studies should alarm parents and educators of the harm that smartphones and social media can inflict on children and adolescents. The potential harm to children is great enough that in 2023 Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released an Advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health. The advisory states, “Extreme, inappropriate, and harmful content continues to be easily and widely accessible by children and adolescents. This can be spread through direct pushes, unwanted content exchanges, and algorithmic designs.” (8) In other words, the individuals who are most vulnerable to harm are not properly protected against some of the ways these social media are designed. Murthy strengthened his statement a year later in piece he published in the New York Times, calling for warning labels on social media platforms along the lines of those found on cigarette boxes.

Advice for Schools

What is clear from Haidt’s book and recent studies is that smartphone and social media use by children and adolescents can be harmful. As a result, parents and schools should amplify their protections for children. In this section, we will outline a few steps that can be taken in schools to proactively respond to these trends.

Become Truly Phone Free

Many schools have phone policies of some sort. Haidt amplifies the issue when he writes, “A phone ‘ban’ limited to class time is nearly useless. This is why schools should go phone-free for the entirety of the school day.” (249, emphasis original). Such an approach requires a secure location for phones where they can be parked far enough away from where students do academic work for them to be truly separated from the device.

At Clapham School, we implemented a program where a phone storage cabinet was placed near the receptionist desk. As students enter the school, they place their phone in the “phone home” and proceed into the school where they learn in classes and interact with one another without phones present. The advantages of this approach are that the phone is in a secure location and there is a responsible adult present at all times. The presence of the adult is important both for the security of the phones, but also to facilitate accountability for the students. Rather than sneaking access to the phone during passing periods, breaks or lunch, students are more inclined to interact with each other. If a situation arises where the student needs to ask a parent a question, they are permitted to go to the receptionist area to use the phone in a designed location. Unsurprisingly, these needs have been fairly rare. When the phone is not easily accessible at all times, many of those “needs” seem to evaporate.

As you consider implementing a phone-free policy at your school, there are few principles to keep in mind. One, the policy needs to begin with the security of the students’ devices, because if they feel their property is not secure, there will be immediate resistance. Two, the policy needs to have some amount of flexibility where students can have a designated location where they can transact any interactions that come up during the day. By having that location near the receptionist, an appropriate approach can be that the student use the school phone to reach parents, thereby negating even further the “need” for the personal device. Three, there needs to be true separation. A location in a classroom can end up being quite the distraction as the phones buzz and squawk throughout the day. It can be difficult to find a central location that can accommodate the student traffic and maintain optimal security. Four, having an adult present at the secure location means there’s on-the-ground support for policy implementation. Finally, there needs to be an inspiring set of ideas that motivate the policy. Showing students the pathway to rich fellowship and deep learning helps them to know that there is something good and worthwhile they are committing to, rather than seeing such a policy as solely the deprivation of their property.

Write a Technology Policy

Now, having a phone-free school does not mean having a technology-free school entirely. The reality is that students must be well equipped to navigate a world full of technological and virtual components. At one level, schools need to develop a strong technology policy. The guiding principle should be the academic use of technology. Students must learn how to use basic apps such as Word, a school-based email account, presentation platforms and spreadsheets. Most of these tools can be incorporated into the general objectives across the curriculum. For instance, teachers can articulate objectives that will see students able to format text, format documents, set up tables, integrate graphics, set up templates, use table of contents, use different methods of citations including footnotes. These kinds of objectives situate technology within a set of learning outcomes that wed technology to academic production.

The next level of technological training should incorporate the use of video production. After Covid, the use of video meetings has become a reality even in the academic space. Thus, when we think about rhetorical training, students should not only think about written and oral production, but what it takes to be not only comfortable on camera, but to view this as a medium for persuasive communication. Along these same lines, I could see schools articulating objectives where students learn how to develop their own blogs and complete assignments by producing video content. This set of outcomes equips students to inhabit the virtual world that is part of their reality not solely as consumers but as creators. As such, I think they are more likely to have a greater sense of their own identity consistent with their real-world selves rather than being swayed by an onslaught of influences through social media platforms.

In order to accomplish these technological outcomes, I do think there should be a some clear parameters set with regard to the use of technology in school. Three immediately come to mind. First, devices – and here I mean predominantly laptops or tablets – should only be taken out under the direction of a teacher. Here I am trying to push back against the inundation of devices in the classroom. Students should still experience school as a place where paper books are opened in literature class, and math problems are solved with pencils in hand. Second, it should be expressly stated that there is no social media or entertainment sites open in school. The sole purpose for devices is their academic use. This curtails the switching between windows to support singular focus on the work at hand. It also encourages face-to-face interactions outside the classroom, rather than students gathering around a laptop to watch a YouTube video. Third, screens ought to face out towards the public. This means that anybody walking by or circulating in a classroom can quickly and easily see what is happening on screen. These kinds of approaches to the technology policy enable accountability and mentoring, strengthening the habits of students in the school context.

Get Parent Commitment

Implementing a phone-free school program cannot happen without good parent partnership. Schools can help parents by providing readings and workshops to address the issues facing parents today. Administrators and teachers should invite discussion with parents to learn more about the pain points they experience raising children in a world with smartphones and social media. In all likelihood, a phone-free school is exactly what they would want for their children. That being said, good communication is necessary in order to assuage fears parents might have about their ability to stay in touch with their children when out of the home. These fears are often associated with safety concerns, so they will want to know the measures the school will take to ensure the safety of their child.

One way to amplify parent commitment is to embed the phone-free school program within a larger movement. A compelling vision has been cast by Justin Earley, author of Common Rule and Habits of the Household. He sets forth ten practices that help individuals, households and communities to develop healthy relationships with technology. One of the ten practices is a phone-free school. Set within a context of personal, family and community standards, the alignment of this visionary approach enables everyone to work together towards the goal of healthy approaches to technology in our lives. One of the tools available to individuals is a commitment form that can be signed. What something like this can do for a community is to put some kind of stake in the ground that states a commitment to certain standards of conduct. You can find more information about the movement, the practices and the form at hangtenmovement.com.

Get Outside

Returning for the moment to Haidt’s thesis that we have increased vigilance regarding playing outside and decreased vigilance regarding playing online, my advice to educators is to get the students outside. Children need more time experiencing the real world in unstructured play out of doors, particularly in contact with the richness that nature has to offer. There is actually good research to support this. The mindfulness movement gathered momentum in light of the Covid epidemic, and much of the research tells the tale that being outside in nature improves mood and decreases anxiety. Walking in nature can improve one’s mood even more than physical exercise alone, according to a 2020 study (Olafsdottir, et al. “Health Benefits of Walking in Nature: A Randomized Controlled Study Under Conditions of Real-Life Stress,” Environment and Behavior, 52 (2020), 248-274). Even if an immersive experience in nature is hard to come by, even taking a walk in an urban environment was shown to have positive results on the mood of students (Jingni Ma, et al., “Effectiveness of a mindful nature walking intervention on sleep quality and mood in university students during Covid-19: A randomised control study,” EXPLORE 19 (2023), 405-416.) The long and short of this is that we should enable students to experience the benefits of real world.

There are lots of ways that you can enable students to make rich connections with the outdoors. Sometimes even a simple walk taking only five to ten minutes can completely change the mood of the day for your class. Getting outdoors can take a more formal approach by planning a nature study lesson. Plan field trips where the day is spent at a local garden, farm or arboretum. The goal is to get outside and have a meaningful interaction with the physical space we inhabit.

Training the Prophetic Voice by Dr. Patrick Egan is a must-read for classical Christian educators seeking to build a robust rhetoric program. Grounded in biblical theology, this insightful book provides a framework for developing students’ prophetic voices – the ability to speak with wisdom, clarity, and conviction on the issues that matter most.

As an experienced educator, Dr. Egan understands the vital role rhetoric plays in shaping the next generation of Christian leaders. Through time-tested principles and practical guidance, he equips teachers to cultivate students who can articulate the truth with passion and purpose.

Whether you’re looking to revitalize your existing rhetoric curriculum or lay the foundation for a new program, Training the Prophetic Voice is an invaluable resource. Discover how to empower your students to become effective communicators, courageous truth-tellers, and agents of transformation in their communities and beyond.

Order your copy of Training the Prophetic Voice today and unlock the power of your students’ voice in your classroom.

The post Are You Ready to Become a Phone-free School? appeared first on .

“Why the History of Narration Matters” series:

Part 1: Charlotte Mason’s Discovery?

Part 2: Classical Roots

Part 3: Narration’s Rebirth

Part 4: Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Narration in Historical Perspective

Expanding Narration’s History with Comenius: Narration’s Rebirth, Stage 2 – The Great Didactic

Expanding Narration’s History with Comenius: Narration’s Rebirth, Stage 2 – The Analytical Didactic

This series began as an attempt to wrap up the loose ends of hints and speculations I had had for years, regarding the origins of Charlotte Mason’s practice of narration. Was it her own invention? Some passages I had discovered in a rhetoric textbook from the early 1900s, and then from Quintilian and John Locke, argued otherwise. Perhaps this, then, was a test-case for the broader question of Charlotte Mason’s relationship to the classical tradition.

Since then I have been able to fill in a pretty compelling set of stepping stones for the use of narration-like practices throughout the history of education. But one major gap remained…. the Middle Ages. I am excited to announce that I have filled in that gap; or at least, I have moved up the gap in the history of narration from the Renaissance proper to the twelfth century renaissance of the high Middle Ages. The source: John of Salisbury’s Metalogicon, or defense of the verbal and logical arts of the trivium. The proponent of narration: Bernard of Chartres.

While this investigation into the history of narration began with the theme of Charlotte Mason’s place within the classical tradition of education, it has come to represent more than that for me. In our recovery movements we have focused our attention on recovering the broader and more holistic purpose of education (the Why), in contrast to modern utilitarianism and pragmatism. In addition, we have rediscovered old curricular tracks (the What), like the liberal arts themselves. But we have not delved as deeply for the gems of pedagogy, the teaching methods of the classical tradition in all their multiform glory.

This short history of narration (which I am revising and expanding into a book to be published with Educational Renaissance) aims to uncover narration as it was practiced in the tradition, turning this pedagogical gem in the light of various centuries and cultural expressions. This historical understanding will then give us a flexibility and creativity of application with the teaching practice that we couldn’t gain any other way.

With that preface, let us travel back to the late Middle Ages!

The Twelfth-Century Educational Renaissance

Daniel D. McGarry sees the twelfth century as the birthplace of modern Western pedagogy, noting that while the “constituent elements were Greek, Roman, and early Christian in origin, yet it is also true that these received new form and life in the Middle Ages.”[1] He goes on to call this momentous time period of intellectual flourishing, in which John of Salisbury lived, the “twelfth-century educational ‘renaissance’.” Whether we agree with designating the twelfth century as the birthplace of modern Western pedagogy may depend more upon our assessment of the relative merits of ancient and modern teaching methods than anything else. But the important point for our purposes is the new life, and what we can undoubtedly call the rebirth of narration, among other teaching practices that occurred during this time period.

Jerome Taylor of the University of Notre Dame also has called the twelfth century a “renaissance”, describing it as “a time when centers of education had moved from the predominantly rural monasteries to the cathedral schools of growing cities and communes; when education in the new centers was becoming specialized, hence unbalanced, according to the limited enthusiasms of capacities of particular masters”.[2] Against this backdrop, John of Salisbury wrote his Metalogicon to combat a group scholars who repudiated the value of the Trivium arts of grammar, dialectic and rhetoric, and claimed to advance on to mastery of philosophy in but a few years of study.[3]

John of Salisbury closes his discussion of the importance of full grammatical training by discussing an eminent teacher of the previous generation, Bernard of Chartres, who taught at the cathedral school there beginning in 1115. Bernard is the earliest figure to be attributed with the famous “standing on the shoulders of giants” conception.[4] With such a value for the thoughts of those who came before, it is no wonder that we see him using narration as a core teaching practice. As we have mentioned elsewhere, narration is a fundamentally pious act that accords well with a focus on classic literature and the Great Books.[5]

Bernard of Chartres Teaching Grammar

John of Salisbury begins by describing Bernard’s method of teaching grammar:

Bernard of Chartres, the greatest font of literary learning in Gaul in recent times, used to teach grammar in the following way. He would point out, in reading authors, what was simple and according to rule. On the other hand, he would explain grammatical figures, rhetorical embellishment, and sophistical quibbling, as well as the relation of given passages to other studies. He would do so, however, without trying to teach everything at one time. On the contrary, he would dispense his instruction to his hearers gradually, in a manner commensurate with their powers of assimilation.[6]

This explanatory lecture method is well attested for grammatical teachers in the tradition going right on back to Quintilian. What is noted as of special importance is Bernard’s avoidance of being pedantic about the wrong sorts of details. In his discursive commentary on texts, Bernard took a methodical and gradual approach, suiting his teaching to the receptivity of his hearers. His unique sensitivity to what his students could “assimilate” was likely borne of his practice of listening to his students narrate the next day (see below).

Proponents of narration might be inclined to see in Bernard’s method nothing more than the ineffective lecture-based approach to education that we deplore. But according to John of Salisbury, Bernard would not leave his readings of texts and lectures there, simply in the air to be remembered or not by his pupils. Instead, Bernard was aware of the necessity for mental exercise through narration or recitation:

In view of the fact that exercise both strengthens and sharpens our mind, Bernard would bend every effort to bring his students to imitate what they were hearing.[7] In some cases he would rely on exhortation, in others he would resort to punishments, such as flogging. Each student was daily required to recite part of what he had heard on the previous day. Some would recite more, others less. Each succeeding day thus became the disciple of its predecessor.[8]

Bernard’s teaching practice involved students in the imitation of the authors “that he read to them” (see n. 28). In addition, we can see that this was a required daily practice for all students – a fact that impresses us with the pedagogical value Bernard attributed to it.  John says he “would bend every effort” to this task. We might say that Bernard assigned his students homework to remember something of what he had taught them the previous day. Failing to complete your homework for Bernard’s class might have dire consequences (i.e. “flogging”). It seems at least partly ambiguous whether details from Bernard’s lecture would be included in students’ recounting of the content of the texts. But we could easily imagine commentary and text fusing together naturally when the previous day’s topics were retold by many students, one after another.

We might wonder whether the recitation that Bernard speaks of was similar to what Charlotte Mason called ‘narration’ or if it involved the word-for-word memorization of select passages from the texts Bernard read aloud, what many modern classical Christian educators and Masonites now call recitation. While the details here are somewhat ambiguous, a few factors push me in the direction of the former. First, the fact that “some would recite more, others less” seems true to life for educators who have used narration, whereas if word-for-word memorization were in view, we would expect a teacher to assign a set number of lines. Would Bernard leave it to chance which passages his students memorized? Likewise, the closing observation that each day “became the disciple of its predecessor” seems to fit better with an oral recounting of the content from the previous day by many students than memory work.

A later passage also exhibits the same ambiguity about whether narration or memorization is in view:

Bernard used also to admonish his students that stories and poems should be read thoroughly, and not as though the reader were being precipitated to flight by spurs. Wherefor he diligently and insistently demanded from each, as a daily debt, something committed to memory.[9]

It is possible that this passage refers to Bernard’s homework requirement of memorization, while the other refers to narration. Or both could refer to the same practice of narration or memorization. Either way, even if we were to conclude (which I doubt) that word-for-word memorization is intended in both these passages, we could still argue that such a heavy use of recitation (as “a daily debt”) edges into the benefits of the unique practice of narration because of how consistently and vigorously it engages the memory.

At the end of the day, it seems most likely that Bernard employed both narration and word-for-word memorization (as did Charlotte Mason and countless educators throughout history). What he was most remarkable for was his use of these imitative exercises as a daily requirement for all students. In this way, we can see the features of earlier rhetorical and grammatical teaching reinvigorated and taken seriously in a way that John of Salisbury, at least, found remarkable and rare in his own time.

Bernard’s “Conferences” and the Narration-Trivium Lesson

For classical educators who worry about a bare recital of content, Bernard’s methods went further to cultivate what we might call the higher order thinking skills and creative production of his students:

A further feature of Bernard’s method was to have his disciples compose prose and poetry every day, and exercise their faculties in mutual conferences,[10] for nothing is more useful in introductory training than actually to accustom one’s students to practice the art they are studying. Nothing serves better to foster the acquisition of eloquence and the attainment of knowledge than such conferences, which also have a salutary influence on practical conduct, provided that charity moderates enthusiasm, and that humility is not lost during progress in learning.[11]

Bernard’s “daily debt” did not only involve narration and/or memorization, but also literary composition and discussion. These “conferences” might have sounded like what we call socratic seminars, involving the discussion of ideas from the authors being read as well as their relationships and applications to other ideas. This conclusion finds support in John’s claim that they would have a “salutary [health-bringing] influence on practical conduct”. Or else, these conferences could have required students to critique one another’s prose and poetic compositions, judging their merits and flaws. In all likelihood, both sorts of discussions occurred thereby fostering both “the acquisition of eloquence and the attainment of knowledge”.

Bernard’s method of teaching grammar thus coheres broadly with the Narration-Trivium lesson structure that I have advocated for as a fusion of Charlotte Mason’s narration lesson with the classical tradition.[12] Bernard’s explanatory lectures provided the set-up or 1^st little talk that enabled his students to understand the texts that he read to them. His extended commentary on the text cleared up further difficulties and focused on the detailed development of grammatical learning. The text and proper explanation were then required to be narrated, not immediately, but the next day by each student, as much as he could remember. Students’ preparation for this task might have involved them engaging in their own sorts of retrieval practice activities (perhaps involving notes) which would enable them to tell in detail the next day. They may also have memorized word-for-word particular passages or quotations from the texts, which they might have jotted down in a commonplace journal.

Then students would engage in “conferences” where they discussed the ideas and features of the texts they were studying, based on their knowledge of the text gained through lecture and narration. Finally, they would also write their own imitative compositions, share them with others for discussion and critique, thus training them in dialectic and rhetoric, the second little talk and a creative or analytical response to the text. Instead of happening all in a single lesson, this process would begin on one day and continue into the next, a practice that I would commend as well, esp. for older students. The Narration-Trivium lesson structure is intended to be flexible and adaptable by the teacher to the nature of the subject-matter and the needs of the students.

Bernard’s Methods as a Classical Inheritance

We might be tempted to think of Bernard’s grammatical pedagogy involving narration as simply a blip on the timeline of the Middle Ages, but its resonance with the practices of the classical era should cause us to wonder whether there were many more unremembered Bernards throughout the Middle Ages at earlier monastic or church schools, who followed the traditions of genuine classical learning. Even in his own time, Bernard’s pedagogy was adopted by many, according to John, even if it died off quickly:

My own instructors in grammar… formerly used Bernard’s method in training their disciples. But later, when popular opinion veered away from the truth, when men preferred to seem, rather than to be philosophers, and when professors of the arts were promising to impart the whole of philosophy in less than three or even two years… [they] were overwhelmed by the onslaught of the ignorant mob, and retired. Since then, less time and attention have been given to the study of grammar. As a result we find men who profess all the arts, liberal and mechanical, but who are ignorant of this very first one [i.e., grammar], without which it is futile to attempt to go on to the others.[13]

John of Salisbury’s nostalgic reflections of his own quality instruction in grammar by teachers following Bernard’s approach might cause us to wonder whether the human tendency to take short cuts is really to blame for narration’s neglect. As Plato feared, writing has proved to be “a recipe not for memory, but for reminder,” filling men “not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom”.[14] In all times and places, narration (alongside other genuinely classical teaching methods) represents a hard and uphill climb, but the true route to the peak of the mountain of intellectual virtue.

In this final article on the history of narration, I’ve given you a taste of the book that Educational Renaissance published in early 2022: A Short History of Narration. I hope you’ve been inspired by the history of narration and that you will buy the book to take your practice of narration to the next level. Also, check out our webinars, like Habit Training 2.0 or one on Narration 2.0, to get the practical resources and insight you need to bring ancient wisdom into modern era in your classroom!

[1] Daniel D. McGarry, “Introduction” in The Metalogicon of John of Salisbury: A Twelfth-Century Defense of the Verbal and Logical Arts of the Trivium (Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino Publishing, 2015), xv.

[2] Jerome Taylor, “Introduction” in The Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor: A Medieval Guide to the Arts, translated by Jerome Taylor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961; Forgotten Books reprint, 2018), 4.

[3] He actually addresses one particular advocate whom he nicknames Cornificius for the ancient detractor of Vergil, but this may be a literary fiction, and either way, the individual represents a movement of thought, on which see John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, 11.

[4] John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, 167:

Bernard of Chartres used to compare us to [puny] dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants. He pointed out that we see more and farther than our predecessors, not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are lifted up and borne aloft on their gigantic stature.

[5] See Jason Barney, A Classical Guide to Narration, 89.

[6] John of Salisbury, The Metalogicon of John of Salisbury: A Twelfth-Century Defense of the Verbal and Logical Arts of the Trivium, translated by Daniel D. McGarry (Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino Publishing, 2015), 67.

[7] The translator adds a note, ibid., 68: “Literally: what they were hearing, namely, the selections that he read to them [from the authors].”

[8] Ibid.

[9] Another note from the translator, ibid.: “Bernard apparently required of each of his students the daily recitation of some passages memorized from their current reading.”

[10] Translator’s note, ibid, 70: “collationibus, collations, conferences, comparisons. Although ‘conferences’ would seem to fit here as a translation, Webb holds that ‘comparisons’ is better….”

[11] Ibid.

[12] See www.educationalrenaissance.com for a free eBook explaining the Narration-Trivium lesson.

[13] Ibid., 71.

[14] Plato, Phaedrus in The Collected Dialogues, 520.

“Why the History of Narration Matters” series:

Part 1: Charlotte Mason’s Discovery?

Part 2: Classical Roots

Part 3: Narration’s Rebirth

Part 4: Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Narration in Historical Perspective

Expanding Narration’s History with Comenius: Narration’s Rebirth, Stage 2 – The Great Didactic

Expanding Narration’s History with Comenius: Narration’s Rebirth, Stage 2 – The Analytical Didactic

The post Expanding Narration’s History in the late Middle Ages: Bernard of Chartres from John of Salisbury’s Metalogicon appeared first on .

For example, the habit of timeliness is indispensable for a life of ease. Imagine how difficult life is for the person who struggles with timeliness. He is constantly behind–missing meetings here, chasing deadlines there–and feels the constant pressure to keep up and keep calm despite the ever-present burden of the clock. On the contrary, imagine the person who has mastered timeliness. He is able to go about his day with an exceptional disposition of nonchalance. He effortlessly moves from task to task, allowing his habit of timeliness to pave the way for peaceful relationships and productive outcomes to emerge.

Charlotte Mason famously taught that the most effortful aspect of being a teacher is not the teaching itself. It is the habit training that goes on behind the scenes. If teachers equip students with good habits, then the lessons, provided they are of the right sort, will take care of themselves (Towards a Philosophy of Education, p. 99). Students will gain a newfound ability to focus, concentrate, follow instructions, and engage the ideas of the lesson with an exceptional degree of independence.

More recently, modern research has confirmed the fascinating neuroscience behind the formation of good habits. It has also confirmed that the formation of habits geared toward strengthening the will are the most reliable indicator for achievement. Modern researchers have given a name for this special bundle of will-power habits: Grit. 

In this article, I will explore how teachers can help foster grit in their students in the classroom through guidance from Charlotte Mason on habit training. The concept that comes closest to grit for the British educator is perfect, or thorough, execution. Perfect execution is the act of completing a task as well as one can within a reasonable amount of time. Cultivating this habit takes strategy and effort to be sure, but the reward is worth it. Over time, children develop habits of perseverance, responsibility, and care for one’s work, all leading to a unique strength of will: grit. 

What is Perfect Execution?

Have you ever wondered why some children write with remarkably elegant penmanship and others rush? Or why some children complete fitness exercises with perfect form all the way to completion while others struggle? 

While it is tempting to attribute these feats to natural talent or even gender differences, the truth is that both tasks were carried to completion through habits of perfect execution. By “perfect” I do not mean literally perfect, but the repeated act of aiming for perfection through giving a thorough effort each and every time. 

For children who complete tasks with thoroughness, two factors are at play: First, they care about their work. They have come to believe that the tasks they execute to some extent matter.

Second, they work with a resolved commitment to do their best. They do not settle for half-measures or shortcuts. They have the perseverance and fortitude to carry out a task to completion. This willpower did not appear over night. It came as the result of deliberate practice and usually, but not necessarily, the encouragement of a supportive mentor. 

Training the Habit of Perfect Execution

We tend to assume students will grow more proficient in a task over time simply through repetition. After all, we are told, practice makes perfect. What we fail to realize is that imperfect practice yields precisely that: imperfection. Admiring the German and French schools of her day, Charlotte Mason observes, “…if children get the habit of turning out imperfect work, the men and women will undoubtedly keep that habit up” (Home Education, p. 159).

To train the habit of perfect execution, Charlotte Mason taught that parents and teachers should hold high yet realistic expectations of children as they work. She writes, “No work should be given to a child that he cannot execute perfectly, and then perfection should be required from him as a matter of course” (Home Education, p. 159). The key to growing in perfect execution is to prioritize quality over quantity, and to expect and support the highest quality the child is capable of each and every time.

When it comes to teaching penmanship, for example, it is tempting to think that a great quantity of practice is the surest way to learn to form letters. But Charlotte Mason cautions that it not so much how many letters are written, but the quality of the letters:

For instance, he is set to do a copy of strokes, and is allowed to show a slateful at all sorts of slopes and all sorts of intervals; his moral sense is vitiated, his eye is injured. Set him six strokes to copy; let him, not bring a slateful, but six perfect strokes, at regular distances and at regular slopes. If he produces a faulty pair, get him to point out the fault, and persevere until he has produced his task; if he does not do it to-day, let him go on to-morrow and the next day, and when the six perfect strokes appear, let it be an occasion of triumph.

Home Education, p. 160

In the quotation above, Mason is clear to emphasize that perseverance and perfect execution matter most in habit formation. Likewise with other activities, teachers should always expect the child to give her very best: “So with the little tasks of painting, drawing, or construction he sets himself––let everything he does be well done. An unsteady house of cards is a thing to be ashamed of. Closely connected with this habit of ‘perfect work’ is that of finishing whatever is taken in hand. The child should rarely be allowed to set his hand to a new undertaking until the last is finished” (Home Education, p. 160).

So often in our modern world we feel the pressure to be efficient and useful. In a block of time, we would rather perform ten tasks poorly than one task exceptionally. But here we see the secret for setting up children for long-term flourishing. The solution is not to pile on hours of homework each night after a full day of school. It is not to assign endless loads of busy work to keep students occupied. It is to assist students in approaching each and every task with the discipline to do their very best. This is how we as educators train the habit of perfect execution.

The Power of Grit

In her New York Times bestseller Grit (Scribner, 2016), psychologist Angela Duckworth shares her findings on the power of grit to drive achievement. She defines grit as the unique combination of passion and perseverance, determination and direction (8). People with grit are resilient and hardworking, propelled by some deeply held belief. They are convinced that whatever they are doggedly pursuing matters.

Central to Duckworth’s research findings is the notion that in examining cases of achievement we tend to be distracted by talent. That is, when we encounter a person who has achieved great things, we often chalk it up to raw ability. While there is certainly something to be said for God-given strengths and abilities, too often we let  natural ability overshadow the dedicated work ethic an achiever cultivated to get there.

To reconcile natural talent and the power of grit, Duckworth argues that “effort counts twice” (35). Rather than drawing a direct line from talent to achievement, the psychologist suggests there is more to the equation. For achievement to occur there are two instances of calculus. First, the achiever invests effort into his or her natural talent to develop a particular skill. Then, the achiever builds on that skill through more effort to reach the level of exceptional achievement. Effort counts twice.

More Important than Grit

It is important to note here that grit in and of itself is not equivalent to character in the moral sense. It is possible to have a lot of grit, and therefore to be a high achiever, but to be a very bad person. In Duckworth’s own social science parlance she distinguishes between strengths of will, heart, and mind (273). Strength of will, or willpower, includes attributes like self-control, delayed gratification, grit, and the growth mindset. Strength of heart includes what we would classically describe as moral virtues: gratitude, honesty, empathy, and kindness. And strength of mind includes curiosity and creative thinking.

In a 2018 interview with the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Duckworth acknowledges that strength of heart does not lead to the same levels of achievement as strength of will, but it is more important. She admits that she would rather her own daughters be good before they are great.

This is an important word for classical educators, including Charlotte Mason followers. All this talk about perfect execution, grit, and achievement can quickly get our minds churning about how we harness this power for, say, elevating standardized test results. We would do well to remember, as Duckworth does in her own secular way, that “while man looks at the outward appearance, God looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). At the end of the day, more than achievement, we will be judged not by what we accomplished, but how we lived.

Fostering Grit Through Habit Training

So how do we help our students become more gritty, not for the sake of worldly achievement, but for true human flourishing? A great place to start is by cultivating the habit of perfect execution in the classroom. Commit to having your students only work on tasks they can complete with excellence and then hold them to it. 

Briefly, here are three steps for cultivating this habit:

1. Clarify your expectations. 
2. Cast vision for the worthiness of the work. 
3. Support them throughout.

By clarifying your expectations, you are making it unmistakably clear what your students are to do and how they are to do it. They should have a good sense of “the final product” so they know what to aim for. And they should understand that process and format matters: the “how” is just as important as the “what.”

When you cast vision for the worthiness of the work, you are giving your students a picture of why this work matters. This is what Charlotte Mason would call “sowing the idea.” If they are working on a map of Asia, for example, you could emphasize the beauty and variety we observe across the globe. Highlight some unique cultural artifacts from the region to help them form a concrete relationship with it. In order for the habit of perfect execution to take, student care is a necessary precondition. High teacher expectations without student ownership and care devolves into micro-management all too quickly.

Once they begin their work, teachers must support students throughout the assignment. There is a reason why the habit of perfect execution is so rare. It is hard work! As humans, our wills often fail us and we take the path of least resistance. We need wise and supportive mentors around us to hold us to the standard we set out to meet. This is the indispensable work of the teacher, and as Charlotte Mason warned, it takes the most effort!

Conclusion

As classical educators, we seek to form humans holistically as virtuous young men and women. We believe that school is not reserved exclusively for the cognitive domain, but that there is work to be done in the moral and spiritual domains as well. Through helping students develop the habit of perfect execution, we are helping students forge wills of perseverance and grit. As we do so let us keep our motivations in check. It is not ultimately to propel our students to chase after worldly achievement or to elevate their will-power over others. It is to help them grow as workers in the field, reaping the harvest the Lord has prepared for His people, as we wait for His return. Habits of perfect execution and grit, I believe, can only aid them in this worthiest of work.

[Downlo

The post Fostering Grit Through Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Habit Training appeared first on .

While we know that Aelius Theon used written narration to train future orators in memory and invention, and that Quintilian saw it as a core practice connected to the ability to learn, it is not really until Comenius that narration is a central teaching method. Erasmus too recommended the narration of a teacher’s lecture, thus shifting the focus to knowledge of content and away from rhetorical style and fluency. But only Comenius made of narration a golden key to unlock the doors of knowledge to the student.

In my article on The Great Didactic we saw how Comenius envisioned teaching as opening founts of knowledge, and the process of students narrating to one another as part and parcel of the nature of knowledge itself: it must be shared! Developing his analogies from the natural world, Comenius advocated for narration under the analogy of intellectual nourishment through collection, digestion and distribution. The teacher first collects and digests knowledge, and then distributes it to others; then, in an ironic transformation the student becomes the teacher to do the same for his fellows. Thus, Comenius recommends a process of repeated narrations of content given by the teacher (or his book) with corrections by the teacher.

In this article we will explore how Comenius developed his thinking about the teaching method of narration or the student becoming the teacher in The Analytical Didactic, which is really a section of a longer work (The Methodus) that he wrote much later in life. In The Analytical Didactic Comenius “reinterpreted the principle of nature that he had described in The Great Didactic as a principle of logic” (John E. Sadler, “John Amos Comenius” in Encyclopedia Britannica; accessed January, 2021). While his translator found in this a movement away from the fertile and imaginative quality of his first didactic (see the Introduction), my impression was of the bracing winds of truth blowing steadily through Comenius’ treatment of teaching method. Where some of Comenius’ insights seemed strained and overwrought in the analogies from nature in The Great Didactic, the crystal clarity of Comenius’ principles and applications in The Analytical Didactic leaves little that can be objected to. I encourage you to find a copy and read it yourself; it’s a book that I anticipate coming back to again and again.

Narration as Review and Examination

First of note in Comenius’ recommendations for what Charlotte Mason called narration is his focus on the importance of reviews and examinations. The whole passage that most concerns practitioners of narration comes at the end of The Analytical Didactic in a section on “how to teach rapidly, thoroughly, and agreeably” (171). His comments on review and examination reminded me of my own statements in A Classical Guide to Narration about how narration serves both as a method of assimilation and of assessment. In other words, when students narrate, they store what they are learning in long term memory, AND teachers learn what students know and don’t know.

Comenius begins by claiming that “the more anything is handled, the more familiar it becomes; consequently, if we would have our students well acquainted with anything and ready to use it, we must familiarize them with it through reviews, examinations, and frequent use” (191). He goes on to say that these “reviews and examinations” should occur “even during the process of learning”. Comenius reinforces the importance of continual review and testing through the analogy of a traveler becoming acquainted with a road through the process of going backward and forward on it, retracing his steps through narration, and then digressing along different alternate routes along the way (191-192).

Narration, Analysis and Practice

For Comenius, then, narration is not to be opposed to analytical discussion, but is complementary to it. He sums up the natural progression of learning, review and examination through three questions:

1. Has the student learned something? This will be apparent if he can repeat it.
2. Does he understand it? This will be discovered by a variety of analytical questions.
3. Does he know how to use it? This will be revealed by prescribed but unrehearsed practice. (191)

Narration is the first step in a process. This view finds expression in the Narration-Trivium lesson structure that I developed based on Charlotte Mason’s narration lesson for young children. By following up narration with dialectic or analytical discussion, teachers can help deepen students’ understanding from a bare recital to fuller comprehension. This functions like the digressions down alternate routes in Comenius’ analogy. Practice then corresponds, to some extent, to the rhetoric phase or response to the rich text.

The Student as Teacher

Comenius’ practical application of this principle involves the same ironic transformation of student into teacher that he advocated for in The Great Didactic:

We can do this by urging him not merely to pay constant heed to the demonstrations and explanations of the teacher but also to reverse the role and to demonstrate and explain the same subject to others; furthermore, he ought to see and hear others besides his teacher give these demonstrations and explanations. I must make my meaning clearer by quoting a set of verses well known in schools:

                        Often to ask, to retain what is answered, and teach what remembered,

                        These are three means that will make the disciple surpass his own master.

The third part of this advice, that about teaching what we have retained, is not sufficiently well known, nor is it commonly put into practice; yet it would be highly profitable if every student were required to teach others what he himself has just learned. Indeed, there is a great deal of truth in the saying, ‘He who teaches others educates himself,’ or, as Seneca puts it, ‘Men learn while they teach.’ This is so not merely because teaching strengthens their conceptions through repetition but also because it offers them opportunities of delving further into the subject. (See Sec. 85.) (191-192)

What Comenius adds to this discussion from his previous treatment is a new articulation of the value of teaching for deep learning. In claiming that the conceptions are strengthened through repetition, we are on the solid ground of what modern learning science calls retrieval practice. But in describing the “opportunities of delving further into the subject” we seem to add on to bare retrieval the value of elaboration or making further connections to what one already knows. Acting as the teacher doesn’t just store memories, it improves and develops insight or understanding.

Comenius then expresses this method as “a practical rule” to the effect that “every pupil should acquire the habit of also acting as a teacher” (193)—an idea that is both stunning in its simplicity and also revolutionary in terms of common teaching practice. Every student? Really? Acting as a teacher to the others? Adopting this practical rule would upend how most classrooms operate in terms of their daily practices. For the teacher who imagines that it can’t be done with any efficiency in time, remember that this passage is from Comenius’ section on rapidity and thoroughness in teaching and learning. He is not unaware of time constraints. His detailed method in the Analytical Didactic greatly resembles what he had previously shared in The Great Didactic:

This will happen if, after the teacher has fully demonstrated and expounded something, the pupil himself is immediately required to give a satisfactory demonstration and exposition of the same thing in the same manner. (If there are several pupils, they should do so one after another, beginning with the more talented.) Furthermore, pupils should be instructed to relate what they learn in school to their parents or servants at home or to anyone else capable of understanding such matters. (193)

Comenius again wants the students who are more likely to have understood correctly to give the first exposition, so as to avoid the wasted time and confusion likely to result from incorrection narrations. He adds the practical expediency of having students share their knowledge at home. Assigning students to narrate stories or explain concepts in detail to their parents is not an impossible homework assignment, but one that might further several purposes of the school, especially if a school has a strong vision for parental involvement and support like many classical Christian schools.

Rationale for Narration

Comenius’ reasons for this narration practice with repeated tellings of a teacher’s demonstration or explanation are more succinct than in The Great Didactic but express the same basic thoughts:

In the first place, pupils will be more attentive to every part of the teacher’s exposition if they know that presently they will have to repeat the same matter and if each one fears that perhaps he will be the first to be asked to do so. (See Sec. 86 above.)

Second, by restating exactly what he has been taught, everyone will imprint it more deeply in his understanding and memory.

Third, if it appears that something was not understood quite correctly, this practice will offer an immediate opportunity for correction (on the great value of this see Axiom XCVII).

Fourth, it will enable teachers and pupils to make certain that they have grasped what they were supposed to grasp, for the mark of knowledge is the ability to teach.

Fifth, such frequent repetition of the same material will bring it about that even the slowest pupils may finally grasp the subject. Thereby (sixth) everyone will make swifter and sounder progress in every respect.

And thus (seventh) every pupil will become a teacher, in some degree or other; consequently, the opportunities for multiplying knowledge will be mightily increased. (193-194)

Then it will be clear how apt is the playful remark of Fortius: ‘I learned much from my teachers, more from my fellow-students, but most from my pupils.’ Or, as someone else has said, ‘The more often we impart learning, the more learned we become.’ Therein lies our enduring pleasure.[1] (194)

Comenius expresses many of the same reasons for narration that have been endorsed by more recent proponents, like Charlotte Mason. Using narration as a regular practice habituates students to pay attention, because they know that they will be held accountable. It also “imprints” the content “more deeply” on the understanding or memory, thus functioning as assimilation. And then retrieval practice with immediate feedback or correction provides the most effective way to ensure true learning. While this may seem to disagree with some of Charlotte Mason’s statements, her concerns about over-correcting young children or those new to narration have probably been misunderstood. The “bracing atmosphere of sincerity and truth” that she advocated for seems in full agreement with Comenius here, even if she emphasized the infrequency of correction needed for students trained on narration over years.

Finally, Comenius’ universal vision for the increase of Christian learning spills into his pedagogical considerations, as he imagines an army of irenic students-become-teachers advancing the cause of knowledge into every sphere of life and fighting back against the ignorance and darkness of a fallen world. And this is not just a duty or a burden to be borne, it is in our learning that we experience “our enduring pleasure,” Comenius says with a wink as he ends his treatise. I cannot help but hear resonances with the flow experience and the joy of learning that I have explored at length in my book The Joy of Learning. For Comenius this method of learning through teaching is not just logical, reasonable, thoughtful and humane, it advances the cause of knowledge itself and brings delight.

[1] Comenius writes this sentence in German: “Und so bleibet man immer bey der lust.”

“Why the History of Narration Matters” series:

Part 1: Charlotte Mason’s Discovery?

Part 2: Classical Roots

Part 3: Narration’s Rebirth

Part 4: Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Narration in Historical Perspective

Expanding Narration’s History with Comenius: Narration’s Rebirth, Stage 2 – The Great Didactic

The post Expanding Narration’s History with Comenius: Narration’s Rebirth, Stage 2 – The Analytical Didactic appeared first on .

If you’ve been following Educational Renaissance for some time, you might remember my history of narration series from last year. During the third article of the series I had a short section on narration in John Amos Comenius’ work, relying primarily on Karen Glass’s brief quotations in Know and Tell. At the time I was only beginning to read Comenius’ The Great Didactic in full, and I had not yet procured his Analytical Didactic. Now I have read and digested both, coming away with more narration gems to add to the history. Even then I wrote that “more remains to be said on Comenius and narration,” and now I am excited to expand that section on Comenius into an article or two of its own.

Returning to this topic is timely for me because the week before last I trained both my own faculty at Coram Deo Academy, and the faculty of The Covenant School of Dallas (what a privilege!) using this stunning passage on narration from Comenius’ The Great Didactic. So the practical application of it in our modern classical schools is fresh on my mind.

The great Czech educational reformer, philosopher, pastor and theologian, John Amos Comenius, sometimes called the father of modern education, represents the next stage after Erasmus in the history of narration’s rebirth during the Renaissance and Reformation era. The opening statement of his stunning work on teaching methods, Didactica Magna or The Great Didactic, promises much in terms that are familiar to advocates of narration:

“Let the main object of this, our Didactic, be as follows : To seek and to find a method of instruction, by which teachers may teach less, but learners may learn more; by which schools may be the scene of less noise, aversion, and useless labour, but of more leisure, enjoyment, and solid progress; and through which the Christian community may have less darkness, perplexity, and dissension, but on the other hand more light, orderliness, peace, and rest.”

John Amos Comenius, preface to The Great Didactic

As I have noted before, activities like narration that turn students into active learners are more likely to produce flow, thereby attaining for the student both “enjoyment” and “solid progress”.

Charlotte Mason found in narration an ideal “method” for realizing Comenius’ golden key of education: teachers teaching less and learners learning more. Whether consciously or unconsciously, she likely drew some of the details of the practice itself from him (in addition to other sources like John Locke).

As well, Comenius’ profoundly irenic Christian vision of how Christian education might contribute to healing the immediate wounds of Christendom’s strife and divisions (like the Thirty Years War) accords well with Mason’s educational leadership and the classical Christian education movement’s high hopes for renewal in the church. Education is not just for the training of individual Christians, but for the benefits experienced in families, churches and communities.

Rivulets Flowing Out

Comenius’ use of narration has a number of unique features and a flexibility and philosophical completeness that is hard to find in other educational thinkers. Therefore, it is likely to him that we owe the fundamental shift from narration as a progymnasmata or preliminary training exercise for rhetoric to a central learning method or strategy. He states the principle in global terms, while at the same time practically endorsing modern techniques like partner-narration:

Whatever has been learned should be communicated by one pupil to the other, that no knowledge may remain unused. For in this sense only can we understand the saying, ‘Thy knowledge is of no avail if none other know that thou knowest.’ No source of knowledge, therefore, should be opened, unless rivulets flow from it.”

John Amos Comenius, The Great Didactic, “Thoroughness in Teaching and Learning”, 155

This entire section on thoroughness in teaching and learning is essentially a tribute to narration, or more particularly the classical principal identified by Chris Perrin of Classical Academic Press through the Latin phrase docendo discimus (“By teaching we learn”) in his course Introduction to Classical Education. (I wonder where Perrin himself derived this Latin phrase from…. Was it from Comenius or an earlier thinker in the tradition? Or is it a phrase he himself quipped to represent a traditional conception?) Similarly, I have often referred to the classical principle of self-education (see my SCL presentation from 2020), citing Charlotte Mason’s quip that there is no education but self-education and Dorothy Sayers’s remarks about students learning how to learn in “The Lost Tools of Learning”.

The imagery of a fount of knowledge, a spring, being opened up and rivulets naturally flowing out to surrounding streams is evocative. Comenius is claiming that knowledge must be shared; it is a communal inheritance passing from one mind to another. For him it is as if there were a sacred commandment inscribed into the nature of the cosmos that knowledge is no mere personal possession, but a social trust.

On its own this claim holds the teacher to a high standard with regard narration and narration-like activities. Not a single source of knowledge opened (!), Comenius says, without students at least telling one another what they have learned. And yet how much “material” is “covered” by the average teacher without an opportunity for the student to become the teacher, in this splendidly ironic transformation that Comenius envisions as part and parcel of learning.

Collection, Digestion and Distribution

Comenius solidly anticipates the modern research that supports retrieval practice, spaced practice and mixed practice, but he does so through his prevailing method throughout The Great Didactic of drawing analogical wisdom from the created order:

From this it follows that education cannot attain to thoroughness without frequent and suitable repetitions of and exercises on the subjects taught. We may learn the most suitable mode of procedure by observing the natural movements that underlie the processes of nutrition in living bodies, namely those of collection, digestion, and distribution. For in the case of an animal (and in that of a plant as well) each member seeks for digestion food which may both nurture that member (since this retains and assimilates part of the digested food) and be shared with the other members, that the well-being of the whole organism may be preserved (for each member serves the other). In the same way that teacher will greatly increase the value of his instruction who 

(i.) Seeks out and obtains intellectual food for himself.

(ii.) Assimilates and digests what he has found.

(iii.) Distributes what he has digested, and shares it with others. (156)

If we pair Comenius’ call for “frequent and suitable repetitions” of the subject matter with The Great Didactic’s opening principle of teachers teaching less and learners learning more, then it becomes clear that by repetitions he is not envisioning a simply review process where the teacher goes over the facts again before a test. Instead, it is the students who will be repeating the content back, and as becomes clear later in the passage, not just in summary, but in full detail.

At first, the analogy from nature about the collection, digestion and distribution of “intellectual food” may seem to have awkwardly shifted topics. Now we are talking about the teacher grazing for knowledge himself? But in the following paragraphs Comenius will zero in on that third part, distribution, to detail his full method of narration. In the meantime, we can note that Charlotte Mason’s favorite metaphor about the mind feeding on living ideas is not, in fact, of her own coinage. For Comenius too there is a process of assimilation of knowledge that involves narration. But he stresses it as a communal endeavor, with teachers serving as the honeybees gathering sweet pollen for the production of honey and distribution to the younger members. Charlotte Mason, by contrast, is more inclined to minimize the collection and digestion process of the teacher (though she did write a stirring appeal to her ‘bairns’ encouraging them to foster their own intellectual life through avid reading), in keeping with her own focus upon the “living books” curriculum that she herself carefully selected.

But this contrast between Mason and Comenius could be overplayed, given Comenius’ ironic twist of the student becoming the teacher. So while teachers themselves should engage in the collection, digestion and distribution of knowledge, Comenius immediately shifts this application to the student-become-teacher through recourse to a well-known Latin couplet:

44. These three elements are to be found in the well-known Latin couplet:–

To ask many questions, to retain the answers, and to teach what one retains to others;

These three enable the pupil to surpass his master.

Questioning takes place when a pupil interrogates his teachers, his companions, or his books about some subject that he does not understand. Retention follows when the information that has been obtained is committed to memory or is written down for greater security (since few are so fortunate as to possess the power of retaining everything in their minds). Teaching takes place when knowledge that has been acquired is communicated to fellow-pupils or other companions.

With the two first of these principles the schools are quite familiar, with the third but little; its introduction, however, is in the highest degree desirable. The saying, ‘He who teaches others, teaches himself,’ is very true, not only because constant repetition impresses a fact indelibly on the mind, but because the process of teaching in itself gives a deeper insight into the subject taught. Thus it was that the gifted Joachim Fortius used to say that, if he had heard or read anything once, it slipped out of his memory within a month; but that if he taught it to others it became as much a part of himself as his fingers, and that he did not believe that anything short of death could deprive him of it…. (157)

Comenius’ main point is the incredible power of teaching others as a learning tool. Where Comenius has recourse to the anecdote of Joachim Fortius for support, modern research can confirm through studies the value of retrieval practice combined with the elaboration necessary for the act of teaching. This effortful combination of research-informed strategies essentially makes for the most durable and flexible learning, such that the new knowledge has become part of oneself.

Repeated Narrations of the Teacher’s Explanations with Corrections

This brings us to Comenius’ specific recommendations for narration, which are unmistakably surprising to those who are only familiar with Charlotte Mason’s advice. Note as we go the focus on the teacher’s lecture or explanation (just as with Erasmus), but also the repetitions and corrections. (We can observe as well that Comenius does not have our modern scruples about politically correct descriptions of students who struggle….)

This would certainly be of use to many and could easily be put into practice if the teacher of each class would introduce this excellent system to his pupils. It might be done in the following way. In each lesson, after the teacher has briefly gone through the work that has been prepared, and has explained the meanings of the words, one of the pupils should be allowed to rise from his place and repeat what has just been said in the same order (just as if he were the teacher of the rest), to give his explanations in the same words, and to employ the same examples, and if he make a mistake he should be corrected. Then another can be called up and made go through the same performance while the rest listen. After him a third, a fourth, and as many as are necessary, until it is evident that all have understood the lesson and are in a position to explain it. In carrying this out great care should be taken to call up the clever boys first, in order that, after their example, stupid ones may find it easier to follow. (158)

The teacher’s explanation here becomes the rich or living text, complete with examples in a particular order. The students are transformed into teachers, endeavoring to reproduce as exactly as they can the full substance of the teacher’s explanation. To make clear that he intends this as a global practice or central learning strategy, Comenius deliberately begins his description of the method with the phrase “in each lesson”. Instead of avoiding corrections during the narration, as Mason recommended, Comenius has the teacher actively correcting and expecting other students to get all the details right in subsequent narrations. While this is clearly not a word-perfect memorization, it edges in that direction and away from Mason’s insistence on a single reading and letting the students take what they do but trusting the process over time.

Interestingly, in commending the “exercises” and “repetitions” of narration, Comenius hits upon a few of the same rationales that Mason would later borrow to commend her practice of narration (e.g., the habit of attention; supporting “dull” students, to use Mason’s term; the love of learning; and self-possession in public speaking):

46. Exercises of this kind will have a fivefold use.

(i.) The teacher is certain to have attentive pupils. For since the scholars may, at any time, be called up and asked to repeat what the teacher has said, each of them will be afraid of breaking down and appearing ridiculous before the others, and will therefore attend carefully and allow nothing to escape them. In addition to this, the habit of brisk attention, which becomes second nature if practised for several years, will fit the scholar to acquit himself well in active life.

(ii.) The teacher will be able to know with certainty if his pupils have thoroughly grasped everything that he has taught them. If he finds that they have not, he will consult his own interest as well as that of his pupils by repeating his explanation and making it clearer.

(iii.) If the same thing be frequently repeated, the dullest intelligences will grasp it at last, and will thus be able to keep pace with the others; while the brighter ones will be pleased at obtaining such a thorough grip of the subject.

(iv.) By means of such constant repetition the scholars will gain a better acquaintance with the subject than they could possibly obtain by private study, even with the greatest intelligence, and will find that, if they just read the lesson over in the morning and then again in the evening, it will remain in their memories easily and pleasantly. When, by this method of repetition, the pupil has, as it were, been admitted to the office of teacher, he will attain a peculiar keenness of disposition and love of learning; he will also acquire the habit of remaining self-possessed while explaining anything before a number of people, and this will be of the greatest use to him throughout life.” (158)

Comenius is happy to use social pressure as a motivator to improve students’ learning, especially since he has abandoned the widely accepted corporal punishment of his day. Students’ natural desire not to appear “ridiculous” before their peers is arguably a more powerful and immediate spur to the effort of learning than an abstract symbol system like a grade. And while not wanting to seem foolish may not be the highest of ideals it does go some way toward creating a culture of learning among human beings as socially embedded and embodied creatures.

It is clarifying to hear Comenius indicate “several years” as the appropriate timeline for training students in this habit of “brisk attention” that will fit them for an “active life”. Likewise, the help afforded the teacher through opportunities to clarify and re-explain accords well with the real challenges of communicating effectively to students. Comenius gives every indication of having practiced what he is preaching, discerning the ins and outs of teaching and learning through philosophical reflection and practical experience.

As with Erasmus, it may be that the teacher is here supplementing or acting as the mediator between the students and the curriculum books. We might imagine a generally older set of students than Mason envisions, but he is undeniably more focused on the teacher as the initial distributor of knowledge. The repetitions seem designed to help students understand hard truths or difficult and complex ideas that are not easily grasped on a first hearing. Corrections, then, might be justified as a necessary safeguard to prevent students from confusing one another with incorrect explanations. We might ponder as well whether Mason’s advice not to “tease [young students] with corrections” focused more upon style and grammar, i.e. not attacking the endless string of ‘and’s that children often start out with. Perhaps she would have sympathized with corrections on matters of fact, when other students might become confused by another student’s misleading explanation.

As stated, Comenius’ variant on narration embodies the golden key of his Great Didactic by turning the student into the teacher after a teacher’s “demonstration” or “exposition”. It thus follows Erasmus in focusing on a spoken lecture or explanation by the teacher rather than a text. The new development present in Comenius is to emphasize the ironic transformation of student into teacher. In a future article we will look at material from Comenius’ Analytical Didactic to see how he developed his recommendations for narration later in life.

“Why the History of Narration Matters” series:

Part 1: Charlotte Mason’s Discovery?

Part 2: Classical Roots

Part 3: Narration’s Rebirth

Part 4: Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Narration in Historical Perspective

The post Expanding Narration’s History with Comenius: Narration’s Rebirth, Stage 2 – The Great Didactic appeared first on .

But it should not be thought that I plan wholly to neglect moral and spiritual virtues in the rest of this series on Aristotle’s Five Intellectual Virtues. After all, a main point of my previous article was that the moral, intellectual and spiritual categories are overlapping and interpenetrating categories, at least for the apostle Paul. For Aristotle as well, the moral and intellectual categories interact and intermingle in unique ways. This in fact is what makes Aristotle the proper antidote to Bloom and his cognitive taxonomy: breaking down the rigid separation between the heart and the head, let alone the hands.

In this article we continue laying the foundation for a taxonomy of Aristotle’s intellectual virtues by exploring the unique relationship between Aristotle’s conception of moral virtues and one particular intellectual virtue, techne, which I prefer to translate as artistry or craftsmanship, though many translators use the English term ‘art’. Modern English speakers will find this confusing and unhelpful, because the term ‘art’ is almost exclusively used nowadays to refer to particular fine arts, like drawing, painting and sculpture. But the Latin root had a similar range and meaning to the Greek techne, which could refer to any craft or productive skill. (In a similar way the modern English term ‘science’ was narrowed to refer to only natural science, or the knowledge that we have discovered about the natural world, when it had previously referred to knowledge in general, as in the Latin scientia or Greek episteme. See the article “The Classical Distinction between the Liberal Arts and Sciences”.)

According to Aristotle, moral virtue and artistry are allies and analogues to one another, because they both are cultivated by means of habit or custom. It will therefore be helpful to our broader purpose to explore this relationship between the body, the heart and the mind, summed up in what we call habits, in order to pave the way for a full explication of the educational goal of techne or craftsmanship in a classical Christian paradigm. Our primary text for this exploration comes from book II of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, though we will bring Charlotte Mason’s thought and modern neuroscience into the dialogue as well.

Excellence Comes by Habit… or At Least Some Excellences

The well-known quotation from Aristotle, “Excellence comes by habit…” is at least partially a misquotation, since arete, virtue or excellence, in Aristotle is divided into two types, moral and intellectual. To only one of these does the power of habit apply as the main method of cultivating virtue. The full quotation from the opening of Book II of the Nicomachean Ethics reads as follows:

Excellence, then, being of two kinds, intellectual and moral, intellectual excellence in the main owes both its birth and its growth to teaching (for which reason it requires experience and time), while moral excellence comes about as a result of habit, whence also its name [ethike for “moral”] is one that is formed by a slight variation from the word for ‘habit’ [ethos].

Nicomachean Ethics, 1103a.14-19, rev. Oxford trans. vol. II (Princeton, 1984), p. 1742

The word translated ‘teaching’, didaskalia, is the common term for ‘instruction’ used in the New Testament as well, and means exactly what we would think: the work of an instructor in teaching truths and skills, whether in a formal or informal setting. It will not do its work in a moment, but will involve time and a host of experiences in which the student’s mind is formed for whatever intellectual virtue is being cultivated. 

This bare statement puts the lie to some extreme modern versions of Rousseau, like unschooling, that deny the need for a teacher or instructor, and posit that a child has enough resources in himself to cultivate his own intellect and grow and develop the intellectual virtues needed for life. It is true that books can serve as teachers to the disciplined and curious mind, and so the supposed exceptions to this—the self-taught geniuses of the world—are really the exceptions that prove the rule, since they invariably relied on the instruction of others, even though through more independent means like books. On the other hand, people certainly can learn things through their own experience. Otherwise how would the human race have ever learned anything? But learning from personal experience is in general a horribly inefficient process; therefore, the systematic and thoughtful instruction of a teacher is the regular and normal route to intellectual excellence.

It is also worth noting here that the cultivation of habits is not the primary method for the development of intellectual virtue, but only of moral virtue for Aristotle. We will see later that techne or artistry is an exception to that, in a way. But for the time being it is worth sitting with this idea and comparing it with other thinkers like Charlotte Mason or Maria Montessori. In emphasizing the personhood of the child, Mason, for one, is sometimes heard by moderns as endorsing the unschooling extreme just mentioned. In reality, she regularly called attention to the primacy of God-given authority and children’s need for intellectual food, primarily in the form of the best books of the best minds. Like most moderns, she makes a firmer distinction between curriculum and instruction than Aristotle, in order to claim that teachers should use living books, rather than provide their own worked-up lectures. This idea might have been lost on Aristotle because of his different context. In the ancient world books were not regularly read silently, and were not easily and cheaply procured. But it is this book-based process of instruction that allows Mason to endorse what she calls “self-education” as the only true education, and not a Rousseauian anti-civilization, anti-authority stance on human development. 

Mason also believes that the formation of habits, both intellectual and moral, is a third part of education. We should note that, for Mason, habits are intellectual as well as moral. Outward customs have moved inward to cover what we can call today habitual “trains of thought”, an idiom that evokes Mason’s favorite metaphor for habits as the railways of life. Is this then, perhaps, an area of disagreement between Charlotte Mason and the great philosopher Aristotle? That, for her, habits are intellectual as well as moral? Let’s look closer at what she says in her discussion of education as a discipline from her 6th volume:

By this formula we mean the discipline of habits formed definitely and thoughtfully whether habits of mind or of body. Physiologists tell us of the adaptation of brain structure to habitual lines of thought, i.e., to our habits.

Education is not after all to either teacher or child the fine careless rapture we appear to have figured it. We who teach and they who learn are alike constrained; there is always effort to be made in certain directions; yet we face our tasks from a new point of view. We need not labour to get children to learn their lessons; that, if we would believe it, is a matter which nature takes care of. Let the lessons be of the right sort and children will learn them with delight. The call for strenuousness comes with the necessity of forming habits; but here again we are relieved. The intellectual habits of the good life form themselves in the following out of the due curriculum in the right way. As we have already urged, there is but one right way, that is, children must do the work for themselves. They must read the given pages and tell what they have read, they must perform, that is, what we may call the act of knowing. We are all aware, alas, what a monstrous quantity of printed matter has gone into the dustbin of our memories, because we have failed to perform that quite natural and spontaneous ‘act of knowing,’ as easy to a child as breathing and, if we would believe it, comparatively easy to ourselves. The reward is two-fold: no intellectual habit is so valuable as that of attention; it is a mere habit but it is also the hall-mark of an educated person. Use is second nature, we are told; it is not too much to say that ‘habit is ten natures,’ and we can all imagine how our work would be eased if our subordinates listened to instructions with the full attention which implies recollection––Attention is not the only habit that follows due self-education. The habits of fitting and ready expression, of obedience, of good-will, and of an impersonal outlook are spontaneous bye-products of education in this sort. So, too, are the habits of right thinking and right judging; while physical habits of neatness and order attend upon the self-respect which follows an education which respects the personality of children. (vol. 6, pp. 99-100)

Interestingly, Mason makes a distinction between “habits of mind and habits of body”. Of course, she knows very well that all habits make a “mark upon the brain substance” from the latest science of her day (vol. 6 p. 100). And so, in a way it is redundant to call any habit a habit of mind or of body, since a habit is in its very essence, bodily, or physical, as well as mental, i.e. registering in the brain. These reflections challenge again the simplistic divisions made by Bloom and his colleagues in proposing a division of educational goals into a cognitive domain, an affective domain and a psychomotor domain. If the brain registers in all of these, and they all have outward bodily expressions, then we have perhaps hit up against the limits of our traditional metaphors for the nature of the human person. Head, heart and hands are irreducibly intertwined through the human nervous system. Aristotle was most certainly not aware of these insights about the brain and other vital organs, even if he did more than his fair share to advance science and human physiology in his time.

On the other hand, Charlotte Mason does seem to share with Aristotle this conception that “intellectual habits” come from instruction, if we view curriculum and proper teaching methods as a specification of Aristotle’s didaskalia or instruction. As she says, the “intellectual habits of the good life form themselves in the following out of the due curriculum in the right way.” She cites attention and the act of knowing, perhaps chiefly embodied in her teaching method of narration, as “the right way”. Mason’s “self-education”, then, does not resolve itself into a call for unschooling, but for a more rigorous adherence to the right books and the right methods by which a child’s own intellectual powers will grow and find their full development.

Her concern coheres broadly with Aristotle’s focus on intellectual virtues generally, since arete involves the active engagement of the individual in means and ends. It may owe “its birth and growth to teaching,” but it has a life of its own; it is not something that a teacher can mechanistically instill in a person, as a waitress pours water into a glass. The organic metaphors used by Mason find their expression in Aristotle as well. 

In addition, it is the nature of the human person that habit training and teaching are meant to develop. As he goes on to say at the beginning of Book II following the passage quoted above:

From this it is also plain that none of the moral excellences arises in us by nature; for nothing that exists by nature can form a habit contrary to its nature. For instance the stone which by nature moves downwards cannot be habituated to move upwards, not even if one tries to train it by throwing it up ten thousand times; nor can fire be habituated to move downwards, nor can anything else that by nature behaves in one way be trained to behave in another. Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do excellences arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit. 

Nicomachean Ethics, 1103a.19-25, pp. 1742-1743

Modern science might cause us to stumble over Aristotle’s examples here, because the discovery of gravity and chemical reactions like combustion throw a wrench in his system. But for Aristotle, things move downward because it is in their nature to do so; they have an internal telos or goal toward which they head of their own accord. For stones this telos is down, but for fire it is up. The point of the examples is that human beings too have a telos and this is excellence, but we do not have excellence “by nature”, otherwise no training would be necessary or even possible. You can’t habituate a stone to fly upwards of its own accord. But you can habituate a human person to act justly or eat temperately. 

But I ask again, is this only true of moral virtues and not also of intellectual ones? Can’t we be habituated to think in a certain way?

The Analogy between Morality and Artistry

For Aristotle it is important to distinguish between abilities we have by nature and those that are developed by practice. In a way, this devolves into the age-old debate between the relative importance of nature and nurture. As he says,

Again, of all the things that come to us by nature we first acquire the potentiality and later exhibit the activity (this is plain in the case of the senses; for it was not by often seeing or often hearing that we got these senses, but on the contrary we had them before we used them, and did not come to have them by using them); but excellences we get by first exercising them, as also happens in the case of the arts as well. For the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing, e.g. men become builders by building and lyre-players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts. (p. 1743)

Aristotle’s point is that sight is an ability we have by nature. The potential to see is formed in the very nature of a human person (from pupil and retina to optic nerve and brain structure); seeing, therefore, comes without any practice. The first time a baby opens its eyes it sees. (Perhaps we shouldn’t rabbit-trail into how distinguishing between objects and developing facial recognition, for instance, are extremely complex skills that the brain is practically hardwired to develop on its own, for which it nevertheless requires significant time, experience and practice, and which is influenced by the development of habits….) 

Both morality and artistry, however, do not come by nature but by exercise or practice. As the saying goes, “One swallow does not a summer make.” One just act does not make a man just. Nor does constructing one building make a man an architect. Through deliberate or purposeful practice of particular activities, the habit of doing them is elevated to the level of excellence. Excellence in morality and artistry then comes by habit… but not by a habit that is thoughtless. As my gymnastic coach drilled into me as a youth, “Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Perfect practice makes perfect.” Aristotle further details the point in his ongoing analogy between moral excellence and craftsmanship:

Again, it is from the same causes and by the same means that every excellence is both produced and destroyed, and similarly every art; for it is from playing the lyre that both good and bad lyre-players are produced. And the corresponding statement is true of builders and of all the rest; men will be good or bad builders as a result of building well or badly. For if this were not so, there would have been no need of a teacher, but all men would have been born good or bad at their craft. This, then, is the case with the excellences also; by doing the acts that we do in our transactions with other men we become just or unjust, and by doing the acts that we do in the presence of danger, and being habituated to feel fear or confidence, we become brave or cowardly. The same is true of appetites and feelings of anger; some men become temperate and good-tempered, others self-indulgent and irascible, by behaving in one way or the other in the appropriate circumstances. Thus, in one word, states arise out of like activities. This is why the activities we exhibit must be of a certain kind; it is because the states correspond to the differences between these. It makes no small difference, then, whether we form habits of one kind or of another from our very youth; it makes a great difference, or rather all the difference. (p. 1743)

In this passage Aristotle comes full circle and justifies the need of a teacher for artistry (even though he hasn’t yet listed it among his five intellectual virtues). It is possible to build many buildings, and only confirm the builder in mediocrity, or worse, poor quality or shoddy building. In the same way, I needed a coach to become a gymnast, to correct my poor form on various exercises, to instruct me to point my toes, keep my legs straight and tuck my head in during handstands. Otherwise, I would develop bad habits early on that would make advancement in good gymnastics impossible. 

Notice how coaching in artistry requires a competent teacher who is sufficiently advanced in the craft to pass along the basic principles of proper form or good quality, along with the judgment to correct errors and mistakes. As I advanced in gymnastics, I could practice more and more on my own, because I had developed the mental architecture for quality gymnastics and had internalized the basic principles of the craft. Watching and imitating Olympic gymnasts as they demonstrate exquisite form might also spur my growth and development of excellence. 

Aristotle argues that it is much the same with moral virtues. While he doesn’t explicitly mention parents and tutors, his final appeal that it makes all the difference what habits we form from our youth seems targeted to raise the bar for those who have charge of the young. Early habit training is the determining factor in the later development of moral character. But this should not be construed in such a way as to remove the value of thinking and deliberating over moral choices. For Aristotle one cannot have the moral virtues without also attaining the intellectual virtue of phronesis, practical wisdom or prudence. And we dare not undervalue the importance of artistry or craftsmanship of all types, which involves the development of cultivated habits as well as a true course of reasoning. 

Resolving the Nature-Nurture Debate: Myelin, Habits and Skill

From the perspective of modern research the nature-nurture debate for both skill and moral action seems to have been substantively resolved. The key is not exactly neurons and synapses, but myelin, a white fatty substance that is wrapped around neural networks after they are repeatedly fired. As Dr. George Bartzokis, professor of neurobiology at UCLA said, myelin is “the key to talking, reading, learning skills, being human” (As quoted in Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code [Bantam, 2009], 32). Neuroscientists claim that “the traditional neuron-centric worldview is being fundamentally altered by a Copernican-style revolution” based on three basic facts:

1. Every human movement, thought, or feeling is a precisely timed electric signal traveling through a chain of neurons—a circuit of nerve fibers. 
2. Myelin is the insulation that wraps these nerve fibers and increases signal strength, speed, and accuracy. 
3. The more we fire a particular circuit, the more myelin optimizes that circuit, and the stronger, faster and more fluent our movements and thoughts become. (Coyle, The Talent Code, 32)

Notice that what we call body, heart and head are equally susceptible to the neural network process. In addition, the repetition of particular acts, thoughts or feelings in a certain context creates what we call a ‘habit’, a propensity for or ease of repeating that same act, thought or feeling again. Deep or focused practice tends to wrap myelin more quickly and efficiently. 

As Aristotle claimed more than 2,000 years ago, “Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do excellences arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit.” We cannot make a habit or skill of doing something physically impossible. But if we have the ability to do something, we can get better and better and better at it through practice, until even our original abilities have been fundamentally altered and developed. Nature provides the hardware for the myelin wrapping process, while nurture (including all our choices, actions, thoughts and feelings) actually wraps the myelin. As Daniel Coyle explains, 

Instead of prewiring for specific skills, what if the genes dealt with the skill issue by building millions of tiny broadband installers [i.e. myelin-wrapping oligodendrocytes] and distributing them throughout the circuits of the brain? The broadband installers wouldn’t be particularly complicated—in fact, they’d all be identical, wrapping wires with insulation to make the circuits work faster and smoother. They would work according to a single rule: whatever circuits are fired most, and most urgently, are the ones where the installers will go. Skill circuits that are fired often will receive more broadband; skills that are fired less often, with less urgency, will receive less broadband.

Coyle, The Talent Code, 71-72.

Memory, habits, skill development, all of human educational goals, in fact, seem to have this process at their root, even if they cannot ultimately be reduced to it.

As Christians, we may get nervous at all this talk of the brain and neurons, because of the real and present danger of reducing the mind or spirit to the matter and electrical signals of the brain. So we would do well to put a stake in the ground with Charlotte Mason on this point and clarify that we believe the mind is more than the brain. We are not evolutionary materialists. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” (Shakespeare’s Hamlet I.5). But having clarified our spiritual frame of reference, perhaps these findings of neuroscience are precisely what we should have expected: God has made us as trifold beings, body, soul and spirit, situated between heaven and earth:

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

The moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

What is man that you are mindful of him,

And the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings

And crowned him with glory and honor.

You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;

You have put all things under his feet…. (Psalm 8:3-6 ESV)

Our glory as human beings is our middle placement, our intertwined nature, participating in the intellectual nature of the angels and the physical nature of beasts. Flesh and spirit intermingle and interact, and the nervous system gives us a glimmer of insight into how. Our habits, practice and skill development involve fleshly acquirements in body and brain, but they are nonetheless spiritual. Moral and intellectual virtues can be trained by practice. As the author of Hebrews says, “But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” (Heb 5:14 ESV). Discernment is an important Christian intellectual virtue mentioned frequently in the New Testament. And according to Hebrews it, too, is “trained by practice”.

In the next article we will explore the differences between moral training and training in techne or craftsmanship, introducing the modern concepts of deliberate practice, coaching and the apprenticeship model.

Earlier Articles in this series:

Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Purpose of Education

Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Importance of Objectives: 3 Blessings of Bloom’s

Breaking Down the Bad of Bloom’s: The False Objectivity of Education as a Modern Social Science

When Bloom’s Gets Ugly: Cutting the Heart Out of Education

What Bloom’s Left Out: A Comparison with Aristotle’s Intellectual Virtues

Aristotle’s Virtue Theory and a Christian Purpose of Education

The post Moral Virtue and the Intellectual Virtue of Artistry or Craftsmanship appeared first on .

In order to escape the technological addiction that has mystified the 21st century, it is not enough to take smartphones, laptops, and video streaming services away. They must be replaced with something better. Something deeper. Something more satisfying.

In this blog, I will put forward one compelling alternative to digital saturation. It isn’t the only alternative, nor is it a sufficient one. But it is necessary. Here I have in mind cultivating the intellectual life. By this I mean the world of story and imagination. Thoughts and ideas. Concepts and principles. The life of the mind. 

The Road to Recovery

Sadly, like some prehistoric species, the intellectual life is all but extinct in some minds. I don’t mean this in a condemning sense. It is merely a diagnosis. We have become so acquainted to consuming that the idea of cultivating the intellect sounds incredulous. At best, it sounds boring. Why think when one can switch to auto-pilot?

In theory, people are first taught to cultivate an intellectual life in school. Or are they? For most of us, school was a pragmatic transaction from day one. First-graders may be six, but they are not dull. Their social acumen is developed enough to pick up on what matters in the classroom. The usual suspects include grades, prizes, and teacher-approval. 

Imagine, however, if the first day of school was an orientation to cultivating the life of the mind. No talk of a syllabus, grade criteria, or course objectives. Instead, the teacher begins by comparing one’s mind to a garden. Gardens don’t pop into existence weed-free and fruit-bearing. They must be tended, weeded, watered, and cultivated. As does the mind. The intentional teacher, dedicated to her craft, inspires her students to cultivate an Eden in order to discover that the labor is its own reward.

People coming from schools who implement traditionally modern methods to motivate learning may struggle to cultivate the intellectual life at first. “What will I get out of it?”, “This is boring”, and “I would rather do something else” are all common reactions. But if one can move beyond these initial obstructions, there is hope for recovering interest in intellectual matters. It will take time and effort, but it is possible.

The Importance of Self-Feeding

Once the intellectual life is conceived, it requires self-feeding for sustenance. This is the brilliant insight of educator Charlotte Mason. She insisted that the life of the mind will die if it remains dependent upon the sustenance of others. This is because the mind is like an organism, a living thing that needs to take care of itself. A nascent organism that depends on other organisms will be parasitical at best and fizzle out at worst. It is up to each individual to cultivate the life of the mind through feeding it regularly.

How does one feed the intellect?

This may sound surprising to some but reading, generally speaking, is not the precise answer. There are two reasons for this. First, not all books nourish the mind in the same way. Tech addiction is one major obstruction for cultivating the intellectual life and another is a diet of shallow books. Stories that are morally vacuous, sensationalistic, and stylistically weak fall into this category. These books won’t nourish the intellect any more than a sugar-glazed donut will nourish the physical body (even if it tastes good).

Good books must be chosen for self-feeding and, subsequently, they must be chewed upon. This is the second reason that reading is not, generally speaking, a sufficient path to the self-nourished intellectual life. Our minds need to act upon that which has been read. They need to do something with the knowledge that has been encountered. How often do we read something, probably too quickly, and try to recall it later with no success? We never gave our minds time to assimilate, or digest, that which has been encountered.

For Charlotte Mason, narration is the ideal way for students to assimilate knowledge. Give children the opportunity to narrate the text without looking back, after a single-reading, and the process for self-feeding begins. The mind comes alive as it processes in real-time what it ingested moments ago. The ideas of the text become part of the mind of the student. 

Making Time for Quiet

To cultivate the intellectual life , one must first recover and nourish it. Then one must sustain it intentionally. 17th century polymath Blaise Pascal famously wrote, “All of man’s problems stem from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Pascal’s observation is more than relevant for us today as we inhabit this present age of distraction. Technology is one contributing factor for incessant distraction, as I have already suggested.

Another factor is that most of us live in suburbs or cities. We are surrounded by people, pets, activities, stores, restaurants, and things to do. It is very difficult to find a place that is quiet and unoccupied. Professionally speaking, our work may not be physically laborious, but it mentally exhausting. And more often than not, our personal lives provide no respite. We are constantly on the go, bumping into people and things like electrons.

The solution to such mental crowdedness in order to sustain the mind is to carve out space for solitude. To be sure, minds can be nourished in social settings. Engaging thought-provoking questions, spirited debate, and penetrating discussion are all worthwhile intellectual activities. But the mind also needs time alone with no immediate distractions. It needs time to slow down, process, and reflect. It needs time to be alone.

Of course, this is easier said than done. Most of us begin feeling antsy after sitting still with no distraction for more than a few minutes. Our minds grow nervous, eager for something new to seize our attention. In reality, however, what the mind needs, even if it doesn’t realize it, is space to think. Perhaps surprisingly, making time for the mind to work brings unexpected rest.

The Benefit of Such a Life

Despite what has been written thus far, some readers may continue to struggle to see the value of the intellectual life. “What benefits will it bring?” they will wonder. “How will this support my personal advancement?” 

Questions like these miss the mark. To be sure, there is productive value in the intellectual life. I have already alluded to some examples. The nourished intellect, on average, will be more resilient than one that has been depleted. It will be more efficient in work settings. It will more effectively grapple with everyday problems. 

But here lies the paradox. The real benefit of the intellectual life is the joy of learning. One in pursuit of a nourished intellect for the sake of external benefits will eventually fizzle out. The work will grow too difficult and the benefits will no longer be perceived as worth it. Joy must accompany the process for the intellectual life to remain viable.

The good news, though, is that there is grace. As humans, we often begin our pursuit of good things for wrong, or imperfect, reasons. But amidst these mixed motivations, God can use these moments to transform us. He graciously conforms us to His image, revealing to us the goodness of Himself and the eternal reward of life with Him. When it comes to cultivating the life of the mind, we pray for God to reveal truth to us through the Holy Spirit and shape our affections to desire it and Him more and more.

Conclusion

As the apostle Paul writes in his closing remarks to the Philippians:

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you (Phil. 4: 8-9 ESV).

Amidst the busyness we all face in the modern world, may we make time for the intellectual life, reflecting on what is true, honorable, lovely, and just. Ultimately, as we engage in such reflection, may our minds turn to Him who is the manifestation of all these, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Word who became flesh.

Recommended Reading:

Mind to Mind: An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Education by Charlotte Mason and Karen Glass

Christianity for Modern Pagans: Pascal’s Pense’es by Blaise Pascal and Peter Kreeft

Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport

Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster

The post Rest for the Weary: On Cultivating the Intellectual Life appeared first on .

Mason’s revival of narration therefore stands as a signpost of her larger project. And it is a project that we find inspiration from here at Educational Renaissance. The renaissance had a healthy respect for and appreciation of the classical past, while at the same time being quite innovative in a number of areas. In a way narration is simply one piece of this broader puzzle: all the pieces will help create a more accurate picture of Charlotte Mason as an educator within the liberal arts tradition of education.

In this article we come to Charlotte Mason herself to see how her recommendations for narration square with those of the classical and renaissance educators we have surveyed. We will see that Mason’s use of narration was at least as innovative as any other educator in its history, even if the steps she took make perfect sense as natural developments. In the process we will discern some new possibilities for narration, including how we could revive the narration practices of earlier educators to supplement Charlotte Mason’s recommendations, or even reach out into new and uncharted territory with narration to attain new pedagogical goals. 

We will begin by looking at three issues raised by Charlotte Mason’s practice of narration: 1) the focus on rich texts, 2) the main goal of knowing content, and 3) the methods of narration.

Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Narration, Issue 1: Focusing on Rich Texts

Readers who are familiar with Charlotte Mason will be aware of some of the ways that Mason’s narration differs from that of the educators we have surveyed so far.

The first and most obvious difference, perhaps, is that the focus of Mason’s narration is upon a rich text, and not an informative lecture, as in Erasmus or Comenius, or else the telling of any story that the child knows, as in John Locke. In this way Mason sides with Aelius Theon, Quintilian and the secondary steps detailed by Locke. 

Charlotte Mason has a very practical and down-to-earth set of considerations for her decided preference for what she calls “living books” over “oral teaching” (not to mention the “dry-as-dust” textbooks of her era). Her thoughts in her third volume School Education are worth reproducing in full:

“Reason for Oral Teaching.––Intelligent teachers are well aware of the dry-as-dust character of school books, so they fall back upon the ‘oral’ lesson, one of whose qualities must be that it is not bookish. Living ideas can be derived only from living minds, and so it occasionally happens that a vital spark is flashed from teacher to pupil. But this occurs only when the subject is one to which the teacher has given original thought. In most cases the oral lesson, or the more advanced lecture, consists of information got up by the teacher from various books, and imparted in language, a little pedantic, or a little commonplace, or a little reading-made-easy in style. At the best, the teacher is not likely to have vital interest in, and, consequently, original thought upon, a wide range of subjects.

“Limitations of Teachers.––We wish to place before the child open doors to many avenues of instruction and delight, in each one of which he should find quickening thoughts. We cannot expect a school to be manned by a dozen master-minds, and even if it were, and the scholar were taught by each in turn, it would be much to his disadvantage. What he wants of his teacher is moral and mental discipline, sympathy and direction; and it is better, on the whole, that the training of the pupil should be undertaken by one wise teacher than that he should be passed from hand to hand for this subject and that.”

Charlotte Mason, School Education, vol 3 pg 170

For Mason an inspirational lecture requires a master-mind, in a way the type of teacher that Erasmus called for in his work on education, who could interpret to his students the best of a whole host of great classical works of literature on all topics. But in Mason’s day and age, the master-mind teacher approach would require experts on a variety of subjects, like science and literature, history and math, art and Bible—a feat that was becoming less and less attainable as scholarship proliferated in the modern era. At the same time schooling was spreading to more and more children of the British empire, making this ideal less and less viable, or even desirable for teachers specifically. Teachers were no longer scholars. Specialization had virtually ruled that out. 

And for Mason the practice of narrating from rich texts allows the teacher to focus more, not less, on the “moral and mental discipline, sympathy and direction” that students really need. As she says at the end of her 1st chapter on “self-education” in her final volume Toward a Philosophy of Education:

“In urging a method of self-education for children in lieu of the vicarious education which prevails, I should like to dwell on the enormous relief to teachers, a self-sacrificing and greatly overburdened class; the difference is just that between driving a horse that is light and a horse that is heavy in hand; the former covers the ground of his own gay will and the driver goes merrily. The teacher who allows his scholars the freedom of the city of books is at liberty to be their guide, philosopher and friend; and is no longer the mere instrument of forcible intellectual feeding.” (vol 6 pg 32)

Narration focuses on living books or rich texts as a means of providing the most vibrant and vital source of thought, while relieving the average teacher of the burden of inspiration. She can be a philosopher-guide even in territory she has not mastered to the point of being able to speak on it with power and conviction. 

Exceptions to Focusing on Rich Texts Only

There is an exception clause to Charlotte Mason’s nixing of oral teaching, and that is foreign languages. In her 6th volume Toward a Philosophy of Education, Mason reports on a development in foreign language instruction at her House of Education (the training school for future teachers and governesses) and the Parents Union School at Fairfield where they were apprentice-teachers:

“The French mistress gives, let us suppose, a lecture in history or literature lasting, say, for half an hour. At the end the students will narrate the substance of the lecture with few omissions and few errors.” (vol. 6, p. 212)

It should be noted that this occurred with the senior students, and was a less frequent exercise than narrating from a text. Early training in French, German, Italian or Latin consisted of narrating from texts after they had been translated or “thoroughly studied in grammar, syntax and style” (vol. 6. p. 213). 

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Mason’s concession to the value of oral teaching. As she herself admitted:

“We cannot do without the oral lesson—to introduce, to illustrate, to amplify, to sum up. My stipulation is that oral lessons should be like visits of angels, and that the child who has to walk through life, and has to find his intellectual food in books or go without, shall not be first taught to go upon crutches.” (Parents Review, Vol. 14, 1903, “Manifesto Discussion with Charlotte Mason”, pp. 907-913)

We have to wonder if Mason’s concerns would have been quite the same, if podcasts had been available in her day… or equally, if books had not been so cheap and readily available. Mason seems to base her advice to focus on narrating from books upon the practical realities of lifelong learning that were available in her day. Books would be the chief source of intellectual nourishment for her students, and so they should learn to walk on their own two feet in reading books from the start. 

Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Narration, Issue 2: The Main Goal of Using Narration

The second area in which Charlotte Mason’s practice of narration differs from the other educators of the classical era or renaissance is in the main pedagogical goal. For Quintilian, Aelius Theon and John Locke the main goal had been rhetorical training: the development of style through imitation. Students were learning, through narrating texts or stories, to speak fluently and to the point, with concise and clear expression. They might very well remember many of the exact details of things they narrated, and certainly stocking the memory with words, phrases, ideas, and common topics was necessary. But the point of all that memory-stocking and practice was the students’ own rhetorical style and fluency. 

As you’ll recall, this changed with Erasmus and Comenius in the renaissance. Now the focus was on the content of the teacher’s lecture or explanation. And they even made a point of emphasizing that the substance of the things, rather than the style of the teacher’s expression, was the important thing to be narrated in the child’s own way. For them, the main goal of narration is the students’ knowledge or memory of content, a scientific rather than rhetorical pedagogy, if you will. Students were learning, through narrating their teacher’s lecture or explanation, certain truths either as background to a text or as pictures of the way the world works. The emphasis is entirely upon narration as a sealing up of new knowledge, and not upon the development of style. 

Well, Charlotte Mason made an innovative leap. Familiar with John Locke’s narration from texts to develop style and fluency in speech and writing, and perhaps also with Comenius (given her quotations from him), she fuses the approach of the two to focus narration upon rich texts, with the main goal of memory of content or the development of knowledge. If you take a moment to glance at the table I have made below, “Narration in Historical Perspective Table,” you can see that she has pulled from the left and top right sections down into the bottom right.

Now here we must note one or two exceptions that seem to indicate that Charlotte Mason had rhetorical training in mind, even if she preferred for various reasons not to emphasize it as the main goal of narration. For instance, when discussing composition of the youngest students (Form I) in her 6th volume, she mentions the style of students’ narrations, as well as the accuracy of the content, saying, “The facts are sure to be accurate and the expression surprisingly vigorous, striking and unhesitating” (vol. 6, p. 190). However, she is still adamant against Locke’s method of coaching students to correct their narrations, whether written or oral, in the younger years: 

“Corrections must not be made during the act of narration, nor must any interruption be allowed.” (vol. 6, p. 191)

“Children must not be teased or instructed about the use of stops or capital letters. These things too come by nature to the child who reads, and the teacher’s instructions are apt to issue in the use of a pepper box for commas.” (vol. 6, p. 191)

“But let me again say there must be no attempt to teach composition.” (vol. 6, p. 192)

Even for the oldest students (Forms V and VI), Mason’s emphasis is against too much active focus on matters of style and rhetoric, preferring a natural imitative process that comes passively through a focus on content:

“Forms V and VI. In these Forms some definite teaching in the art of composition is advisable, but not too much, lest the young scholars be saddled with a stilted style which may encumber them for life. Perhaps the method of a University tutor is the best that can be adopted; that is, a point or two might be taken up in a given composition and suggestions or corrections made with little talk. Having been brought up so far upon stylists the pupils are almost certain to have formed a good style; because they have been thrown into the society of many great minds, they will not make a servile copy of any one but will shape an individual style out of the wealth of material they possess; and because they have matter in abundance and of the best they will not write mere verbiage.” (vol. 6, pp. 193-194)

In essence, Mason’s approach to the development of style was as an afterthought that will take care of itself by narrating rich texts if the teacher doesn’t get in the way. This approach will fall short of what many modern classical Christian educators desire, who value the revitalization of active teaching of the art of rhetoric as a major goal of the movement. We might situate Charlotte Mason in this conversation by imagining the dangers of a “stilted style” or overly programmatic formalist structure, that might result from certain types of prescriptive rhetorical training. The long, natural process of narration that Mason envisioned might, in and of itself, subvert the dangers of formalism in our students’ writing and speaking, even if our schools do engage in somewhat more active coaching in grammar, punctuation, style and rhetorical forms than she envisioned. 

Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Narration, Issue 3: The Method of Narration

We leave to the last the method of narration, whether oral or written. As we saw, classical educators often emphasized one or the other, or else both in sequence. Aelius Theon seemed to envision older pupils, trained in writing previously, coming into his rhetorical school ready to write their narrations immediately. Quintilian, and John Locke after him, envisioned a process that started earlier with oral narration, moving to written narration and composition exercises as students grew in facility with the skill of putting pen to paper. From reading in between the lines of their comments, Erasmus seemed to envision written narrations to be turned in to the teacher, while Comenius implied students becoming teachers explaining truths aloud to the rest of the class after the teacher had first done so. 

Charlotte Mason provides the fullest vision for narration as a consistent pedagogical practice, where both oral and written narration play a consistent role in students’ education. Students gently progress to writing their own narrations as they are able. Examinations at the end of the term utilize written “narration” of any amount of knowledge previously stored in students’ memories by initial narration. Given how central narration became in Charlotte Mason’s schools, it is not surprising to find her and her schools after her innovating other creative ways to narrate through the fine and performing arts. Karen Glass quotes from an article in the Parents’ Review long after Mason’s death about the practice of artistic narrations:

“But is narration…always merely ‘telling back’? It must be, we know, the child’s answer to ‘What comes next?’ It can be acted, with good speaking parts and plenty of criticism from actors and onlookers; nothing may be added or left out. Map drawing can be an excellent narration, or, maybe, clay modelling will supply the means to answer that question, or paper and poster paints, or chalks, even a paper model with scissors and paste pot. Always, however, there should be talk as well, the answer expressed in words; that is, the picture painted, the clay model, etc., will be described and fully described, because, with few exceptions, only words are really satisfying.” (Know and Tell, pp. 46, 48)

It may be a matter of debate how much these dramatic and artistic forms of “narration” began during Charlotte Mason’s lifetime, and to what extent they would fall under her definition of narration. Interestingly, Helen Wix, the author of this article, emphasizes the need for words. Acted narrations require words necessarily and are attested nearer Miss Mason’s time (see the second block quote on Know and Tell, p. 48 from The Parents’ Review of 1924, the year after Mason’s death). We also know that illustrations of particular moments from a literature or history book were a common practice in PNEU schools that Mason supported. So I have included drawn and acted narrations as innovations of Charlotte Mason. But it seems clear that oral and written narration were always the core and regular daily methods of narration, while other artistic “narrations” featured as occasional experiences that kept things fresh. 

The Practice of Narration for Charlotte Mason and Classical Christian Educators Today

What can we learn from this history of narration to guide our practices today? I will conclude this series with a list of propositions and suggestions for the future of narration in our movements today. These twelve points summarize what we’ve learned and point forward to exciting possibilities for using narration as classical Christian and Charlotte Mason educators.

1. Narration began in the rhetorical tradition with the main goal of developing students’ style in rhetorical training.
2. Renaissance educators shifted the focus of narration from books to lectures and the goal of narration from style to knowledge of content. 
3. Charlotte Mason adapted narration from the tradition for her context in accordance with her philosophy of education and mind. 
4. Her innovations in narration included taking the focus on rich texts from the classical era and joining it with the main goal of knowledge of content from the Renaissance educators. 
5. She also elevated it to the core status of the primary teaching and learning tool of the PNEU, a development that has support from modern research on retrieval practice.
6. Therefore, classical Christian educators who adopt narration may want to revive some of the rhetorical training pedagogy from John Locke, Quintilian and Aelius Theon.
7. Educators who follow Charlotte Mason may also want to consider more carefully her concerns about training in style or composition and whether or not the concerns she had about creating a “stilted style” were responding to specific trends in composition or rhetoric instruction during her day. 
8. Perhaps some Masonites will opt for more explicit rhetorical training than she might have envisioned, even while avoiding the errors she was warning against.
9. Given the technological developments of our modern world in audio and video recording and the free accessibility of high quality material from “living” voices and scholars, both Masonites and classical Christian educators might want to expand the role of inspirational lectures and oral teaching in education, with narration as the learning tool for either content or style. 
10. Classical Christian educators may feel that many of their teachers (or video instructors) reach the level of “master-minds” (in Charlotte Mason’s terms) and therefore inspirational lectures should play a larger role in their schools, or online courses. 
11. If the power of the spoken word is gaining new prominence through video recording and sharing technologies, then perhaps the next important innovation in narration would be to employ video recordings of great modern orators for students to narrate with the goal of developing their own rhetorical style, while also learning content.
12. At the same time, the use of lectures/speeches as a focus of narration should not crowd out the central importance of rich texts (either for Charlotte Mason or the classical tradition). In our day and age, a facility with the thoughts of the best minds of earlier eras has never been more crucial for students’ development of moral wisdom and historical judgment. 

Hope you have enjoyed this series! Share your thoughts in the comments on why you think the history of narration matters.

Earlier articles in this series:

Part 1: Charlotte Mason’s Discovery?

Part 2: Classical Roots

Part 3: Narration’s Rebirth

The post Why the History of Narration Matters, Part 4: Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Narration in Historical Perspective appeared first on .

(See Jason’s article on CSI “7 Steps to Narrating the Bible”!)

In biblical studies we seek to cultivate the habits of reverence, humility, submission to the text, and other qualities of faithful scholarship. But I propose another goal should rise to the top: enjoyment. The enjoyment that students have in reading a novel, or an eerie poem, or an adventure epic. 

When students are engaging with the Bible, we should hear laughter and gasps. We should see quizzical eyebrows and wide-eyed shock. I love to see students jumping out of their seats to be picked to identify a ‘hidden’ motif of Joshua. To see awkward blushes and grins, in unfolding the romance of Ruth and Boaz. To see shock and dismay over the violence of Genesis. And I had to laugh at my student’s obvious frustration, annotating her way through the book of Judges, with its noted cycle of idolatry: “Oh no… This is so wrong… Oh why? … That was cruel… This is just sad… Be smart and think!… Not again!”

My students read through the entire biblical canon in community, and their literary enjoyment of it is a memory that will last. Whether visually depicting the imagery of a Psalm or orally narrating the downward spiral of Genesis, students will remember Scripture as profound, holy, and artistically compelling. St. Augustine quipped, 

“Perhaps someone inquires whether the authors whose divinely-inspired writings constitute the canon, which carries with it a most wholesome authority, are to be considered wise only, or eloquent as well. A question which to me… is very easily settled. For where I understand these writers, it seems to me not only that nothing can be wiser, but also that nothing can be more eloquent.” 

 On Christian Doctrine, section 9

Why have we often missed the literary beauty of the Scriptures? Why do we move so quickly to “personal application,” while failing to linger in the episodes and the larger, sweeping narrative? Many a theologian has noted that we throw out good reading skills when it comes to the Bible—cutting the text into bite-size daily chunks, reading without context in mind, failing to find the author’s key themes and motifs. 

We have our modernity to blame. Theologian Peter Leithart depicts the Enlightenment and subsequent theological disputes as having moved evangelicals toward only half of the equation: unfolding the literal meaning and the moral application. But in Rehabilitating the Quadriga, Leithart explains that modern readers have missed out on the riches of Scripture by overlooking the medieval fourfold approach. We have ignored allegorical (or typological) reading and anagogical (or forward-looking reading, in light of final things). He urges us to recover more ancient ways of reading Scripture. 

Many modern advocates of theological interpretation of scripture are seeking to revive the more ancient, literary and typological approach to Scripture, and the good news is that we can implement this in K-12 Bible classes, even without personal training in the field. We can apply best-practices from teaching other literature as we study the canon. Here are 5 practical tactics to cultivate an enjoyment of scripture through a literary approach:

1. Annotating a Reader Bible 

This methodology revolves around close-reading and annotating of the text, so it is crucial that students have their own copy of a simple pew Bible or reader Bible to serve as their consumable textbook. Most reader Bibles are published in 4-6 volumes to complete the canon, and they are available in most translations. Students will build a personal library of the whole biblical canon. The embossed hardcover on these reader Bibles simply say “Pentateuch” or “Poetry,” but inside, the Bible looks like a novel or set of poems. 

Students are taught to treat this book as the valuable resource it is—to mark it, underline, and annotate neatly in pencil. A black-and-white composition book completes the required resources. Students will add quotes to this commonplace book over the six years that they read through the canon. It is a solid setup for a literary approach: a hardcover “novel” plus a growing journal of quotations. 

2. Seeking Simplicity: Multum non Multa

In keeping with the classical principle of “much, not many things,” we should cultivate long-term focus on a text rather than jumping between many resources. Students can sustain attention through a whole book or whole canonical section.  

To strip away distractions, students are asked to read with a pencil on the text, annotating their way through a full book. But there are two ways to practice sustained attention: 

1) Close reading of dense chapters, full of meaning. (Read at least twice.) Or

2) Longer periods of reading through several chapters in one sitting. 

“Long form reading teaches the students to follow a plot, poem, or letter from start to finish,” noted Zach. “It also sharpens the students’ attention span by requiring them to work and remain focused. Long form reading isn’t done every class period, because we take time to dive-deep at key moments, but either way, students should interact with the text first-hand prior to the teachers dispensing information.”

It is best to read in a good translation, to follow-along on a hard-copy as a skilled reader reads relatively swiftly, and then stop and do a close reading at key moments. Since they wouldn’t stop after every paragraph of the Iliad (because it’s lengthy), they keep up a similar pace with much of the Bible’s historical narratives. Otherwise, it can be hard to finish! 

Both reading methods seem . . . basic. Does this reduce the role of the teacher or eliminate direct instruction? By no means. But it does mean that the teacher’s role switches from lecture to hands-on coaching in skills. “Students benefit from habits and routines,” Zach explained. “Learning to read Scripture is like apprenticeship. The teacher is the lead learner and should model habits that the students will acquire over time, after much repetition. Good biblical reading should be seen as training.” 

3. Embracing Literary Skills 

Students at Veritas Christian Academy (the school where I teach Pentateuch and OT historical books) quickly learn that they will utilize literary skills daily in Bible class. There is no way to follow a complex text without using tools of genre, structure, precise vocabulary and synonyms. 

Precise attention to language is also how biblical theologians do their work. Many insights found by scholars are missed by average readers only because one’s literary understanding has to be increased to see the connections. Bible study tools that have been discussed for decades (“Listen for repetition”) only work when students understand the range of synonyms for a given word. 

4. Connecting with Ancient History

Since the canon is a collection of texts written in ancient Hebrew and Greek, we need to spend more time entering into the world of ancient history. Zach notes,

“Those who authored the biblical text had many similarities to us, but they also saw the world differently and we should learn from their worldview. It requires the reader to take on an ancient imagination.”

But discussing ancient history doesn’t have to be a dry, scholarly affair. In fact, since Veritas’ reader Bibles don’t contain scholarly footnotes or commentary, students have to use class discussion to work out their existing knowledge of ancient cultures and enter into “what this probably meant.” 

And don’t underestimate how much ancient knowledge is gained simply through broad reading of the Old Testament. The importance of land, agriculture, fertility, offspring, local gods, and differing gender-social roles is evident directly in Genesis.

Unleash your students’ creativity in wondering what life was like before the modern era! How did the ancients pass on writing, produce needed goods, utilize power, or reason about natural and supernatural forces? Even a bit of ancient background and ancient imagination goes a long way. 

5. Unleashing a Hunt for Imagery

Recurring words and images create through-lines across the Bible. Teach students to listen for repeated ideas, even if they don’t use the exact same word, and even if they seem like a minor concrete detail. These details will add up to a richer, more beautiful story when we keep track of them. But because motifs lie under the surface, we have to act like detectives. Have you heard repetition and wondered, “Is this a whole-Bible motif?” Check a scholarly work like the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery. Then do some thinking: What would this image mean to ancient people? Where did we see this motif earlier? Does it run all the way from Genesis to Revelation?

“We can be a lead learner, training students as apprentices,” Zach encourages. “Equip them with skills they need to be those with ‘eyes to see’ and ‘ears to hear’ God’s words, and then let them experience their own journey. My students often see aspects of the biblical text that I haven’t even noticed. I appreciate how we get to journey toward truth together.” 

A literary approach to the Bible lays a rich feast of manifold, complex meaning. What better could we spread before our students? Yes, they will have the choice as they grow, whether to go on believing. But I don’t think people want to walk away from a feast of meaning that is so very rich. When you start to see everything in existence illuminated by the light of Christianity, with all these layers of meaning—every concrete thing having a deeper, poetic, symbolic meaning. That is very hard to walk away from. It would constitute a loss to move from sacred, poetic living into non-meaning. Bare atoms. Nothingness. The richer the theology, the more lasting the faith. The imagery of the Bible can fuel new imagination for a kingdom way of living.

The post Enjoying the Bible as Literature: 5 Strategies for Engaging Students in Reading the Canon appeared first on .

For someone like me, having spent my entire professional career straddling the aisle between the two (at a Charlotte Mason influenced classical Christian school), this can be easy to say. But the fact that narration — the centerpiece of Mason’s method, and her claim to fame, as it were — was not itself discovered by her, but was a mainstay of the classical tradition may come as a shock to some. As I explained last time, Mason did claim to have discovered how to use narration as a global tool of learning in such a way as to train students in the habit of attention and significantly improve their rate of learning and retention. But the devil is in the details. 

In this article I want to unpack some of those details, as a sort of preview of my new book A Classical Guide to Narration coming out with the CiRCE Institute in November. (I found out this week you can preorder on Amazon and at a discount on the CiRCE website. Also, have you seen the endorsements from Ravi Jain, Jessica Hooten Wilson, W. Davies Owens, and Bill St Cyr in the CiRCE press release?) The history of narration matters because it helps classical educators approach narration (and Charlotte Mason) with greater confidence. Once Mason is in the Great Conversation about education, classical educators will gain other helpful insights and correctives as well. Narration’s history also matters because it helps Masonites understand her application of narration in a fuller light. When they know the history, they can be better equipped for the task of continuing Mason’s legacy by bringing a liberal education to all children of the modern world in a way that is philosophically sound and holds old and new in concert from a Christian worldview.

Now to the history!

Narration as a Progymnasmata in the Rhetorical and Grammatical Tradition

In my own story of discovery, John Locke and Quintilian were the first to the party. In reading Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education I was struck by the similarity of thought with Charlotte Mason on numerous topics: the importance of attention, the role of the instructor, the futility of rules and the necessity of training in habit. But then I chanced across his discussion of Rhetoric and was amazed at his recommendations for the use of narration. Sometime afterward I discovered many of the same themes and topics in the opening books of Quintilian’s Institutes of Oratory, as well as a stunning similarity in the suggestions for narration, like using Aesop’s fables. At this point I knew I had struck upon something significant. 

Classical Roots Stage 1: Narration in Aelius Theon

But I still thought there might have been a simple and unique route along the narration highway: from Quintilian, to Locke, to Mason. It was only later that I realized narration’s roots went far deeper. For this I needed the expertise of a scholar of rhetoric: George A. Kennedy, the long time Professor of Classics at the University of North Carolina. In his masterful book Classical Rhetoric and its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times (2nd ed.; University of North Carolina, 1999), he writes:

“The earliest surviving treatment of progymnasmata is the work of Aelius Theon, a teacher in Alexandria in the middle of the first century after Christ. In Theon’s method of teaching a passage was read aloud and students were first required to listen and try to write it out from memory; after gaining skill in doing this they were given a short passage and asked to paraphrase it and to develop and amplify it, or seek to refute it.” (26-27) 

Here we have the first distinct step in the history of narration. The first surviving book of preliminary exercises for rhetoric students (a progymnasmata) records Theon’s “method of teaching.” And it is surprisingly book-based in a way that is reminiscent of Mason: a passage is read aloud, students are required to listen, and then write out a narration from memory.

This is clearly not dictation, where scribes in training would write as the text was read out slowly and with pauses, aiming for word-for-word accuracy. Instead, this “method of teaching” focuses on students’ ability to listen with focused attention, inwardly digest and reproduce content in writing as faithfully as possible.

For Aelius Theon, this practice no doubt honed students ability to hear and understand a complex discourse. This then became the foundation on which students could practice amplifying the thought or refuting it accurately. From what we know of the value of retrieval practice from modern research, it also likely gave his students a ready wit and a memory stocked with the style and vocabulary and living thought of the authors read to them. 

Classical Roots Stage 2: Narration in Quintilian

It is not surprising that we have to wait for Quintilian to hear of narration again. Many of the rhetorical handbooks deal more with the customs and details of judicial speeches that were most popular or effective in the classical era, and not so much with the pedagogy of how students were actually trained. Quintilian’s On the Education of an Orator, however, is the fullest ancient source of pedagogy we have, beginning from students’ very cradles with a call for the hired nurse to speak only the best grammatically correct Latin. 

Quintilian’s treatment of narration is assigned to the important work of the grammaticus, the elementary school teacher who would be responsible for training a student in written and oral expression, and beginning his study of authors (from poets to historians and astronomers). Among other things the grammaticus needed to prepare the future orator with the foundational skills and fluency necessary for elite rhetorical training:

“Let boys learn, then, to relate orally the fables of Aesop, which follow next after the nurse’s stories, in plain language, not rising at all above mediocrity, and afterwards to express the same simplicity in writing. Let them learn, too, to take to pieces the verses of the poets and then to express them in different words, and afterwards to represent them, somewhat boldly, in a paraphrase, in which it is allowable to abbreviate or embellish certain parts, provided that the sense of the poet be preserved. He who shall successfully perform this exercise, which is difficult even for accomplished professors, will be able to learn anything.”

Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory 1.9.2-3 (trans. John Selby Watson, ed. Curtis Dozier and Lee Honeycutt; Creative Commons, 2015) 49-50

Notice how, for Quintilian, we have a step added before Aelius Theon’s practice of written narration. After all, students can speak before they can write, so why can’t their narration training start earlier, when they’re just advancing from the “nurse’s stories” to their formal education. Here Aesop’s fables become the hallowed starting place for narration — a pattern we see in Locke and Mason as well. As anyone knows who has read them, Aesop’s fables are a great place to begin narration with young children partly because of their length. They are short but pack a punch. Get the children telling the fables read to them “in plain language,” not as an exercise in ornate style, but in elegant simplicity of plot and compact expression. Then as they develop their writing skills, they can do the same practice as written narration, with the emphasis placed upon simple, correct statement of fact, rather than stereotyped formulae. 

Narrating Poetry?

Of course, once narration of stories is in place, poetry provides the next challenge. We have to read a bit between the lines to imagine what exactly Quintilian is implying. Do each of the students have their own copy of the poems read? Or is the teacher still reading aloud to the students? If the former, then students might be able to look at the poem while they “take to pieces” and re-express “in different words” the verses. This would be a very different analytical task from narration, but a powerful rhetorical training practice in its own right. Benjamin Franklin employed a similar tactic in teaching himself to write essays. If the latter, then we have another example of narration being used as the foundation stone for rhetorical training, with students hearing a poem and then reproducing it in prose, paraphrasing it, amplifying parts and diminishing others. Of course, the fact that the form of the content is being deliberately changed has added an extra element of artistry to it, but presumably it is still long form telling, as opposed to the short, look-up-the-sentence-in-the-book answers of the exercises in our modern curricula. 

My instinct tells me that the second option involving narration is the more likely for Quintilian’s ancient context. Scrolls were not cheap and it is hard to see the average grammaticus of the Roman era providing his students with textbooks or copies of each poem. He did not have a teacher’s lounge with a copier to retreat to and quickly scan the poem he found in his old college textbook. Of course, students would likely have transcribed poems and memorized them by heart as well, so we could imagine a student first transcribing a poem and then proceeding with this exercise; however, students normally wrote on a wax tablet with a stylus, and while these could have multiple “pages,” it seems less likely that ancient teachers would tolerate this kind of lack of verbal memory. 

Lastly, we can appreciate the value of Quintilian’s concluding statement: “He who shall successfully perform this exercise, which is difficult even for accomplished professors, will be able to learn anything.” Not only does this seem to clinch the argument in favor of the latter (Is picking apart poetic lines that are right in front of you really that hard?), it prevents us from claiming that narration was an ancillary or insignificant thing in Quintilian’s pedagogy. Yes, it’s true that he doesn’t spend a lot of time discussing it, while he’s happy to wax eloquent on issues of Latin grammar and solecisms. But if it mattered little, why would he make so stunning a claim for it as a touchstone of all learning? Here we have a foretaste of Mason’s notion of narration as the centerpiece of education. 

Have you downloaded the free resource “Charlotte Mason and the Trivium: Planning Lessons with Narration”?

The Seed of Narration’s Classical Roots: Hearing-Dominance and Preliterate Narration

As modern people in a text-dominant society we tend to undervalue the power of human memory for extended discourse, as we have largely abandoned this ability in our reliance on texts. The reality is that the cost of paper and writing rendered the ancient and medieval world largely hearing dominant, even after the introduction of writing. “Hearing dominant” is a term I borrow from John Walton and Brent Sandy’s The Lost World of Scripture (IVP Academic: 2013), but the ideas of orality and literacy go back to my undergraduate reading of Walter Ong’s mind-blowing book (Orality and Literacy, Methuen: 1982). Hearing dominance means that people remembered and relied more on what they heard in day to day communal life than on the scripted communication of a text. We forget that until the modern era the vast majority of people were not literate, but relied on professionals for that sort of thing. 

Hearing dominance also means that oral narration of things heard was just a common occurrence. It almost didn’t need to be said, as it was so obvious a feature of social interaction with others. If you think about it, the only ways that content could have been passed down in a preliterate society would have been through narration or memorization. Whether a story or a wisdom saying, any tradition would have been passed down through tellings and retellings. Corrections would have occurred during family recitals, but only recognized authorities would likely have shared at public events. Oral narration would have simply been a part of culture and an aspect of normal social life before writing came along. And it makes sense that after the introduction of writing among an educated elite, the centrality of spoken and heard discourse would not immediately vanish.

These considerations seem to me to support the prominence of narration-like activities not only in the classical world, but in the pre-literate antiquity out of which the classical world was born. We might call preliterate narration the seed out of which the classical roots of narration sprung. After all, once texts became more and more prominent in education, narration was bound to be used as a technique to get the matter on the page into the pupils’ heads. It would have seemed natural. That’s not to underrate Aelius Theon’s or Quintilian’s pedagogical brilliance. It’s simply to see it in its broader context.

As we have become more and more text dominant we have moved further and further from the discipline of expecting one another (or our students) to hear and know enough to tell. Ironically this is exactly what Plato’s Socrates foretold in the dialogue Phaedrus. He retells a myth of an Egyptian Pharaoh Thamus being presented with the invention of great arts by the god Thoth. When Thoth praises writing as a “branch of learning that will make the people of Egypt wiser and improve their memories,” king Thamus counters,

“If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.” (Phaedrus 274e-275b, from The Collected Dialogues, Princeton: 1989; 520)

The problem of writing causing forgetfulness is akin to the problem of securing attention that Charlotte Mason puzzled over in our last article. In fact, we might even say it is the same problem. How can we prevent ourselves from relying on the written record for reminders rather than performing the spontaneous, yet difficult “act of knowing”? The answer lies in a task like narration that forces the student to immediately retrieve from memory. It was inevitable that rhetorical teachers would find a solution to this intriguing problem, given that one of their main tasks included training future orators in the art of memory!

In our next installment we will explore the rebirth of narration in the Renaissance with recommendations of Erasmus and Comenius, and John Locke’s critique of “classical” training during the Enlightenment.

Other articles in this series:

Part 1: Charlotte Mason’s Discovery?

Part 3: Narration’s Rebirth

Part 4: Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Narration in Historical Perspective

The post Why the History of Narration Matters, Part 2: Classical Roots appeared first on .