At Clapham School, where I serve as an administrator, we were able to hold a small, in-person ceremony for our graduates. As I composed my commencement address, I was struck by parallels with the class of 1919, which had graduation ceremonies cancelled or postponed in various locations due to the Spanish Influenza pandemic. In this message, I try to bring perspective to graduates this summer, that the challenges we face due to Covid-19 may go a long way toward shaping the outlook of this next generation, if one embraces the opportunity a catastrophe provides. In many ways, this speech is a sequel to my article on the Black Death in the 14th century.

Here I’ve shared my commencement address in the hope that perhaps this message will be meaningful to you as a teacher and leader in your school.

Commencement Address – Class of 2020

Good evening, class of 2020. I am so grateful that we can meet this evening with a small gathering of parents, siblings, teachers, relatives and friends. Little about the past several months has gone according to plan, so it is that much more satisfying to have planned this event, bringing a little order in the midst of chaos.

The “Greatest Generation” is a term used to describe the Americans who experienced both the Great Depression and World War 2. What characterizes these Americans is that they lived through some of the greatest hardships of the depression and exhibited the will to win on the battlefields of Africa, Europe and Asia. Of the 16 million who served in WW2, only about half a million remain today.

When we look back on the Greatest Generation, we can observe that such a generation is forged by the harshest of trials. You can’t engineer such a generation. There’s no recipe or lab manual. There were attempts to create great generations. Warren G. Harding called for a return to normalcy in 1920, a phrase that anticipated “Make America Great Again.” What is normalcy? And can normalcy be created through public policy?

The post-war 1950s represented another attempt at social fabrication of a great generation. The idea was social conformity. The picture of suburban docility was promoted on the covers of the Saturday Evening Post with weekly prints of Norman Rockwell paintings. What, though, are we striving for when we call for conformity? Can social pressure create a great generation? This is a highly relevant consideration in light of the dominant position social media has taken since the early 2000s.

My thesis, and the point that I want to make for our graduating seniors, is that great generations are forged through unexpected hardship, and cannot be made by the will of cultural engineers. And what has 2020 been, but a year of hardship after hardship. This pandemic gives me pause to ask whether we are experiencing the kinds of conditions that will contribute to the making of a new great generation. To assess this hunch of mine, I want to take us back to 1918 and 1919.

The Great War, or WW1, was drawing to a close after years of stagnation. The US was ultimately drawn into the conflict as the decisive force, bringing victory to the allied forces against the central powers. One of the unexpected consequences of American soldiers serving overseas was that they brought back the Spanish Influenza, which hit pandemic levels in the fall of 1918. Schools closed in September and October of 1918. Homecoming events, a fairly new annual celebration in the early 1900s, were cancelled that fall. We can empathize with some of the experiences from that pandemic that swept the nation. For instance, students in Los Angeles remained at home and were sent assignments by teachers through mail-in correspondence.

There were subsequent spikes of the Spanish Influenza in January of 1919 and then again in the April-May timeframe later that year. This meant that graduations were cancelled or delayed in various hotspots throughout America. The class of 2020 seems to have similarities with the class of 1919. There were no vaccines or treatments available, so the only protocols to follow were isolation, quarantine, washing hands, disinfecting surfaces, and canceling or limiting public gatherings. If nothing else, it’s good to know we are not alone. Mark Twain is reputed to have said that “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” Well, sometimes it sure seems like it does repeat itself.

For reasons we don’t particularly know, the Spanish Influenza just went away. It took researchers until 2008 to fully understand the genetic makeup of the H1N1 virus, colloquially termed the Spanish Flu. Side note: the Spanish Flu did not originate in Spain. Spain became associated with this virus simply because they remained neutral in WW1, and were therefore able to provide unbiased reporting about this new virus during the war, a service which ultimately associated their national identity with a virus. The Spanish, by the way, referred to the virus as the French Flu.

The parallels between the Spanish Flu and the Coronavirus interest me for this simple reason. The Spanish Flu is something we can regard as the first in a series of hardships that impacted the generation who would subsequently experience both the Great Depression and WW2. Yet, few ever associate that pandemic with the ensuing events. But could it be that the Influenza pandemic served as an initial crisis in a string of events creating the greatest generation?

And so I ask you now, our graduates, a compelling question. Will our pandemic serve as an initial crisis that will forge the next greatest generation? I don’t know what the future will hold. I can’t promise you that depressions and world wars will further galvanize your generation. But perhaps if the mantle is born with only this one catastrophic event, the work of making a next great generation is accomplished here and now.

The temptation will exist to dive deeply into social distractions. We could be on the verge of the next roaring 20s. But I trust that the books that you’ve read here at Clapham, the discussions about what it takes to live life with meaning and purpose, will have prepared you to fully embrace the opportunity now made available to you in our current traumatic experiences.

Let me be clear about my charge to you. I do not spell these things out to you to place a burden of expectations on you. It matters not whether you become labelled a great generation. Instead, what does matter is to notice that your class has had a bit of rubbish luck when it comes to your graduation. And I say, good for you! That’s now part of your story. That’s something that becomes part of your perspective on life. That’s something that marks your graduation as something unique and special. And if you can own that and truly embrace it, you will find joy and blessing.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plan for wholeness and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Jeremiah 29:11

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One of the great joys of being a teacher is summers off. This may be one of the chief compensations, more important to teachers than healthcare or retirement accounts. I for one love the rhythm of the schoolyear and delight in the summer downtime. Working as an administrator for several years now, the joy has somewhat diminished since there’s still so much work to be done. But even in this case, the nature of the work is different, and therefore enjoyable in its own way.

As I reflect on the dynamic of summer vacation, I wanted to inspire our readers with an opportunity that lays before us. During the school year, when it is our responsibility to teach, we rarely have the time to be learners ourselves. It’s true that quite a number of teachers take continuing education courses. Many of my colleagues over the years have worked towards their masters degrees during the school year. I myself had finished all my degrees before teaching full time. So these educational warriors have my admiration.

Two of my colleagues, one in St. Louis and another here in Chicago, caught my attention by taking what might be considered special interest classes. They weren’t working towards a degree. Instead, they took classes sheerly from their interest in the subject. My colleague Rachel at Providence took a pottery class, making beautiful pieces that she eventually gifted to our graduating seniors. My colleague Nathan at Clapham was caught carrying a cello down the road. When asked what he was doing lugging such a large instrument, he said he was taking cello lessons. Both of these examples epitomized for me the value of lifelong learning. If you are like us at Educational Renaissance, then you value lifelong education. We often consider this concept in light of our students. But what about us?

Therefore, when a professor at Wheaton College – who also happens to attend my church – offered a basic pottery class this summer, I jumped at the chance to learn a new skill. Here are some thoughts that emerged through the process. As I reflect on my experience as a learner, hopefully it will inspire you to find something to learn this summer, and then you can experience the joy of learning by taking a summer class.

The Basics of Pottery

First, for the uninitiated, here is an outline of basic pottery. You grab a clump of wet clay. You work it around in your hands until it becomes a ball. Take a small part of the ball, and flatten it to the size of an iPhone, marking out a round portion for the base of, say, a mug. Then you roll the rest of the ball between your hands to form it into a snake. You probably remember doing something like this with Play-Doh when you were a kid. You continue to roll the snake on the board until it is long enough to form a coil around the circumference of the base. You then squish (not being very technical here) the coil, working it into the base and upward slightly. You can add on more coils; I did three. You continue to squish the sides, forming a flat surface on your cylinder. After letting it set for a day, I added a handle. And, voila, a mug ready to be glazed and fired.

There are definitely other levels to pottery. For instance, I didn’t do anything with a wheel, which is what many people associate with pottery. One can learn about different kinds of clay, or different tools of the trade. I didn’t go into this aiming to set up a home studio. Instead, I wanted to try something new. I wanted to get my hands working with something. And I wanted an activity that would serve as a stress reliever during one of the strangest ends to a school year I had ever experienced.

Learning Means Confronting the Fear of the Unknown

Fear is an interesting emotion. We learn in 1 John 4:18 that “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” From this we might surmise that fear is a bad thing. Yet we are called to fear God, by which we understand fear to mean respect or worship. This seems to be a good thing. Fear of the unknown is a very real aspect to our existence as human beings. If God is unknown to an individual, the fear that person experiences would be substantially different than that of the individual who knows God and is known by God. I believe I have a healthy fear of my wife, but not the kind of fear one has when one’s life is threatened. Love has cast out that kind of fear. All that remains is the niggling kind of fear that somehow my imperfections will collide with her imperfections in some way that causes sparks to fly. But we’ve been through enough of those, that fear really isn’t the right word for it anymore. Forgive my tangent into fear, but it does relate, I promise. (Perhaps I am causing you the fear of the unknown right now).

When we learn, there is a genuine fear of that which is not known or only partially known. We have an entire neurological system devoted to processing fear. The limbic system helps our bodies scan for danger. A small, almond-shaped part of our brain called the amygdala is ready to initiate the fight, flight or play dead programmed response to danger. There were reasons our ancestors were scared to leave their caves. And yet without overcoming those fears, there would have been no food, no exploration, and no learning. You see, when we learn something new, there’s a part of our brain that is afraid of this new thing. Will it hurt? Will it change me? Am I any good at it? Will everyone make fun of me if I fail, or even if I succeed?

With pottery, there is the fear that whatever it is I’m making will look terrible. I might try to make a mug, but end up with a clumpy, amorphous blob that isn’t even good enough to be an ashtray (and who uses those anymore anyway?). Another fear is that I’ll make something that I’m pleased with, but it cracks when it is fired. That’s a real risk. Why take the risk, one asks oneself. Better not to begin at all than set oneself up for failure. I find it helpful to face these fears as a learner. How many of our students face these fears with multiple subjects every day? We are working with true heroes.

Learning Ought to Humble You

Learning is not only about gaining intellectual courage, it is also about acquiring intellectual humility. The expectation on all teachers is that they are the experts in the classroom. We prepare ourselves through careful study to deliver content and guide students to knowledge based on the fact that we know substantially more than our students. Now it ought to be the case that despite our teacherly expertise, we have simultaneously cultivated intellectual humility. Pride should not get in the way of us admitting areas where we lack expertise. Intellectual pride can trip us up when students ask questions. We want to mask our fallibility by seeming omniscient. Telling our students, “I don’t know,” or “I need to think about that more,” goes a long way towards being rigorously honest with our students. Not knowing everything is not a sign that we are not experts, it just shows that we are aware of what we know and what we don’t know. This can enable greater connection with our students, as we establish an atmosphere of learning together.

With these thoughts in mind, I was so happy to enter an environment where I had no expertise. Like my students, I had to submit myself to teacher who would guide me based on his expertise. David, my teacher, has a calm voice and a positive attitude. His advice to novice potters is based in years of working with clay and producing lots and lots of great pieces. The clay itself is a teacher as well, and the clay will humble you. There were several projects I started that fell apart in my hands. All I could do was ball the clay up and start over. Even the pride one feels in a finished project has in it the flaws or unrefined areas that become evident the more you learn and grow.

One aspect of the joy of learning is addressing this concept of humility. As human beings, we are limited, frail and fallible. Frequently we attempt to cover this up, to hide what we truly are behind the smoke and mirrors of our expertise and accomplishments. True human growth, though, only occurs when we uncover our true nature and deal with it. As an individual confronts an area of lack, there is a transformation that can occur, whereby something about us becomes strengthened. For instance, my hands are completely unpracticed in the art of pottery. I compared one of my rolled coils with that of my teacher, and it fell way short of his standard. In owning that self-assessment, I continued to practice rolling the clay, getting a little bit better feel for it. Learning some subtle techniques to more evenly roll out the clay. I’m certainly not there yet, but I can see growth that occurred through honest self-evaluation and acceptance of personal weakness.

Learning is about Process rather than Product

Often our thinking about learning focuses too much on the end product, whether it’s a grade, an award or entrance into some college or career. In one of my previous articles, I challenged our thinking about using end product as the measure of success. We tend to measure success based on end product rather than process largely because it’s often easier to measure. Does Johnny meet the objective or not? There’s a place for summative assessment, to see where things stand at a key moment in time. But the most important work of learning is setting up good processes that will last a very long time, most often beyond the timeframes we set up for measurements.

Working with pottery was a chance for me to see the process of learning at work. You keep working at the clay, shaping it and refining it. For several days I would set aside the piece I was working on to take it out and work it some more. Each time I could feel that my hands were becoming more used to the clay. I was gaining more insight into the techniques being taught. New ideas emerged for what direction I wanted to take this project as well as the next one. Imperfections were evident each new day that weren’t as obvious the previous day. I’m looking forward to the end product, don’t get me wrong. I will use my handmade mugs with pride. But the process is so alluring that I find myself more looking forward to the next time I can work the clay.

There seems to be a lesson in this for us. Learning should entice us to enter into the process again and again. Our students should be encouraged to rework and refine whatever it is they are learning. Yes, there will be moments where we celebrate the work we’ve finished, but our learning comes in the moments when we are working through the process. We should create an atmosphere in our classrooms where we celebrate the moments when we are metaphorically or literally getting our hands dirty in the work.

Learning Brings True and Lasting Joy

There is a profound difference between true and lasting joy and the trifling hits of dopamine on offer in today’s world. We are tempted to think we have been productive or done something meaningful after a morning of reading through email, scrolling through a Facebook feed, and watching a few YouTube videos. Yet we all know that feeling of wondering where the day went and whether we actually did anything of any worth. We really need moments of true and lasting joy, but they almost always occur as a result of concerted effort. This was a point I made in my review of Josh Waitzkin’s book. Learning places us in a position where we are able to engage in something that will help us to grow, and in that growth we will find true and lasting joy.

In speaking about educating children, Charlotte Mason connects the dots of a holistic education. She writes:

‘Education is the Science of Relations,’ is the principle which regulates their curriculum; that is, a child goes to school with many aptitudes which he should put into effect. So, he learns a good deal of science, because children have no difficulty in understanding principles, though technical details baffle them. He practises various handicrafts that he may know the feel of wood, clay, leather, and the joy of handling tools, that is, that he may establish a due relation with materials.

Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, 31

This quote is packed full of ideas. What I want to draw from this for now is that student aptitude is drawn out and promoted through effort. This effort is a joyful experience not only in the moment of learning, but that joy also gets compounded at later points. One aptitude enhances another. Different areas of learning begin to influence each other. The whole person is deeply impacted by this “science of relations” whereby a student gains mastery of multiple and varied areas of knowledge. And notice that these areas of learning are not just intellectual. She sees how intellectual learning and handicrafts work together, giving students transferable skills.

In the introductory video, my teacher mentioned how working with clay could be a stress reliever. I have been reflecting on this, because he’s right, it is a stress reliever. I think that’s another way of saying that when you work with the clay, you will experience true and lasting joy, which is an antidote to stress. For us as educators, there is a lesson here. The subjects we teach are full of potential joy that comes through deep work. Students sometimes confuse the effort of deep work with the stress of life today. We need to help them to understand this difference, and the way to do this is by tracking joy. Our classrooms should be places where we celebrate the effort of deep work and the accumulation of aptitudes in different areas.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my reflections on learning pottery. Maybe this will inspire you to sign up for a class this summer. If you are plan to learn something this summer, let us know in the comments. The Educational Renaissance community is one that promotes life-long learning, so we’d love to hear what you’re learning. Having mentioned the concept of joy, allow me to promote Jason’s new book, The Joy of Learning: Finding Flow through Classical Education. Learn more about it on our webpage promoting his book.

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One of my favorite podcasters, Brian Johnson who put out a great series of YouTube videos called Philosophers Notes, had this tagline on his podcasts: “Isn’t it a bit odd that we went from math to science to history, but somehow missed the class on how to live?” This idea always resonated with me, not because we need an extra class on living, but because the idea of how to live should be resonating throughout all of our classes. Educators have often missed the fact that math, science and history are to be learned in order to know how to live. If math, science and history don’t seem like subjects where you would learn how to live, then you’re probably like me, having been raised in a system of education more focused on functional outcomes (getting into the best colleges or getting into the best careers) than on living meaningful and purposeful lives. 

You might be skeptical, and rightfully so. The dominant mode of education, the one we see in mass media, is all about the systematic approach — a conveyor belt of educational product. But consider my geometry class. The major goal of the class is to see our world differently, especially those parts of our world that appear most obvious. Why ought we to do proofs? Why transform polygons? Why inscribe triangles within circles? To help us to grapple with the world around us in fascinating new ways. We live in a three-dimensional world that is often depicted in two dimensions. Let’s get to the bottom of that. And in so doing gain insight into what it means to live in this space. Now you kinda want to take geometry again, don’t you?

In this article I want to go beyond just academic subjects and consider the entire enterprise of education as it pertains to life. There are many dimensions to this, so I don’t expect I will fully extract every morsel in this essay, but hopefully it will provide you with some suggestive avenues to stimulate your own thinking about life. Additionally, I would like to relate these thoughts to our current response to the COVID-19 epidemic.

(One more thing, before diving in. A justification of a seemingly inadequate title. You might think that I’m missing an indefinite article, since you know my heartfelt devotion to Charlotte Mason. Yes, she states, “Education is a life,” and by that she means that the child’s mind is fed on living ideas. I’m extrapolating that idea to demonstrate that there is another level of understanding Mason’s claim. Furthermore, you will notice the preposition “on” instead of “of.” Many teachers are asked to express their philosophy of education, in which they will describe their teaching techniques and practices, sometimes elaborating on their view of the child as a whole person. What I am doing here is not really a philosophy of education in that sense. I am instead thinking about education as a whole and its place in life. Maybe the preposition “on” will rattle a few feathers. Thus ends the deconstruction of an inadequate title.)

Two Forces: Achievement or Inspiration

To begin with, I think it is important to make a distinction between two competing forces in education. These aren’t mutually exclusive, but they do exist in tension with one another. The first force is what we might call achievement. Students, parents and teachers want what’s best for their child, and this often gets translated into measurable categories. The grade in a class is a measure of the student’s achievement. The class rank, SAT score, National Merit selection index number and a plethora of other measurements let everyone know how this particular student stacks up against all others. It’s actually really valuable to incorporate measurement in education, but it’s really difficult to measure what really matters.

I’ve written elsewhere that most of our educational measurements select only a few areas of learning and growth, solely because they are easy to measure. Unfortunately, much of what we measure has little value in predicting future success. Our tools simply cannot measure determination, the ability to hold pleasant conversation, kindness toward others, piety, resilience, or delayed gratification. So we need this first force — achievement — but it is a force fraught with fallacies.

The second force I will call inspiration. My hunch is that most teachers go into education because they want to inspire students to love subjects they themselves love. Most teachers look back at their own education and can point to a few teachers that inspired them. They want to make a difference in the lives of their own students. Unfortunately, there are far too few teachers who retain this high level of inspiration for the entirety of their career. Teaching is a demanding job, calling for long hours preparing lessons, learning technology, sitting in staff meetings, and grading homework. Teachers who truly want to inspire students find the nature of their work rather intense, because it means you need to bring massive energy to every lesson, you have to work with struggling students, you need to motivate fringe students, you need to coach and counsel both students and parents, and sometimes you need to flex your schedule to reach those students who need extra help. The first force – achievement – can also steal from the second force. The most inspirational teacher can get caught up in tracking the measurements, not only as a way of looking at her students’ success but also to measure her own success. Don’t get me wrong, we shouldn’t be graduating a group of fantastically inspired students who are complete and utter failures. We need achievement. But we also need inspiration. Both forces are necessary. If I’m honest with myself, though, I greatly lean toward the force of inspiration, sometimes wishing the other force could go away. 

These thoughts on two forces have lived with me for quite some time. So when I came across this quote by Charlotte Mason, I felt it was time to really wrestle with it philosophically for a while.

“It seems to me that education, which appeals to the desire for wealth (marks, prizes, scholarships, or the like), or to the desire of excelling (as in the taking of places, etc.), or to any other of the natural desires, except that for knowledge, destroys the balance of character; and, what is even more fatal, destroys by inanition that desire for and delight in knowledge which is meant for our joy and enrichment through the whole of life.”

Charlotte Mason, School Education, pg. 226

The strength of Mason’s feelings is matched by the power of her vocabulary. The character of learners is “destroyed” when education becomes focused on the desire for wealth or success. The only sure educational desire is for knowledge. She calls it fatal to base education on anything else. The word “inanition” means that a thing is emptied of all of its nourishing content. Take your bleached grains, your generic white bread, with its crusts cut off, and try living off just that. That’s the picture Mason paints for education when the focus is shifted away from the life-giving enrichment of knowledge. I would guess that Mason sides more with the force of inspiration than the force of achievement, too.

Mason, however, was very much aware of the force of achievement, and most definitely saw that a good education entailed success at such things as examinations (Vol. 3, pg. 301). So we can’t minimize the role achievement plays in education. There remain standards that must be met in order to be considered a well-educated person. But Mason also recognizes that our standards ought to be measured against what truly matters in life.

“But the one achievement possible and necessary for every man is character; and character is as finely wrought metal beaten into shape and beauty by the repeated and accustomed action of will. We who teach should make it clear to ourselves that our aim in education is less conduct than character; conduct may be arrived at, as we have seen, by indirect routes, but it is of value to the world only as it has its source in character.”

Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, p. 129

Achievement, then, is not only necessary, it is of fundamental importance. It is actually the goal toward which inspiration aims. The two forces that tug at each other actually cohere elegantly when put together properly. If our aim is on top marks, a 4.0 GPA, college entrance, merit-based scholarships, and the like, our aim isn’t truly aligned. What Mason is articulating is that true achievement is a life so well lived that the world is made a better place. This life of great value is achieved through character. Here is achievement that is truly inspirational.

The Classroom is a Microcosm of Life 

The vision of a life well lived is our ultimate goal of achievement. But that vision seems so far off that it feels impractical on a daily basis. Time presses upon us each day holding in our faces the immediacy of the lesson at hand, the upcoming assessment, or the report card soon to be released. Achievement snaps into focus, pushing inspiration out of the picture.

We need to start viewing the classroom differently. The classroom is the place where life occurs. The temptation is to think about life as truly occurring outside the classroom. Students feel this way, since home is where they most often eat, rest and play. Their youth group, sports team or the Starbucks where they hang out with their friends feels more like the locus where life occurs than the classroom does. School is where they have to go to do the work that’s required of them. How often do we get sucked into that way of thinking as well? But life occurs in the classroom all the same, even if students don’t place the greatest importance on that aspect of their life. To be clear, I don’t think one can say one sphere of life is more or less important than others. Our existence as living beings transcends time and space, and we are unified beings no matter what space we inhabit. To view ourselves as more alive in one place than in others begins to disintegrate the coherence of our being. In light of this, we must strive to breathe genuine life into the atmosphere of our classrooms, lest we cause real harm to ourselves and others.

So what does it mean when I say life occurs in our classrooms? For one, it means that our students are whole persons. We are not just interacting with our students’ minds. Students are also emotional, social and spiritual creatures, just like we are. All dimensions of their personhood come into the classroom. All dimensions of their personhood are being trained and cultivated. This means that teaching that doesn’t connect to their multi-dimensionality will actually not get assimilated because it isn’t fundamentally important to their existence as living beings.

But wait, you might say, aren’t there things you just have to learn, even if there isn’t an emotional, social or spiritual connection? Let’s consider a recent geometry lesson. We are just starting to learn trigonometric functions. This is hard stuff when it’s brand new. I could see the look of frustration on their faces. Lurking in the background is a feeling that if this doesn’t relate to real life in some way, what’s the use of putting in the effort to figure out when, how and why to use inverse sine? In this very moment, though, real life is happening before our very eyes.

What I did was take a step back from the lesson about the law of sines, to help them grapple with their encounter with things that are difficult to learn. “You are feeling the fog right now, aren’t you?” I helped them to see that some things we learn aren’t fully clear at the outset. This might have been true when they first learned long division in early grammar school. This might have been true when they learned factoring in algebra 1. I was connecting them to their emotional state. “Hey, we’re all experiencing this together.” It is very common for us to feel that we are the only one who doesn’t get it. But when there’s a recognition that we are doing something together, a deep bond is formed. The “ah-ha” moments become a group celebration. Learning is a social and relational thing. I was connecting them to their social state. “This seems pretty out there, doesn’t it?” The deeper you go in mathematics, the more abstract and esoteric things become. In this moment, I was showing them that they were exploring something almost mystical. I could relate this to something as practical as navigating an airplane. But the practical application will actually compound their frustration in the moment. Instead, I helped them to see how their imaginations were gaining new tools. I was connecting them to their spiritual state. Real life was occurring in a specific learning environment. The temptation was to think in terms of achievement. “We’re not getting it. Our grades will suffer. I won’t go to the best school. I won’t get a good job. I’ll likely be homeless for the rest of my life!” Instead, we thought in terms of life and saw geometry as a field of endeavor in which we can gain an understanding of meaning and purpose. (I might add that these students have done well using trigonometric functions. As an experienced teacher I knew the fog would dissipate through more practice.)

What does this mean for you as a teacher? We must become observers of life. We only get a relatively small amount of time with the students God gives into our care. By being watchful for real life occurring in our midst, we position ourselves to seize every moment we can. The little arguments that erupt between students, the games that are played on the blacktop, the struggles to learn new concepts, the disorganized backpack. All things are avenues into genuine life connections.

Application of Education is Life to COVID-19

If we agree that education is about life, then this COVID-19 epidemic presents a huge teaching and learning opportunity. We are confronted with the frailty of our humanity. A few weeks ago I compared our present epidemic with the black plague in the mid-1300s. A confrontation with death and our own mortality is not a topic we should shy away from. We ourselves as teachers might be wrestling with new emotions and concerns about safety. We must also assume our students are wrestling with the reality and implications of COVID-19. Their world just got turned upside down.

Because one of the forces of education is inspiration, I think now is the time to inspire our students with a deep and profound vision of what life really means. There are some students who miss their interactions with friends through daily contact. Students presently feel a deep sense of loneliness and isolation. Many students miss the life-structuring order of our daily schedules. We can share with them how all of these feelings point to their yearning for meaning and purpose in their lives. Our texts and discussions can take on new importance if we are forthright in our response to the impact of COVID-19 on them and us right now. You may have a chance to model for them how your faith is upholding you in this moment, or what practices you’ve incorporated during this time of social distancing.

As an example, I teach a health class for sophomores and juniors. We spent time this week talking about meditation and mindfulness as a Christian practice. When I planned this unit, coronavirus was not in my thinking. Now that we’ve gotten to this unit, I opened up about how just a few minutes of quiet meditation in the morning helps me to calmly approach my day. I contrasted this to mornings when I opened up a news feed and saw how many new cases and deaths there were. They were able to see how I was responding to COVID-19, and then I asked them to share their own responses to the epidemic. We explored how stress can impact our health and well-being.

Clearly there are boundaries that we need. I am always careful not to make a class about me, my feelings or my viewpoint on current matters. I am also careful not to traumatize my students by forcing them to talk about raw feelings or controversial matters. Yet we should be open to teachable moments when we can provide insight through our transparency. We should equally be open to discussing matters that are hyper-present in their minds. How odd it would be for a teacher not to mention COVID-19 or social distancing.

Application of Education is Life to Online Learning

Speaking of social distancing, online learning has meant that we are all accumulating new technological skills. You are using student management software in new ways, or you are becoming masters of Zoom or Skype, or you are learning how to use Google Classrooms or MS Teams. Your students are also accumulating new technological skills. If you’re like me, they are learning these skills quicker than you. You might be asking them questions about how to upload assignments or share your screen. With this in mind, don’t be afraid of being a learner. Show them that you are learning how to do some new things. Ask them questions. There’s something empowering when a student is able to teach a teacher. If we are promoting life-long learning, then there are moments when we need to let our guard down so that our students can see that we ourselves are life-long learners.

My other piece of advice as we dive deeply into technological solutions to educating amidst social distancing is to make sure the techniques and technology of education don’t drown out our experience of life. I have told my students how much I miss them at the end of our Zoom sessions. There’s something about being able to see them eye-to-eye in the hallways. I can casually ask them how they’re doing, and they can see the care in my eyes. The technology enables us to connect, but our pixelated, two-dimensional connection is no replacement for embodied presence with one another.

Teach Like Life Depends on It

Someday — hopefully sooner rather than later — we will return to classrooms. We will return having learned some lessons about the nature of education. My hope is that one of the enduring lessons is that education is about life. My hunch is that the reason you come to our humble website is that you get this concept, and that you are striving to provide an education that nourishes the lives of your students. Let me encourage you that I think it will be teachers and schools that feed their students’ souls who have the best hope of surviving this epidemic and even thriving during and after this epidemic. Why do I think this? It is because when people confront forces like our frailty and mortality, we begin to ask questions of meaning and purpose. Parents and students will be looking for this kind of education, one that engages the mind and the soul. Now more than ever is the time to teach like our lives depend on it.

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I’ll never forget when as a child I encountered the idea of the Roman Empire. In the family room we had an entire bookshelf dedicated to World Book encyclopedias. Categorized alphabetically, these tomes catalogued more knowledge than my youthful mind could possibly take in. And while encyclopedias might not exactly fit Charlotte Mason’s criteria for a living book, I can assure you that a feast of knowledge was underway. I was just about through the third course of the meal when I encountered for perhaps the first time the political climax of the ancient world: Imperium Rōmānum. I was hooked. 

Perhaps you’ve had a similar experience. It may not have been while browsing encyclopedias, but there you were, reading some text or perhaps going on a walk outside with a friend, when some previously unknown aspect of the world hit you square between the eyes, sparking a desire within you to learn, discover, and connect what you had learned with your current base of knowledge.

The Life of the Mind

This is the power of ideas. And unfortunately for many modern schools today, this power lies largely dormant. In the present educational landscape, ideas are not sought after largely due to the hubristic assumption that there are hardly any left to find. As a result, students are left scrambling and sorting the intellectual table scraps of others, what is called information. The real adventure of learning, encountering ideas, has been counterfeited and massed produced for the unsuspecting modern classroom. An educational renaissance is desperately needed to discard this counterfeit and replace it with a feast worthy of young growing minds.

This is precisely what the educator Charlotte Mason sought to achieve roughly a century ago. She taught that education is a life, referring to the life of the mind. Just as the human digestive system assimilates food, providing the body with the nutrients and sustenance it needs to survive, so the mind requires its own food in order to enjoy health and vitality. 

Charlotte Mason writes,

“Under the phrase, ‘Education is a life,’ I have tried to show how necessary it is to sustain the intellectual life upon ideas, and, as a corollary, that a school-book should be a medium for ideas, and not merely a receptacle for facts. That normal children have a natural desire for, and a right of admission to, all fitting knowledge, appears to me to be suggested by the phrase, ‘Education is the science of relations’” (Preface to the “Home Education” Series).

Here Charlotte Mason alludes to two central themes in her educational philosophy. First, as I’ve been emphasizing, the intellectual life is sustained by ideas, not by mere facts. While information is important, it does not itself propel a mind to inquire. When I was devouring encyclopedic information about the Roman Empire as a child, it was not the information itself that was beckoning me to continue. It was the ideas embedded within the text that were impressing upon my imagination. 

Second, children have an innate desire for knowledge, which is understood to be both multifaceted and interrelated. While philosophers may debate whether reality is ultimately simple or complex, there is no doubt that the world, as humans practically experience it, is infinitely complex and full of variety. We live in a world of physics and metaphysics, nature and culture, mathematics and language. Each of these facets contains ideas that are uniquely interesting and enticing to the human mind. Moreover, each of these facets are interrelated through their corresponding ideas. A discussion of astronomy can quickly turn into a discussion about the history of astronomy. A Bible lesson can naturally integrate knowledge of geography, archaeology, or poetry.

Education as the Science of Relations

The interrelatedness of knowledge is what led Charlotte Mason to believe that education is rightly understood as “the science of relations.” Children, as persons, are essentially relational creatures who naturally enjoy “…relations with a vast number of things and thoughts” (Preface to the “Home Education” Series). Therefore, the task of educators is not to create these relations, since they already exist, but to activate or strengthen them. As children encounter the world for themselves, both through vivid texts and experiences in nature, their minds take in a multitude of ideas, assimilating the knowledge and making endless connections. 

Once education is understood as the science of relations, it becomes clear why Charlotte Mason was so critical of textbooks. Textbooks all but eliminate the possibility of idea-sharing. They provide an accurate account of the subject matter to be sure, but they do so blandly. Rather than directly connecting students with knowledge itself, textbooks offer a summarized, diluted, or what Charlotte Mason called “predigested,” substitute. As a result, textbooks don’t harness the imagination or stir the emotions. They mechanically convey information rather than nourish a living entity, the mind.

On this point, Charlotte Mason writes,

“I believe that spiritual life, using spiritual in the sense I have indicated, is sustained upon only one manner of diet––the diet of ideas––the living progeny of living minds. Now, if we send to any publisher for his catalogue of school books, we find that it is accepted as the nature of a school-book that it be drained dry of living thought. It may bear the name of a thinker, but then it is the abridgment of an abridgment, and all that is left for the unhappy scholar is the dry bones of his subject denuded of soft flesh and living colour, of the stir of life and power of moving. Nothing is left but what Oliver Wendell Holmes calls the ‘mere brute fact’” (School Education, 169).

Nourishing the Mind with Ideas

Although Charlotte Mason lived in the heyday of modern materialism, she was greatly influenced by the counter-reaction to materialism within modernity: Romanticism. She wasn’t afraid to suggest that there is more to this world than what is rendered by the five senses. As a result, she spoke confidently about the spiritual realm, referring to that ethereal reality that extends beyond the physical. Mind, soul, heart, imagination and spirit, thought the British educator, are aspects of reality that merit a central place in the task of education. Additionally, flowing from her view of children as persons, not mere blank slates or undeveloped humans, she firmly believed that the minds of these children deserved the spiritual food of ideas. Under this conception, hollow summaries or abridgements of real knowledge wouldn’t do.

Ideas, and ideas alone, bring life to mind. Charlotte Mason believed so strongly in the power of ideas, she offered this advice:

“Give your child a single valuable idea, and you have done more for his education than if you had laid upon his mind the burden of bushels of information; for the child who grows up with a few dominant ideas has his self-education provided for, his career marked out” (Home Education, 174). 

Ideas vs. Information

Now don’t get me wrong, information is important. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to make much sense of the world or even comprehend ideas for that matter. Information is necessary for strengthening one’s foundation of knowledge and growing proficient in any field of study. Hopefully our positive interaction with books like Make it Stick, which highlights superior techniques for information recall, demonstrates precisely this. But even the authors of Make it Stick emphasize the shortcomings of information, even as they praise its necessity. 

In a particular section of the book in which the authors are defending information recall against critiques that honing higher-order skills is a more valuable use of class time, they write,

“Pitting the learning of basic knowledge against the development of critical thinking is a false choice. Both need to be cultivated. The stronger one’s knowledge about the subject at hand, the more nuanced one’s creativity can be in addressing a new problem. Just as knowledge amounts to little without the exercise of ingenuity and imagination, creativity absent a sturdy foundation of knowledge builds a shaky house” (30). 

It is my contention that this little insight has some direct connections with Charlotte Mason’s emphasis on ideas. More specifically, I want to suggest that ideas, as she understands them, fuse what the authors are referring to as “knowledge” and “creative thinking” together. When an idea strikes a person’s mind, it doesn’t just bounce off. It lands, attaching itself to the host, not parasitically, but generatively. This is because ideas themselves are generative: as ideas make contact with the mind, they interconnect and reproduce. Not before too long, given the proper sustenance, these ideas have created a whole new area to one’s web of knowledge. Within this dynamic web, which is durable yet flexible, one’s knowledge base grows while thinking skills are honed.

Here’s how Charlotte Mason explains the generative nature of ideas: 

“An idea is more than an image or picture; it is, so to speak, a spiritual germ endowed with vital force––with power, that is, to grow, and to produce after its kind. It is the very nature of an idea to grow: as the vegetable germ secretes that it lives by, so, fairly implant an idea in the child’s mind, and it will secrete its own food, grow, and bear fruit in the form of a succession of kindred ideas. We know from our own experience that, let our attention be forcibly drawn to some public character, some startling theory, and for days after we are continually hearing or reading matter which bears on this one subject, just as if all the world were thinking about what occupies our thoughts: the fact being, that the new idea we have received is in the act of growth, and is reaching out after its appropriate food” (Home Education, 174). 

Ideas in John Milton Gregory’s The Seven Laws of Teaching

Let me make one final point about Charlotte Mason and the power of ideas. In the broader home-school/classical education/Charlotte Mason movement, there is discussion, sometimes debate, over whether Charlotte Mason and classical education are compatible approaches to education. Of the many apparent differences, one common argument for incompatibility is that while Charlotte Mason emphasized the power of ideas, classical educators, at least those following Douglas Wilson’s popularization of the trivium, focused on fact memorization.

I’ll provide a fuller response to this point of view in a future article, but for now, I want to reference what has become a popular teacher training text in the classical school world: The Seven Laws of Teaching by John Milton Gregory. While this text does not serve as a universal authority for classical educators, it has earned a credible voice in the movement. It is curious, therefore, to observe one key section of the book in which this text discusses the power of ideas. Gregory writes,

“Knowledge cannot be passed, like some material substance, from one person to another…Ideas, the products of thought, can only be communicated by inducing in the receiving mind action correspondent to that by which these ideas were first conceived…It is obvious, therefore, that something more is required than a passive presentation of the pupil’s mind to the teacher’s mind as face turns to face. The pupil must think” (41)

Although this passage indicates some noticeable differences, there remains an even more noticeable similarity: the focus and power of ideas. It is not enough for a teacher to merely pass knowledge to his students as he would a football. In order for a student to truly learn, her mind must actively receive and digest ideas. She must think on ideas, the products of thought. When the pupil’s mind is attending to the task at hand, in the flow and focused intently on learning, the germination of ideas is the result.

Now, I am not suggesting that this insight from Gregory solves the Charlotte Mason-Classical divide, but it does show that perhaps the sides needn’t be as polarized, at least on the topic of ideas vs. facts, as they are. As much as Gregory measures learning using the retention of facts as a core metric, here he seems to be acknowledging that the key for any learning to occur in the first place is a meeting of the minds and the sharing of ideas.

Ideas for Life

Let me leave readers of this article on the power of ideas with this word from Charlotte Mason:

“The question is not,––how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education––but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?” (School Education, 171). 

In this post, I have tried to make the case for a reinstatement of ideas in education. Ideas are powerful. They are generative. Unlike facts and information, they have the capacity to support life, the life of the mind. Ultimately, education is not about information recall, creative thinking, or knowledge acquisition. It is about cultivating the mind, shaping the heart, and passing on the tradition. Through harnessing the power of ideas, we can help our students see all of creation as a world of connections, and over time, by God’s grace, watch them flourish in it.

Did you enjoy the article? Want to read more about Charlotte Mason? Request Jason’s eBook on Narration or Patrick’s eBook on Habit Training.

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Flow is his term for the experience of focused effort at some worthwhile pursuit at a level of challenge commensurate with one’s skills. Whether a hobby, work or a meaningful conversation, the experience of flow is immensely rewarding, but it requires full engagement of one’s consciousness and a high level of what Csikszentmihalyi calls “psychic energy.”

It’s because of this requirement that we too often engage in passive entertainment, like TV watching, and less meaningful experiences. We are too tired. And instead of resting fully, we try to avoid the disordered chaos of our untrained minds (no doubt a result of the Fall) by resorting to these attention grabbers and timewasters.

As I mentioned, our psychologist’s findings mirror Aristotle’s claim that the life of virtue, and more specifically the theoretic life, is the happy life. Human flourishing is found in a life of active striving after excellence, in whatever domain surely, but most of all in contemplative pursuits. In his chapter on the Flow of Thought our psychologist breaks down the many paths of the contemplative life, or how to achieve flow in thought, and in so doing provides more arguments for the value of a classical education per page than many of the classical education movement’s best-sellers.

In this article we’re exploring the joy of memory in order to discover how training the memory can contribute to a happy life.

Csikszentmihalyi begins by explaining why remembering something is in itself a pleasurable activity:

“Remembering is enjoyable because it entails fulfilling a goal and so brings order to consciousness. We all know the little spark of satisfaction that comes when we remember where we put the car keys, or any other object that has been temporarily misplaced.” (121)

Even the smallest acts of memory sparkle of the possibility of the flow state, since a goal is being reached. You’ll remember his claim that disorder naturally clouds our consciousness as problem-seeking creatures, and so the memory of some stable fact or idea brings a sort of order to our inner world. And if this is true of remembering where we put the car keys, how much more the important events of our life, the histories of our culture, or the important truths that give our lives meaning.

Debunking the Attack on Memory

Interestingly our psychologist takes on the educational establishment’s attack on “rote memory.” He speaks nostalgically of how his

“grandfather at seventy could still recall passages from the three thousand lines of the Iliad he had to learn by heart in Greek to graduate from high school. Whenever he did so, a look of pride settled on his features, as his unfocused eyes ranged over the horizon. With each unfolding cadence, his mind returned to the years of his youth. The words evoked experiences he had had when he first learned them; remembering poetry was for him a form of time travel.” (123)

For his grandfather remembering these lines is both a source of pride and “a form of time travel” providing a re-emergence of his youthful experiences. We can suppose that this sort of experience gave his grandfather a stability and a richness that those of us who haven’t attained such feats of memory might lack.

Our psychologist goes on to debunk the modern attack on memory with characteristic charity and grace:

“But for a person who has nothing to remember, life can become severely impoverished. This possibility was completely overlooked by educational reformers early in this century, who, armed with research results, proved that ‘rote learning’ was not an efficient way to store and acquire information. As a result of their efforts, rote learning was phased out of the schools. The reformers would have had justification, if the point of remembering was simply to solve practical problems. But if control of consciousness is judged to be at least as important as the ability to get things done, then learning complex patterns of information by heart is by no means a waste of effort. A mind with some stable content to it is much richer than one without.” (123)

His argument turns on the pragmatism of modern education, as if the ability to solve practical problems were the only point of education. One can hear John Dewey’s claims in the background, as he argued against traditional methods on the basis of his evolutionary mindset. For him solving practical human problems was the end-all be-all of life. Yet if we view life broadly enough, controlling consciousness should be a valuable enough goal for even the most ardent Deweyan, especially given how many problems are caused by the internal disorder of our minds. Enter the modern epidemics of anxiety and depression, as simple examples of this fact.

But even without this last point, modern learning science has shown just how valuable having a mind full of data is for problem solving. As the authors of Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning explain,

“Repeated retrieval [of something from memory] not only makes memories more durable but produces knowledge that can be retrieved more readily, in more varied settings, and applied to a wider variety of problems.” (43)

Of course, that doesn’t absolve us of the perennial question of what knowledge and therefore what subjects and books are most important or valuable to be learned and remembered at any particular time. But it does debunk the assault on “rote learning” as simply not useful. And the objection that memorized material must be understood by the children (to some degree) in order to be useful is not to the point. Nobody, so far as I am aware, is advocating that children memorize material that they have no understanding of, even if that accidentally still happens sometimes in practice.

Yet these reflections are far afield from our psychologist’s primary point, which is that the cultivation of memory allows a person to enter the flow of thought and thereby attain a joy that is independent of one’s circumstances. As he explains,

“A person who can remember stories, poems, lyrics of songs, baseball statistics, chemical formulas, mathematical operations, historical dates, biblical passages, and wise quotations has many advantages over one who has not cultivated such a skill. The consciousness of such a person is independent of the order that may or may not be provided by the environment…. She can always amuse herself, and find meaning in the contents of her mind. While others need external stimulation—television, reading, conversation, or drugs—to keep their minds from drifting into chaos, the person whose memory is stocked with patterns of information is autonomous and self-contained.” (123-4)

As Christians we might think of the stories of martyrs and those imprisoned for their faith, even in recent times, like Richard Wurmbrand, a Romanian Christian minister imprisoned under the Soviet Union. In his book With God in Solitary Confinement Wurmbrand explains how he survived the ordeal with his sanity intact by sleeping during the day and first composing, then preaching a new sermon each night. In so doing he developed (or already had the gift of) an extraordinary memory. He claimed to be able to recall more than 350 of the sermons he composed in this way after the ordeal, some of which he later recorded in his book.

Setting himself such a task was without doubt a divinely inspired mission and we have no reason to suspect anything other than that he was uplifted by the Holy Spirit in a remarkable way. But it’s interesting to notice how his chosen activity mimics our psychologist’s secular recommendations for attaining a flow of thought independent of one’s environment. Wurmbrand found a divinely-ordained task—he was called as a preacher after all—that he could practice with focused effort utilizing the whole range of his mental abilities. Practicing this task kept him occupied in joyful flow, improving his preaching skills and developing his prodigious memory. And he did this while in the otherwise torturous state of solitary confinement, with not a sound, not a person, not a thing to amuse him or relieve the pain of boredom.

In light of such an example of the joy of memory it’s frankly pitiful that our culture considers rote memorization to constitute painful boredom for kids, who need to be relieved by frequent entertaining pop-culture references, videos or their own smart phones.

Aside: Download the Free eBook “5 Tips for Fostering Flow in the Classical Classroom”

Wondering how to practically apply the idea of flow in your classroom? These 5 actionable steps will help you keep the insights of flow from being a pie-in-the-sky idea. Embody flow in your classroom and witness the increased joy and skill development that result!

You can download “5 Tips for Fostering Flow in the Classical Classroom” on the flow page. Share the page with a friend or colleague, so they can benefit as well.

Memory the Mother of an Inspirational Education

As a matter of fact, the classical tradition has long recognized memory as the foundation of all the virtues of the mind. As Csikszentmihalyi recollects:

“The Greeks personified memory as lady Mnemosyne. Mother of the nine Muses, she was believed to have given birth to all the arts and sciences…. Before written notation systems were developed, all learned information had to be transmitted from the memory of one person to that of another…. All forms of mental flow depend on memory, either directly or indirectly.” (120-1)

In the opening of his Theogony Hesiod names the nine Muses and describes their gift to him of song and the knowledge of the past: they “breathed into me a divine voice to celebrate things that shall be and things there were aforetime” he says (trans. Evelyn-White, lines 31-32). By later Roman times each Muse presided over one particular art: Calliopē, epic poetry; Clīo, history; Euterpē, flute-playing (and lyric poetry to the flute); Melpomenē, tragedy; Terpsichorē, choral dancing and singing; Eratō, the lyre and lyric poetry; Polyhymnia, hymns to the gods; Urania, astronomy; and Thalia, comedy.

The common factor that many of these were recited to accompanying music gave rise to our term ‘music’ today, though all the genres of poetry, as well as history and astronomy were included as ‘musical’ subjects. The ‘museum’ too was originally a place where all these arts—and learning generally—were cultivated; the most famous museum was founded by Ptolemy I Soter in Alexandria and was distinct from the well-known library, instead housing scholars and artists who lectured and wrote and discussed the great works.

The point of the myth is that memory is the basis of all these cultural achievements, just as the joy of flow was a contributing factor in the experience of the inspired poets and artists, scientists and history writers. In actual fact the men and women who created these great works began by storing up in their memory the beautiful and inspiring compositions of others. They imitated them and forged their own path out of the raw materials of memory. In this way, memory is the basis for many of the cultural products that we most enjoy in life.

But not only does memory give birth to all the songs and art that we love, the act of recalling such things is itself enjoyable. You don’t have to teach your child to take joy in remembering their favorite songs from the radio. This comes naturally. Simply the act of remembering creates an internal feeling of control and satisfaction that, as our psychologist would say, orders our consciousness. The assumption that students will be dismayed and bothered by the work of “rote memory” may be one of the more pernicious ideas of modern education.

While memorizing itself has the flavor of work about it, the joy of recalling easily overcomes the initial pain of effort. This is especially so when students are set up to be successful. When a class memorizes a poem together, with the teacher’s guidance and patience line by line, the students build confidence the natural way: through completing a challenging task and experiencing the natural reward of the sense of mastery that knowledge entails. But more than that, they regularly come to love the poem itself. The act of recalling it again and again makes the poem theirs in a way that is hard to describe. It is as if the memory has wedded the poem to their consciousness in such a way that it has become a part of them. And of course, there is no one who does not love his own self; in a mystical fashion, memorizing unites knowledge with the soul.

But memorizing word for word is not the only use of memory that will inspire our students. In fact, any act of retrieving from memory something that has previously been learned has the possibility of enacting the flow state. Remembering is challenging work; in a way, it is the work of learning itself, because it is during what learning scientists call “retrieval practice” that the wiring of neural networks is signaled to take place. But just because it is work, if it is engaged in willingly, as a challenge commensurate with our current level of skill, it can be immensely pleasurable. This is, after all, what is often called the joy of learning or the love of learning as a lifelong skill.

Because of this Charlotte Mason recommended the practice of narration in every subject. Narration is when a student is asked to retrieve from memory as much as they can of what they have just read, heard or seen. In giving students the time and accountability to assimilate the new knowledge they have encountered by telling it back, they are given the opportunity of creating a personal connection with the material, and the joy of memory is the natural result.

Tips for Getting in the Flow of Memory

In closing out his chapter our psychologist describes some practical tips for modern adults to use for getting in the flow of memory during daily life. We can translate some of them into ways of helping our children or students enjoy learning as well.

The first tip is to make the work of memory a daily activity, carried with us wherever we go:

“Some people carry with them the texts of choice poems or quotations written on pieces of paper, to glance over whenever they feel bored or dispirited. It is amazing what a sense of control it gives to know that favorite facts or lyrics are always at hand. Once they are stored in memory, however, this feeling of ownership—or better, of connectedness with the content recalled—becomes even more intense.” (124)

Who does not have an abundance of spare minutes waiting at the checkout counter at a store, or for a meeting to start? Punctuating your day with time cultivating your memory of favorite poems or quotations, facts or figures, gives a sense of meaning to those lost minutes. Rather than getting frustrated while driving in traffic, the recitation of some valuable content can occupy the mind with something productive and overcome habits of irrational anger, worry and fear.

This is part of the reason why memorizing Bible verses or passages has helped so many to overcome temptations and vices of many kinds. While there is the power of the truths of scripture themselves to transform the soul, and although God’s Spirit undoubtedly comes to the aid of those who reach out to him in this way, there is also the simple logical benefit of mental preoccupation. It is the pain of mental boredom and frustration that often causes us to seek relief in some sinful pleasure. This is because of the link between attention and willpower. If instead we focused our consciousness on recalling some beautiful and convicting passage of scripture, our whole frame of mind would be changed, and the boredom relieved in a more productive and life-giving way.

Because of this, we shouldn’t feel guilty as teachers about assigning our students short tasks of memory as regular homework. This sort of minor retrieval practice that can be completed in minutes is often enjoyable to children and develops in them life-long habits that are beneficial both academically and morally. Our reticence in this area is the result of the overwhelming modern pressure against “rote learning” that our secular psychologist has already successfully debunked. Little memory assignments are not to burdensome for our students; we do them a disservice by avoiding them.

But the joy of memory can also be developed through life-long learning in some area of interest or hobby. The sense of autonomy in cultivating a personal passion lends a great deal of strength to the task. Csikszentmihalyi recommends deliberately setting out a plan for what in a subject you will work on committing to memory:

“With a good grasp of the subject will come the knowledge of what is worth remembering and what is not. The important thing to recognize here is that you should not feel that you have to absorb a string of facts, that there is a right list you must memorize. If you decide what you would like to have in memory, the information will be under your control, and the whole process of learning by heart will become a pleasant task, instead of a chore imposed from outside.” (124)

This psychological fact is something important to keep in mind as teachers and parents. Whenever possible, it is helpful to enlist the student’s own will and desire in the process of learning and even the selection of tasks and assignments. Of course, if you work in a school setting, a class must receive some uniform assignments, especially in early years and at the beginning of developing a new skill. But treating children as persons created in the image of God includes according them the dignity of autonomy in ways that fit their age and understanding. In Dan Pink’s Drive autonomy is described as one of the major ways to boost motivation.

This doesn’t mean that students become the arbiters of what to learn, rather than the classical tradition and their teachers’ best judgment. But there are ways to cultivate students’ full engagement with the content at hand through appealing to their autonomy in some of the details of assignments. For instance, when deciding on which passage or poem to memorize, why not let the class decide on one they most connected with. In committing to memory the important facts about an author, engage the class in the determination of what are the most crucial details to remember.

Students jump at this sort of opportunity, and, incidentally, it helps them train their judgement in discerning the relevance of different facts. But more than anything, it creates the habits of life-long autonomous learning in them that we should aim to cultivate in ourselves. After all, it’s not just a chore, it’s one of the joys of life itself. How are you cultivating the joy of memory?

Enjoying this series? Jason Barney revised and expanded it into a full-length book that you can buy through the EdRen Bookstore. Complete with footnotes and in an easy-to-share format for teacher training or to keep in your personal library, the book aims to help you apply the concept of flow in your classical classroom.

Future installments: Part 3: Narration as Flow, Part 4: The Seven Liberal Arts as Mental Games, Part 5: The Play of Words; Part 6: Becoming Amateur Historians; Part 7: Rediscovering Science as the Love of Wisdom; Part 8, Restoring the School of Philosophers, Part 9, The Lifelong Love of Learning.

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