“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 .

My assumption is that most followers of Educational Renaissance work within K-12 schools, but I suspect there are some who like me also teach in undergraduate or postgraduate settings either as adjunct faculty or full professors. My hope is that there will be a growing number of college and seminary professors who take seriously the craft of teaching and the concern to provide students the optimal learning environments. I offer this paper for your consideration that perhaps Miss Mason will help you transform your lecture hall into a place where students engage rich texts, assimilate through narration and plumb the depths of great ideas through discussion.

Introduction

The problem facing higher education today is not a crisis of information, or even knowledge, but a crisis of thinking well. Our culture has a glut of information readily available at any number of URLs. The passivity with which we access these things has led to a passivity of the mind; minds disengaged from the living ideas which transcend mere knowledge or information and which alone can give sustenance to the human organ best suited to face the complexities of our modern life.

My musings on today’s educational crisis, particularly as it relates to academic biblical studies, has benefitted greatly from reconsidering a model of education from an unlikely source. Charlotte Mason taught, led an educational reform movement, and produced six volumes on educational philosophy around the turn of the twentieth century. How can this educational philosophy address the concerns we have today as educators within the guild of biblical studies? This paper will explore her philosophy with a view to relating it to the biblical studies classroom. Her method of instruction offers exciting possibilities for utilizing the rich texts available to us—both ancient and modern—within our field and for drawing students into a mind-to-mind encounter with texts in such a way that students may grow in their capacity to think great thoughts.

Charlotte Mason

Charlotte Mason was born in 1842 an only child in Bangor, Wales. Her philosophy of education was prompted by her experiences teaching in Worthing, England and later at the Bishop Otter College in Chichester. Beginning around age 40 and spanning over three decades, Mason wrote six volumes dedicated to expounding her philosophy of education. These volumes capture her struggle to find an educational philosophy that transcends the class barriers that divided Victorian England. The surprising results of her method were seen in the successes of youth from mining communities, previously regarded as hopeless bastions of the uneducated working class. Her final volume, Towards a Philosophy of Education, published in 1923—the year she passed away—shows her development of thought as the Great War shattered the assumptions about culture and society that reigned in the 19^th century.

During her lifetime, a movement of educational reform grew up around her teachings. The Parents’ National Educational Union (PNEU) was formed in 1886 to advance Mason’s philosophy of education among parents who were dissatisfied with the state of education in England. A number of Union schools were opened which carried out her philosophy. Shortly thereafter, a periodical was issued called Parents’ Review—a title reflecting the basis of her philosophy in the role of parents. This journal drew upon a wide array of voices who were working through various aspects of Mason’s philosophy and its practical implications. In 1892, a college dedicated to training teachers was opened in Ambleside, England. The school remains to this day a part of the University of Cumbria.

Three Elements of Mason’s Educational Philosophy

From the writings of Charlotte Mason—a person who devoted her life not just to teaching but to thinking about teaching—several worthy principles may be distilled. Mason understood education to comprise three tools. First, education consists of an atmosphere. This has to do not only with the physical appearance of the setting in which study is to occur, but also to the intangible quality of the space where students are enthused to learn. Teachers are to think intentionally about how the room is arranged, what is in the room, and what is not; all with the goal of creating an atmosphere conducive to learning. The most significant aspect, especially for those of us who have little control over the look and feel of the rooms to which we are assigned, is the atmosphere we establish through our presence and what we say as educators.

Second, education consists in the disciplined training of students in order to attend to the tasks not simply of academic enterprise but of a life devoted to personal growth. Some college students come to us with well-formed academic habits, but it is largely the case that students these days simply do not know how to accomplish simple tasks, such as memorizing Greek vocabulary, writing multi-paragraph essays with clearly articulated topic sentences, or even scheduling their reading load appropriately. We could add to these basic operational skills intellectual habits such as courage or humility. If we as educators don’t take responsibility for these shortfalls, then the higher-order projects we might have them do will not rise to the level we could otherwise expect from them. So, in my teaching, I actually spend time talking about the habits students need to have to succeed in university and these need to be reviewed consistently.

Finally, Charlotte Mason proposed that education consists in living ideas. If we are presented with “mere dry summaries of facts,” our minds will at some point flush these out of the system. Instead, if we are presented with living ideas from great literature, our minds are challenged to think along the same paths as the text, causing them to grow in maturity and sophistication. It is this point that has revolutionized my own teaching methodology, and I will spend the rest of my paper spelling out the method Charlotte Mason has formed for accessing these living ideas.

The Approach to Accessing Ideas in the Text

Mason articulated a five-part methodology that has been the foundation of my own educational praxis, although I cannot claim to have achieved mastery of it yet. First, one must provide students with “a well-chosen book”. For biblical studies, we have available to us not only the books of the canon, but literature from the Ancient Near East, the pseudepigraphical literature, the writings of early Judaism, the early church and even Greco-Roman materials. Furthermore, we are not limited to texts from the ancient world. A well-written book by a recent author can be an excellent guide to great ideas.

Second, the teacher should provide a brief talk before each lesson. This amounts to a lecture in our parlance. But, it is a lecture that is far more pared down than what I used to prepare. My goal now is to set up the student’s reading in such a way that they are introduced to primary issues that will give them success in reading the assigned lesson. In this brief lecture, I can feel free to bring up any number of complex issues. But I need to do so as a means to giving tools to the students. I’m thinking here of models of interpretation, historical background, social setting, exegetical conundrums, the composition history of a text, the outline of a book. My shift in thinking, though, has been to shift my work away from being the primary conveyer of content and toward enabling students to do the primary work of learning through direct contact with texts.

Third, students read their lesson. We literally read texts out loud in the classroom. I usually select passages from their out-of-class readings. I call on individual names, and there are a few who struggle with their reading diction. My goal is to have students encounter the ancient text as much as possible. Therefore, the focus of our class time is on texts. I find that, although this is a simple activity, the students attend closely to the reading and I get far fewer eyes glazed over, even in my three-hour evening class.

Fourth, students narrate or re-tell what was read. This is the most important step of the method. This is where students are able to assimilate their readings into their own knowledge. They are forced to think along with the text. Mason responds to the criticism that this is mere memorization by explaining, “in the act of narrating every power of [the] mind comes into play, that points and bearings which he had not observed are brought out; that the whole is visualized and brought into relief in an extraordinary way; in fact, that scene or argument has become a part of his personal experience; he knows, he has assimilated what he has read. This is not memory work. In order to memorize, we repeat over and over a passage or a series of points or names with the aid of such clues as we can invent.” She goes on to identify the role of memory work within the broader scope of education. But memorization is not assimilation. This component of Mason’s educational philosophy, I find, has been the tool that opens up for students a world of thought previously untapped.

Finally, the fifth part of the method is a concluding talk. Most often, this is a discussion about the text or reading. I facilitate this by asking leading questions, but more times than not, there is a student-to-student conversation that grows out of points they are noticing in the text. Sometimes I need to instruct students in the course of this discussion or, rarely, in place of the discussion. For instance, if we have read a text that is central to a model of interpretation, I might need to talk briefly about the background of, say, the German school that gave rise to the model of interpretation, critiques of it, and so forth and so on. What I avoid is collapsing the method so that the students become passive. If the ancillary ideas are so important, they might require their own session in which I will identify a text and apply the approach to it.

This is the method, then. It begins with the selection of an excellent text, rich with ideas. A small talk sets up the reading. We read the text (either aloud together or prior to the class). After reading, the students are called upon to re-tell the reading in their own words, supplying details from the text, in the proper order and capturing the language and style of the author. Finally, we talk about the text in a rich way that engages the ideas of the text.

The Method in Practice

I have applied this basic method with success in the coursework I teach at Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, Illinois. Let me now spell out a couple of ways in which I have incorporated this method into an otherwise standard liberal arts Christian college. (Editor’s note: since writing this, I have also utilized this method at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Chicago and Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis.)

First, for each class session I prepare a lecture that will run roughly ten to fifteen minutes of a fifty-minute block. If the class time is longer, I still tend not to lecture for more than fifteen minutes since I would rather have the students engaged in the exercise of reading, narrating and discussing. I plan readings that must be done prior to class, just like most other professors do. However, I ask students to tell me in their own words the contents of that reading. This might take about five to ten minutes; maybe longer if the readings generate questions and discussion. I usually choose a passage from scripture that becomes the focus text for our class session. Sometimes I might cue up several scripture passages. I call on students to read aloud. When this is done, I call on other students to re-tell the reading. After this, I ask them, “What strikes you about this passage?” or “What did you notice about the passage?” or “What is this passage communicating?” There are any number of questions that can get students to think through the reading and begin discussing it.

Sometimes, a passage will have difficulties or raise problems in the minds of some students. I will allow this problem to be expressed and fester for a bit. I don’t want to step right in as the answer man. I want them to begin working through why there’s a problem here, what the factors are, what alternative interpretations might be there, etc. There is often a lot of back-and-forth between students as they grapple with these things. When the discussion begins to slacken, I will now go up to the board and ask students to call out the salient items under discussion, which I write down so that we can all visualize the ground we have covered. Only then, after having them work a long way through the matter, will I step in to assist them in bringing some kind of resolution. Sometimes, though, I might be able to leave them in suspense and have them do some light research along with a brief write-up on it. The energy behind the problem discussed in class supplies the energy that will motivate them to get it done.

One time, for example, I used the introductory lecture to teach my students about call narratives and the elements that scholars have discerned as the constituent parts of a call narrative. I had them read the calls of Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, and also the baptism of Jesus. They listed all of the elements of a call narrative for each, discussing ways in which the pattern is evident in each and ways in which certain elements might be absent. Students narrated each passage and each passage had ample discussion. By the end, they knew rather well how to identify a call narrative, what the constituent parts of a call narrative are and even why they matter. They knew all of this not because I told them so, but because they had engaged the text for themselves. They now had assimilated knowledge and learned how to interpret biblical text in a sophisticated and nuanced way.

A second way in which I apply the method is as a means of assessment. For each term, I assign about five written narrations. These are minimal assignments, consisting of 500 words in which the student must read a text and re-tell the contents of the text in their own words. You might be surprised at the effectiveness of this tool. I find that students learn to really pay close attention to what they are reading. They are usually able to get on paper a good amount of details from the text and in the sequence that the text presents them. I am also able to see places where students are not understanding the text or have lost focus on the text. I also use the written narrations as a means to provide feedback on writing mechanics. College students who have never written in the biblical studies discipline still need to attend to proper grammar, spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, verb tenses and organization of paragraphs. It is only after doing several written narrations that I pass them on to doing more substantial written projects involving thesis statements and argumentation.

One of the challenges that written narrations presents to students is to capture the essence of a reading in three categories: details, sequence and vocabulary. I give them feedback on each. I might ask students to re-tell in their own words the story of the exodus. They cannot merely copy the text of the Bible. They must begin selecting elements to write. While selecting, they must arrange them properly. These types of skills are necessary in higher forms of writing where they will be researching many texts (both primary and secondary sources).

Students Who Can Think

Ultimately, the goal of my application of this method is to cultivate students who can think. I found myself more and more frustrated at test scores and student aptitude when using the more traditional method of lecturing. With this method, created by Charlotte Mason, I find that students are scoring as well or better on tests and they are growing in their ability to discuss in mature and sophisticated ways the subject matter surrounding biblical studies.

The minds of students that are brought into contact with texts of high quality are raised to new heights. Their minds are challenged and exercised in ways that create a hunger and thirst for extended mental activity. I still run into the problem of students who want to merely pass the next exam. But I think despite this sentiment, they are also eagerly cultivating practices that will feed their curiosity and maintain an active thought life after they leave my classroom.

From my vantage point as a member of a biblical studies faculty, this afterlife of thought is imperative. The reason for this is that the primary location in which biblical studies resides is outside the academic domain. It is in religious and cultural discourse that most people engage with the Bible and its attendant literature. Only a small number of our students will ever go on to engage with biblical studies as academicians. But students who are trained to think rather than merely acquire (and quickly forget) a set of facts about the Bible will be properly equipped to partake in the wider discourse surrounding the Bible in our culture.

The post What has Ambleside to do with Jerusalem?: A Consideration of Charlotte Mason’s Philosophy of Education as a Model for Teaching Biblical Studies appeared first on .

If that weren’t enough, I have criticized and countenanced criticism of online classes and courses, including those prominent classical education ones. Years ago, when my former head of school told me his grand plan for launching an online education platform to expand the reach of our classical Christian school, I argued against it and effectively buried it in the dust.

But times have changed…. And I found myself several weeks ago developing an online learning plan with my colleagues that would aim to preserve our educational philosophy and methods during mandated social distancing. In a way, I had been prepared for this moment through using online communications tools, like Zoom meetings, more than ever before in the last couple years. I had enough experience and understanding that, when the need hit in early March, I knew exactly what I thought we should do.

And so, whether my luddite past or my tech-savvy present appeals to you, perhaps you will be intrigued to hear my thoughts on the benefits and the drawbacks of online learning. Parents, teachers and school leaders need to think through the transformations that are involved in an online education.

As Marshall McLuhan famously quipped,

“The medium is the message.”

How is the educational experience being transformed by the online platforms we are using during social distancing?

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Only if we are aware of the shifts and spend focused attention on understanding the differences, can we make the most of the benefits and mitigate the downsides. And again, while I can’t claim expertise in online learning after a few weeks, perhaps I can make some suggestions that will spark a broader conversation. To that end I offer 3 Benefits to online learning, 3 Drawbacks, and 6 Hacks to Mitigate the Drawbacks.

3 Benefits of Online Learning

#1 Flexibility of Time and Place

I start with the most obvious. Online platforms provide incredible flexibility in both the time and place that learning can occur. Gathering together is a deeply engrained and normative aspect of the human experience. But a global pandemic illustrates one of the more extreme reasons why it might not be ideal.

While viruses do infect our computers, they are of a very different kind (so they tell me…) than the virus that is causing Covid-19. Schools are turning to online learning because it enables us to continue our education in ways that would not have been possible in earlier generations.

A test case for this is Isaac Newton, who was sent home from Cambridge when the school was temporarily closed because of a plague. As Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi recounts in his book Flow,

“Newton had to spend two years in the safety and boredom of a country retreat, and he filled the time playing with his ideas about a universal theory of gravitation.” (137)

While Isaac Newton was able to carry on his studies individually and these studies ended up being immensely profitable, still he couldn’t attend lectures from teachers, discuss with fellow students, or receive and turn in assignments from his professors.

Since Newton was already a lover of wisdom and had the resources he needed to continue learning, this wasn’t debilitating for him. But there were, no doubt, other Cambridge students, who would have profited more from online lessons.

#2 Organization and Grading

The second benefit to many online learning platforms is how the organization and grading features are built right in. Whether it’s Google Classrooms, Microsoft Teams or something else, these tools make it even easier for teachers to organize, turn in, receive and grade assignments than in-person methods.

How much time is wasted by teachers searching through papers and hounding students to turn in assignments? When students are able to turn in the document they were working on the moment they are finished by simply uploading it into the online platform, our memories are unburdened and the logistics of managing assignments are streamlined.

I have to admit that my old school stacks of papers from students are less convenient to organize and grade than the list of assignments turned in from students through Microsoft Teams. They are already happily in alphabetical order, allowing me to easily record the grades in my excel file with a minimum of effort. When I have typed in feedback and a score, I simply click return and the student has received it back again. The wheels of this modern educational process have been thoroughly greased.

#3 Screen Sharing a Text

The final feature that I find incredibly beneficial is the ability to screen share a text with students. When using a Zoom meeting for online learning, screen share enables me to direct student’s attention clearly at text that I have scanned without making copies, wasting paper, or needing every student to have the book in front of them.

While in many cases students do have their own copies of our books, getting everyone to the right page sometimes takes time, and even with brilliant and attentive students, occasionally they find themselves lost, not knowing where we are now in the book. That’s because I like moving quickly, as many other teachers do. When there is a lot to share in a limited time, screen sharing a text and having a number of resources up and ready to jump to on my computer means that I can guide students through a textual journey with almost no friction, as long as they are looking at the screen in front of them.

No moments get wasted when a student calls out, “Wait, where are we again? What page are we on?” Because of screen sharing technology, I can, with proper planning, execute much more intricate and detailed lessons than would otherwise be convenient.

3 Drawbacks of Online Learning

#1 Loss of Personal Connection

You knew it was coming. And this is the main thrust of the argument against online learning that I have used in the past. Online learning necessarily involves a loss of personal connection. We are embodied creatures and while video is incredibly more powerful than a simple phone call, physical presence and proximity do make a difference. Even if it’s hard to articulate the psychological experiences involved, I can feel the loss as a teacher.

Interactions with students are less personal. Rhetorical appeals are less effective. Jokes get fewer laughs and timing is slightly obstructed. Students interact together in more mechanical and artificial ways. Some things may be more efficient, but, when the personal connection is diminished, classical learning aims like mentoring and modelling are perhaps similarly hampered.

I don’t mean to paint the drawback too bleak. They can still see my face and hear my voice and vice versa, and that is not something to take for granted. We can still interact personally in real time. But flesh and blood connections are real. We are rational animals, not incorporeal intelligences and virtual reality will never be reality.

#2 Less Amenable to Improvisation

One drawback that I think extends from the last is how live video conferences seem less amenable to improvisation than in-person classes. I know that some teachers plan out their lessons to a tee. But others of us work with what we’re getting from students. When I lead discussions, I may plan out some discussion questions to ask in advance, but I also improvise based on student response. I watch for where the play of words is taking us and follow the question where it leads. I don’t often have a set of answers we need to get to. In the humanities especially, the lesson evolves as we go, and it does so in response to students’ interaction with me, the text and each other.

This improvisatory teaching method feels harder online. Transitions are more clunky, students are more reticent, and the mood and atmosphere are harder to sense. I can put the students on Gallery Mode and scan their faces in the video screen, but it’s just not the same. It may be that we will all adapt with more hours of practice in this medium, but maybe not. It’s possible that some of the awkwardness, at least, is part and parcel of staring at a screen rather than sitting in the same room with flesh and blood people.

It’s not like video conferencing is the only avenue with this problem. I find that phone calls are always more awkward than face-to-face conversations. That doesn’t mean they’re not worthwhile. I’ve talked on the phone with my wife for hours and hours on end, especially during the years we were dating. But just because something is better than nothing, doesn’t make it equal to everything. Just as talking on the phone in real time is more personal and improvisatory than writing a letter, so video conferencing is a real blessing. I hope that you will not think me ungrateful for these reflections. But the medium does seem to privilege over-planning because of the loss of in-person feedback.

#3 Distractibility

The final drawback to online learning is a greater distractibility in the participants. This is something I noticed in myself long before experiencing it with students. When I’m on a Zoom meeting on the internet, all the distractions of the internet, my email inbox, and other work I could do at this very moment on this computer call to me in a way that is simply not true when I’m sitting in a room with a person or persons for a meeting.

In Nicholas Carr’s masterful book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains he explains the research behind how our brains are being hardwired to be more distractible. The click-bait and links, the endless scrolling and scanning, the bright lights and colors are all carefully designed to draw our attention and habituate us to the endless wading through the shallows.

It doesn’t seem to be too far of a leap to imagine how this default mode is turned on in ours and our students’ brains more when we’re in a video conference, than if we were present in a room together with all our phones and other devices safely stowed away. The fact of the matter is, I’m tempted to check my email when a notification pops up during an online learning session, when I never would have been while standing in front of a class of students. And if that’s true for me, then it’s definitely true for our students—a fact that might explain the loss of personal connection that I feel, as well as the clunkiness of complex interactions like discussions.

We’re not going to be served well by pretending that the higher distractibility isn’t the case. Yes, it may be harder for some construction going on outside our window to distract the whole class in the same way that we may have experienced at the school building. But we have to reckon with the fact that we are dealing with a higher threshold level of constant distraction, and temptations to distraction, with all our students every moment of a video conference.

And the real problem is that many of the teacher’s best defensive weapons against distraction involve personal face-to-face and one-on-one interventions that are functionally invalidated by the online medium. Moving in closer proximity to a student who is distracted or distracting others and offering a slight tap on the desk to remind him of your expectations is just no longer possible.

So how can we mitigate the drawbacks of decreased personal connection, less effective improvisation and increased distractibility?

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6 Hacks to Mitigate the Drawbacks

#1 Schedule Personal Meetings with Students to Check In

The loss of personal connection can be addressed, at least in part, by scheduling some one-on-one or smaller group video conferences. This may seem like an extra burden to bear for teachers already stressed out by the new and strange situation. But think of it like this: the efficiencies in travel, assignments, and communication have probably freed up some of your time, not to mention all the little pit stops and chatting in the hall interactions that have disappeared from your day. You can probably afford to add to your schedule some systematic check in meetings with students. If you work at a public school, obviously follow whatever regulations and procedures are necessary, and consider small groups of 2-4 students to avoid overload or the appearance of anything out-of-bounds. Consider calling them advising meetings or small group check-ins.

Think of these smaller group meetings as a way to overcome the obstacles of students’ motivation and engagement. For the type of challenging work and deliberate practice learning we’re expecting of our students, personal coaching is necessary.

Also, use the time as an opportunity to field questions and actively seek feedback from the students about the online learning process. You’re new at teaching online, just like they are new at learning online. Actively seeking out what they find most helpful and what they feel is ineffective provides you with a powerful source of insight that allows you to improve your skill in this medium much more quickly. It is also motivating for them to know that you care and value their perspective enough to ask.

This might also be a good time, if you are a homeroom teacher, charged with guiding students spiritually, to ask for prayer requests or provide some wise counsel and advice. We want to find ways to encourage and model the life of faith for our students and this crisis provides just such an opportunity.

#2 Make the Most of the Opening and Closing Minutes

Another way to address the loss of personal connection is to magnify those minutes at the beginning of a video conference when students start showing up, but not enough are there to really begin. Like in a physical classroom, these transitional minutes are a prime opportunity to establish a relational atmosphere. Greet students as they “arrive,” ask them about their day, and find topics to chat about informally.

Especially after the first few online meetings have gone by, it may be tempting to get into a routine and be checking your notes or engaging in some last-minute lesson planning. Instead, savor the personal connections and set goals for making them. It’s important to remember that our relationships and authority as teachers, our ethos, has a powerful effect on how students receive our instruction.

If you’re looking to “optimize” the effectiveness of your teaching, focusing on forming relational connections with students is ironically one of the best investments. Students are eager to learn from a teacher they trust and admire; even the best students struggle to learn well from a cold and distant instructor.

#3 Set Up Discussions Well Ahead of Time

If you’re at all an improvisational teacher like me, or you’re in the habit of using discussions in class to attain learning objectives and promote comprehension and higher order thinking, then you’ll want to adjust your strategy slightly. While our experience and training might incline us to “wing” our discussions, or attempt to execute our standard method of calling out pre-planned questions from the “front” of the class, the clunkiness of the medium will make such discussions hit or miss.

One of the tactics I’ve found most effective in the humanities is to have students read and answer some of my discussion questions ahead of time in writing. Then I send them into breakout rooms (a feature in Zoom that allows you to subdivide your meeting into smaller groups) to discuss and share their answers to those questions. Since they are all required to share and everyone has prepared their thoughts, AND they are in smaller groups, the discussion goes much more smoothly and profitably.

#4 Plan the Tangents

The other way to mimic the experience of the improvisational experience is, paradoxically, to plan more. Tangents and sidetracks can be an exercise in irrelevant trivia or teacher gab in the classroom. But they can also be incredible learning moments, in which students work out the implications for life and relevance of Great Books or make unlikely and creative connections that issue in long-term learning.

It may sound strange to plan these tangents, but an experienced teacher may be able to anticipate where we would have gone (profitably) off the beaten track in our discussion of this or that text. If you do, you can have on the top of your mind a discussion question or high engagement technique (like taking a poll, chat box response, etc.; see #6 below) for turning that tangent into a meaningful moment, in which distractible students are revived with new interest.

#5 Call on Students Frequently

For many teachers, discussions happen like this: teacher asks question, pause, a couple students slowly begin to raise their hand, pause, teacher calls on one of them to respond, and repeat. There are downsides to this approach even in a physical classroom, but in a video conference it is almost unbearably slow, especially since the heightened distractibility will likely slow down the rate and frequency of “hand raises.” It’s much better to adopt the practice of cold calling students.

Cold calling is when the teacher calls on a student by name to respond to a question. It creates a higher standard of accountability for the whole class, because everyone is expected to be able to respond. It also greases the wheels of the discussion process, because it eliminates the pauses, the uncertainty and the engagement decision going on in every student’s mind. If you think about it, there’s a lot of wasted mental space when students are continually questioning within their mind whether or not they should raise their hand to respond. They’re not thinking only about the question, they’re thinking about the social implications of the decision to raise their hand as well.

The best way to cold call in an online meeting is to state the question clearly, perhaps even repeating it once or rephrasing it, then call on a student to respond. Once that student has finished, call on another student by name to respond, perhaps even saying whether they agree or disagree and why. It’s best to keep track of who you’ve called on in some way, whether by name cards or tallies on a list. If you can embed calling on students in as many places as possible in your online teaching, then you can go some way to disincentivize the distractibility of the medium.

#6 Embed Engagement Techniques (like Chat, Polls, Whiteboard, etc.)

Another way to disarm the distractibility of video conference lessons is to embed a variety of engagement techniques. Aside from having a clear lesson plan, equipped with reviving tangents, and screen sharing of texts, some of the great tools for doing this are features I’ve toyed with in Zoom like the Chat boxes, Polls and the Whiteboard. I’m sure there are equivalents on whatever platform you may be using.

The chat box can be helpful for increasing engagement with low stakes or simple to answer questions. When you ask a question that you know is relatively simple, but are feeling low engagement or some reticence from students, it might be the time to require a chat box answer from everyone. It can be as simple as asking every student to type out a single sentence response to your question. Sometimes I then read them out as they are coming in and I cajole late students into giving a response verbally if they are slow in the uptake. The chat box is also a helpful way for you to give information to students, like the discussion questions they should use in their breakout groups.

The poll feature can serve a similar purpose, except that you can limit them to a range of possible answers that you have predetermined. The point to be aware of here is that a poll requires prior planning, so a chat box response can be something you resort to on the fly, whereas a poll is idea for multiple choice questions that function either as a planned tangent or as a spring board for the next activity. Also, if you are aware of the importance of retrieval practice, you could use the poll feature to give students a little bit of low stakes quizzing or formative assessment on their ongoing learning.

Lastly, the whiteboard feature is incredibly helpful for brainstorming content as a class. It can thus function as a basis for video conference narration, where you, say, brainstorm the main plot points, events or topics from a reading all together, listing them on the whiteboard, then call on students individually to elaborate on each in turn. Since the task is clear and the process is straightforward, this makes it easy to avoid distraction and focus intently on the content. The emerging record on the whiteboard draws students’ attention, just like the screen share feature, and directs it, with all the power of the flashing lights and colors of the screen, right where you want it to go.

Helping students focus on this way is thus more likely to push them into the flow state and out of the bored distractibility that is so common online.

Those are my 3 benefits, 3 drawbacks, and 6 hacks to mitigate the drawbacks of online learning. What struck a cord with you? Are there other benefits, drawbacks or hacks you’ve come up with through these weeks of online learning? Share your ideas in the comments!

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Of course, Polonius interprets this as a depressive comment on the meaninglessness of reading, with a unique philosophical twist. But perhaps it can represent for us an important claim regarding the purpose of education in language and the humanities: words are meant to be played with, not merely learned.

In the previous installment of my “Flow of Thought” series, we took a stroll down the liberal arts lane, stopping for a moment to contemplate grammar among the Trivium arts of language, before hopping over to the Quadrivium arts of science and math, especially under the modern lens of STEM. Our goal was to counter the utilitarian focus of the educational establishment. The theme was the joy of thought and invention, and not merely its utility, as we develop arguments for classical education from an unlikely source, the famous positive psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

Hamlet’s witty banter, in spite of his seemingly depressive state, seems to serve as a good example of the flow of thought uniquely attainable through the “play of words.” Hamlet’s one-liners and verbal antics are some of the funniest and most enjoyable moments of the play. Perhaps they are even what keeps Hamlet relatively sane as long as possible, even if they are a part of his excuse to stall and wait for certainty.

Our psychologist issues a clarion call for the value of such witty repartee in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience:

“Utilitarian ideologies in the past two centuries or so have convinced us that the main purpose of talking is to convey useful information. Thus we now value terse communication that conveys practical knowledge, and consider anything else a frivolous waste of time. As a result, people have become almost unable to talk to each other outside of narrow topics of immediate interest and specialization.” (129)

Such a comment could equally be a tribute to the glories of an Oscar Wilde play or the narrator of a Jane Austen novel, which turns even the drab and dull dialogue of the most boorish characters into a source of endless amusement… But not just amusement, also of manners, in the broader sense of human morality and conduct… And apparently of learning something human and crucial enough that we would put Jane Austen novels in the curriculum.

There’s something about the play of words that is liberating, enriching and deepening, even if it is also enjoyable and exciting. And so, in this article we will discuss another lost art or tool of learning: what our psychologist calls “the lost art of conversation” (129). He quotes Caliph Ali Ben Ali, saying, “A subtle conversation, that is the Garden of Eden” (129). If so, then let’s try and map out the territory of Eden a bit.

The Play of Words as Dialectic

First to note is its connection with the liberal art of dialectic. Socrates’ method of “teaching” (if we should call it that, since by his own admission, he knew nothing…) was really all about having a conversation. True, he would often announce some problem to be solved near the beginning, and he would chase down various possible solutions through elaborate trains of reasoning and question-and-answer with his dialogue partner or partners. But it was fundamentally a conversation nonetheless.

He could be very persistent in his questioning, but he also seems not to have been afraid of talking too much, if that seemed the best way to advance the discussion. Dialectic, as opposed to rhetoric, was Socrates’ proposed method of discourse, because the back and forth of conversation was to him more real and genuine, than the prolonged persuasion of one speaker (see Plato’s dialogues of Gorgias or The Apology).

Skilled orators could spin a speech of impressive length and strategy. But if you pinned them down and questioned them about each of the points in turn, much of it came up wanting, in Socrates’ experience. Dialectic allows for the discussion of different words, the distinctions between them and the careful parsing out of what is actually meant by them. This requires a certain playfulness in looking at the words themselves, trying them on for size and seeing if they fit the whole body of reality.

St. Augustine’s De Dialectica, for instance, begins with a discussion of types of words, both simple and complex, in a way that we would be inclined to classify as grammar, rather than simply logic. But grammar was first about the skill of reading and interpreting. Parts of speech, however, are as distinguishable in “speech,” as in writing, if you have mastered the art of a subtle conversation. In fact, we might even say that it is more natural to think out distinctions in speech.

But the fact that Socrates was almost annoyingly focused on discovering the truth—or at least displaying the ignorance of his conversation partner—didn’t prevent Socrates and his students from having a time of it. Plato’s dialogues, at least, are full of witty banter and the play of words. You get the impression that Socrates was enjoying himself. The flow of conversation gathered quite a following among the youth because Socrates’ dialectical method was fun, unlike some types of logic textbooks and exercises today.

Small Talk and the Play of Words

But so much of the experience of normal conversation consists in small talk and pleasantries. High-minded people are inclined to despise these small beginnings. At least, I can recall comments of my own in disparagement of the endless chatter about the weather or sports at parties. But the art of face-to-face small talk may be something our children are missing out on, with all their mediated communication through texting and social media. And we should reckon on the necessity of a prelude into the profundities of an extended conversation.

Because of his expertise our psychologist is able to note some of the overlooked value of small beginnings in the dialectical art from a psychological perspective:

“When I say to an acquaintance whom I meet in the morning, ‘Nice day,’ I do not convey primarily meteorological information—which would be redundant anyway, since he has the same data as I do—but achieve a great variety of other unvoiced goals. For instance, by addressing him I recognize his existence, and express my willingness to be friendly. Second, I reaffirm one of the basic rules for interaction in our culture, which holds that talking about the weather is a safe way to establish contact between people. Finally, by emphasizing that the weather is ‘nice’ I imply the shared value that ‘niceness’ is a desirable attribute.” (129-130)

Modern communication theorists have called this phatic communication and connected it with the exordium of classical rhetoric. In the opening of a dialogue or a speech there needs to be a connection of persons, a development of trust or ethos, and this is established through following some simple social rules for interactions.

Such reflections raise legitimate questions over whether, in abandoning training in politeness and the proprieties of social interaction for our children, we are crippling them from stepping into the longer walks of conversation. After all, a conversation or connection must begin somewhere, and why not with a few clichés?

Philologists, those pedantic lovers of words (like myself), may object, but they would do better to laugh and continue playing the game themselves. This reminds me of the opening scene from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, where Gandalf humorously nitpicks Bilbo Baggins’ pleasantries:

“Good morning!” said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat.

“What do you mean?” he said. “Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?”

“All of them at once,” said Bilbo. “And a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain. If you have a pipe about you, sit down and have a fill of mine! There’s no hurry, we have all the day before us!” Then Bilbo sat down on a seat by his door, crossed his legs, and blew out a beautiful grey ring of smoke that sailed up into the air without breaking and floated away over The Hill.

It’s not that we should view Gandalf’s playful questioning of the convention as out of bounds. In fact, it’s part and parcel of a Socratic dialectic. But we could all use more of Bilbo’s cheery openness to conversation. He is here the paragon of hospitality, and it is his very politeness that opens him up to adventure. The first step out your door and into the adventure of a true conversation can be the most important.

Journeying on in the Play of Words

The art of conversation must begin somewhere and mastering the basics of cultural conventions is a suitable training for even the very young. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a danger represented by hiding under the conventions of politeness. As our psychologist states,

“The pity is that so many conversations end right there. Yet when words are well chosen, well arranged, they generate gratifying experiences for the listener. It is not for utilitarian reasons alone that breadth of vocabulary and verbal fluency are among the most important qualifications for success as a business executive. Talking well enriches every interaction, and it is a skill that can be learned by everyone.” (130)

The move of turning conversation into a learnable skill puts it back in the realm of education, where it ought to have stayed. Of course, it is useful in preparing the future “business executive,” but it also simply enriches life to be able to carry on a deep conversation with a few friends. In fact, even if it had no utility in the workplace, such a skill would be invaluable to the one who attained it, a veritable Garden of Eden.

As a matter of course, though, conversations with other people are an endless source of learning throughout life. The British educator Charlotte Mason tells the story of how Sir Walter Scott found himself sitting on the coach with a man, whom he could not get talking for anything. After “a score of openings” that were unsuccessful, he finally hit upon “bent leather,” and “then the talk went merrily for the man was a saddler” (vol. 6 Toward a Philosophy of Education p. 261). Everyone has something interesting and useful to share, if you know how to ask the right questions.

Each conversation can be an adventure, when we view it as a quest in search of what the other has to share. If we are open and hospitable like Bilbo, we never know where the road of conversation will lead.

But how do we train our children in the dialectical art of conversation?

Training Children in the Play of Words

Conversation skills don’t often appear on the lists of educational standards. At least, I’ve never seen it there. And it must be admitted that it’s hard to test objectively whether a student has sufficiently mastered a verbal sense of humor to pass grade level.

But classical educators and home educators can embrace such qualitative goals, even without penalizing students who are naturally more obtuse. It’s worth asking whether, just because an educational goal is not easily testable, and may be nearly impossible for some students to ‘master’, it should be abandoned as a legitimate pursuit. The play of words is one of those legitimate pursuits of the humanities that deserves a place on our radar screens, if not our standards lists.

The first way to train students in the play of words is the class discussion. Home educators will probably have to play Socrates a little more. But teachers can simply open up discussion between students and give them lots of practice discussing in a variety of subjects and contexts. How this will differ from the conventional class discussion can be left to the imagination and skillfulness of both teacher and students. The main shift is in viewing the goal as not simply the “mastery of content” but the development of sub-skills in the subtle art of conversation. Listening well to others, interacting with previous comments, disagreeing confidently yet respectfully, and covering over it all with a playfulness in language and thought that makes the conversation sparkle—these are all ideals that can be sown and sub-skills that can be practiced.

The second way is more akin to the teacher playing the role of Socrates, or Gandalf, if you prefer. Having practiced this one religiously since my youth, and not only in my teaching, I was tickled to see Csikszentmihalyi endorse it publicly in his book. For some years I have called it deliberate misunderstanding. Here is how he describes it:

“One way to teach children the potential of words is by starting to expose them to wordplay quite early. Puns and double meanings may be the lowest form of humor for sophisticated adults, but they provide children with a good training ground in the control of language. All one has to do is pay attention during a conversation with a child, and as soon as the opportunity presents itself—that is, whenever an innocent word or expression can be interpreted in an alternative way—one switches frames, and pretends to understand the word in that different sense.” (130)

One of the assumptions I must contend with in the paragraph above is the assumption that “puns and double meanings” are “the lowest form of humor for sophisticated adults.” My high school English and Latin teacher taught me quite the opposite, that puns were the very finest form of humor. And if one thinks for a moment of the other types of humor that are common in conversation, my high school teacher has a leg up on our psychologist or whomever he got such disparagement from. But we digress….

The pretense of misunderstanding creates the shock factor for the listener that alerts them to the possibilities and ambiguities of their words and expressions. There is no easier or more natural way to “teach” the play of words, than to play with a child’s own words in her very presence. Its power lies in shocking them out of the complacency of conventional communication:

“In fact, breaking the ordered expectations about the meaning of words can be mildly traumatic at first, but in no time at all children catch on and give as good as they are getting, learning to twist conversation into pretzels. By dong so they learn how to enjoy controlling words; as adults, they might help revive the lost art of conversation.” (130)

This need not wait until some supposed “logic phase”; young children love a good pun, riddle or dad joke. But it does reach new levels of sophistication with witty older students. Some of my most enjoyable teaching experiences are in the witty banter of a group of high school students, discussing a great book, at least ostensibly, but also playing with words and the thoughts and ideas that they represent. What students are really doing with some (at least) of their side comments and rabbit trails is connecting the experiences of the difficult texts we are reading with their own thoughts and experiences as budding young adults.

At least that is what I tell myself when we take a trip down digression lane….

One of the ways we have institutionalized the art of conversation or skill of dialectic at the school where I work is through a monthly practice we have called a colloquium (from the Latin word for a conversation or discussion). Our whole high school gathers together for an entire humanities class focused on a single conversation around a perennial question, like “What is truth?” or “Why is there so much pain and suffering in the world?” or “What is the best form of government?”

Like Socrates’ dialogues, there is no set text or “curriculum”; the discussion is the curriculum, and the leader’s goal is the make sure the inquiry is genuine through putting up road blocks, countering sloppy thinking and in every way making things as hard as possible for the students. There are ground rules, but the colloquium includes much witty banter alongside the genuine inquiry. Sustaining an hour and a half to two hour long discussion on a single topic is an educational experience in itself. It’s also a highlight for many of our students.

Previous articles in this series, The Flow of Thought:

Part 1: Training the Attention for Happiness’ Sake; Part 2: The Joy of Memory; Part 3: Narration as Flow; Part 4: The Seven Liberal Arts as Mental Games

Future installments: 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.

What other ideas do you have for cultivating the lost art of conversation in our students? Share them in the comments!

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