Escaping the Clutches of the Cadillac Course
You might recall the homeschool product reviews the Andreola family wrote for a Christian catalog for 14 years (2000–2014). Who knew anything about the quantity of stuff we didn’t review? Here’s a look at one evening during our last year of writing reviews.
Another Box of Curriculum Samples
Letting the dishes soak, I decided to tackle instead the box that sat on a chair at the far end of the kitchen table. I straightened my glasses. Then I supported my chin in both palms with both elbows on the table. I meant business. I always gave boxes of sample curriculum a sober and honest appraisal.
This time, it was a science curriculum. Wow. What large, beautiful photographs of the animal kingdom and their habitats. The kit came with two thick, hardcover textbooks, shiny and durable enough to last a hundred years. The teacher’s book contained the identical text of the student’s book but with an added paragraph or two. This way the teacher could be “one-up” on the animal at hand. Why? Was the added information too difficult for a child to comprehend? Too boring? The text was expected to be “livened-up” by the teacher. The teacher’s edition was “an aid to formulating lectures.” Reading aloud was not suggested. Was it assumed? The texts supplied 20 questions on each animal. Added to this was an attractive pack of animal-fact cards for memorization, a softcover quiz book, and a test book. It was an expensive package, impressively school-ish in the classroom sense of the word. If a child were taking this science course, who could possibly say he wasn’t doing school? Charlotte Mason, that’s who. My decision was firm. I would not review it. Okay. Time to wash the dishes.
Conscientious Moms Beware
I stood at the sink, motionless, mesmerized. I was staring out the window, a wet dishcloth in my hand. I wasn’t looking at anything outside. It was too dark. Rather, I was seeing something in my mind’s eye. I saw a young mother, new to homeschooling, less-than-confident, well-meaning, hardworking, tired. I could relate. I had been there. A little whirlwind of emotions swirled within me. It rose to the surface and I sighed, just as my husband Dean entered the room. He wanted to know what was the matter.
“It’s this new gigantic fancy-dancy Cadillac course,” I blurted out, my back to him. I began filling the dishwasher. “It involves hours upon hours of teacher preparation for giving lectures, a sort of spoiler, you might call it, because much of the same information is repeated, as it’s supposed to be read by the student afterward. Then, repeated for the quiz. And, repeated yet again for the test. It’s riddled with review questions, memory-facts, multiple choice, crossword puzzles, and those dreadful match-the-columns.”
“I always hated those,” Dean said. “Are they meant to throw a child off?”
“I dunno,” I said, weakly. But after a deep breath I revved up again. “The quizzes teach for the test. It all goes to substantiate a final grade. I can just see it.”
“See what?” he asked.
“I can see this classroom busy-work, marketed to homeschoolers, leading to burn-out in Mother and tedium in student, if followed exactly as the course objectives advise,” I said, eyes widening. “And conscientious moms wanting the best for their children, who’ve just spent 300 dollars on it, might do just that: attempt to do it all. If all the subjects studied are comprised of big Cadillac courses, with long lessons, heavy on teacher preparation and presentation, the family will be doing schoolwork ’til five o’clock.” (I almost said “midnight,” which, on second thought, might not have been inaccurate.)
“So … this kit has all the earmarks of what Charlotte Mason advised not to do?” Dean asked, knowing the answer.
“Yup,” I said, emptying the sink of the last fork. I rinsed the sink of all its suds with the spray-wand and squeezed out the dishcloth with unusual vigor.
When I finally turned around, I saw Dean squinting down at the books and rubbing his beard. He too was impressed with the pictures. He said, “A committee of Ph.D.’s wrote this course, you know.”
I made a little face.
He missed this. He was still reading. “Hmm … it’s as if the writing has no voice. It’s impersonal. Like a computer wrote it, not a person enthused with his subject.” He paused while he drew his conclusion. “It requires a gallon of teaching, doesn’t it?” He smiled at me.
“Yup,” I said, smiling back, “a gallon of teaching for an ounce of learning.” Hanging up the tea towel for the night, it struck me how glad I was for a husband who understood. Softened by this thought, I put a hand on his arm.
“Okay, that’s that,” he said.
There was one thing left to do. Knowing how much I disliked cardboard boxes strewn about the place, he carried the impressive-looking course to the basement. There it sat, until it was given away with boxes of other material that had had their turn at cluttering up our keeping-room that year.
A Different Story
One day, Charlotte Mason observed a PNEU class of girls, aged 13, read an essay on George Herbert with three or four poems included. None of the girls had read either the essay or the poems before. They narrated in full paragraphs. “No point made by the poet was omitted and his exact words were used pretty freely,” Miss Mason says.[1]
The teacher made comments upon one or two unusual words and that was all. To explain or enforce (other than by a reverently sympathetic manner, the glance and words that showed that she too, cared), would have been impertinent.[2]
“It is an interesting thing,” she says, “that hundreds of children of this age [following the PNEU syllabus] … scattered over the world read and narrated the same essay and no doubt paraphrased the verses with equal ease. I felt humbled before the children knowing myself incapable of such immediate and rapid apprehension of several pages of new matter … In such ways the great thoughts of great thinkers illuminate children and they grow in knowledge, chiefly the knowledge of God.”[3]
Yet usually, the work of education, Miss Mason continues, “is drowned in torrents of talk, in tedious repetition, … in every sort of way in which the mind may be bored and the affections deadened.”[4]
A Big Necessary
Read the living book. Narrate. This is mostly what’s necessary. But it is a big necessary. Children are brought up acquiring powers of self-education by this simple method. They want opportunity and direction, not mental gymnastics for storing information. Their minds come alive when they ponder ideas conveyed in literary language.
Is your child free to make his own associations, follow a train of thought, reason, draw conclusions? For this is how persons truly become knowledgeable. By the method of reading living books and narrating they enter a state of knowledge similar to that of entering into a state of friendship.
Example: “Tell, or add to your notebook, what you’ve learned about Australia’s amazing kangaroo from birth to adulthood. Draw a series of three or four illustrations for it.” Thus, you have an ounce of teaching for a gallon of learning. Not the other way around.
Karen Andreola is the author of A Charlotte Mason Companion, one of the most trusted and referenced books in the home school world. She also authored A Pocketful of Pinecones and Lessons at Blackberry Inn. She and her husband Dean were instrumental in bringing Charlotte Mason’s six volumes back into print in the 1980’s. Karen’s latest book, Mother Culture – For a Happy Homeschool, is available now from Simply Charlotte Mason.
This article is chapter 32 of the book Mother Culture © Karen Andreola and is used with permission.
Endnotes
[1] Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education, pp. 64–65.
[2] Ibid., p. 65.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
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