The CMP Review — Week of February 24

February 24, 2025

“If we want to make a dress or to make a cake we find a pattern or a recipe. Where shall we find a recipe to follow if we wish to make peace? It is hard to find. A good recipe tells us what to use, how to use it. ‘Take such and such, mix –, bake in a — oven, for so many minutes or hours.’ If some good angel gave a recipe for peace he would say: — ‘Take an ordinary family, mix it with love and understanding and bake it in your homes for every day of every year.’” (Essex Cholmondeley, Parents Are Peacemakers)

@tessakeath

February 25, 2025

“Scientism,” writes Dr. Charles T. Tart, “is a psychological process of taking the current scientific theories that work well about how the universe functions and subtlety starting to regard them as if they were the absolute truth, beyond any further serious questioning… Thus the process of science becomes an ‘ism,’ becomes a psychological stopping point, becomes a dogmatic belief system, like many of our most dogmatic religions.”

Dr. Tart contrasts scientism with “real science.” “Real science, essential science,” he explains, “is about always being open to the facts, about always taking your own beliefs and theories lightly, about always subjecting them to further tests and never making a psychological ‘ism’ of them.”

In 1928, Dr. Telford Petrie approached the question of school science. He began with the definition of science, and then he explored Charlotte Mason’s insistence that “science should not be divorced from the humanities.” Finally, he published his notes in the Parents’ Review.

Who was Dr. Petrie? How do his notes from 1928 relate to the scientism of our day? And what implication does all this have for us as we teach our children? Dawn Rhymer, home educator, teacher, and scientist, ties together these threads in an original editor’s note before sharing Petrie’s notes. Hear it at the here.

@artmiddlekauff

February 26, 2025

Emily Dickinson is the poet most represented in my nature journal. Who’s yours?

@rbaburina

February 27, 2025

Often I hear parents ask how to get their children to become more interested in nature instead of being drawn to screens and digital entertainment. It’s related to the broader question of change. How do we get our children to pay attention to or to focus on different things?

I think change can come from the outside in or from the inside out. In my experience, the latter is more enduring. But how can we as parents bring it about?

I’ve learned from Charlotte Mason that inside-out change comes from living ideas. These are ideas that take root and flourish in the heart, and they are found in living books. When these ideas grow, they bear fruit in changed lives.

Wordsworth has become a favorite poet in our homeschool, and reading the Prelude is like reading a love letter to nature. Several times a week we dip into these words and find them take root in our hearts.

Poetry transforms nature walks from outside-in duties to inside-out loves. We listen to the birds and look at the flowers because we want to see what Wordsworth saw. And in moments too magical to express, sometimes we do.

@artmiddlekauff

February 28, 2025

If you want to skate, you have to shovel!

Our river was just not skateable this year, so we are very thankful for the campus outdoor rink for all our skating needs

@antonella.f.greco

March 1, 2025

This book is definitely “one to grow by.”

We have a number of articles on Physics (and art) on the website. Just last Tuesday we published “A Note on the Teaching of School Science” in which Dr. Telford Petrie reminds us of Miss Mason’s view that the sciences should not be divorced from the humanities and the importance of personal observation in our approach to science.

Just pages in, Schlain offers a fascinating correlation between the subjectiveness of observer and observed not only in art, but in physics as well. The same subjectivity is at play as the scientist observing light affects whether it responds as a wave or a particle.

Have you read it? Would you?

@rbaburina

When William Holman Hunt painted his The Light of the World in 1851, the door that he featured had an unusual trait: there was no handle. It could only be opened from inside.

“What easier than let in, I pray, The lord of th’ house without delay?” asks Charlotte Mason in her poem “The watchful servants.” As in Hunt’s famous painting, the master is returning at night. All the servants need to do is open the door.

But there is a problem, and Mason captures the moment powerfully in her verse. And then the outcome is wonderful, marvelous, and moving. Read or hear it here.

@artmiddlekauff