Parents' Review: A PNEU Nursery School

I have been using Instapaper (possibly my favourite iPod Touch application) to read some of the Parents' Review articles available at the Ambleside Online website, and plan to share some quotes as I read.

This is from A PNEU Nursery School by Hilda Eleanor Breckels (1969). The children began each morning with a 40 minute period of free play, then:

As soon as this is over and everything is put away, with the help of the children, they voluntarily separate into their age groups and run pell-mell to their group places, glad to have seen the last of free play for that morning.

Free play has wearied them by the end. Each child has been left to its own devices. It has had to make up its own mind about everything; whom to play with, or which sharing group to join, what play equipment to choose, or whether to dare a big adventure on the apparatus, or dare to knock on the door of the playhouse to see what's going on inside it.

At last all are tired of being creatively busy, and of being left to manage all alone. The children are also tired of each other, in need of a comforting grown-up with a kind voice for telling all about things to do.

The need is for quiet and a spell of uplift, through close companionship with adults. This is especially so with regard to speech. This needs frequent uplift in the early years and the under-fives cannot get this when with contemporaries.

For speech uplift, under-fives need to be often with grown-ups who are light-hearted and good at making conversation with the very young.

I must now tell you about our quiet time, because it follows all that noisy play. Some mornings we sing a hymn and say prayers. Others, we associate God with human relationships, or with the seasons and other aspects of nature. We also tell stories of Jesus, Mary and Joseph and Old Testament babes and boys and girls. We learn to be hushed. Reverent.

Thus are they quietened. They are now eager for group activities when they will be in the close care of grown-ups who tell them what to do and how to do it. While carefully and expressively telling the listening children what to do, the group teachers are giving that important uplift to speech.

Besides being training time for skills in speech, these activities in small groups give carefully graded steps in the preliminaries to reading, word-building and number.

That is all done through play. The knowledge is threaded, as it were, through a game, by means of the appropriate teaching aids. If the children are ready, they will learn the little lesson. If they are not, they just enjoy the game. They usually do both.

Being a PNEU Nursery School, we do no more than help the children to play the game. We leave all else to the children's powers of attention, imagination, reflection, judgment and so on.

My interest was piqued by the assertion that children find too much free play and free association with other children tiring, and need it to be balanced by structured, adult led time. Also by the way in which learning activities were simply play, from which the children took whatever they were ready for.

Discipline: Taking Up the Challenge

Elizabeth has continued her summer Charlotte Mason book study with comments on the "Education is a Discipline" section of the free ebook Education is ... (well worth downloading if you haven't already). I already posted a bit about education as a discipline in my previous post, so for my contribution to the conversation I am just going to develop a couple of ideas that are particularly applicable in my life at this point.

"Developing discipline in our children requires huge amounts of discipline in ourselves"

Oh, what a conscience pricker! As I wrote the other day: "Self discipline is my great weakness, and I get trapped in a cycle of good intentions followed by backsliding." But there really is no way I can ignore this if I want to be able to help my children to develop good habits. Elizabeth emphasizes the point:

"When I read about laying down the rails of good tracks of character in the lives of my children and training them in order to cultivate healthy habits, I recognize immediately that this is going to take some serious self-discipline on my part. I need to be disciplined in order to provide an education that is richly disciplined.

So ... for those of us who are decidedly challenged in the area of self-discipline, where do we start? "Education is ..." gives five suggestions for helping to develop good habits in children, so why not see if I can apply these to myself:

• Pick one habit. There is no point in allowing myself to be overwhelmed by all the different areas I need to work on. But where to start? One thing I always struggle with is responding promptly to my husband and children. I hate having to leave something half done - an email half written, an article half read, a row half knitted, a floor half cleaned. The number of times in a week (or a day!) that I say to someone "in a minute" - a minute that turns out to be five or ten - doesn't bear thinking about. How can I expect prompt obedience or responses from my children if I can't manage it myself? So I think that will be my starting point.
  
• Be vigilant and consistent. I can exercise vigilance by examining my conscience on this point frequently. I can also ask Tevye to be my cheer-leader. Consistency is going to be hard, because of my weakness with self-discipline. Maybe reminding myself that it doesn't take long to form a habit will help. Every time I fail will make it that much harder to establish the habit. Is that enough incentive?
• Living examples. I have one. Tevye, the king of prompt responses. Angel is pretty good too.
  
• Appropriate consequences. What are the consequences of failing to respond promptly? Irritation with myself. An irritated husband. A daughter who thinks her lack of response is acceptable. A toddler who will soon learn that it is OK to prevaricate when asked to do something.
  
• Encourage, don't nag. Don't nag myself? I do, you know. I am quite capable of harping on about how irritated with myself I am for failing to do something I know I should have done. So dwell on the positive. Pat myself on the back for my successes and don't dwell on any failures.
  

Discipline: beginning the process with a toddler

As far as my children are concerned, for now I want to turn my habit-forming attention to Little Cherub, who is right at the beginning of the habit-forming process. So ... where to start with a toddler? "Education Is ..." gives a list of habits to work on. Skimming through the list, I picked out these habits as being particularly applicable to a two year old ...

• Cleanliness
• Manners
• Neatness
• Generosity (sharing)
• Obedience
• Even temper
• Outdoor life
  
• Training the ear and voice (that over-excited toddler screech ...)

A toddler is largely a clean slate. Working with a toddler is about encouraging good habits and nipping bad habits (screeching!) in the bud before they have a chance to develop. At this age I think vigilance and consistency is far more important than anything else. Never allowing an instruction to slip by unheeded; always correcting the screech; cutting short every toddler whine with a distraction ... absolute consistency!

This sounds a near impossibility, but I am noticing that intervention as soon as I notice something undesirable is remarkably effective. Far more so than it would be with an older child. Take that screech. Usually it happens when she is playing with her sisters, who hype her up. The first couple of times I winced but ignored it. Then it dawned on me that I didn't want it to become a habit. The next time she screeched, I got down to her level, told her that the noise hurt my ears and she needed to be quieter ... and the squeal went down several decibels. There was more screeching today when Star pretended (repeatedly) to let Cherub push her over. Much excitement, but this time it only took a gentle reminder to quieten her down ... and she seemed both amused and pleased that she was able to control her own volume.

Distraction is also a particularly useful weapon with toddlers. Walking home with Cherub today she went into a full-scale whine, complaining because she did not want to be strapped into her pushchair. Instead of just waiting for the whine to subside - let's face it, she was strapped and trapped, and I had the upper hand! - I started singing The Wheels on the Bus and encouraged her to choose verses. Instant distraction and some rather surreal verses ("the car on the bus goes vroom! vroom! vroom!").

In contrast to older children and adults, where working one habit at a time is preferable, with toddlers I think it is better to take a broader approach, putting out the sparks of bad habits as soon as they appear and encouraging a number of good habits simultaneously.

I'm looking forward to learning more from Laying Down the Rails, but at least I now have a starting point in my journey towards developing good habits ... a single habit to tackle for myself, and a determination to be thoroughly consistent with Little Cherub.

An Atmosphere, a Discipline, and a Life

After thinking and reading about Montessori and Waldorf for a while, over the last couple of weeks I have been digging my way back into Charlotte Mason's educational philosophy, and realising over again why I have always found it such a wise path.

With great timing, Elizabeth at In the Heart of My Home is proposing a Charlotte Mason conversation, and has kicked it off by talking about education as an atmosphere, a discipline and a life. If you click on the Mister Linky logo at the bottom of her post you will find the other contributions to the conversation (you don't need to add anything yourself to find the links, but they are not showing up on Elizabeth's post). I haven't yet checked out the Simply Charlotte Mason eBooks Elizabeth is delving into, so I'm going to throw into the pot some quotes from Charlotte Mason Reviewed by Jenny King. This is a short book (I re-read it in an hour or so on Thursday) written in the 1970s by a PNEU schoolmistress who trained at Charlotte Mason College in the 1930s. I'm not sure whether this counts as participating in the conversation, or running off at a tangent. Whatever!

Education is an atmosphere

"Charlotte Mason was not in favour of the creation of a special environment for children ... atmosphere is more subtle than environment ... It is the atmosphere of respect and understanding created in the home where the child knows he is wanted and the classroom where he can do what he is able to do.
... To create the right atmosphere we must consider again Charlotte Mason's insistence on the child as a person and not, as can be the case, a pawn in the lives of adults to be pushed around according to whim or inclination.
... It is the attitude of the adults to the children which creates the atmosphere in which they can respond and have room to grow."

I like the distinction between atmosphere and environment. Environment is physical; atmosphere is about attitudes rather than things. A child needs to be nurtured in an atmosphere of respect, where he is treated always as a person and a child of God. There is a contrast here with Montessori, which is also respectful of the child but is far more dependent on physical environment. Although it is possible to create a Montessori environment on a shoestring, it does require a certain amount of "stuff". CM's atmosphere doesn't. What it does require is self-discipline on the part of the parents, always to treat the child fairly, to exercise their God-given authority justly, and to lead by example. Respect for the child does not mean that the child rules the roost - that would simply be an atmosphere of indulgence, which is not at all what CM is about - but it does allow the child a certain amount of freedom to make mistakes and learn from the consequences.

Education is a discipline

"Charlotte Mason expressed the power of habit as being ten times as strong as nature. By nature she meant the natural desires, appetites, affection common to all humans, the sum total of which is called 'human nature'. Every society has its conventions and rules, children must not be left to the devices of human nature but directed along channels of activity by the force of habit. This is not a contradiction to the theory of letting them be but a way of easing their lives so that their attention may be taken up with interesting pursuits and achievement.
... The habit of paying attention to instructions is a case in point. Give simple instructions (one at a time to little children) and ask them to repeat what you have said before they dash off heedless of your intentions.
... The habit of consideration for others is learnt from example as are so many of the graces. This is the area in which we fail our children. We do not insist on the formation of good habits from the very start of life and we so often set a bad example ourselves.
... Charlotte Mason speaks of habits to be formed in every field of the children's lives: cleanliness, obedience, truthfulness, attention to detail. With this theory put into practice not only will human nature be trained, but also inherited traits can be brought under control, whether they are good or bad.
... So the formation of habits can be a liberating force in the life of the growing child, and in no way does it restrict the development of personality. rather it makes it possible for him to make more of himself."

Uh-oh! Habit! I can't pretend I have ever mastered the knack of instilling good habits, so I think I am going to have to tackle Laying Down the Rails: a Charlotte Mason Habits Handwork along with Elizabeth. I'm afraid example is my downfall here. How can we expect a child to have good habits if we don't have them ourselves? Consistently. And I don't. Self discipline is my great weakness, and I get trapped in a cycle of good intentions followed by backsliding.

One thing I have been doing recently is taking care over giving Little Cherub instructions, getting down to her level, making sure she looks me in the eye as I talk, and then checking that she understands. If I do that she will almost always comply - she will try to avoid my eye if she knows I am going to say something she doesn't want to hear, but once she is pinned down to "hearing" me she will follow the instruction.

Education is a life

"Charlotte Mason asks us to look upon the child's mind as a spiritual organism. It is alive and in need of nourishment just as is the physical body. Ideas are the natural diet of the mind. An idea 'strikes' the mind and is absorbed. It then begins to behave like a living cell in the physical body. By thought processes it grows and nourishes the mind. One idea leads to another and so minds make contact with one another. In saying that education is life Charlotte Mason is referring to the living ideas expressed in great works of art, music, and literature and in scientific progress in many fields. For children to effect any satisfactory relationship between their minds and the minds of great men and women they must be brought into direct contact through their works.
... When a child's mind is nourished in this way he becomes knowledgeable, that is, he is put in the way of experiencing what he learns. The faculties of reason, imagination, reflection, and judgement are brought to bear on the matter in hand which becomes part of the life of the child. If these faculties are not stultified by a diet of predigested information and illustrations which leave no scope for the imagination, or the cramming of facts which allow no time for reflection, or reveal the prejudices of the teacher, then the mind of the child will blossom and the intellect flourish.
... Men have spoken of the liberty of the individual conscience and have forgotten that there is such a thing as the liberty of the individual mind to choose or disregard the knowledge provided. Unless it is presented in the form of living ideas most of it will be disregarded."

In other words "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink". Unless something sparks a child's imagination, it will not be internalised. I think it easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we must cover everything when educating our children, when in fact we need to give them a diet of ideas from which they can expand their own knowledge, making it their own as they do so. I liked a point she made elsewhere in the book about visiting a stately home with a child - the parent tends to want to make sure the child sees everything, whereas the child's imagination may be sparked by a single room, or a particular view. Giving them time and space to make that room or view their own, to allow the working of imagination, is more important than seeing everything. For education to be a life, we have to allow time to process ideas. Just because reading one book is good, it doesn't mean that reading two, or three, or four, is better .. an overloaded mind doesn't have room to ponder.

The Penny Dropped

... and I realised I had a handle on the differences between Montessori, Charlotte Mason and Waldorf style education, as illustrated by nature study:

Montessori: Learn to identify wildflowers using three part cards and matching cards. Learn the parts of a flower with botany puzzles. Draw and label the parts of a flower.

Charlotte Mason: Learn to identify wildflowers through spending lots of time outdoors or on nature walks. Draw them freehand in a nature notebook.

Waldorf: Learn to identify wildflowers through spending time in nature. Listen to stories about fairies and gnomes living in the flowers. Paint pictures of flowers using wet-on-wet techniques.

Charlotte Mason, Montessori, and Early Schooling

This thread at the 4Real Forums on Montessori and Waldorf sent me on a Charlotte Mason rabbit trail ... I knew that Charlotte Mason once sent a letter to The Times expressing her views on Montessori education, but had never seen it. The link to the original text is broken, but at Bona Vita Rusticanda Est the blog author has posted an extensive paraphrase.

Ideas about early education, particularly Waldorf and Montessori, have been flitting around in my head again lately. Aspects of both attract me - sometimes in quite contradictory ways - and reading Charlotte Mason's thoughts has helped me to get mine in order. I'll write more about this later, but for now I just wanted to post some quotes.

These two made me want to send bold-print, shouted emails to the scarily named Department for Children, Schools and Families, which is heavily pushing early schooling and an early literacy agenda. (Incidentally I don't agree that early literacy is the main appeal of Montessori education - though that may have been the case at the time CM was writing.)

"Her children can read and write by age four or five, while our own children don't master those skills until age eight. That's what appeals to us about her method. But we forget that education is more than the mechanics of reading and writing. Such skills don't educate any more than mastering shorthand, or Morse Code. But we get excited thinking that, by teaching these mechanics earlier, we'll gain two or three years of school life."

"No child under the age of six should go to a school that doesn't allow him the full freedom to run, or squat, or lay face down on the floor if the mood strikes him."

(paraphrase of CM's letter to the Times)

The next quotes are taken from Home Education (vol.1 of the CM Series) and come from the Ambleside Online Year 0 page:

"Let him go and come freely, let him touch real things, and combine his impressions for himself, instead of sitting indoors at a little round table while a sweet-voiced teacher suggests that he build a stone wall with his wooden blocks, or make a rainbow out of strips of coloured paper, or plant straw trees in bead flower-pots. Such teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of before the child can develop indepndent ideas out of actual experiences." (p.196)

"'A child will have taught himself to paint, paste, cut paper, knit, weave, hammer and saw, make lovely things in clay and sand, build castles with his bricks; possibly too, will have taught himself to read, write, and do sums, besides acquiring no end of knowledge and notions about the world he lives in, by the time he is six or seven. What I contend for is that he shall do these things because he chooses (provided that the standard of perfection in his small works be set before him)." (p.194)

The Charlotte Masons

Every now and again something nice pops up unexpectedly in my life. It turns out there are not one, not two, but three other homeschooling mothers in my local area interested in Charlotte Mason. One I've known for years, the other two I had only met in passing. Last night we had the inaugural meeting of the MK Charlotte Masonic Lodge (someone's husband's joke about secret societies got out of hand!) ... in a bookshop, of course. There is a large new Borders in MK - well worth a visit if any of my British readers are in the area - with a Starbucks. Coffee, company, conversation and Charlotte. What more could I want? We are planning to make it a regular thing.