What's New This Week?Poet: Education for Joy: feasting and youth formation; 100 years of Illustration.
Sailor: Education for Wonder: Limoncello, Clever Presents, and What's Around Me.
LOOKING FOR AN EDUCATIONAL VISION?
This site is geared to youth formation and building Christian Culture. It's a vision inspired by Hilaire Belloc and Frederick Wilhelmsen. Read more here>>What's the plan of action? A book, a curriculum, a school . . . Read more here>>
Every week you'll find new suggestions about youth formation and building Christian Culture. Christian Integration is the home site of an educational vision that comprises
- Education for Tradition. Read more here>>
- Education for Wonder. Read more here>>
- Education for Joy. Read more here>>
Cheers,
Gwen Adams
Stratford Caldecott's New Blog
It goes with his new book Beauty for Truth's Sake: On the Re-Enchantment of Education, a highly intriguing title. At his blog you can find different links (like one to my blog) and "resources for teachers, parents, home educators, and students." I especially like his exploration of mathematics (see this post).
For Those Who Work With Youth
"Trust no philosopher who does not relish his existence and his thoughts. . . . The voices of culture are too often dull, blank, and soundless . . . at least one classic educator, Rabelais, was a roarer. And nobody could doubt the culture of John Jay Chapman in our time: . . . 'Is the education of the young the whole of life? I hate the young--I'm worn out with them. They absorb you and suck you dry and are vampires and selfish brutes at best. Give me some good old rum-soaked clubmen--who can't be improved and make no moral claims--and let me play checkers with them and look out of the club window and think about what I'll have for dinner.'" --Mark Van Doran, "Liberal Education."
Apologies to young people, of course! But young people can't be our hobby; we have to serve them because we love them, not because we like them.
Christ the King
There will be no new posts this week as the Feast of Christ is coming up and consuming all my attention. Read this old post for ways to read up and celebrate the feast.I also thought a great way to celebrate would be to wait for this feast to reintroduce all the wonderful cold weather drinks like: Hot Toddies, Mulled Wine, Irish coffee, Hot Buttered Rum, Russian Tea, and the like--but I have not good recipes--maybe you do? . . .
For your pleasure, and His honor, please enjoy the following poem. Till next week--:
The Soldier
YES. Why do we áll, seeing of a soldier, bless him? bless
Our redcoats, our tars? Both these being, the greater part,
But frail clay, nay but foul clay. Here it is: the heart,
Since, proud, it calls the calling manly, gives a guess
That, hopes that, makesbelieve, the men must be no less;
It fancies, feigns, deems, dears the artist after his art;
And fain will find as sterling all as all is smart,
And scarlet wear the spirit of wár thére express.
Mark Christ our King. He knows war, served this soldiering through;
He of all can handle a rope best. There he bides in bliss
Now, and séeing somewhére some mán do all that man can do,
For love he leans forth, needs his neck must fall on, kiss,
And cry ‘O Christ-done deed! So God-made-flesh does too:
Were I come o’er again’ cries Christ ‘it should be this’.
--Gerard Manley Hopkins
Health Care "Reform" Heading to a Vote
If I Was a Youth Minister . . . And if I wanted to practice Christian Integration
For more information on the theory, click here:
"There is a Grizzlebeard, a Sailor, and a Poet in each of us. Let them be nourished."--Frederick Wilhelmsen
How to Teach Science
A working model for ages 7-16 or so . . .OVERALL GOALS. Remember: experience first, then seek understanding.
- Observe in detailed, colored sketches
- Describe with logistics (date / time / location) and increasingly accurate vocabulary (i.e. “shiny like the back of a CD” => “iridescent.”)
- Be familiar with basic information: Insects (Name and recognize mouth and body parts; describe metamorphosis); River Systems (Name and describe parts of a river system; explain how rivers form); Astronomy (Name and recognize major constellations and their key stars); Plants (Name and recognize parts of a plant and major plant types. Describe life cycle); Geology (Name and recognize major rock types, especially local specimens); Weather / Clouds (Name and recognize clouds); Bird Calls? (I like this because, like the sound page, it trains the ear to observe; generally observation is more visual. Also, very doable when stuck inside in February.) There are many other important and appropriate areas to study. If you can experience it, study it.
- Read The Tracker. Write 1-page reflections.
Children's Adoration
Fr. Antoine's apostolate for Children's Adoration offers one of the best introductions to prayer that I have come across. While intended for toddlers and children, it is neither childish nor simplistic. He captures what lies at the heart of prayer--both the prayer of children and the aged, religious and lay, soldier and scholar, saint and sinner. His guidance is helpful for working with children or refocusing your own prayer. Here is the website, though their new blog is better. Fr. Antoine is a member of the Community of St. John.
He Rides His Loud October Sky
The spring's superb adventure callsHis dust athwart the woods to flame;
His boundary river's secret falls
Perpetuate and repeat his name.
He rides his loud October sky;
He does not die. He does not die.
--Hilaire Belloc, from The Four Men
The Case for Memorizing Poetry
Got Poetry?By JIM HOLT
Published in the New York Times: April 2, 2009
A few years ago, I started learning poetry by heart on a daily basis. I’ve now memorized about a hundred poems, some of them quite long — more than 2,000 lines in all, not including limericks and Bob Dylan lyrics. I recite them to myself while jogging along the Hudson River, quite loudly if no other joggers are within earshot. I do the same, but more quietly, while walking around Manhattan on errands — just another guy on an invisible cellphone. . . .
The Lemons ("I Limoni")
But listen—those famous poets
everyone studied in school—they got stirred up
among plants we don’t know here: box privet or acanthus.
As for me, I love the roads that shrivel
into parched, weed-cluttered
ditches where boys
catch a skinny eel or two in a puddle;
the paths that follow the banks and sidle
down between clumps of cane
and put you down in the lemon groves, among the trees.
Pattern Language
Christopher Alexander is Professor in the Graduate School and Emeritus Professor of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. Click here for more bio . . . While he is no Christian, Alexander's ideas captivate: he has found the architectural means to support and foster communal life. And he did it (as if he were a SAILOR) by observing which existing architectural patterns foster communal life and which fail.
His book A Pattern Language delights; from town to neighborhood to house to room, his observations ring true. And I just found his website! Sign up and pay a small fee to access this site or get many of the ideas here for free, at his sister site.
Just sample what he has to say about Establishing a Main Center.
Green Thomism
The St. Paul Seminary located at the University of St. Thomas is hosting a mighty interesting conference this fall--looking for better and better ways to articulate the connection between man and the land. Call for papers and more information can be found here.
Memory and Thinking on Your Feet
A friend and I have an ongoing conversation: in the information age where everything can be stored in databases and libraries and online--what need do we have to memorize anything? Of course, I have lots of reasons and lots of gut reactions--one being that ideas and images need to tumble against each other like rocks to produce synthesis and further conclusions. You can't do that if nothing is stored in your mind.But last week I got two more reasons.
Diary of a Country Priest
I have been rereading Georges Bernanos' classic The Diary of a Country Priest. Around October 1st's feast of Therese of Lisieux, I was reminded of how much Bernanos was inspired by her life, even borrowing her words "all is grace." The book's character marvels "Oh, miracle--thus to be able to give what we ourselves do not possess, sweet miracle of our empty hands! Hope which was shrivelling in my heart flowered again in hers; the spirit of prayer which I thought lost in me for ever was given back to her by God" (157).And isn't it mysterious that it can happen that way? How can Therese of Lisieux inspire such childlike confidence in God--when her own confidence was stretched to the limit--to believe there was something after death, to hang on through the suffocating agony of her tuberculosis? She begged her sisters not to keep lethal pain-killers within her reach--she freely admitted that, but for her faith, she would have killed herself.
How can Mother Teresa convince everyone around her that God loves us, when she herself felt completely abandoned? Yet there it is--God's power "made perfect in weakness." Mother Teresa, Therese of Lisieux, and the Cure of Bernanos' novel demonstrate the mysterious role of desire. Cut off completely from the experience of God, what did they have left but desire, even desire for the desire for God? While they burned in that, they lit the lives of others. Here's the book and here's the beautiful film.
Set: Build Concentration and Attention with this Quiet Rainy Day Game
Deal out 12 cards 4 X 3. You are looking at images that differ in 4 ways:1. Shape (oval, diamond, peanut-shape)
2. Shading (clear, half-shading, opaque)
3. Color (red, blue, purple)
4. Number of shapes (one, two, or three).
The object of the game is to see the most sets of three which meet the following requirements:
1. Either everything is the same
OR
2. Everything is different
So for example, I've got three cards.
1. Shape--all ovals/diamonds/peanuts or all three shapes.
2. Shading--all clear/half/opaque or one of each kind of shading.
3. Color--all red/blue/purple or one of each color
4. Number of shapes--all ones/twos/threes or a one+two+three.
What does NOT work would be two cards share something, but not with the third. All share a characteristic or none of them share it. No pair of blues and a red. No pair of diamonds + an oval.
If you see a set of three which meets the above requirements, call "Set" and take the three. Play alone, or if you play with others, whoever has the most cards at the end wins.
** If all the players look at the 12 cards dealt and can't find anything, then you can lay out more cards in threes, until someone sees a set. As people call "Set" dealer should replace cards to keep twelve on the table. ***Make sure to shuffle well.Make decks at home with 3x5 cards and markers. The grid above shows you what to do: you should have 81 cards. This game uses a very different part of your brain, and is excellent for training an eye to notice.
Preparing the World for the Incarnation
I have been collecting "stories that I tell"--complete with voices, colorful imagery, repetition, etc. These posts talk more about that. For various reasons, my stories are all retellings of ancient myths. I have polished "Demeter and Persephone" and "Psyche and Eros." I am working on The Epic of Gilgamesh and perhaps then the Egyptian myth of Osiris and Isis.Now here is my current project: as I gather ancient myths, I'll examine this question. How much did people want immortality, love, to draw near the gods, etc., how much did people want beforehand what Christ came to offer? I know He satisfied our deepest human need, but it would be interesting to see how well the myths reflected this need. I am in full agreement with Chesterton's The Everlasting Man that the world was temporally, culturally, philosophically, physically prepared for the coming of Christ. It might have been prepared in desire, too.
Survivor
Everyday,I think about dying.
About disease, starvation,
violence, terrorism, war,
the end of the world.
It helps
keep my mind off things.
Twenty Additional Question to ask When Teaching Poetry (3 in a 3 part series)
1.Look beyond the main noun-verb skeleton of the poem—at the explanations, additions, and ornaments. Ask what purpose do these serve?2.Look at the words. Why are they given in this order? What would change if the order was different?
3.Look at the grammar, sentence structure, phrases and clauses. Why these kinds; why here? What would happen if some were changed or missing, or the order reversed?
4.Look at the rhythms. What are they doing? What would happen if they did something different?
5.Look at the literary devices—kind and number and order. Why this way? What would happen if this poem was missing, for example, the second metaphor?
6.What is implied by the “white space” between this sentence or these stanzas? Why here?
7.Is the organization linear (start-to-finish), radial (a cluster or phrases around a center), or recursive (doubling back on itself)?
Identity and Magnanimity
Magnanimity enchants. Here is my article on Gasparo Contarini, a Venetian 17th-century hero of magnanimity. And here is a quotation by Josef Pieper from a book I've been reading called Living the Truth. Get it here. Who are we and why are we here? Pieper weighs in:Grace and Truth
Here is a grand read by Fr. Paul Murray called "The Word into Words: Grace and Truth in St. Bernard of Clairvaux." Fr. Murray is a Dominican Friar of the Irish Province and teaches at the Pontifical Faculty of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the Angelicum, in Rome. He preached retreats for Mother Teresa and her sisters. He worked with death-row inmates in Africa and Ireland. He has written extensively on Jonah, T. S. Eliot, and Dominican spirituality. This paper deals with mercy and self-knowledge in a wonderfully lucid way. Here is the article and here is a recording of his lecture on the same talk.I had Fr. Murray as a professor for three classes. He reads poetry like no other and his lectures are finely crafted syntheses of theology, philosophy, and literature. Listening to this will be well worth it.
Twenty More Questions to Ask When Teaching Poetry
Again taken from Helen Vendler’s Poems, Poets, Poetry (Boston: Bedford Books, 1997).1. We could classify poems by content. What kind of content genre does this poem fall into? How does knowing this unpack the poem?
Another Project for Ancient History
This interesting website is devoted to slings and slinging. There are articles, videos, and how-to demonstrations. Apparently, King Tut had a sling in his tomb; apparently slingers were an important part of ancient armies. And who forgets David and Goliath?At any rate, making one according to the directions here or here might be a worth-while project for class, if the students are pretty developed in their motor skills. Trying to use it, however, is very popular with students of all ages.
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