Episode 288: Finding Balance for Our Student
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Welcome back to A Delectable Education, the podcast that spreads the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method. I am Emily Kaiser, and I'm here with Liz Cattrall and Nicole Williams. In Charlotte Mason's short synopsis, that is what sometimes is referred to as the 20 principles, she tells us in point nine that our children are naturally adapted to do the work of their education. And then later in point 10, she tells us that they must do it.

or what they receive is of little value to them. But we often prevent them from doing the work of their education by reading to them when they can read some of it or all of it alone.

or not challenging them with work that's appropriate to their level because we combine them with younger students or maybe older students where they're not doing the work that is appropriate to them. We talked about this in a past episode, but there was something I wanted to share with you guys today about this. This is why I do not suggest combining students that are in forms of

two and three in science or even one and two, but this example I want to share is about students in two and three. You can combine them within their forms or later, like a form three and up students, you can do some combining. But

These students, form two and three, have completely different time allotments for science and ways to use that time. For example, a form two student will spend one day a week reading nature lore and then do formal science two days a week for 20 or 30 minutes. While form three students will do biology one day a week and then do another science topic three days a week for 40 minutes. Which is about three times longer. Yeah, that's a considerable difference. And it wouldn't be fair to

either your Form 2 student to move them up or your Form 3 student to move them down. Even though my Form 2 student might think they really love science and would be happy to do it, a 40-minute lesson is far beyond his capacity right now. Right, right. And even if you have, like, that Form 3 student is maybe a struggling reader and you think, well, I've got to work with my Form 2 students, so maybe we'll just all do that. There are ways to work around the reading issue or...

You know, if you have some other kind of learning challenge. But they do need to be in their own form level. Yeah. Another way that we do too much for our student is we actually underestimate their ability. We...

despise them as charlotte mason would say and i think a common area that we hear this in is not giving our form 1a second and third graders pilgrims progress we have to do the little pilgrims progress because quite frankly we as adults have a very difficult time reading mr bunyan's language how in the world can our second and third graders understand it

So we're not challenging them at all because we think they can't handle it. Right. So really all learning theory tells us that if you're given something difficult, your brain will expand. Which is what is called learning. We're inhibiting them from future growth by not doing that. But also Charlotte Mason knew what she was talking about and she had a laboratory of thousands of students and they all did this. And I will attest,

This book is the book that every single one of my children in Form 1A have clamored for. Oh, good. It's Pilgrim's Progress. Are you kidding me? Would I have ever thought that? This is where we have to trust Cheryl Mason, right? Yeah. That she really did know what she was talking about as far as developmentally appropriate material. Have I ever shared on the podcast about the time I read Pilgrim's Progress to my girls in front of my husband? No.

And I told them, watch this. They're like little trick puns. Oh, no. And I read the thing. And then when we were done, I asked him, did you get any of that? He said, nope. I said, just a second. They'll tell you. And they narrated the whole thing. And he was like, what just happened? I know. They do it every time. They tell me what happened. And I think part of it is also we're thinking like,

traditional educationalists were thinking they need to understand every single thing in here. They need to get all of the spiritual connections and all of the allegory. No, you know, they need the one idea from the book that we're all on a journey. I remember what they want. Yes, exactly. My, my third grader, because he read the second or he read the second part first because he was combined with an older student. So he hadn't read Christian's Journey until he was in third grade. And he told me,

I wonder if I've started my journey yet. Oh, bless his heart. And I'm like, that is exactly why we read these books. Yes. I think too, we think like, I don't know, we're corrupted somehow. Like our, really, I think our brains are a little bit like,

What do you say when you like shrivel up, you know? Yeah. And they're not like that. They can be challenged. Our sponge is very dehydrated and theirs is not. And theirs is not. They...

They can be challenged by work like this and get things out of it. And like you said, it doesn't have to be like, you know, this college level. Although I'm telling you, we have lots of conversations about those things too. And they bring it up even when we're not reading it, you know. And you guys always hear me talk about how we're teaching our children what they're one day going to love. But we have this idea that we need to let them pursue what's of interest to them and

instead of sticking to the feast that Charlotte Mason thought was important and which we, over the years, have come to appreciate more and more is absolutely appropriate for them. Yeah, and I just think about, well, in all of these points, we're looking at the child in front of us, which is good and right, Charlotte Mason told us to do, but we're looking at them as a finite person at this moment in time and we're forgetting about

that they're a person who's going to live on for a long time. And if, if we're training them to only pursue interest and we're feeding into that, or I don't like this book. Okay, well, I'll get a different one for you. You know, Lord knows there's many living books. There are, but are they going to have that mentality? Yeah.

In every future aspect of their life. Even if they, I mean, I hope my children go into fields of work that they enjoy and get a lot out of. But I mean, all of us are doing that. We love this. But there are many days I don't want to do the work that I have to do. Yeah. And I'm not even working for a boss telling me what to do.

No boss but myself. So there's that aspect of it. But there is another aspect of it. And that is the overlap of everything that they should be learning through the feast. And just recently... How the feast is integrated. Exactly. Just recently, I was thinking about science and how I hear from people all the time, my child wants to be a... Astrophysicist. Right. Marine biologist. Exactly. And...

So they want to just pursue that entirely for their science. Well, Charlotte Mason had a different idea. And when we think about the fields of science, I mean, you think about like biochemistry, there's an overlap chemistry itself is,

starts with the cell, which includes quantum mechanics, which is physics. Astrophysics is considered part of the earth sciences, but it comes at the end of the physics book. You know, all of these things overlap. And what kind of gift are we going to give our children when we give them this broad feast of

they have learned robustly about a lot of things and whatever they choose to do. It's like Charlotte Mason's example was Sir Walter Scott in the carriage talking, sitting next to the man and they've got a long journey ahead and he kept trying all the things like, well, can we talk about this? Can we talk about this? Can we talk about this? And Sir Walter Scott could until he said, and we were miserable until I happened upon the topic of bent leather. Yeah.

And then we proceeded merrily, but only because Sir Walter Scott was a person who was interested in a wide variety, right? If the guy who was interested in bent leather was sitting next to the man who was only interested in cattle breeding or something like that, they would not, well, maybe they would have had a little overlap there. I'm not thinking where leather is coming from. Or think of a physical perspective, you know, an athlete who's very well-rounded and can do all kinds of physical things, right?

What we're doing here is giving our children, you know, in your case, Nicole, what you're talking about is agility in the sciences. And every good scientist knows a lot about all the other fields. Right, right. At least until they're, you know, post-doctorate work. Right. And there's time for that later. Let's not do that now.

So what we're talking about in this season is the balance. And what we've been sharing is really us doing too much for them or holding them back from the hard work. We're too involved. We're overstepping our boundary as a teacher. Right. We're not giving them the independence to do the work for themselves and learn how to learn and all of that. But there is another side to this where things get rough. And I'm embarrassed to say that

I have one true regret in my whole raising of my kids, not just even in homeschooling. Only one? That's amazing. Well, I mean, obviously I have lots of regrets, but this one is really the one where I have a lot of shame about it, where I messed up. I feel very bad about it.

And it's the idea of pushing too hard. It is when you are not looking at that child in front of you and meeting them where they are at.

But they're so behind in math or reading. And we're fearful. We have things to prove to all the people. But they're going to have to grow up and support themselves someday. And they still can't do their multiplication tables. A real fear for me. I mean, a true, honest to God fear. How will this child in front of me be able to support himself? And just so y'all know. He is. He's 25 at the airing of this. And he is supporting himself now.

Very well. So no problems. But honestly, so much fear. And so I pushed and pushed. And we do this. We push. We push that child to know something they can't even know at this moment. You know, they're not even equipped.

To know that we need to meet them where they are and challenge them. Yeah. And I think this also hits all of us who like to neatly check off boxes that everything that we had planned was done. We can push them through. I mean,

I think I fall into this a whole lot. I remember the day that I was just trying to finish our last exam so we could be done for the year. And my four at the time, the one was safely in a play yard. Otherwise, I would have intervened because he would have been in danger. But the other three under school age kids had all of these pony beads spread literally throughout the whole

home and my daughter then camps right and I'm going it's okay Emily you will pick it up after it'll be fine just ignore it we'll finish this and then my daughter I think Laura was really telling me like you need to intervene because she comes in screaming she stuck a beat up her nose and

and couldn't get it out, and we had to go to the urgent care. And we did not finish the exam that day. But I think that we try to push through, push through, push through. OK. And sometimes it's fine. Yeah, I could have picked up that mess, but actually it was not a safe environment. So that night, did you have severe anxiety that he might not make it through college because he didn't finish that one exam question? No, but there are-- there have been other times that-- I'm teasing you. --that is very close to accurate. Yeah.

We also sometimes just sort of attach ourselves to a curriculum plan that is unreasonable in the first place. And dare not vary in any way because it will get us in trouble. May, June comes around, July. Yes, we do school through the summer. We do school for...

Five, six hours a day. Yeah. Yes. Second grade. There are a lot of people that do that. And then right through the summer, right through the breaks that we're supposed to have. We need to I think that push might be an accurate word here, but we kind of need to push through the terms.

Like we need to work hard during the terms. We need to be consistent. We need to consistently work hard is what she said in every lesson. Yes. Every lesson, every day during those, that term, that block. And then it's over. She says we should not be feeling behind. There should be no homework and we should not feel any rushing. We should not be made to feel in arrears like we're behind. No guilt. Or make our children feel that too. Right. Right. And then we have a break.

And that is the time they get to pursue their interests and do their things. And learning specialists over and over affirm that those breaks are just as vital for our learning as the work itself. Right, right. I would add that you could fall on the other extreme since we keep talking about balance and how it's so easy to get off on one or the other is...

Oh, well, we did that book. And then you find out they've done like three pages or a chapter and a half. Or they read the geography reader and don't do the math questions. Or they read the science book and do the experiments. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So we really do need to guard the balance here. So it's not just, you know, within the year and the work set before us, but we also have a fear that we won't get to the finish line in time and have them be ready for college. Which is such a joke. Yeah.

Or because we haven't done enough, we need to have two added on extra years of high school so they will get what they need. Yeah. Because I think sometimes that's also unnecessary. I was certainly not prepared for college and I managed to get through it. But I

really think they will be prepared for college. If we do this thing right, if we truly are giving them the feast and we're, we are allowing them to do the work of their education, they are going to be prepared. Yeah. This time, this kind of goes back to what we were talking about two episodes ago in number 286, but just our,

the balance in our own expectations of ourselves but we also our expectations of our students i think we have a very irrational expectation of what it takes to get into college yeah especially colleges are struggling for enrollment y'all they're gonna take your kids to come and also i have many friends who are professors at the college level who have been like i'm appalled at

at the caliber of work that their students are doing. Like cannot string a sentence together to save their life, you know? Cannot read and expect all these accommodations. So really, if you are doing the feast, if your children are narrating and writing their narrations, they are prepared for college. I went in college right now, and she mentions like –

"Oh, we have this project due next week." And she tells me what it is and I'm just thinking, "Are you serious? "This is what you're using your time to do?" I told her the other day, she said, "Why do I have to do this?" And I said, "I think it's because companies just wanna know "you got put through your paces and you can do it."

They'll train you what you need to know later. I mean, obviously, there are some majors where you learn things you need for your career. Yes, for sure. And what mom was saying earlier, like, I wasn't prepared for college and I made it through. I was absolutely not prepared for college, particularly the writing aspect. I didn't know. I just didn't have a lot of experience writing research papers. And that was most of what I had to do for college. Wow.

I didn't teach her, by the way. She was at public school. Also, I wasn't used to having like, you need to have this book done by whatever instead of read these pages tonight, read these pages tonight. But that my unpreparedness did not hinder me. I had to learn those lessons and that's where I learned them. Right. Yeah. And our kids who have lived on a timetable and work hard in the time they have, they're going to already be way ahead of what.

most freshmen come to school prepared to do just because they have learned how to be independent and put your full attention to something and get it done. Yeah. And speaking of college professors, we're actually going to have a session at our upcoming ADE at Home, which will be the first full weekend of February the 7th and 8th and air through May 7th. A college professor talking to parents about what he wishes they knew about college.

sending their children to college and what they need to know. Yeah. I,

I think that'll really be eye-opening for a lot of people. I also, I want you moms to remember that we can't make our kids be something that they're not. Mm-hmm. That doesn't mean they're not going to be something interesting and great and successful. It's not our job to choose. But they're actually going to be more than we ever dreamed. I think that's true, Liz. I'm really amazed. I'm actually really excited to see the homeschool graduates that are part of my life. Mm-hmm.

and their creativity with what they do become their interest. I had no idea what I wanted to be in my early twenties, late teens. I was like, I had no idea. I literally was just flailing. And I watched all of the kids that I've homeschooled just beeline in a direction and be really interested and pursue something and have kind of a confidence

about them not a pride and just a confidence that well of course in directions that you never would have imagined for them you wouldn't have chosen I think that's the point it's not our role to do that right right

That is why Charlotte Mason made sure that we would spread a wide feast because she said, we don't know what idea is going to be the captain idea of their life. She actually said this about Latin lessons and whenever anybody says, why do I have to give my kids Latin? I'm like, well, she said, you know, and it is a captain idea so far for one of my kids. He loves Latin. It excites him. He gets gleeful when he hears some word we use in English and he goes, oh, you know,

Even if he doesn't become a Latin scholar, I don't know what is brewing for him. And that is not my role. I remember my dad, very resistant in high school when I wanted to pursue a career in a more creative field. I wanted to go into interior design. I ended up becoming a studio art major in college. But he thought I was too smart for those. And I needed to be a doctor or a lawyer. Which she could totally have done. I would not have enjoyed it.

And I'm not really doing a ton with my art. I do have an art curriculum and I get to do that with my kids and it's fulfilling, but I definitely wasn't destined for the other things. And I could never have envisioned where I ended up. Like I just spend walking through one

open door or following one nudge of the Lord at a time and just trying to be faithful at that. So it's just not our job. And, you know, we need to stop, I think, as parents taking a measure of our worth based on what our children are doing. That is a bondage that you are not to be

under. Absolutely. So I started this by talking about some of the things that are in Charlotte Mason's short synopsis. And in point 11, she assures us the normal child has powers of mind which fit him to deal with all knowledge proper to him. And therefore, she gives us these ideas of what we should be providing the

And one of them is a full and generous curriculum. We've kind of mentioned this throughout, the importance of this full, robust curriculum that Charlotte Mason put before the kids. That does not mean chock full, guys. The curriculum has space. It's very intentional in what it provides the children at each level. Such a good point. And it's balanced these intense morning classes.

Right.

she meant for them to learn deeply about as many things as possible she explained therefore we do not feel it is lawful in the early days of a child's life to select certain subjects for his education to the exclusion of others but we endeavor that he shall have relations of pleasure and intimacy established with as many as possible of the interests

proper to him, not learning a slight or incomplete smattering about this or that subject, but plunging into vital knowledge with a great field before him, which in all his life he will not be able to explore. That's such a fun thought. So when we're looking at this issue of us holding them back or pushing too hard, we really want to look at that child before us and

And maybe just even have kind of a glow about them. Like, what will you become? What will your life look like? And it takes faith. It really does. And then putting this feast before him. And you make such a good point that it isn't full in the amount. It's just full in the topics, the richness of it. Yes. And to give him the kind of knowledge that,

Like Charlotte Mason talks over and over about our minds only absorb ideas that are presented in literary form or that were made, wired to take in knowledge most readily when it's in literary form. And so we need to make sure the subjects that we're giving them are not busy work but are full of vital knowledge. And our children recognize that.

subconsciously that that is a respect for them. They do. They feel respected and seen and honored. Yeah. She also said the knowledge needs to be fitting. Right. For the child. And I have always appreciated the fact that she saw the whole child's development and knew when was the appropriate time for this child

idea or subject or book. And sometimes that's not waiting for the child to ask for it or to, she kind of anticipated that. They don't know when they're ready. She just, it's that slow and steady progress and just inviting them into a deeper level. Like you think about the end of the Narnia books, you know, further up and further in, and then we're always going a little and giving them, inviting them to come and taste and see. Right. So how does that look when we have a child

that we're trying to find the balance, say, in their math lessons. And, you know, we're doing okay. We're moving through it. How do we know when to up the challenge more?

Or, you know, obviously when we're over-challenging, we can see like, okay, we need to scale this back a little. But I hear so many times. I mean, multiple families tell us that their third or fourth grader is still in level one Charlotte Mason math. Or eighth grade and they're doing third grade. And some of that can be – well, and I will –

just make this very clear. These are children with no apparent learning disabilities in, or in this, that is a whole different conversation. I'm not talking to those. Of course we need to meet our child where they are. But I think we have, we're falling off the horse on the side of expecting mastery when they're just experimenting and making, building those relationships and the mastery is coming in as they are able to work with it more. So, um,

It is a fine line. I've asked this question of my friend and math teacher, Emily Alkateeb, who does Beauty and Truth Math. I remember asking it at least three times in my son's first two years of school. How do I know if it's okay to move on? And she's like, you'll know. If our kid is hitting a wall and they are becoming frustrated because they don't have a previous step, we just back up and we –

stay there until they do. And we just keep trying it. Or it might not even be backing up. It may be looking at that problem or that math concept or operation from a different angle. You know, some children have a really hard time in arithmetic. But as soon as they add that practical geometry and it's applied differently and they're actually seeing this has a bearing with angles and shapes, those more concrete ideas, they're

Their arithmetic will improve. We see this over and over again. And sometimes the freshness. So it does take wisdom. And I think we just have to really pray that the Holy Spirit would give us those eyes to see if we need to pull back, do a different way, get some help, or keep going. Yeah. To just find that appropriate challenging level for a student. And that's what we're really looking for here. That's when they're moving forward.

And they're learning to do the work, the hard work of their education, but not being over-challenged. Right. And I think we find it when there is actual joy and delight in the lesson because you do get excited about a little bit hard. And I've seen this. I'm going to keep going back to the math, but it was such a challenge for my oldest son in the early days. And math was a constant, tearful thing. Now he comes upon something that's a little challenging. And what used to send him immediately into tears is,

huh I don't know like I can tell and so he has a bet and I think when we we want a little bit more excitement and challenge in an application so I think sometimes kids are I started to say troublesome but you know restless cranky just opposing us in school a lot of times because they're bored they need the next level of work you know especially boys I feel like are like that yeah

You also there's some there's an idea that I'm picking up from what you're saying to just a minute ago that you could have stuck with that. He's not good in math. Oh, yeah, you could have that could have just been a label that created limits, you know, and instead, you know,

Now you're looking at a whole different picture. So just keeping your mind open to that. I think it somewhat, I want to say it goes without saying that we do, you know, we talk about the feast. It has to be feast worthy stuff, obviously, too. If we are going to not hold them back, not do too much for them, guard this balance, we have to engage their minds.

And we cannot do that unless we are giving them books with living ideas. It has to be living books all the time. And then Charlotte Mason has a lot to tell us about how to have this posture that keeps us in the middle. And that, I think, can be summed up in two words, masterly inactivity, right? We are in authority. We're in a position of authority. We are the master of our children while they are in our home.

But we are to be watchful and inactive as much as possible. Those beads spread across the floor. I was being watchful until she left the room. And so I was not doing my due diligence there. I should have intervened before that happened.

But that means I never do what they are capable of doing as far as their school lessons. I'm not writing their papers. I can't tell you. My husband teaches high school Charlotte Mason, predominantly Charlotte Mason students, homeschooled students. And he has had every year.

he can tell there are the parents who are doing too much of the work. And the kid, when they're doing an in-class writing assignment, the caliber is quite different than a finished paper that they turn in. And I think about friends I had in college that clearly their parents had been very involved in their writing process, particularly in how –

they still relied on them too much from thousands of miles away as they were writing papers. And I just want more for my kids that they're going to be standing on their own feet by that time.

I think they need to. So we need to be making sure that we're not overstepping that and doing too much at even whatever level they're at. Yeah. You opened up in this episode saying that they must do the work of their own education. And I think that that needs to be on a plaque, tattooed on our arm, written on a sticky note on our mirror. So we need to be thinking about that a lot more. They need to do the work of their own education. Will you go to an orchestra performance? Yes.

And the music is beautiful and all that. There is a conductor there who's setting the tempo, who is. Yes, it would be quite chaotic if he wasn't, right? Right. But the work of learning the instrument, of being able to perform that music is by each individual. True. That's a beautiful example. Yeah. Mm hmm.

This work we're doing is truly preparing them for their future. We have to keep that in the forefront of our mind. And Charlotte Mason warned that our deadly error is to suppose that we are his showman to the universe. And not only so, but that there is no community at all between child and universe, unless such as we choose to set up. So I hope as you reflect on this episode, it,

you keep in mind that there is a bigger picture at play here. There is a future for your child and an adult life that all of this, this balance that we're trying to find right in their lessons is preparing them for. And speaking of universe, we want to draw your attention to our season long sponsor. We're so grateful for Anthony at Living Book Press.

He is amazing. Not only the volume of books that he has printed in a very relatively short time, he went over backwards to get a more recent book republished that was used by another curriculum as well as your own middle school students.

physics guide you had written this whole guide the book was in print and then it all of a sudden went out of print and you were scrambling because your guides are worthless without the book that they need to read and so he brought The Secrets of the Universe by Paul Fleischer back into print which takes a considerable amount of effort he contacted the author himself who made all

some revisions to his original books and now they are widely available for us again so and something that us um charlotte mason devotees really appreciate are really great images and he went back to the original images and got the rights to use those in the book and they're beautiful

So we hope you will join us in expressing our appreciation for Anthony and his hard work by going to visit his site, livingbookpress.com. Would you like to go deeper in your knowledge of the Charlotte Mason method? A Delectable Education has resources available for your continuing education and growth as a Charlotte Mason teacher.

We have a variety of full-length video workshops as well as video demonstration lessons featuring real families using the Charlotte Mason Method that you can watch at your convenience. Visit www.adelectableeducation.com and click on the Teacher Training Videos under the Teacher Tools tab. Thank you for joining us today on the podcast. We hope our discussion serves to equip and encourage you as we seek to explain the Charlotte Mason Method.

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