I
think I first learned about this book on Brandy's blog about five years
ago, but Kansas Dad has been encouraging me to read it for at least a
year. Until recently, I knew I didn't have the mental energy to tackle a
book like this. During the day there were too many kids and crises and
after they went to bed I couldn't think coherently about anything. Then,
when I finally did begin to read it, I got horribly bogged down in the
second chapter, which is a lot of philosophy. A lot of philosophy. I
married a philosopher turned theologian, but I am a microbiologist by
training, so I was a bit overwhelmed.
I am every so thankful I persevered through that second chapter, because it was all fascinating after that!
If you haven't read the book, you're probably wondering, "What is poetic knowledge?" (If not, you might want to skip this whole post.)
First
of all, poetic knowledge is not necessarily a knowledge of poetry but
rather a poetic (a sensory-emotional) experience of reality…Poetic
experience indicates an encounter with reality that is nonanalytical,
something that is perceived as beautiful, awful (awefull), spontaneous,
mysterious. It is true that poetic experience has that same surprise of
metaphor found in poetry, but also found in common experience, when the
mind, through the senses and emotions, sees in delight, or even in
terror, the significance of what is really there. (pp. 5-6)
Poetic knowledge, then, is not something that
can be experienced through a book or through a lecture. It is an
experience in which a person sees, hears, touches or feels
something. I was still thinking about
Poetic Knowledge as I was reading
Schoolhouse in the Parlor
aloud to the children and was struck by this passage in which Bonnie
and Debby have been awakened in the middle of the night by their father
who takes them outside to see the
aurora borealis:
Time
and again, over and over, over and over, the vast sky was filled with
the rolling and folding of the yellow-green curtains of light, tipped
with fieriest red fire, as if a mighty wind were blowing. And below, on
the still, snowbound earth stood the Fairchilds, wrapped in blankets,
watching, watching. (p. 61)
No one was telling the
children what the phenomenon was called, what caused it, how long it had
been studied, what the technical terms would be...They were all simply
experiencing it,
together. For the expert, or the person studying to become a
specialist, there's plenty of time to learn all the technicalities, but
this first moment is one in which to wonder, to cultivate the curiosity
and desire to learn more.
I thought it was interesting when Mr. Taylor spoke of
wonder and
fear
because the first response of both Bonnie and Debby is one of profound
fear. One of them even wonders if the world is ending. (She is quickly
soothed by her parents.)
Aristotle...recognizes
that there is a poetic impulse to know in all men, an experience he
calls “wonder,” that initiates all learning…First of all, wonder is an
emotion of fear, a fear produced by the consciousness of ignorance,
which, because it is man’s natural desire (good) to know, such ignorance
is perceived as a kind of abrupt intrusion on the normal state of
things, that is, as a kind of evil. Something is seen, heard, felt, and
we do not know what it is, or why it is now present to us….the
traditional idea of wonder expressed by Aristotle operates within the
ordinary, simply “things as they are.” (pp. 24-25; from the infamous
second chapter)
I haven't read much philosophy, but I have heard quite a lot about
wonder in my course for Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. In
The Religious Potential of the Child, of which I have only read bits and pieces, Sofia Cavalletti said:
The nature of wonder is not a force that pushes us passively from
behind; it is situated ahead of us and attracts us with irresistible force
toward the object of our astonishment; it makes us advance toward it, filled
with enchantment. (p. 138)
If I understand any of this correctly, Mr. Taylor
and Ms. Cavalletti are both speaking of those moments in our life when
we feel our hearts rise within us, when our stomachs drop, when we are
startled out of our complacency by amazement and awe. For Bonnie and
Debby, it was while shivering in the cold, watching ripples of light in
the sky. It could just as easily be stroking the cheek of a newborn
child, painting with finger paints, watching a summer thunderstorm,
gazing at sunlight reflected on water, seeing a sublime work of art,
digging in the dirt, building bridges with sticks and stones across a
stream, or stomping in rain puddles.
Poetic
experience leading to poetic knowledge is concerned “with bringing men
into engagement with what is true. What is important is engagement with
reality, not simply the discerning of reality." (p. 73, Mr. Taylor is
quoting Andrew Louth from Discerning the Mystery.)
For me as a homeschooling mother, this quote means that we must allow our children to interact with
real things.
We cannot merely sit inside and read about everything (as much as I
might prefer that, and certainly even though it would be easier). We
must go outside to learn about nature. We must gaze at the sky to learn
about astronomy. We must build with sticks and stones and dirt and sand
to learn about engineering. Even more, we must
begin with the
real things. We must begin with looking at a real tree before children
can possibly begin to learn what the parts of a tree are, what the
purpose of a tree is, how a tree interacts with its environment, and how
a tree is important to our environment. This is not because they could
not learn the words to explain those other things, but because they
would not be able to place that knowledge in a context with the real
world.
Applying this to more traditional education (all
those age-segregated classrooms), children should begin studying
ecology and biology by going outside and experiencing nature. I think
most teachers would welcome that sort of education, but it gets
complicated when there are principals and consent forms and bells
ringing for the next class and (yes, I'm going to say it)
end-of-the-year standardized tests that will be asking only for the
vocabulary and not whether children really know what a tree is.
I
don't think Mr. Taylor is right about everything. For example, he seems
to encourage teaching a child to read merely by reading to him or her.
Eventually, the child will learn simply by imitating. I am obviously
supportive of reading aloud to children from a variety of books in
nearly every kind of situation (skimming through the blog for about five
minutes will tell you that much), and I believe choosing the right kind
of books is essential to encouraging a love of reading, but I think
it's naive to think every child could learn to read with nothing else,
let alone learn to read well.
Overall, though, I loved
this book. When visiting Boston earlier this year, I discussed home
education and public education with two dear friends. I remember talking
about the non-profit organization for which I worked, a non-profit that
supports career academies in public high schools. This is a good
organization working to make the lives of students better, to guide them
toward good jobs and maybe even college. I knew that and believed they
did good work but I also
knew I would not want that education for
my own children. I wanted something more, something that, perhaps, is
outrageously complicated and practically impossible on the grand scale
of public education in our country. The education described in this book
is the kind of education I want for them all -- one in which the person
of the child is honored and taught to become whoever they are meant to
be, without regard for future earnings or the names of the parts of a
flower -- and the defense of this kind of education (in the book) is
much better than anything I could articulate myself at the time.