Toward a Philosophy of Education - CM

I have been following along as Cindy at Ordo Amoris has read through Toward a Philosophy of Education by CM.  I started the summer strong but haven't read the actual text for the past few chapters - but this one caught my attention.  It is entitled A Liberal Education in Secondary Schools and outlines some of the key points of her philosophy as it pertains to older students.  I agree with Cindy that this is a very rich chapter.

This is the key point that I need to remember at this point:

Here we get the mind forces which must act continuously in education,––attention, assimilation, narration, retention, reproduction. But what of reason, judgment, imagination, discrimination, all the corps of 'faculties' in whose behoof the teacher has hitherto laboured? These take care of themselves and play as naturally and involuntarily upon the knowledge we receive with attention and fix by narration as do the digestive organs upon duly masticated food-stuff for the body. 

She also says that the key question to ask students is - What happened next?  I used this today with my almost 6 year old and he did a great job remembering (yes, I realize that is early for narration - but he often just tells me what happened last chapter before we read).  I also think that reading once is essential. We develop a habit of inattention when students expect to listen or do things over and over again.  Listening once with attention and then narrating truly does allow them to internalize the material and teaches them to pay attention the first time.  A skill that will serve them well all of their days.  


CM had a very high estimation of a child's ability and set up her schools to call that out of them.  I hope that I can hold out a similar vision of ability to my kids.  


PS - To learn more about how to secure a child's Attention (which is the first chain in the link of learning) check out this informative post.