When I thought I was going to stop homeschooling, several years ago,
I heard myself mourning, moaning, "But I don't want to stop doing nature study!"
I had spent years arranging my kids' daily schedules per Victorian homeschool writer Charlotte Mason's insistence that
education be not
a series of otherwise meaningless activities with the sole purpose of imparting information,
but rather
"a discipline, an atmosphere, a life"
that strengthens the will
and cultivates interior beauty.
She started with the radical notion that children must be respected as real persons
and their time respected too
so she advocated regular time in the wilderness,
keeping a journal,
viewing fine art,
because these things are good for us as human beings
not just as children.
Every activity that was also educational needed to have inherent value besides its’ educational value.
I was a grown-up unschooled kid, still skeptical of the silliness we subject kids to in the name of education
but also not willing to unschool my own kids, wanting to show them the wheel I was given to re-invent
and this in-between -- parent-directed but not schooly in the slightest-- fit the bill.
Charlotte Mason's educational philosophy got me thinking about
what kind of people I wanted my children to be,
what kind of daily life I was directing.
She had me choosing activities that would create habits and routines to carry the children through adulthood,
choosing activities that were worth doing for their own sakes as well as for their immediate instructional value,
thinking about which things were worth doing because they make a good, meaningful, ideal daily life.
Thinking about which things were worth doing because they make a good, meaningful, ideal daily life.
Contemplating the end of my homeschooling career,
a few years ago, when I thought illness would take away my ability to care for children all day long,
I knew that I could carry on doing nature study no matter whether I had kids in school or not,
but what nature study represented to me was
intentional choosing of meaningful daily activities
and
choosing the small daily things that would add up to a big, good, cumulatively meaningful life.
My purposeful approach to daily life was entirely set in the framework of homeschool lesson planning.
Lesson planning, of all things, as a way of choosing and implementing an intentional life!
How silly. And weird.
But true... Charlotte Mason taught that children are persons and thus we should respect their time. Not far from that was the awareness that I am a real person
thus I should respect my time.
And maybe anyone with a vocation
or even a long lasting occupation
thinks of all things in job related terms.
But who else besides teachers design time
and design it to be deeply purposeful?
Liturgists, wedding planners, some forward-thinking managers,
efficiency specialists, choreographers maybe, monks.
Yes!
Monks!
A devotional life.
An intentional life.
Monk life.
So I began to think about the designing of my days, my curriculum of meaning, as my Monk Life project.
To save my dignity, I asked myself not, “what things would I do if I was arranging my whole life as carefully as I arrange my kids' homeschool program?" (although that was entirely what I was doing)
but asked myself,
“What things would I do with my time if I was arranging my daily life so every act was a devotional, religious act, full of meaning and purpose, something really truly worth doing with my limited time in this life?”
I think that may be one of those big, lifelong questions no one ever really answers.
And I must should here acknowledge also that I am so privileged -- spoiled, rich, indulged, surrounded by abundance -- compared to all of the human beings who have lived on Earth at any time, because I get to set goals of my own choosing and fulfill them. It wows me, this power to direct my life. I do not deserve it any more than the girl who died crying and snotty in a medieval village or the boy who depleted all of his days running between spindles in a Victorian factory. I live in the best time and place there has been for opportunities to intentionally craft a meaningful life, and this gratitude makes me boggle with shame at the notion that I have in years past wasted it.
Initially, I knocked out a list of Important Things to Do, my “monk list,” over the course of a weekend, and it has changed quite a lot since. I’ll post about that next.
I heard myself mourning, moaning, "But I don't want to stop doing nature study!"
I had spent years arranging my kids' daily schedules per Victorian homeschool writer Charlotte Mason's insistence that
education be not
a series of otherwise meaningless activities with the sole purpose of imparting information,
but rather
"a discipline, an atmosphere, a life"
that strengthens the will
and cultivates interior beauty.
She started with the radical notion that children must be respected as real persons
and their time respected too
so she advocated regular time in the wilderness,
keeping a journal,
viewing fine art,
because these things are good for us as human beings
not just as children.
Every activity that was also educational needed to have inherent value besides its’ educational value.
I was a grown-up unschooled kid, still skeptical of the silliness we subject kids to in the name of education
but also not willing to unschool my own kids, wanting to show them the wheel I was given to re-invent
and this in-between -- parent-directed but not schooly in the slightest-- fit the bill.
Charlotte Mason's educational philosophy got me thinking about
what kind of people I wanted my children to be,
what kind of daily life I was directing.
She had me choosing activities that would create habits and routines to carry the children through adulthood,
choosing activities that were worth doing for their own sakes as well as for their immediate instructional value,
thinking about which things were worth doing because they make a good, meaningful, ideal daily life.
Thinking about which things were worth doing because they make a good, meaningful, ideal daily life.
Contemplating the end of my homeschooling career,
a few years ago, when I thought illness would take away my ability to care for children all day long,
I knew that I could carry on doing nature study no matter whether I had kids in school or not,
but what nature study represented to me was
intentional choosing of meaningful daily activities
and
choosing the small daily things that would add up to a big, good, cumulatively meaningful life.
My purposeful approach to daily life was entirely set in the framework of homeschool lesson planning.
Lesson planning, of all things, as a way of choosing and implementing an intentional life!
How silly. And weird.
But true... Charlotte Mason taught that children are persons and thus we should respect their time. Not far from that was the awareness that I am a real person
thus I should respect my time.
And maybe anyone with a vocation
or even a long lasting occupation
thinks of all things in job related terms.
But who else besides teachers design time
and design it to be deeply purposeful?
Liturgists, wedding planners, some forward-thinking managers,
efficiency specialists, choreographers maybe, monks.
Yes!
Monks!
A devotional life.
An intentional life.
Monk life.
So I began to think about the designing of my days, my curriculum of meaning, as my Monk Life project.
To save my dignity, I asked myself not, “what things would I do if I was arranging my whole life as carefully as I arrange my kids' homeschool program?" (although that was entirely what I was doing)
but asked myself,
“What things would I do with my time if I was arranging my daily life so every act was a devotional, religious act, full of meaning and purpose, something really truly worth doing with my limited time in this life?”
I think that may be one of those big, lifelong questions no one ever really answers.
And I must should here acknowledge also that I am so privileged -- spoiled, rich, indulged, surrounded by abundance -- compared to all of the human beings who have lived on Earth at any time, because I get to set goals of my own choosing and fulfill them. It wows me, this power to direct my life. I do not deserve it any more than the girl who died crying and snotty in a medieval village or the boy who depleted all of his days running between spindles in a Victorian factory. I live in the best time and place there has been for opportunities to intentionally craft a meaningful life, and this gratitude makes me boggle with shame at the notion that I have in years past wasted it.
Initially, I knocked out a list of Important Things to Do, my “monk list,” over the course of a weekend, and it has changed quite a lot since. I’ll post about that next.