Consider This by Karen Glass
Because of this book I can narrate Mason’s first five points comfortably which is unique. For the Children’s Sake either doesn’t work that way or didn’t stick as well.
To wit —
Children are born persons. They are complete and whole at birth, not a tabula rasa or the fruit of utter wickedness - their blood does not make them good or hopeless.
We have authority and they must obey, but it can not be through manipulation of fear or love, or amplifying one characteristic to the detriment of others. So we have the world they live in, their habits, and the feast of ideas.
I like this one more than Know and Tell which is application and example oriented. Handbook was in the name.
On the whole the Consider This is enlarging my reading list and I’m having a hard time accepting that I won’t read every book I want to before I die. It makes me want to cry, probably because I am pregnant.
But that brings me to
Boece by Boethius; Translated by Chaucer
I’ve mentioned before, Chaucer is in the family. I’m trying to read him on the reg to keep the wisdom of my forefathers at the forefront.
It is in Old English, but I have technically been exposed to Boethius before (and Chaucer), so while slow going it is good to think from a Roman and OE perspective in one go.
Boethius has wept, been followed down the dark paths of death by the Muses. Then a lady of great size and stature, with a young face and an old countenance showed up. Now that I have read The Princess and the Goblin, it is like meeting Irene’s huge great grandmother in an Ostrogoth prison cell. Keeping my eyes peeled for pigeons.
The good lady runs off the many faced muses like flock of pestering mermaids, telling Boethius he needs nourishing of reason.
She ruffles her dress embroidered with Pi in the hem and Tau at the top border separated by seven degrees with ladders intertwined. She bears small books and a scepter.
Then she settles at the farthest corner of his mattress and begins to speak his own sorrows.
All I remember from the first time around is Lady Wisdom, the impending rack, and betrayal - and wrangling loose papers because we didn’t have copies or were just reading excerpts. The dear adventures of my early Omnibus days.
I’m insinuating that he sees the Nine Muses as natural enemies of or an impediment to Wisdom or the Seven Liberal Arts (guessing at the symbols on her dress). That would be Platonic - the search for the unmediated form - instead of seeing the muses as the means by which we can draw near the higher ideals. He loved PlatoTime will tell.
Lewis’s Signature Classics: Mere Christianity
I don’t think I have read a physical copy and while I know I have listened to it a couple times I don’t remember more than the Lord, Liar or Lunatic argument.
He just talked about Freud and gave him way too much credit for knowing what he was talking about in his own sphere. But he did call him for talking out of turn about language.
Jane Austen: Mansfield Park
Have you ever read this as a commentary on education? All the slights to Fanny center on it, all the differences determined between her and her cousins come down to it, and there is significant time spent on it.
For Maria and Julia : The kind of education chosen philosophically is applied without parental tuning to the virtue of the child. They know the kings and queen,planets, and dates. They are trained in courtesy to the point of refined artlessness and their Aunt Norris convinces them they are faultless. There father provides, but takes no interest.
Fanny enters the scene knowing how to work, how to read, and with the humble conviction of her own shortcomings. Edmund directs her free reading, she takes history with the others, and she improves herself. Edmund, in a sign of the rector he would become, notes Fanny’s need for intentional kindness.
It is really a lovely set up and I like Jane more for it. Seeing the whole thing as an educational commentary turns Edmund from a surrogate father to a teacher in the old style. In fact he probably was treating Fanny as he had been treated and done first at Eaton then at Oxford. The model of both schools had - to my understanding - a degree of students directing younger students - everyone studying under another towards the goal of becoming lettered.
Further Up and Further In.
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