FOREIGN LANGUAGE AND "THE RICHES": ART AND MUSIC

J.M.W. Turner, The Fighting Temeraire
This is going to be kind of an omnibus post dealing with what might be called "the rest" of a Charlotte Mason education, by which I don't mean "stuff you really don't have to do." What I do mean is that these aren't "subjects," per se, as much as they are elements to weave into your family culture, though you obviously will often use school time to touch on them. 

 Foreign Language: 

 The primary aim in developing a second language (and then, if possible, a third one) has to do, as Charlotte Mason puts it, with "The Knowledge of Man."  In Volume 6, she prefaces her discussion of the acquisition of a foreign language (in the case of her PNEU schools, French), with a meditation on how an English-speaking child acquires a working knowledge of his native language: 

**English is rather a logical study dealing with sentences and the positions that words occupy in them than with words and what they are in their own right. Therefore it is better that a child should begin with a sentence and not with the parts of speech, that is, he should learn a little of what is called analysis before he learns to parse. It requires some effort of abstraction for a child to perceive that when we speak, we speak about something and say something about it; and he has learned nearly all the grammar that is necessary when he knows that when we speak we use sentences and that a sentence makes sense; that we can put words together so as to make utter nonsense, as,––"Tom immediately candlestick uproarious nevertheless"––a string of words making perfect nonsense and therefore not a sentence. If we use words in such a way as to make sense we get a sentence; "John goes to school" is a sentence. Every sentence has two parts, (1), the thing we speak of, and (2), what we say about it. We speak of John, we say about him that he goes to school. At this stage the children require many exercises in finding out the first and second parts of simple sentences. When they are quite familiar with the fact that the first part of a sentence is what we speak about, they may get a name for it, subject, which will be made simpler to them if they know the word subject means that which we talk about. For instance, we may say, the subject of conversation was parsley, which is another way of saying the thing we were speaking about was parsley. To sum up such a lesson, the class should learn,––Words put together so as to make sense form a sentence. A sentence has two parts, that which we speak of and what we say about it. That which we speak of is the subject. (pp 209-210)**


**The selected foreign language should be presented orally at first, until the child knows an abundant vocabulary (including verbs and idioms). Seeing the words in written form while learning them is confusing to many children, since the phonics of another language will differ so much from English and create a hindrance. Charlotte Mason even said in volume 1, "The child should never see French words in print until he has learned to say them with as much ease and readiness as if they were English."**

Charlotte Mason began with French, partly because it's a beautiful and enjoyable language, and young children will be better at developing an ear for its pronunciations than older children are likely to be. I began learning French at age three myself, very much by this sort of method, though I didn't attend a PNEU school, and I can attest to this fact! It is a beautiful and enjoyable language, and far easier to learn to pronounce when you're very young. I suspect, though, that one other reason why Charlotte Mason chose French as a first language was the close historical relationship between England and France, and the close geographical proximity of those two countries. An American family might very well start with Spanish for much the same set of reasons, and this would be completely valid. 

A Catholic family might also, for valid reasons, wish to begin with Latin. I think that even here – though the world is certainly full of structural-grammar-heavy programs for very young children – Charlotte Mason's principles for language learning still apply. The grammar of Latin is, in my view, too abstract for a first or second grader, even as much English grammar is really too abstract: the child can certainly memorize and parrot things, but this doesn't seem to me like actual meaningful knowledge. With any foreign language, including but not limited to Latin, learning familiar prayers, prayers which the child already knows in English – the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Glory Be, the Table Blessing – is a good place to begin acquiring vocabulary and a sense of how Latin (or another language's) sentences work.

My own favorite introductory Latin program is Cambridge University Press's Minimus. One afternoon in our second year living in Cambridge, when our oldest daughter was six, my husband happened to see this book in the window of the Cambridge University Press Bookshop and, on impulse, bought it and brought it home. The previous summer, we had made an excursion to Bath, where the same daughter and I had wrung all our money's worth out of our tickets to the Roman Baths by going through the whole exhibit five or six time in the course of the afternoon. This was the beginning of a great deal of Roman-Britain geekery in our family, so Minimus, whose story line follows the adventures of a military family – real people, mind you, whom we know about through archaeological finds – living in the fortress town of Vindolanda, not far from Hadrian's Wall in the north of Britain, was greeted with great pleasure and much enjoyed. 

The book introduces a storyline, chapter to chapter, in graphic-novel/comic book form, with basic vocabulary and extremely basic grammar. There are historical and cultural notes as well, and some classic myths. There's a sequel, Minimus Secundus, followed by the Cambridge Latin series, which also employs the "reading-first" approach to teaching the language, first popularized by Hans Orberg and his Lingua Latina text (taught in live classes by Dwane Thomas of Visual Latin, also a good program for older students). 

This basic progression is ideal for any language. To focus first on acquiring the language by ear, through hearing it spoken or read, and acquiring vocabulary in context, provides an important backdrop for understanding the language's grammar. The primary aim, again, is to learn to express ideas in that language and to communicate with another culture: by the acquisition of that language, to increase one's "Knowledge of Man." 


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Ambleside Online's artist rotations, which I have used and liked very much. 

Charlotte Mason's explication of "picture-talk" is followed by a discussion of drawing lessons, modeling in clay, music instruction, and handiwork, with a meditation on the child's innate artistic sensibility.  All these elements are part of the nourishment for which the child's integrated intellect – encompassing his soul, his imagination, and his physical senses – continually hungers. As always, the objective of an entire education is to feed that hunger as completely as possible.

Practically speaking, I think that these "riches" in a Charlotte Mason education, as they're often (rightly) called, can happen in any number of ways as part of a family's culture. Ideally they'd be built into a school schedule (Mater Amabilis offers several sample schedules in various levels), but for a family with preschoolers, toddlers, and babies – and thus a compelling reason not to plan for long stretches of uninterrupted school time – OR for a family just starting out and wanting to establish a simple core schedule to build on later, many of these educational elements can either be outsourced (art lessons as well as music lessons; we have outsourced all of this in our family) or woven into the fabric of the home environment. Composer study can consist of classical music by a given composer playing in the background, and identified periodically with that composer's name. Picture study can be as simple as hanging an image where everyone can't help seeing it all the time (the fridge door may be one workable choice), and talking about it casually, though trying to include Charlotte Mason's questions and observations in that conversation. For us, handicrafts often happened in Scouts if they were going to happen at all, though we did go through potholder looms (I still have those potholders, too!), friendship bracelets, paracord bracelets, soap carving and other pocket-knife use, clay modeling, sewing, washing-machine repair, metal-roof painting, interior wall painting . . . those are things that spring to mind, anyway, as endeavors that happened either because somebody got a kit for their birthday, or something broke in the house and had to be fixed.

In other words, it doesn't all have to be a scheduled lesson for which you have a fixed time slot, though that can certainly be a way to make sure something happens. But there's a lot of merit to viewing children as able people, reasonably for their age, and teaching them to do useful things with their hands as you are doing those things yourself.

A few books we have liked for various of these "riches" include

Titles by Lucy Micklethwait:

I Spy: An Alphabet in Art
I Spy: Shapes in Art
I Spy: Colors in Art

and also her Child's First Book of Art

 Usborne's Introduction to Art (and also various How-to-Draw books which one of my daughters enjoyed at one stage)

 Betty Edwards' Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

Various Klutz Press books and kits for crafts. I can't even remember all the ones we've had, but they have included origami, paper-airplane-making, hair braiding, friendship bracelets . . .

We have also, at various times, made jewelry and other beaded object, learned to crochet – both my daughters learned to knit from my mother, but I still haven't! – made candles and soap and beauty/facial masks and hair treatments and . . . once you have pre-teen and teenaged girls, there's a certain kind of cottage industry that really explodes.

And to a great extent, especially if you can tolerate some mess (with the caveat that people who make the mess at least have to help clean it up, since that's an important life lesson!), you can strew materials and books and invite children to gravitate to them, rather than conducting a formal adult-led lesson. Some parents excel at group art or craft lessons; some children respond well to them. Others . . . do not. But if you, like me, have a family that does NOT do well with structured parent-led art or craft lessons, take heart: these things can (and should) still happen as part of your child's education. There just are ways to figure out how not to have to lead them, if that doesn't work for you.

Music

Things we have done for music over the years: 

*played classical playlists as ongoing atmospheric composer study
*outsourced instrumental lessons: violin, piano, guitar
*community youth orchestra
*sung a lot, especially hymns, chants, sacred rounds, and some folksongs
*listened to music of all kinds, especially on long road trips
*taken children to the symphony and musical theater
*enrolled children in a parish treble choir program
*taken voice lessons and participated in our parish choir, as part of our adult self-care and enrichment


When Jesus wept, the falling tear
In mercy flowed beyond all bounds. 
When Jesus groaned, a trembling fear
Seized all the guilty world around. 

Other favorite rounds have included "Dona Nobis Pacem"   (words)  and the Tallis Canon (words)


(Protestant perspective, but applicable for Catholics, and virtually all of these hymns are fine for Catholics to sing, even if you wouldn't sing them in the context of the Mass)



For an integrated Catholic Latin/music experience, I highly recommend Memoria Press's Lingua Angelica songbook and CD, for learning traditional chants plus Mass parts for the beautiful, traditional Missa de Angelis. You can buy the components of this program separately, or as a whole translation course (which we owned and dipped into some, but never really did in a schematic way – we just used the living daylights out of the CD and songbook). 

You may also wish to acquire a traditional Catholic hymnal. My personal favorite is the Saint Michael Hymnal, which our parish uses, but the Adoremus Hymnal is also good. The Saint Gregory Hymnal is VERY traditional, but contains a great number of less-readily-singable selections, some of which our parish choir uses as anthems. Corpus Christi Watershed's new Brebeuf Hymnal looks very good as well, and their site is full of useful resources, including many audio files for chant settings. 

Meanwhile, I have used Ambleside Online's composer study , folk song, and hymn rotations, because there they are, done for me, accessible at a click. 

As a Catholic, I regard the hymns in these rotations in two ways: 

*As simply part of an entire Christian sacred tradition, which of course belongs to us, because anything good, beautiful, and true is our birthright as Catholics. These are things that flow from the graces of baptism, and baptism is the one indisputable thing we share with other Christians. I have no problem singing a hymn which arises from those graces – and in fact, many of our traditional hymnals, used in orthodox parishes, include much of this shared sacred tradition. A tradition of singable sacred music in our own language is a gift to us. 

*As part of our general cultural literacy. There are hymns that are part of a traditional American or English-speaking public language, and an educated person should have some knowledge of that language. 

We generally sang traditional Latin chants as part of our family devotions: not as lessons, but as part of our active prayer as a Catholic family.