What is it Ernest T. Bass says in the old Andy Griffith Show? "I don't chew my food twice," he says, meaning, "I said it, and I'm not going to say it again. "Not chewing my food twice" is what Principle 15 is all about, except it's reading.
Again, let's revisit our Principles as they build to Number 15. We began at "children are born persons," developing our understanding of what, exactly, this means, through Principles 2, 3, and 4, all of which impel us – though this wasn't Charlotte Mason's conscious intent – to consider Catholic teaching on personhood and what that means for our relations with the persons who are our children.
Principles 5, 6, 7, and 8, meanwhile, invite us into a sacramental view of learning, in which we see that the three "instruments of education" involve not just, or even primarily, books and lessons, but the child's whole world and all his movements in it, by all of which he is always gaining growth and knowledge.
In Principles 9, 10, 11, and 12, we turn to a consideration of the mind itself – what Thomas calls "the intellectual light," given to every human person by God for the purpose of finding God, the Source of all light. Just as the first four Principles led us to contemplate our response to our children as persons, these four Principles lead us to contemplate our response as educators, specifically, to the reality of that "intellectual light." How do we help direct it toward the Source of all light, but through all the marvelous things of the world which also spring from that Source and show forth something of its light? Therefore, the "full and generous curriculum," filled with "things and thoughts," to help the light of the mind fill itself with more and more light, by which it may ultimately see and recognize God in His glory.
Principle 13 turns from the establishment of this idea to the actual how of its accomplishment: the devising of a syllabus that offers "much knowledge," with variety of "diet," and in the most excellent literary forms available for the child's level. In other words, Step 1 of how to do this is to devise an excellent booklist. Fortunately that step can be done for you, if you opt to follow a curriculum like Mater Amabilis. Or somebody like me can help you design a custom booklist to meet your family's particular needs. Either way, Principle 13 sets out parameters for determining what that booklist might include, and what you might reject (twaddly books, infotainment, anything that fails the "literary excellence" test, anything that treats either the subject or the child as intrinsically uninteresting or incapable of being interested).
Let's say you have your booklist in place. Principle 14 tells you what to do with it. People are always asking about Charlotte Mason lesson plans, but really, the plan is very simple and very standard, more or less across the curriculum (math, foreign language, some geography, and some science stand out as exceptions):
The lesson plan is READ AND NARRATE.
The lesson plan is READ AND NARRATE.
Read the living book.
Tell back what you read or heard in this reading, with as much detail as possible.
That is truly all.
Principle 15 clarifies the lesson plan a little more.
A single reading is insisted on, because children have naturally great power of attention; but this force is dissipated by the re-reading of passages, and also, by questioning, summarising. and the like. (source)
The rule of thumb: DON'T REREAD. Don't re-do.
If this sounds kind of like no second chances, as if there weren't any grace for mistakes, consider:
You are always accepting more or less anything the child has to say in a narration as valid. This in itself is affirming. You're telling your child, "Hey, you have a mind. Your insights matter. My job is not to sit here and tell you you're wrong."
That sounds like offering a lot of grace, all the time.
Meanwhile, your aim is to nurture the habit of full attention. As Charlotte Mason says, "This force [i.e. the force of attention] is dissipated" when the child knows you're not expecting him to pay attention, and will read it over again just in case he wasn't listening the first time. Do that regularly, and the habit he will have built is the habit of not listening the first time.
Does this mean it's wrong to reread things, and your child should never reread something he's already read, ever?
No, it does not. Free-reading books are meant to be read at the child's own pace, not narrated, and read again and again as the child desires. Books do speak to us in different ways at different stages, and it would be an impoverishment to think, "Well, once and done. No more King Lear. No more Snow Queen. No more [your heart book here]."
She is speaking specifically about books narrated for lessons. And what she is emphasizing is that "getting" what the reading was about is less important than whether or not the child has heard or read with all his powers of attention. That is the lesson that's going to bear fruit, not the fact that the Magna Carta was signed in the year AD 1215, in the reign of King John.
All of this, of course, is a process. A child just beginning school and embarking on a lifetime of narrations is not going to narrate well and fully on the first day, or the second, or regularly well for a long time. There will probably always be some things that that child narrates better than others. But not to worry. If you get a really incomplete narration, you can
*ask a "what about" question
*say, "I wonder why X did Y . . . "
*offer your own narration, as in "what really stood out to me was that they had to make King John sign the Magna Carta . . . "
*say, "Thank you for your narration," close the book, and try again tomorrow with a shorter episode, and possibly a little prep in which you recap what you read today and maybe give the child a name or two to listen for as you read aloud.
But don't read the selection over, to hammer it in. Just don't. All the child will really learn, in terms of larger, valuable lessons that he will continue to apply to all his learning, is that he really doesn't have to listen the first time, because you're going to do the work for him by rereading it.
One exercise that makes a good backdrop for narration is picture study. You might consider starting your week with it. Ask everyone to look at the image you're showing them very carefully for one minute – tell them to use their full attention and notice as much as they can. Then turn the picture away from them and have them tell you what they saw.
When you turn to your readings, you can remind them of your picture-study exercise and say, "Now we're going to do the same thing, but with our ears. Use your ears just as hard as you used your eyes to look at that picture, and hear as much as you can, so that you can tell me what you heard at the end."
This practice really does bear huge fruit. Older students who might be doing close readings of texts for essays, and reading them over and over again to see what they see in them, still benefit from narrating those texts first. They benefit from the longstanding habit of bringing their attention to bear on what they read – as a daily habit, this obviates the need to cram for exams at the last minute. I ask high-school students to narrate lectures, for example: listen hard, rather than scribbling down everything as it's happening, because you'll miss a lot that way.
Again, this isn't a rule against ever rereading anything. It is a principle oriented toward a learning habit that pays dividends over many years, the more consistently it is practiced.