Cultivating an Intellectual Culture
From the Alveary Team
How can we ensure that education is an “atmosphere, a discipline, and a life” during the winter’s long dark evenings? Both group and independent activities are at our disposal.
Miss Mason exhorts us: “Intellectual culture...the young people must get at home, or nowhere. By this sort of culture I mean, not so much the getting of knowledge, nor even getting the power to learn, but the cultivation of the power to appreciate, to enjoy, whatever is just, true, and beautiful in thought and expression.” We offer our children this power through many means.
First is the family read-aloud. Mason writes, “There are few stronger family bonds than this habit of devoting an occasional hour to reading aloud, on winter evenings, at any rate. The practice is pleasant at the time, and pleasant in the retrospect, it gives occasion for much bright talk, merry and wise, and quickens family affection by means of intellectual sympathy.”
Second is the enjoyment of poetry together. Again from Mason: “Poetry takes first rank as a means of intellectual culture...and, certainly, a little poetry should form part of the evening lecture.” She recommends reading the works of one poet for a year, such as Wordsworth, Keats, Coleridge, and Browning. Younger children may enjoy certain works of Christina Rossetti, Robert Louis Stevenson, or Emily Dickinson.
Next are the delights in the works of one artist and one composer throughout the winter months.
Of the former, Mason writes: “They should take one artist after another, term by term, and study quietly some half-dozen reproductions of his work in the course of the term... We cannot measure the influence that one or another artist has upon the child’s sense of beauty, upon his power of seeing, as in a picture, the common sights of life; he is enriched more than we know in having really looked at even a single picture.”
And of the latter, “Use every chance you get of hearing music {I do not mean only tunes, though these are very nice}, and ask whose music has been played, and, by degrees, you will find out that one composer has one sort of thing to say to you, and another speaks other things; these messages of the musicians cannot be put into words, so there is no way of hearing them if we do not train our ear to listen.”
Finally, we have letter-writing, drawing, notebooking, and handicrafts like knitting, whittling, beading, and sewing, among countless others. Keep materials orderly and accessible to invite your children to engage in one of these activities, perhaps while listening to a piece by the chosen composer. Thus, you create a home culture and habits that will foster a lifetime of self-education.
Notes
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