Beauty in Education

 According to Socrates, "The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful."

Sorting through the last of our papers and books to finalize our 2024-25 school year has reminded me of the vision I began our year with ~  Help my children see how God is anchored and woven into each of their subjects, and that God is the center of all knowledge.

I am currently reading Beauty for Truth's Sake, by Stratford Caldecott on the re-enchantment of education, and I'm quickly finding out, as lofty as my aim this past school year was, we barely scratched the surface.

Sure, we would discuss God's character as it is revealed in the mathematical concepts we studied, but to train their sense of beauty, nourish their imagination, and orient their hearts to (in Josef Piper's words) "that simple vision where truth offers itself like a landscape to the eye," is rapidly becoming my new vision for next school year. 

This was our second year dabbling in more of a classical style education, (compared to the Abeka books my kids used in the younger grades) and I'm humbly recognizing I have a lot to learn on this leap from a traditional curriculum to a classical one.

Is it a bottomless well? Or is this gnawing inside me true? ... That by the time I wrap my head around it and finally grasp it, my kids will all be graduated and I won't need the knowledge anymore.

Either way, I believe it is a worthwhile and exciting pursuit.

When my children were younger, Charlotte Mason's books and Booker T. Washington's autobiography shaped my homeschool ideals. They gave me a vision for incorporating nature and family meals, along with strong daily practices such as chores and hygiene into our routine. But now that my kids are getting older, I'm finding that (to use the apostle Paul's analogy of maturing from milk to solid food) I need to, "be open to the presence of meaning where the modern mind sees none... Developing an awareness of the totality of education through art, literature, music, mathematics, physics, biology, and history. Each subject having its own autonomy, but at its heart it connects with every other." - Stratford Caldecott

Reading this book has helped explain why my recent visit to Paris felt so rich and meaningful. The art, music, and math present in the cathedrals there were soul-stirring in a way that is absent in America. Somehow, the christians who built these churches a thousand years ago understood how to use beauty to refine the human spirit, and to inspire an ascent of the mind and heart toward God.

While discussing this with my older children, (and apologizing to them over an upbringing so starved of such beauty) one pointed out that we should be careful not to take this too far. Admiration of art and architecture, he cautioned, could lead to worship of the building, not of God, putting you at dangerous risk for idolatry.

(Rich discussions with my teenagers are the crowning moments in homeschooling. As we wrestle with ideas, I get to watch them become who God intends for them to be.)

In the meantime, I will continue this insightful book, pondering how I can train my children's character to reach for beauty as they seek to know God more... And remembering another homeschool mom's wise words who recently looked at me and profoundly said, "The point of all this is to marvel."

"As our own eyes reveal to us every day, the universe is beautiful. It has majesty, order, and loveliness; three types of beauty that scientists love to discover in the world." - Stratford Caldecott

~ Courtney 

The Last One

 It started with a $71 curriculum order and a leap of faith when my oldest, Roman, was due to begin first grade.

"Just take it one year at a time," my husband wisely counseled.

And so, with nothing more than a few good books and a kitchen table, we began our homeschool journey.

I fell in love with the care-free lifestyle quickly, almost daily pinching myself that this could be real life: No early busses to catch? No PTO meetings to attend? 

Our schedule is our very own?... to do with as we like?!....

As Booker T. Washington observed after the Emancipation and recorded in his autobiography, "Freedom was a more serious thing than they had expected to find it." 

I felt the same.

But we soon settled into a comfortable routine, where every morning consisted of chores, hygiene, and formal lessons, and every afternoon was some combination of outdoor play, baking or crafting, with the occasional play date or doctor's appointment thrown in.

Over the years I learned to conquer diagramming sentences, making equivalent fractions, and solving for x right along side my growing kids.

I learned to stick with the same curriculum year after year to build familiarity and mastery, so the next kid in line could benefit from a confident mother.

Each year bled into the next until homeschooling began to feel like the easiest, most natural thing in the world to us.

Then, in the blink of an eye, we came to this morning...

 I helped Elsa finish her final lesson in her 5th grade arithmetic book... the last one... and I realized this season of our family's homeschooling is shifting. My baby's done with 5th grade? That means we are officially through the elementary years! I now have all middle schoolers and high schoolers.

Uncertain if I should feel sad, sentimental, or proud of myself, I rummaged through the attic bins looking for room to pack away this year's books, and almost as Divine Acknowledgment, I uncovered Roman's first grade curriculum. The books that started it all. I hadn't seen them in years. 

With them in the bin was a completely filled notebook. I had written out this daily and weekly plan on the first page...

And the following pages, revealing his handwriting and mine, were made up of little assignments and quizzes I had created for him.

I thumbed through the pages carefully, pondering how my younger self hand wrote all these assignments... I was learning how to homeschool, I thought, nostalgically.

Never believing I was cut out for the job, but trusting in the Lord fully, I stuck to the work and now find our elementary years behind us.

(Nola's final illuminated letter in her cursive book...

 If you zoom you may see she creatively turned it into the phrase, The last one...)

"Being confident in this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." Philippians 1:6

The other kids are officially done with their school year, too. Homeschooling in the upper grades has proven to be an enormous blessing, but I will have to write about that another time.

💐

~ Courtney