The weekly “little of this, little of that” feature here at Like Mother, Like Daughter!
Very rarely does one come across just the thing. As a would-be classical homeschooler, I always found the issue was putting into practice the wonderful ideas and thoughts I had about education.
Oh, it's all very well to know that Aristotle thought we must keep the whole in mind when examining the parts, and C. S. Lewis made the case in Abolition of Man that the urgency is real, but I certainly was not equipped to develop a science curriculum for my children that would observe this dictum, and all that was available was yet another baking-soda-and-vinegar-style workbook.
Just shoot me now.
But Christopher Blum and John Cuddeback, two friends who each unite in his person the vision for education and the ability to express it, wrote just the thing, Nature's Beautiful Order, a biology curriculum.
I found it in time to do it with Bridget, and it came to mind again when I was discussing, as one does, what to do for science with a friend.
I'm not getting paid for this post — I'm just passing along an important, though modest, resource that will help you get closer to the goal of passing along to your children the understanding that knowledge isn't a matter of packing in the discrete facts but of seeing the ends of things, their essence, and their causes.
There will be time later to delve into, for instance, the workings of the cell. But I can attest for myself (and I did do college-level biology) and for my children, that the ancients, though lacking in technology, were correct in saying that we won't grasp the meaning of these particulars if we don't see what they are for.
Don't make the pedagogical mistake of starting with the cell (as virtually every biology book today does).
This meaning is what this curriculum aims at. “In eighteen lessons, students are led through the animal kingdom from the invertebrate animals through the five great vertebrate classes to the culmination of the natural order, a consideration of man as the knowing animal and as a steward of Creation.”
The selections are from “writers including John James Audubon and Jean-Henri Fabre, [who] were some of the greatest observational biologists of all time. They remain useful guides, for the advances in biological science that have happened since they wrote cannot invalidate our first-hand experience of organisms as unified living beings.”
Thus, you will also need an encyclopedia and some visual references, but you will have the all-important overview. This curriculum will not be easy! Your student (and you) will be challenged.
Although it comes with a workbook and a teacher's guide, it will not be the sort of thing that you just hand over and let the child check off boxes. To get the most out of it, a patient reading together will be the best path.
The workbooks help if you see them as facilitating your conversation; I would not recommend them as a force-feeding sort of exercise.
To get the idea of what I am talking about — where you read and discuss a book (or essays, as in this curriculum) together, see my post about Faraday's Chemical History of A Candle.
I think it could liberate your home school to approach things like this: reading together, so that the child can see that the parents take this seriously and that we too would like to delve into the meaning behind phenomena.
This curriculum could be good for the very precocious sixth grader who demonstrates a nerdy interest in science — I do think such a child needs to know that real knowledge isn't about accumulating facts but in seeing their relationship and causes.
It could be good for the reluctant ninth grader who feels unmoved by science as it is presented — this child needs to connect with the actual material world around him. The motivated high school student could do a lot of the work on his own, however, and learn a lot about how to use other resources to tackle difficult texts.
Both the authors are excellent writers and steeped in classical education. Memoria Press has done a great service in keeping this curriculum current and offering it to homeschoolers everywhere.
By the way, the publisher tells me that the text itself goes with either the first or second editions of the workbooks (student and teacher). But the workbooks only work within their edition, because the second one is updated with quizzes and tests.
On to our links!
- Changing the wording of the Lord's Prayer has been in the news. Our friend Mark Langley on the reason the ancient translations say what they do.
- Jeffery Tucker on why parish music is a joke. “What’s completely amazing about the entire OCP family is how lacking it is in self-awareness. The poor quality of contemporary Catholic music is a cultural cliché that turns up in late-night shows, Woody Allen movies, and Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion. It is legendary among real musicians. Ask an organist what he thinks about today’s Catholic music, and you will receive a raised eyebrow or a knowing laugh.”
From the archives:
If we are going to be thinking about next year's curriculum:
- Again, the Faraday candle resources.
As the children get older, family culture:
While you’re sharing our links with your friends, why not tell them about Like Mother, Like Daughter too!
We’d like to be clear that, when we direct you to a site via one of our links, we’re not necessarily endorsing the whole site, but rather just referring you to the individual post in question (unless we state otherwise).
Valerie says
Thank you so much for this! I’m more of a physics/ math person, so this is a life saver. I danced around biology this year, and frankly skipped it for the most part( we did nature observations and drawing, that counts right?). Instead of cell learning and what not, this time around, we dove into ‘the chemical history of a candle’ ( another thanks to you for this one too).
Adding this curriculum to my summer reading while the younger ones are busy with their mud pies! 😉
Carol Kennedy says
Perfect timing for us–I have really struggled to give my kids science when I am not very well versed and not very interested, and they are not very interested and not very well versed. 😉 This might be the ticket for us! Would you say reading aloud the text and following whatever rabbit trails arise would be valuable without the student text/teacher edition? Or would say you need the whole shebang (assuming you do the workbook together)?
Leila says
Carol, the price is so reasonable — I would just get the whole set. (Bridget did hers online when it was available from another publisher, hence my conditional tense). I would not necessarily require all the workbook to be written out, but I think it would help guide your discussions when that is how you are working, and offer work that your student can do on his own if that’s what you decide to do. (This would depend on the age and abilities of the student.)
I would think of it as insurance. You might not use it, but it would be there to guide you if you got a bit overwhelmed or began to lose your focus!
Emily says
Oh, what a lovely science series that would be! I don’t have kids but I want it for myself, LOL.
And parish music…..sigh. Shoot me now.
Sophia says
Thank you for the science rec, I’ll definitely check it out! Looks like just the thing we might need next year.
I did want to comment on the Christian Feminist article. I think it’s an important topic and one I’m trying to come to terms with personally…Can I as a faithful, Catholic, pro-life woman consider myself Feminist? Can I use a word that has been so perverted and misused and distorted? Does it cause scandal because while I may be defining “feminist” in a specific way, the rest of the world thinks it means something entirely different? So many thoughts about this. But I feel that the article doesn’t do a great job of giving credit to those very faithful Catholic women who are trying to bring to the world the feminine genius which in so much of the history has been overlooked. It’s this just this line that irked me, to be honest, it feels like a straw-man argument…”In other words, self-proclaimed “Christian” feminists study Scripture not to discover God’s loving self-revelation, but rather to incite women by highlighting allegedly unjust sexual disparity on the sacred page, in order to foment a chthonic revolt against the traditional doctrines of the Faith.”
I consider myself a Catholic, feminist, but I study Scripture to discover God’s love for me and His Church. I don’t use it to incite women, to anything other than loving Christ and God the Father more.
I guess I just would love for Feminism to be defined correctly. There is nothing in that belief that should be contradictory to our true Catholic faith. Unfortunately the most vocal feminists get that wrong and mostly get feminism wrong too.
Just my two cents!
I really need a St. Gregory Pocket to work out these ideas with other women. 😉
Leila says
Sophia, any woman alive today is going to have a hard time stepping away from feminism.
I think the article does address your question. It has to do with the anthropology that is found in Scripture, which simply doesn’t support the idea of a feminist equality between the sexes — although it does support the idea of equal dignity, complementarity, and hierarchy. But the point is that feminism’s equality between the sexes is the opposite of those qualities. (Not to mention the insult to women of the past and THEIR feminine genius!) Thus, the feminist who is searching Scriptures AS a feminist is indeed on a mission to obliterate the anthropology that pervades them — that is, the revealed will of God as to the nature of the sexes.
You say: “I guess I just would love for Feminism to be defined correctly.” Well, feminists specializes in changing the definition and in not being pinned down. But the bottom line is always to reject complementarity and to erase hierarchy. And that is the answer to this that you also say:
“There is nothing in that belief that should be contradictory to our true Catholic faith.” Yes, the premise is contradictory to the faith, and it is Scripture that reveals that to us. In any case, why this desire to cling to an ideology that has resulted in nothing but death and misery?
Leila says
But Sophia, I hope you do find or found a St. Greg’s Pocket — discussing this with other women would be great! I have so many posts about this too — lots of scope for a great conversation!
KC says
I think it boils down to how you define the term(s); in this case, the expedient of defining the term as Always Wrong and Unbiblical is simplifying matters – and that’s easier to do because often lots of definitely-unbiblical ideas (men and women being exactly the same in all ways, for instance; or, alternatively, feminine superiority in all ways over men) get bundled into various definitions of the term. (although the adoption of not-actually-in-the-Bible things by some Christian groups or subcultures – like women never being supposed to do work for money – make more potential areas of feminism unacceptable to some people than they are to me)(I still think that, even if someone is of the opinion that in an ideal world women would all be supported by men, everyone should recognize that we live in a world with living Ruth and Naomi examples and we should, societally, make things safer for them rather than just leaving them to the wolves so as to more fully incentivize “proper” family structures, but maybe that’s unacceptable-feminist of me.)
If you use the definition “wishing to bring attention to and alter societal factors that un-Christian-ly and negatively affect women either exclusively or in a disproportionate manner” (as per reducing the cultural acceptability [or, depending on the country, the legal permissibility] of sexual abuse, or being against female genital mutilation, or being opposed to the acceptance of prostitution, or being against the trend of making progressively-younger girls’ clothes “sexy”, which are all things I’ve heard friends identify as feminist issues), I don’t really see how someone would object to the term, other than that is has been used for a ton of other things as well and therefore is potentially more or less useless/damaging (as I’ve heard people argue for a number of terms, including “Christian”). Or one could argue that all the “good” feminist issues are simply Christian issues and therefore we don’t need any terms to indicate that category of things, although I’ve never heard anyone argue that and *also* have a recognition of these things as specific problems that we should be working to repair rather than things that are perhaps regrettable, but ignorable and unimportant.
*But* use of the term is really complicated by the number of things it’s used to mean for various people. That might be slightly ameliorated by adding an adjective, perhaps – being a Complementarian Feminist, for instance? And of course there are various people who say you can’t use the term unless you agree with this or that (as some people say you can’t call yourself Catholic – or Christian – unless you agree with them on all their particular pet issues), but we don’t *have* an official language council in this country, so fundamentally, they’re probably wrong.
(I would love to be in a Pocket to discuss that, in other words! 🙂 )
Leila says
Instead of us arguing these points, all of which require clarification, let’s just say this — the world wants us to be feminist. That alone should warn the Christian. Even your questions and thoughts demonstrate this one thing, that the world doesn’t seem able to tell us what feminism is — is that on purpose?
I suggest stepping away entirely for a little while, simply because there is no reason to subscribe to or attempt to find excuses for ANY ideology, much less one that has resulted in death and destruction (i.e. abortion, divorce, and mutilation). I hope you find (or start!) your Pocket!
KC says
Thank you for your calm response!
I have found the secular world to be less uniformly supportive of feminism than of, say, recycling (I’ve known plenty of atheist anti-feminists). I agree that it’s good to be especially careful as we examine what our current culture is pushing, since we’re more likely to have blind spots and knee-jerk “but of course that’s the Way Things Are or The Way Things Ought To Be” sorts of reactions (which is an advantage of broad across-the-centuries and across-multiple-cultures reading – not fully curative, but helpful as a corrective). That said, it does not logically follow that everything that the world endorses is wrong (vitamin C: it’s anti-scorbutic even if Extraordinarily Bad People agree it’s anti-scorbutic)..
I think the main linguistic difficulty with the label is that while generally people mean “I am against the ways in which women are being victims of injustice in this culture/etc.” – what they think those things are varies to a degree that makes coherence difficult, because it is a big tangled hideous mess of a culture and humans are complex and what people think is fair varies enormously. I can’t think of any positive label that *doesn’t* have any disagreement as to what’s in and what’s out, or what’s necessary vs. unnecessary (Christian; Catholic; Republican; environmentalist; conservative, liberal). But certainly, caution is often useful with the term (as with most of those other terms, oy).
Leila says
Sorry, I’m not going to go there. I am indeed trying to remain calm but I don’t see you owning the negatives. Feminists use this ploy all the time. It’s a form of gaslighting, to use a popular (and apt) term. No, I am not going to agree that all the terms are so difficult to pin down. Just one — feminism.
Again, perhaps it’s time to question whether feminism is socially acceptable as you seem to think it is, or as non-ubiquitous — in other words, can an ideology that overwhelmingly and increasingly loudly stands for and celebrates the unfettered killing of the unborn in the womb and the destruction of the family *and* the mutilation of the body, and has indeed achieved these things to the degree that we now witness the carnage all around us, have “a positive value”.
KC says
I’m familiar with the use of “gaslighting” from Wikipedia: “Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, making them question their own memory, perception, and sanity.” – I’m certainly not trying to make you question your memory, perception, or sanity! I *am* trying to challenge the logic of the argument you propose, however, because I think the logic has holes in it and doesn’t get all the way there (saying “I think there is a gap here in your logical sequence” is not, I think, challenging someone’s sanity, just their intellectual thoroughness in a particular instance?). I was also trying to provide information from my (admittedly limited) experience of humans who identified as Christian and also feminist (who are against the objectification of women; against sexual assault; etc.) to indicate why I think this is less cut and dry than Feminist = Always Anti-Christian.
That the label of feminism has been widely used by proponents of abortion is certainly the case (and, as I suggested in a previous comment, it is possible that the term has been used enough by some groups as to eliminate its usefulness for those who don’t support abortion et al; there are some terms that have gotten loaded enough, especially in some contexts, that it’s not possible to use them without first clarifying the definition); I thought what I said indicated that I agreed that some/many people who have said they were in favor of feminism have been in favor of a lot of negative things, but apparently not explicitly enough for your comfort?
Anyway, yep, I don’t think we’re going to magically agree on this (probably because we have extremely different personal experiences of people using the term). But I really was not trying to make you feel crazy or personally attacked, and am sorry that seemed to be a result!
KC says
(and I’ll look forward to future weeks, when I can hear about sourdough adventures and nod along in agreement about excellent books and learn about odd corners of history that I’d never heard of before – and be occasionally challenged to think carefully about some of the things I’ve taken for granted. 🙂 )
Rain says
Thank you Leila! You are such a treasure! I really needed to be directed to these resources.
Angelique says
Just FYI, I’m not on twitter but I saw your tweet about congenital CMV. It’s spread by any bodily fluids, not just wastes. Your toddler sticks another toddler’s toy in her mouth before you can stop her, she comes and gives you a big drooly kiss later or you finish her snack so food doesn’t go to waste…you get the idea. It’s been a decade now since I’ve been through the hell of having a baby deathly ill with CMV, so I’m not nearly as emotional about it as I used to be, but it’s still not accurate or kind to make it sound like CMV is caused by gross moms not washing their hands after diaper changes. I think maybe you let your passion about your main point cloud your judgement on that one because it’s not like you.
Leila says
Angelique, I’m sorry about your experience with your daughter. I’m sure it was harrowing. Twitter is a platform that compresses ideas, so there was indeed perhaps a step missing.
Let me put it this way. Some of the things that transmit this disease are not really avoidable. But one of the things is not washing hands after diaper changes, and that is something that is avoidable and is, apart from the disease, just gross. So IF a person has the habit of not washing his hands after a diaper change, then that person needs a wake-up call. I don’t think that the implication is that the mother is the culprit, necessarily, but just that any disease is going to be more prevalent if basic hygiene is not practiced — making the virus more pick-upable by the innocent person. But I will clarify on twitter.
The larger point is that as a society we have become almost superstitious about antibiotics, hand sanitizer, and vaccines as magic bullets that remove the need to just have common sense.