The story of Lachlan Macquarie

I wonder what you know about New South Wales' fifth Governor, Lachlan Macquarie.  If you're like most Aussies, you'll recognise his name because of the things named after him - Canberra's suburb of Macquarie and Lachlan Street, Sydney's Macquarie Street and Macquarie Place and Hobart's Macquarie Street, Macquarie Island south of Tasmania, Lake Macquarie on the NSW coast, the Macquarie River in NSW and the Macquarie River in Tasmania, Port Macquarie, and the Lachlan River to name a few.  Maybe you've sat it Mrs Macquarie's Chair, overlooking Bennelong Point and the Sydney Opera House. The inscription on his tomb on Mull in Scotland names him "The Father of Australia" and yet we know longer know who he is. Should we?

Arriving in Australia in 1810, Macquarie took up the position of Governor vacated by William Bligh who had been deposed by the military during the 1808 Rum Rebellion (remember that?). From the beginning Macquarie saw the colony as both a settlement as well as a penal colony.  "This country," he wrote, "should be made the happy home of every emancipated convict who deserves it." He was frustrated by what he referred to as 'the party spirit' - the class divisions and factional fighting that were so rife in the colony. "Free settler in general...are by far the most contented persons in the colony," he wrote to the colonial office in England.

Macquarie believed that the solution to the convict problem was to put them to work. During his 12 years as Governor Macquarie was responsible for over 250 new buildings, including churches, schools and hospitals.  He built roads and tidied up the design of Sydney's streets. He built Sydney into a city as fine as any in the world. But England was not keen that Sydney become too attractive.  New South Wales was meant as a place of punishment and they worried that people might actually commit crimes in order to be transported!

Macquarie produced the first official currency for the new colony. He authorised exploration of the 'west' beyond the Blue Mountain where well watered grassland and forests were discovered.  It was Macquarie who ordered all traffic on New South Wales roads to keep left. He encouraged the creation of the colony's first bank. He drew up plans for Castlereigh, Pitt Town, Richmond, Wilberforce and Windsor.

The Startling Story of Lachlan Macquarie - Founding Father of Failure by Michael Sedunary and illustrated by Bern Emmerichs goes some way towards introducing Australian kids to the unfairly forgotten  Governor Macquarie.  It's an oddly sophisticated book, and I am not quite sure who its written for.  It is aimed at kids of 10-12, but I suspect that without some prior history knowledge the story would go over the heads of most of them.  It's a long book using complex language and discussing deep questions, and  I suspect that most kids would lose interest long before the end. That said, it is wonderful for use as part of a study of Australian History. It is well balanced, discussing Macquarie's considerable accomplishments with his many less than stellar decisions.  It covers Macquarie's treatment of the Aborigines in a way that is sensitive to our native Australians but without falling into the trap of revising history inappropriately with the wisdom of hindsight and putting our modern worldview onto past events.

Sadly the book paints Reverend Samuel Marsden as a villain, referring to his moniker as 'the flogging parson' and telling the story of the public lending library - which is probably true, but without balancing the considerable good also accomplished by this powerful man of God.  I am saddened by this. So it is not perfect, but in general The Startling Story of Lachlan Macquarie is an excellent book for a child keen to learn more about the early history of our great country and willing to put in the work to understand it.  It is also great for use as part of a history study for school.  Those of you using my Australianised AmblesideOnline will want to grab up a copy for use during both cycles through Aussie history - it is well worth using twice, and who knows how long it will be in print?

The Startling Story of Lachlan Macquarie is the third in a series by this author - illustrator trio and published by Berbay Books.  The first two are The Unlikely Story of Bennelong and Phillip and William Bligh - a Stormy Story of Tempestuous Times.  I haven't seen either of these but I am keen to.  I am sure they would be excellent.

So there you are.  Hopefully you now know more about Governor Macquarie.  Perhaps once you read the book you will be able to decide whether he deserves to be remembered as the father of Australia.  Do tell me what you think. Can a country really have a father anyhow?

Knowing Samuel Pepys

(L)et them get the spirit of history into them by reading, at least, one old Chronicle written by a man who saw and knew something of what he wrote about, and did not get it at second-hand. These old books are easier and pleasanter reading than most modern works on history, because the writers know little of the 'dignity of history'; they purl along pleasantly as a forest brook, tell you 'all about it,' stir your heart with the story of a great event, amuse you with pageants and shows, make you intimate with the great people, and friendly with the lowly. They are just the right thing for the children whose eager souls want to get at the living people behind the words of the history book, caring nothing at all about progress, or statutes, or about anything but the persons, for whose action history is, to the child's mind, no more than a convenient stage. A child who has been carried through a single old chronicler in this way has a better foundation for all historical training than if he knew all the dates and names and facts that ever were crammed for examination.

Charlotte Mason, Home Education p282

On Saturday afternoon, Jemimah, her daddy and I went to see the new movie, Cinderella. We'd heard good reports, and the film more than lived up to the hype. I'd recommend it, if you get a chance to go. There are lots of lovely moments, but a highlight for Jemimah and me was when we realised that the book the grown Ella was reading aloud to her father was none other than our very good friend, Samuel Pepys. Mr Pepys has a very distinctive voice, and Jemimah and I both recognised his style immediately. It was a joyful and very satisfying homeschooling moment for us both.

Samuel Pepys caused me a little bit of grief when I realised his diary was scheduled in AO8. His story is so important, his writing style is so captivating - straightforward, lively and chatty, he is a pleasure to get to know, and you can't help but like him. But...our friend Samuel was not always an upstanding citizen. He drank too much, and he was rather an unpleasant, violent drunk. He frittered away his money on frivolous pursuits. He was a womaniser. Although he loved his wife, he fell hard and often for barmaids, actresses, duchesses, maids, and the wives of his friends. He is also remarkably frank about his own faults and weaknesses, and he records his dalliances in agonisingly embarrassing detail. In fact, Samuel Pepys was so explicit, that the first unabridged version of his diaries wasn't published until the 1970s (so you needn't worry about Cinderella - I'm sure her version was quite clean). My concern was how I could introduce my daughter to this charming rogue, and how much I really wanted her to know about him.

Pepys was born in London in 1633, and he kept his diaries for ten years through some of the most fascinating years of English history. He was involved in the Restoration of Charles II, he was an eye witness to the Plague, the Great Fire of London, and the execution of great men including Charles I. Concerned about the frankness of his writing, AmblesideOnline choose to read only a very short excerpt of the diary, covering the Great Fire and the Plague, but although these events were undoubtedly important, I feel that the major value in reading Pepys is learning about the minor events of his everyday life in 1660s London - the food he eats, the books he buys (he was a bibliophile, and I love reading the titles he purchases and his 'book reviews'), the fashions of his wife’s clothes (what were the ‘patches’ that the women wear on their cheeks?), the games they play, his dealings with his servants, his impressions on the plays he attends, the renovations of his house. I wanted more of Samuel Pepys than just a few pages.

After much consideration, I decided on using this entertaining dramatisation of the diary adapted by Hattie Naylor, and produced by the BBC. It is over 12 hours long, and is contained on 11 CDs. This is not for purists – portions of the diary are read, but in between, the events are acted, and are imagined, not factually accurate. There is some bad language – Pepys was extraordinarily fond of the word t*rd for excrement, and uses it liberally to describe the product of both man and beast. There is also much womanising and typical Pepys behavior. Since I am listening to this production with Jemimah, I have not found the content too extreme, but he was a very naughty boy, and it still shows in this production.So far we have listened to four CDs and are enjoying it very much indeed.

In addition to the CDs, Jemimah is also dipping into this book, Voices from the World of Samuel Pepys by Jonathan Bastable. Using Pepys' diary as its main resource, the book also quotes from other first-hand accounts of the day to give us a well rounded account of 17th century London.

As Jemimah learns about Samuel Pepys this year, I hope that this era of history is brought vividly alive as she learns what living in London was like – church, theatre, coffee houses, taverns, books, fashion, music, politics and home-life. When she reads her dry outline of 17th century England, this is what I want to remember. Not lists of dates; real men and women, with real families and real lives. That's really what history is all about, isn't it? To me, this is the value of getting to know Samuel and Elizabeth Pepys.

The fatal mistake is in the notion that he must learn 'outlines,' or a baby edition of the history of England, or of Rome, just as he must cover the geography of the world. Let him, on the contrary, linger pleasantly over the history of a single man, a short period, until he thinks the thoughts of that man, is at home in the ways of that period. Though he is reading and thinking of the lifetime of a single man, he is really getting intimately acquainted with the history of a whole nation for a whole age. Let him spend a year of happy intimacy with Alfred, 'the truth-teller,' with the Conqueror, with Richard and Saladin, or with Henry V.––Shakespeare's Henry V.––and his victorious army. Let him know the great people and the common people, the ways of the court and of the crowd. Let him know what other nations were doing while we at home were doing thus and thus. If he come to think that the people of another age were truer, larger-hearted, simpler-minded than ourselves, that the people of some other land were, at one time, at any rate, better than we, why, so much the better for him.

Charlotte Mason, Home Education pp280-1

Here's part of the dramatisation telling about The Great Fire of London.  I hope you enjoy it as much as we both do.  Meet 'our' Mr Pepys.

The Century Chart

The pupils make history charts for every hundred years on the plan either adapted or invented by the late Miss Beale of Cheltenham, a square ruled into a hundred spaces ten in each direction with the symbol in each square showing an event which lends itself to illustration during that particular ten years. Thus crossed battle axes represent a war.Charlotte Mason, Toward a Philosophy of Education p 177

We are blessed to have almost forty years of Charlotte Mason's thoughts on education. Her first book, Home Education, was published in 1886, some five years before her teaching college was established, and Towards a Philosophy of Education was published posthumously in 1924, a year after her death. That gives us forty years. Forty years of experience. Forty years of experimenting. Forty years of teachers with different skills and knowledge. Forty years of students. Forty years to get it right. It is a long time, isn't it? Forty years ago I was...well, never mind.

Those forty years also pose those of us who try to teach by her philosophy some conundrums. Some Methods and ideas remain the same throughout the decades - living books, nature notebooks, narration, dictation, a single reading. We see evidence of these things right through her writings. Other things change: her methods for teaching foreign language; her reasons for teaching mathematics. In volume one we see Gouin series. They're nowhere in volume 6. In volume 1, maths is all about habits. In volume 6, Miss Mason has come to value mathematics for itself - the awe and wonder of mathematics, she says.

It is hardly any wonder that we see changes, is it? Surely a woman who has taught thousands of children will have learnt something along the way. Sometimes the things she thought would work turned out not to. Other things may have worked fine, but they might have got bored, or there just may have been more than one good way of doing things.

In order to give definiteness to what may soon become a pretty wide knowledge of history - mount a sheet of cartridge-paper and divide it into twenty columns, letting the first century of the Christian era come in the middle, and let each remaining column represent a century BC or AD, as the case may be. Then let the child himself write, or print, as he is able, the names of the people he comes upon in due order, in their proper century.We need not trouble ourselves at present with more exact dates, but this simple table of the centuries will suggest a graphic panorama to the child's mind, and he will see events in their time-order.Charlotte Mason, Home Education (1886) p292

The recording of time is one of those things that we struggle to understand because her methods appear to change so much. Back in volume 1, Miss Mason suggests a simple table of history, of twenty columns, and the child writes the names of people he comes into contact with in order. For example, under the 11th century, the child might record something like this:

1000s
King Cnut
Duncan
Macbeth
Harold Harefoot
Edward the Confessor
Tintern Abbey
Norman invasion - 1066
William the Conqueror
Domesday Book
Henry 1
White Tower of London

So, in 1886, Miss Mason thought this was a good idea. She tells us how to do it. And then? We don't hear about this type of table again. Why? Did it not work? Did she get bored with it? Did she find something better? It's a mystery.

What we do know, is that in 1893, there were a whole series of fascinating papers published in the Parent's Review about the chronology of time. In one of these articles - possibly written by 'H. B.', the author of the other articles, and possibly by Miss Mason, as editor, herself, is written this:

As a means towards the more efficient teaching of history chronological tables, family trees and historical charts have for long more or less been made use of. In most cases, however, it may be said such aids have proved of comparatively small value, inasmuch as they have been largely artificial in their character.

I'm guessing that depicting history was a bit of a struggle!

I am not good at teasing out this sort of information. Perhaps when Jemimah is grown, but not now. In the meantime, I am immensely grateful for Laurie Bestvater's The Living Page, where she has discussed all the examples of all the various methods of recording time, in a far more erudite way that I ever will. Mind you, as only one part of a whole book on Charlotte Mason note booking, I think Laurie has only scraped the surface. There is certainly more to learn about the CM method of recording time.

Okay. All this waffle is simply an introduction to the Century Chart. Jemimah is keeping one this year, and I wanted to show it to you. One of the things I love about this chart is that it is first described by its originator, Dorothea Beale, in a PRArticle in 1891/92, with full details on how to make it, it features in several PNEU school programmes,and it is still in use in Miss Mason's schools when she writes her final books more that 30 years later. It seems Century Charts passed the test of time. They were keepers! Hurrah!

Miss Mason recommends these charts for Form III and on. That's about 12 years of ageish. It is the hundred years of a century drawn as a grid, representing approximately the length of a man's life. (Five score!) The top, left square is the year __00, the bottom, right, the year __99. Into each square are drawn symbols representing events that have taken place. You can see some of Jemimah's early entries below:

King Henry VIII ascends to the throne.

The Diet of Worms

The beheading of Thomas More

You can see how the chart is constructed by looking at the PRArticle yourself.

I am encouraging Jemimah to choose what she draws onto this chart, and which events are worthy of inclusion. Since these photos were taken, she has chosen to draw books depicting Spenser's The Faerie Queen, and Francis Bacon's Essays. She takes great pride in her work.

One of the things I've noticed since we started keeping our Books of Centuries and the Century Chart, is that every time you open then, you are reminded of events that you have already studied. Every time we look at the chart we see Henry smiling at us up there in the top right hand corner. That's the year 1509. See? I've remembered a date without ever learning it. When we write events into our books of centuries, we notice that it was just a year before that happened, and just before that man was born and that one died. Charlotte Mason never focussed on learning lots of dates for history, but when we start using her methods, we find that the dates just happen. It is quite miraculous, really.

In the introduction of her final volume, Miss Mason speaks of adhering as closely as possible to her methods - not more or less. I think this is an example of what she means. When you read living books, history comes alive. When you document it using her charts and methods, the connections become deeper. The chronology appears. The dates embed themselves in your mind. Some people sneer at CM purists, but I find that the closer I come to what Charlotte Mason intended the better it all works.

The Century Chart is just one tiny link, but it is more than one link really, because it joins so much together. Not only that - it's easy, and kinda fun! Yay. I love it when the simple stuff works so well. Do you?

Characteristics of the centuries

 

I added this helpful Characteristics of the Centuries chart to the back of my Book of Centuries today.

It comes from this Parents Review article on the teaching of chronology, written by Dorothea Beale. We don't know if Ms Beale's chart was ever taken up by Miss Mason, or her schools, but since Miss Mason was editor of the Magazine, and other ideas from the article were adopted, we can assume that she at least thought a chart of this type was a good idea. I do too.

Ms Beale says this:

I would place before the child a map, in which the eighteen Christian centuries are brought together thus on a small scale with some characteristic to give it individuality.

I wonder why she said 18? At any rate, I have twenty. I haven't added the 21st - it's a little early to identify a characteristic for this present century yet, isn't it? The 20th Century is a different matter. More than 120 years have passed since Miss Beale wrote her article, and the century that was yet to be, now forms part of history.

So help me. What should we call the 20th Century, do you think? World Wars? Information Technology? Help me fill the blank space. What would you put there? Please help!

 

 

Lessons from the Armitt I

This was actually supported to be Lesson II, only Lesson I is taking too long to write, and so I thought I should move on and actually get something into print. I'm sorry for the delay. It's the story of my life, I'm afraid.

Today's lesson is about the Book of Centuries.

Most of what we know about these history notebooks is due to the the extensive research of Laurie Bestvater. Laurie wrote two terrific articles on the Book of Centuries, here and here, followed by an inspirational book entitled The Living Page: Keeping Notebooks with Charlotte Mason, as well as publishing a pretty impressive facsimile of the books, which she makes available on her website, Keeping a Book of Centuries. I was inspired, and back in 2012,I bought two copies, one for Jemimah, and one for me.

And then they sat on the shelf. And sat, and sat. I am not a drawer, (that is, somebody who draws rather than a thing that slides in and out), and the idea of filling the pages of these beautiful leather bound books panicked me into doing nothing at all. So at the time of my trip, there I was with not one, but two, of Laurie's beautiful Books of Centuries taunting me from the study shelf.

The Armitt is the holder of a copy of a Book of Centuries kept by P.N.E.U. teacher Eve Anderson during her teacher training years, and it was really exciting holding her book and looking through its pages. And what I learned was how simple and non-scary keeping a Book of Centuries can be.
First, Eve's drawings, while significantly better than mine, we not all that amazingly good. You won't believe what a relief that was to me. Secondly, and more relieving again, there weren't many pictures at all. Eve Anderson's Book of Centuries is mostly writing.

Miss G. M. Bernau has added to the value of these studies by producing a 'Book of Centuries' in which children draw such illustrations as they come across of objects of domestic use, of art, etc., connected with the century they are reading about. This slight study of the British Museum we find very valuable; whether the children have or have not the opportunity of visiting the Museum itself, they have the hope of doing so, and, besides, their minds are awakened to the treasures of local museums.
Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education (1923) pp 175-6

Now I don't know if that's a good thing. This quote of Miss Mason's certainly seems to imply that the illustrations play the major part in the Books of Centuries kept by her students, but it certainly freed me up. Maybe it will you too.

On our return home, we set to to fill in our pages. The photos below show that mine is not a work of art, but it is so much fun, and every time you get it out to add to it, you remember more and more as you reread. It is incredibly satisfying, as well as serving as a memory aid.

There's a few things I find difficult, in particular, remembering that the year 1066 is in the 11th century, not the 10th, and 595 is in the 6th. That's a bit tricky. The other thing is that the writing gap is really tiny, even for me. Sometimes it brings Jemimah to her knees.

The Book of Centuries, is a great joy to the owner, and even in these busy days it is possible to find some time, however short, to add an illustration from time to time. Children always take a keen delight in their books. There is no need to be an artist in order to have quite an interesting book - neatness and accuracy are essential though. Museums will be clothed with fresh interest to keepers of these books, who will be able to recognise objects which have already become familiar old friends through their Books of Centuries.
G. M. Bernau The Parents' Review, Volume 34 1923 pgs. 720-724

You'll notice I've made some mistakes. I try to be neat and accurate, but I don't always manage. The size of the writing puts paid to neatness, as well.

Anyhow, so that's Lesson I from the Armitt. Books of Centuries are not necessarily works of art, and they're not scary. Pictures enhance what you're learning, of course, but if you're afraid, at least start on the written side. Maybe soon you'll be ready to give the drawing side a burl as well. And maybe I'll join you when you do. Maybe.

Find the start of the series here for more lessons.

So, the maps

They're beautiful, aren't they?

What's more, they're online and free. Wow.

They're the work of cartographer/calligrapher Reginald Piggott, and despite the fact that his work graces the pages of many books, and he is even cited as author of a couple, I can tell you nothing about him apart from the fact that he was born in 1930, lived in Norfolk, and has now died.

Fortunately his beautiful work lives on, and is available for viewing - and to print from Kemble, the Anglo-Saxon Charters Website.

It was hard to choose which to print for this term on Ancient Britain. I would have loved the full set, but I settled for two - Bede's Britain, shown above, and Southern England in the time of Alfred the Great, below. Perhaps I'll give in ad print more as we move through the year. Given their beauty, it is certainly possible.

I had the maps printed professionally (my brother-in-law works for a photographic company) in A3 size. They're just perfect, and I love them. I hope you will find them useful as well.

A broad sweep of history

This course of historical reading is valued exceedingly by young people as affording a knowledge of the past that bears upon and illuminates the present.

Charlotte Mason A Philosophy of Education p 177

As we approach the end of AO6, we draw to the close of our first chronological history cycle.  In the past six or so years we have made a broad sweep of World History, a concomitant broad sweep of British and then Australian History, and a third broad sweep of Church History.  And to what value? Our sweep was broad, but as a consequence, it was also shallow. Superficial, even.

As we look back through our books, there are certain events that we remember - Boadicea, King Alfred learning to read - and burning the cakes, Canute and those waves, Thomas à Becket in the Cathedral, John and the Magna Carta, the Battle of Bannockburn, and the War of the Roses. We remember some of the Godly men and women from the pages of Trial and Triumph - Patrick, Francis of Assisi, Peter Waldo and the Waldensians, William Tyndale, Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer, the Two Margarets, Jonathan Edwards and the Chinese Christians during the Boxer Rebellion. We recall James Cook and Matthew Flinders, Governor Macquarie, Burke and Wills, Carolyn Chisholm, Ned Kelly, John Flynn, John Batman and that list - blankets, tomahawks, mirrors, eyeglasses, flour, scissors, beads.

Sadly, though, there are many, many more that remain just names.  Who was Bernard of Clairvaux?  Elizabeth of Hungary? John Huss?  David Brainerd? Why was Ethelred unready? What did Henry I do? Who was John Lackland? Which Henry was which? Was that James a good guy or a bad one? Who locked the two boys in the Tower? Where did Major Thomas Mitchell explore?  Who was Edward Eyre? There is just so much that we've forgotten.

Does that make our learning worthless?  Was the past six years of history just a waste of time?

When you read the introduction to Our Island Story, the 'spine' of AO history through the primary years, you find that the author's purpose in writing the book was to tell the story of the island that is Britain. Our Aussie book, The History of Australia describes itself as 'the story of this new country within an ancient land. Trial and Triumph calls itself a history of the church, but also a 'family history', the stories of the trials and triumphs of many...in our family of faith.

History is a collective memory.  It teaches us who we were, and how we came to be. It teaches us about the world around us. Our historical story defines our sense of national identity. It informs our attitude to ourselves, and that might be pride or shame, or sometimes both.  I believe that it is true that German students today continue to have counselling in schools to help them deal with the atrocities that their country committed during the Second World War. (Contrast this with Japan.) History teaches us how we come to be who we are.  It explains why I am more similar to the English than to Americans.  It teaches me how and why my country developed as it did.  It teaches us why my church is closer to the Presbyterian church than to the Roman Catholic, and why they are more similar to the Orthodox churches than mine is.

When I studied Australian History in school a million years ago, this broad sweep of superficial history had been replaced by an in depth look at three or four disconnected unit type themes.  During my final year we studied the Time Between the Wars, the Gold Rush, and Land Settlement.  When I finished school - and achieved an 'A' for history, I knew nothing about the exploration of Australia, nothing about the Dismissal of the Whitlam Government, and nothing much about anything in between. I had learned nothing about the things that make me who I am. It has taken AO, and its broad sweep to teach me all of that.

When I hear mums on the AO forum saying that they're replacing this chronological narrative with in depth studies on one or two areas - concentrating on American history, say, or replacing Trial and Triumph with an intensive study of two or three great men, I want to yell NO!  Isolated packets of knowledge do not do the same thing at all.  They don't tell the story.  The story is the superficial sweep of time.  It is the accumulation of lots of events that tells the tale.  It is the story of mankind.  It is the story of your country. It is the study of your church.  It is the story of you.

This doesn't mean we can't focus on two or three great men in addition to our story.  In the past years we've read biographies of Athanasius, Luther, Knox and Calvin.  We read about Captain Cook and Matthew Flinders and Burke and Wills and Ned Kelly.  We read books on Mary, Queen of Scots, and Queen Elizabeth I, of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.  All this reading adds to our knowledge.    Miss Mason tells us that it' amplifies and illustrates' history, and helps children 'individualise their heroes'. (Vol 6 p 174) It brings a period of history to life. All this extra learning is good, but it isn't history.  History is a story.

The broad sweep of history is not perfect, and all history has a bias, and the bias I choose is to present Australia in a positive light.  When I study history with my daughter, I want to show her that Australia is a great country, but that it is not perfect.  I want her to form an opinion about our treatment of Aborigines.  I want her to understand the sacrifices people made so that we can have a 40 hour week (ostensibly) and have a day off on Saturday.  I want her to realise that it is only through the actions of some pretty great people that she will have a right as a woman to vote.  When we study church history, I want her to realise that these great people were mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers, and that they are the people that have made Christ's church what we see today.

I am glad that in coming years we have an opportunity to cover the pageant of history a second time.  That we will be reintroduced to our old friends, and that we will relearn about people we have forgotten.  Maybe in another six years we will be able to tell you about Bernard of Clairvaux.  Elizabeth of Hungary, and John Huss.  Or maybe not.  At any rate, we will have a far better idea of who we are, and why we live like we do.

It is a great thing to possess a pageant of history in the background of one's thoughts. We may not be able to recall this or that circumstance, but, 'the imagination is warmed'; we know that there is a great deal to be said on both sides of every question and are saved from crudities in opinion and rashness in action. The present becomes enriched for us with the wealth of all that has gone before.

Charlotte Mason A Philosophy of Education p 178

Welcome Stranger!

Jemimah and I spent the night in Geelong last night, and instead of heading straight home, we decided to take the scenic route through scenery like this:

And this:

Eventually, our meandering route took us through a district known as the Golden Triangle which has produced more gold nuggets than any other in Australia. The corners of the Triangle are formed by Tarnagulla and Dunolly and Moliagul, and the latter is a tiny township with an even greater claim to fame as the home to the discovery of the world's largest gold nugget, the Welcome Stranger back in 1869.

My very favourite part of the story occurs a couple of days after John Deason and Richard Oates discovered the nugget somewhere near where Jemimah is standing in the photo above, and only an inch below the surface. After hiding the nugget until fewer people were around, the two men had finally prised it clear of the earth with a crowbar, and transported it home on the back of a bullock dray on the night of Friday 5th of February.

With a need to keep the nugget a secret all weekend while the banks were closed to avoid theft, the two men buried the nugget under the hearth and kept a fire burning on top of it. On Monday, the men decided to tell their friends of their discovery. They held a big party, and hid the nugget under a cloth at the end of the table. Midway through the night there was a great reveal, at which time the nugget was shown in all its magnificent glory. Imagine being at that party. What an amazing surprise! Bit hard to better that one, eh?

The 78 kg 'Welcome Stranger', still the world's largest-known gold nugget, was hidden under Mrs Deason's skirt, and taken to Dunolly with the men and the partygoers as guards. There, it had to be broken on an anvil before it could fit onto the bank's scales. At the time it was worth £10 000. That equates to between $3-4 million today! Within a few days of the discovery, the world's largest nugget was broken up, melted down and loaded aboard ship en route to England.

The miners were so keen to get the Welcome Stranger to safety that they even forgot to take photographs. How were their wives going to blog without photographs, I ask you? Anyhow, the photo below was taken several weeks later with a piece of quartz in place of the gold.

So there you are. Australian History brought alive. What a great way to learn. Isn't it a fantastic story?

 

Integrating the Bible with history

Last year we saw this tablet at the Melbourne Museum's terrific exhibition showcasing the wonders of Ancient Mesopotamia.  If you are cleverer than I am, and can read it, you will know that the tablet is part of a narrative of the main events of the years 605-595 BC, and tells of Nebuchadnezzar's first capture of Jerusalem in 597 BC, the deportation of Jehoiachin and his family, and the beginning of the Babylonian exile. 2 Chron 36:9,10 and 2 Kings 24:15-17

I felt quite emotional when I saw the tablet and recognised it as actual archaeological evidence for this major Biblical event.  Christians, of course, believe that the Bible is the infallible word of God, and that God himself maintains the integrity and accuracy of his word through the work of the Holy Spirit.  As such, we believe that its historical accounts are flawlessly accurate, and so it should not be surprising to find archaeological evidence confirming the events recorded in his Word, but it was pretty cool all the same.

Despite this inerrancy, it is really difficult to chronologically calibrate early Biblical history.  Some Christians use genealogies, others generations of forty years.  Still others look at the reigns of kings.  Some believe in continuous lists; others allow overlap or omissions.  Attempts, therefore, to date Moses and the Exodus, the birth of Abraham, Noah's Flood and the actual date of Creation have proved controversial.  As a consequence, in my family, we choose not to attempt to date these events when compiling Books af Centuries and timelines.  It is just too easy to make a mistake.

All such controversy over the dates of the Babylonian exile disappears, however, when you have evidence like that contained on this little stone tablet.  The exile happened in 597 BC.  It did.  It has been substantiated by archaeological evidence, and importantly, that evidence fits with the evidence contained in Scripture.  It is easy to add it to timelines with confidence (and so we did!)

We also made a decision to introduce the Bible as history during this time period into our school history, given that the history was so much easier to reconcile with Biblical events.   The credibility of Scripture is certainly a multifaceted issue, and dating the early Bible is really difficult, but the events of the exile are easier to substantiate than earlier periods.

And so this is what we did...

The events of the exile occur between Chapters XXXIII and XXXIV of H. A Guerber's The Story of the Greeks, which is read in AO6, and this year of Ancient History was the perfect chance to integrate Biblical History with our basic history spine.  During this term we read Bible as a history source, integrating the passages of Scripture where they fitted in our readings. As an introduction, we read the Bible texts of the exile during Week 16 of AO6.  (You can find a summary of our readings at the end if you want them.)

Daniel 1 tells of the taking of Daniel and other members of Judah's elite into captivity in 605 BC. 2 Chronicles 36 describes the taking of Jehoiakim in 597 BC.  Three months and ten days later the events narrated in the tablet occur, as told in 2 Chronicles 36 and 2 Kings 24. Finally, after a siege lasting about one and a half years, Jerusalem was conquered and destroyed in 596 BC.  We read in 2 Kings 25 that most of the people were taken to Babylon, along with the articles from the temple.  Only the poorest people remained.

He (Nebuchadnezzar) carried into exile to Babylon the remnant, who escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and his successors until the kingdom of Persia came to power. The land enjoyed its sabbath rests; all the time of its desolation it rested, until the seventy years were completed in fulfillment of the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah.

In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and also to put it in writing:

“This is what Cyrus king of Persia says:

“‘The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. Any of his people among you may go up, and may the Lord their God be with them.’”

2 Chron 36:20-23 NIV

The decrees of Cyrus the Great allowing the people of Judah to return home, occurred in the first year of his reign.  He was later defeated and killed by Sythians, and Sythia was taken over by Darius, The Great King.  We learn about The Great King in detail in Chapter XL of The Story of the Greeks. This is the Darius mentioned in Chapter 6 of Ezra (but not the Darius the Mede of Daniel, which is why we don't read Daniel 9, because it confuses small people.), and so this is a great time to read this fascinating historical book. There are 10 Chapters of Ezra.  We read two per day during Week 17 in Term II.

Darius is killed, and succeeded by his Son, Xerxes.  We read about that in Chapter XLVII. Xerxes, otherwise known as Ahasuerus, is the husband of Hadassah...otherwise known as Esther.  We read about her in Week 18.

Xerxes, in turn, is succeeded by his son, Artaxerxes, whom we are introduced to at the end of Chapter LV. It is Artaxerxes who commissions Ezra to take charge of the ecclesiastical and civil affairs of the Jewish nation, and we read that decree in Ezra 7:13-28.  Later, in Artaxerxes' 20th year, Nehemiah, his cupbearer, hears from his brother that Jerusalem remains without walls and returns to restore them.  We read the first of 13 Chapters of Nehemiah during Week 19.

The history of God’s people in the Old Testament closes at the end of the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. God’s people have returned to  their homeland. The temple has been rebuilt, and worship has been restored.  It would be 400 more years before our Saviour would come into the world, and the New Testament would begin.  And we read about that in AO6 Term III!

We found our integration of history in Term II fascinating, and we learned a great deal. Below, in summary, are the Bible passages we read.  It is my hope that some of you might find them useful too.

Week 16: The Exile: 605-597 BC

Day 1: Daniel Chapter 1
Day 2: 2 Kings 24
Day 3: 2 Chronicles36
Day 4: Jeremiah 25: 1-14
Day 5: Jeremiah 29: 1-23

Week 17: Return from Exile with Zerubbabel : 536 BC

Day 1: Ezra 1,2 (Search for interesting info in the list of names.)
Day 2: Ezra 3,4
Day 3: Ezra 5,6
Day 4: Ezra 7,8
Day 5: Ezra 9,10

Week 18: Those who remain in Persia  497 B.C to 466 BC

Day 1: Esther 1,2
Day 2: Esther 3,4
Day 3: Esther 5,6
Day 4: Esther 7,8
Day 5: Esther 9,10

Week 19: Nehemiah returns with additional exiles  444 BC

Day 1: Nehemiah 1,2
Day 2:Nehemiah 3,4
Day 3:Nehemiah 5,6:1-14
Day 4:Nehemiah 6:15-8:18
Day 5:Nehemiah 9,10

Week 20

Day 1: Nehemiah 11,12
Day 2: Nehemiah 13

The threads of history

After studying the American Civil War this past year, we are really excited to see this film when it is released here on January 17th. What do you think of the trailer?

As we Australianise AO, it is difficult to decide what stays and what goes. So far, I think we've reached a pretty good balance between Australian and World history. I am certainly pleased that I have more knowledge about when went on in the past, both within and without of Australia's boundaries, and learning about Abe Lincoln and his attempts to abolish slavery is an important episode in the history of all mankind, not just in the history of the United States.

How do you teach history in your homeschool? How you decide how much time to spend on the history of your own country compared to the history of other parts of God's great world? Do you think you have the balance right? Will you be seeing Lincoln at the movies? Will you take your kids? Do tell. Which threads of history are the most important to you?

John Flynn - Faith in action

Last night Jemimah, her Daddy and I were privileged to hear a talk on Presbyterian minister, Reverend John Flynn and the Royal Flying Doctor Service by their Central Services CEO,  John Lynch.  A humorous, engaging and erudite speaker, John commenced his talk with these words:

John Flynn, what a mighty man.  His vision for the outback, a truly wonderful plan.

Of course, this made Jemimah and me sit up and listen, for these words are the chorus to a much loved song by another outback legend, Ted Egan. 

Ted's song, John Flynn, tells the story of the death of Jimmy Darcy, and Jemimah and I had often wondered whether it were true.  Here are the words:

John Flynn

by Ted Egan

I guess it was the death of Jimmy Darcy
that prompted the decision to provide,
A mantle of safety for the outback
and it took a man like John Flynn to decide,
that the people of the bush deserved a better life.
The furthest boundary ride, a lonely drover's wife,
deserved to be protected, kept in touch, given a go.
It took a man like John Flynn to make it so.

He was John Flynn,
what a mighty man.
His vision for the outback, a truly wonderful plan.

Flynn mustered his supporters all around him
and slowly to fruition came the plan.
Simpson, Traeger, Barber, his old mate Hugh Mackay,
and Hudson Fysh, They were loyal to a man.
Aeroplanes and wireless would span this big brown land
To reach the furthest outback family, the injured station hand.
Medicine for the bushies, a model for the world.
The Flying Doctor's banner was unfurled.

So rest easy in your grave now Jimmy Darcy.
In knowledge that your death was not in vain.
The Flying Doctor Service is a goer
To handle all the suffering and the pain.
The people of the bush now have a better life,
The furthest boundary rider, the lonely drover's wife.
The people of the bush, kept in touch, given a go
It took a man like Flynn to make it so.

Last night, John Lynch told us the real story of Jimmy Darcy, a stockman in Western Australia.  It went something like this:

Darcy had ruptured his bladder in an accident, and was taken to the closest town, Halls Creek by some friends.  The town was only 30 hours away, but the arduous journey to the remote town took 24 hours.  In Halls Creek, Mr Tuckett, the postmaster,administered first aid, and realising the serious nature of Darcy's injury,  attempted to contact doctors in Wyndham, and then Derby, by telegraph. Eventually he managed to get hold of  Dr Holland, a doctor in Perth. Using sharpened pocket knives and kitchen tools, and an anaesthetic of whisky, and guided by Dr Holland using Morse code, Tuckett then attempted to operate on Jimmy Darcy.  Operation complete, Dr Holland set out for Halls Creek.  The journey took ten days, and when the doctor arrived he discovered  that Darcy had died the day before. Turns out that Tuckett's operation had been successful, but the stockman had died from complications of malaria and a ruptured appendix.

John Lynch tells us that John Flynn was profoundly affected by this story, and that as a consequence of this case and others like it, Flynn was inspired to provide not just pastoral care, but also social and medical care to these isolated people in the Australian Outback.  Taking his report back to the Presbyterian Church, together they established the Australian Inland Mission, and from that The Royal Flying Doctor Service.  His is truly an inspirational story of faith in action.

You can learn more about Flynn here:



We will be studying Flynn in AO6 using Barry Brown's book, The Flying Doctor: John Flynn and the Flying Doctor Service, pictured above.  You can purchase it from Abe. Renowned Aussie author, Ion Idriess, also wrote a book about Flynn called Flynn of the Inland, which alone has created much of the mythology that surrounds this great man. Flynn himself was amused at the book, which represents him as a paragon of virtue, saying that it created 'my mythical self'!  Perhaps we'll read this one in secondary school.

The talk last night whetted our appetites for more study of this inspirational Australian next year.  It was fabulous to hear that Ted Egan's song was based on fact as well, because it is one of those songs that acts like an earworm.  If we hadn't known all the words already, we certainly do now!

If you still want to hear it, you can listen to a snatch on iTunes here.

The Battle for Gaza

At the end of Chapter 16 of Reverend Joseph Bowes' novel, The Aussie Crusaders, its heroes, Major Jack Smith and Sergeant Jock McThirst have escaped from the Bedouins and Turks that have held them captive for much of the story up to this point and have rejoined their regiment in the Australian Lighthorse in the lead-up to the taking of Gaza.

At this point in the book, where the action turns from  the fictitious but highly exciting escape to the account of the actual fall of Gaza, it seems Rev. Bowes realises the need to add little historical, geographical and military detail to his narrative.  He does it well, in the form of letters home and interesting acecdotes, but his intention is evident, I think.  Normally I dislike vehemently books where an author tries to cram information down his readers' throats thinly disguised as a story, but Bowes manages this extremely well.  (Not so Mary Mapes Dodge in her surprisingly well acclaimed novel, Hans Brinker; or, the Silver Skates: A Story of Life in Holland, which has its pages cram packed with must know historical and geographical information about the Netherlands that is completely irrelevant to the story.  Ugh.)

Anyhow, the following paragraphs from Chapter 17 about Gaza and its historical importance, rather than its military one as gateway to Jerusalem and the Ottoman Empire, absolutely fascinated me, and I thought I would share them here.  Maybe you will find them interesting as well.

What soul-stirring memories cluster around that ancient town!  From time immemorial she has stood on the great warpath of the nations, and was to Africanders the gateway to Asia.  What Damascas was in the north, that Gaza has been in the south of Palestine; an entrepôt, receiving the trade from all routes stretching from Egypt to Arabia.

What conqueror has not seen he?  Those mighty Pharaohs, Tothmes and Rameses; Alexander the Great and his ten thousand invincibles; and Pompey with his Roman legions.  By this gateway, also, Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar entered Egypt.  Later on the streets of Gaza echoed the footsteps of Richard Coeur de Lion and his crusaders, in his campaign against Saladin.  After him came kings and innumerable nobles from all countries, culminating in the savage onslaughts between the Knights Templars and the Saracens.  Last of all, but greatest of all in military genius, came Napoleon in the spring of 1799, on his way to the Euphrates - then back again, making a holocaust of blood and fire to minister at the shrine of his insatiate ambition.  Here Sampson the Strong performed two of his greatest exploits, and here, too, the great Jewish patriot and hero, whom one has called the William Wallace of Judaism, Judas Maccabeus, fought some of his notable battles against the Syrians.

...This was the place the Commander-in-Chief of the British forces was asking his men to seize.

Joseph Bowes, The Aussie Crusaders

We're reading The Aussie Crusaders as part of our Australianised AO5.  The curriculum this year covers the period of history that includes WWI, and the significance of this war on Australia's national identity and its newly emerging status as a federated nation independent from Britain makes it more important for Australians to study in depth than for Americans.  For them it is the Civil War that consumes their time and interest here.

The Aussie Crusaders has been a valuable adjunct to our studies this term, as well as being a thrilling adventure.  I recommend it.  Of course it's out of print, but Abe has a few copies.

Australian Backyard Explorer

I am extremely impressed with the book, Australian Backyard Explorer by Peter Macinnis.

When you view this author's discussion on how he came to write the book, and his fascination over the early explorers, it is easy to see why he was able to write so engagingly.  His passion and enthusiasm for his subject really shines, both in this interview, and in the pages.  A living science book indeed.

I'll be using Australian Backyard Explorer in AO6.  We've recently studied the explorers in Aussie history, so their stories are fresh in our minds.  Macinnis' book assumes some knowledge of history and the exploration of our country to best understand his discussion of the bias of history and the integrated science, so this should work well.

Australian Backyard Explorer at first glance looks like a DK book, full of choppy unconnected paragraphs that are impossible to narrate.  It's not though.  The book contains lots of boxed text and 'Did You Know' type informational asides, and it is interspersed with projects and extra information, but in between, the book tells an integrated, highly literary and eloquent story.  Primary proof sources are scattered liberally throughout, describing explorers' adventures in their own words...and idiosyncratic spelling (Jemimah will be right at home. Sigh.).

Macinnis is a science writer with a great love of history.  His book is a combination of both.

Anyhow, enough of my rave.  Here's the author himself.

Why study history?

In teaching history, besides the general object of personal discipline and development, which doubtless will in all cases be prominent in the mind of the teacher, our main object will be to produce some degree of retention of the facts taught. Retention is of two distinct sorts, --assimilative and mechanical. Assimilative retention ...is the great purely intellectual object we set before ourselves as educators; and mere mechanical memory will for this prove a valueless or comparatively valueless substitute. It is surely a wiser plan, more economical, more conducive both to permanence and to accuracy, rather to leave our undigested facts stored on the shelves of our libraries, where at need they may readily become available, than to cram them painfully into the unwilling brain to the exclusion of food more profitable. The mechanical memory may be indeed in some cases a gift of great value; but since the invention of written records its value in ordinary circumstances has fallen to a discount. The assimilative memory, on the other hand,--the memory which is alive, which consists of organized ideas, appropriated generalizations--is a memory for which bookshelves can furnish no substitute. By the fact of assimilation the individuality has been affected; the knowledge assimilated has become a vital and integral portion of the individual essence; it has become living knowledge, and henceforth, given light and air, and rain from heaven, it will grow and entwine itself through the whole labyrinth of human existence. In the mechanical memory the seed-corn has been hoarded up in the barn, as so much provender; in the assimilative memory it has been planted in a fruitful soil.

History: History and Fiction by H. B. Parents' Review Volume 5, 1894, pp 255-259

What am I trying to achieve when I have Jemimah read from the pages of Abraham Lincoln's World or Story of the World or History of Australia?  Is it not that I am hoping that she will learn from the experiences, right or wrong, of those who came before her?  Am I not wanting her to heed their warnings, their failures, their barbarities, and make herself, therefore, a better and more capable citizen of modern Australian society than they were in their times?  Surely when we study history we want to take the experiences of those we are studying, and make them our own? 

Why, then, are we so worried about the whos, whens and wheres instead of the whys?

This lovely quote by H. B. (whoever he or she may be) in the Parents' Review asks this question too.  She (I'm guessing that she's a she) points out that it is more sensible to leave our historical facts on the shelves of our libraries, or indeed in their modern equivalent, the ether that is the World Wide Web, where we can access them at the click of a mouse, than to cram them into an unwilling brain.  She's right too.  It is so easy for me to open my iPad and google whenever I want to know stuff. 

So why then do we need to remember history at all?  We no longer consider that knowledge for knowledge's sake makes us better people.  To know the dates of history might once have indicated that we were cleverer; more educated.  It might have procured for us a good job in an excellent company.  It doesn't now.  So why learn? Is it good enough to analyse and study and just forget?  I'm sure you will agree with me  that we do want our children to remember the substance of what is taught as well as the lessons learned.  We do want them to know the whos, whens and wheres as well as the whys of history.

H. B. believes that history that is brought alive, that has been assimilated to become a part of the person himself, will grow and form links with all the other knowledge that is stored in that unwilling brain. Only then can we mould that knowledge to make it ours.  Only then can we take that character study and learn from it.  From reading and assimilating history and forming links we can learn about people and how societies function.  We can look at what happened in the past and as a consequence we can see how things came to be as they are now.  From history we form a National Identity.  We look at what happened in the past that makes us Australian, distinct from the mother country that was England.  When we know the whos, whens and wheres of history we can contrast and compare.  Why did he succeed when he did not?  What makes him good and her bad?

When we study history in a way that allows that allow us the assimilate the data into a useful form, one that allows us to form opinions about what we feel and what we believe, that allows us to know how the world works, then, and only then, can we begin to know how to take the experiences of others and make them our own.History will stop being a series of unrelated facts, best accessed at the click of a mouse, and become a part of us.  A part that will make us better.  A part that will help us know who we are.

People have studied history for a long time.  Despite that, we still make the same mistakes.  There are still wars.  There is still immorality.  There is still poverty.  History repeats again, and again, and again.  We don't just study the past so that we can understand the future.  When we study history in a way that makes it part of us, when we study the world through the eyes of other, we have context and coherence.  Then and only then can we begin to grapple with the great moral questions - the whys, instead of the whos and whens.  Only then can we take the lessons of history and make them our own.

The Blood Mobile

Hey, it could be that standards are slipping a little in our Peaceful Home on our second to last week of school, but we really enjoyed these today:









Twaddle? Maybe.

This close to the end of the school year most kids are playing games and watching movies and being babysat. At least this was educational as well as fun.

Well, I can justify it, anyhow.

The Chronology of Time

It is a phenomenon that must have fallen under the notice of all who have the happiness of being brought into close relations with young children, that their idea of time is a very narrow one; that hardly even with the utmost difficulty can they be brought to grasp the distinction of time recent and remote. Time is a conception, whose development is matured but slowly: perhaps it is even the latest condition of existence to be fully grasped by the human intellect; it is, therefore, not to be wondered at that any complete idea of time should be entirely beyond the apprehension of a child of tender years. Systematic time relations then--at least relations more definite than the familiar "a long time ago," "when I was young," and similar phrases--may, for the most part, be wisely left out of account in the earliest teaching of little children. We shall then, in the main, direct our efforts to store the mind with a wealth of vivid impressions of times, places, and customs varying from our own.

H. B. The Parents' Review Volume 4, (1893/4) pp 890-6

 For some time recently I have been researching what Charlotte Mason had to say about visualising time. The concept has intrigued me for quite a while, as this post written a couple of years ago attests, mainly because I struggled with how to impart this knowledge to Jemimah in a way that worked.  It was with some relief that I discovered the above quote, which put my mind to rest as I was reassured that what I had believed about the abstract concept of time in young people was in fact correct.

What I have learned is that Charlotte Mason and her colleagues wrote a considerable amount about how to visualise time.  She mentions not only timelines, but also their close cousins, books of centuries and century charts, and I thought it would be interesting to link to some of these and to discuss a little what we find, and what the differences are between them.  Firstly, what did Mason herself say?

In Volume 1 Mason writes about keeping a Timeline Chart with children up to about 8:

In order to give definiteness to what may soon become a pretty wide knowledge of history - mount a sheet of cartridge-paper and divide it into twenty columns, letting the first century of the Christian era come in the middle, and let each remaining column represent a century BC or AD, as the case may be. Then let the child himself write, or print, as he is able, the names of the people he comes upon in due order, in their proper century.

We need not trouble ourselves at present with more exact dates, but this simple table of the centuries will suggest a graphic panorama to the child's mind, and he will see events in their time-order.

Charlotte Mason, Home Education (1886) p292

In Form II, ages 9-12, Miss Mason talks about the children using a Book of Centuries  in Volume 6:

Miss G. M. Bernau has added to the value of these studies by producing a 'Book of Centuries' in which children draw such illustrations as they come across of objects of domestic use, of art, etc., connected with the century they are reading about. This slight study of the British Museum we find very valuable; whether the children have or have not the opportunity of visiting the Museum itself, they have the hope of doing so, and, besides, their minds are awakened to the treasures of local museums.

Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education (1923) pp 175-6

Later she states that children in Forms III & IV continue these Books of Centuries.

Older children in Forms V and VI, aged 15-18 make History Charts as described here:

The pupils make history charts for every hundred years on the plan either adapted or invented by the late Miss Beale of Cheltenham, a square ruled into a hundred spaces ten in each direction with the symbol in each square showing an event which lends itself to illustration during that particular ten years. Thus crossed battle axes represent a war.

Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education (1923) p 177

Book of Centuries

Of these three, the one we are most familiar with is the Book of Centuries, owing mainly to the work of Laurie Bestvater based on an article written by Mrs Bernau herself in The Parents‘Review Volume 34 (1923) pp 720-4 entitled The Book of Centuries. Laurie wrote two terrific articles on the Book of Centuries, here and here, and went on to republish a pretty impressive facsimile of the books, which she makes available on her website, Keeping a Book of Centuries.

This pamphlet entitled The Book of Centuries and How to Keep One , also by Mrs Bernau has wonderful illustrations of the book and further information on how to implement its use.

History Charts

The history charts kept by older children ages 15-18 is described in this article by Miss Beale in The Parents' Review Volume 2 (1891/92) pp81-90 entitled The Teaching of Chronology. Dorothea Beale was the Principal of the Cheltenham Ladies' College, and she describes her charts in significant detail.  Interestingly, although Miss Beale used these charts in a modified form even for very young children, it is apparent that Miss Mason, at least by 1923 only advocated using them in the upper Forms, V and VI.

Timelines

Timelines are not spoken of in Miss Mason's own writings, however do appear to have been used in her schools as well as in homeschools, according to this pamphlet by Winifred Irving entitled Notes on Making a Time-Line. It is worth noting that this timeline was to be used in conjunction with a time-chart (later in the same pamphlet it is called a history chart). Events and developments were to be noted on both. This timeline was advocated for use in the junior classes, and it was presumed that initially entries would be made by the parent or teacher, and only later by the child.

It would be interesting to know when this pamphlet was first written, since it appears that the timeline to which Ms Irving refers is that of Miss Beale.  In 1923 it appears that Beale's chart was only used by older students.  Perhaps at the time this pamphlet was first written, younger children also used the Beale Chart. (Some of the other pamphlets of this type were written in the 1950s perhaps by that time the PNEU schools had diverged somewhat from CM's original teachings.  Who knows?)

Ms Irving mentions that more comprehensive, larger scale timelines might be kept by older children in order to clarify a particular period of time, however in this article she advocates beginning at the earliest recorded time periods and carrying it on through the various periods studied.

Timeline Chart

The simple timeline chart mentioned by Miss Mason in Vol 1 is not mentioned again that I can discover.  It appears to be a simple chart divided into columns covering the whole pageant of history for the young child.

Why is it that so many differing methods are used to visualise time?  Why do these appear in only one writing?  I believe that in order to study the chronology of time in CM's philosophy, we also need to study the chronology of the writing.  Almost 40 years have passed between Volume 1 and Volume 4.  37 years of students; 37 years of classes; 37 years of new ideas and opinions; 37 years of exposure to new teachers, thoughts and lessons.  I'm going to look at this chronology more in a further post.  I'm also going to consider further what Mason and her colleagues wrote about visualising time and the teaching of history.

I've enjoyed this study of the teaching of history and time very much.  I hope you'll indulge me as I turn this interest into a series.  Stay tuned for installment 2 in coming days.  I hope you'll share your thoughts with me as well.