The Christian Homemaking Podcast: Simply Convivial with Mystie Winckler

Summary of Law 2: The learner must attend with interest to the material to be learned.A learner – which is what our children are supposed to be – cannot be passive. To become a learner, a child must have two things: interest and attention. Unless and until the child becomes invested with interest and attention to the lesson, the teacher teaches but in vain.One may as well talk to the deaf or to the dead as attempt to teach a child who is wholly inattentive.So, what is attention, exactly? Gregory develops three types of attention, one progressing to the other naturally, and it is leading his students through the progression, the development, of attention, that is the teacher’s duty:Passive Attention. Passive attention is characterized by flitting, playful, docile. No effort of the will is involved; such attention allows outside forces to dictate what is attended to. This is the most typical type of attention, especially in young children.Active Attention. Active attention is characterized by control, persistence, resolution, duty, determination; such attention requires effort. It is mental toil. Active attention is a distinctly human capability to control the mind’s focus despite allurements, fancies, and temptations.Secondary-Passive Attention. Secondary-passive attention is characterized by absorbed fascination, being caught up in and carried away by what one has determined to focus one’s mind upon. The object of attention is attractive, demanding little or no effort to exert very focused and absorbed attention.It is the third type that teachers should seek out for their pupils. Secondary-passive attention results in efficient learning, effective learning, pleasant learning. However, secondary-passive attention is the reward, the fruit, of diligent active-attention. One cannot move from passive to secondary-passive, bypassing active attention. Active attention is work, it is necessary, and it is not the end goal but rather moves us into our end goal of “flow.”It seems to be generally true that these sustained and abiding interests are to be purchased only at a price — and the price is strenuous effort. […] Human experience during the long ages has taught few lessons that are more dependable than that which predicates effort sacrifice and persistence as the chief ingredients of success, and this holds as generally of success in learning as it does of success in business, art, invention, and industry.So what is the role of the teacher in this? It is, Gregory maintains, that of a counselor and guide, not a taskmaster. For attention gained through fear or force not only does not last, but it creates a distaste for that which it is forced to attend to. The teacher is to aim for secondary-passive attention through gradual advancement that makes the effort worthwhile to the student. Handily, Gregory has some proposed methods for moving the student through such gradual advancements:Problems Give the children a problem to solve to motivate them to seek the material you want them to learn. This is best for initial momentum or for an engaging break from abstract study.Sensory Hand gestures, looks, many-toned voices, illustrations are artificial stimuli to use when necessary, but will not produce lasting attention.Relation Relate the information being presented to the past or the future of the pupil to create concentration with genuine interest. Touch his personality with the material.Delight Sympathetic interest can be compelled by a delighted teacher.Age-appropriate Interests will mature from the concrete and self-centered toward abstract and ultimate as the students grow; do not expect or aim for interest beyond the abilities of your pupils. Keep their interest and their attention proportional to their age and abilities.The primary hindrances to attention are apathy and distraction, and the primary causes of these hindrances are lack of interest, lack of taste, and weariness. The teacher’s duty is to determine the cause and work an appropriate angle to help the student out of his funk or folly. If illness or fatigue is the cause of the student’s difficulty, then the wise teacher will not force the lesson. The teacher needs insight and wisdom.

Housework seemed like a stupid waste of time.And I hated wastes of time and stupidity, so I triply hated housework.I was torn between wanting to be a good, competent homemaker and thinking that the state of my bedroom or the kitchen just wasn’t a big deal. I could get meals on the table, keep things stocked, and complete a project just fine. But the day-in day-out routine tasks were a drag.I’m not going to say that I love those routines now or that I totally rock them, because I don’t. But I am learning to love them.And it all started back then, when my third born was just a baby, and I was reading novels.

What is a teacher? What is teaching?According to Gregory, the art of education — that is, teaching — is two-fold:Teaching is the art of training. Teaching is leading the students into paths of physical, mental, and moral fitness.Teaching is the art of instructing. Teaching stimulates a love of learning and forms habits of independent study.Thus, a successful teacher is working himself out of his position. He is moving his pupils not into but out of dependence on his guidance.We can only train by teaching and we teach best when we train best.Teaching and training can be thought of individually, but in practice can hardly be separated. Every act of teaching — purposefully or not, done rightly or not — inculcates good or bad habits of work and thinking. Likewise, every act of training teaches, even if the lecture is missing. The work of teaching, says Gregory, is the work of assigning, explaining, and hearing lessons. “Hearing lessons” is hardly comprehensible today, but is akin to hearing narrations after independent reading and study, I believe. So, “lecture” is only a third of the work of teaching.Teaching is the communication of experience.Experience includes facts, truths, doctrines, ideas, ideals, skills, art. Communication includes words, signs, objects, actions, and examples. I think this definition makes it clear, then, that the mother in a homeschool setting is not the students’ sole teacher. It is the books used more than the mother that teach. This relieves a lot of the pressure, I believe, especially in light of the laws that govern teaching. One essential element of teaching, however, is easy to forget yet indispensable even within the mother’s realm:Questioning is not, therefore, merely one of the devices of teaching, it is really the whole of teaching. […] An explanation may be so given as to raise new questions while it answers old ones.This is how the teacher leads while instructing.

Personally, I always wanted a home to keep. I never wanted a career. I have only ever wanted a home and family to tend. I’ve never questioned that it is worthwhile. Whenever I think of it I am flooded with gratitude that God gave me a husband and home so early, so that I didn’t have to find some random job or feel obligated to pursue a career and ended up as a worker for Denver Concierge’s affordable maid service, for example.So, it’s really rather odd that though I was doing what I always wanted to be doing, it took me so long to get my act together and really own the role of homemaker. Because, it turns out, homemaker means more than being at home and putting meals on the table. It means more than changing diapers and reading books. It does include those things, but it also includes housework.

The problem with much of the productivity and planning advice out there is that it begins with a vision for a 5-year outcome. When we as mothers at home try to do that, we are rather at a loss. We might not even know how many children we’ll have in 5 years. If your oldest is 5, you’re not likely to accurately foresee what it’s like to have a 10 year old – and the same is true if your oldest is 10 and you’re trying to predict 15.

What adjectives do you associate with repetition?Dullness, boredom, monotony.What about training, practice, discipline, rehearsal.Pianists practice the same scales and pieces over and over daily.Actors rehearse their scenes over and over.Athletes practice the same drills over and over daily."Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable."In the same way, we must repent, pray, read our Bible, speak kindly, admonish, rejoice, give thanks daily, even multiple times daily. We must do so to become good at them, to become fit and trained in holiness, to imitate and glorify our Father.

I’m a proponent of making short-term plans and goals – ones that can be tracked and kept top-of-mind easily. I call it ‘interval planning’ because I think it’s like interval training: Go all out for a short amount of time, then take a rest period, and you’ll progress more than if you just slog through at a consistent but slower rate.

So, I discovered that otium was the Latin word for leisure, and although I have not encountered it in education talks, it seems to have been the word used by philosophers to mean precisely what Pieper in Leisure, the Basis of Culture was trying to convey: that to truly cultivate arts – including those of reading, thinking, and discussing – we must have a space apart from the cares of marketing, buying, and selling.

Leverage the interval training technique in your personal life by setting up your calendar in intervals and planning goals accordingly. Planning and executing in short-term bursts is a great way to keep laser focus and high energy. By always keeping short deadlines and tackling manageable chunks, you can avoid overwhelm and procrastination.

Would we rather look good than be good, than do what is right? What if we prioritized being and doing good over looking good? And I’m not talking about makeup. It is simpler and more immediately rewarding to have people think we are good than to expend the effort and rise to the challenge of really pursuing virtue, regardless of people’s opinion of us.