Who am I? Christian, Mom of 7, grandma to 14, 'retired' homeschool mom after 29 years, AmblesideOnline Advisory member. I've camped on the Al-Can highway, snorkeled in the China Sea. I blog about Charlotte Mason, books, travel, and more. Posts often include affiliate links. I promise not to waste your time.
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Friday, November 26, 2021
Learning about other cultures
Monday, October 18, 2021
1904 Parents' Review article on Haiti's TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTOURE.
Miss Mason operated a teaching school where she trained young women in her educational practices and principles. It was located in a building called Scale How (a how is a hill, and the building was at the top of a small hill).
One part of the program required the student teachers to take turns presenting weekly papers on various topics to an assembled audience of their fellow student teachers and the teaching staff. The weekly presentations were called SCALE HOW Tuesdays and from time to time Miss Mason reprinted one of them in The Parents' Review magazine she edited.
Below is a rather remarkable (for its time) piece I discovered while browsing. It does use language now outdated, but as I understand it, at the time the terms used were correct and even respectful.
I used a program to translate pdf to text and I haven't given it a thorough proofread.
Scale How Tuesdays. III.
TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTOURE.
By M. ROTHERA.
AMONG the West Indian Islands, Hayti, or San Domingo, is next in size to Cuba ; this island was discovered by Columbus in 1492, and in little more than a generation the Spaniards had completely swept away the aborigines, whose place was filled by negro slaves. Then the Buccaneers made their appearance and ultimately succeeded in appropriating part of the island ; being mostly French, this part, the western part of Hayti, was given to France in 1697.
For a long time these marauders imported for their own use a vast number of African slaves. The mulattoes who grew up in the island gradually formed quite a separate caste, and in 1791, under the influence of the French Revolution, the three classes, white, black, and mixed, burst forth into the struggle which ultimately led to the downfall of the Europeans in the island and the independence of the coloured rebels.
This result was mainly due to the influence of a very remarkable negro, Toussaint L’Ouverture, and it is about this man that I want to speak. At the outset we must remember that he has left hardly one written line of his story, It is taken from the testimony of Britons, Frenchmen, and Spaniards—men who despised him as a negro and a slave, and hated him because he had beaten them in many a battle. All the materials for his biography are from the lips of his enemies.
Toussaint L’Ouverture was born at Breda, a property near Cape Town, in San Domingo, in 1743. His father and mother were both African slaves ; so that if anything in his life excites our admiration, we must remember that the black race claims it all, we have no share in it at all. An old negro taught him to read, and his favourite books were Epictetus, Military Memoirs, and Plutarch: in the woods he learned some of the qualities of herbs, and became, for this reason, village doctor.
On the estate the highest place he ever reached was that of coachman. He gained the confidence of his master and was appointed to exercise a kind of superintendence over the other negroes.
In this position the Native Insurrection of 1791 found him. He took no part in the first stages of the insurrection and is said to have expressed himself violently against the perpetrators of the massacres of that year. From then until the proclamation of February 4th, 1794, which declared all slaves to be free, Toussaint was alike conspicuous for his zeal in the cause of the Catholic religion and of royalty. He first joined the native army as physician at fifty vears of age, but soon exchanged this for a military appointment, becoming the aide-de-camp of Jean Francois, the native general. About the time he reached the camp of Francois, the army had been subjected to two insults. First, their commissioners, summoned to meet the French Committee, were ignominiously and insultingly dismissed; and when, afterwards, Francois was summoned to a second conference and went to it, accompanied by two officers, a young lieutenant who had known him as a slave, angered at seeing him in the uniform of an officer, raised his riding whip and struck him over the shoulders. If he had been the savage which the negro is painted to us, he had only to breathe the insult to his twenty-five thousand soldiers and they would have annihilated the Frenchmen in blood. But the indignant chief rode back in silence to his tent and it was not until twenty-four hours afterwards that his troops heard of this insult to their general. Then the word went forth, “ Death to every white man!” They had taken fifteen hundred prisoners. Ranged in front of the camp, they were about to be shot, when Toussaint, who had a vein of religious fanaticism, like most great leaders, he could preach as well as fight—mounting on a hillock and getting the ear of the crowd, exclaimed, ‘‘ Brothers, this blood will not wipe out the insult to our chief; only the blood in yonder French camp can wipe it out ; to shed that is courage ; to shed this is cowardice and cruelty besides”; and he saved fifteen hundred lives.
After the proclamation abolishing slavery, Toussaint was so grateful that he joined the French, heart and soul, opening communications with General Laveaux. On receiving the assurance that he would be recognised as a General of Brigade, he set to work to establish French supremacy throughout the island and soon occupied the Spanish towns in his neighbourhood. This action naturally threw much confusion into the Spanish ranks. An exclamation of Laveaux, on learning the consequence of Toussaint’s joining his standard—‘' Comment, mais cet homme fait Pouverture partout !’* is said to have been the origin of the name Toussaint subsequently adopted.
*(I think a very loose and modern translation might be something like, "How on earth?! This man is showing up everywhere!")
Laveaux at first treated Toussaint with coldness and distrust, and the latter, to all appearances, had reached the close of his career: but in 1795 Laveaux was arrested at Cape Town, in consequence of a conspiracy among the mulatto chiefs. Toussaint assembled his negroes, found himself at the head of ten thousand men, marched upon the capital and released the governor. Laveaux, in the enthusiasm of his gratitude, proclaimed his deliverer to be the protector of the whites, and appointed him Commander-in-chief of the united forces, and Dictator of the whole island.
When the peace between France and Spain was concluded in 1801, Jean Francois went to Madrid, leaving Toussaint the only powerful negro leader in San Domingo. He reduced the whole of the northern part of the Island to the dominion of France with the exception of one place, of which the English retained possession. He was the first person who succeeded in establishing discipline among the armed negroes and he did much to re-establish the plantations and set the colony on the way to recovery.
I cannot stop to give in detail every one of his efforts. Between the years 1795 and 1801 he achieved wonderful results. He had driven the Spaniard back into his own cities, conquered him there, and raised the French standard over every Spanish town, and for the first time and almost the last the island obeyed one law. He had subdued the mulatto and had attacked the English General, defeated him in pitched battles and allowed him to retreat to Jamaica.
This was the work of six years. With whom is he to be compared ?
Macaulay says comparing Cromwell with Napoleon, that Cromwell showed the greater military genius, if we consider that he never saw an army till he was forty, while Napoleon was educated from a boy in the best military schools in Europe. Cromwell manufactured his own army. Napoleon, at the age of twenty-seven, was placed at the head of the best troops Europe ever saw. They were both successful, but, says Macaulay, with such disadvantages, the Englishman showed the greater genius.
This, surely, is a fair mode of measurement. Let us now apply it to Toussaint. Cromwell never saw an army till he was forty; this man never saw a soldtery till he was fifty. ‘Cromwell manufactured his army out of Englishmen, out of the middle-class of Englishmen, the best men of the island ; and with this army he conquered Englishmen, their equals. Toussaint manufactured his army out of what people call the despicable race of negroes, debased, demoralised by two hundred years of slavery, a hundred thousand of them imported into the island within four years, unable to speak a dialect intelligible even to each other; yet, out of this mixed mass he forged a thunderbolt and hurled it at what ? At the Spaniard and sent him home conquered. At the French and forced them to acknowledge his superiority. At the English and they retired to Jamaica.
Now if Cromwell were a general, at least this man was a soldier. Further Cromwell was at his best as a soldier; his fame stops there. But this man no sooner put his hand to state affairs than he began to show a statesmanship as wonderful as his military genius.
Historians say that the most statesmanlike act of Napoleon was his proclamation of 1802 at the peace of Amiens, when he said, *‘Frenchmen, come home, I pardon the crimes of the last twelve years; I blot out its parties; I found my throne on the hearts of all Frenchmen ’’; and twelve years of unclouded success showed how wisely he judged.
That was in 1802. In 1800, this negro made a proclamation which ran thus, *‘ Sons of San Domingo, come home; we never meant to take your houses, or your lands. The negro only asked the liberty which God gave him. Your houses wait for you, your lands are ready ; come and cultivate them.’’
And from Madrid and Paris, from Baltimore and New Orleans, the emigrant planters crowded home to enjoy their estates, under the pledged word, that was never broken, of a victorious slave.
Again, Carlyle has said, ‘‘ The natural king is one who melts all wills into his own.’ Toussaint, at the close of the war, turned to his armies and said to them, ‘‘ Go back and work on these estates you have conquered ; for an empire can be founded only on order and industry, and you can learn these virtues only there.’ And they went. The French Admiral, who witnessed the scene, said that in a week his army had melted back into peasants.
In the matter of Free Trade, Europe waited until 1846 before the English adopted it. But in 1800, nearly fifty years before, Toussaint said to the committee who were drafting a constitution under his direction, ‘‘ Put at the head of the chapter of commerce that the ports of San Domingo are open to the trade of the world.”
At this very same time England was at war with herself on matters of religion. This man was a negro; he was uneducated, many say that makes a man narrow-minded ; he was a Catholic, many say that is but another name for intolerance. And yet, negro, slave, Catholic, ill-educated, that he was, he said to his committee, ‘‘ Make it the first line of my constitution that I know no difference between religious beliefs.”’
Toussaint was now at the height of his prosperity. He always preserved great simplicity in his own person, but surrounded himself with a brilliant staff. The island flourished under his rule; peace was in every household, lands were cultivated in every direction and the commerce of the world was represented in its harbours.
At this time, in 1801, Europe concluded the peace of Amiens and Napoleon took possession of the French throne. With a single stroke of his pen he reduced Cayenne and Martinique back into slavery. He then said to his Council, ‘‘ What shall I do with San Domingo ?"
The slaveholders said, ‘‘ Give it to us.” But Colonel Vincent, who had been private secretary to Toussaint, said, in a letter to Napoleon, ‘‘Sire, leave it alone, it is the happiest spot in your dominions. God raised this man to govern; races melt under his hand. He has saved you this island, for I know of my own knowledge, that when the Republic could not have lifted a finger to prevent it, George III. offered him any title and any revenue if he would hold the island under the British crown. He refused and saved it for France.” Napoleon turned away from his Council and is said to have remarked, “‘I have sixty thousand idle troops, I must find them something to do.’’ It seems likely that he wanted to have his troops occupied at some distance away that he might the more safely accomplish his wish to seize the French crown. It is further said that the satirists of Paris had christened Toussaint the Black Napoleon, and Bonaparte hated his black shadow. So, from one motive or another, from the prompting of ambition or dislike of this resemblance, Napoleon resolved to crush Toussaint. They were very much alike; Napoleon could never bear the military uniform; he hated the restraint of his rank, he loved to put on the grey coat of the little Corporal and wander in the camp. Toussaint also never could bear a uniform ; he wore a plain coat, and often the yellow Madras handkerchief of the slaves. Like Napoleon, he could fast many days, could dictate to three secretaries at once, could wear out four or five horses. Like Napoleon, no man ever guessed his purpose, or penetrated his plan. For instance, three attempts to assassinate him failed from not firing at the right spot. If they thought he was in the north in a carriage, he would be in the south on horseback; if they thought he was in the city in a house, he would be in the field. They once riddled his carriage with bullets; he was on horseback on the other side! The seven Frenchmen who did it were arrested ; they expected to be shot. The next day was a saint’s day and Toussaint ordered them to be placed before the high altar, and when the priest reached the prayer for forgiveness, came down from his high seat, repeated it with them and permitted them to go unpunished.
He had the wit common to all great commanders. When people came to him in great numbers for office, he is reported to have learned the first words of a Catholic prayer in Latin and repeating it would say, 'Do you understand that ?'
“No sir!” “What! want an office and not know Latin ? Go home and learn it!”
Then again he had confidence in his own power to rule men.
His bitterest enemies watched him and none of them charged him with love of money, sensuality, or cruel use of power.
The only instance in which his sternest critic has charged him with severity is this:—During a tumult a few white proprietors, who had returned, trusting his proclamation, were killed. His nephew, General Moise, was accused of indecision in quelling the riot. Toussaint assembled a courtmartial, and on its verdict ordered his own nephew to be shot; he was sternly Roman in thus keeping his promise of protection to the whites.
Above the lust of gold, pure in private life, generous in the use of his power, it was against such a man that Napoleon sent his army, giving to General Leclerc thirty thousand of his best troops, with orders to reintroduce slavery.
When this army reached the island, Toussaint mounted his horse, rode to the eastern end of the island and looked out on a sight such as no native had ever seen before. Sixty ships of the line crowded by the best soldiers of Europe were rounding the point. Toussaint looked a moment, counted the fleet, and turning to his General Christophe exclaimed :“All France is come to Hayti; they can only come to make us slaves and we are lost!” He then recognised the only mistake of his life, his confidence in Bonaparte which had led him to disband his army.
Returning to the hills he issued the only proclamation which bears his name and breathes vengeance :—' My children, France comes to make us slaves. God gave us liberty ; France has no right to take it away. Burn the cities, destroy the harvests, tear up the roads with cannon, poison the wells, show the white man the hell he comes to make’’—and he was obeyed.
When William of Orange saw Louis XIV. cover Holland with troops, he said : “ Break down the dykes, give Holland back to the ocean.”
When Alexander saw the armies of France descend upon Russia, he said: ‘“‘ Burn Moscow, starve back the invaders.”
The Black saw all Europe marshalled to crush him and gave to his people the same heroic example of defiance.
Leclerc sent word to Christophe, one of Toussaint’s generals, that he was about to land at Cape city. Christophe said, “Toussaint is governor of the island, I will send to him for permission. If without it a French soldier sets foot on shore, I will burn the town and fight over its ashes.”’ Leclerc landed, Christophe took two thousand white men, women and children and carried them to the mountains in safety, then, with his own hand, set fire to the splendid palace which French architects had just finished for him, and in forty hours the place was in ashes. The battle was fought on its streets and the French were driven back to their boats.
Wherever the French went they were met with fire and sword. Thus beaten in the field they tried double dealing. They issued a proclamation saying: ‘‘ We do not come to make you slaves ; this man Toussaint tells you lies. Join us and you shall have the rights you claim.’’ They cheated every one of his officers, except three, and finally these also deserted him and Toussaint was left alone. He then sent word to Leclerc: ‘I will submit, I could continue the struggle for years, could prevent a single Frenchmen from safely quitting your camp, but I hate bloodshed. I have fought only for the liberty of my race. Guarantee that and I will submit and come in.’’ He took the oath of a faithful citizen and on the same crucifix Leclerc swore that he should be faithfully protected, and that the island should be free. As the French General glanced along the line of his splendidly equipped troops, and saw opposite Toussaint’s ragged ill-armed followers, he said to him :—‘ L’Ouverture, had you continued the war, where could you have got arms?” ‘ I would have taken yours!” was the Spartan reply.
He was sent down to his house in peace, but shortly afterwards Leclerc, fearing his power, summoned him to attend a council. Toussaint, ‘‘ the purest soul God ewer put into a _ body,”’ as the Spanish General said of him, probably reasoned thus, on receiving the summons: ‘If I go willingly, I shall be treated accordingly,’? and he went. The moment he entered the room, the officers drew their swords, and told him he was a prisoner; and one young lieutenant who was present says :—‘“*He was not at all surprised, but seemed very sad.’’ Thus this man, truthful as a knight of old, who could not be taken by fair means was taken by treachery. They put him on board ship and set sail for France. As the island faded from his sight, he turned to the captain and said :—“ You think you have rooted up the tree of liberty, but I am only a branch. I have planted the tree so deep that all France can never root it up.”
Arriving in Paris, he was put into gaol, but after a short time he was sent to the Castle of St. Joux, to a dungeon, twelve feet by twenty, built wholly of stone, with a narrow window high up on the side, looking out on the snows of Switzerland.
Thursday, August 19, 2021
Haliburton's Orient, Chapter 8
In Chapter 8 of Halibuton's Orient there is an incident described where he buys a pair of slave children. The incident is largely treated as a humous anecdote so it is obviously disturbing. What to do with that chapter is up to the individual reader. In some cases it's ideal to skip it. In others it's best to discuss it. This is some background material for those who want additional material for that discussion or simplyfor their own interest.
This page is full of helpful information and background research on Haliburton. You can and should read it, but it's long, so this is my quick summary of points that stuck out to me personally.
He strikes me over all as the original influencer. What he might have done with an IG account!
He and a brother had a heart condition that showed up in their teens. The brother died of it. Haliburton's college room-mate says this changed everything for Haliburton- he doubted and was infuriated by a God who would let this happen. He questioned our basis for morality. He decided it was better to live to the utmost and die young, than to live a life of conventional respectability at all.
He wrote in a college essay that it was “Better by far … to be guilty of interesting lies, than to be guilty of stupid truths.”
The website is the work of a man who followed in Halliburton's footsteps, attempting to travel where he traveled, see what he saw. He also invested a lot of time and energy into tracking down Haliburton's original journals, letters, and other other memorabilia, and found some surprises, like this one:
"To my surprise and amazement, I discovered his letters had been highly edited (doctored would be a better word) by his father before publication. Lines were changed, deleted, added. Not all of Halliburton’s adventures took place as he described them. For example, he wrote that he had bought and sold slaves in Timbuktu, when in reality he had left the city in a rush to escape the flies. The slaves were an afterthought, a story he tried out on reporters at his hotel suite in Paris. They loved it."
IT's hard to know what to make of this, exactly. Why did Halliburton try this story out on reporters? Did he think it would amuse them, or was he mocking their gullibility and willingness to write up anything without fact checking? Was it even him, or was this one of his father's additions to the story?
Personally, my first reaction on reading this was relief. I know it's irrational because whether true or not, all the people involved are long dead and my feelings change nothing anyway, but knowing the story was fake, my first reaction was a release of sadness because that means that there were not two very real children who suffered in this story. Of course, there were thousands, no millions of others. But to the human heart as a wiser person pointed out, one person's death is a tragedy but a million is a statistic. We can't take in the larger number. Not defending this, but it is a reality. So I am glad and will always be glad to know that I don't have to worry about these two children because they are a fiction.
Others think it makes the story worse, because it shows he thought it was funny and entertaining to buy slaves- but we already know that, since the story is in the book. So I cannot see how it makes it worse- it doesn't add a callousness to the story we didn't already have available to us, it only tells us these children were not real so did not suffer. To me, that's always going to be a relief.
Or do we know this after all? Do we know who added it to the book? Haliburton apparently first made this story up off the cuff while talking to reporters, who ate it up. Was it that he was just proving to himself he could make something up, however outrageous, and reporters would just accept it uncritically?
I still read Haliburton and think he's a great read to give one a sense of adventure, a sense of wonder and delight in the diverse culture and geography of the world, even with his great personal flaws. People are a mixed bag. I woudn't send one of my kids out to camp overnight with Haliburton, or take a trip with him in person. But reading his book his not the same.
If I were to have a child who says they won't read Haliburton any more because of this incident, would have a long and serious discussion offering other points of view to consider, but then probably in the end leave it up to her. My part of the discussion would include the notion that we do not read authors because we agree with their actions or viewpoints, and that there is more value in reading outside our echo chamber than staying within it. It is possible to strongly disagree with a person's attitude and action in one or more areas, and still learn from them- nobody is 100% all one thing or another. We can learn from good writing, from horrible warnings and bad examples and, in Halliburton's case from his writing style and his descriptions. I would say that human beings are complex and nuanced and weird creatures, and she's not inviting him to live in her house or marry her sister- she's reading a book about geography. Probably few of us should be totally written off based on a single episode in our lives, particularly when we don't know what followed- this is a snapshot in time (if it even happened).
Here are some things to learn from the incident in question- whether it actually happened or not, this doesn't just tell us something about Halliburton. It passed editors and the publishing company, it passed through many reviews at the time, it passed through the hands of thousands of people and few even commented on it- this tells us something important about the culture and time- how easily they accepted as a joke something that screams out to us as a great evil! Those bad, bad, people of the past, right? Except... they weren't. they were as we are, really, no matter how much we may hate to admit it. It is as easy as breathing to absorb attitudes and assumptions about all kinds of things in your own culture because you don't even see them- this should be a warning to us to be more vigilant about what we pick up and take for granted in our own culture. This also might be a great time to read C.S. Lewis' essay on why we read old books (it is not because they are more error-free than modern books), and listen to this podcast: https://www.theliterary.life/080/
Thursday, August 12, 2021
Of Little Brown Girls and Babies Wif Spa'klin' Eyes...
It's interesting - and concerning- to me that often white people who think they are helping, who have good intentions do not realize how much they are actually white washing the curriculum when they take it for granted that it's fine to sing a song about oats, peas, an barley, but get nervous when we sing about picking bananas.
Read this right and you can smell and see the steaming corn pone, hopefully accompanied with butter speedily melting down the sides, glistening the lantern light, filling your senses with a sense of warmth and well being.
Tuesday, August 3, 2021
Charlotte Mason Language Arts, Part 3
In years 4-6 for Composition and grammar, Miss Mason had her students learn the parts of speech, and do some assigned writing. The assignments and topics came from their reading, and were in addition to regular oral or sketched narration of all their readings. The older children (fifth and sixth grade) might be asked to write stories from Plutarch readings, the fourth graders from The Pilgrim's Progress. Young children who couldn't easily write could narrate orally. In other terms 4th and 5th graders might be asked to write compositions, or stories, from their readings in Citizenship and Reading, or, from events of the day, etc. The fourth graders were only asked to write about their literature or stories selections for school, not from other subjects.
We used Mad Libs a lot, and also the original Learning Language Arts Through Literature: The Red Teacher Book. I think the first sets, comb-bound, without accompanying student workbooks, were much better than the ‘new and improved’ later versions, but that’s just me. Probaby many of you have your own preferred method of teaching the parts of speech. (yes, those are affiliate links)
Students continued in copywork or transcription, dictation, and foreign language study, which always includes some grammar.
They also were assigned written and oral composition (narrations) from
“Stories from work set in (a) Citizenship and Reading, or, (b) events of the day, etc.” (form IIA), or “Stories from reading. Children in B who cannot write easily may narrate part” (Form IIB).
Writing.
A New Handwriting for Teachers, by M.M. Bridges, 2/8; practice pages 1, 2, 3. Two perfectly written lines every day. Transcribe, with page 6 as model, some of your favourite passages from Henry V.Dictation.
Two pages at a time to be prepared carefully; then a paragraph from these pages to be written from dictation, or, occasionally, from memory. Use The Story of the British Empire (see Geography).Composition.
Write stories from (a) Plutarch (Aristides), (b) The Pilgrim’s Progress (Partridge, 9d.), pages 67-105 (to the Valley of the Shadow of Death). Young children who cannot easily write may narrate.English Grammar.
A Short English Grammar, by Professor Meiklejohn (Holden, 9d.), pages 152-161. Parse and point out Subjects, Verbs, Objects.
BEGINNERS, Arnold’s Language Lessons, Book V. (3d.), pages 5-22.
I have more to say about Meiklejohn and Arnold's later.
Next we have Programme 43:
Composition.
Write stories from (a) Plutarch (Coriolanus), (b) The Pilgrim’s Progress (Partridge, 9d.), pages 105-141 (to Trial at Vanity Fair). Young children who cannot easily write may narrate. (again, I address the composition here)
English Grammar.
Arnold’s Language Lessons, Book IV. (3d.), pages 20-33. Parse and point out Subjects, Verbs, Objects.
Beginners, Arnold’s Language Lessons, Book IV. (3d.), pages 5-19.
Arnold’s Language Lessons are thus far unavailable to me, but I haven't looked in a couple of years.
Next we come to programme 90, around 1921, and now we are gettingg somewhere:
Writing.
A & B A New Handwriting,* by M. M. Bridges (P.N.E.U. Office, 5d. a card): practice card 3. Transcribe, with card 6 as model, some of your favourite passages from The Tempest. Two perfectly-written lines every day.Dictation.
A & B Two pages at a time to be prepared carefully: then a paragraph from one of these pages to be written from dictation, or, occasionally, from memory. Use the books set for reading and history.Composition (written and oral).
A Stories from work set in (a) Citizenship and Reading, or, (b) events of the day, etc.
B Stories from reading. Children in B who cannot write easily may narrate part.English Grammar.
Parse and point out Subjects, Verbs, Objects.
A Meiklejohn’s Short English Grammar* (2/-), pp. 1-18; 106-118.
B How to Tell the Parts of Speech,* by E. H. Abbott (Seeley, 2/6), pp. 55-74. Teacher study preface.
As an aside, this Parts of Speech book set me on a pretty little goose chase for an hour or two. It is what she (or one of her employees) wrote in this Programme, but there’s a small error. It’s not E.H. Abbott, but E.A. Abbott, (who also wrote Flatland). This is not uncommon when searching through her writings. She was very widely read, and sometimes she tossed things off from memory rather than checking her references, and of course, she lacked google. I’ve found a handful of mis-attributions of this sort in her books.
You see, there is an E. H. Abbott who also wrote, but he wrote mostly magazine articles which were largely published in an American weekly news and opinion journal called The Outlook (which first published Booker T., Washington’s Up From Slavery in serial form, and then later it was published as a book). So it took me more than a few web searches, using various permutations of title and author, and finally I tracked down the book by E.A. Abbott. . (Naturally, by then it was time feed my family and get a kid to swim practice and help another child with something else, and I was too tired to think about grammar anymore that night).
I can only find the American version online at googlebooks. I believe some of the exercises are rather different, and I know the page numbers are, so that won’t be much help when looking at the assignments. However, Miss Mason stressed that teachers needed to not just read, but study the preface of this book, and I do believe those would be essentially the same.
I transcribed the preface below.
To recap just a bit before we do this, one thing has remained constant for form II in Grammar- they are learning parts of speech, and they are learning them by finding them as used in a sample paragraph from their reading.
Keep in mind, too, that form IIB is the youngest group of form II children- the 9-10 year olds. They begin in this term with Abbott’s book and the parts of speech, and their teachers read the preface in order to give them the philosophy and perspective they need to teach this topic.
Which brings us to this- if Miss Mason wanted teachers to read the preface (after previously not asking anything of them but teaching nouns, verbs, and adjectives at this level), it would behoove us to take a peek at that preface.
So…. drum roll, please! Here is the Preface which Miss Mason wanted the teachers to study from Abbott’s Parts of Speech book:
PREFACE: The conviction that any child can be taught “how to tell the Parts of Speech” in any sentence that he can understand, has induced me to publish this little book. I believe that a very young child may be taught, almost without knowing that he is being taught, first to classify English words according to their function in the sentence and then to infer the nature of each word from its function, or, as a child would put it, to tell you first what the word does and then what Part of Speech the word is. The principal mistake in teaching English grammar hitherto seems to have been the attempt to assimilate it to Latin grammar. All the grammatical nomenclature of the inflected Latin language having been imported, as a matter of course, into the teaching of the uninflected. English teachers next set to work at finding English things for the Latin names. For example, they first imported into English the Latin word, “Gender,” which represents a Latin reality, and then, inventing an English unreality to correspond to the Latin importation, they insisted on making their pupils repeat, as an important point in English grammar, that “hen” is the feminine of “cock” and “she-goat” of “he-goat.” In the same way, a whole system of syntactical concords was invented, not because the concords existed, but because their names existed, having been obtruded into English grammar. This has given a sense of unreality to elementary English teaching, from which even now we have not quite extricated ourselves.”
Now, most of that part of the preface no longer applies to us, of course, because every writer of grammar textbooks for English speakers has moved on from trying to obtrude Latin grammar into English. Pay attention to what he says about form and function, however. Set those ideas over on the little warming tray in your mind, let the connections start to work a bit. We’ll be coming back to that. The next page of the preface:
“The following extract from a paper read before “the Birmingham Association of Teachers of all Grades” will serve as an exposition of the remedy suggested and aimed at in the following pages:
“The reform that I would suggest is based, 1st, upon honesty, a determination to approach the subject with a single eye, to discard all one’s hampering Latin notions, and not to say one sees in English what one really does not see; 2d, upon experiment, guiding a boy from his own language (not from poetical examples, nor from choice classical prose) to see the necessity of certain words; 3d, upon reasoning, teaching him to reason out what part of speech each word is for himself.
“Of these three principles honesty needs no comment nor does experiment need much (though some teachers seem to be hardly aware how valuable a lesson English grammar may be made in the way of enlarging a child’s stock of words and notions by experiment): but how is a boy to reason out what part of speech a word is? Thus: he is to be taught for some time to tell you what a word does, before he is asked or even permitted to tell you what the word is. The fundamental principle of English grammar may be stated with little exaggeration as being this, that any word may be used as any part of speech. It is therefore the force and meaning of the word, as gathered from the meaning of the sentence, that must determine what part of speech the word is; for example, whether ‘considering’ is a Participle, an ordinary Noun, or a Verbal Noun, a part of some Tense in a Verb, or a Preposition.* We must, therefore, not allow our pupil to tell… (cont.)
*For example, in the words ‘Considering your youth, it is possible your fault may be pardoned.’ If this sentence is English, which can scarcely be denied, it is the merest pedantry to deny that considering is a Preposition here. See Morris’s “Historical Outlines of English Accidence,” p 200.
Incidentally, I love the mention of honesty. How often do adults teach children things they do not themselves truly believe, merely because of so-called experts? Here’s how I am understanding the ‘what do I do?’ part of this: So we spend some time presenting him with sentences or paragraphs, and asking him to look at the sentences and point out a word and ask him to tell what that word is doing- it would probably help to give some examples. Happily, the pages Miss Mason assigns contain many such opportunities.
Preface cont:
“[we do not allow our student to tell] us what part of speech the word is till he has told us its function, or, in his own words, what the word does.
“Perhaps some one may say “Of course, no good teacher would let his pupils say what part of speech a word is without being able to explain why.’ But I submit that this is not quite the same thing. Giving reasons after the answer is not the same mental process as giving first the facts, and then deducing the answer from the facts. A boy that has given a bad answer will generally find little difficulty in supporting it with a bad reason. But if you fix his attention first on what the word does before he has committed himself to an error and while his mind is open to receive the truth, he is more likely to reason in an unbiased and honest way; and besides, he will attach importance to that which is really important, – I mean the function, and not the name of the word.
I should like to be able to go into any elementary school and to be sure of hearing children reasoning thus; ‘Quickly tells you how he came; therefore it is an Adverb.’ ‘Black tells you what sort of a horse it was; therefore it is an Adjective.’ ‘Horse is the name of an animal; therefore, it is a Noun.’ ‘That joins two sentences together; therefore it is a Conjunction.’ ‘Twice; tells you how often he fell; therefore it is an Adverb. That word ‘therefore’ is a word that might with advantage be indelibly engraved on the heart of every child.
In the use of that word consists the system that I wish to recommend. Facts first, reasoning from the facts afterwards. I stand here as against the claims of ‘because,’ to advocate the claims of ‘therefore.’
Rather more time and pains than are given at present will perhaps be required to teach a child thus to experimentalize, to reason, and to classify; but the time will probably be well bestowed, and, besides, we may perhaps gain time by dispensing with a good deal now generally taught. (cont. later)
I found this a little bit confusing, so I’m going to cheat a bit and jump ahead and share one of the lesson exercises with you. It think it illustrates his meaning well enough to help us interpret the above instruction about form, facts, and function. Here is the entire chapter on nouns, in case you are also confused and want to see what that might have looked like in practice.
In CM's schools, the children do these exercises, and for a few minutes at scheduled times each week, they find nouns in their daily reading. This could take a few weeks.
This is not to take a long chunk of time each day- we see in the schedule above that the form IIB children only went through 20 pages of this book in a single term. That’s about two parts of speech per term.
Think of these grammar exercises as vitamins rather than a meal: a very little bit, but that little done steadily, regularly, sustainably over the term. The children learn through observation as well as instruction, and they use real books to identify what they have learned.
For the parent-teacher, I confess this is a bit more daunting than a canned grammar curriculum from one of the bigger publishing houses, more challenging than an ordinary textbook with that pleasant time saver, an answer key.
For the child, I think this will produce knowledge that is his own, a conceptual understanding of the ideas in such a way that he can more easily apply that knowledge in other areas.
I should be disposed to give up as either superfluous or hopeless the attempt to teach an English child how to speak English out of an English Grammar. If he is ever to speak English correctly, he will learn it by speaking it; if he is ever to use the words loci and cherubim, maxima, and minima, he will, before he uses them, have learned the correct forms, by hearing others use them. Nor do I see, I confess, the use of making an English boy go through the whole of the Verb ‘I love,’ including such out-of-the-way Tenses as ‘I may have been loving,’ ‘I shall have been loved,’ etc. A Verb thus learned seems to me to convey little benefit, and gives a sense of unreality to the lesson– for the boy uses his Verbs in all probability quite correctly already– and it is a very dull and wearisome task. I would discard the task and all such tasks and make the business of the teacher not to teach the boy how to speak English but how to understand English and how to see the reasons for the anomalies in it. Common faults, if they are common in a certain neighborhood, such as ‘says I,’ ‘will’ for ‘shall,’ and the like, may be eradicated without compelling a boy to go through the whole of an English Verb, and the symmetry of the Tenses may be perceived better, not worse, by discarding the drudgery.”*
To come to details– it is hoped that the Exercises may be less wearisome than such exercises mostly are. They have been written with the special purpose of exemplifying the rules of parsing, while at the same time they have been thrown into the form of little tales or fables. They are intended chiefly as oral exercises, but may be afterwards written….
*The Tenses are not dealt with in this book.”
We see once more the importance of Miss Mason’s foundational methods- that of exposing the children early and often to literary language, to the stories read from the actual Bible rather than story books, to a good full three years of school spent reading only the best books, copying only the best sorts of writing, studying shorter passages carefully for recitation, writing notations in nature journals where accuracy matters, learning the basics of another language, singing songs, listening to poetry- it's all part of the foundation.
Read these sorts of books, do this kind of copywork, narrate from this class of literature, and vocabulary really does take care of itself, and generally, proper grammar does as well. Done properly, your child is already handling his native language correctly, he just hasn’t learnt the nomenclature to label and explain what he’s doing.. If he does have some grammatical irregularities because family members or friends with whom he is in regular contact with also have weak areas in their grammar, then you focus your teaching on those areas. If your child’s relatives are not native English speakers and so they struggle with pronouns or use double negatives, then you focus on *those* areas. Don’t insist on forcing a 7 y.o. native English speaker through grammar lessons on the proper use of a or an when he already naturally uses the correct article- wait until fourth grade or beyond to give him the explanation behind what he already does, or to begin honing in on those specific areas your particular child didn’t pick up naturally. Don’t force native speakers to conjugate verbs in their native tongue (the exercise has some use in learning new tongues, IMO, and in Latin it’s just fun). If English is your second language but you've got a clear understanding of the punctuation, don't waste time on lessons on what your child already knows and does- sometime after year 4, give a quick lesson on the right terms, but the bulk of your time allotted to grammar should be focused on short, but deeper lessons and studies in the weaker areas, using the principles and examples above to help you.
“(It seems to me to have been a serious mistake in teaching English Grammar to give young children, by way of examples and exercises, chips of sentences, always dry,) dull, and uninteresting, and often ambiguous, and to call them “Simple Exercises.” Easy and connected narrative (not poetical extracts, which are full of inversions and irregularities), should be given to a child as soon as he begins to parse. For no child ought to be able to parse a sentence that he does not perfectly understand.
The Specimen Exercises worked out for the child are purposely made more difficult than the Exercises given to the child to work out for himself. The intention has been gradually to prepare the learner to grapple with difficulties in a logical way, and to accustom him to believe that all difficulties can be logically overcome. For undoubtedly there are difficulties in English grammar; there are probably more in English than in Latin and Greek. But the beauty of the difficulties in English grammar is that they can be reasoned about by English children, and that the materials for such reasoning lie in the child’s own mouth: his own speech supplies him with the best foundation for argument. For they are to be solved by appeal, not to inflections, but to the function of each word, which an English boy is quite able to comprehend, provided that the subject matter is suitably simple.At the risk of appearing to practise mechanical, while advocating intelligent teaching, I have ventured to insert “tests” side by side with definitions. Experience has convinced me that they are useful as occasional crutches, and can easily be thrown aside when no longer needed.
If the book should seem somewhat diffuse, attempting to fill up what should be supplied rather by a teacher than a book, my apology must be that it is intended for parents as well as for professional teachers, and that most books on this subject hitherto have rather erred on the side of conciseness than diffuseness.”
Function first, name follows- which words in these sentences describe things? What is this sentence about? That’s the subject. What does the sentence tell us about what is happening, what that subject is doing? Ah, that’s the predicate, the verb.
There's more of the preface but I am going to stop here and give us time to really think about this- and, as Mason said she wanted her teachers to do, study it. This is a LOT to think about, isn't it?
Preface TBC.