Tricotomania and more

More from my week of staring at the Wiley/Blackwell booth… Though this one I almost missed. Essaying the Past: How to Read, Write, and Think about History by Jim Cullen is a thin book. I might have missed it had I not gone over and taken a really good look at the history section

This is another book that I might not give to Freya (at least not immediately) but really helped me see how to guide her learning in history. Regular readers will know that I do not think the purpose of studying history is to know a lot of facts about important events. And Freya seems to have a natural attraction for history so I don’t really need to worry about getting her to do any.

Essaying the Past is written for high school and undergraduate university students. It is a discipline specific look at how to write an essay. And that discipline specific focus is important because, as I used to tell my students, most academics use the same words to describe what they want but they don’t all mean the same things by them. “Argument”, “evidence”, “theory”, etc mean different things to different people. And “discipline” in the academic sense is not that far removed from “discipline” in the military sense — it is about training people to do things in a particular way.

Taking a discipline specific approach to the topic of essay writing also allows Cullen to discuss details of the process that are usually treated as outside of the essay writing process per se. The first seven chapters are actually about reading and include an excellent discussion of how to skim read a large range of possible sources in order to home in on your question and choose sources you will read in more detail. It also includes a solid discussion of the appropriate uses of internet research in academic work, as well as detailed guidance on evaluating sources.

The first section ends with a chapter on analysis, which is what distinguishes an essay from a report. This is an excellent discussion of the subject and makes it clear that students do need to take a position and communicate it, but that this is not any old “opinion”. Rather, students are required to engage with the material and make decisions and persuasive arguments.

The next 7 chapters go through how one might do that in some detail. Throughout the text Cullen uses examples from both published histories and student essays written for his classes at the Fieldstone School in New York. The importance of choosing a good question, first broached in Part I, is fleshed out here but the focus shifts to the proposed answer (the thesis). He also situates all of this in terms of the motive, the reason why anyone should care about this question and argument. But he does so in a way that keeps the student tied firmly to the evidence.

The 15th chapter is an extended discussion of one student essay demonstrating how all of this works in practice in a novice piece of history writing. I think this is important because it is impossible for high school and undergraduate students to write at the level of professional historians, and unreasonable to expect them to do so. They are, by definition, novices. That doesn’t mean, however, that they can’t make arguments of their own and support them with evidence. In fact, the availability of primary sources in digitized format on the internet makes the possibilities for novices to “do history” much greater than they were in the past.

The Appendices deal with various technical issues including citing sources, plagiarism, and writing answers to DBQs (Document Based Questions). Excellent information that is appropraitely located here.

I highly recommend this book for all students of history in high school and college/university. It is easy to read and easy to dip into as a resource.

I also recommend it to parents of younger children to get a sense of where you might be going with your children’s history education. Influenced by Julie Bogart (at Bravewriter), Jena (at Yarns of the Heart) and others, my approach will be to develop a lot of the skills orally at first — asking good questions, making arguments, and supporting arguments with evidence .  And by “at first”, I don’t mean for a couple of months. I think a few years of primarily working in this mode will provide a good basis for developing solid essay writing later. (Look at Jena’s post on her son Peter’s first college paper for evidence of this.)

At this point, Freya seems to be doing very well with writing fiction based on historical sources. Her latest success in this is a poem based on the biography of John McCrae (who wrote In Flanders Fields) that has been accepted for publication in Canadian Stories. It’ll be in the October edition.

So, I went to a big academic conference. And I had a booth in the trade fair bit, which is called the Book Fair because it is mostly publishers. And I spent the entire week staring at the Wiley/Blackwell booth and maybe spent some money on the last day.

One of those books was How to Read a Poem by Terry Eagleton.

Eagleton is a big cheese literary critic (nay, theorist) in England. But this book is written for students near the beginning of their undergraduate studies and for the general reader. I think you’d have to be the kind of general reader that likes academic writing, but this is probably a fair description. And he does say that you can start at chapter 4 if you want to skip his discussion of theoretical debates.

I’m the kind of person that actually finds the discussion of debates in literary theory helpful. Because I know that literary criticism, like other forms of academic analysis, takes place in the context of debates. So it is helpful for me to have a sense of what is at stake in those debates. Eagleton’s first few chapters help with that enormously, while attending to the specific case of poetry.

They also situate certain trends in poetry historically. The influence of the Romantics on our everyday notions of what poetry should be (or at least mine) was particularly enlightening. And freeing. As was the discussion of the historical shift in the meaning (and moral/political value) of “rhetoric”.

He uses examples throughout to illustrate his points and kind of walk you through the particular aspect of literary criticism that he is dealing with. And then the last chapter walks you through 4 poems from different periods.

I think I’ve mentioned before that I never “got” literature in high school and university. And I’m particularly lost when it comes to poetry. But this book really helped me.

Just to reassure you, despite the fact that he’s a big cheese literary theorist, here is his definition of a poem.

A poem is a fictional, verbally inventive moral statement in which it is the author, rather than the printer or wod processor, who decides where the lines should end. (p. 25)

Chapter 2 goes through that definition. In addition to explaining what he means by each term –”fictional”, “verbally inventive”, “moral”– he also talks about why his definition doesn’t include anything about rhyme, rhythm, metre, and all that other stuff we associate with poetry.

All his points are illustrated with appropriate examples. I particularly enjoyed the introduction to the section on the term “fiction” (which follows that on the term “moral”).

The distinction between the empirical and the moral is not the same as the difference between fact and fiction. There are plenty of moral statements, such as ‘certain members of the Royal Family are ofish individuals of philistine tastes and remarkably low intelligence’, which are not fictional — not only because they are true, but because they belong to the real world rather than to poems and novels.

There are, of course, poetic examples, as well.

This is not the kind of book I would give to my child to read. Or at least not until she is solidly advanced in high-school level English. However, I have found it very helpful in my quest to figure out what the goal of high-school English might be. What kind of thinking do I want to nurture in my daughter? And how could studying poetry help with that?

It is also helpful in making me more comfortable with poetry in general. A useful skill since Freya seems to be a poet (among other things) and it would be nice to be able to appreciate that in more than a purely parental pride kind of way. She thinks the title of the book is nuts, btw. Who needs to be taught that?

Well, I do need to be taught how to read a poem. And I’m sure others do, too. And this book helped me enormously.

BTW, there is a Search Inside feature for this book on Amazon. The table of contents gives a good sense of what is covered and there is a substantial chunk of Chapter 1 available.

Two grammar related blog posts found courtesy of Twitter today.

The first, a detailed indictment of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style in the Chronicle (in the free to all stuff). By a linguist. With details of a (presumably better) book about grammar at the bottom. At least one to check out, I think.

Geoffrey Pullam makes some sound arguments. But for those who are not familiar with the basic tenets of linguistics, it might seem odd. For linguists (and I agree with them) the whole point about a living language is that it is living. Thus the rules are only discernable by examining how people actually use the language to make meaning.

For me, the sociologist, I would say that this means that they are more social conventions than rules. Thus you can teach the social conventions, but those conventions also change. And some people defy those conventions and still communicate well and may even be lauded.

If you want to read more about linguistics and public debates about language, I highly recommend Deborah Cameron’s Verbal Hygiene. She demonstrates how some of the vociferous debates about language are really (or also) about other things — discipline, social cohesion, employment for copy writers, etc.

The second grammar post today is Three Grammar Rules You Can (And Should) Break. Directed at bloggers it takes on some of the big rules-that-are-really-social-conventions and gives you permission to treat them as you would asking your girlfriend’s father for permission to marry her.  Sometimes makes sense. But use your judgement.

I liked both. But then I’m not a big fan of rules or rule-following at the best of times. Hope you enjoy them.

Saw this video on Productive Flourishing (Somehow Charlie can get the video to actually show up on his site and I can only get a link but do click through. It is worth it.)

David Heinemeier Hansson – FOWA Dublin 2009 from Carsonified on Vimeo.

And it resonates a lot with what Lori is saying about Cheating Your Way to a Great Education.

If you are at work or have small children around (the kind who aren’t used to hearing swearing from time to time and thus might make a big deal of it; not like my child), you might want to use headphones. Or wait until the kids have gone to bed.

On Becky’s recommendation, I requested My Boy Jack from the library quite a while ago. (Finding the link, I realize that is was a LONG time ago. Maybe the library should order a few more copies.) It arrived this week. I was alone last night (Tigger had a sleepover and Mat plays football/soccer on Friday nights) so I decided to watch it just to make sure it would be okay for Freya. Personally, I find the rating system close to useless for helping me with that decision but that is a rant for another day.

So, it is a WWI movie. The potential for violence, gore, general horror is quite high. But this film is not really about that aspect of the war. It is about the effect of the war on one family. It is about the internal conflict of supporting the war and yet not wanting to lose your own son/brother. It is about the conflict between supporting the war and the shock of how badly it is being fought by your country.

In other words, this is an ideal film for teaching some of those complexities of war that I have talked about on this blog before. You know avoiding the glorification of war, the importance of imperialism to the causes of war, that kind of stuff.

Basically, this is a very personal story of a very particular family. Jack is the only son of Rudyard Kipling. Kipling is a friend of the King. And an outspoken supporter of going to war against the Germans. He speaks publicly on the issue before war is declared. And he continues to speak afterwards, encouraging all young men to join the British Army to fight the Hun (his words). His outspoken support is directly connected to the British Imperial project and the need to save this great accomplishment, which he calls “a family of nations”, from German agression.

When war is declared, Jack is 17 and wants to join the Navy. He is severely short sighted and denied a commission. He then takes an army medical and is again denied on the grounds of his eyesight. Rudyard pulls strings and Jack goes off to train as an officer.

This film is not driven by suspense so I don’t think it ruins it to say that Jack is killed in the battle of Loos very early in the war. (Statistically, this is the most likely outcome, as we all know.)

The tension of the film is between Jack’s own desires and the desires of his father, not opposed but not quite aligned either. Between Rudyard’s love of country and empire and his love of family. Between Jack’s desire for independence and his own love of family. And between unflinching support of the war and the horrible crushing loss of a son/brother.

There are scenes in the trenches. But the horror is conveyed through the terror of the soldiers and the stark contrast between a muddy countryside marked with shell holes, barbed wire and other artifacts of war and the beautiful country estate of the Kiplings. The camera does not linger on dead and injured bodies nor the gory details of their deaths. (We do see Jack’s death, drawn out somewhat but interspersed between the telling of it in the living room in England and the showing of it.) There is some swearing, remarkable for its rarity in the film and completely appropriate in the circumstances.

I recommend that you go to Becky’s remembrance day post for further information about the historical context and the lovely poem from which the title of the film was taken.

And watch this film.

We went to the theatre last weekend. Since drama is one of Tigger’s interest areas, I decided at the beginning of the school year (such as it is) that we should go to the theatre more often. This is not as easy as it sounds when you are taking an 11 year old. Most of the “family” theatre is aimed at much younger children. But the regular program is not always interesting or appropriate for someone her age. Thus I didn’t by a subscription but picked a couple that looked interesting.

One of these was Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Belle Moral: A Natural History. Mat decided to go to a workshop on Orchard and Small Fruit Production and Marketting that day, so I also took one of her friends (who is 13 and also into drama). The girls both loved it.

This is not light entertainment. There is a lot going on. I was thinking that it was a good thing we’ve been studying 19th century British history because a lot of that knowledge came in handy. I also had to explain a few things about Oscar Wilde, and late 19th century ideas about mental illness and physical features. I suspect that most 11-13 year olds would not be as thrilled as these to young intellectuals were.

But all of you interested in Darwin, the history of scientific thought, and the relative importance of art and science in guiding moral behaviour will love it. Lots of food for thought. And what I thought was an interesting ending, verging on the post-modern.

Belle Moral is also funny. As MacDonald says in the author’s note in the program

I’m essentially a comedian. Which is to say, an informed, jaded, jaundiced, optimist. There may be unhappy endings to stories, but all stories are happy, because as long as there are stories, there is hope.

And lots of references to other work for those who have read a lot and can get them. I would love someone to relieve me of my frustration at placing the reference to the madwoman in the attic, for example. And I’m sure I missed loads. I’ve had a quick skim of the Study Guide (PDF) and it looks like it provides a lot of relevant background.

There is so much going on in this play that I think it is one that will stand the test of time. It deals with big important themes. And it bears repeated viewings. I am seriously contemplating buying a copy of the script.

This run ends on Saturday. It has had 2 runs at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake (2005, 2008). Hopefully, it will come around again there. If you ever see it somewhere near you, I would recommend attending.

I’ve been busy. I’ve been planning and writing and learning. This whole growing your business thing takes time and effort. It’s fun. But I’m working harder than I have been for a while.

And Tigger is not upset. She is mostly getting on with things. And reading a lot.

At the end of the Christmas holiday we had some conversations about what she wanted to be learning and what skills she wanted to develop and came up with a routine for her. She has 5 things she needs to do most days: piano, violin, art, writing, math. All of it is in the spirit of music practice. You need to do some every day to get better. Some of it is exercises to develop new techniques. Some of it is pieces. Some of it is just repetition to improve the execution. We are going to add in some music theory using a workbook we bought a little while ago because I think it will help her with where she is going.

She also has homework for some of the outside the house stuff she does: science, Spanish, her writing group, drama. I know it looks like writing is on both lists but the second list is just a reminder that there is some specific writing she needs to do every week.  She has so many stories on the go that she could write for an hour a day and still not have done the writing she is sharing with her writing group.

We are reading A Tale of Two Cities together. That isn’t happening every day but I’m trying to remember to do it a few times a week.

And we talk. She has started asking me  how things are going when we are in the car or before bed. It feels like some weird reversal but I’m letting that feeling go and responding genuinely. And I think that is leading to her responding better to those kinds of questions. She is very resistant to things she thinks are manipulating her to do things. But if I am learning, too. Or if I’ve been busy and she wonders how things are going… Much better.

So Mom of Monkeys’ questions about unschooling the other day really spoke to me.  I realized that the “problem” with unschooling for so many of us is not about whether the kids will learn. It isn’t about what the kids will do at all. It is about what we will do.

If I’m busy working on my business all day, aren’t I neglecting my duties as a mom and a teacher? Shouldn’t this homeschooling thing take up a lot of time in my day?  Doesn’t my kid want to be the centre of attention? And won’t she resent me doing something else that isn’t really about her at all?

I didn’t homeschool when she was little. And my kid is not normal (is anyone’s?). But the particular 11 year old that lives in this hous doesn’t seem to mind at all. She gets on with stuff. She needs reminding sometimes. And she does that “do I have to” look. She is 11. But she knows that the list is a list of things she wants to do. (Yes, even the math.) And she recognizes that she is happier with a bit of a routine, loose as it is. And she still gets lots of time to devour books (good books AND trashy books).

And I think there might be something there about not wanting the weight of having to occupy me. She has always been very independent. So she doesn’t want me sitting with her for a lot of this stuff. She doesn’t want anyone listening to and commenting on her music practice unless she asks. I did a lot of work to set up the art practice, but then she can get on with it on her own. I found the math books that she is using, but she is working through them on her own.

Occasionally, I ask to see what she has been doing. She is a little bit resistant to showing me, but usually lets me go through the math book or the art binder. I haven’t seen any of her writing unless she puts it on her blog. She does share the one story with her writing group and gets comments from others (and the leader, who is a published children’s author). And I can hear the music.

But then I don’t show her the draft blog posts and e-books that I’m working on all day, either. And she only has the vaguest idea of what I’m learning right now (about business).

We talk to each other about what we are working on, in the way you might talk to a friend. I explain some of what I’m doing. She is interested. But beyond a certain level of detail, she isn’t that interested any more. She doesn’t need to know about Search Engine Optimization, for example. (I’m not sure I do, either, but I needed to learn a bit about it to figure that out.)

And that’s the thing. As a homeschooling parent, I need to know that she is learning. And I need to know some broad strokes about what that is. But I don’t need to know all the details about what she is learning. She isn’t me. I know people will ask me, and think me a horrible mother if I don’t know. But it isn’t really about me. I don’t have control over what she learns no matter how much other people would like me to.

And at the end of the day, it is she who will have to demonstrate she has the skills and knowledge that she needs for whatever particular purpose she needs to demonstrate them. And my job is to help her do that.

Right now, my job is to help her identify what she wants to learn, what she wants to get better at, what she skills she needs. And my job is to help her figure out what regular activities will contribute to that learning. And as we move forward, my job will be to help her work out what she needs to demonstrate to others for different purposes and how she can do that.

I don’t need to spend a lot of time on that. And my example, of learning and of earning a living using my skills, is worthwhile, too.

The problem with unschooling is that it requires mothers to go against the dominant cultural script. We do not have to be selfless and self-sacrificing in the name of our children. We need to be ourselves, in relationship with our children.

Can I say enough nice things about Donna Jo Napoli? I think not. I may have mentioned that when I find an author I like, I tend to go on a bit of  a binge. So our latest Donna Jo Napoli novel is The Smile, a historical novel whose main character is the woman famously painted by Leonardo da Vinci.

I think this one is shelved in the teen section and officially a “young adult” novel. The main character is in her teens and thus dealing with the standard fare of that age — getting betrothed, falling in love, etc. This topic is treated well and there is a lot of food for thought in there about the relative importance of love, economics, and status in our notions of a “good” marriage. It treats the idea of different kinds of love sensitively as well.

I am relatively unfamiliar with this particular historical period in Florence. The novel is set in the late 15th century, before and after the fall of the Medici regime there. The history seems to be very well integrated and told from the perspective of a noble girl who is slightly outside of the city politics. Her father is a silk merchant and they live in the countryside. Also important to her perspective (and I don’t think this gives to much away) is that she falls in love with a younger Medici.

Most of the novel is firmly located in noble society but class differences are addressed in the relationship between Elizabetta (Monna Lisa) and her friend Silvia, the daughter of one of the peasants who works for her father. The impossibility of transcending these boundaries is well illustrated while at the same time the possibility of friendly relations between women (at least) of different classes is shown.

This novel really got me interested in learning more about this period in Italian (though at that time one should really say Florentine) history. It is this period that Macchiavelli writes about in The Prince and we thought that maybe that could be a read-together book sometime soon.

This isn’t really a book about a painting. It takes the painting as a point of departure and creates a plausible story, drawing on solid historical knowledge. The main character is fictional. Not much is known about the woman who modelled for DaVinci. But the events and places are real. It is this combination of a good story about a girl growing up, falling in love, marrying and having children with interesting historical detail that makes The Smile so compelling.

You learn a little bit about silk production on the side. And I wondered at some points, whether one could recreate certain dishes. There is considerable detail about food in places. And this is Italy before the “discovery” of the New World and thus before the tomato. I have trouble imagining Italian food without tomatoes and the food intrigued me.

As you can tell, I enjoyed this book as much as Tigger did. It makes a good read-together. I suspect that the primary narrative would not be of interest to younger girls. Tigger is just coming into the age where this kind of thing is of interest, though the history is also fascinating.

Highly recommended, as seems to be the case with any book I take the time to write a review of.

Sometimes the news throws up some examples of excellent writing. Today was one of those days. The first paragraph of a story about the dire economic fortunes of Waterford Wedgwood, ends with a rather amazingly well chosen metaphor.

In the end, if this is the end – and Killian Murphy believes that it’s the end – neither Vera Wang’s Grosgrain plates nor Barbara Barry’s Musical Chairs teacups nor Jasper Conran’s pretty peacocks on green chinoiserie place settings could save Waterford Wedgwood PLC from shattering like crystal stemware on an unyielding kitchen floor.

If you care about the particulars of the news, as opposed to just the metaphor, you can find the full story here.

Today we had the radio on. And we listened to Q with Jian Ghomeshi. They are replaying some best of 2008 stuff (isn’t everyone) and today it was an interview with Lynda Barry. This was so amazing given all the thoughts I’d been having about this lately. Very inspiring. Well worth a listen.

Luckily, the folks at the CBC make Q available as a podcast. You can get today’s episode (including the Lynda Barry interview, which was near the end) here.

Best piece of advice from Lynda: we have to get out of the Is it Good/Does it Suck mindset about our creative process and just value the experience of creating. She connects that to play. And to brain research. Do go listen.