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Date:         Fri, 8 Jan 1993 08:28:46 MDT
From:         Fred Fowler <frefow@FREFOW.AUTO-TROL.COM>
Subject:      Re: Home Schooling...
              93 5:49 am

  Though this thread has not attracted much attention, I am going to
  try to keep it going by widening the discussion.

  First, though, I must say that I am somewhat puzzled by the tendency
  of all those posting messages about home schooling to assume that
  parents must use some sort of structured program put out by a
  company or organization.  Apparently people believe that they are
  not able to draw up their own programs.  I am not sure why anyone
  should believe this, unless it is a result of the modern notion that
  one should always consult "experts" before setting out to do
  something.  I think that any parents who want to teach their
  children at home are perfectly capable of doing so without having to
  follow any plan drawn up by someone else.

  Several families in my parish are teaching their children at home,
  and they are using published programs only in part.  Two at least
  are going to base their whole procedure on an essay of Dorothy
  Sayers' called "The Lost Tools of Learning."  This essay lays out,
  in general terms, the kind of primary education (the education that
  comes before a university education) a person ought to be given
  if he is to be able to reason correctly, and learn new subjects
  without the help of a teacher.

  This raises a question that many Christians seem to have never thought
  of: how can a Christian child be educated so that he can go out into
  the world and effectively defend his faith to unbelievers, and
  refute the endless stream of nonsense and falsehood poured out from
  the press and radio and television?  It is not enough to teach a
  child the Christian faith, in the sense of teaching him the
  doctrines.  If he is incapable of exposing false reasoning, unable
  to detect when a writer or a speaker has redefined a term in order
  to prove his point, and so unfamiliar with formal logic that he
  cannot even recast a chain of reasoning into a syllogism, then he
  will be swayed by every false doctrine that makes an effective
  appeal to his emotions.

  The scheme of education described in "The Lost Tools of Learning"
  would give children the ability to counter the propaganda of the
  world.  Dorothy Sayers takes the scheme from the type of education
  that a learned man received in the Middle Ages before he began to
  study specialized areas of knowledge.  Primary education was divided
  into grammar, dialectic and rhetoric.  These words have changed in
  meaning since that time, so that they do not refer to what a modern
  person would be thinking of if he used them.  Grammar meant,
  besides the grammar of a language, the elementary knowledge that
  everyone absorbed before going on to more subtle learning.
  Dialectic meant the science of reasoning, and included formal logic.
  Rhetoric meant the art of using words to most effect: to express
  clearly what a you meant, and to persuade others of the truth of
  what you were saying.

  The purpose of the scheme that Miss Sayers presented was not that of
  filling a child up with subjects, but of teaching him the use of the
  tools of learning.  First he would be given elementary knowledge so
  that he would have material on which to practice with these tools,
  and then he would begin to learn their use.  In the end he would
  begin a more detailed study of special areas of knowledge that
  interested him, especially if he were going on to a university.
  I'll give more details about this in my next posting.

                                                Fred Fowler
                                                frefow@frefow.auto-trol.com
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU