Is Plutarch all there is to Citizenship? Not at all. Middle school students in Forms 3-4 take up the definite study of their local, state, and national government, as well as turn their attention upon themselves to learn how they are capable of engaging the world and their neighbors. Tune in to the podcast today to hear more.
Listen Now:
Charlotte Mason, Volume 6 (Amazon) (Living Book Press – use code DELECTABLE for 10% off!)
ADE Vol 6, Chapt 10 Reading List
Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, trans. by Thomas North (Heritage Press)*
Anne White’s Plutarch Project (Amazon or free on AmblesideOnline.com)
Ourselves by Charlotte Mason (Riverbend Press softcover or Amazon – Vol. 1 and Vol. 2)
Atlases (discussed in Episode 324):
- Ancient and Classical Geography*
- Rand McNally’s Atlas of the Ancient World, ed. by RR Palmer*
- Muir’s Historical Atlas of Ancient Medieval and Modern*
- Digital map resources at Grammaticus.co
Episode 178: Plutarch Immersion
*for out of print – OOP – or difficult to find books, try BookFinder.com
Emily
Welcome to A Delectable Education, the podcast that spreads the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method. I’m Emily Kiser and I’m here with…
Liz
…Liz Cottrill…
Nicole
…and Nicole Williams.
Emily
Well, Charlotte Mason tells us that “children familiar with the great idea of a state in the sense not of a government, but of the people learn readily enough about the laws, customs and government of their country learn too with great interest something about themselves, mind and body, heart and soul, because they feel it is well to know what they have in them to give to their country.”
Nicole, can you share with us what Charlotte Mason used to give children these ideas?
Nicole
Yes. In Forms 3 and 4, they continue with Plutarch, which was begun just for two years before this. And most of the time, the same Life was assigned from Form 2A through Form 4. So fourth grade through ninth grade. Sorry, fifth grade through ninth grade.
Again, with those omissions. Only occasionally do we see a different Life substituted in Form 3 or 4. I’m just not sure that that’s really necessary. I think in my home school room, I think we’re good to just all stick together.
Alongside Plutarch, students began reading the first book of Charlotte Mason’s book, Ourselves, that she wrote to the children. And then they read that book over the course of three years. So a small amount every week in that. This book maps out human nature and its noble possibilities and its weaknesses so that students can better understand their own character and the part it plays in the common life of their community. It’s something we recommend for moms too.
Liz
Yeah, we all need that.
Nicole
Charlotte Mason also assigned Form 3 students, so these are your seventh and eighth grade students, an additional book that explored the workings of society and the responsibilities of the individual within it. These included titles such as Social and Industrial Life, The Golden Fleece, Household and Citizen, Who’s My Neighbor? So while the exact book varied over the years, the goals remain the same with that. And we..I’ll tell you what we used in a minute.
In Form 4, they continue this work with additional books, including such as The Citizen, Days to Remember, The English-Speaking Nations. I don’t know how you say…is it Helles the Forerunner? Or Sesame and Lilies. Again, this deepens their students’ sense of history, culture, civic identity. So instead of using those options, there’s a lot of things there I guess you could pull from. But in Forms 3 and 4, we suggest the Young Citizen Reader by Paul…
Emily
…Reinsch. I don’t know how you say it.
Nicole
This has been updated by Lisa Ripperton.
Emily
Of Yesterday’s Classics.
Nicole
Of Yesterday’s Classics, yes.
Emily
And we make that change why, Nicole?
Nicole
Because Charlotte Mason originally scheduled a book similar to this in Form 1A…
Emily
2A
Nicole
2A. I keep doing that. In 2A, but in our five-day timetable we just did not have room for that second lesson in that grade level so we have pushed that book up to this level.
Anything you want to say about that?
Liz
Also because this is geared more to Americans, right?
Emily
Well, yes, we update because we, of course, need these are to give their ideas about their local community, state and federal government.
Liz
That are different from the UK.
Emily
Absolutely. So we do need a resource that is applicable. We, yes, instead of doing the variety that she did at this age, we’re giving that foundation that they did not get into a that they would have in her programs. Yeah.
Nicole
So also later in the programs, there was a new element that appeared in Form 3 and 4 called Life and Its Beginnings by Webb. And I just mention it because people often write me and ask about health class. I always tell them, I really think Ourselves covers everything that would be needed in health class, but I thought it was interesting that this was here.
Emily
That she saw that more in Citizenship.
Nicole
Yeah. Yeah, so that was interesting. So yeah, that’s and it maybe is important to note that was way later, well after Charlotte Mason was gone.
Emily
So yeah, I guess we think of health as more of a science adjacent subject. But she considered more of…yeah because we have duties to keep our body in good order to help the citizens around us.
Nicole
And really she talks about you know, the things that maybe are listed more crassly if you look at what are the health requirements for a high school or a young age. She really does cover them. But in a much more…
Emily
…holistic.
Nicole
Yes!
Liz
Sophisticated.
Emily
Yes, exactly.
Nicole
Purity and exercise…
Emily
It’s actually quite astonishing what…and the Victorian era we think of as so silent on this that I was impressed when I read it. I was like, she’s really getting into these issues.
Well, OK, so that’s the big picture of what these three grades would be studying. And we discussed how we tweak what we assign. But the format is one 30-minute lesson, which we suggest using for Plutarch because that’s such a meaty lesson. And then one 20-minute lesson. But you’ll notice there’s, you know, a Citizenship reader and Ourselves. And so really those, since they’re read over three years, have such small amounts each term, you can alternate weeks with those in that 20-minute lesson. That works out really well. And we do, well, I’ll mention it later, but we do have a forecast that shows how very doable that is.
So the individual lessons, again, are very similar to other book lessons. We recap the previous lesson at the beginning, we want to, as a teacher, arouse their interest in what they’re about to encounter. They read and narrate and discuss. And just a note, I’ve said this before, but Plutarch is always read allowed to the students so that we can make those suitable admissions. The only exception would be an edition that was already formatted with them.
And then Miss Drury, who followed Charlotte Mason over the House of Education. She tells us that Ourselves is read “to herself by each girl in forms three to four without comment.” And it’s, I should make two notes here. The “girl” in Form 3-4, because at this age in England at the time, boys were going into university or trade school. And so her amazing programs were for girls. It’s just incredible that she valued their minds so much at that time.
But “without comment”, because we don’t want to insist on the moral for the child, you know we don’t want to apply that to our own child. This book is dealing with the sacred inner workings of a person, and so we need to give the students space to wrestle with that on their own.
The objectives for Citizenship lessons at this time. Charlotte Mason tells us that children gather that little code of principles which shall guide their lives. So that’s what we’re after. We’re aiming to give them these principles that they will use for the rest of their lives to make their decisions. So our objectives should be to give knowledge that’s fit to fit them to live for the good of their neighbors and for the good of the world. That knowledge covers knowledge of themselves, Ourselves being the primary text for that, knowledge of others, Ourselves is very informative of that, but then we have, you know, far distant others like Plutarch and thinking about what challenges lie in when we think about society and that comes through the Citizenship reader, so they’re getting knowledge of the government and what it means to live together in society.
As far as teacher prep, again, I’m going to, well, if you need a longer discussion of this, you can go back and listen to our Form 2 episode if you haven’t. But you need to pre-read Plutarch. It is very challenging, I think, for us who have not grown up with this kind of education to jump right into that and read it cold in turkey or whatever we would want to say, you know, just first upon first opening the book. “Open and go” is not Plutarch. We should not have that desire for such a thing.
I think it’s helpful to forecast the lessons because otherwise we’re gonna like these books that are meant to be savored and really mulled over in small chunks if we just used how much time we had we would probably cover them way too quickly and so really looking at okay this book is spread out over three years, how much do I really need to read in a single lesson? And then I would say your other teacher prep is be ready for discussion because this is where the rubber meets the road and your kids are grappling with things that they never really had to grapple with before, you know, as they’re developing their opinions.
Nicole
And at this form level, they’re having higher thinking.
Emily
Yes, so true.
Nicole
At this level, they’re really going to be seeing some things that they maybe wouldn’t have seen.
Emily
Exactly.
As far as resources, Ourselves…you can get any Charlotte Mason edition, but I really like these and because they are such a personal thing, this is something my family has done, is we’ve gifted volume one only to our Form 3 students and then when they get to Form 5, when they start reading, they can read book two. But Riverbend Press has published very…
Liz
Nice quality.
Emily
These are going to endure time. There’s sewn bindings and in a nice hardcover edition and then having the books individually bound is such a nice thing. So this is something that I hope they will keep with them and take with them for their lives.
Here is The Young Citizens Reader that we were mentioning for American students. Obviously if you live in another country, you’re going to have to find a Citizenship book, but it’s helpful to look at the table of contents and this really covers all the things that Charlotte Mason’s British citizen reader does, but for American students. And this is reprinted by Yesterday’s Classics. We have created Citizenship breakdowns, which do the forecasting for ourselves and the Citizenship reader for you if you want to save some time preparing.
And then I mentioned a lot of our Plutarch resources in our previous episode, but very briefly Anne White’s guides are very helpful, especially for teacher prep. And then the Heritage Press edition of Plutarch’s Lives by Thomas North. Thomas North’s translation is the preferred translation of Charlotte Mason and many others.
Nicole
Preferred by Charlotte Mason.
Emily
Preferred by Charlotte Mason, thank you. And I also mentioned multiple historical atlases that really help with the study of Plutarch. So if you are interested in looking at those, you can check the show notes for links that we’ll just put in, but you can also go see examples by listening to our last episode on Form 2.
Liz
You know I think with that young citizens reader, I thought, my goodness, my kids are, this is going to be really dry and boring. I was always surprised at how interested they were in it, you know, because they…they’ve never thought about why do we have running water and electricity turning on in our house because those don’t talk about utilities and you know the mail systems and all those kind of things and just being aware of the difference between one town and another and how they decide to do things. Anyway I just thought I’d put that plug in there because honestly local government plays a much more intimate part of our lives.
Emily
And we can actually do things to affect change for us and our neighbor.
Liz
And this is probably just reinforcing what you guys have already said but by seventh grade, children are beginning to be more introspective and aware of their body image and observe health and unhealthy people, you know, in their lives and wonder. They start having a lot of thoughts that they don’t necessarily share. And I just love how Charlotte Mason kind of steps in as their silent aunt who gives them little counsels, you know, about what to think about for their future and all potentials that they have as a person, because my goodness you know at that age a lot of children struggle with thinking how am I ever gonna cope with this stuff I don’t think I can do it and I just think it’s beautiful how she presents such an amazing picture of what they’re becoming as they grow up because that’s a hard stage you know to move from being a kid to being an adult.
Emily
Yeah.
Liz
Yeah sometimes I think I’m still in it. And I just like that she doesn’t serve it up to them as like lectures, you know, it just tells little stories and just gets the ideas across.
I think the biggest stumbling point at first with kids is the unfamiliarity, she uses kind of this analogy of your body, your person as a country. And she calls it Mansoul, which I think she took from Bunyan’s book, The Holy War, which by the way, it really helped me to get more into Ourselves when I actually took the time to read The Holy War.
But anyway. She just gives this perspective of your whole person – all the realms and spheres of your life like there are so many different aspects to a country. Definitely don’t try prying out. I think Emily, you pointed this out really good, but children like to have their independence and they like to have their own personal thoughts. And I think even their written narrations are maybe not necessarily any of your business, I guess.
Emily
Yeah. I actually, with my son, his narration notebook has all of narrations from all different subjects, just one after the other, except Ourselves is a separate one. And I wanted it to be more like a journal for him to reflect on and I’m not even reading it yet. Like I feel like I need permission to read his grapplings.
Liz
And I, you know, there’s so much value in writing self-reflection and yeah, I just, would tell my kids to write it as a diary entry and I promised them that I would not sneak, peek, poke or snoop, whatever.
I think that this whole area of the book of Ourselves, it’s read really slowly over five years altogether, but in these forms they’re just getting through the first book, the first half. But I think it’s inspiring to them as a person in a way that social media will never be. She gives such an awareness of their being made in the image of God and their relationship to their creator. I think that is what it’s most valuable for.
Nicole
And in previous episodes, we’ve talked about literature and Charlotte Mason pulls a lot of those characters that they may have read into this book, too.
Liz
Yeah, especially in book two. But she basically starts with their outer self and works her way inward. So by the time they get to the end, they’re talking about their heart and I mean, their conscience and their will and those kind of topics.
Emily
Yeah. And one other practical question you might have if you’ve got, you know, a seventh and a ninth grader and your ninth grader, like most of the time we have a new student coming into a book we just have them jump right in, and I would say Ourselves is not that book. It should be read sequentially from the beginning through the end and because it is personal to really read on their own right. So don’t combine those lessons.
Thanks for tuning in today. We have links in the show notes for all the resources that we have discussed this week. We hope you’ll join us next time when we will finish our look at Citizenship lessons in high school as we continue to spread the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method.