As we close our series on citizenship, we hope you’ll join us on today’s podcast for a discussion of practical questions we often hear.
Listen Now:
Charlotte Mason, Volume 6 (Amazon) (Living Book Press – use code DELECTABLE for 10% off!)
ADE Vol 6, Chapt 10 Reading List
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
This is our last episode in our series on Citizenship. We take these closing episodes as a chance to answer any practical questions about implementing the subject of the feast that may be still hanging out there.
So we know the top one is usually about how do I combine kids? If I’m homeschooling mom, and I’ve got multiple students, what and where can I combine?
Nicole
Well, Citizenship is one of those subjects where we can combine in some places, but we shouldn’t in other places. So in the middle years, it works beautifully to combine Plutarch. I mean, we have from grade five to nine that we can be doing this with all of our kids at the same time. And, you know, our older kids are going to have more…presumably, because what I found in the past, sometimes my younger kids narrate this better than my older kids did. But maybe they’re going to have more insight than maybe a younger child would. But everybody working together on that is really a beautiful picture of Citizenship in a lot of ways.
But once the students move to Form 5 and Plutarch is no longer part of the work, we really need to let those kids go on to their studies and not just continue Plutarch as a default. We need to let them do what they need to do. But we also can’t bring younger kids up to that. So it’s just…at that point there needs to be some separation, some independence for those older kids. So yeah, so combine where it’s natural and then don’t…
Emily
…and we mentioned in our last episode or our Form 3 to 4, and maybe I should have mentioned in our 5 to 6 episode, about not combining Ourselves, that that book should be read sequentially so each individual coming in is going to start from the beginning instead of jumping into where their older siblings are.
Nicole
And that Citizenship…the citizen reader I think that those students that are all reading that, they could jump in and combine as long as they’re in that form level that’s going to read that.
Emily
Yep, I agree.
Well, another one that we often hear is, what about students who have not been doing this? I mean, we talk about Plutarch and we’re like well, this isn’t the first hard thing that they’ve had to read. They’ve been doing Bible lessons from our original translation. We’re doing Shakespeare a year before we start Plutarch. And they’ve had other literature that’s a super high caliber.
But we have also discussed that there’s a note on the programs that students are expected to do the whole program that is appropriate for their age, whether they came in or not. And so we know from Charlotte Mason’s own testimony about the Liberal Education for All movement that there were children of uneducated classes who had never had the exposure to the literature that a lot of our kids have had that jumped right into Plutarch and did great.
So I would just say you don’t need to worry about adjusting down and like going back and reading, we need to do a year of Shakespeare or we need to read Pilgrim’s Progress before we can approach Plutarch. If it’s on their schedule because that’s the year they are, just start.
There are five years of Plutarch in Charlotte Mason and this is something we have made adjustment for because it is so foundational these ideas of Citizenship that Charlotte Mason wanted our students to have. If you have a child who’s coming in in high school and they wouldn’t have Plutarch on their schedule, we have made accommodations to have them do at least a year or two of Plutarch to get those lives. Do you agree that that’s a reasonable expectation?
Liz
You would like them to at least have a year of exposure to it.
Nicole
Right, that as a student who’s coming all the way through will have had 15 lives.
Emily
Right.
Liz
Yeah, so three is good….
Emily
But that does mean that you have to drop one or so of their other Citizenship books that would have been assigned about that age, so that’s a trade off. You can’t just add it in willy-nilly or their days are going to be way too long.
Nicole
Right. I think sometimes we forget that our children are still thinking beings. They may not have the mechanics to do some of the things like read Plutarch for themselves. But those complex characters are very interesting to them. And it respects the child to be like, let’s grapple with this. And they will rise to the occasion.
Emily
Yes. So true. What other questions do you hear, Mom?
Liz
Oh goodness. So many, you know. A lot of times families postpone this from year to year and then they realize, our time is up. And I just encourage people to dive in. And if you don’t make it all the way through the life in one term, just start a new one in the next term. If they’re curious about whatever ended up with that showdown that was going on at the end of the last term, they’ll pick it up and read it themselves if they’re that curious.
One of the things about the whole topic of Citizenship that’s important to remember is that a lot of us, not everybody, but many people begin homeschooling to expose their children to better morals in general and to acquire, you know, some independent thinking. And I think the study of Citizenship is a very important thread in accomplishing that goal.
We desire them to go out into the world and be equipped to understand and cope with the world and with the people in it and live a productive and fruitful life. And they’re always going to have to live under other people’s different ideas and be under authority. And even in college, you know, that’s like a whole community and they’re figuring out how things work and run in this place, especially depending on if you’re at a big university or a small private school. They’re always going to be involved in their community and we want them to be. We want them to be responsible and to care about the welfare of others. So I really think Citizenship along with all their other subjects is really a practical application for them to understand themselves and other people and how we get along and love our neighbor as ourselves. And I think it really spurs them on and gives them really inspirational ideas for how to be personally responsible. Just to bear responsibility and carry your weight.
Emily
So what I hear you saying is Citizenship is not optional. It’s a key subject.
Liz
It’s integral to their personhood. And really I think it inspires them to maturity basically.
Emily
Yeah. Well, I want to talk a little bit about how we assess our child’s progress. We’ve done this with every subject so far, but it’s really important to keep in mind those objectives for our Citizenship lessons.
Are they engaging with these big ideas that are in their books? Do they show compassion for characters who have to make difficult decisions and realize that people are complex, that there’s really no wholly good or wholly bad person, right? My young kids always are like, is that the bad guy? Is he a bad guy? And you’re like, you know, I hope that you’re moving out of that and gaining maturity and realizing that everybody, as Charlotte Mason’s second principle says, has potential for both good and evil, right? And that we’re not wholly one or the other.
Do they narrate coherently and make applications to their own lives of the ideas that they’re reading in their books? Are their exam answers relevant to the books that they read? Do they discuss ideas from Citizenship with you and seem to be forming their own opinions? Their own opinions. I hope you caught that because that is what Charlotte Mason said is the duty of every person, to form their own ideas and opinions and not blindly take on our opinions or social media.
Do you guys have anything else you’d add? We hope that we have spread a feast of Citizenship ideas for you to chew on.
Charlotte Mason reminds us that in unlikely ways and from unlikely sources do children gather that little code of principles which will guide their lives. This is the goal of Citizenship and ultimately the entire curriculum. As we close this series on Citizenship, we hope you’re better equipped to share and spread the feast for your students.
Next time, we will be turning our attention to Composition, a subject that instills fear in many parents’ hearts. But Charlotte Mason’s method is natural to every child and gently allows them to grow in their writing abilities. So please join us next time as we continue to spread the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method.