The Old Schoolhouse - March 2012

Am I worried about what he’ll do three or
;ve or ten years from now? Not really.

“Pencil = Brain Freeze”

Does the need to put thoughts on paper block effective composition?

day appeared to be play, though frequently accompanied by audiobooks on an iPod. He listened to hundreds of books, many of them classics by authors such as Dickens, Twain, Melville, Tolkien—authors whose work he never would have been able to read even if he had been reading “at grade level” and way more books than his parents could have read to him.

We persevered with faith that God had a plan for his life, that some day he would be able to read, and that even if he didn’t ever read well, he wouldn’t be doomed to failure in life. Meanwhile, he would sit in on my writing classes.

Later, he o;en dictated his compositions—at ;rst to Mom and then to a computer. Gradually he developed a ;ne vocabulary and a rather sophisticated way of using words. ;e handwriting and spelling were hard (and still are), but we kept him doing copywork daily for almost two years. Had we done standardized tests, he probably would have scored frighteningly low, but we had the wisdom to just say “no” to the world’s demand that we compare our children with other people’s children. However, I must confess there were many days when we really doubted whether this was the right approach.

With a great amount of unstructured time, he was free to ful;ll his natural calling to run and jump and build and ;ght and explore. As we had renounced video games and television as available forms of entertainment in our home, he was forced to be creative. He spent considerable time outdoors, o;en alone, observing and absorbing his world in a healthy, visceral way. Maria Montessori asserted, “Play is the work of the child,” and indeed my son worked at play. (G. K. Chesterton noted that the reason adults don’t play more is because it requires too much effort.) So it was the combination of imaginative recreation, huge quantities of great literature, and a small but steady rigor of simple academics that got us over the hump and into the homestretch.

And where are we today? My son is
15. He reads voraciously; applies him-
self seriously to the study of grammar,
logic, and rhetoric; still loves to argue
and debate (only now over much more
sophisticated ideas); and writes prose
that awes me. A couple of months ago, he
took a pad of paper and went out into the
woods behind our home. An hour or so
later, he returned and read to me what he
had written, a part of which I o;er you
now, unedited (except for spelling):

The dark forest floor is illuminated in spots by the small amount of light let through by the dense branches above. After the first few layers of pine foliage, the branches die, leaving dark claws, grabbing at any traveler. The moss which has grown on the rocks turns to bright gold when light finds rest there. Although the feel of the forest is magical, it is in no way good, for good only lives in the places of good, and the cedar forest is not a place of good. The magic which lives in the forest is strong, but wild, treacherous, and unpredictable. It seeks to hinder the traveler, causing him to become bewildered. The wind that blows through it is spasmodic and chilling to the bone. The scattered grasses which find root there are tossed in the icy breeze. Thorns stretch from one tree to another, weaving a complex web almost as if a giant spider had made the land its own.

I don’t think I could ever write something like that. ;at sort of play requires too much e;ort. Am I worried about what he’ll do three or ;ve or ten years from now? Not really.

Andrew Pudewa is the director of the Institute for Excellence in Writing ( www.excellenceinwriting.com) and a homeschooling father of seven. Presenting throughout North America, he addresses issues relating to teaching, writing, thinking, spelling, and music with clarity and insight, practical experience and humor. He and his beautiful, heroic wife, Robin, currently teach their two youngest children at home in northeastern Oklahoma.

Endnote:

1. One of my most important presentations, Nurturing Competent Communicators, explains this concept fully: www.excellenceinwriting.com /ncc-e.

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