14/1001 - Frye, Twain, and Wodehouse the poet (again)

 Short Story: The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain. Also The Story Of The Bad Little Boy

Both were humorous, especially the second one since it is thumbing the nose at all the didactic, saccharine spiritual literature so prevalent in Twain's day.

Essay: The Critical Discipline by Northrop Frye, found in On Education, available here

For anyone interested in education, this is a book worth having. Frye is the kind of critic that can see through all the fluff an flurry to the structure beneath, and the structural problems within. He can be challenging to read since his sentences are deep and dense with meaning. You have to chew them well before you can swallow. And sometimes you have to take the method of the cow or the camel and ruminate a few times before it finally clicks. But aren't those the authors especially worth reading?

"It follows that such a cliche as 'teaching the student to think for himself' is not a simple conception either. In ordinary social experience, thinking for oneself is a matter of putting one's expressive energies into socially acceptable forms. In real thinking we first study a given subject long enough to enable its laws and categories to take possession of our minds, after which we may move around inside the subject with some freedom. There is no real thought outside such disciplines. Those of us who are in universities have heard the protest of the delinquent undergraduate in some such terms as this: 'You tell us we should think for ourselves, and when we do you throw the book at us.' It is a complicated matter to explain to such a lad what he means by 'himself' is a being entirely incapable of thought. Of course a thinker should be able to return to society with an enormously heightened power of practical decision, but by that time he has lost interest in thinking for himself." 

I can't be the only person who needs to read through this more than once, and slowly, narrating as I go, until I can finally say, "Ah, yes, I see what he is saying. Wow! Frye manages to pack a lot in a single paragraph." It isn't necessary a lot in the sense of many, but in the sense of weight. An iron anvil in a vitamin capsule.

I participate in the #FryeDay over at the Literary Life Podcast Discussion Facebook page and my quote for this week was from this essay:

When I read that last line, I was immediately reminded of Charlotte Mason:

"There is no education but self-education." 

And 

"Therefore, teaching, talk and tale, however lucid or fascinating, effect nothing until self-activity be set up; that is, self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child's nature." (emphasis mine)

That is, the child will only learn what he or she wants to learn. This is not the same thing as child-led learning, though it is often confused for it. The parent lays a "wide and varied feast" of books on many subjects and the child must do the reading. But the goal is not to check the boxes and say the work was accomplished. The goal is that over the course of the years, the child will become more and more active in his education. He will want to learn. And those things that do not interest him, he will gain the self-governance to study them well enough to narrate what he has read about them. The child is not led by his interests but by a disciplined mind and a will that is able to say, "I may not want to do this, but I must, and I know I should, so I will."

The university student is no different, as the quotes from Frye show. The student is not being taught to think for himself, but trained in the discipline of how to think about a thing by himself, to make connections and see relationships between disciplines. He is learning to do the things he may not want to do ("study a given subject long enough to enable its laws and categories to take possession of our minds") so that he can have the freedom that only comes through discipline and increased self-governance. 

Poem:

I really love Wodehouse as poet so expect more of him as such in this little space.

A Solitary Triumph

by P.G. Wodehouse

Oh, the progress of Woman has really been vast

Since Civilization began.

She's usurped all the qualities which in the past

Were reckoned peculiar to Man.

She can score with a bat, use a rod or a cue;

Her tennis and golf are sublime.

Her aim with a gun is uncommonly true,

But Man beats her hollow at crime.

The strings to her bow are both varied and quaint;

There are maids who can work with the pen,

There are maids who can handle the palette and paint

With a skill that's not given to men.

There are ladies who preach, lady doctors there are,

MPs will be ladies in time,

And ladies, I hear, practise now at the Bar --

But Man holds the record for crime.

So it's hey for the jemmy, and ho for the drill,

And hurrah for the skeleton keys.

Oh, to burgle a house or to rifle a till!

I am more than her equal at these.

She may beat me at home, she may beat me afield;

In her way I admit she is prime.

But one palm at least I compel her to yield:

I can give her a lesson in crime.