Tuesday, August 27, 2013  Countdown to School: Pedagogical
Passion, Part Two   Part One is here.  It's one week until
school starts.  Charlotte Mason said that all children naturally
have good appetites for learning, just as they do for eating.
Trouble is, some kids--is it just a contemporary, First-World
problem?--have poor appetites for both.  Dollygirl has always
been a small eater at meals.  This summer she often hasn't even
bothered eating breakfast.  That might be just a
tweenage/teenage thing, along the same lines as wanting to sleep
late (which she doesn't do); but you see my point.  Was
Charlotte Mason right or wrong about that in her own time, and
if it was true then, does it hold up now?  Have our children's
natural appetites, physical and intellectual, possibly changed
in the last hundred years?   If the banquet is spread before
them, is it still true that they will eat?  Or does there have
to be some kind of extra encouragement?  I've been reading The
Passionate Learner: How Teachers and Parents