“Once a day… call yourselves to an account what new ideas, what new proposition or truth you have gained, what further confirmation of known truths, and what advances you have made in any part of knowledge.” -Isaac Watts, from Improvement of the Mind
Wow, it has been a ROUGH week around here. But bad news, medicine struggles, sickness, and sadness aside… I’m here, you’re here, and we’ve got a brand spankin’ new week ahead. God gave us this week to glorify Him in word and deed… so let’s get cracking. In other words, let us rejoice and be glad in it. 🙂
In Chapter Three, Bauer focuses on journal keeping as a means of self-discipline, a way not only to keep track of your reading but also to track your thoughts, ideas, and criticisms of it. After all, this educational journey is not meant to be merely a mental check-list, crossing off books read as we cross off our daily to-do lists; it instead is meant to generate action in our minds: active thinking, evaluating, understanding, and use. We’re not just reading words on pages; we’re reacting to them, putting them in their proper place in our minds and hearts.
According to Bauer, the ideal idea journal combines both the objective (memorable quotes, facts, summaries) and the subjective (observations, evaluation, and reaction). As Bauer writes:
“The goal of classical self-education is this: not merely to ‘stuff’ facts into your head, but to understand them. Incorporate them into your mental framework. Reflect on their meaning for the internal life. The ‘external things’ – be they Platonic philosophy, the actions of an Austen heroine, or a political biography – make us more conscious of our own ‘reality and shape.’ This, not mere accumulation, is the goal of self-education. The journal is the place where learning happens.” (36)
So it’s now official: we’re going to be writing this stuff down. Don’t you feel all academic right now?
Our action step for the week is to practice taking notes while reading, then summarizing what we read. That sounds simple enough at first glance. Heck, I even started my own idea journal a few years ago, using a small five-subject Mead Five-Starr notebook to jot down quotes from my reading… as well as menus, schedules, daily workouts, and ideas for my own writing. I like it because it’s portable (at least it fits in my huge momma-bag that I call a purse), it’s cheap, it’s durable, and most importantly it does what I want it to for minimal fuss. I’m ahead of the game. Right?
But herein lies my problem: at some point during the pregnancy/child rearing craziness (“haze” might be the most appropriate term) of the last ten years, I lost confidence in my ability to retain and truly understand “difficult” reading. I found it hard to concentrate effectively, to formulate thoughts into any kid of intelligible whole for any real length of time. Perhaps you can relate. So while I have kept an idea journal of sorts for a while now, my journal more closely resembles the “commonplace journal” of Jefferson’s day — the recitation of facts, nothing more. In fact, I even quit paraphrasing at one point… I had — have — so lost faith in my own ability to understand the difficult, to correctly deduce the intent of the author or what my thoughts on that intent should be. So the reading portion of my journal is filled with quotes, and only quotes, some of which are quite lengthy.
This is my challenge and my main reason for diving into serious reading again: to find again some sort of intellectual capacity beyond simple math and Veggie Tales. I used to be smart… or at least smart-ish. And I’d like to be able to carry on an adult conversation that doesn’t revolve around the color of my baby’s poop (as endearing as that may be) for once. Please tell me I’m not alone in this.
So, friends, let us rediscover our brains together. For this week, our assignment is this:
1. Read through Chapter Four without stopping. Jot down ideas/phrases/quotes that leap out at you.
2. Divide the chapter into sections and summarize each section in your own words (shudder). Leave large margins, and then…
3. Use a different color pen to comment/react to your summaries in the margins.
Deep breath. Now go. Read. Enjoy.
Oh, and we start Don Quixote next week (this is the version I have… it looks like it’s back in stock at Amazon). Are you as nervous as I am?
I LOVED this chapter! I liked what it said on page 35 “What we write, we remember. What we summarize in our own words becomes our own.” I guess this is why notetaking works better than hilighting. I really liked the idea of putting both the objective and subjective together, part of me says that isn’t orderly, but it really is. I chose a compostion book for my reading journal; it is tough enough that it can be carried around (although I haven’t yet), pages don’t get loose or fall out, and it fits in most bags I carry. I do think that there are things that I read where notetaking on the computer works better. Right now I am researching the logic stage from The Well-Trained Mind and for some reason I want those notes on my computer. Naybe because I am looking at it as research and not reading.
This week’s reading excited me and left me with all sorts of questions. When is a good age to start (junior high or high school, before that)? Is Felicia too young to start? Since she probably is too young, when should I have her start? Should I journal about anything and everything I read? Even popcorn reading? Maybe for those types of books, just a general summary, if I liked it or not and what about it and why I did or didn’t like it? So many things to think about.
I’m a little nervous about Don Quixote as well, I checked it out a few months ago and didn’t get far (not really light reading), hopefully having a reason to read it will help.
This was a fun chapter. I love the promise a new journal holds! I’m especially fond of new things in theory, before the reality of life makes them messy. : ) Similarly, I enjoy planning more than doing. Doing has all sorts of annoying snags I’d rather avoid, lol. Anywhoo, I digress…
Nikki, I really resonate with what you wrote. No, you are certainly not alone! It has been so long since I learned anything (beside child care or parenting strategies), I’ve not only become rusty, but even complacent! Was it in the first chapter that Bauer asserted that over time a neglected mind stops hungering for knowledge? This chapter got me excited. Don Quixote does sound intimidating, though.
Maybe it’s my longing for spring, but if you saw my fb post a couple days ago, you know that I’ve been feeling restless lately. My first tendancy is to look for a way to be creative — some art or decorating or organizing project. But then I think back to Jesse Wise’s comment in Well-Trained Mind about how we expect a 6 year old to be creative before they have any storehouse of knowledge or ideas to be creative with! Somehow the creative ideas I’ve been kicking around feel old and dusty. I think I need to get a fresh infusion of outward things to reflect back upon my thoughts and form into new ideas, to borrow some of Bronson Alcott’s terminology from p. 36. I really liked that quote. I guess because I’m feeling this renaissance longing, I see his quote as applicable to the creative process as much as it is to education and self-realization. They really are all connected at a certain level. Okay, I think I’m totally rambling. Sorry.
I’m no expert, Jenny, but I’d think doing narration after Felicia’s age-appropriate reading would be preparing her for just this sort of thought process. It allows her to summarize the story in her own words and add in thoughts or questions as she talks. Although, maybe she’s past narration. Like I said, I’m no expert…just trying to get the habit of narration started with Brendan.
Nikki, do you use the different sections of your notebook for different things, or do you just let the pages of meal plans and quotes intermingle?
Intermingle… as in TOUCH??? Egads, NO. Everything is separate. Totally separate sections. I’m kind of like a small child in that regard… if one food touches another, it’s like it’s all ruined. Are you surprised? 🙂
Well, I wasn’t imagining that you’d have a quote at the top of a page with a shopping list written at the bottom. That would drive anyone nuts! I guess I wondered if you had a specific idea in mind for each section of your notebook, which it sounds like you do. No, I’m not surprised. Occasionally I write a grocery list on a random sheet of paper in my notebook, but since I rip it out when I head to the store, no one knows. ; )
Carissa, Felicia is in 3rd grade and has been doing narration since k/1st, and its still sometimes painful, so, if I think about it I KNOW she is not ready to do this, but as I was reading, I got very excited about it and wondering WHEN would be a good time. She may be able to do a simplified version when she gets to the logic stage in 5th grade.
finally catching up here…jenny, i have lucy journal about her reading. i mix it up so it doesn’t get boring for her. sometimes she writes me a letter to me about what she read that day, sometimes i have her write a review about the passage like she was a book editor, sometimes she draws a picture about an event or lists the character traits of someone, or make predictions about what will happen next. we don’t do this every day, but a couple times a week. we started a new book this week and when she got out her journal she looked back and read some pages from other books we read and was really pleased to see all the notes she made…she said, oh, do you remember when we read….i think it will be neat for her to look at when she is older.
in the public schools, they start annotating books in high school. they have to buy the books and they are taught a system of using highlighters, writing in the book and using small post it notes to “SIFTT” (find symbols, imagery, figurative language, tone and theme.
i actually like writing in the book better than keeping a journal, but am trying this to see how it work for me. looking forward to cracking open D.Q.!