The Living Page- Thoughts

I'm going to start this with the preface that some people are not as inclined toward paper as others. It is just {sadly} the way it is. People can be lead to appreciate it but some will just never love it as others do.

"'To Keep,' had become for Tracy the most important verb in the English language. 

'And it isn't only possessive,' she had defended herself against Bella. 'It means to watch over, take care of, maintain.'"

~Rumer Godden

I'd gotten some composition notebooks at the Dollar Tree and one has been designated for 'notes' on books I'm reading. The Living Page and Charlotte Mason's A Philosophy of Education are the only ones I've gotten to so far. Reading at Wildflowers and Marbles, I was so tempted to buy a pretty, sturdy and expensive {if it's more than a $1, it's expensive} notebook but refrained. There's something about the plain composition books that I like more than the pretty notebooks. Perhaps someday I will get a different super nice one; not right now. 

Reading the Preface, Bestvater says that the commonplace for her is a personal record of her thinking. I wonder if that means she writes down passages in the commonplace as well as her thoughts and notes on the passage. Later in the book, because I am actually at page 106 now, she mentions that the commonplace isn't for personal reflections, as per Mason. I'd have to actually find where she says that...

One of the reasons Mason kept and had her teachers and students keep notebooks was to be more observant. "They nurture the science of relations and the art of mindfulness" (p. xv). It takes more time and a concentrated effort to put something down nicely in a notebook for future reference, for posterity. The focus was not on the book itself, but the process. "Our goal is not beautiful notebooks" (p. 63). But I'm getting ahead of myself, I think.

I really enjoyed reading of others who were/are "Keepers": Linus Pauling, Galileo, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, Maria Sibylla Merian, Thoreau, Beatrix Potter, Edith Holden, Georgia O'Keefe, William Beebe, Ansel Adams, John Muir, Columbus, Magellan, Livingston, Meriwether Lewis, Perry, Amundsen, Darwin, Da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, John Milton, E. M. Forster, W. H. Auden, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy, Wallace Stevens, George Gissing, Bruce Cockburn, Bach, Beethoven, Richard Foster, Luci Shaw, Ron Klug, and possibly others I missed. 

Keeping notebooks wasn't a notion that Charlotte Mason came to on her own but "Mason was, and could not help to be, a product of her time, often echoing or refining ideas found in Comenius, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Herbart, Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, the men known as "the Scottish school of philosophers" as well as various other intellectuals and sages" (p. 10). There is some debate whether Mason would have embraced the technology that we have today and I think she would have so long as it did not corrupt the philosophy she held of education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life. Bestvater quotes Jennifer New and Sharon Ely Pearson, respectively (p. 11):

"Blog journals are the fastest growing form of journal keeping."

"We are no longer shackled to books and paper. Books may become outdated." 

While the technology is increasing at such an alarming speed, there is just something about paper and books that I don't think will ever become outdated. I believe Mason would have taken what was good about technology and use it to the benefit of the child's education; not merely using all of it because it was there. As Bestvater goes on later to talk about the different 'how-to' books for using journaling as an educational tool today, but they are not the way that Mason would have used them. I agree. 

"One can find various teachers' guides for journaling in the classroom...but even if they avoid the notion that such a journal is to be filled with "self," these are invariably about facilitating creative writing projects, creating authors--one-offs designed for a specific purpose and largely utilitarian" (p. 13).

Towards the end of the chapter, Bestvater talks about Mason's first principle that a child is a person and how keeping notebooks is very important to this. "The teleos or end of education, as she puts it, is to become "students of Divinity." Even children" (p. 13). Prior to this, Bestvater had pointed out many adult Keepers, "who were scholars, the movers and the shakers in science, the arts, and exploration" (p. 10). Ansel Adams said no photographer should be without one; "and many others realize "no student of Divinity" should be without one" (p. 14). She finishes with, "Charlotte Mason, under her usual banner, takes what is set aside for the enlightened and scholarly and offers it to children, "the least of these," saying, in effect, "no child should be without one" (p. 14).

The last few pages of the chapter "The Art of the Keeper" tells of Bestvater's first experiences with notebooking. It was a significant time in her life and, I think, because of the experiences surrounding the notebooking, she took to it so well. Not all of us will have such an experience but I do believe that with the help of notebooking we can come to see better and clearer this world in which we live. 

"Perhaps this is one of the secrets of life--to know 'glory' when we see it." ~Charlotte Mason 

I'd like to continue on with my thoughts of The Living Page, so we'll see how it goes. I highly suggest visiting Wildflowers and Marbles {her blog is beautiful in and of itself} for more on this book.