"Worthy" Work

Worthy Work

0:00

In a recent email I mentioned “worthy work”.

“If the class is listless, or rowdy – put them straight to worthy work.”

The specification of “worthy” is necessary because - all work is not worthy!

Speaking of traditional curriculum assignments I have heard parents lament, “They ask me what the point is, and I don’t have an answer! I don’t care if they finish it or not.”  

Why then assign it in the first place? Why are you using that program?

If it doesn’t have enough substance to stir care in us… how can we expect them to?

This is a travesty.

This is gaslighting.

This is numbing our kids towards lessons.

No wonder some older kids feel done with school before time to graduate. What was sold to them as “school” stood starkly apart from life, in all uses of the word. Real life couldn’t possibly be a continuation of their lessons (thank God!) because their lessons were made up of what Charlotte Mason called sawdust. Their school days were divided between twaddling content and twaddling interactions with that content.

And so, the question to answer is: what makes some work “worthy” and some not?

***

Charlotte Mason’s philosophy is a bit of a paradox. On one hand it can appear that her method requires too little of the child, and yet when you are in the place of the student, it feels like quite a lot – if the pack has been adequately placed.

Which is the correct view?

Both.

Very often a Charlotte Mason parent/teacher doesn’t exert themselves during class with definite objectives, or key points that they will impart at each lesson,and then loop back round to prove. Rather the they will, behind the scenes, make definite efforts of themselves to scrounge up the absolute best book, the most vital thought, music, picture, experience; and then carefully map out the most direct, densest, and purposeful way the child can make contact with that idea – and then in the moment stand back to let it happen.

So yes, a casual external, and single, class observation may result in an assessment of “too little expectation”. However, the ability for the teacher to able to stand-back in class is predicated on the crucial imperative that the student knows that they are expected to apply absolute attention and effort, full force of their personhood to the given thing. This is incredibly fatiguing when applied and so Charlotte Mason requires a protectant: that this maximum effort be expected for only limited amounts of time, that subjects rotate, and that this standard of effort is only ever applied to work/ thought that is “worthy”.

Vital thought, and worthy work upon that thought are two halves to the same whole. Too many people glance at Charlotte Mason, like some aspect of what they see, and try to implement the elements that catch their fancy. One element that catches the fancy of all who teach is “diligent, sustained effort and attention”. This is the coveted goal of all teachers! And so, they lay this burden upon the student, without burdening themselves of their part. They attempt to require this kind of effort and attention to whatever they have on hand, for however long it takes.

It is not human to attend to fogs of twaddle, to relish pablum and chew it any longer than absolutely necessary to swallow it down. To be clear, we can make efforts of will and trudge through slogs of sawdust, and there are times in life where this kind of determination is needed. But it is not vitalizing. It certainly can’t be the day in and day out school experience and expect curiosity to stay intact and personhood to grow. What is the cure?

Vital thought is easily found in living books.

Worthy work is the job of the teacher.

Narration is the non-negotiable first step. Step two can be specific assignments that allow space for specific thought processes to materialize. The Charlotte Mason teacher, along with narration, may also give assignments for the student to:

(Note: Dark words are Charlotte Mason. Italicized words are mine and are not meant to be prescriptive but rather tangible ideas to help you generate your own!)

1.      Generalize

(sum it up, make and support an assumption, etc.)

2.      Classify

(Sort what has been apprehended: make a chart. ie: items, people, distinguishing events of “Eras of Roman History”; “Collect in a chart all you know about these three Egyptian Pharaohs”; “List examples of Endothermic and exothermic reactions”; “Sort essential and non-essential things to take on the Oregon trail”. Work up to the student deciding categories based on the reading.

3.      Infer

“How might the arc of Rome’s history inform America’s: What cautions should we consider?”; “If this is true about broadleaved trees what could be true about conifers?” ; etc.

4.      Judge

“Was Hannibal a good guy or a bad guy, why?”; “Was Thomas Jefferson a hypocrite in terms of slavery or not; why?”; Because _____ is true about cellular function, you should ______”; etc.

5.      Visualize

“Sketch a scene or person” (with words or drawings).

6.      Discriminate

“Take a side on ____________ (various environmental, political, economic, historic debates) and give 3 reasons why.” (Then have them argue the other side!)

7.      Give a careful description of a person, place or event

8.      Give the sequence of a series of incidents

Can be lists (first, next, last), or flow chart with boxes (may contain words or drawings)

9.      Give the links in a chain of arguments

“Make the case for ________ whether you agree with it or not.”; “Tell what he/she must have been thinking to have done _______”.

10. Trace cause to consequence

Predict possible outcomes before they are known; Trace a series of events and how they played out to a definite conclusion.

11. Trace back from a consequence and find its cause

Choose an event and dig for cause(s)!

12. Try to discern character 

(not explicitly spelled out in the content, context clues, personality clues.)

13. Perceive how character and circumstances interact                                                                         

Think about various temperaments and how they would differently respond to various situations. Shakespeare is great as a reference for identifying “types” of characters. 

14. Make statements of morals/ ethics on life or conduct from the reading.                                        

You are not allowed to “point the moral” – but they are!

Note that these elements are separate from narration and most likely will not happen during the same session as the reading and narrating due to time constraints. The wise teacher will look elsewhere in the week to tuck in these elements. Perhaps the next class session, some things will be suitable in the review portion of the very next lesson time; but also look for other pockets of time in the week or term schedule, perhaps even at the end of a term. The teacher should be fully aware of which objective they are aiming for, even using that particular phrase to the student.

Beware! The educational world is full of teacher “resources” that claim to meet some of the above objectives with all manner of printable materials and gimmicks. Steer clear. It is in the subtle details that worthy work gains its weight. The work Miss Mason would have us offer is the scope of a blank piece of paper, a sharpened pencil, and a prompt. Let the student labor in the decisions on structure and approach – consult if asked, but for the most part let them take ownership of the piece. Let them fail, let them strategize about what would be better next time and then try it.

While I personally cringe at the idea of marking books(!), and in school settings often books cannot be written in due to the need to reuse them. A certain amount of money should be allotted to at least one purchase per year where the students can have a book that is theirs to own and be taught to mark a book well and with reverence:

·         Marginal notes should be neatly and beautifully made.

·         Numbers, letters and underlining may be used to help the eye and save the labor of writing abstracts (which means they should occasionally write abstracts!)

Can you feel the worthiness of this kind of effort. It may be effort – that is not a bad thing – but effort must be channeled to things, questions, and ideas of intrinsic value. Things that adults might take up and talk about or want to hear in real life. Children are nothing if not perceptive. They have a keen eye for all of the tawdry veneers of education.

No child is too young for this kind of thinking as long as it rests upon narrating living books. Let the young tackle it orally, take their down their words as a scribe of old would. That same childish perceptiveness will shock you as they rise to the occasion of this kind of worthy work.

Sara Timothy 2025

In Sum:

·         There is additional work we can assign kids to go deeper with ideas. But it must be worthy.

·         The normal lesson consists of reading and narrating. This is kept to a specific time frame. This is the work horse of the method and keeps the stream of thought flowing forward. (Progress through the year is desirable!!)

·         On top of this foundation selections from above can be tossed in here and there. Hold them in your mind as the teacher, this is part of your effort, look for natural windows of opportunities that present themselves in the normal courses of reading.

·         For these 2^nd Step assignments, continue to honor short lessons for the sake of the schedule, it is likely that one of the above assignments may be something they come back to for 2 or 3 weeks or more.

·         Additionally, one of the 2^nd Step assignments could be allowed to interrupt the regularly scheduled reading if it can be kept to a single day assignment. Feel what your schedule needs.