Here’s a bit about what Angie Baker said at the TJED Forum as the keynote speaker on May 5 at the Salt Palace. I almost feel as pleased about her speaking as I would if I were her mom. I have known Angie for a long time, before she hit it big in the TJED world. I actually knew her when we were both La Leche League Leaders for LLL of Utah, long ago. In my mind’s eye I can see her at her my girlfriend Joyce’s home, for a meeting of LLL of Utah Leaders, telling stories about nursing her toddler at night and helping a breastfeeding mom over the phone.
Enough of the nostalgia, here’s a recap of what she said. She stated that when she was young she knew she wanted to grow up to do something great. She heard about men and women like Gandhi and Mother Teresa who were great and wanted to be like them. She defined a great soul as “a person with character and virtue who works to develop their God-given genius and uses it to bless humanity.”
http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf
In the above video Sir Ken Robinson talks about how schools kill children’s creativity.
She then quoted the Brit Sir Ken Robinson who wrote The Element. I thought it was cool that she quoted that book since my daughter and I got that book last fall for a self-directed scholar retreat that she attended for LEMI. (At the bottom of this post I have some more videos of Sir Robinson.) Here’s the quote:
Almost no one is asserting that one of the things education should aim to produce is children who have what Aristotle called a great soul.
She also shared a quote by a great church leader, David O. McKay, who said:
True education does not consist merely in the acquiring of a few facts of science, history, literature, or art, but in the development of character.
Then we got this gem of a quote from Einstein that Angie gave:
The world as we created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.
Then Angie went through the seven keys of TJED, adding her interpretation of each one.
1. Classics
Angie gave this quote from Arthur Henry King. If you don’t know AHK, you are missing out. He was educated at Cambridge. He became a famous British poet and writer. After he converted to the LDS Church, he came to Utah where he was a professor of English at BYU. He wrote a great book called Arm the Children: Faith’s Response to a Violent World that every TJED mom would salivate for. It has chunks of meaty thought on every page. Anyway, here is the quote:
Great literature helps us, as we are growing, to widen our world, from ourselves so that we can better choose what kind of person we are going to be. It helps us choose ourselves. In great art and literature, we can find what we ought to be, we can find our highest selves.
This is the best quote of all that Angie shared from a fellow homeschooling mom when Angie was just starting out. I shared a similar statement when I spoke at LDSHEA conference years ago:
If you can do nothing more than sit on the couch and read great classics to your kids, that is enough.
Angie said she discounted that at first but now she agrees. I do plenty of that at my house so I am glad to hear two more witnesses!
2. Mentors
Angie stated that mentors are great because they allow an individual to multiply his efforts. She said that one of the best ways to mentor your child is to lie in bed next to them at bedtime and let them talk.
3. Inspire not require.
Angie acknowledged that you do have to do require when it comes to chores, but she said, we can work at adding more inspiring in. I took that to mean we can add more inspiring into whatever we require, including chores, plus academics.
4. Structure time not content
Angie spoke about how important it is to set up time to study one subject in depth, instead of saying, “We will get done with this history textbook and then move on to something else.” She told the story of being in AP US History in high school. When it came to take the AP test, she didn’t have the confidence to fork out the money and take the test, because she felt her class had just glossed superficially over the subject, so she didn’t. Years later she is now a homeschooling mom studying history with her children, so she said now she has time to go study U.S. history deeply with her scholar youth and she enjoys it.
5. Quality not conformity
Angie declared that quality changes according to the age and stage of the child. She said that we should help the student ask, when determining quality, “What is the best for me to give?”
6. Simplicity not Complexity
Angie said that this simply means to read, write about, discuss, and apply the classics. She then added that you create the time to do these activities, that seem so simple yet can be so elusive, by minimizing the electronic distractions. She didn’t go into detail about how to do that at all. In every family that looks different but chances are you can do something to create more time to read a classic by cutting back on the screen time you enjoy and your family enjoys.
Angie said that she discovered the magic of having a chunk of time in the evening without electronic distractions when the power went out in their home and they spent an evening reading aloud from a classic.
7. You, not them
Angie shared what I have heard before, “I can’t give my children what I don’t have.” She then went on to say, “Your education is the hinge to open the door their education.” She pointed out how great it is to let them see you reading. She used to do all her studying before her kids woke up, in the early morning hours. Then one day she happened to read when her kids were awake and her daughter said, “Mom, you actually read books?!” So she realized how important it is to let them see her reading.
She told this story to share how important it is to have a background knowledge of classic books to help mentor your children’s education. After 9/11 her daughter asked her about the tragedy by saying, “Did God want this to happen?” Angie told her, “No, but sometimes people do bad things.” Then Angie read Uncle Tom’s Cabin and she was inspired to tell her daughter, “Jesus heals the hurts.” Angie stated, “When fathers and mothers are in the classics, it makes a great difference.”
Angie then claimed that if you are having problems in homeschooling, it is time to do a Seven Keys Assessment. Go through the Seven Keys she just reiterated and see how you can apply them better.
Angie told a story about working in her garden. She had just planted seeds and was eager to see them grow. She realized that there was nothing she could do to force the plant to grow faster. She said homeschooling children is like gardening. The whole process just takes “Working the principles consistently and persistently even when it is hard.” She then shared the story of a time when she asked a neighbor/farmer for a truckload of manure to use on her garden. As luck would have it, the only time the neighbor could bring it over was when all the older kids and her husband were gone. She the task of shoveling the manure onto her garden fell to her and her little girl. As they were working, her daughter said, “Boy this stuff sure smells bad! Why are we putting it on the garden.” Angie told her it was to help things grow. Angie made an analogy to life in general and thought, “Hey, genius grows from problems or manure!” She suggested that we not say, “If only I didn’t have x problem, things would be so much better.” She said “You have problems to help you become great.”
So what does it take to grow great souls, asked Angie. Three things:
- Vision
- Understanding the journey
- Trusting the process
Ask yourself what you were born to do, and ask what your children were born to do.
(Here are more of the videos of Ken Robinson.)
http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf
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Tree of Life Mothering 