CiRCE Booklist

As many of you know, I invested in some “teacher training” {it’s more like soul training} by purchasing the CDs from CiRCE’s 2009 conference, A Contemplation of Nature: A Return to Sound Thinking. After I listened to about three or four hours worth of lectures, I realized that each speaker was suggesting a book or two that a person could delve into if they wanted to know more. And around that time, I thought, we like books around here!

And so I started keeping a list, because one cannot have too many booklists.

So I decided that whenever I fill up one of my little notebook pages where I’m keeping the list, I’ll share it here, with all of you. And I’ll try to include the name of the lecture, so that you’ll know who suggested the book, and when they did so. Who knows? I might even give you a little summary of the lecture itself, if my brain is turned on.

Here is what I have so far {I need to go back and listen again to the CDs I “studied” before I began keeping the list}:

Lecture: {Workshop 3} Teaching Boys and Other Kids Who Would Rather Be Playing in FortsLecturer: Andrew Pudewa

In this workshop, Pudewa discusses the nature of boys from a physiological perspective, explaining how they are physically different from girls {did you know girls hear better?} and how this impacts teaching. He also, in a roundabout way, showed me why having a girl after having a boy is an “adjustment.” You get to where you speak loudly to a boy, and then you have a girl and she cries when you talk and, when she is older, accuses you of “scaring my ears.”

I’m just saying.

Anyhow, Pudewa suggested two books by Dr. Leonard Sax, but with caveats. {1} The books can be from a Darwinian perspective, which in itself is not respecter of Nature in a metaphysical sense {but that is Andrew Kern’s lecture; I get ahead of myself}. {2} There is a description of the lives of teens in America that is shocking and Pudewa says to keep it away from children that pick up any and every book you have in your house because you just don’t want to have to have the discussions that would result from that chapter.

Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know About the Emerging Science of Sex Differences

Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic Of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men

If I could only buy one of these books, I’d buy the latter.

Moving on.

Lecture: {Workshop 6} Nature Deficit DisorderLecturer: Andrew Pudewa

Pudewa insinuated that there were connections between these two workshops, so I listened to them in order. I would say that if I had a boy with ADHD, these two workshops might help me figure some things out. One new goal I have: learn to teach out of doors. The Greek and Roman philosophers did this. Jesus did this. I am going to start a new school. It is called Trampoline School and it meets on our giant trampoline for two hours each day.

Books related to this workshop are:

Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder

Raising Them Right: A Saint’s Advice on Raising Children

The Restoration of Christian Culture

Lecture: {Workshop 8} The Incarnation of Christ and its Implications for TeachingLecturer: James Daniels

I am still putting my thoughts together on this one, so I don’t have much of a summary. It’s not that it was a bad lecture. On the contrary, it was revolutionary. It takes time to think about new thought, especially when you don’t have a lot to attach it to in your brain. I’m letting it simmer.

Recently, our pastor preached on the nature of truth, and he emphasized that Truth is a Person. {Jesus says, “I am the truth.”} I remember looking over to my dear friend {we were in the Cry Room} and telling her I thought that this had to be really significant. James Daniels fleshed this out for me, I think.

I is significant. So we have a new catchphrase: Incarnational Teaching.

Books suggested are:

Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology Of The Body

Plowing in Hope: Towards a Biblical Theology of Culture

Lecture: {Workshop 9} The Implications of Dewey, Darwin, and DescartesLecturer: Andrew Kern

If I could get one idea out of this, it is that these three men, and all of their many disciples, destroyed the idea of nature. I don’t mean pretty trees and flowers, but rather the concept that things have a nature or, to use a similar word, an essence. In our culture, we do not recognize essences, we do not interact with people with a regard to essences {which is, Kern explains, the end of propriety, for propriety is, at core, treating a thing according to its nature}. Kern details how this has wreaked havoc in our culture. I know I discovered a couple areas in which my thinking was more like Darwin’s than like God’s!

Only one book was really mentioned, though a number of lecturers agree that we should all be reading John Senior. The book is a detailing of Dewey’s effect on American culture:

John Dewey and the Decline of American Education: How the Patron Saint of Schools Has Corrupted Teaching and Learning

That’s all for today. I’ll probably have another list in a week. Let me know if you pick up any of these books! I’d love to hear what you think about them.