Thursday, May 4, 2006

Notes on PNEU History Curriculum In the PNEU schools, English history and, as children grew older, the corresponding French and world history, were studied in a cycle covering 4 years. A child studied English and world history 3 times over the course of their PNEU career. Ancient history was studied entirely separately. All of the first 8 years (Forms I-III) studied the same period of history at the same time. Years 1-3 (Form I) read Our island story, Years 4-8 (Form II) used A history of England by Arnold-Forster. At least 3/4s of the children beginning school didn't begin their study of English history at the beginning, and Charlotte Mason didn't feel that it mattered a bit. If a child remained in the PNEU schools, eventually they would come to the end of a cycle and finally begin at the beginning. Once literature started to be coordinated with history, different years read different books, depending, I would imagine, on the children's readiness. For instance, for the period 1649-1714, Year 4 read The children of the New Forest, Years 5-6 read Peveril of the peak, Years 7-8 read Old Mortality, The holy war, and Robinson Crusoe. Thus, children completing all 12 years at PNEU schools hadn't necessarily read all the same books. In my compilation of the PNEU curriculum, I did begin at the beginning with Year 1 and returned to it in Year 5. The Literature portion of my compilation/synopsis is still only in its 2nd draft, but in it I tried to list the books that all the years would have been reading for any given period. Years 9-12 (Forms IV-VI) also covered all of English and world history, but in a slightly different way. Years 9-11 (Forms IV-V) began at 1485 and followed a 3-year cycle. Year 12 (Form VI) always studied the medieval and earlier periods. I don't know why this was so. Perhaps it was because the corresponding literature presented linguistic challenges that were more appropriate for older children or perhaps older children would have been better able to deal thoughtfully with ways of living so different from their own. 10:20:00 AM     PNEU Bible Curriculum Because I am Episcopalian, I was very interested in how Charlotte Mason, a fellow Anglican, approached the teaching of the Bible. I've put all the Bible passages covered through the years into one sequence. I find it very interesting that she didn't introduce the more "theological" parts of Scripture--the Epistles and the Prophets--until quite late. For the first eight years or so, she focused on the children's simply learning "the tale of the loving purposes of God from the first days of our disobedience" (the Bidding prayer, from the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols) The Bible Sequence is with the rest of the PNEU Curriculum. 7:49:23 AM

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