On Prereading

(or the mystery of being fellow heirs)

There’s a lot I wanted to share with you about prereading. But when I sat down to write this, it felt personal. I kept thinking about this quote from Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell:

“By degrees they spoke of education, and the book learning that forms one part of it; and the result was that Ruth determined to get up early all through the bright summer mornings, to acquire the knowledge hereafter to be given to her child. Her mind was uncultivated, her reading scant; beyond the mere mechanical arts of education she knew nothing; but she had a refined taste, and excellent sense and judgment to separate the true from the false. With these qualities, she set to work under Mr. Benson’s directions. She read in the early morning the books that he marked out; she trained herself with strict perseverance to do all thoroughly… Those summer mornings were happy, for she was learning neither to look backwards nor forwards, but to live faithfully and earnestly in the present.”

That’s pretty much prereading in a nutshell. For me to share with you about prereading, what I really want to share, I need to share with you some of my Uncultivated Mind, some of my Knowings of Nothings. When we started homeschooling, I specifically chose AO for its booklist. I remember staring at the booklist with my husband and imagining what an education like that would produce in a person—the character and priorities. We wondered if our children would struggle with what we struggled with if this was what they got for an education. We could see the benefits of “the city of books” because we didn’t have that ourselves. We didn’t have a family culture of reading. Books were for nerds. But we looked at AO knowing that if we had the courage to pursue this then strongholds would fall. We’d be setting our children on a path foreign to what we knew. Maybe we could give them “the higher life” as Mason says. So when I think of prereading, it very much fits the bill with this quote from Ruth. It has been very personal. It was driven by maternal love. It helped me to live a “quiet life” just minding my own business, cultivating my own mind, reading hard books, and having discussions with my children about them. Maybe sharing that is encouraging.

What I began to notice in all my prereading was how it enriched our homeschool. I didn’t need to worry about my children trying to not read what was assigned to them because they knew mom was reading it. There was accountability folded into it. I was partaking in the feast. I wasn’t just Martha; I was also Mary. I was getting mind-to-mind with the authors, then I was experiencing the science of relations through connections (and maybe this is the Grandest Conversation of them all), and then I was entering into conversations with my children about the books we read and the connections we made.

“This is one reason why children should have a wide and generous curriculum. We try to put them off with a parcel of ready-made opinions, principles, convictions, and are astonished that these do not stick to them; but such things each of us has to get by his own labour. It is only a person of liberal mind whose convictions are to be trusted, because they are the ripe fruit of his knowledge.”

-Charlotte Mason (Vol 5, p.407)

And here maybe we should talk a bit about what prereading isn’t. Prereading isn’t us getting knowledge so we can lord it over our children. Charlotte Mason spoke against this “forcible intellectual feeding.” We aren’t trying to get our children to make the same connections as we are, and we aren’t trying to get them to have the same opinions as us, we are simply fellow partakers in this feast. It is incredibly freeing when we understand that this is sufficient. 

One of my favorite prereads was Tale of a Tub by Jonathan Swift. It was HARD. It wasn’t until after I finished it that I read it’s one of the most challenging satires to read. As I worked through it, checking all the footnotes, I stumbled upon a reference to Plutarch. It was at that moment that I thought to myself, “Plutarch! I know him! I can do this!” That moment is seared into my memories. Tale of a Tub gave me the courage to pick up more hard books.

Another prereading moment I have seared into my memories is when I read a book all the way through before I listened to a podcast about it. I had made the same connections, and many more besides (thanks to the science of relations), than what I heard on the podcast. And this is where I must insert a disclaimer: I do not have anything against podcasts. I used to listen to a lot of them, and I used to think I needed them. I did not think I was smart enough to understand the books I was reading. But eventually, the feast begins to pay for itself–especially in those upper years. As homeschool moms, and maybe especially those of us who have come to understand Charlotte Mason’s educational philosophy, we should be working our way towards “mixing it with brains.” Our brains, specifically, not someone else’s. A “parcel of ready-made opinions” and connections won’t stick with us how it will if we are doing our own brain work. There are seasons for pre-chewed ideas, but we disrespect our own born persons when we don’t put in the brain work that is education eventually. Think of it as fake cheese on your charcuterie board. No one wants that. Prereading and doing our own thinking is us showing up to the feast with real cheese on the charcuterie board, and this enriches the conversations we have with our students and is healthier for us as educators.

I have other memories besides. I kept a map as I preread Church History in Plain Language to watch the Gospel spread out of the Middle East. I remember prereading and scribbling notes while laying on my stomach in my youngest’s room waiting for him to fall asleep for his nap. This is where I enjoyed Napoleon’s Buttons, where I read The Living Page and planned out notebooking for our homeschool, too. I listened to 10 Books That Screwed Up the World while I walked on the treadmill and vividly remember hopping off to process what I just heard because: excuse me, what?! I will never forget Twain’s Joan of Arc and the small commonplace book I made for it. I remember getting several chapters into Postmodern Times by Veith before I started over and created a four-page timeline to follow along with his ideas. I also remember deciding A Meaningful World was the best of all the worldview books I’d preread because instead of having a message of fear in it, it had the message “but God.” I remember reading Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and leaving a note in the comment box when I realized our state museum only shares one side of the story.

I am getting carried away…

I could go on and on.

Maybe by now, you’ve heard a homeschool mom joke about her “second education.” It is actually a very serious, humbling pursuit. We are not who we once were. There was a great chasm between who we were and who we are now. There is still a great chasm between where we are and where we want to be, but we’re a little less worried about it.  We have gone from there to here with a reading life made up of prereading. That’s it, and that was enough. Education is formative; it changes you even if you’re doing it semi-right, even if you’re doing it for your children.

“The mother is qualified," says Pestalozzi, "and qualified by the Creator Himself, to become the principal agent in the development of her child; ... and what is demanded of her is––a thinking love ... God has given to the child all the faculties of our nature, but the grand point remains undecided––how shall this heart, this head, these hands be employed? to whose service shall they be dedicated? A question the answer to which involves a futurity of happiness or misery to a life so dear to thee. Maternal love is the first agent in education."

-Charlotte Mason (Vol 1, p.2)

Mariah Kochis 2023