SS #57: Heroes First! (with Wendi Capehart)

Wendi Capehart from the AmblesideOnline Advisory board is a very busy lady, so we were thrilled when she — rightly dubbed “the smartest woman on the internet” by Cindy Rollins — agreed to a phone call with us this summer.

Wendi blogs at Wendi Wanders. She has published an e-zine called Education for All. The latest issue contains most of the material from her talk on Imagination at AO Camp, including the material and sources that had to be cut. Click here for more information.

It was something Wendi said at AO Camp during her talk that inspired this conversation. Today, we’re discussing why starting with heroes in a child’s education is not white-washing, and why pointing out the darkness too young might backfire.

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Kids Need Heroes

Today’s Hosts and Source

Today’s Guest: Wendi Capehart

Let us tell you a little about Wendi. Wendi and her husband Bill have been Christians since their teens. They married at 20 and have been married 37 years. They have seven terrific grown children, 4 stalwart sons-in-law, 14 unsurpassingly wonderful grandchildren, and have also helped raise their two perfectly delightful god-sons (as well as occasionally hosting Japanese exchange students and Ukrainian orphans). The Capeharts have lived all over, most recently in the Philippines for two years, where they served as missionaries with a Christian school in Davao City. In January they will be moving to Malaysia to the city of Kota Kinabalu where they will help establish a learning center, among other projects.

“Remember, we do not want to make cynics of our children too young. It does not increase their discernment. It makes them unbecomingly opinioned, arrogant, and jugdy far too young”

Wendi’s blog post: Ancient History Studies

Scholé Every Day: What We’re Reading

Middlemarch, George Elliot

Mystie loved this book, especially the author’s writing style, and would have commonplaced more had she not listened on audio.

Mistmantle Chronicles, M. MacAllister

Wendy enjoyed this series of children’s books about animals written by a British pastor’s wife.

The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb

Brandy has wanted to read this book since it came out, she’s a little bit annoyed by his tendency to name-dropping. It’s an interesting read as a Christian because many of the authors observations about the world are true, even though he’s coming from a secular perspective.

Start history with heroes

Giving young children heavy problems that they can’t do anything can often backfire and lead to more focus on themselves and not more compassionate kids. We want our kids to have real empathy and understanding of human frailty, not just empty sentimentalism.

Children can’t change a great injustice, so presenting them with one is building a habit of anger toward the wrong without action. Letting children judge adults dealing with adult sins and temptations, which the children have no frame of reference for, is unwise.

Start with Fairytales

Stories with clear good guys/bad guys are a great place to start young children. There will be time enough to discuss the grey areas and the faults of real heros. Myths and fairytales provide good and evil characters, and a chance to discuss virtue, with out prompting children to judge real people.

Foster right action

Instead of getting worked up about big issues that don’t really concern them, children need to practice compassion by serving. Rather than starting with judging others for their failings we should practice doing good ourselves.

“Active compassion is what matters. All the right thinking in the world is worse than useless if it doesn’t produce right action.”

Wendi Capehart, Episode 57

“Of course there is a great deal to criticize in any country, and I should be the last person to suggest that the critical faculty should not be exercised and trained at school. But before we teach children to criticize the institutions of their country, before we teach them to be critical of what is bad, let us teach them to recognize and admire what is good. After all life is very short; we all of us have only one life to live, and during that life let us get into ourselves as much love, as much admiration, as much elevating pleasure as we can, and if we view education merely as discipline in critical bitterness, then we shall lose all the sweets of life and we shall make ourselves unnecessarily miserable. There is quite enough sorrow and hardship in this world as it is without introducing it prematurely to young people.”

— John Stuart Mill quoted in Charlotte Mason’s A Philosophy of Education, p. 126

Mentioned in the Episode

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