I am a CM educator of a few years and have really enjoyed perusing your stack and curriculum. I have been, along with my husband amd children, in a MacDonald year. We recently read The Golden Key and The Light Princess. I cannot wait to read Phantastes after reading your article here. I am trying to wrap my head around this concept of poetic learning and in re-reading your definition was reminded of the discussion of Analysis and Synthesis in Charles Kingsley's Madam How and Lady Why (ch 8). In it, Synthesis is portrayed rather poorly for looking at things more as he expects them to be rather than how they are and for bullying his brother Analysis for many years. Analysis, however, is limited in his ability to understand things in that he can only see some thing's factual parts and not how they work together as a whole. So, as a pair, these two help us understand the world but care must be given not to allow one the upper hand of the other. Back to poetic learning, I think the pendulum in education must swing back toward synthesis soon, toward the seeing of an idea as a whole, in relation to other ideas and truths, rather than the accumulation of facts or the more recent push toward developing "learning skills." This has been true of my experience since my eyes have been opened to CM's "science of relations."
I am a CM educator of a few years and have really enjoyed perusing your stack and curriculum. I have been, along with my husband amd children, in a MacDonald year. We recently read The Golden Key and The Light Princess. I cannot wait to read Phantastes after reading your article here. I am trying to wrap my head around this concept of poetic learning and in re-reading your definition was reminded of the discussion of Analysis and Synthesis in Charles Kingsley's Madam How and Lady Why (ch 8). In it, Synthesis is portrayed rather poorly for looking at things more as he expects them to be rather than how they are and for bullying his brother Analysis for many years. Analysis, however, is limited in his ability to understand things in that he can only see some thing's factual parts and not how they work together as a whole. So, as a pair, these two help us understand the world but care must be given not to allow one the upper hand of the other. Back to poetic learning, I think the pendulum in education must swing back toward synthesis soon, toward the seeing of an idea as a whole, in relation to other ideas and truths, rather than the accumulation of facts or the more recent push toward developing "learning skills." This has been true of my experience since my eyes have been opened to CM's "science of relations."