Walden, or Life in the Woods

My mum gave me a postcard with this painting (Collins St.,5pm by John Brack) on it.  It says on the back of the card "In the winter of 1955 John Brack stood in a doorway in Collins Street on successive nights between 4.45 and 5.30pm and observed and sketched office workers on their way home from work.  He commented "There are so many of us whose lives are encompassed by offices in the day and suburbs in the night, that it seems almost urgent for the painter to say something about it."

This painting fits neatly with the sentiments of Henry David Thoreau, who's book Walden or, Life in the Woods (published in 1854) I am currently reading.  He famously said "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

"Walden emphasizes the importance of solitude, contemplation, and closeness to nature in transcending the "desperate" existence that, he argues, is the lot of most people. Thoreau regarded his sojourn at Walden as an experiment with a threefold purpose. First, he was escaping the dehumanizing effects of the Industrial Revolution  by returning to a simpler, agrarian lifestyle. Second, he was simplifying his life and reducing his expenditures, increasing the amount of leisure time in which he could work on his writings. Much of the book is devoted to stirring up awareness of how one's life is lived, materially and otherwise, and how one might choose to live it more deliberately. Third, he was putting into practice the Transcendentalist belief that one can best "transcend" normality and experience the Ideal, or the Divine, through nature." (from Wikipedia)

It is interesting that all through the ages there are  people who question the life that the masses are living while others are happy to follow the prescribed path. I particularly like these paragraphs toward the end of his conclusion.....

"I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.  He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him......In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness"        and

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

Why can't school be more fun?

I am rereading for about the third time a book called " Awakening your child's natural genius" by Thomas Armstrong.  He succinctly expresses my concerns with our education system....

"Children are programmed by nature to absorb knowledge easily and joyfully when surrounded by a positive learning climate.  The problem is that tremendous forces in our culture - and in particular in our education system - stand in the way of a child's natural learning ability.  These barriers include competition, testing, grades, stress, shame, boredom, dull textbooks, bland teachers, student labeling and educational tracking."

He goes on to say...  "The worksheet wasteland still lives, and the clamor nationwide for higher test scores threatens to make this condition worse by causing teachers to focus too much attention on test preparation at the expense of real learning."

This book was written in 1991 in America,  however I think it is relevant to our education system today  which has foolishly followed along the standardized testing path.

Education should be about curiosity, creativity, problem solving, wonder, excitement, exploration, enthusiasm  and passion.  It should help children discover their interests, aptitudes, passions and hobbies and then teach them the skills to pursue them.  Children should be learning about the world and how to best live in it.  Less worksheets, more art, drama, creative thinking, hands on maths, real book literacy, writing, scientific observation and experimentation, gardening, dance, music, cooking, hands on - real life  learning, doing.

Luckily there are some inspirational schools out there.......

1. Green School in Bali

2. The Blue School in New York.

You can also read some articles on progressive education at Let the children play.

Unfortunately those schools are overseas and very expensive.  We need public schools to be more fun, creative, colourful and inspirational so everyone can  receive the best education possible!  Maybe we can start a red or yellow school in Australia or even a rainbow one!

Luckily school isn't this bad!

"I have no patience with the stupidity of the average teacher of grammar who wastes precious years in hammering rules into children's heads.  For it is not by learning rules that we acquire the powers of speaking a language, but by daily intercourse with those accustomed to expressing themselves with exactness and refinement and by copious reading of the best authors" Erasmus.

The Art of Living

Trees mean life

Nelson is at the top of the mulberry tree.

A tree of life pillow I made for a friend this week.

A book I got for my birthday ( Bruno Munari - drawing a tree) and a tree collage idea from it. You start with a strip of paper for the trunk, then halve it to make the next two branches, then into quarters for the next four branches, then into eighths and so on. It worked really well and I think it would be a great maths lesson at school too!

Another tree painted on our toilet.

A favourite tree we can see from our veranda.

 I'd like to make a wishing tree, that looks like fun!

Herman Hesse has written a lovely passage on trees in his book Wanderings.  Read the excerpt here. 

This is our lovely friend Lulu with a beautiful lovemae tree wall sticker that her mum Peta makes.

An old favourite song Hairy Trees.

Cute picture from TheSeaKiwi

33dodo

Up or down

There are lots of lovely pictures and messages on  The SeaKiwi.

Don't be a Twit, be beautiful!

On our long drive to Sydney we listened to Roald Dahl's The Twits in the car.  I love this book and thought I'd share this page......

"The funny thing is that Mrs Twit wasn't born ugly. She'd had quite a nice face when she was young.  The ugliness had grown upon her year by year as she got older.  Why would that happen? I'll tell you why...

If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face.  And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until it gets so ugly you can hardly bear to look at it.

A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly.  You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely."

Mad World

I was listening to an old mixed CD I had made a few years ago and I heard this song which I used to love but had forgotten about.  It is great to remember an old favourite!