“We do not bother to teach the great virtues, though we love them and want our children to have them; but we nourish the hope that they will spontaneously appear in their consciousness some day in the future, we think of them as being part of our instinctive nature, while the others, the little virtues, seem to be the result of reflection and calculation and so we think they absolutely must be taught.” NATALIA GINZBURG, THE LITTLE VIRTUES Over the summer, my husband and I did a parenting check-in. We listed some topics that we wanted to reflect on (discipline, meal time, spiritual formation), then we went to separate rooms…
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The Little Cannot Contain the Great: Engaging the Eternal Over the Relevant (The Little Virtues, Part 4)
“The great can contain the little, but by the laws of nature there is no way that the little can contain the great.” NATALIA GINZBURG, THE LITTLE VIRTUES One helpful aspect of the big/little virtue template is its focus on priority. In her essay, Ginzburg is adamant that little virtues aren’t problematic because they are bad, rather they are problematic only when they aren’t moderated by big virtues. The trouble starts when we mis-order or equate big and little virtues. Here’s a battle between big and little virtues that I bet a lot of us feel: the call to engage the eternal, versus the call to only engage the relevant.…
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Mindless Production: The Littlest of Little Virtues, (Part 3)
“Not that the little virtues are in themselves contemptible; but their value is of a complementary and not of a substantial kind; they cannot stand by themselves without the others, and by themselves and without the others they provide but meagre fare for human nature.” NATALIA GINZBURG, THE LITTLE VIRTUES Here’s a bit of irony: I decided to leave the classroom and start a small run-from-home business so I could spend more time with my kids during their earliest years. But I often find myself complaining that my kids leave me little time to do my work, even though I chose this work so I could spend time with my…
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That Their Love of Life Should Never Weaken: The Little Virtues, Part 2
“What we must remember above all in the education of our children is that their love of life should never weaken.” Natalia Ginzburg, the little virtues While re-reading The Little Virtues, the above sentence stuck out to me. It made me think of all the times, both at home and at school, that we fall into a trap that whispers something like this: We must diminish a child’s love of life today so that he will have a life worth loving tomorrow. We do this when we dismiss pervasive boredom, discomfort, embarrassment or frustration as “character building.” Of course discomfort is part of life and learning, it does build character.…
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The Little Virtues by Natalia Ginzburg
When I was pregnant with my first child, I came across an article about “The Little Virtues,” an essay by Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg. It was a breath of fresh air. I’d already gorged myself on parenting advice by reading books on eating, sleeping and first aid. But I longed for something both deeper and broader, a template that cut to the quick of parenting. I found that template in “The Little Virtues,” which begins this way: “As far as the education of children is concerned I think they should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones. Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to money; not…
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Blog Series on the Book, “Reader, Come Home”
In Reader, Come Home Maryanne Wolf reminds us how the reading brain works, how it can be altered by digital media, and how we can help our students (and ourselves) develop a reading life in a digital world. Here’s a round up of posts on topics found in the book: “The good readers of a society are both its canaries–which detect the presence of danger to its members–and its guardians of our common humanity.” –Maryanne Wolf
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Festina Lente: Hurry Slowly, Reading as Contemplation
This is the seventh in a series of posts about Maryanne Wolf’s Reader, Come Home. You can read the introductory post and find links to other posts in the series here. “To read…we need a certain kind of silence that seems increasingly elusive in our over-networked society…and it is not contemplation we desire but an odd sort of distraction, distraction masquerading as being in the know. In such a landscape, knowledge can’t help but fall prey to illusion, albeit an illusion that is deeply seductive, with it’s promise that speed can lead us to illumination, that it is more important to react that to think deeply…Reading is an act of contemplation…an act…
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How to Facilitate Deep Reading & Foster Biliterate Brains
This is the sixth in a series of posts about Maryanne Wolf’s Reader, Come Home. You can read the introductory post and find links to other posts in the series here. Before getting to Marynne Wolf’s final point in Reader, Come Home, I wanted to share some practical takeaways from the book. These are my own personal takeaways and I’ve divided them into two categories: Examining My Own Reading Life, and Imagining My Children’s Reading Lives Examining My Own Reading Life Since reading Reader, Come Home I’ve been ever more aware of my shallow reading tendencies. I experience continuous partial attention when I read on my phone, and that bleeds over to…
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The Biliterate Brain: The Reading Brain of the Future
This is the fifth in a series of posts about Maryanne Wolf’s Reader, Come Home. You can read the introductory post and find links to other posts in the series here. So we know that deep reading is good and shallow reading is problematic, which begs the question…what do we do? Throw our phones in a lake? Raise our kids off the grid? Maryanne Wolf suggests a more balanced, more livable option. She’s the first to admit that we can’t go back in time, and wouldn’t want to. The goal, according to her, is to maximize the benefits of digital media and minimize the costs. She has suggestions for both the adult…
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What You Need to Know About Digital Media & Shallow Reading
This is the fourth in a series of posts about Maryanne Wolf’s Reader, Come Home. You can read the introductory post and find links to other posts in the series here. “Will the quality of our attention change as we read on mediums that advantage immediacy, dart-quick task switching, and continuous monitoring of distraction, as opposed to the more deliberative focusing of attention?” maryanne wolf, Reader, Come Home In Reader, Come Home, Maryanne Wolf points out that while we may be reading just as much as ever (we may very well be reading more than ever) the quality of our reading has become shallow. She connects this to our inundation with digital…
