Housekeeping: I’m going to try switching to a weekly roundup of our homeschooling instead of daily, so expect my next update on Friday/Saturday.
My daughter asked me recently whether time could pass at different speeds. I tried Einstein’s explanation:
When you sit with a nice girl for two hours you think it’s only a minute, but when you sit on a hot stove for a minute you think it’s two hours.
Then we talked about how two minutes on a merry-go-round passes in a flash, but two minutes brushing your teeth sometimes seems to last for hours. I also told her about double-lessons I had sat through at school. 80 minutes where we were expected to sit still at our desks and work, no matter what mood we were in or how easy or difficult we were finding the lesson. Time didn’t just move slowly in those lessons, it appeared to stand still.
Which is not to say that it is wrong to sit and work hard for extended periods. What I have noticed whilst homeschooling is that sometimes that is exactly what a child wants to do. Maria Montessori spoke of ‘sensitive periods’, when a child is intensely focused on developing a particular skill or area of knowledge. These sensitive periods are often quite broad—movement, language, social behaviours—but I see something related happening in my children. They will have days or weeks when all they want to do is maths, or reading, or imaginary play. They don’t seem to tire of whatever the topic is. They don’t want to stop for meals. They don’t want to be distracted by anything else, no matter how appealing it usually is.
When they are having these moments, I consider how maddening it must be to be a schoolchild in a lesson which abruptly finishes, when the child is completely engrossed and could carry on for hours, timetable be damned. Here’s Maria Montessori:
The interruption of work by the hours fixed by a time-table and the period of rest is also negative. “Don’t work too hard at one thing or you will be tired”, whereas the child shows clearly the desire for maximum effort.
But there are also days (many days!) when, as Charlotte Mason counsels, five or ten minutes is enough. Writing one perfect letter is enough, when controlling a pencil is deeply challenging. When you are a seven year old working at the very edge of your ability in maths, one problem, thoroughly worked through, can exhaust you all by itself. How painful to have to continue for another twenty or thirty minutes, when all you are really fit for is a snack and a breath of fresh air.
I don’t think there’s an easy way around this in a school, with hundreds of children to shepherd through the day and around the building. And I know homeschooling is not right or possible for every family. But what a privilege to be able to observe these long periods of deep concentration—as well as the times when five minutes is enough—and to be free to accommodate and support them.