Episode 27: Plutarch
A Delectable Education Charlotte Mason Podcast
Nicole Williams
5 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 1 April 2016
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Charlotte Mason thought Plutarch an invaluable source of knowledge and moral wisdom in the subject of citizenship. This podcast explores who he was, why Mason thought so, and how the study of the lives he described would inform and enrich our children.
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“In the same way, readings from Plutarch's Lives will afford the best preparation for the study of Grecian or of Roman history.” (Vol. 1, p. 286)
“[T]he principle being, that, whenever practicable, the child should get his first notions of a given period, not from the modern historian, the commentator and reviewer, but from the original sources of history, the writings of contemporaries.” (Vol. 1, p. 285)
“Perhaps nothing outside of the Bible has the educational value of Plutarch’s Lives.” (Vol. 3, p. 236)
“[The Lives] stand alone in literature as teaching that a man is part of the State, that his business is to be of service to the State, but that the value of his service depends upon his personal character.” (Vol. 3, p. 280)
“...an early education from the great books with the large ideas and the large virtues is the only true foundation of knowledge--the knowledge worth having.” (Vol. 6, p. 308)
"We take the child to the living sources of history––a child of seven is fully able to comprehend Plutarch, in Plutarch's own words (translated), without any diluting and with little explanation." (Vol. 2, p. 278)
“We read him his Tanglewood Tales, and when he is a little older his Plutarch, not trying to break up or water down, but leaving the child's mind to deal with the matter as it can.” (Vol. 2, pp. 231-232)
“[Plutarch] hath written the profitable story of all authors. For all other were fain to take their matter, as the fortune of the countries whereof they wrote fell out: But this man being excellent in wit, learning, and experience, hath chosen the special acts of the best persons, of the famousest nations of the world.” (Thomas North as quoted by Mason in Vol. 6, p. 274)
If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy.
Home Education (Volume 1), pp. 286-87
School Education (Volume 3), pp. 152, 235, 280-81, 286-89
Ourselves (Volume 4), Book I, Chapter 2
Towards a Philosophy of Education (Volume 6), Book I, Section II, "Morals and Economics"
(Contains affiliate links)
Stories from the History of Rome (free online)
Anne White's Study Guides (free online--scroll down to individual Lives listings)
The Children's Plutarch (free online)
Weston's Plutarch (free online)
Kaufman's Plutarch (free online)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Oh, Welcome to episode 27 of a delectable education, the podcast that spreads the |
| 0:35.1 | feast of the Charlotte Mason method. I'm Emily Kaiser and I'm here with |
| 0:39.0 | Nicole Williams and my mom Liz Kottrell. Today we are going to be talking about one of the most distinctive subjects |
| 0:46.3 | in a Charlotte Mason education, one that has the reputation for being very, very difficult |
| 0:51.6 | and intimidating for a lot of moms. |
| 0:54.0 | And that is the study of Plutarch. |
| 0:57.2 | So let's just begin by saying who was Plutarch in the first place. |
| 1:01.6 | Well, he was Greek. He was born in the first century and he was a historian |
| 1:08.4 | primarily is known today as a biographer, one of the first historical biographers, at least that we have record of. |
| 1:16.4 | He came from a prominent family, so he grew up with some privilege, but later he did become a Roman citizen. I just find these |
| 1:25.4 | little details to be interesting to know who in the world was the man. He's been |
| 1:30.6 | known most famously for his pairing of Roman and Greek lives, a comparative study of the great leaders of Greece and the great leaders of Rome. |
| 1:41.0 | But he did not consider his biographies to be historical perhaps in the same way that we think about them, a factual account or narrative of a person's entire life. |
| 1:55.0 | He really wanted to give anecdotes, episodes in these leaders' lives, even things that were not |
| 2:02.1 | necessarily the most widely known about that person and he |
| 2:06.3 | sometimes left out the most epic events in one of these characters lives. He thought that even trivial details might show more about |
| 2:18.0 | the character of that person than the famous accomplishments that he achieved and so that gives us a clue as to what his purpose |
| 2:28.0 | was in writing these he was one of the first moral philosophers and he just wanted us to see an entire life |
| 2:39.2 | and to see the character of a man as it developed and how it affected the world. |
| 2:47.0 | So Nicole, why did Charlotte Mason think that the study of Plutarch was an essential component of her curriculum. |
| 2:55.0 | Well, first of all, Mason said that the lives offer the best preparation for the study of |
| 3:00.0 | Grecian and Roman history, which I think is so interesting because when we first started reading Plutarch, we had not really read any of the ancients. |
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