hansgeorg wrote:That would be very obvious. Using functional geometrics for Miraz' buildings and ridiculous arithmetics for the transactions between supposedly fabulous Old Narnians, would be in line with the worst we have heard about Communism.
Yes, this is just what might be meant about indoctrination, and I also accept your later point about mathematics and science, very much so. But in C.S.Lewis' time and afterwards, girls' education rarely included how to use a slide rule and what it was for. You don't need one for cooking and needlework, though maybe it just might be handy for dressmaking. These subjects would be done concurrently with boys learning woodwork, metalwork and technical drawing, where a slide rule would be useful before today's ubiquitous pocket calculators. But I think that this discrimination between two sorts of pupils, ie boys and girls, can also be considered distortion and indoctrination, as well as downright sexism.
As it happened, having attended a co-educational high school, I did have a set of conversion tables. I did learn about logarithms, anti-logarithms, sines and cosines. Though I never got around to using tangents, which is where we are at I fear, since I think that education and Narnia might be a big enough topic for its own thread. But though I also learned French au lycee, and later followed it up as a University BA major, I doubt I can understand an explanation of logarithms (decimalisation of fractions) in that language any better in French than I ever understood it in English or even Latin. Especially when after so many years, the amount of French I currently speak is not really up to continuous lucid conversation in that language. My grasp of German is much worse, whilst my grasp of Swedish is non-existent.
hansgeog wrote:Through parents by saying they are unhappy.
Between 7 and 14 boys used to go only in minorities to school: many farmed along pa, most in cities were apprentices.
If a boy was unhappy with that métier he begged his pa to make him apprentice of another.
That is Shasta's situation whilst with Arsheesh in HHB, and maybe the boy being beaten in Prince Caspian. It is also why Earl Shaftesbury stopped child labour in UK, such as children as young as five working in the mines and as cotton-frame attendants, and also why school originally became compulsory there in UK. Through plain simple Christian compassion and with the best of intentions. No doubt in the early 19th century, 'working with pa' or 'not liking that métier' explains why such children often found themselves in Botany Bay or worse. Including one or two ancestors of mine.
In Shasta's case, an escape from slavery didn't mean he escaped education. His own father said he had to learn reading, writing, heraldry, dancing, history and music. Probably enough maths to do the accounts, though Arsheesh might have taught him that.
Narnia-and-the-North wrote:If your phrase, "anti-school compulsion," implies something other than what I have suggested, I guess I still wait to be enlightened as to its real import. If, on the other hand, it implies giving children an option simply to avoid education, I can't imagine Lewis fully supporting that view. Such a view would ultimately go against his most basic description of the human condition (as given for example in The Problem of Pain) whereby all of us, (children and adults) as fallen human beings, must go through certain kinds of painful discipline in order to be restored to the way of life in God which will make us truly happy.
Although I agree that masses of homework can be painful, and that too much work means there is little leisure time for play, I don't think that C.S.Lewis was advocating children be exempt from school if they don't like that situation. I was thinking that what C.S.Lewis was pointing out that education is a lifelong experience, and there is education in play as well. That too regimented and conformist a school regime like in Communist regimes or worse, only benefits tyrants who want everyone to agree with them. For instance, in my weekly church magazine I read about a Christian pastor in Iran who is to be executed because he dared to suggest that Iranian education should include teaching other points of view besides Islamic values. I was startled to find out this case had also been mentioned in the previous Friday's daily newspaper.
There are also other forms of study, like home-schooling in America or UK or distance education which conforms to the demands of compulsory education and which includes home-schooling as well as Uninversity studies. which can be done at one's own pace. Basically I agree that traditional schoolwork is not for every taste, which is why we have technical & vocational education courses for apprentices which their employers recognise. I expect they have Polytechnics in Europe and UK now, but though technical education has been here since the late 1890's, having grown out of the old Mechanic's Institutes and Schools of Arts, I wonder if they had them in C.S.Lewis' time?
I do think that Walden's film did get Susan and Lucy very right for their time. It was all about a beautiful girl, having been flattered by adults, being vain enough to depend on making that attribute her fortune, including Susan's trip to America, which their parents thought Susan would benefit most from. I expect that Susan would have worked hard at cooking, dressmaking etc. and not at other things, which would have given her extra skills for the future if and when she ever needed them.
For an example of what I mean, do check out this movie. The wife in that pesky film,
It's a wonderful life, if her husband hadn't rescued her from a fate worse than death, was supposed to become, wait for it
, gasp! horror!
a
librarian gasp! horror!. I could think of much worse things for anyone to do if they needed an income. Especially as your friendly poster is one.
Instead of depicting how Lucy's envious wish to be as beautiful as Susan might cause trouble and devastation the way the book did, I even appreciated what Aslan was saying in the film. Lucy at times could be every bit as beautiful as Susan, as in the book. But she had her own attributes and skills to nurture. She should not waste time wishing these skills and attributes away as if she had never been born. I don't see anything wrong with telling people to be themselves and to make the most of who they are. I even saw nothing wrong with Lucy telling Gail that extra girl, that she would grow up 'to be herself'. I thought it was the only reasonable answer Lucy could give to Gail's childish fangirling her.
As Eustace was to say in LB, instead of going around saying that he wasn't clever enough, Puzzle could have tried to be as clever as possible. That, too, is important, however sorry for the LB donkey Jill and Lucy might be.