Revisiting Miss Minnie's Method
Earlier this summer, my eighteen-year-old was reading Wendell Berry's That Distant Land as I was working nearby. He looked up, and said, "Listen, Mom, this describes you."
When she was hardly more than a girl, Miss Minnie had gone away to a teacher’s college and prepared herself to teach by learning many cunning methods that she never afterwards used. For Miss Minnie loved children, and she loved books, and she taught merely by introducing the one to the other.
~ Wendell Berry, “A Consent”
I am fairly certain he does not often read my blog. He did not know I posted this as a commonplace entry a few years ago. There is no way that he can know that when I read it, my heart beat a little more quickly in the hope that my children and grandchildren would remember me in this way (except for the teacher's college bit – I never did that). But those words, coming at the end of his, and therefore my, home education career were like a benediction. There was plenty that I got wrong. But this, by the grace of God, I got right. And I am so grateful.
