Summer is the time in between, a time for reimagining the patterns of ordinary life. Once September is underway with a crush of activities and necessary meetings and daily routines, momentum will impel the continuation of habits, whether they are good or not. In summer, however, we can consider another way.
Noel Streatfeild’s first of the “Shoes” series, “Ballet Shoes,” is perhaps an unexpected place to find sound advice for homeschool routines. The odd little novel about three biologically unrelated orphaned girls, the Fossils, adopted by an eccentric and absent older gentleman, seems to focus on dysfunction more than health. The girls, motherless and abandoned by their father figure, are raised by an army of conscientious but unmaternal women who operate on a decreasing pittance of fortune while they await the return of the master of the house.
The book, which follows the child acting careers of the three sisters, is charming and whimsical but at times grim. When a disheveled little girl shows up late to an audition desperate for a part to help support her many siblings, overworked mother, and ailing father, you get a harrowing view into the work of child actors of yesteryear. Why anyone would put their innocent children into child acting today is a question for another day.
The Fossils are children without parents. While an eccentric older man decided to collect them and bring them to his household, he could not be bothered to take part in raising them, and, indeed, even fails to name them. The women of his house come up with names and the girls themselves figure out a last name for themselves, calling themselves “Fossils” because before collecting abandoned baby girls, their Great Uncle Matthew collected the preserved bones of dead animals.
Why people are so charmed by the harrowing depiction of young girls without parents or financial stability may seem at first a bit of a mystery. However, one of the most enduring charms of many children’s books is an absurd degree of independence and total lack of parental oversight (like the beloved Box Car Children). While no one would honestly want to live that way, so many of us find such tropes irresistible in story form.
The Fossils, while not yet in desperate poverty, are impelled by financial necessity to pursue the arts and earn wages as they can once they reach the age of 12, then the requirement to work legally. Withdrawn from private school because of the expense, the three girls are educated at home. Thankfully, they gain the academic assistance of two boarders who are professors of mathematics and literature.
Taken into an academy for dancing, acting, and performing, the girls receive an extracurricular education at no expense; a percentage of their earnings will go to the academy once they are 12. Overseen by their legal guardian, the great-niece of the man who picked them out of their unfortunate circumstances, the girls have many people who take part in their daily care. The nurse manages the children when very young and directs many of the hours of the day, from daily walks and tea time, to dance classes and bedtime.
In addition to these two women, the professors take care of the lessons, the cook makes the meals, one boarder teaches them more about dancing, singing, and acting, and another boarder takes one of the girls to his auto mechanic shop regularly to learn about cars.
Streatfeild describes their days in almost exhaustive detail. She writes:
“The Fossils became the busiest children in London. They got up at half-past seven and had breakfast at eight. After breakfast they did exercises with Theo for half an hour. At nine they began lessons. Posy did two hours’ reading, writing, and kindergarten work with Sylvia, and Pauline and Petrova did three hours with Doctor Jakes and Doctor Smith….At twelve o’clock they went for a walk with Nana or Sylvia…After lunch they all had to take a book on their beds for half an hour. In the afternoon there was another walk, this one with Nana…Tea was in the nursery at quarter to four, and at half-past they went by the Piccadilly railway to Russell Square…They got home at half-past six and Posy went straight to bed. Sylvia read to the other two for twenty minutes, and then Petrova had to go up, and at seven, Pauline. The lights were out by half-past and there was no more talking.”
Despite being called the “busiest children in London,” the assortment of activities rather resembles the schedule of an average child in the present day. Add to that being dragged out of bed at 5:30 AM to be dropped off at childcare before mom and dad head to work, an additional four hours in some type of school or institutional setting, eliminate downtime like afternoon tea, and seasonally change the evening extracurricular from dance class to soccer to gymnastics and you have about the makings of daily routine that many children have.
What about homeschoolers? The Fossils’ day is remarkably similar to many a homeschooled child. The number of hours devoted to academic study and the quiet, home-based activities throughout the day are all quite like that of many currently homeschooling families with one important difference. There is an army of women involved in the establishment and enforcement of routines of education and civility.
Instead of one, lone mother making the meals, teaching each lesson, supervising outside time, and driving the crew to each activity, there is a cook who prepares the meals, an independent tutor to offer morning instruction in dance, two professors who teach—taking time out of lessons for a snack they call a “beaver” over which they have extended conversation with the children—two different adults who take the children out-of-doors for walks, and at least two adults to cart the children back and forth to the evening activities, read a bedtime story, and enforce a strict lights-out policy.
While children without parents are in a deplorable situation and not to be envied, there is a lot to recommend aspects of their way of life. Many children with present and involved mothers and fathers also had domestic help. Older books often feature cooks, maids, or, even in decidedly middleclass America, a “hired girl” to help with the necessities of living a civilized life.
Dishwashers, washing machines, and all labor-saving devices are lovely little things, but a “dishwasher” used to be a person who would wash dishes, a person who was intimately part of the domestic life of the family, someone who could lend a listening ear or offer advice, talk to a bored child, or keep an eye on a mild toddler. This is, of course, romanticizing the situation, but there is some truth to it.
While raising children to be civilized used to be a dance orchestrated by many competent adults. Now, we are expected to impart manners and hygiene upon our offspring in isolation approaching the desolation of Ma Ingalls in a mud hut on the prairie. As easy as it is to romanticize the class-dependent vision of an army of domestic laborers, we find it even easier to think mistily about the beautiful simplicity of life in isolation.
What we fail to consider is how much more likely it is that we would end up in the circumstances of isolation like the unpleasant and unbecoming family Laura boards with when she has her first teaching job in a neighboring town. The wife, melancholic and morose, broods and fumes, occasionally erupting in late-night homicidal outburst, cursing her husband for ever taking her away from the East. There but for the grace of God go we! How many of us, absent the subtle support of friends and kindly neighbors would resort to moping and brutalizing our family? (though hopefully not threatening wielding the kitchen knife in the midnight hour)
What does this have to do with planning the next school year? In short, we should consider how to incorporate more people into the daily routines of caring for and educating children. Hiring a cook, a nanny, a driver, and a maid is beyond the reach of most of us, to put it mildly. But having someone mop the floors and wipe down the kitchen once a month might be attainable.
If not, how much would our children benefit at least from the instruction of another competent adult and daily conversation with people outside the home? It just might be that for may of us the secret to greater happiness in homeschooling is striking the balance between the necessary quiet time in the home with the need to avoid isolation. We are ever but a single generation away from barbarism, and if you as a lone adult are tasked with civilized a group of young children, the odds are not in your favor.
