Customer Reviews

The Children on the Hill: The Story of an Extraordinary Family.

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

I thought that this book was a very interesting study. It certainly reveals the benefits of allowing the child to develop at their own pace and in relationship to their lives.

I would love to know what happened to these children and learn more about the relationship between the parents.

My main concern was the seemingly obsessive nature of many of the children.

It's definately time for a follow up book!

Average parents dedicate their lives to the careful raising of their children. Their methods of teaching when the child's 'window of learning' is open, pays huge dividends as each child excels. One enters university in his early teens and another becomes an accomplished pianist before the age of ten. A parental "must read" book!

I find this book inspiring but it raises many questions mainly why the secrecy now, when it was so long ago? What really happened to "the children"?

First, know that the names of the family in the book are not real, and so to wonder and query on the current activities of this family is very difficult. Though there are some names and terms that one can start the hunt with: D. T. Davies, Fanny Waterman, Cardiff, Festival Hall, and the location of the best primary education school in Britain (apparently).

Some sections jumped out at me and I consider them important:

* "Too often Maria found that materials designed by people not directly concerned in an individual parent-child relationship turned out, when judged in the light of a carefully prepared environment, to be designed not for any particular purpose beyond diverting the child and killing time. Sometimes, it is true, a specific toy presented a challenge, but as often another was discarded - a living example of the old adage that the best toy is a simple one. It was not complex adult-inspired toys, but pens and paper, raffia and small home-made looms which provided Maria and her children with endless hours exploring their senses and reflexes, and later with improvised scientific experiments and games of imagination."

The idea of periods of sensory exploration is not new; many babies focus on tasting objects with their tongue, grasping objects and wanting to touch nearly everything. As for the children on the hill, this was something to be respected within the household: children would do whatever they would like for as long as they like, with the mother restraining any of her urges to stop some activity to the best of her ability. Eventually the children would grow tired of some activity and move on to the other, so the fear of children being locked into mischevious social patterns is seemingly unfounded in this context. They decide to go on to do something else. It was her intention that her family would be, essentially, a social organism wrapped up in a cacoon to be certain that no external pressures from human society would reach to the children.

* "As every mother who has brought up children knows, the best children's books are those which are adult in their language, like the Beatrix Potter stories. The same is true of conversation. 'Baby talk' is as bad a medium of communication as Hottentot."

However, since the publishing of this book, it is questionable whether or not every mother knows such a thing. The mother of the children on the hill actively saught activities and literature that would be just over or on the horizon for the abilities of the children, making sure to be with the children at the moment that the possibility of learning makes itself most clear.

* "That a child should have its own personal creative outlet is highly desirable, especially if it is one that does not put it in competition with other members of the family: sibling rivalry would be inevitable if, for instance, two of the children played the piano. It is no accident that Christian and Adam have become committed to different disciplines, and maintain more stoutly than truthfully that they understand nothing of the other's speciality. Christian claims to be tone deaf, and at school bellows loudly and tunelessly when confronted with the customary barrage of Welsh tunes. Adam, at the sight of a page of figures, rises silently and leaves the room. As a case of avoidence of sibling rivalry it is almost classic."

* "Love is the intuition of the unity of all reality - we must foster this faith in ourselves - love in action is to act out this intuition to the end." - Mother of the children on the hill. This has important connections to many forms of philosophy, including Leibniz's optimism.

* "Montessori, it is true, provided many of the tools; but nobody else considered possible her challenge to the whole conception of the darker aggressive sides of human behaviour. Science believes them to be regrettable but ever present elements under a veneer, thick or thin, of civilisation. Maria believed that if she built a prepared environment of sufficient strength, and then brought up the children in the way she knew to be right, many undesirable emotions could be eliminated, and that what we mostly accept as being 'natural' could be shown to be the product of avoidable strains during very early development."

Too, the mother found questionable the true existence of emotions such as 'Shame' and 'Guilt'. There is very little evidence of any of the children having these 'emotions' in Deakin's report.

* "Bit by bit Christian began to grasp the rudiments of algebra and one day his father showed him how to draw out equations on squared paper, showing their natural balance in graphic representation. Christian was interested and began to divert himself with monstrous sums. How many atoms are there in the world? How many thousand tons do whales weigh? How many grains of sand are there in the Sahara? What is the average specific density of the world? It was the cerebral equivalent of collecting train numbers, of plane spotting, or hoarding bus tickets. So isolated was the house on the hill, so unrelated to the educational structure of the outside world, that [the father] Martin was not aware how unusual these games were."

To be honest, there is little more of value within the book that I can find, except perhaps if one wants to try to hunt down the family from the sparse information within the document. Additionally, there are other segments that could potentially be of interest: the short biographies of the parents, the individual focuses on each of the children, and the "up to date" information in the back of the book (old, of course).

And there is a fantastic error on the back cover. "Fortram". Heh.

- Bryan (son, valid use of account, etc.)

Fascinating tale of a "child-centered" couple and their four home-schooled children. Raises some questions (in my mind, not much in the book) about the purposes of education and the self-sacrifice of parents. The children are undoubtedly exceptional, but they are hothouse-grown, not paradigms for any kind of public educational policy. Still, a suggestive and thought-provoking book. A pity the author seems content to tell the tale and not much interested in waxing philosophic.