Understood Betsy Quotes

My boys and I are really enjoying Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher.  She was actually one of the first Americans to introduce Montessori methods to the United States during the 1910's.  This work has a lot to say about education without being a treatise on education.  I appreciate the lessons that are sprinkled throughout but aren't too heavy handed.  The story follows a young girl raised in the city by her Aunt who is always trying to "understand" her.  Due to a family sickness, she is forced to move out to the farm with her Cousin and learns a lot about herself in the process.  I laughed at some of the "understanding" that Aunt Frances provided - my boys didn't get it - but it is well described.

Here are a few of my favorite parts.

After reading her lesson well at school, her response to her teacher is:

The little girl went up to her desk and said, what she knew it was her duty to confess: "I can't be allowed to read in the seventh reader.  I don't write a bit well, and I never could get the mental number-work right.  I couldn't do ANYthing with seventh-grade arithmetic!"
The teacher looked a little blank and said: "I didn't say anything about your number-work! I don't know anything about it!  You haven't recited yet."

The first day of school continues and the teacher tries to find out what she knows in each area and towards the end of the day Betsy gets very upset and proclaims:

"Why - why," said Elizabeth Ann, "I don't know what I am at all.  If I'm second grade arithmetic and seventh-grade reading and third grade spelling, what grade am I?" 

The teacher laughed at the turn of phrase. "you aren't any grade at all, no matter where you are in school.  You're just yourself, aren't you?  What difference does it make what grade you're in!  And what's the use of your reading little baby things too easy for you just because you don't know your multiplication table?" 

The rest of the anecdote is instructive but you'll have to read it for yourself - I am sure you might identify with it!

"OH pshaw!  It's ten minutes past five!  Now my grandmother could have told that within five minutes, just by the place of the shadow [talking about the sundial]. I declare! Sometimes it seems to me that every time a new piece of machinery comes into the door some of our wits fly out at the window! 

And another about family time:

She was very proud to think she could please a grown-up so much as she was evidently pleasing Uncle Henry, but the idea of reading aloud for people to hear, not for a teacher to correct, was unheard-of.

When the girls decide to help out a classmate Cousin Ann has some comments - a little convicting!

"Well," said Cousin Ann, "What has that got to do with 'Lias knowing who did it?"
"Why, he wouldn't know who to be grateful to," cried Betsy.
"Oh," said Cousin Ann, "oh, I see.  You didn't do it to help 'Lias.  You did it to have him grateful to you."

Thoughts on good teaching

. . . and to begin with had gone back, back, back to bedrock, to things Betsy absolutely knew, to the 2x2s and the 3x3s.  And then, very cautiously, a step at a time, they had advanced, stopping short whenever Betsy felt a beginning of that bewildered "guessing" impulse which made her answer wildly at random. . . From that moment her progress had been rapid, one sure fact hooking itself on to another and another one on to that. 

 These are just some of my favorites.  I highly recommend it as a read aloud.  It is part of the Year 2 Ambleside Online curriculum.