The criteria we use for choosing books to include in the Cumberland Books catalog are a little quirky. We like a book that is a good, thorough introduction to its subject, one that is both a good stopping place if you only want to know the basics, and a good starting place if you want to explore deeply. We like one that can be profitably read more than once. We like one that is no harder to read than the subject requires. We like one that is aesthetically exceptional. And we like one that makes you want to corner your friends and tell them, “You’ve got to read this!”
We’ve been working for nearly three years now to build up a list of such books. The work isn’t done, but we’ve reached a point where we now have good coverage in a number of key areas: Christian living, Christian doctrine, the church, the family, the Bible, history, philosophy, and literature. Sounds a bit like a curriculum, doesn’t it? We’ve always thought of it as one—a set of tools for teaching oneself how to think biblically about the important things in life. And as time goes on my wife Debbie and I have found that they are also excellent tools for training one’s children to think biblically.
Consider this quote from G.K. Chesterton:
What is education? Properly speaking, there is no such thing as education. Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. Whatever the soul is like, it will have to be passed on somehow, consciously or unconsciously, and that transition may be called education. ... What we need is to have a culture before we hand it down. In other words, it is a truth, however sad and strange, that we cannot give what we have not got, and cannot teach to other people what we do not know ourselves.
Chesterton's two points restated: we educate our children by passing our culture on to them; and, to properly educate our children, we must have a culture worth passing on.
We think of the books and other materials we sell on the Cumberland Books website as tools for building a Christian culture. Some of it focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of modern day Christian culture, some points back to how our forefathers did things, some looks at secular culture and the dangers it presents to our own, and some points foward to the glories of the faithful and godly culture we will be able to build if we equip ourselves properly. Thus, they are tools we can use to make sure we have a culture worth passing on.
And they are also excellent tools for teaching children, at least older ones, about the things that really matter. We've used them with our own children, and we've been happy with the results. And we think that with a little bit of guidance other parents of older children could make good use of them, too. So we're spending the next few months getting our website organized and wrting book descriptions that will help you decide whether a particular book is suitable for your purposes.
The best way to study a subject is to sit down with your child and read and discuss a good book about it. The technique we use is simple—pick a book, read it, then talk about it. Sometimes the children read the book on their own, sometimes we read it to them, sometimes they read it to us. The questions come tumbling out, and they always lead to long and fruitful discussions of how our family understands God and His creation.
This is far more time consuming than the conventional approach, where we hand a child some work to do on his own, occasionally conducting some sort of spot check to see that the work was done. And so there's no way you can use the approach we suggest and still cover the vast amounts of material that are thrown at a child by a conventional curriculum. You'll have to decide for yourself which topics, if any, are important enough to merit this extra effort.
Since education is conversation, we'll also be adding discussion guides for each of the books we recommend for homeschoolers. In some cases the books are designed for discussion-based study, and so our guide for it will be very brief, mostly describing its contents in some detail. For the rest of the books we will also provide discussion questions. Please be patient with us as we work to create these guides.
It’s a pretty free-form approach, and homeschooling parents will naturally ask two skeptical questions : Is it adequate? and, Is it workable? We are using it in our own family, and we are very happy with the results.
But probably the best way to decide is to try it out. You don't have to jettison your current approach. Pick a book that looks intriguing to you, then clear a spot in your schedule so you can study and discuss it with your son or daughter. We think you will find the experience rewarding enough to want to try it again.