A Short Synopsis of The Educational Philosophy of
Charlotte Mason
Towards A Philosophy of Education, Volume 6 of the Charlotte
Mason Series
1.
2.
Children are born persons.
They are not born either good or bad, but with possibilities for
good and for evil.
"This first proposition of Charlotte Mason's educational
philosophy may seem merely a statement of the obvious. But it
is not some minor element of a greater truth. It is a central truth in
its own right, and if we ignore it, great sorrow and malpractice
can result. Try a simple experiment. Take a small child on your
knee. Respect him. Do not see him as something to prune,
form or mold. This is an individual who thinks, acts, and feels.
He is a separate human being whose strength lies in who he
is, not in who he will become. If his choices now and in the
future are to be good ones, this person must understand reality
and see the framework of truth... We are told by many in our
generation that this small child is a cog in a machine, or even
that he is a possession, like a pet animal... We must answer:
NO. You are holding a person on your knee and that is
wonderful."1
The principles of authority on the one hand, and of obedience
on the other, are natural, necessary and fundamental; but3.
These principles are limited by the respect due to the personality
of children, which must not be encroached upon whether by the
direct use of fear or love, suggestion or influence, or by undue play
upon any one natural desire
4.
"There is an idea abroad that authority makes for tyranny, and that
obedience, voluntary or involuntary, is of the nature of slavishness; but
authority is, on the contrary, the condition without which liberty does
not exist and, except it be abused, is entirely congenial to those on
whom it is exercised: we are so made that we like to be ordered even
if the ordering be only that of circumstances."
"That principle in us which brings us into subjection to authority is
docility, teachableness, and that also is universal. If a man in the
pride of his heart decline other authority, he will submit himself slavishly
to his 'star' or his 'destiny.' It would seem that the exercise of docility is as
natural and necessary as that of reason or imagination; and the two
principles of authority and docility act in every life precisely as do those
two elemental principles which enable the earth to maintain its orbit,
the one drawing it towards the sun, the other as constantly driving it
into space; between the two, the earth maintains a more or less middle
course and the days go on."2
Therefore, we are limited to three educational instruments—
the atmosphere of environment, the discipline of habit, and the
presentation of living ideas. The P.N.E.U. Motto is: "Education is an
atmosphere, a discipline, and a life."
5.
6. Then
we say that "education is an atmosphere," we do not mean
that a child should be isolated in what may be called a 'childenvironment' especially adapted and prepared, but that we should
take into account the educational value of his natural home
atmosphere, both as regards persons and things, and should let
him live freely among his proper conditions. It stultifies a child to
bring down his world to the child's' level.
"The atmosphere in which a child gathers his unconscious
ideas of right living emanates from his parents. Every look of
gentleness and tone of reverence , every word of kindness
and act of help, passes into the thought-environment, the
very atmosphere which the child breathes; he does not think
of these things, may never think of them, but all his life long
they excite the vague appetency...towards things sordid or
things lovely, things earthly or divine."
"In a personal interview with Marion Berry in July 1999, I asked
her the secret to creating the atmosphere that seemed to
exist in her school for fifty years or more, one in which children
thrived as persons in proper relationship to so many things.
Her reply came quickly, firmly, and with conviction for her
ninety-one years. Yet she spoke of what was omitted rather
than what was present. The absence of four toxic
practices – competition, prizes and marks, stress, and
comparison-purified the air for learning."3
7. By
"education is a discipline," we mean the discipline of habits,
formed definitely and thoughtfully, whether habits of mind or body.
Physiologists tell us of the adaptation of brain structures to habitual
lines of thought, i.e., to our habits.
" 'The formation of habits is education and education is the
formation of habits', Charlotte Mason maintained. But
children are often 'left up to their nature' in hopes that they
will grow out of it or in excuse of their youth or individuality. But
Charlotte Mason was adamant concerning training in habit.
She went as far as to say that almost anything could be
accomplished through the correct and consistent
training...This discipline is training that comprises relationship
with oneself, one's world, one's God, and others.
The parent and/or teacher supplants the child's weakness
or affinity through instruction of conscience and the will.
Along with deliberate effort, that is often painstaking on
behalf of both the child and the educator to reach the
desired outcome. This work expands the scope of a child's
education to include the following habits:
a. Intellectual habits: attention, concentration, thoroughness,
intellectual volition, accuracy, reflection, and meditation,
rapid mental effort and application, thinking, imagining,
remembering, and perfect execution.
b. Moral habits: sweet thought, obedience, truthfulness,
reverence, and temper
c. Physical habits; self-restraint, self-control, self-discipline,
alertness, quick perception, fortitude, service, courage,
prudence and chastity.
d. Religious habits: the thought of God, a reverent attitude,
regularity in devotions, reading the bible, praise and
Sunday keeping_
e. Miscellaneous habits: physical exercise, good
manners and ear and voice.
The children will have habits, and we as parents and educators are
engaged in forming these habits actively or passively every day,
every hour:14
8. In saying that education is a life,- the need of intellectual and
moral as well as of physical sustenance is implied.
The mind
feeds on ideas, and therefore children should have a generous
curriculum.
In terms of the development of a curriculum that reflects
the idea that education is a life, Miss Mason does not
leave us clueing. She has written that just as the body
needs nourishment in order to grow and flourish, so does
the mind need feeding. “The mind feeds on ideas," she
wrote "and therefore children should have a generous
curriculum.' The business of teaching was for the sole
purpose of furnishing the child with ideas, and any
teaching that did not leave the child with a new mental
image missed the mark. A morning in which the child
receive no new idea, needless to say, was a morning
wasted. This wasteful existence goes on and on in many
a classroom, on many a day, as the student and the
teacher passively interact with information. This need not
be, nor should be, as Charlotte Mason has left a rich
legacy of thinking and practice that constantly affirms
one of her basics tenets. That education is a life. This
principle is not a narrow compartmentalizing of facts into
one area and life into another, but a rich interweaving of
ideas, experiences, knowledge that leads ultimately to the
way we all as individuals live our lives.'5
9 We hold that the child's mind is no mere sac to hold ideas; but
is rather, if the figure may be allowed, a spiritual organism, with
an appetite for all knowledge. This is its proper diet with which it
is prepared to deal; and which it can digest and assimilate as
the body does foodstuffs.
“This vibrant picture at the "life-ward" motivation of
children that she draws is most striking and unique. The
nature of knowing (learning) begins with ideas, the live
things of the mind, that strike, impress, seize, and catch
hold of one. Ideas are the initiators of habits, of thought,
and habits of action. They originate as the issue from two
minds. No one person has the power to produce an
idea autonomously, as ideas reproduce after their
own kind and in turn generate their own ideas,
“Ideas are of spiritual origin, and God has made us
so that we get them chiefly as we convey them to
one another”. These ideas are conveyed through
the natural world, heroic poetry, painted pictures,
books of literary tradition, proverbial philosophy,
music symphonies, and the lives of persons and
nations. Ideas are the living concepts that under
gird, give meaning to, and connect one thought to
another”6
10. Such a doctrine as e.g. the Herbartian, that the mind is a
receptacle, lays the stress of education (the preparation of
knowledge in enticing morsels duly ordered) upon the
teacher. Children taught on this principle are in danger of
receiving much teaching with little knowledge; and the
teacher's axiom is. "what a child learns matters less than how
he learns it."
11. But we, believe the normal child has powers of mind which fit him
to deal with all knowledge proper to him, give him a full and
generous curriculum; taking care only that all knowledge
offered him is vital, that is, that facts are not presented without
their informing ideas.
The educators part is to place before the child the daily
nourishment of ideas by way of books !hat promote “living
thought". Scores of thinkers will meet the children mind to mind in
books of literary quality. This "mind food”- is not served up in dry
bits, diluted, or pre-digested. Instead it is offered in abundance
with all it’s savory delights. Each child eats what he wills and
leaves nourished and contented”7
Out of this conception comes our principle that,—
12. "Education is the Science of Relations"; that is that a child
has natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts:
so
we
train
him
upon
physical
exercises,
nature
lore,
handicrafts, science and art, and upon many living books, for
we know that our business is not to teach him all about anything,
but to help him to make valid as many as may be of—
"Those first-born affinities
That fit our new existence to existing things."
We consider that education is the science of
relations, or, more fully, that education considers what
relations are proper to a human being, and in what
ways these several relations can be best established; that
a human being comes into the world with a capacity for
many relations-, and than we, for our part, have two
chief concerns, first, to put him in the right way of
forming those relations by presenting the right idea at
the right lime, and by forming the right habit upon the
right idea: and secondly, by not getting in the way
and so preventing the establishment of the very relations
we seek to form. "8.
13. In devising a SYLLABUS for a normal child, of whatever
social class, three points must be considered:
(a) He requires much knowledge, for the mind needs sufficient food
as does the body.
(b) The knowledge should be various, for
sameness in mental diet does not create appetite (i.e. curiosity)
(c)knowledge should be communicated in well-chosen
language, because his attention responds naturally to what is
conveyed in literary form..
'Charlotte Mason introduces the reader to living books
and living things as the only form of "mind food" that
provides the daily nourishment for the mind to do its work.
"For the truth of the matter is that babies and young
children explore new experiences with tireless enthusiasm.
A girl or boy has a mind which is hungry for ideas. They
have an appetite for knowing and experiencing”. If a
book is not living, Mason refers to it as twaddle, something
dry, diluted, pre-digested, void of thought. It seems as if
there is nothing in between; books and things either do
the work of nourishment, or they do not”.9
14. As knowledge is not assimilated until it is reproduced, children
children should ‘tell back’after a single reading or hearing; or
should write on some part of what they have read.
15. A single reading is insisted on, because children have
naturally great power of attention; but this force is dissipated
by the re-reading of passages, and also, by questioning,
summarizing and the like.
Acting upon these and some other points in the behavior of
mind, we find that the educability of children is enormously
greater than has hitherto been supposed, and is but little
dependent on such circumstances as heredity and environment.
Nor is the accuracy of this statement limited to clever children
or to children of the educated classes: thousands of children in
Elementary Schools respond freely to this method, which is based
on the behaviour of mind.
'Narration is re-telling. It is not memorizing or parroting. It
includes feelings and reactions. It is not word for word, but
point for point. It is a type of essay response to a broad
open-ended questioning, a recall of information. In the
strictest sense, narration is an immediate recall of
information seen, read, or heard, In a more liberal sense
it is often used as a quest for information that has been
seen, read or heard after a period of time in the form of
exams or evaluation of a child's knowledge on a
particular subject. But even in the latter sense, the work
of oral narration must have gone on before in order that
the child obtain the knowledge in question”10
16 There are two guides to moral and intellectual selfmanagement to offer to children, which we may can call ‘the
way of the will' and 'the way of the reason.'
17 The way of the will: Children should be taught, (a) to
distinguish between ‘I want' and ‘I will’ (b) That the way to wilI effectively
is to turn our thoughts from that which we desire but do not
will. (c) That the best way to turn our thought is to think of or
do some quite different thing, entertaining or interesting. (d)
That after a little rest in this way, the will returns to its work with
new vigour. (This adjunct of the will is familiar to us as
diversion, whose office it is to ease us for a time from will effort,
that we may ‘will’ again with added power. The use of
suggestion as an aid to the will is to be deprecated, as tending
to stultify and stereotype character, It would seem that
spontaneity is a condition of development, and that human
nature needs the discipline of failure a well as of success).
"The great things of life, life itself are not easy of definition.
The Will, we are told, is ‘the sole practical faculty of man.'
But who is to define the Will? we are told again that ‘the
Will is the man’ and yet most men go through life without a
single definite act of willing. Habit, convention, the customs
of the world have done so much for us that we get up,
dress, breakfast, follow our morning's occupations, our
later relaxations, without an act of choice. For this much at
any rate we know about the will. Its function is to choose,
to decide, and there seems to be no doubt that the
greater becomes the effort of decision the weaker grows
the general will. Opinions are provided for us, we take
our principles at second or third hand, our habits are
suitable, and convenient, and what more is necessary for
a decent and orderly life? But the one achievement
possible and necessary for every man is character and
character is as finely wrought metal beaten into shape
and beauty by the repeated and accustomed action of
will. We who teach should make it clear to ourselves that
our aim in education is less conduct than character;
conduct may be arrived at, as we have seen, by indirect
routes, but it is of value to the world only as it has its source
in character11
“By degrees the scholar will perceive that just as to reign
is the distinctive function of a king, so to will is the function
of a man. A king is not a king unless he reigns and a rnan is
less than a man unless he wills” 12
18. The way of reason: We teach children, too, not to 'lean (too
confidently) to their own understanding’; because the function of
reason is to give logical demonstration (a) of mathematical truth,
(b) of an initial idea, accepted by the will. In the former case,
reason is, practically, an infallible guide, but in the latter, it is not
always a safe one; for, whether that idea be right or wrong, reason
will confirm it by irrefragable proofs.
19. Therefore, children should be taught, as they become mature
enough to understand such teaching, that the chief responsibility
which rests on them as persons is the acceptance or rejection of
ideas. To help them in this choice we give them principles of
conduct, and a wide range of the knowledge fitted to them. These
principles should save children from some of the loose thinking
and heedless action which cause most of us to live at a lower level
than we need.
“After abundant practice in reasoning and tracing out
the reasons of others, whether in fact or fiction, children may
readily be brought to the conclusions that reasonable and
right are not synonymous terms; that reason is their servant,
not their ruler, - one of those servants which help Mansoul in
the governance of his kingdom. But no more than
appetite, ambition, or the love of ease, is reason to be
trusted with the government of a man, much less that of a
state; because well reasoned arguments are brought into
play for a wrong course as for a right. He will see that
reason works involuntarily; that all the beautiful steps follow
one another in his mind without any activity or
intention on his own part; but he need never suppose
that he was hurried along into evil by thoughts which he
could not help, because reason never begins it. It is only
when he chooses to think about some course or plan, as
Eve standing before the apples, that reason comes into
play; so, if he chooses to think about a purpose that is
good, many excellent reasons will hurry up to support him;
but, alas, if he choose to entertain a wrong notion, he, as
is were, rings the bell for reason, which enforces his
wrong intention with a score of arguments proving that
wrong is right. '13
20. We allow no separation to grow up between the intellectual
and 'spiritual' life of children, but teach them that the Divine Spirit
has constant access to their spirits, and their Continual Helper in
all the interests, duties and joys of life.
"Supposing we are willing to make this great recognition, to
engage ourselves to accept and invite the daily, hourly,
incessant co-operation of the divine Spirit, in, to put it
definitely and plainly, the schoolroom work of our children,
how must we shape our own conduct to make this cooperation active, or even possible? We are told that the
Spirit is life; therefore, that which is dead, dry as dust, mere
bare bones, can have no affinity with Him, can do no
other than smother and deaden his vitalizing influences. A
first condition of this vitalizing teaching is that all the
thought we offer to our children shall be living thought; no
mere dry summaries of facts will do; given the vitalizing
idea, children will readily hang the mere facts upon the
idea as upon a peg capable of sustaining all that it is
needful to retain. We begin by believing in the children as
spiritual beings of unmeasured powers-intellectual, moral,
spiritual – capable of receiving and constantly enjoying
intuitions from the intimate converse of the Divine Spirit”14
References:
1. Jack Beckman, When Children Love to Learn, p51
2. Charlotte Mason, Vol 1, CH4
3. Charlotte Mason, Home Education, Vol 1
4. Maryellen St Cyr, When Children Love to Learn, p90-91
5. Maryellen St Cyr, When Children Love to Learn, p100
6. Maryellen St Cyr, When Children Love to Learn, p101
7. Maryellen St Cyr, When Children Love to Learn, p102
8. Jack Beckman, When Children Love to Learn, p123
9. Maryellen St Cyr, When Children Love to Learn, p125
10. Maryellen St Cyr, When Children Love to Learn, p128
11. Charlotte Mason, Vol 6, p128,129
12. Charlotte Mason, Vol 6, p133
13. Charlotte Mason, Vol 1, CH9
14. Charlotte Mason, Vol 2, p277