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Charlotte Mason in Modern English
Charlotte Mason's ideas are too important not to be understood and implemented in the 21st century, but her Victorian style of writing sometimes prevents parents from attempting to read her books. This is an imperfect attempt to make Charlotte's words accessible to modern parents. You may read these, print them out, share them freely--but they are copyrighted to me, so please don't post or publish them without asking.
~L. N. Laurio
Preface
to the 'Home Education' Series
The future of education both in England and overseas is vague and
depressing. We hear various urgent pleas -- science should be the focus
of education, we need to reform the way we teach foreign language or
math, we should incorporate more crafts and nature study to train the
eye and hand, students need to learn how to write English and must
therefore be familiar with history and literature. And on the other
hand, we're being pressured to make education more vocational and
utilitarian. But there's no coherent principle, no real aim. There's no
philosophy of education. A stream can't rise any higher than the lake
it flows from. In the same way, no educational work can rise above the
thought and purpose behind it. Maybe this is the reason for all the
failures and disappointments of our educational system.
Those of us who have spent many years researching the gentle, elusive
vision of education have come to understand that various approaches
have a law behind them, but we haven't yet discovered what it is. We
can make out a dim outline of it, but that's it. We know that it's
all-encompassing. There's no part of a child's home life or school work
that isn't affected by that law. It's illuminating. It shows the value
(or worthlessness) of all the thousands of various educational systems
and programs. It isn't just a light, it's also a measure. It sets the
standard by which to measure all educational work, whether small or
great. That law is impartial and gracious. It will embrace
anything that's true, honest, and respected. It sets no limits or
obstacles, except where too much would be harmful. And the educational
path that the law reveals is continuous and always advancing forward.
There is no magical transition stage, progress is steady from birth to
old age, except that, whatever habits are learned in youth will
determine what choices are made even in adulthood. When we finally see
the law for what it is, we'll find that certain German thinkers --
Kant, Herbart, Lotze, Froebel -- were right when they said that it's
necessary to believe in God, so the most important thing to learn is
knowledge of God. That should be the priority of education. There's one
more way that we'll be able to recognize this perfect law that gives
educational freedom when we see it. It's been said that, 'The best
thing about absolute truth is that it works under every condition we
can think of.' And that will be true of this law. No matter what
experimental test or logical investigation we give it, it will pass.
We still haven't seen an outline or summary of this law. So, until we
have something definite, we'll have to fall back on Froebel or Herbart,
or, if we adhere to a different school of thought, Locke or Spencer.
But we aren't content. We feel dissatisfied. Is it a divine discontent?
If we found a workable, effective philosophy of education, we'd welcome
it as deliverance from our perplexity. Before we find this great
deliverance, there will probably be lots of tentative attempts. They'll
all have the characters of a philosophy, more or less. Specifically,
they'll have a central idea, a basic concept with various details
working in harmony with it. This workable, effective theory of
education could be called a system of psychology. It would have to work
well with the accepted ideas of the time. It wouldn't think of
education as an isolated, shut-off compartment, but as a natural part
of life, like birth, growing, marriage, or work. It would create a bond
between the student and the great wide world, connected at many
different points where interest was sparked. I know that some
educational experts want to create that connection in many subjects,
but their attempts are too random. They give a saying here, an idea
there, but there's no common foundation to unify and support education
as a complete unit.
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. I don't want to seem
presumptuous. I hope that there will be lots of ideas submitted towards
a working philosophy of education, and that each one will bring us one
step closer to discovering the best possible education. In that spirit,
I offer my idea. The central foundational thought of my idea will sound
rather obvious: the child is a whole, complete person with all the possibilities
and capabilities already included in his personality. Some of the
implications of this idea have been exploited by educational experts,
and fragments of this idea are already pretty commonly accepted by
common sense. For instance, take the aspect that education is the science of making
relationships. That concept seems to solve the curriculum
question. It shows that the main purpose of education is putting the
child in living touch with as much of nature and thoughts as possible.
If you add a couple of skills that help the child self-educate, then
the student will go into the world after graduation with some ability
to manage and control himself, a few hobbies to enrich his leisure
time, and an interest in lots of things. I have two reasons for even
attempting to offer my educational idea, even if my idea is tentative
and will probably be replaced by an even better idea. For the last
30-40 years, I've worked unceasingly to come up with a philosophical
educational theory that works practically. Also, each of the following
educational principles is something that came about by inductive
processes, and has been proved with long and varied experiments. I
hesitate
to share my findings because I know that, in the field of education,
there are many workers more capable and more knowledgeable than I am.
Even they aren't bold enough to offer answers because the footing is so
precarious! They are like the 'angels who fear to tread.'
But, if only to encourage their effort, I offer an amended version of a
synopsis I included in the other volumes of my 'Home Education Series.'
My approach isn't methodic. It's more incidental--here a little, there
a little. That seemed like the best way to make it practical for
parents and teachers. I should add that the various essays in this book
were originally written for the Parents National Educational Union
(PNEU) to provide the society with a unified theory.
'As soon as the soul spots truth, the soul recognizes it as her first
and oldest friend.'
'The repercussions of truth are great. Therefore we must not neglect to
correctly judge what's true, and what's not.'
--Benjamin Whichcote
Whichcote said that the end result of truth is so great that we must be
careful to make sure that what we live by is, indeed, the truth.
1. Children are born persons--they are not blank slates or embryonic
oysters who have the potential of becoming persons. They already are
persons.
2. Although children are born with a sin nature, they are neither all
bad, nor all good. Children from all walks of life and backgrounds may
make choices for good or evil.
3. The concepts of authority and obedience are true for all people
whether they accept it or not. Submission to authority is necessary for
any society or group or family to run smoothly.
4. Authority is not a license to abuse children, or to play upon their
emotions or other desires, and adults are not free to limit a child's
education or use fear, love, power of suggestion, or their own
influence over a child to make a child learn.
5. The only three means a teacher may use to educate children are the
child's natural environment, the training of good habits and exposure
to living ideas and concepts. This is what CM's motto "Education is an
atmosphere, a discipline, a life" means.
6. "Education is an atmosphere" doesn't mean that we should create an
artificial environment for children, but that we use the opportunities
in the environment he already lives in to educate him. Children learn
from real things in the real world.
7. "Education is a discipline" means that we train a child to have good
habits and self-control, both in actions and in thought.
8. "Education is a life" means that education should apply to body,
soul and spirit. The mind needs ideas of all kinds, so the child's
curriculum should be varied and generous with many subjects included.
9. The child's mind is not a bucket to be filled with facts that bunch
up into thought-groups, as Herbart said.
10. The child's mind is also not a bag for holding knowledge. It is a
living thing and needs knowledge to grow. As the stomach was designed
to digest food, the mind is designed to digest knowledge and needs no
special training or exercises to make it ready to learn.
11. This is not just splitting hairs; Herbart's philosophy that the
mind is like an empty stage waiting for bits of information to be
inserted puts too much responsibility on the teacher to prepare
detailed lessons. Students taught this way have lots of knowledge
taught at them, without getting much out of it.
12. Instead, we believe that children's minds are capable of digesting
real knowledge, so we provide a rich, generous curriculum that exposes
children to many interesting, living ideas and concepts. From this
principle, we can deduce that--
13. "Education is the science of relations," which means that children
have minds capable of making their own connections with knowledge and
experiences, so we make sure the child learns about nature, science and
art, knows how to make things, reads many living books and that they
are physically fit. Our job isn't to teach everything about everything,
but to inspire interests that will help children make connections with
the world around him.
14. Children have two guides to help them in their moral and
intellectual growth--"the way of the will," and "the way of reason."
15. Children must learn the difference between "I want" and "I will."
They must learn to distract their thoughts when tempted to do what they
may want but know is not right, and think of something else, or do
something else, interesting enough to occupy their mind. After a short
diversion, their mind will be refreshed and able to will with renewed
strength.
16. Children must learn not to lean too heavily on their own reasoning.
Reasoning is good for logically demonstrating mathematical truth, but
unreliable when judging ideas because our reasoning will justify all
kinds of erroneous ideas if we really want to believe them.
17. Knowing that reason is not to be trusted as the final authority in
forming opinions, children must learn that their greatest
responsibility is choosing which ideas to accept or reject. Good habits
of behavior and lots of knowledge will provide the discipline and
experience to help them do this.
Principles 15, 16 and 17 should save children from the sort of careless
thinking that causes people to exist at a lower level of life than they
need to.
18. We teach children that all truths are God's truths, and that
secular subjects are just as divine as religious ones. Children don't
go back and forth between two worlds when they focus on God and then
their school subjects; there is unity among both because both are of
God and, whatever children study or do, God is always with them.
These books are called the 'Home
Education Series' based on the title of the first volume, not because
they deal wholly or in principle with 'home' as opposed to 'school'
education.
Preface
to the Third Edition
The way we behave results from our principles, even if the only
principles we have are ones like--'It doesn't matter,' or, 'What's the
use?'
Every job implies a need to observe certain foundational principles in
order to accomplish the job.
These two considerations make me think that it's useful for those of us
who take our important work seriously to take a careful look at the
principles that are the foundation of the parent's job.
We believe that the individuality of parents is a great benefit for
their children. We know that when an idea takes possession of a mind,
how to apply the idea takes care of itself. Therefore, I'm not going to
burden these pages with lots of instructions, practical tips and other
crutches that might interfere with the free, natural relationship
between parent and child. How great our nation is depends on how far
parents take generous and enlightened views of their important job and
the way to do it, when those views and methods are given to them.
The following essays have been published as articles in the Parents' Review, and they were
delivered at various times to a group of parents who are doing a
practical study of the principles of education. This group of parents
is called the 'Parents' National Educational Union.' The Parents'
Union's purpose is to advance a specific kind of educational thought
methodically and steadfastly. This educational thought has two main
principles. First is the recognition that habit has a physical reality,
and this makes up the physical, material side of education. Second is
the recognition that ideas have the power to inspire and transform.
This makes up the spiritual, non-material side of education. These two
guiding principles cover the whole field of human nature and,
therefore, they should help us to deal rationally with all the complex
problems of education. The purpose of the following essays isn't to
give an exhaustive application of these two principles. Even the
British Museum itself isn't big enough to contain all the books that
would be needed to do that! Instead, my purpose is to give an example
or suggestion here and there about how a particular habit might be
developed, or how a specific transforming idea might be planted and
cultivated. The intent of this volume means that I'll be reiterating
the same principles in connection with different applications. I hope
that the following hints and suggestions will be helpful to busy
parents even if they rest on profound educational principles. I also
hope that they'll be suggestive and inspiring to teachers in some way.
Ambleside,
May 1904.
Paraphrased by L. N. Laurio
Please direct any comments or questions to me by emailing me at cmseries-owner at yahoogroups dot com.
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