| CM SERIES HOME | CONCISE SUMMARIES | PARAPHRASED IN MODERN ENGLISH |
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
pg 204
Chapter 19 - 'What Is Truth?' Moral Discrimination is Required by Parents
As a
Nation We Are Losing and Gaining in Truthfulness
They say that the English are no longer characterized as a
truth-speaking people. This is a disturbing accusation, but we can't
easily brush it off. Maybe we're in a period of civilization that tends
not to produce people who are courageous enough to be completely
truthful. A person who has no fear usually doesn't lie, either. A
nation brought up among heroic war deeds dares to be truthful. But we
live in peaceful times. We no longer have to defend the truth of our
words with physical strength. We have very little sense of
responsibility about what we say because nobody challenges us and makes
us accountable. Those who do tell the truth do so because they have a
pure truth of heart and upright life. When our nation was young, she
was trained in the habit of truth, although the methods may have been
rough and violent. But we seem to be losing that habit. As we're
growing up, the truth among us may be of a higher quality than the mere
general truthfulness of ancient days. It's true that truth is like the
white flower of a blameless life, rather than the mere result of a
habit of
pg 205
being fearless. Our task is to bring up our children to this higher
kind of truth. We can't treat this or that specific lie or deceitful
deed as a sore that just needs the right lotion or bandage. We need to
consider it as a symptom of a deeper issue pointing to an urgent fault
in the child's character. It's that fault of character, not the
symptom, that we need to work on.
Darwin said that opinion without knowledge is worthless. When dealing
with the common childhood tendency to be untruthful, we should have a
lot of a special kind of knowledge. Treating a child from scratch by
analyzing him from a moral perspective, recording our observations,
formulating an opinion based on that child, and doing the same with as
many children as we can is undoubtedly a worthwhile mission that will
benefit the public. But that's work for a trained expert, not a busy
parent or teacher.
The
Child is a Human Being, Perhaps at his Best
Unaided common sense and good intentions aren't enough for the delicate
art of child-study. We can't afford to discard the wisdom of the past
to start all over again by working to collect and systematize, and hope
to accomplish as much or more in our short time span than wisdom of
past centuries has brought us. After all, the child is a human being.
He may
be immature, but, still, he might represent a human being at his best.
Who among us adults has such gifts of seeing, knowing, understanding,
imagining, and such capabilities to love, give and believe as the
'little child in the midst'? The highest praise that we can give to the
wisest and best among us is that they're as fresh and quick in their
interests and passions as a little child.
When
it Comes to Lying, There are Two Theories
When it comes to lying, for example, unaided common sense
pg 206
will probably start from one of two theories: either the child is born
honest and pure and you need to keep him that way, or else the child is
born manipulative and lying and you need to cure him of it. These
days, popular opinion leans towards the first theory--that children are
born true. Since we only perceive what we believe, we might tend to
take children's truthfulness and honor a bit too much for granted. It's
a fact that, if you want children to be true, you need to treat them as
if they are true and as if
you believe that they're true. All the same, it isn't wise to be like
an ostrich. The previous generation believed that their children were
born false, and that belief probably turned more children towards
falsehood [because their mistrust
became a self-fulfilling prophecy.] I'd guess that some of the
lack of truthfulness in our day can be traced to the dogmatic teaching
that our ancestors were raised on.
A
Child is Born Without Virtue or Vice
The wisdom of the ages--meaning philosophy and, more recently, modern
science, especially physiology and psychology--shows that both of these
extremes are inaccurate, and any theory founded on either of these two
positions or somewhere in between is also mistaken. The truth is, a
child is born neither true nor false. When he comes into the world, he
has neither virtue nor vice. Yes, he has tendencies, but these aren't
any more or less virtuous or evil than the color of his eyes. Even a
child born to parents who lie isn't necessarily born a liar, because
acquired tendencies aren't transmitted at birth. But still, a child
born into a family that's been in the subservient class for generations
might be less naturally predisposed to truthfulness than a child born
into a
pg 207
family that's been a member of the ruling class for generations. [It seems that even Charlotte Mason
couldn't totally remove Victorian class stigma from her thinking!]
In the physical world, all substances need to be reduced to their
purest elements before they can be chemically worked with. It's the
same way in the moral world. If we want to treat a fault, we need to
trace it back to the underlying elemental property of human nature that
it probably originated from.
Lying
Isn't the Underlying Problem, It's a Secondary Symptom
Lying, even the worst forms of lying, isn't the fundamental, elemental
problem by any means. Ambition is elemental. Greed, vanity, gratitude,
love and hatred are elemental. But lying isn't. It's a secondary
symptom. That makes treatment all the more difficult. It's no longer as
simple as, 'the child lied and he must be punished.' It's a matter of
finding the weakness of character, or the gap in his education, that's
the root cause of his habit of lying, if it even is a habit. The issue
isn't how to punish the lying, but how to treat the character flaw
that's behind the lie. From this perspective, let's consider the way
that American educationalist Professor G. Stanley Hall classified lies
in a Jan. 1891 American Journal of
Psychology article. The following headings are his
classifications.
1.
Treatment
for False Guilt
Jessica thinks she might have
glanced at Megan's math paper and seen her answer. Comparing both
papers shows that she didn't, but, in an effort to avoid telling a lie,
Jessica has actually told a lie. This kind of hyper conscientiousness
makes a child overly anxious about other forms of sin in her life. I
once knew a sick girl, fourteen years old, who was distressed because
she wasn't able to kneel up in her bed when she prayed. Was this the
'unpardonable sin'? she asked in genuine
pg 208
terror. I agree with Professor Hall about the cause of this common form
of anxiety, that it's not a moral problem, but it stems from
physical causes. I should also mention that it's more common in girls
than boys, and in children taught at home than those taught in school.
Healthy interests, time spent outside, fun and stimulating handicrafts,
keeping busy enough with things so that thoughts don't become
all-consuming, and avoiding any stray comment or suggestion that might
cause self-consciousness or a habit of introspection, will probably go
a long way in getting a young child with this tendency through a
difficult stage of life.
2.
The Heroic Lie
The heroic lie is predominantly an issue with schoolboys. It's not
caused by any love for lying, It's caused by a lack of moral balance.
It means that the boy has been left to form his own code of ethics.
Little Tyler is asked, 'Who spilled the glue?' and he says, 'I did it,'
because Jason, who really did it, is his hero at the moment. In Tyler's
eyes, faithfulness to a friend is a higher virtue than mere rigid
truthfulness. And if Tyler has never been taught, how is he to know
that it's wrong to value one virtue at the expense of another? When we
consider how little clear, definite, authoritative teaching children
get about ethical issues, it's a wonder that most people formulate any
kind of code of ethics or code of honor for themselves at all.
3. Be
True to Friends, but it's Okay to Lie to Enemies
This kind of lie is different from a heroic lie because it doesn't
necessarily bring any risk to the person telling the lie. But, like
heroic lies, it displays moral ignorance, and we don't always recognize
it because we confuse innocence with virtue. It's very natural
pg 209
for a child to believe that truth is relative and not absolute, and
that whether a lie is a lie depends on who you're talking to. The child
is unconsciously mimicking Pilate, asking, 'What is truth?'
4.
Lies Motivated by Selfishness
For this kind of lie, superficial treatment is a waste of time. The lie
and its root cause are so connected that they can't be separated.
Professor Stanley Hall correctly points out that schools are a fertile
ground for this kind of lying. But it's the selfishness that has to be
dealt with, not the lying. If you cure the selfishness, the lies will
disappear on their own. But how do you cure it? This is a difficult
question. The only thing that can deliver a boy or girl from this kind
of vice that is served by lying is a strong impulse to heroic
unselfishness that's initiated and sustained by God's grace. Prayer,
patience, and watchfulness for opportunities to convey the inspiring
ideas are needed. Every child
has the potential to be a hero. The worst kind of betrayal is the kind
that gives up on curing a fault of character in a young child, no
matter how serious the fault might be. At the same time, parents who
haven't allowed selfishness to do direct battle with virtue (whether
it's in the form of truthfulness or any other name) are fortunate. It's
easy to direct the tendencies of a child, but it's almost impossible to
change the character of an adult once it's set.
pg 210
5.
Deceptions Caused by Imagination and Play Because of a Malnourished
Imagination: Lessons in Telling the Truth
I saw little Madison at the park one day. She didn't look my way and I
didn't recognize who she was playing with. I was preoccupied with the
friend I was
with, and I didn't think that Madison even noticed me. But, after she
went home, she told her mother that I had hugged her and asked specific
questions about how her family was doing! What could her motive have
been? There was no motive. Her actively imaginative little mind had
played over the little dialog that would likely have taken place if we
had exchanged greetings, and that seemed so real to her that it
obscured the reality. To Madison, what she had imagined seemed to be
real. She probably didn't even remember what actually happened. This
sort of lapse in spoken truth is very common in imaginative children.
It requires prompt attention and treatment, but not the kind of
treatment that a hasty and righteous parent might tend to adopt. In
this situation, there's no need for moral indignation. It's not the
child who is to blame, but the parents. Most likely, the child's
ravenous imagination isn't satisfied daily with enough mental
nourishment--fairy tales when the child is young, and adventures later.
We can believe that children arrive 'trailing clouds of glory' from a
place where all things are possible and any wonderful thing might
happen. Our pathetic grown-up limitations of time, space and laws of
matter are
inconceivable annoyances to them that trap their free souls like wild
birds locked in a cage. If we refuse to give the child outlets into the
world of fancy where anything is possible, then their imagination, like
Ariel, the delicate sprite, will still work, trying to express
imagination within the narrow confines of our mundane tasks. Thus
every bit of our mundane lives will be played over with a thousand
different variations that are bound to be more vivid and interesting
than the dull reality of what actually happened.
pg 211
And the created incident is more likely to remain in the child's mind
than what really happened when he's asked to tell what happened. What's
the cure? Allow the child to enter in, live abundantly and joyfully in
the kingdom of make-believe. Let him imagine that every canyon is
populated with fairies, and every island is peopled with Robinson
Crusoe. Let him imagine that every bird and animal has human interests,
which he'll share as soon as his fairy godmother arrives and is
introduced. Let's rejoice and be happy that all things seem possible to
children. We should recognize that, because of this condition they're
in, they're more fit to receive. believe and understand the things of
God's kingdom in a way that we, unfortunately, can't. The age of faith
is a prime time for sowing belief, and was undoubtedly designed in
God's scheme of things especially to provide parents with a time to
make their children familiar with spiritual things before exposure to
the world makes them more concerned about materialistic things.
Yet, at the same time, the more imaginative a child is, the more he
needs the boundaries of the make-believe kingdom defined, and the more
he needs to be held to exact truthfulness in everything concerning the
limited world where the grown-ups live. It's simply a matter of careful
education. He needs daily practice at giving exact statement, without
any unpleasantness or righteous indignation from his mother about
misstatements. A
child who conveys a long message with accuracy, who tells you what Mrs.
Brown said and no more, or who tells what happened at Hayden's party
without adding any embellishments should receive warm, loving
encouragement. Every day provides opportunity for at least a dozen
little lessons in accuracy. Gradually, the more precise beauty of truth
will dawn upon the child whose soul is already blessed with the gift of
fancy.
pg 212
6.
Pseudomania (pathological lying)
I don't have much to say in this area except to advise parents to keep
watch at the place where the waters let out. This tendency is a
pathological disorder and needs professional help, not punishment. But
I believe that it's a disorder that never needs to get a foothold in
the first place. A girl who's been able to gain some honor for who she
is and what she does won't be tempted to make things up. A boy who's
found lots of opportunities to give outlet to his physical and mental
energy won't have any left for creating delusions. This is a situation
that shows how important it is for parents to familiarize themselves
with the vague border of human nature that relates to both the physical
and spiritual. Parents who want to avoid the possibility of psuedomania
getting started in their child should know about the way that spiritual
thought interacts with the physical brain tissue, how the brain and
nerves are inter-dependent, how fresh air and healthy diet affect the
blood that nourishes the nerves, and how the nerves in turn have
dictatorial influence over physical health.
Signs
of Pseudomania
It's a good idea for those who deal with young people to be familiar
with one or two signs of this mental condition, such as the child
stealing a glance at you from under half-closed eyes to see your
reaction, or the child talking on and on with a slightly vacant
preoccupied look, indicating that he's making it up as he goes.
It's not necessary to go into detail about lies to cover up, lies of
terror, or other common kinds of lies such as boasting lies,
pg 213
inaccurate lies of carelessness, and, worst of all, malicious lies of
false witness.
Children
Must be Trained to Be Truthful
It's good to bring the subject of truthfulness to the attention of
parents because,
although children may be more prone to one tendency than another,
truthfulness doesn't come by nature any more than the multiplication
tables do. A child who seems totally truthful isn't that way by chance.
He's been carefully trained to be truthful, even if his training has
been indirect and unconscious. It's better to take the trouble to
cultivate the habit of truth than to deal with lying later on.
Moral teaching should be as simple, direct and definite as intellectual
lessons. It should be presented with religious authority and inspired
by religious impulses, but not limited to the Scriptural mandate or
Biblical penalties against lying.
Paraphrased by L. N. Laurio
Please direct any comments or questions to me by emailing me at cmseries-owner at yahoogroups dot com.
|
CM SERIES HOME | CONCISE SUMMARIES
| PARAPHRASED IN MODERN
ENGLISH |