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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
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 101
Chapter
10 - Some Aspects of Physical Training That We Don't Usually Consider
England seems obsessed with physical fitness these days. I doubt this
much attention has been focused on physical training since the original
Greek Olympics. But this obsession seems to suffer from a lack of
unity, and from devotion to any real purpose. That lack makes a large
amount of our educational efforts worthless.
Does
Our Physical Training Create Heroes?
We want to create a fine specimen of a human, with a fit physique and
good health, and that's exactly what we get. The progress in women's
development, especially in the last twenty years, is amazing. I heard
someone comment recently that the stiff little brocaded dresses that we
still see in a few places from the days of our great-grandmothers seem
to be made for tiny women, while the girls we're rearing today who will
be tomorrow's grandmothers show promise of being much larger women. So
far, so good. Yet I doubt that we're creating heroes--and, for the
Olympians of Greece, training heroes was the object of their physical
training. Men needed to be heroes. How else could they fulfill the
heavy tasks that the gods required of them? Heroes aren't made in a
day, so boys
pg 102
were trained to do heroic exercises from their infancy, and girls were
brought up to be mothers of heroes. Glimpses of heroic character can
still be spotted to this day in the little country of Greece, with its
great historic legacy. A few years ago, the mother of a fallen soldier
was told, 'Your son behaved like a hero.' And she replied, 'That's what
I raised him for.' Englishmen can die like heroes, too--but can they
live like heroes? Too often, the purpose for English men and women
developing a healthy, strong body is the poor and narrow goal of
getting the most out of life, especially physical enjoyment. So our
youth go to extremes, training their body to endure hardships, and then
pampering them with comfort and self-indulgence. Both are done for
their own pleasure. Pampering is even more enjoyable when it follows
training, and training is a pleasant change of pace from the softness
of pampering.
Is A
Fit Body All We Want From Physical Training?
Some British youths prefer enduring hardness all the time, so they go
off in the spirit of a reckless Viking warrior looking for adventures.
But even that's not the best we could do. The object of athletics and
gymnastics should be kept constantly before us. There's nothing wrong
with pleasure and enjoyment, but it shouldn't be the end goal. The end
goal should be a prepared body that's trained and ready from head to
toe for whatever request 'the gods' may ask of us. It's odd that we,
who have the benefit of God's revealed Word, have less of a concept of
vocation and preparation than the heathens of the ancient world who had
only 'a few faint, weak' rays to enlighten them about the meaning and
purpose of life. 'You're your own,' seems to be the unspoken thought
pg 103
of most of our youth these days. They seem to think they belong to
themselves and are free to do whatever they want with their bodies.
Therefore, excess in sports, too much casual fun, obsessive amounts of
studying, an abundance of pointless reading, careless disregard for
health, any excess they feel like is okay if they think it's worth
their while. This isn't outright sin, but it's a loose kind of morality
regarding their physical responsibility, and it's probably the reason
why the world doesn't benefit as much as it could from such a robust,
strong generation of young people.
You
Are Not Your Own
Children should be brought up from their earliest years with the
concept that, 'You are not
your own.' The divine Author of your being has given you life, and He
has given you a body perfectly adapted to serve Him. He's given you the
job of keeping your body healthy, nourished to be strong, and trained
to be fit so that it will be ready for whatever special work He gives
you in this world. If children grew up with that idea stamped into
their psyche, then they would be more content to embrace a Spartan-type
of regimen. They would want to be available for service. Physical
neglect and excess, no matter how harmless it seems, would be
unacceptable to someone who felt that it would be like trifling with a
sacred trust.
It's worthwhile to keep the concept of living under authority, whether
exercising or serving, in the forefront of children's minds. A
heroic impulse is strong in children, and they're usually glad to
embrace a disciplined life of their own accord. This doesn't mean
that we'd decrease the pleasures of youth by even a fraction. Actually,
it would increase, because a disciplined person is more able to
experience fresh enjoyment than someone who's undisciplined. Also, it's
not right for parents to impose unnecessary hardships on their
children. Parents made that mistake in the 1700's and even the early
pg 104
1800's. Hunger, cold, and denial (but not self-denial) were thought to be
good for children. All we're saying is that every child should be
brought up with a sense that they're under authority when it comes to
governing, managing and training their bodies. They should recognize
that health is their responsibility, and that toying with their health,
either deliberately or by being careless, is related to suicide. Their
life is held in trust by a Supreme Authority.
It might be helpful to parents and teachers, and beneficial to
children, to read about these kinds of subjects:
Greek games and Greek heroes
How a child can be trained so that he's fit for meeting his
responsibilities
What the body is supposed to be used for
Extremes that seem innocent but are excessive
What's acceptable and what's wrong when it comes to home discipline
The heroic impulse
How games can be used for physical training
The uses and abuses of sports
Parental authority as it relates to physical matters
The right uses of self-denial
Governing, managing and training the body
The responsibility of staying healthy
Use
of Habit in Physical Training
It's good for a child to learn to control his body and keep it under
subjection to his parents, and, as he matures, to his own will, and,
even more than that, to the God who made him. We always need to keep
ourselves under subjection to God because that's the very least that's
required of
us. But if we had to constantly make ourselves be subject to those in
authority over us all the time, it
pg 105
would take a constant amount of conscious deliberate work, and life
would be a struggle of constant effort. That's why staying under
authority needs to become a matter of automatic habit. We all know a
little about how a habit starts, and most of us recognize that habits
have a physical aspect. If you say or do something often enough, it
will leave a physical mark on the brain tissue, like a rut, that makes
it easier to do it again, and eventually becomes automatic. When it
comes to
our physical body, it's easy to see that after you do something a
hundred times, it starts to get easy, and after a thousand times, it
becomes mechanical so that it's as easy to do it as it is to not do it.
This principle is used all the time in baseball, boating, golf,
cycling, and the other labors that we enjoy. But athletics develop
habits of life that are half physical, half moral. If those habits
aren't practiced steadily and regularly at home, then they become
associated with the sport and are put on and taken off with the team
uniform. It's the duty of parents to give their children these habits.
They do make up part of the training of well-raised children, and it's
still good to keep them in focus and not to lose sight of this aspect
of raising children.
Self-restraint
Most educated mothers carefully train their children to have a habit of
restraining themselves in the area of indulgences. They feed their
children healthy, appetizing foods, and their children don't crave a
little of this or a taste of that. It doesn't seem to matter to these
children whether they're limited to one or two pieces of candy a day,
or none. Children in lower economic areas, even when they get plenty to
eat and are sufficiently clothed, still seem to have an animal instinct
to bask in the heat of the fire. But the real danger is that, after
learning good habits at home and in the early years of school, children
might lapse into bad habits as they get older. It's so easy
pg 106
to get in the habit of lounging on the sofa with a novel in between
scheduled amusements. In past days, this kind of idleness was a matter
of principle. Lazy, loitering intervals simply weren't allowed. When
people weren't using their time for physical work, they were doing
something useful. We might not value the cross-stitch that our
grandmothers left behind, but it was better for them morally and
physically than the leisure of lounging around with some light book.
Maybe we tire ourselves too much with strenuous sports. It's worth
considering whether it's healthy to exercise so frequently and so
intensely that we have no mental or moral energy left when we're done
playing.
Self-control
Children who aspire to live a disciplined life should be trained from
the beginning to have the habit of self-control in a crisis. This stems
from having a general habit of self-control. We've all seen how ice
accidents, boat accidents, fires (like the tragic disaster in Paris
recently - possibly referring to the
Paris Metro train fire of 1903?) could have been minimized if
just one person there had kept his head and been able to organize and
lead everyone else. Having presence of mind in an emergency comes from
keeping control of oneself, being unaffected by small annoyances,
staying cheerful about minor inconveniences, and being ready to act in
minor crises. If children went into the world fully equipped with
presence of mind, then we wouldn't have so many embarrassing examples
of ill-tempered British men and fussy British women at foreign customs.
pg 107
There wouldn't be so many people jostling for the best spots at public
events. Women wouldn't be so fretted and stressed by mistakes that
their maids make. All kinds of little hassles of social life would be
soothed if children were trained to tolerate little physical
discomforts and emotional offenses gracefully. It's good to teach
children not to show when they're annoyed, because every kind of
exasperation, impatience, resentfulness, or nervous irritability
usually increases if it's vented, but decreases with self-control. It's
good to remember that our physical actions affect our mental state as
much as our mental attitudes affect us physically.
Self-discipline
Disciplining a person's habits is never complete until he has
self-disciplined habits. :-) It's not a trivial thing that doesn't
matter when a preschooler makes a mess at the table, spills his milk,
breaks his toys, and dawdles about his little tasks. A well-trained
child enjoys achieving good habits in these things. He knows that being
clean, neat, brisk and orderly are helping to make him a man, and, in
his mind, a man is like a hero. Some parents don't secure good habits
in their child before he starts school. They assume that school will
take care of it. But habits that are only practiced at school and never
at home because 'it's summer vacation,' don't really become life-long
habits.
Local
Habits
Habits can have a tendency to become local--in one house, a child will
be neat, alert, and diligent, but he'll be messy, dawdling and lazy in
another. This just shows how important it is for even young children to
have self-discipline.
'Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
Only these three lead life to sovereign power.'
pg 108
We all understand the concept of training the proper habits so well
that I don't need to convince anyone that these habits aren't really
habits if the child only does them while someone is making sure he does
them. Children need constant supervision at first while they're
learning, but gradually they're left to do what they should be doing on
their
own. Habits of behavior, posture, addressing others, tones of voice,
etc., are all the habits of a gentlemanly bearing and courteous manner.
They're part of the self-discipline of the physical body.
'When you first arrived, there was such courtesy
In your every movement and even in your voice, that I knew
You had to be one of the men who dines with King Arthur.'
Alertness
Many good men and women regret the opportunities in their lives that
have slipped through their fingers because of their passiveness. They
missed the chance to do some little service or act of courtesy because
they didn't notice it in time. It's a good idea to bring children up to
feel a certain sense of failure if they miss a chance to relay a
message, open a door, carry a package, or do some other small act of
kindness that presents itself. They should also learn to seize every
opportunity to learn something. It's natural for children to regard
every adult they meet as a fountainhead of knowledge about some
particular subject. They should be trained so that they never grow out
of this inquisitiveness. Success in life depends to a large extent on
how alert they are at seizing opportunities, and this skill belongs to
the
category of physical habits. Opportunity is often symbolized as a
figure flying by so fast that there's no way to catch it except
pg 109
by grabbing its forelock as it approaches.
Quick
Perception
Closely connected to alertness is the habit of quickly perceiving
everything there is to see, hear, feel, taste and smell in a world that
gives out unlimited information that can only be taken in through our
five senses. A Mr. Grant did some studies of character in Naples and
described the training of a young Camorrist (Camorrists are a dangerous
political group notorious for violence and blackmail; nevertheless,
their training methods are worth looking at). 'The major goal of his
training was to teach him the habit of being observant to every minute
detail, and with accuracy. Here's how they would do it: They'd be
walking down the street and suddenly the instructor would ask, 'What
was the woman wearing who was sitting by door of the fourth house on
the last street we passed?' or, 'What were those two men talking about
that we met at the corner of the third to the last street?' or, 'Where
was cab number 234 asked to drive to?' or maybe, 'How tall is that
house, and how wide is its upper window?' or, 'Where does that man
live?' ' This is also a habit that falls under the category of physical
skill, and is trained by learning to be observant in other areas. Young
children are naturally quick to notice everything, but that can't be
relied on. As they get older, especially as they get preoccupied with
school lessons, they lose the powers of perception they had when they
were
little. But if they're trained to see everything around them, and to
hear
all there is to hear, that habit will stay with them all their lives. I
don't have time to talk about any more of the physical habits that help
develop a child's mental and moral habits, but it might be useful to
pg 110
read about and reflect more on the teaching of these subjects:
Self-control in emergencies.
Self-restraint in indulgences.
Self-discipline in habits.
Alertness to seize opportunities.
Promptness and energy in physically exercises.
Quickly perceiving everything there is to see, hear, feel, taste and
smell.
Stimulating
Ideas
The ability for a habit to become morally binding depends on how much
inspiring power the idea
behind it has. When I was little, I had a book of sayings translated
from Greek and Roman classics. The fine, rolling sentences full of
substance made a big impression on me. It's easy to understand how
Greek and Roman boys who were brought up on these kinds of literary
ideas developed virtues that we seem to lack. In the same way,
the early Church brought to life three
evangelical virtues, four
cardinal virtues, and the seven deadly sins. If
we want our children to take up the mission of disciplining their
habits, we'll need to revive this kind of teaching. When it comes to
developing our children's habits, all we can do is get them started.
Fortitude
If you touch the right well-spring of inspiration, children will prove
to be
capable of an amazing amount of persistent effort. A ten year old I
know made up his mind to run three miles a day by himself during his
hot summer vacation because he was going to be in a race when school
started again in the fall. And it wasn't that he was so interested in
sports, but his older brother had made a name for himself by winning
races and he wanted to do the same thing. When we consider
pg 111
how we as adults seem so unable to do the things we put on our to-do
lists every day, it makes us appreciate the compelling power of
children when they have the right inspiration. Fortitude is a big word,
but it's what little boys need when they're sitting in the dentist's
chair. It's helpful for a child to think of Fortitude as a manly,
knightly power to tolerate pain and inconvenience without showing
discomfort. The story of the Spartan boy who hid a fox under his shirt
will cause a child to admire the boy's Fortitude, perhaps inspiring a
girl not to fuss about physical irritations. She'll have the same shame
in complaining as the disciples did when Jesus asked, 'Couldn't you
watch with Me for even one hour?' and she'll brace herself to bear up
so she can be of service. Brutus's wife Portia showed what she was made
of when she hurt her sensitive skin to prove that she was strong enough
to share her husband's concerns.
Service
Service is another knightly quality. A child should be so inspired by
heroic examples to serve, that he hates letting an opportunity to serve
pass by him.
Courage
Courage should also be developed as a habit rather than a rash impulse.
All children have courage in them naturally. They only need heroic
examples to fan the flame of their bravery, and they need to learn that
the task that needs doing is always more important than the person
doing the task.
Caution
Caution is also part of chivalric service, whether we're serving our
country or our family. Courage without caution is recklessness. But, as
it relates to the physical body, caution is mostly concerned with the
duty to stay healthy. I once heard about a boy at a school where a lot
of instruction had been given about matters of health and hygiene. He
got very anxious and stressed about the care of his health. That kind
of worry isn't
pg 112
what I mean by caution. The kind of caution I'm talking about should
think of every power within our physical means as a way of serving and
defending what's right. It's a shameful thing to do something
carelessly or recklessly that would make any part of the body unfit for
that kind of service.
Purity
The highest inspirational impulse we can have when it comes to physical
purity is the scripture that says, 'Your body is the temple of the Holy
Spirit.' But we present the concept so inadequately! There are so many
inspiring ideas that should support the physical training and teaching
that our children need. Teaching such virtues as purity, perseverance,
courage, stability, caution, and moderation using inspiring examples
should help teachers and parents to prepare their children better for
their life responsibilities. Parents are wise to make sure that their
children are fit and ready for service It's not just important that
they maintain their physical health and cleanliness, but they also need
to be able to manage and control their own bodies. Parents do this by
training the proper habits and inspiring them with examples of
chivalric service.
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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