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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
pg 182
Chapter
17 - Education as the Science of Relationships:
We are Educated by Our
Intimacies as Illustrated by Wordworth's Prelude and Ruskin's Praeterita
'But who's going to divide up his intellect in some geometric pattern,
Splitting up his mind like a province of neatly shaped farmlands?
Who can know in which moment his first habits were sown, like seeds?
Who can point to different areas of his mind and say,
That part of the river of my mind came from that particular fountain
over there'?
[adapted from Wordsworth's 'Prelude']
I don't need to emphasize what kind of educational tools we should use.
We know that 'Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.' By
that, we mean that parents and teachers should know how to make the
best use of a child's circumstances
(atmosphere) in order to advance a solid education; they should
cultivate his self-discipline by training him to have the kind of habits that will make his life run
smoothly (discipline), and they should nourish his mind with ideas, since that's the kind of
mental food that develops their personalities (life).
Only
Three Educational Tools
We believe that these are the only three tools that we can validly use
in raising children. Any shortcut we take by taking advantage of their
sensitivities,
pg 183
emotions, desires, or passions will bring grief to both us and our
children. The reason is simple: habits, ideas and circumstances are all
external and it's never wrong to help any person to improve in those
things, but it's wrong to directly interfere with someone else's
personality. It isn't right to play on his ego, his fears, his
affection, his ambition, or anything that's his by right and is a part
of what makes him the unique individual that he is.
Our
Limitations
Most conscientious people are sincerely concerned about the best way to
bring up children. But that can sometimes make us want to control more
than we're entitled to, and not recognize the boundaries that limit us
to only the outer manifestations of the child's personality. Adults and
children aren't much different. One gracious writer has helped us by
following Jesus's method of educating the twelve disciples.
He writes, 'Our Lord respected whatever the person had within himself
on his own, and He was very careful to encourage the natural
development of his individual personality . . . In His view, people
weren't merely clay in the hands of a potter to be molded into shape.
He saw them as organic, living beings, with their own individuality
growing from within, with a life of their own--a unique, personal life
that was enormously precious to Him and His Father. He encouraged this
development so that it would grow to its highest, most noble
potential.' (Pastor
Pastorum, by H. Latham, M.A., pg 6)
We
Manage Too Much of Children's Lives
I don't think we allow life and normal circumstances to just naturally
occur in children's lives. We control too much, as if we were shielding
little lambs from the wind. We shelter them from knowledge about pain,
sin,
need, suffering, disease, death
pg 184
and other hazards in ordinary life. I'm not saying we should expose
children's tender souls to distress with careless abandon, but we
should recognize that life has a calling for them, as much as it does
for us. Nature provides
them with a subtle protection, as subtle as the scent of a violet, that
screens them from traumatic shocks. Some parents won't even read their
children fairy tales because they're afraid that they'll expose the
children to the ugly facts of life too suddenly. It's worthwhile for us
to consider Wordsworth's experience. I don't think we make use of two
very useful treasures that we as parents and teachers could be using.
Those treasures are the autobiographies of two great
philosophers--William Wordsworth and John Ruskin.
Fairy
Tales Act as a Screen and Shelter
Wordsworth tells us that, shortly after he started school at Hawkshead,
the body of a suicide victim was found in Esthwaite Lake. It was
a ghastly incident, but we can take comfort when we see how children
are protected from shock. Wordsworth, the little boy, was there, and
saw it all:
'Yet, as young as I was, not even nine years old,
No depressing fear possessed me, because, in my mind,
I had seen such sights before among silvery streams
Of fairyland in the romantic forests.
The memory of my imaginings covered the real tragedy
With an ornament of perfect grace.
It gave the incident a dignity, a smoothness, like the works
Of Greek art, or the purest poetry.'
It's reassuring to hear a child who went through it say that such a
terrible scene was kept separate from him by an atmosphere of poetry,
and a veil woven from fairy tales by his own fanciful imagination.
That doesn't mean that we should take unnecessary risks. We should use
pg 185
a calm, matter-of-fact tone when we talk about fires, car wrecks or
other terrors. For some children, the thought of Joseph being in the
pit is scary, and even many of us adults can't handle a horrifying tale
in the news or literature. The only thing I'm suggesting is that we
treat children naturally and let them have their fair share in
experiencing life as it really is. We shouldn't allow too much caution,
or let our own panic dictate the way we deal with them.
Spontaneous
Living
As we know, the laws of habit are one of God's divine laws. Forming
good habits and inhibiting bad habits are some of a parent's most
important duties. But we need to remember that all habits, whether
they're helpful ones or hindering ones, only come into play
occasionally. Spontaneous living is going on all the time, and the only
thing we can do to help that is to drop in inspiring ideas when we have
the opportunity. All of this is old news, but I hope my readers will
indulge me in saying again that our educational tools don't change,
they stay the same. We can't leave out carefully and tactfully forming
good habits any more than we can leave out subtly suggesting productive
ideas and taking wise advantage of circumstances in our child's life.
What
Does Fullness of Life Depend On?
What exactly is education?
The answer lies in this phrase: Education
is the Science of Relationships.
As I said before, I don't mean it in the sense that Herbart did. He
meant that ideas are related to each other, so we need to take care and
be sure to pack the right ideas in the right order so that, once
they've gotten into the child's mind, each idea can attach itself to
its cousins and form a cliquish 'apperception mass.' What I mean is
that we personally have relationships with everything that exists right
now, everything
pg 186
that's ever existed in the past, and everything that will exist in the
future above us and all around us, and, for each of us, our fullness of
life, broadness of mind, expression and ability to be useful depends on
how much we grasp these relationships and how many of them we seize.
George Herbert expresses it well:
'Man is all symmetry,
Full of proportions, one limb connected to another,
And connected to the whole world
besides;
Each part of him can call on its farthest brother,
Because the head and the foot have a private bond,
And both have a connection with
moons and tides.' (Charlotte Mason added the italics.)
Every child is heir to a vast inheritance, inheriting all of the past
ages and
everything in the present. The question is, what procedures (speaking
educationally, not of legal papers) are necessary so that he can take
possession of what's already his? The point of view is changed. It's no
longer subjective, but objective regarding the child.
The
Child is a Person
Seen from this perspective, we no longer talk about how to develop his
faculties, or how to train his moral nature, or guide his religious
sentiments, or educate him towards his future career or social
standing. We don't need the joys of 'child-study.' Instead, we accept
the child as he is--a person with a lot of healthy affinities and
inborn attachments. Therefore, we perceive that our task is to give him
a chance to make the largest number of these attachments good [by
exposing him to as many things as possible.]
A
Baby's Self-Education
Infants are born into the world with hundreds of these inborn
pg 187
sensors, and they go right to work to establish them with surprising
energy:
'The baby,
Nursed in his mother's arms, sinks off to sleep
Rocked on his mother's breast. With his soul,
He drinks in the feelings of his Mother's eyes!
For him, there exists in one dear Person
A virtue that radiates and exalts
Things through the widest connections of sense.
He's no bewildered and depressed outcast.
All of his infant veins are interfused with
The appealing and obligatory bond
Of nature that connects him with the world.'
(adapted from The Prelude)
He attaches his being to Mother, Father, Sister, Brother, Grandma, the
man in the street that he calls 'dada,' the cat and dog, spider and
fly. Earth, air, fire and water are dangerously fascinating to
him. His eyes crave light and color, his ears crave sound, his limbs
crave movement. He's interested in everything, and from everything he
receives:
'That calm delight
Which, if I'm not mistaken, must surely belong
To those first inborn attractions that help connect
Our new existence to things that exist in the real world,
And, in our first days, make up
The bond that joins life with joy.'
(adapted from The Prelude)
And, when he's left to himself, he also gets real knowledge about each
thing, and that knowledge reinforces his relationship with that
particular thing.
Our
Role is to Remove Obstacles and to Pique Interest
Later on, we step in to educate him. It's only in the proportion to how
many living relationships we expose him to that he'll have wide,
meaningful interests that will give his life fullness. It's only in
proportion to how aware he's made
pg 188
of the laws that govern every relationship, that his life will be lived
in duty and service. As he learns that every relationship with both
people and things needs to be maintained with deliberate effort, he'll
recognize the laws of work, and the joy of labor. Our role is to remove
obstacles, pique interest and provide guidance to the child who's
trying to get in touch with the vast world of things and thoughts--the
vast world that's his rightful inheritance.
Our
Mistake
The tragic mistake that we make is that we assume that we're the tour
guide who's going to show him the world. Not only that, but we act like
there's no connection between the child and the universe unless we
decide to set one up for him. We imagine that we have all the control,
and if we decide that a low-income child only needs to be educated in
the 3R's, what right does he have to want anything more? If his idea of
life is Saturday nights spent
partying at the local bar, it's not our fault! If our own children
graduate from high school and college and don't have any meaningful
interests or connections to worthwhile things, we're convinced that
that's not our fault, either. We resent it when they're called 'dull
slouches' because we know that they're really decent people. And so
they are. They're splendid material that never quite completed in
development.
Business
and Desire
Hamlet said,
'Every man has business and desire.'
That was undoubtedly true in the boundless days of the great Queen
Elizabeth. But what about us? Yes, we have business, but do we have
desire? Are there lots of enthusiastic interests calling to us after
we're done with the work we have to do? Maybe not, otherwise we
wouldn't be enslaved by the uninspired 'joys' of Ping-Pong, Solitaire,
Bridge and other trivial games. The
pg 189
thing is, real interests aren't things that can be picked up on a whim
at the spur of the moment. They spring up from affinities that we find
and hold onto. As one old writer said, 'When it comes to worldly and
material things, whatever is used is spent and gone. But when it comes
to intellectual and spiritual things, whatever isn't used is lost.'
Once we recognize that it's up to us to provide more for our children
than financial security, the question is, how do we go about it?
Setting
Up Dynamic Relationships
A child should have what we call dynamic
relationships with the earth and water. He needs to run, jump,
dance, ride and swim. Here's an example of how not to do it from Praeterita:
'And so on to Lianberis and up Snowdon . . . if only my parents had
recognized my real strengths and weaknesses. If only they would have
given me a shaggy old Welsh pony and let me spend time with a good
Welsh guide and
his wife! If I'd tried to get any coddling, they would made a man of me
. . . If only! But they could never have done that, it would have been
as unlikely as throwing my cousin Charles into the Croydon Canal. My
father took some time off from his work once or twice a week and took
me to an enclosed square sky-lit riding school in Moorfields with
sawdust on the floor. It was more like a prison. Even the smell of it
as we turned into the gate to enter it was a terror and a horror and
abomination to me. There, they put me on big horses that jumped and
reared up, and circled, and sidled. I fell off every time the horse did
any of these things. I was a shame to my family, and felt disgraced and
miserable. Finally I sprained the forefinger on my right hand (it's
never been the same since) and riding school was abandoned. They bought
me a well-broken Shetland pony and the two of us were led around the
roads of Norwood with a rope by a riding teacher.
pg 190
'I would do pretty well as long as we were going straight, but then my
mind would wander and I'd fall off when we turned a corner. I might
have gotten the hang of it if they hadn't made a fuss about it and
continued to ask how much I'd stayed on and how many times I fell off,
but as soon as I'd get home, my mother would give me the third degree
about my day's disgraces, and I just got more stressed and nervous with
each fall. Finally, riding lessons were given up altogether. My parents
consoled themselves as best they could by concluding that my inability
to ride horseback must signify that I had great genius in some other
area.'
Ruskin's
Accusations About the Limitations of His Situation
Ruskin suffered for his condition. His parents were suburban middle
class people who tend who think too much about bringing up children,
but
not very wisely. They tend to choke out a good part of living with too
much over-protectiveness and coddling, and they're apt to be convinced
that their children don't need any other outlets than the ones
they themselves think to provide. Suburban life is a necessity in our
culture, but it's a misfortune, too. Well-to-do people in a suburb are
around their own kind too much. They're cut off from the lowly, from
the great, from honest work, from adventure, and from needs. I think
that all parents who live in the suburbs should read Praeterita. Even though John Ruskin
shows chivalrous loyalty to his parents, his book gives an accusation,
not of his parents, but of the limitations of his situation. One can
almost hear the child crying out on every page, like Laurence Sterne's
caged starling--'I can't get out, I can't get out!'
One might say that, whatever the faults of his education were, a great
man like John Ruskin was the result. But who can say how much better an
influence Ruskin might have been
pg 191
if he'd been allowed his right to a free life when he was little? And
it's also safe to admit that not every child born and living a
sheltered life in a mansion will be another Ruskin! We can't follow the
setting up of Ruskin's further connections with the dynamic
relationships that were suitable for him, because his parents didn't
allow it, so nothing happened. He says that his mother 'never allowed
me to go near the edge of a pond, or be in a field that a pony was in.'
But he comments 'with thankfulness the benefit I got from a ditch in
Croxted Lane that had tadpoles.' He says that Camberwell Green had a
pond, and 'one of the most treasured joys of my childhood was when my
nurse would let me stare at this contemplative pond with awe from the
other side of the way.'
Wordsworth's
Recognition of His Opportunities
Wordsworth's childhood was a lot more rough and tumble! When he was
nine, he was sent to the school in the little village of Hawkshead, and
he lived with Mrs. Tyson in the cottage [perhaps in a dorm setting??]. Most
things at home and school
pleased him. He didn't get lessons in horse riding, skating, hockey or
tennis, but the local boys probably made it clear that he'd have to do
what they did if he wanted to fit in. But by the time he went to
school, he was already a healthy, strong little boy because his mother
had allowed him to really live.
'How many times as a five year old
In a small creek cut off from the stream
I spent the whole day playing in the water,
Basking in the sun, playing, and basking some more.'
Here's what he says about his childhood:
'My soul had good time to take root, and I grew up
Nourished by both beauty and fear.'
pg 192
Before he turned ten, he moved to his 'beloved Vale.' He says about it,
'There, we were let loose
To enjoy an even greater variety of amusements.'
Those Hawkshead boys did all kinds of things! He writes about times,
'When I hung
Higher than the raven's nest, by clumps of grass
And half-inch fissures in the slippery rock
Hanging precariously and almost (it seemed)
Held up only by the gusty wind
That blew against the crag.'
Those boys went skating:
'Wearing steel blades,
We'd skim along the polished ice playing organized games
That imitated the chase,
And the sports of the woods--blowing horns,
The dogs barking, and the hunted rabbit.'
They played:
'Week after week, and month after month, we lived
A life of activity. Every day our games
Lasted in summer until it got dark.'
They went boating:
'When summer came,
On bright days when we had half the day free,
We would sail along the plain of Windermere
Racing with our oars . . .
This kind of race,
Never ended in disappointment,
There were no sore losers, no frustration, no jealousy.
We rested in the shade, everyone satisfied,
Both the winners and the losers.'
Young Wordsworth also had his share of horseback experiences when he
and his schoolmates would return to school
pg 193
with plenty of things to talk about after their long vacation. They
would hire some horses from a 'courteous innkeeper' and ride off,
'proud to curb, and eager to spur on the galloping horse.' And then
they'd come home:
'Through the walls we flew,
And down the valley, making a circle
In a carefree way. Through rough and smooth paths,
We scampered towards home.'
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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