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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 240
Chapter
22 - Suggestions Regarding Curriculum
(For
Children under Twelve)
Part
III.--The Love of Knowledge
Using
Books Makes for a Short School Day
Since a half dozen entire groups of subjects with their own sets of
subjects are included under the heading of 'Education by Books,' any
practical teacher might be tempted to laugh because it seems to be some
kind of educational Utopia. But, in practice, it turns out that using
books does make the school day shorter. In our Parents' Review School, all
book-work, writing, preparation or reporting is done between the hours
of 9:00 to 11:30 for the lowest class, and 9:00 to 1:00 for the
highest, with a half hour break for exercise/drill, etc.
Then one or two hours, depending on the age and class, are spent in the
afternoons with handicrafts, nature observation (field work), drawing,
etc. The evenings are absolutely free so that the students have time
for hobbies, reading with their families, and other leisure
activities. Since children taught this way get into the habit of
focusing close attention, and are carried along in their schoolwork
because it's so interesting, we're able to get through a greater number
of subjects, and do a more thorough job covering each subject,
and in a shorter amount of time than is usually allowed.
'Utilitarian'
Education
I'm inclined to say the same thing about utilitarian education that Mr.
Lecky [probably William Edward
Hartpole Lecky] says about utilitarian morals,
pg 241
that 'the Utilitarian theory is extremely immoral.' Deliberately
educating children for a specific purpose, such as qualifying them for
commercial work or manufacturing, is making general ignorance a
priority in order to favor special skills. 'The greater includes the
less, but the less doesn't include the greater.' A person who's been
educated to have good character and general intelligence can do any
kind of work excellently, and we teachers can't do anything more noble
for the nation than preparing these kinds of people to serve the
country. Anyone who has intelligent relationships with life will
produce good work.
Relationships
and Interest
Throughout this book, I've talked about relationships, and not interests. Interests can be casual,
unworthy and fleeting. Everyone, even the most ignorant person, has
interests of one kind or another. But creating a valid relationship
implies that some knowledge has begun in that area. The problem
with the way we think about education is that we don't realize that
knowledge is vital. Therefore both adults and children suffer from
malnourished minds. Our intellectual void is undoubtedly partly due to
the fact that educational theorists use organized methods that
undervalue real knowledge. I think that these kinds of theorists tend
to place more importance on the physical workings on the brain than to
what comes from the brain. In other words, they think that it's more
important for a child to think
than it is for him to know.
But I say that a child can't know
without having thought, and
that he can't think if he doesn't have a regular, abundant supply of
various materials of knowledge. All of us know how reading a passage
can stimulate us to think, wonder, and make inferences, which all
result in getting us some additional knowledge.
pg 242
The undervaluing of knowledge isn't a deliberate conspiracy, it isn't
even realized. But the more education is perceived as a series of
psychological problems, the greater the tendency will be to treat,
modify, and practically eliminate
knowledge. Yet that knowledge is the very air, food, exercise, and
whole life of man's mind. When we provide 'education' without including
abundant knowledge, we're like people striving for physical development
by giving lots of exercise, but almost no food. The purpose of a
child's education is supposed to be getting knowledge and delighting in
knowledge. One of our prophets [Thomas
Carlyle] was right when he said, 'If even one man dies ignorant
when he could have had knowledge, that's tragic.'
To summarize, I believe that our efforts to provide an intellectual
education fail for six reasons:
Reasons
for Failure
(a) The oral lesson, which, at worst, is poor twaddle, and at best is
still far inferior to an organized learning of the same material by
reading the right book written by an original thinker. (The right books
exist in countless numbers, both old and new ones, but it takes great
care to make the right selections, as well as a lot of experience
understanding the rather whimsical tastes and dislikes of children.)
(b) Lectures, which are usually gathered from different books that the
teacher took quick notes from, and then delivers in hasty notes that
the students take notes on, and then cram for an exam. Lectures are
often careful, thorough and well-illustrated--but they still aren't as
educational as direct contact with the mind of an original thinker who
wrote a book on the subject. We know that Arnold, Thring, and Bowen
lectured very effectively, but each of them
pg 243
only lectured on a few subjects, and each of their lectures was like a
spring bubbling out of their well of knowledge that they had slowly
gathered over time. Alas, not all of us are Arnolds or even Bowens.
(c) Text books that are condensed and compressed from one or even many
bigger books. These text books fall into two categories--the dry and
boring kind that only give dull data and factual details, or the easy
and
attractive kind that seek to entertain. I think we can safely say that
neither kind of text-book has any
educational value.
(d) Lazy minds that are the result of stimulating the wrong desires to
motivate students to do work that they would naturally do if they were
allowed to enjoy knowledge for its own sake.
(e) In elementary school, depending on graphics and illustrative
objects that paralyze the mind.
(f) Also in elementary schools, using 'Readers' that, no matter how
carefully they're selected, can never be as valuable as reading actual
literature.
Education
by Books
For the last twelve years, we've tried our plan of educating children
with Books and Things, and, on the whole, the
results are very encouraging. Even average
children are happy to do their lessons. That doesn't mean they'll
remember everything they learn, but, in the words of Jane Austen,
they'll have had their 'imaginations warmed' in lots of different areas
of knowledge.
Blind
Alleys
I'd like to take a moment to warn against following blind alleys in our
educational thoughts or educational methods. When it comes to
education, we don't find hidden treasure by casually digging in the
freeways. If evolution is true, then ideas must also have their own
species and descendants, and they must follow their own laws of
reproducing. An educated and thoughtful Chinese man will sometimes
remove himself from the outer world
pg 244
and separate himself from the ideas of other people. Then, when he
feels that he's arrived at a proper state of emptiness, he'll get out
his paint brushes and create from his inner consciousness. The result
will be something that he's never seen or heard or even imagined--some
hieroglyphic set of curves that will be attractive and impressive if
he's an artist. Then he labels his disconnected creation with some
arbitrary Chinese symbol, his peers accept this without question, and
this art is duly hung in his Hall of Tablets. (See 'Through a Hidden
Shensi,' by F. Nichols) Some of us probably know the symbol for
'happiness' in the flowing Chinese characters.
This is all very interesting, and our Western mind is ready enough to
fall for this charming fancy. But I think that it gives us a key to
the baffling problem of China. Here we have a vast population with some
high moral qualities, sharp and sometimes profound intelligence, yet
their civilization seems to have been stagnant for thousands of years.
Might the reason be their tendency to chase after intellectual
rabbit trails and futile blind alleys in all different directions? They
don't realize that a method implies that you're working towards a
specific goal, and traveling a path to get there, making progress step
by step. And they don't realize that a notion only becomes a fruitful
idea when it's influenced by something from outside. Their air of
Divine superiority means that no one will question their casual finds,
but they won't progress. They'll remain the same in everything, just as
they've always been.
And this is the danger that we can fall into regarding education. We
seize on the notion that children should be able to use both hands, or
to draw figures on compasses without any intention, or we apply the
theory of 'child study' to the mind, or latch onto the image of
coagulating clumps that
pg 245
we call 'apperception masses,' or any of a hundred useless intellectual
rabbit trails in a hundred different directions that we hope will give
us the key to education. We can see how futile these notions are if we
apply the test of progress to them. Are they the way to anything? If
so, to what? Out of respect for the children, let's be conservative.
Let's not stake their interests on the hope that this new way or that
novel idea might lead to great results if people are bold enough to try
it. Yes, it's exciting to be a pioneer, but, for the children's sake,
it might be safer to restrain ourselves and only take the paths that we
know people have successfully taken before, or only those newer
paths that offer evident, assured means of making progress towards a goal we desire.
Educationalists shouldn't have their own agendas, and they shouldn't be
allowed
to adopt fads.
An
Educated Child
Knowledge is undoubtedly a relative term, and what a young child knows
about a subject would be considered ignorance if that's all an older
student knew. All the same, there is such a thing that we can define
objectively as
an educated child. Such a child has a solid, wide knowledge of lots of
different subjects, and they all interest him. This is a child who
enjoys his school lessons.
Children
Enjoy School, but Not Because They Love Knowledge
In all fairness, it's true that most children like school. They love
the stimulation of school life and the social experience of friends.
They're competitive and eager for reward and praise. They enjoy the
hundreds of legitimate interests of school life, including the
appealing personality of a particular teacher. But it's doubtful
whether the love of knowledge for its own sake is much of a motivator
with the young students. This is important
pg 246
because, of all the wonderful motives of school life, the love of
knowledge is the only one that lasts. It's the only motive that
determines the level on which the student will live the rest of his
life. To repeat what I've already said, my point is that all children
naturally have an inborn capacity and love for knowledge. Knowledge
about people and governments is best gotten from books, and children
should get that knowledge for themselves out of their books.
There are hundreds of biographies that give us glimpses of
children who grew up on books. And there are still probably lots of
schools whose main work is studying books. It's probably this fact that
keeps our great boarding schools going--to the extent that they still
continue to exist, they exist on books. The best boarding school
graduates are fine, decent young adults, and even the worst of them
have probably benefited by having their minds touched by living ideas.
Yet we all recognize that boarding schools often fail because they
graduate average or slow students and place them in the world still
ignorant, because the curriculum was too narrow to be of any interest
to them. Remember that if a student leaves school at age 17 or 18 and
hasn't become a diligent reader by then, it's pretty certain that he'll
never become a reader. But
it's possible that the most essential step in reforming schools is
proper preparation upon a
broad curriculum, handled intelligently, while the student is between
the ages of six and twelve.
An
Educational Revolution
I've added appendices to demonstrate (a) how a wide, varied curriculum
and the use of lots of books work in the Parents' Review School; (b) the
kind of progress that a student should have made by age twelve
pg 247
using this method; and (c) how we use oral lessons. I hope my readers
will be convinced that the students have knowledge in
several fields of study, that they manifest a distinct appetite for
such knowledge, and that thought and mental ability develop as we read
books in a way that doesn't happen with lectures. If my readers are
indeed convinced of the truth of what I've proposed, I think they'll
see more than a minor reform here and there. I think that this is
nothing less than an EDUCATIONAL
REVOLUTION--and each of us can have a
hand it.
The
Children's Magna Carta
I think I've justified my suggestions with experience. My plea is for
lots of doors to be opened to children until they're at least twelve or
fourteen--and all doors to good houses, in the sense that [Hippolyte?] Taine wrote that
'Education is merely a written invitation to privileged and noble
homes.' And children should never be introduced to any subjects via
concise summaries, outlines or selections. they should learn what
history is, and what literature is, and what life is, from living books
written by those who know. I
know it's possible because it's being done right now on an impressive
scale.
If we're convicted, then the Magna Carta of children's intellectual
freedom is at hand. We need it now,
and the way to do it is clear. At the very least, we should guarantee
that children up to the age of twelve should be educated using a
curriculum similar to what I've been talking about, instilling a habit of Books that I've discussed. (It's
very encouraging that the Board of Education's new regulations for
primary and secondary schools go along with the suggestions in this
book.)
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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