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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 33
Chapter 2 - Children are Born Persons
(Principle 1.)
1. The Mind Of A Child
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
It shouldn't be any great surprise that a chapter written to show a
great truth should open with the meaningful words of the wise Benjamin
Whichcote. But truths get old and wonders cease to amaze us. We're no
longer entranced about the stars in the heavens, or new buds on the
trees in spring, or the clever way that birds build their nests. Even
babies are no longer miracles, except to their parents and siblings.
The completeness and perfection of their newborn brother is what
children marvel at most--his toes and fingers, his ears, and all his
other tiny little perfect parts. His parents have some understanding of
babies. They know that his most important task is growing, and they
feed him with just what he needs most. Wise parents give him freedom
and space to wiggle and stretch and play, and that strengthens his
little muscles. His parents know what he might become, and it gives
them hope that he may do something to benefit the world. But, for now,
he needs food, sleep, shelter and lots of love. We all know that much.
But is the baby anything more than a 'huge oyster'? That's the question
before us, and, in the past,
pg 34
educators have been inclined to say, 'No, the baby is just a huge
oyster.' Their notion is that, with a push here and a pull there,
compressing something somewhere else, they will turn out a person
according to the pattern they had in mind.
The other view is that the infant's body is the setting for a jewel so
valuable that, if you put the child on one side of a scale and the
whole world in the other side, the child would outweigh the world. One
poet, Thomas
Traherne, looked back on the hazy memory of his infancy and
remembered this:
'I was entertained like an angel with God's creations in all their
splendor and glory. Isn't it strange that a baby should be the heir of
the whole world and see mysteries that even scholars' books don't
reveal? The cornfields seemed like great, immortal plains that would
never be reaped and had never been sown--I thought they had been there
from everlasting to everlasting. The dust and pebbles in the street
seemed as precious to me as gold. The green of the trees enchanted me.
Their sweet, unusual beauty made my heart leap. Boys and girls playing
in the street looked like moving jewels. I didn't know that they'd ever
been born, or would ever die. It seemed like the streets were mine, and
the people were mine--their clothes and jewelry and coins were just as
much mine as their sparkling eyes, fair skins and shining faces. The
sky was mine and so were the sun, moon and stars. The whole world was
mine and I was the only spectator to enjoy it.'
Only a poet like Traherne could remember and reproduce such vivid
memories, although maybe all of us can remember when we felt like we
were spectators at the show of life. Perhaps we can remember happy
times before we knew how to speak to say what we thought. Punch [the
magazine] had an amusing feature where a baby commented on his
perception of his nurse and his surroundings, especially the pulling
and pushing that he was subjected to. But, in reality, babies aren't
critics. Their business is to take it all in, and they keep busy at
this
every day.
We suspect that poets say more than they really understand,
pg 35
express more than they really see, and that their version of life needs
to be taken with a grain of salt. But perhaps the truth is, that, no
matter how hard they think, they can't find the words to explain what
they know and remember. So Wordsworth, Coleridge, Vaughan and the rest
can do no more than hint at the glory that exists in childhood. We are
not
poets, and that sometimes makes us inclined to discount what poets say.
But even the most ordinary of us have witnessed the surprisingly alert
and tuned-in mind of a child. Consider that, in their first two years,
children have managed to learn more than they will in any other
two-period of their lives. Suppose an outer space alien were to land on
Earth. Imagine all the things he'd have to learn to be able to get by
here! Our concepts of hard/soft, wet/dry, hot/cold, steady/unstable,
far/near would be as foreign to him as they are to an infant who
reaches out his hand and thinks he can grasp the moon. We don't know
how aliens get around, but it seems reasonable that the ability to run,
jump, climb stairs, and even sit and stand would take as much resolve
and practice as the years someone puts in to learn to skate, dance,
ski, fence, or any other sport. And yet, a baby does this in just two
years! He learns the properties of all different kinds of matter,
colors, some ideas about size, the difference between solid and liquid.
By his third year, he has learned to communicate with surprising
clearness. Not only that, but he has learned a language, or maybe even
two, if he's had the opportunity. I know a three year old who has
mastered three languages, one of which is Arabic. He has mastered it so
well that he can say anything he needs to say in any of those three
languages. Don't we all wish we had this kind of fluency when we travel
to other countries!
pg 36
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu writes about children she knew of in
Constantinople who could prattle in five different languages, and knew
a good bit of each language. Even if we aren't convinced that children
are born with minds as complete and beautiful as their perfect little
bodies, we at least have to admit that they have as much mind as they
need,
to do all the things and learn everything they need to. In other words,
a child's mind is like the instrument that education plays upon; his
education doesn't produce a mind in him. His mind was already there and
active before he ever entered the classroom.
Who can measure the limits of a child's thoughts? His constant
questions about God and speculations about Jesus are more than idle
curiosity. They are symptoms of a God-hunger that we're all born with.
He may be able to comprehend as much about the infinite and the unseen
as we complacent adults. Is it possible that our ways confine him, and
that he needs fairy tales as a joyful escape to places where all things
are possible? We hear that children have no imaginations and that they
need to see and touch and taste to know. Infants devote themselves to
learning the different properties of things by touching, pulling,
tearing, throwing and tasting. But when children are older, they need
only a glance to size up new things, even things that have complicated
structures. Life is a continual progress for children. They don't go
over and over the same things, they love to move on to new things. Quoting Traherne again:
'One sad, lonely evening I was alone in a field. All was still and
silent, as if everything was dead. Suddenly a horror came upon me. The
dead heaviness of the place, the loneliness, the wildness terrified me.
Fear surrounded me. I was only a small, weak child and I'd forgotten
that there were any other people alive in the world. Yet, a kind of
hope and expectation comforted me from all sides.'
pg 37
Traherne never forgot the lessons he learned. He goes on:
'This taught me that the world [of
people] was where I belonged. The beauties of
the world were made to entertain me. The presence of cities, churches,
and kingdoms would sustain me, because being alone in the world is a
desolate and miserable experience.'
Reason is just as much a part of children's minds as imagination. As
soon as a child can speak, he lets us know that he has wondered the
'why' of things, and he asks us a thousand questions. His 'Why?' is
endless! And his logic isn't as senseless as we might think. Look how
early a toddler manages to charm his daycare giver or mother to get
his own way! He will feel out her moods and play on her feelings. It is
born in him to be like a tyrant. His daycare giver says, 'he has a will
of his own,' but she is wrong. His passionate displays of greed,
stubbornness and temper are not really signs of his will. It is only
when the little boy is able to stop all these and restrain himself with
a quivering lip that his will comes into play. For he also has a
conscience. Before he even takes his first step, he knows the
difference between right and wrong. Even an infant in-arms will blush
when reprimanded by his daycare giver. His strong will acts in direct
proportion to his learning the difficult art of obedience. After all,
no one can make a child obey
unless he wants to--unless he wills
himself to [you can force compliance, but not willing obedience.] And
we all know how
even the tiniest rebel can cause mayhem at home or in the classroom.
2.
The Mind of a School Child
It's time to leave the young child, at least until he's grown old
enough for school. I've tried to show (in Volume 1) what parents and
teachers should do for the young child teaching himself about
everything he sees and hears, and growing stronger
pg 38
with everything he does. This Volume is mostly concerned with the
formal schooling part of education, but I was anxious to be sure that
teachers understand that the child who comes into their classroom
arrives with a mind that has amazing potential. He has a physical
brain, too, of course, which is a part of his mind, like an instrument.
Like a piano that is not music but is merely the instrument for music,
a child's brain is the instrument for education. I don't think we need
to concern ourselves with the way the brain, as a physical organ, has
the same needs
as the rest of the physical body--it's fed in the same way the body
feeds, rests in the same way the body rests, needs fresh air and
healthy exercise to keep it strong. But the brain depends on the mind [the intangible, invisible spirit and soul
of a person] to do its functions.
The world has been obsessed with psychology lately. Psychology concerns
itself with 'the unconscious mind,' that place beyond the influence of
nerves and blood (which we'd do best to leave alone) that we tend to
ignore in our educational efforts. We neglect the mind and focus
instead on a set of physical symptoms. But the mind is spiritual. It
doesn't suffer fatigue like the physical body does. If the brain is
adequately nourished along with physical body, and gets fresh air and
rest, it also shouldn't get fatigued. With these two conditions, we
have a vast field of possibilities for education. But it's up to us to
come up with a theory and practice that recognize the role of the mind.
A saying that we normally associate with religion also applies here:
What is born of the flesh is flesh. But we forget this when we teach
children. We make lessons seem like play, and, although play is good
and necessary, it isn't the path to the mind. We strive to make a
child's environment perfectly appropriate, which is good, but it's not
the path to the mind. We teach children beautiful physical motions, and
that's
fine, since the physical body also needs training,
pg 39
but we are mistaken if we think that these things approach a child's
mind. It is no less true here that what is born of the spirit is
spirit. The way to the mind is quite direct. Mind must connect to mind
via ideas. 'What is mind?' asks the old riddle, and the answer is still
the same: 'No matter.' We teachers need to realize that physical,
material things have little effect on the mind. There are still schools
where all the work is physical and technical, where lessons are given
with blocks of wood or scientific equipment. One elementary school
teacher wrote, 'Yesterday the father of one of my pupils told me,
'You've certainly given me some work to do. E. wouldn't let me alone
until I promised to set up my microscope and get some pond water to
look for monad protozoa and other wonders.' That is what should be the
correct order: what was born of the spirit (the idea) came first and
was compelled to confirm and find examples of it. We wonder how these
things can be, and the answer isn't obvious.
Like faith, education is the evidence of things not seen. We have to
begin with the notion that the body's task is to grow. It grows upon
healthy food, which is itself made up of living cells. Each cell is, in
fact, a perfect life in itself. Analogies are never adequate or
accurate, but, in a similar way, the only proper nutrition for the mind
is ideas. And ideas, like the single cells of physical tissue, appear
to go through the same stages and functions as a life. We receive ideas
with appetite and some interest. Ideas seem to feed in an odd way--for
instance, we hear of some new treatment for AIDS, or a poet's latest
thought, or the new direction that some school of art is taking. We
take in the idea, we accept it, and, it seems, for days after that,
everywhere we turn, every magazine we pick up, every person we talk to,
brings food for the notion we've just received. The casual reader might
say, 'You can't prove that.' But
pg 40
watch how your own minds acts towards any idea in the wind. You'll see
that the kind of process I've just described will happen. And it's this
same process that needs to be considered when educating children. We
can't continue taking things as casually as we've been doing. Our job
is to
give children the great ideas of life--ideas in religion, history,
science, but it's the ideas
they need, although they may be clothed with facts. And we must give
the child space to deal with them in his own way.
For example, this might be how a child deals with geography:
'When I heard about any country across the sea, I would envision the
glory of that place. That vision would rise up in me until the whole
thing filled and expanded me. I saw its goods, its rivers, meadows,
people. I felt like I owned the vision of that place, as if it had been
prepared just for me. That's how much joy I had in my vision. When I
heard the Bible being read, my spirit felt like it was really there in
another time. I could see the light and splendor of those ages, and the
land of Canaan, the Israelites entering in, the ancient splendor of the
Amorites, their peace and wealth, their cities, houses, grapevines and
fig trees. I saw and felt all of this in such a real way that it seemed
as if these places could only be entered into by the spirit. I could
physically stay in the same place, yet visit and enjoy all these other
places in my mind. No matter how long ago something happened, even a
thousand years ago, it could always seem to be right there in front of
me.'
I'm quoting Traherne again because I don't know of any other writer who
still has such a clear memory of his infancy. But Goethe gives an
equally thorough and convincing account of his early experiences with
the Bible (see Volume 5). I use the word 'experience' with caution
because the word implies the process children use to get to know
something. They 'experience' everything they hear and read about. In
this way, ideas feed their minds quite literally!
What about our geography lessons? Do they take our children there in
their spirits? Do they feel like they're experiencing and living in the
story of God's calling to Abraham? Or the story of the blind man who
was healed on his
pg 41
way to Jericho? If they don't, it's not the teacher's lack of sincerity
or intention to blame. The fault is the teacher's lack of confidence in
children. He doesn't have an accurate assessment of a child's mind, so
he bores his students with a lot of talk about things that they're
quite able to understand for themselves--in fact, they understand it
better than he does. How many teachers know that children don't need
any pictures except the paintings of great artists, which serve a
different purpose than illustrating? Children can see in their minds a
picture more glorious, and usually more accurate than we, with our
jaded experience, can envision. They're able to read between the lines
and add in all the details that the author left out. A nine-year-old
who'd been reading Lang's Tales
of
Troy and Greece, drew a picture of Ulysses on the Isle of
Calypso cutting down trees to make a raft. A ten-year-old who was
enjoying A Midsummer Night's Dream,
drew the Indian Princess bringing her beautiful little boy to Titiana.
Meanwhile, we adults are content just to know that 'Ulysses built a
raft,' or, 'the boy's mother was an Indian princess.' This is how the
mind of any child works, and we need to make sure we aren't starving
these fertile grounds of intelligence. Children need intellectual food,
and they need a lot of it, and all different kinds. They know perfectly
well what to do with it themselves--we don't need to bother coming up
with separate exercises for each of their minds' 'faculties.' The mind
is one and it works as one unit. Reason, imagination, reflection,
judgment, etc., are all like worthy seamen summoned by the captain.
They all swarm on deck when it's time to unload the cargo. The cargo is
that rich, fragrant bounty of ideas, and the boat is the child's mind
waiting to receive. Don't we want every child to say, or, at least,
feel, 'I was wonderfully broadened' by a geography lesson? Then let him
'see' a place through the eyes of those who have seen or conceived it.
Barometer charts, temperature graphs, contour lines, relief
pg 42
maps, section cutaways, summarized sketches, etc., won't do it. When a
child looks at a globe, his mind should be so filled with the panorama
of images of places he's collected that he'd rather ponder them than go
out to play. And it's so easy to give him this life's joy. Let him
learn about the world in the same way we prefer to learn about it when
we travel. Let him learn about its cities and people, its mountains and
rivers, and his lesson will leave him with a piece of the place he has
just read about, whether it's a county or country, sea or shore, and
the place he pictures in his mind will seem like 'a new room prepared
just for him, he'll be so broadened and pleased with it.' Truly, all
the world is the child's
possession prepared just for him. If we keep what's rightfully his away
from him with our technical, financially-minded, or even historical
approach to geography, or with attempts to make geography illustrate
our own pet theories, then we cheat the child. What the child really
needs is the whole world, every bit of it, piece by piece, and each
piece a key to the next piece. When he reads about the Bore [surge wave] of the Severn River,
he feels that he would know a Bore anywhere. He doesn't need to see a
specific mountain to feel like he knows it. In his mind, he sees all
that is described to him with a vividness that we adults underestimate.
It's as if the only way to those places is in the spirit. Who can
accurately assess a child? The genie of Arabian Nights isn't as
marvelous as he is. Just like a genie, a child can be freed from his
bottle and let out into the world. But woe to us if we keep him
imprisoned in his bottle.
We've established that children have minds and we know that a person's
mind is needed to earn a living. But there's much more to it than that.
The
working class will have more leisure time in the future, and there is a
lot of discussion about how this leisure time will be spent. No person
can use his leisure time well if his mind isn't used to being active
daily. The routine duties of life don't supply any intellectual food,
and only a little bit of monotonous mental exercise. Science, history,
philosophy, and literature must
pg 43
no longer be luxuries of the educated classes. All classes need to be educated.
They need to partake of these things just as they do their daily meals.
They need to have the pageants of history, the wonders of science, the
intimate acquaintances of literature, the speculations of philosophy,
and the assurance that religion offers to every person. Education
should be preparing people to wander in these realms of gold.
How should we prepare a child to use the sense of beauty that every
child seems to be born with? His education should familiarize him with
entire galleries of mental pictures by great artists from the past and
present, such as Jozef
Israels' Pancake Woman, his Children by the Sea;
Millet's
Feeding
the Birds, First
Steps, Angelus;
Rembrandt's Night
Watch, The
Supper at Emmaus; Velasquez's Surrender of Breda.
In fact, every child should leave school with at least a couple hundred
paintings by great artists hanging permanently in his mental gallery,
as well as great buildings, sculpture and beautiful forms and colors
that he sees. It would also be good to supply him with a hundred lovely
landscapes, too, such as sunsets, clouds and starry night skies.
Anyway, he should have plenty of pictures because imagination grows
like
magic. The more you put in, the more it can hold.
It isn't just a child's intellect that arrives at school fully
furnished. His heart does, too. How many of us can love as a child can?
He showers love on Mommy, Daddy, sister, brother, neighbors, friends,
the family pet, an ugly stump of a broken toy. He's so generous and
grateful, so kind and simple, so empathetic and full of goodwill, so
loyal and humble, so fair and just. His conscience is always alert! He
demands to know if a story is true, or if a person is good. These are
important questions to him. His conscience reprimands him when he
misbehaves, and, little by little, as he learns,
pg 44
his Will begins to help him and he learns to have self-control over his
own life. We teach the child to say his prayers without realizing how
real his prayers are to him.
3.
Motives For Learning
Now put a teacher in front of a class full of little persons who each
have their own beauty and their own wide soul. The teacher will wonder,
'What do I have that I can offer them?' His boring run-of-the-mill
lessons are seen to be as useless as dust when he realizes what
children truly are. He won't be able to go on offering them his stale
lessons. It feels wrong to bore them, or to use unworthy goads like
greed or competition to motivate the very minds that his lessons have
dulled. He must not be like Timon,
who sent invitations to a feast where he served only warm water. The
teacher knows that children's minds get hungry regularly, just like
their bodies. But their minds don't hunger for dry facts and
information, they crave real knowledge. The teacher knows that his own
collection of knowledge isn't enough to satisfy them. His own lectures
don't have enough substance, and his interjections disrupt the child's
train of thought. In other words, the teacher isn't enough.
Yet, children lack an extensive vocabulary, and the background of
concepts gained from familiarity with culture, especially children from
the inner city. Children's minds have been compared to a large
pitcher--roomy enough to hold a lot, but with a narrow neck that only
lets in a trickle at a time. And so education has tended to dilute
teaching so that it's as sparse as lukewarm dishwater. And, as a
result, the pitchers go away still unfilled.
But now that's all changed. During the war [WWI], we saw large hearts and
patriotic spirits revealed in our soldiers. In the same way, our
schools have revealed that each child is a person of infinite
possibilities. When I say 'each child,' I include mentally challenged
children. They are not an
pg 45
exception. I am familiar with some experiences of the Parents' Union
School. I have just seen selected exam papers from tens of
thousands of children from elementary schools, secondary schools, and
homeschools [correspondence schools,
many using CM-trained governess/tutors.] The children have
relished knowledge! Their answers are so good and interesting! They
spell and write so well! We don't need their teachers to tell us how
much the term's work was enjoyed. Their enthusiastic narrations speak
for themselves. Every one of these children knows that life offers
hundreds of interesting arenas for the mind to roam in. The children
are good and happy because care has been taken to understand what
children truly are and what they need. This care has been very amply
rewarded by results that change the entire outlook of education. In our
Training College [Scale How, where
teachers and governess/tutors learned how to teach and train children],
student teachers aren't taught how to hold children's attention, how to
keep order [crowd control],
how to grade papers, how to discipline with punishment or even rewards,
how to manage a large classroom or a small one-room school with
children of all different grades. When teachers understand what
children are capable of and what they need, these things take care of
themselves. To hear inner-city children telling about King Lear or Scott's Woodstock, by the hour if you let
them, or describing Van Eyck's Adoration of the Lamb or
Botticelli's Spring in minute detail, is a
surprise. It's a revelation! We stand amazed--we had no idea it was in
them, whether we're parents, teachers or onlookers. And with this
feeling of awe, we'll be better prepared to think about how children
should be educated, and what resources should be used. Let me add that
all the claims I make have been substantiated with thousands of
instances just in our experience alone.
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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