| 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 68
Chapter
4 - Authority and Docility
Principle
3. The
concepts of authority and obedience are true for all people whether
they accept it or not. Submission to authority is necessary for any
society or group or family to run smoothly. (The third of Charlotte
Mason's 20 Principles)
Since WWI, new discoveries don't excite us as much as they used to, but
before the war, we were amazed at the wireless telegraph. To think that
a message could travel through space unseen and unheard, and arrive
almost instantaneously at another place seemed unbelievable. We were
wise enough to value the discovery for its own sake, not just for its
practical application. We were in awe at discovering a law that had
always
been there, but that we never knew about before. In a similar way, we
were awed when our common soldiers fighting in France displayed amazing
heroism--it had always been there, but now it was revealed to us. And
now, discoveries just as exciting are waiting for us in the field of
education. Any educational worker might be the one to make some
startling new discovery that will enrich the world. In the Bible, the
citizens of Genneserat made a startling discovery: they found out that
Jesus spoke with authority, not like the scribes.
It's not for us to speak with that kind of authority. That supreme
authority belongs to God. Yet, we do have some authority given to us. A
person can be 'an authority' on a particular subject if he has studied
the subject so much that he's made it 'his own,' and he has the right
to speak about it. The ability to accept delegated authority seems
pg 69
to be imbedded in everyone, ready when needed. Benjamin Kidd once said
that the London Police was the very embodiment of authority. Even
strangers were surprised at how implicitly they were obeyed. Every
king, every commander, every mother, older sister, school official,
work foreman and team captain finds something within himself that
ensures he will be faithfully obeyed--not on the basis of his own
assets, but on the basis of the authority that goes with his role.
Without this principle, society would fall apart. Practically speaking,
there's no such thing as true anarchy (absence of authority). Rather,
what we think of as anarchy is really just transferring authority, even
if the anarchist finally submits to no other authority but himself.
Some people say that authority leads to tyranny, and that compliance,
whether willing or forced, is kin to slavery. But that isn't so.
Without authority, there can be no freedom. Unless authority is abused,
it exists in happy harmony to those placed under it. We're made so
that, by nature, we like to be under some kind of order, even if it's
circumstances that order our lives. Servants take pride in the orders
they receive. Our badge of honor is called an 'order.' It's true that
'order is heaven's first law' [Alexander
Pope] and order is the result of authority.
The principle working within us that makes us submit to authority is
docility, or compliance, or teachableness. It is universal. Even if a
man is too proud to submit to any other authority, he will still submit
meekly to his fate, or his destiny. It appears that the very act of
submission is as natural and necessary as reason, or imagination. The
two principles of authority and docility are at work in each person's
life to do the same thing as the two forces that keep the earth in
orbit. One force draws the earth to the sun, the other pulls it into
space. Between these two forces, the earth maintains a middle course
and the world goes on.
pg 70
The principles of authority and docility are at work in every child.
One draws him to an ordered life, the other pulls him towards
rebellion. The key to raising children is to find the middle ground
that will keep him in his proper orbit. The solution we have these days
is freedom in our schools. Students should be governed, but so cleverly
that they don't realize they're being governed. They should feel like
the rule is, 'Do what you like,' but the moving force is really, 'Do as
you're told.' The result is an ordered freedom. That kind of ordered
freedom defines the lives of 999 out of 1000 citizens of the world. The
only drawback is that, when indirect methods of securing compliance are
used, children aren't really learning to be subject to authority. It
just looks like they are.
They're not learning the habit of proud subjection and dignified
obedience, which is what sets great men and noble citizens apart.
Undoubtedly, it's nice when children are natural and free to get up and
wander around, or sit still, or play if they feel like it. But it's
important for them to learn conscious, willing obedience. A great part
of their happiness
(and ours!) depends on obedience being pleasant and peaceful.
It's up to the teacher to secure willing obedience, not so much to
himself, but to the school's rules and whatever the situation at hand
calls for. If a student is supposed to read a certain passage, he obeys
the bidding of that duty before him. He reads his passage with full
attention and is happy to do so. We all know the sense of importance we
have when we say, 'I have to be at Mrs. Jones's by 11:00.' 'It's
necessary that I see Mr. Browne.' A person who doesn't obey the
necessities of such situations has his life out of orbit and is useless
to society. It's necessary for us to follow an ordered course.
Children, even babies, should begin in the way they should continue to
go. Fortunately, they come prewired with two inherent forces,
centripetal and centrifugal. Those two forces bring about
pg 71
their freedom (self-authority) on the one hand, and 'proud subjection'
on the other.
But parents and those who care for children have a delicate task. There
must be subjection, but children should feel proud to submit. It must
be a distinction, an accomplishment. The way to do this is to avoid
coming between children and the laws of life and behavior that
ultimately rule us all. The higher the authority, the greater the pride
in obeying it. Children are quick to spot the difference between a
teacher exercising his own arbitrary will and pleasure, and the
submitted authority who is himself under a greater authority. The final
tragedy for any country, family or school is when subservience replaces
docility. Docility implies equality. There's no huge chasm between the
teacher and student that makes one superior to the other. They are both
pursuing the same ends. They are busy with the same task, enriched by
mutual interests. It's possible that the pleasant quest for knowledge
gives the only real freedom there is for both the teacher and student.
'He who the truth makes free is truly a free man.' The steady pursuit
and delightful acquiring of knowledge give us freedom day by day. 'The
mind is a world unto itself,' they say, 'it can make itself a heaven or
a hell.' And what is a heaven of the mind, if not continually growing
and expanding in an ordered freedom? And what hell is more restless and
irritating than continually chafing against natural righteous order?
As far as the superficial freedom of sitting or standing or coming or
going as one pleases, that usually settles itself, like all relations
between teachers and students, once children are allowed to have some
part in their own education. Their education isn't a benefit we bestow
on them. It's a feast for them to take and enjoy. Our main concern,
whether for the mind or for the physical body, is to provide a
carefully planned table with plenty of delicious, healthy and varied
food.
pg 72
Children will take what they need and deal with it for themselves in
their own way. But their food must be served in its natural state, and
without being predigested so that it's sucked dry of all of its
stimulating, life-giving properties. No force feeding or spoon feeding
is allowed! Hungry minds will come to such a table with the greediness
of hungry little children. They absorb it, digest it, and grow and are
enlarged at an astonishing rate as compared to children in schools
where they regurgitate textbook lessons. When teachers avoid exhorting
with lectures, students change their physical position if they need to,
but they're usually so intent on their lessons that they sit still and
are less inclined to mentally wander. But the physical body does get
the
exercise it needs because the teacher makes sure to include physical
movement, whether it's games or calisthenics. But schools already know
about physical education, so I'll just add that, although mental
activity is good for the body's physical functions (an American
discovered that people can live 160-1000 years if they continue to use
their minds!!), the reverse isn't true--physical activity alone doesn't
have the same effect on the functions of the mind.
These days, it seems like educators are mostly concerned about making
it easy for the mind to work. But I must urge that, while physical
activities like hand crafts, gardening, dancing, etc., are useful to
train the nerves and muscles to be ready and responsive, physical exercise does nothing to keep the
mind alive. We also must not put the focus of children's
education on
drama--even when it's Shakespeare--or poetry--even when it's beautiful,
lyrical poetry. Yes, children need these things, but they come into the
world waiting to connect with lots of different things. They need to
establish relationships with places far and near, with the expanding
universe, with the long-gone days
pg 73
of history, with current social economics, with the earth we live on
and all of its delightful plants and trees, with the affectionate
families who love them, with their home country and foreign countries,
and, most of all, with the highest of all relationships--their
relationship with God. With all these things to learn about, only the
most ignorant teacher will let his students spend most of their time on
math, or crafts, or singing, or acting, or any one of a hundred
specialized subjects that try to pass for a complete education.
Children need to have a sense of must.
It's a mistake to give children the impression that they're the only
ones who have to obey a higher law, while grown ups can do whatever
they want. The teacher or parent whose children pester for permission
to do this or that, even though it's against the rules, has only
himself to blame. He has given the impression that he, as a person, has
the authority, rather than given the impression that he's a person under authority. Therefore,
children think that it's okay to
break the rules so long as their well-being isn't jeopardized. In order
to guarantee proper submission to authority, two things are required.
If these two requirements are met, there is seldom a conflict of wills
between adult and child. The conditions are (1) The adult can't be
rigidly arbitrary, but must give the impression of being so much under
authority himself, that the children sense it and understand that he,
too, has things he has to comply with. In other words, they need to see
that the rules weren't made for the adult's convenience. (I'm assuming
that everyone who is entrusted with the teaching of children recognizes
that we are all under God's authority. Without that recognition, I
don't see how it's possible to establish a healthy relationship between
teacher and child.) (2) Children should understand that they have the
freedom to
pg 74
put to use whatever they learn in any way they choose, without the
teacher's interference. Children will choose, and they will be glad to
do their work. Therefore, there's no need to use coercion or pep talks
to try to gain their cooperation.
But the principle of docility/authority is inborn in children. When
teachers use tact and judgment to help students put this
principle into use properly, children will be prepared for their future
duties
as citizens of society and contributing members of their families. The
trend to have students serving in positions of authority in their
schools [such as elected class
president] shows that schools recognize the
importance of teaching students about docility and authority. It allows
children to become familiar with the idea of representative authority
because they are governed by chosen members of their own group. It's a
form of self-government. To
make full use of the educational opportunity of this practice, the
student officer should be elected and voted on by the children, and
they should be encouraged to think carefully about their choice. But
this allows only a few to experience what it's like to be in a position
of authority. Even more should be done to teach children this concept.
Every classroom should have small offices that can be rotated for
students to vote on. Many times, a person will rise to the office he's
given, and, often, even incompetent students will do very well at the
duties they're given.
All school work should be done in such a way that students are aware of
their responsibility in their own education. It's their job to know
what's been taught. We all know from experience how we tend to skim
halfheartedly over daily news when we know it will be repeated in a
weekend edition. And if there's a monthly review, we only skim the
weekend edition! These crutches make us feeble-minded, unable to
remember and prone to wandering attention. In the same way, repeating
and reviewing lessons shifts the responsibility of learning from the
student to the teacher. It tells the child, 'I'll make sure you know
it.' So students don't put forth any real effort to pay attention. And
the
pg 75
same dry lessons are repeated again and again, and the children get
bored and restless, and that's when they get into mischief.
Teachers tend to belittle their high position and obstruct the process
of education because they cling to two or three fallacies. (1) They
regard children as inferior, and themselves as superior beings. Why
else would they be given the position of authority as a teacher? If
they only realized that children's minds are as potent, or even more
so, than their own, they wouldn't see their mission as spoon-feeding
their students, or predigesting it to make it tolerably understandable
for their students.
(2) Another way we belittle children is when we're convinced that they
can't understand a literary vocabulary. So we explain and paraphrase to
our heart's content--but it doesn't do them any good. Educated mothers
realize that their children can read and understand almost anything.
They don't offer explanations unless they are asked to. All this time,
we thought that the children of educated parents were bright merely
because they inherited intelligence.
(3) Another misconception we have concerns attention. We think that we
have to capture children's feeble attention with persuasion, dramatic
presentation, pictures and visual models. But the fact is, a teacher
whose success depends on his charismatic personality is merely an actor
who belongs up on a stage. We now know that attention is not one
'faculty' of the brain and it's not a definable power of the mind. It's
the ability to turn on that power and concentrate [it's not something the brain has, but something it does]. By attempting to
capture a child's attention with gimmicks, we waste our time. The
ability to focus the attention is already there in a child, as much as
he needs. It's like a forceful river just waiting to obey the child's
own authority to turn on. Yet it's capable of stubbornly resisting
attempts to be coerced that are imposed from without. What we need to
do is to
recognize attention as one of the appetites. Then we'll
pg 76
feed it with the best we have in books and knowledge. But paying
attention is something that children have to do on their own. We can't
do it for them. It's not
for us to be the fountain of all knowledge--we don't know enough, we
don't speak well enough, we're too vague and random to cope with the
capability of creatures who are thirsty for knowledge. Instead of
pretending to be the source of their education, we must realize that
books, the very best books, are the source, and we must put that
resource into their hands, and read them for ourselves, too.
(4) One final fallacy that hinders our work as teachers is undervaluing
knowledge. It's currently characteristic of the British to belittle
knowledge. One well-known educationalist recently nailed up a thesis
about what children need from education. The list included only two
items: Children need to know a skill to earn a living, and children
need to know how to behave as a proper citizen. The writer of the
thesis apparently doesn't realize that the quality of
a man's work is directly in proportion to how much of a complete person
he
is. The more broadened a person is, the better his work will be and the
more dependable he will be. Yet we remove the humane influence of
literature from common education, and it's that literature which
results in efficiency. One school with 9,000 adolescent students has
its students attend in batches of a few hundred at a time so that they
can rotate and learn various skills and crafts. But in three years in
this school, students don't spend even one hour learning any kind of
humane knowledge. The reading and thinking that's left out is the very
thing that should be making these students better people and better
citizens!
But, to get back to the topic of attention, it's more than a
convenient, almost miraculous way of covering the material and getting
the students to learn a surprising amount of knowledge, and to retain
it. All of this is very good, but employing attention is even more than
that. It's a foundational principle that's vital to education. In
focusing his attention, the child takes on responsibility for himself.
He uses the authority
pg 77
within himself in its highest function: as a self-commanding,
self-compelling force. It's delightful to find that we can use an
ability that we have within us, even if that ability is only being able
to toss and catch a ball in a cup a hundred times as Jane Austen did to
amuse her nieces and nephews. To make yourself pay attention, and make
yourself know--this is a remarkable power to have! And children feel
even more delight in being able to do this because they have the double
satisfaction of enjoying the knowledge they gain from lessons, which
satisfies their inborn curiosity.
Here's a note that just arrived as I was writing this. It's from the
mother of an
eleven year old girl who's just spent a couple of days visiting London:
'My mother took her to Westminster Abbey one afternoon. I was tucking
her in and she told me all the things she had noticed there that she'd
been learning from her lessons about architecture that term. She
loves architecture. She also said she was anxious to see the British
Museum. She wants to see the things there that she heard about in her
term's lessons [probably from Frances
Epp's book about The British Museum]. So, the next morning,
we went there. We spent lots of
time in the Parthenon Room, studying the things there in great detail.
She was such an interesting companion, and she taught me so much! We
also went to St. Paul's Cathedral and Madame Tussaud's, where she was
excited about seeing so many people from history. The modern people
didn't interest her as much, except for Jack Cornwell and Nurse Cavell.'
Notice that this girl is educating herself.
Her companions merely take her to places where she can see the things
she knows about, and she tells about the things she's read. That's such
a
different approach from pouring information down the throats of less
lucky children who are taken to these kinds of places.
Recently the King and Queen visited the British Museum, probably also
to see the Parthenon Room. A group of London school children were
there. They were as full of information and as interested as the girl
in the letter. They had been doing the same kind of lessons as she had.
It's wonderful when children know that the very things that interest
them also interest their country's leaders. This is the kind of bond
that unites societies. One of the main purposes of a
pg 78
'broad education for everyone' is to form links between the educated
and the uneducated, the rich and the poor, the elite and the common
people. They can all share the strong affinity for the same knowledge,
and it will give them something
in common. Our public schools have done this by using classic
literature. An occasional quote from Horace moves and unites the House
of Commons, not just because the poetic words are moving, but because
the quote is a key to other associations. If this can be done with a
quote in a dead language, what possibilities for common thought and
universal wellsprings of action might be the result of reading our own
rich, inspiring English literature?
Imagine what this kind of power to pay perfect attention and remember
everything could mean for every employer and leader! What an asset that
would be for the entire country! This week I heard a Colonel say that
his second-hand man was an old PUS boy (Parents Union School student),
and we hear this all the time. There aren't too many people who don't
struggle with the effects of inattention and forgetfulness in their
employees. We envision a world of surprising achievement when all
children have been trained to have quick comprehension and can remember
instructions.
We must not masquerade in front of our children, or pride ourselves on
collecting knowledge so that we can deliver it as if it emanated from
ourselves. There are people who have earned the right to lecture
because they've devoted their lives to some specific subject, or maybe
written a book about it. Lectures from experts like that are full of
insight, power and imagination, just like their books. But we don't
have very many of those kinds of people in every school to lecture on
every subject. Even if we did, it wouldn't be the best thing for the
students. The teacher's personality would influence them to distraction
so that they weren't able to focus fully on the pure delight of the
knowledge itself. And it's the knowledge which is in itself enough of a
compelling force to capture their perfect attention and settled
behavior.
pg 79
I'm not advocating a place like Samuel Butler's Erewhon,
where citizens were forbidden to get sick. I'm not talking about
some unreal Utopia in Dreamland. We of the PNEU seem to have discovered
a very real force that's capable of sending forth a new generation with
the resolve:
"I will not cease from mental strife
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land."
So many schools are doing such amazing things. We are educating our
teachers to have lots of enthusiasm and dedication. But what seems
tragic is that, after 8-12 years of the most brilliant teaching that
public education has to offer, students graduate and are content to let
the latest movies, football games, or car races satisfy their need for
mental stimulation. We
are so sad when we see a war hero with a limp, useless hand or leg, or
with a reconstructed artificial jaw or nose. But many of our young
graduates go around even more seriously maimed than that. They have
absolutely no intellectual interests. History and poetry bore them. The
latest scientific research is only a little interesting. Their job and
their social life are all that life has to offer them.
That kind of maimed existence where a person goes day to day without
learning anything new or using his mind is a cause for concern to those
who are interested in education. They know that education is second in
importance only to religion. Education has to be the servant of
religion.
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 |