A Full Life: The Works of Charlotte Mason

CHAPTER XXI - A THEORY OF EDUCATION PROPOSED TO PARENTS

1. How far should the ideal of education be a class ideal?
2. What difference is there between the children of educated and those of ignorant parents as regards vocabulary, imagination, etc.?
3. When is the development of ‘faculties’ an important part of education, and when is it not so?
4. What are the chief things the educator has to do ?
5. Show that it is necessary to recognise the material and spiritual principles of human nature.
6. How does this lead us to recognise the supreme Educator?
7. By what test may the value of studies be judged?
8. Show that ‘Nature’ knowledge educates a child.
9. What is to be said for the use of good books in education?
10. Discuss the question of ‘child-nature.’
11. Why are we tenacious of the individuality of children?

12. Why must we consider proportion in our scheme of education?
13. Show that children have a right to knowledge.

We think that Children have a Right to Knowledge––Much guidance and stimulation are afforded by another principle. We are not anxious to contend with Kant that the mind possesses certain a priori knowledge; nor with Hume that it holds innate ideas. The more satisfying proposition seems to be that the mind has, as it were, prehensile adaptations to each department of universal knowledge. We find that children lay hold of all knowledge which is fitly presented to them with avidity, and therefore we maintain that a wide and generous curriculum is due to them.

We are Tenacious of Individuality: we consider Proportion––In a word, we are very tenacious of the dignity and individuality of our children. We recognise steady, regular growth with no transition stage. This teaching is up to date, but it is as old as common sense. Our claim is that our common sense rests on a basis of Physiology, that we show a reason for all that we do, and that we recognise ‘the science of the proportion of things,’ put the first thing foremost, do not take too much upon ourselves, but leave time and scope for the workings of Nature and of a higher Power than Nature herself.

We do not recognise ‘Child-Nature.’––We endeavour that all our teaching and treatment of children shall be on the lines of nature, their nature and ours, for we do not recognise what is called ‘Child-nature.’ We believe that children are human beings at their best and sweetest, but also at their weakest and least wise. We are careful not to dilute life for them, but to present such portions to them in such quantities as they can readily receive.

We trust much to Good Books––Once more, we know that there is a storehouse of thought wherein we may find all the great ideas that have moved the world. We are above all things anxious to give the child the key to this storehouse. The education of the day, it is said, does not produce reading people. We are determined that the children shall love books, therefore we do not interpose ourselves between the book and the child. We read him his Tanglewood Tales, and when he is a little older his Plutarch, not trying to break up or water down, but leaving the child’s mind to deal with the matter as it can.

Object-Lessons––So of object-lessons; we are not anxious to develop his observing powers on little bits of everything, which he shall describe as opaque, brittle, malleable, and so on. We would prefer not to take the edge off his curiosity in this way; we should rather leave him receptive and respectful for one of those opportunities for asking questions and engaging in talk with his parents about the lock in the river, the mowing machine, the ploughed field, which offer real seed to the mind of a child, and do not make him a priggish little person able to tell all about it.

Nature-Knowledge––Thus our first thought with regard to Nature-knowledge is that the child should have a living personal acquaintance with the things he sees. It concerns us more that he should know bistort from persicaria, hawkweed from dandelion, and where to find this and that, and how it looks, living and growing, than that he should talk about epigynous and hypogynous. All this is well in its place, but should come quite late, after the child has seen and studied the living growing thing in situ, and has copied colour and gesture as best he can.

Studies are Valued as they present Fruitful Ideas––But ideas may be evil or may be good; and to choose between the ideas that present themselves is, as we have been taught, the one responsible work of a human being. It is the power of choice that we would give our children. We ask ourselves, ‘Is there any fruitful idea underlying this or that study that the children are engaged in?’ We divest ourselves of the notion that to develop the faculties is the chief thing; and a ’subject’ which does not rise out of some great thought of life we usually reject as not nourishing, not fruitful; while we usually, but not invariably, retain those studies which give exercise in habits of clear and orderly thinking. We have some gymnastics of the mind whose object is to exercise what we call faculties as well as to train in the habit of clear and ordered thinking. Mathematics, grammar, logic, etc., are not purely disciplinary; they do develop, if a bull may be allowed intellectual muscle. We by no means reject the familiar staples of education, in the school sense, but we prize them even more for the record of intellectual habits they leave in the brain tissue than for their distinct value in developing certain ‘faculties.’

We recognise the Supreme Educator––The idea is the motive power of life, and it is because we recognise the spiritual potency of the idea that we are able to bow reverently before the fact that God the Holy Spirit is Himself the Supreme Educator, dealing with each of us severally in the things we call sacred and those we call secular. We lay ourselves open to the spiritual impact of ideas, whether these be conveyed by the printed page, the human voice, or whether they reach us without visible sign.

We recognise Material and Spiritual Principles of Human Nature––But how does all this work? Is it practical? Is it the question of to-day? It must needs be practical because it gives the fullest recognition to the two principles of human nature, the material and the spiritual. We are ready to concede all that the most advanced biologist would ask of us. Does he say, ‘Thought is only a mode of motion?’ If so, we are not dismayed. We know that ninety-nine out of a hundred thoughts that pass through our minds are involuntary, the inevitable result of those modifications of the brain tissue which habit has set up. The mean man thinks mean thoughts, the magnanimous man great thoughts, because we all think as we are accustomed to think, and Physiology shows us why. On the other hand, we recognise that greater is the spirit within us than the matter which it governs. Every habit has its beginning. The beginning is the idea which comes with a stir and takes possession of us.