So, this is the last chapter:
A Look at the Everyday All Around Us – All Year Long.
An idea that has been used throughout this book has been the beads-on-a-string image. As persons we need a basic routine for life but there are many variations as to how this will look.
Even in times of crisis we need some sort of basic schedule to life or we risk pulling out the string from the string of beads. Our days need to be simplified so that the “string of comfortable beads on our routine” do not disappear.
It is good to think about our year’s rhythm – special days, celebrations, a weekly ‘sabbath,’ (not in a rigid sense but as a sensible break from our regular day to day lives) cultural feasts, national holidays, family holidays.

There will always be some obstacle in our way when we try to put these life-giving ideas into practice. There is no perfect time nor place – or if there is it probably won’t be like that for long. As C. S. Lewis wrote just after the outbreak of WWII in 1939,

‘Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun. We are mistaken when we compare war with “normal life.” Life has never been normal.’

If we postpone caring for our homes, our families and our communities until every thing lines up nicely, we would never begin. Life will never be normal.
The reading of history, the stories of parents and grandparents, of those who have lived through a war or experienced the Great Depression tells us this. If you have experienced the sudden loss of someone you love, or if you have faced a life-changing diagnosis in your own life or in the life of someone close to you, you know this.

One of the on-going ideas presented in this book is that of being an active neighbour. When communities fail to function neighbours become alienated. This can be true of mothers at home full time, single people with busy work lives and the elderly, but there are solutions and we can’t afford to be passive. A life that is lived in an ordinary way can do this.

Other ideas include: the Sabbath, Lent, Advent - these make up the rhythm of the year…

For homes are about all of life, from our first weak cry to that last time our eyes close. What happens in between is our life’s story.

We need to make our choices on where we should live. Friends of ours decided to move back to Australia from Austria to look after the woman’s mother who had developed dementia and lived on her own. They had to give up their missionary work in Austria and never had the opportunity to return. Other friends have made decisions for different reasons - to be closer to family, to afford a home, to be nearer a life-giving church.

The ordinary has been blessed. It is good. Faithfulness “in my small corner” helps to redeem life. Thus we find “the glory of the usual.”

There is an Appendix to this book which mentions some resources relating to family life and relationships in general. I’ll link below to some that I’ve written about.

For the Children’s Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay – I highly recommend this to anyone who has the care of children. It is a very accessible book which introduces Charlotte Mason’s educational ideas. It was life changing for me as I read it when I was about 6 months pregnant with our eldest.

Home Education by Charlotte Mason

What is a Family? and Common Sense Christian Living by Edith Schaeffer (Susan’s mother)

The God Who is There by Francis Schaeffer (Susan’s father)

How to be Your Own Selfish Pig by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay

Books by Elizabeth Goudge:

Pilgrim’s Inn (Herb of Grace)

The Scent of Water

The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis

Two books she didn’t mention that treat a marriage breakup and its effects on the kids very truthfully & poignantly:

The Battle of the Villa Fiorita by Rumer Godden

Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple - Whipple was a supremely moral writer who provides a redemptive pathway while appreciating that actions do have consequences.

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Homes and Life in Community – to understand the need for community we need to get our perspective right by looking at the big picture. Where does my life fit in? Then how do we all fit together as human beings? We were built for community and were not created to live in isolation.

‘C.S. Lewis’s allegory on hell and heaven pictures hell as a dreary city with many boarded-up houses. In this place people’s relationships break down, and they move farther and farther away from their neighbours.’

Solitary confinement has been used as a punishment to great effect in various situations. Of course, there are times when most of us crave some time on our own, but in the real sense of a solitary life where a person is remote from society and destitute of company, it is generally not a choice, or if it is, there is usually an underlying fear or distrust of people. Solitary confinement doesn’t only happen in despotic regimes, but its effects can be devastating, nonetheless. Deafness, the inability to communicate and language barriers are other ways in which people can be cut off from others. Technology can be a barrier, too. Texting, emailing, shopping online, working online, may subtly displace the human connection while giving us the idea that we really have connected.

‘The community aspect of life needs to be a part of a child’s everyday experience. How children are brought up affects how they’ll live later on. Strange as it may seem, play time is a vital part of a child’s preparation for being fully involved in the local community as an adult.’

The word ‘community’ is a derivative of the word ‘common’ and has the sense of belonging, as in ‘our common humanity.’ In biblical terms the Church is called ‘The Body.’ Just like our physical body each part has a role and no part is greater than another. Old & young, smart and simple, male and female, child and adult – so many differences but all are important. Someone asked me the other day how my youngest ‘socialised’ or made friends when she didn’t go to school. It’s been different for her being the youngest as all her siblings mostly grew up together but in the past few years four of them married and another two moved out of home. Her two best friends are not her own age – one is two years younger; the other is about 18 months older. She is also friends with a young married woman who used to lead the youth group before she had a baby. Every few months they meet up and have a day out with a couple of other friends and go into the city or have an activity such as zip lining (aerial tree courses).

Community living isn’t always easy especially in a church setting where many different people are knocking the edges off each other, but it can be so rich. One of the reasons I love the idea of home education is that it allows for the different ages and stages to do life together. I was really disappointed when I went to high school and found that I wasn’t in any classes with my friends, so I don’t understand the reasoning that kids need to go to school to ‘socialise.’ None of the kids I ‘socialised’ with became my friends. I found them outside of the classroom. How did I get onto that?…that’s right, I was talking about community – and that can happen anywhere and in unexpected places if we make an effort. We don’t have to find it among people our own age or among our own nationality or even among those with the same interests!

I was inspired by this video of Gardening Australia which interviews a young mum who started a community garden, seed swaps, street library and other free services as a means of not only providing food for the family but as a way to connect with others. The community now has 1400 members and about 20 to 30 visitors a day.

Susan Schaeffer Macaulay said of her upbringing that ‘My imagination was educated for caring.’ We are God’s hands and feet, and it’s very clear in both the Old and New Testaments that God places high importance on looking after those on the outskirts of society, the orphans, the widowed, the destitute. Children need to see this in action; to be educated for caring.

In this chapter Susan explains more about the importance of play and a regular routine in a young child’s life and its link with duty and responsibility:

‘If children had free time all day, play would not be so delicious. Even the baby has balance in the day, which he or she learns through peaceful routine. Learning to fit into a structure is all-important. Life has a structure to which we adjust; we do not just follow our impulses such as what “I want” or “I feel like…” rather it should be, “What is it time for?” Later on this idea naturally evolves into the concept “What should I be doing?” Or “What ought I to do now?” (Note: In this way we learn about duty and responsibility.)

Parents are Peacemakers. Susan shares some thoughts on the role of parents as peacemakers and mentions a booklet written by Essex Cholmondely (Charlotte Mason’s biographer) and says that:

‘Making peace is our adult responsibility…In creating the true ‘Charlotte Mason childhood,’ parents make no habitual recourse to television’s “virtual reality” to handle difficult, fussy moments. Such random use would deprive the growing child of the opportunity to develop a treasure house of inner riches to cope with the normal ups and downs of life.’

Nancy @ Sage Parnassus has made this booklet available on her blog: Six Talks with Parents on Bringing Up Children

When I first read For the Family’s Sake years ago, I couldn’t get the story at the end of this chapter out of my mind. At the end of a church service in their large church, Susan and her husband got chatting to a man who said he’d been attending that church for over twenty years:

‘His wartime boyhood had scarred him; he was reserved. We wanted to share our Christmas dinner with someone who was alone, and we invited him. Although the shops had been closed when we invited him, he brought me a gift of sweet-smelling lotion, a treat I could not afford. We discovered he had bought this gift and others, “Just in case I was invited out.” Later we heard that ours was the first home ever to invite him in for a shared meal.

Oh, busy Christian church! Oh, fellow human beings! We need to take time for each other. This is right. Share this way of life with every child. It is the way to live now and into the future.’

Older Children

I was asked by a reader for tips on balancing family life as children get older after one of my posts on For the Family’s Sake.

Can you write about the older child/tween/teen years? When my (homeschooling) children were little, this all aligns so well with what my husband and I believed. I’m finding it hard to find encouragement and direction about how to balance life and prioritize stable home life while also slowly letting your kids fly more and more on their own. Constant invites to friends birthday parties and youth events and extra curricular friends groups and on and on which are all wonderful for social development and friendship esp for my extroverted kiddos, but it runs this mama pretty ragged! Keeping them home was wonderful and sensical when they were little but keeping them home and me being their only influence doesn’t feel healthy/overall best anymore as they get older.

Some thoughts

One of the biggest strains of raising children is adjusting our authority as our children mature and knowing how, when, and where to extend or limit the boundaries we have in place. When all your children are little it is much easier to balance life at home but as your children mature, life becomes more difficult to manage.

I think that as we increase our children’s freedoms, we also need to increase their responsibilities. If we don’t, we can end up with children who think that life owes them something, that their rights are paramount. Susan touched on this when she spoke about duty and responsibility and the notions of ‘I want’ and ‘I feel like’ (see quotation above). Living in a family is part of living in community and part of that is giving our children a lifelong hunger to assuage at least a little grief, to instill in them a care and a concern for others.

How children are brought up affects how they’ll live later on.

Perhaps because we had a large family, it was easier to play the host and have other children at our place rather than our children going elsewhere. We did this all through the high school years. It made life a bit easier and helped us keep tabs on where our children were and what they did.

Invitations to birthdays etc. - this has become an issue in more recent times because children in a family aren’t used to doing things together. When our youngest son was about 4 or 5 years old, he was asked to the birthday party of a neighbourhood friend. I took him because he was keen to go and being a very chatty little chap, I thought he’d enjoy it. I was so surprised that he spent most of his time with me. He was so used to having his older brothers & sisters with him that he didn’t know what to do without them. After that I decided that we’d just do things together. By then we knew quite a few home educators with multiple children so that worked out well. I think if you find a couple of families with a range of ages, you can do this & make it work well.

Between swimming lessons, music - both lessons & band practice, part-time work from about age 14, Youth Group on Friday evenings…we had enough to keep us occupied.

Our children are all grown now, 4 are married to people that didn’t homeschool, two have children so far and my oldest son and his wife are teaching their three boys at home.

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If you’re familiar with Charlotte Mason’s writing, you’ll know that she believed that the first few years of life are very important and that children need a “quiet growing time.” She didn’t begin formal lessons until the child was six years age old. So, what did she think younger children should do up until then? What can we do as parents?

Spend LOTS of time outside in the fresh air.

Allow plenty of time for spontaneous play – i.e. not parent plotted and organised. This is a serious problem these days. I understand if you’re in a public park with young children you need to watch out for them but there is so much hovering that goes on that it’s almost suffocating.

‘When enough time is spent on home life, time-consuming activities can find a place.’

Don’t overschedule. The kids have set up their camp and re-arranged the family room in the process when Mum suddenly announces it’s time to go to…whatever/wherever and the kids all moan because it’s taken them ages to set this all up and now they can’t play in it.

I listened to a TED talk this morning (The Price of Invulnerability: Brené Brown) as preparation for a book club a friend is hosting on the weekend. A few thoughts stood out to me, and I thought they were worth considering in relation to bringing up children:

‘An ordinary life has become synonymous with a meaningless life.’

‘We are missing what is truly important because we’re in a quest for the extraordinary. Ordinary moments are where we can find the most joy.’

Parents who care want the best for their children and investing in experiences, activities and learning opportunities seems to be the way to go. I’m not saying these things aren’t valuable, but when they constantly interrupt or interfere with the ordinary moments of life – moments when our children are building their imaginations, forming good habits and taking time to wonder – they may not be the best investment of time at this point.

When my eldest was four years old she asked me to teach her to read. I did, as she was obviously ready, but there was nothing ‘formal’ about it and it only took a few minutes each morning. There was still plenty of time for free play and outdoor time.

I think home education allows a good balance in this. If a young child is busting to read, you can teach them. If they are nowhere near ready, it is no problem to wait until they are. I read once that one hour of education at home would take about three hours of learning in a school situation.

‘Children have an urgent desire to communicate. For all of these activities Charlotte thought that homes or homelike places were best.’

‘In the first three years of life every child learns more than at any other period of life…For the toddler much more is going on than what we would usually define as “learning.” The very being of the child is developing…All future relationships are being started in seed trays, so to speak, in this nursery of life. As any gardener knows, neglect the sprouting seed or young seedling, and you’ll have a stunted plant.’

Routines are early disciplines in a child’s life which allows them to fit into family life and later into community life. They learn that they are not the centre of the universe; that other people matter. If a child starts out with a self-centred orientation it will be very difficult to train them out of it later!

Susan points out that in Britain babies used to be put outside to sleep for their naps, tucked up in their prams. When my Mum & Dad were first married, they lived in an attic in Scotland up a few flights of stairs. Every day my mum would bounce a huge pram down the stairs, put us in it and take us for a walk in all kinds of weather – where we lived on the West Coast it was either drizzle or sleet, but it didn’t stop her.

‘We need to give each other all the encouragement we can in the job of homemaking and bringing up children. Whether we work part time or not, whatever our circumstances, homes really are the heart and hearth of our lives…

Remember, Jesus said, “I prepare a place for you.”

The features of a good nursery school are also discussed in this chapter. We are privileged to be the parents of our young children for only a limited time, but this all too fleeting time is as important as any career we may have.

Coming up… life in community, thoughts on balancing life as children get older

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You’ve probably noticed if you’ve been reading along with me that there is a fair bit of overlap between chapters, but although Susan Schaeffer Macaulay stresses again and again the need for young children to have stable home lives, she offers various scenarios as to how we may achieve that in our very different situations. We are all uniquely different but have certain things in common.

So we need to clarify to ourselves and to each other what should be the same for all, if possible, and yet see how different these commonalities can look when worked out in real life.

Macaulay states that our society is rapidly devaluing human life. It’s crazy to me that on the one hand we are appalled about youth suicide but at the same time encourage the idea that those who wish to end their lives should be given all the help they require. It’s also bizarre that we (rightly) encourage and support those with disabilities but at the same time endorse aborting the unborn because they have some sort of impairment. The mixed messaging doesn’t make sense.

Obviously such attitudes are not new in human thought, but the way we are treating human life, generally speaking is rubbing off on us all…In the last decades as developmental science has clarified how important the first years are for each child’s future intelligence, welfare and wholeness, we have had a parallel decline in respect for society’s most natural and best full-time caregiver – the mother who devotes much of her time to this. We have now reached the place where people actually feel pity for a mother “stuck at home” with two or three youngsters. Her hard work, skills, and growing wisdom are devalued. The entire human community then loses out.

While there is less and less respect for full-time parenting as one of the most valuable services rendered to the human race, our culture has also devalued any careers associated with early childcare or education…Caregivers are often low-paid members of society…

“The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”

The idea that our children’s lives should not inconvenience us and the expectation that our marriages should suit us in every way from the very beginning, confuses us. It’s an unreal expectation. We dream and wait for what we want but neglect to put in the work to bring it about.

‘Instead we need to watch for small successes along the way and develop patience, skill, and wisdom. Satisfaction means carrying through with the situation that is our life, just where we are. Biblically, serving each other is one of the highest priorities in life.’

She explains that the way to build contentment is to accept that sometimes our circumstances won’t change. The effects of the poor choices we’ve made and their consequences are with us. Our choice is to whine or to make the best of them.

In real life we will face difficult circumstances.

‘A solution in real life cannot be ladled out like soup. All of us in every stage of life need to keep the basic “tree trunk” of daily life stable and yet adapt and choose creatively in details.’

As she points out, it’s not much good staying at home to be a full-time parent if the family goes hungry! Our well-being is necessary – if we fall apart we won’t be much good to our kids. Making sure the basic fabric is covered first – the routine of regular meals together, bedtimes, rest – before adding in work outside the home, volunteer work or other activities, is vital.

The mother of a good friend of mine during my high school years ran a family day care at home and looked after a couple of siblings. She was a very motherly woman and was more of a grandma to the children she looked after than a “care provider.’’ I hardly ever hear of anyone doing Family Day Care now. When federal government subsidies were extended to for-profit providers in Australia in 1991, there were dramatic changes in the childcare area, leading to a dominance of for-profit centres. For-profit childcare services are, on average, lower rated than not-for-profit services.

What is going wrong with childcare in Australia? - a report that looks at how centre-based childcare is big business, dominated by for-profit providers. Of the 25 large long daycare providers in Australia, 21 are run for profit and this impacts the quality of care in several ways.

‘We all have different levels of energy. We must not try to do something just because someone else can cope with it. What works well for one parent or family can be a disaster for another.’

The 2005 Australian of the Year was Professor Fiona Wood, a Western Australian plastic surgeon. I read a magazine article about her years ago and was struck by how she and her husband, also a surgeon, managed to raise six children while she continued with her career. From what I remember, she was able to manage on very little sleep!! and had incredible energy. Her husband was very supportive and took an active role in their children’s lives. This article tells a bit about her.

The single parent faces extra emotional and practical challenges. Having lots of stuff doesn’t make a good home or give us happiness but poverty is a destructive enemy. A larger home means more work and more care. Does a child really need their own bedroom?? Should we sacrifice our home life and well-being to satisfy perceived needs?

Jesus said that we should not put stumbling blocks in front of “little ones.”

In other words, smoothing the path in front of children is worthwhile. Letting little children grow up in the care of constantly changing adults is definitely an emotional and intellectual disadvantage (or “stumbling block”).

Jesus always puts people’s good first; things are only to serve people’s needs or are gifts for life’s enjoyment.

Single persons, men and women may need to say ‘no’ to a high-pressure job, a promotion or a transfer to allow time for their lives at home. We need to ‘know our frame,’ to understand where our boundaries are so we don’t go beyond our limits.

If we feel the life being squeezed out of us, we need to rethink what we should be doing or not doing.

Further Reading

Mothers at Home Matter

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Contentment, thanks, and enjoyment are the focus in this chapter. Depending on whether you are a glass half full or a glass half empty type of person these are probably areas many of us need to intentionally cultivate.
One way to help us do this is to consider what is best for us to do at this particular moment. Avoiding rushing into the day and getting distracted is often key to being contented and thankful. If we get caught up in a whirl of activities which sweep us along, we won’t get to do what we should be doing and that becomes a source of discontent.
Routine comes to the rescue by helping us to determine the next right thing, but a routine isn’t necessarily set in concrete. Different stages of family life require a change in our routines.

‘Routine gives us continuity & stability – if the routine is constantly having to be altered because of extra things to do or other people’s demands, we must think again.’

A large part of Chapter 10 is devoted to the Benedictine Way of Life.

‘The Benedictine way of life altered European cultures, including England’s. The traditional English way of life is undergirded with Benedictine’s balance and attention to everyday life…
Benedictines came here with the Normans (around A.D. 1000), and their centers of discipline and life became life-giving examples that the culture slowly followed. Balanced everyday life became more and more generally adopted in homes and villages. Like the tick-tock of a cultural clock, this life was rooted in God’s worship and His Word on the one hand and in a livable pattern of human activities on the other…
The ordinary was celebrated, enjoyed, tended.

I know it’s not fashionable to look at the past and acknowledge that despite all our scientific knowledge, material wealth and the benefit of hindsight, we don’t measure up to previous generations in some of these areas.
Labour saving devices, longer life spans, advances in medicine, don’t seem to have made us any more contented than our grandparent’s generation.

The Benedictines’ way of life provided a balance of rest, work and prayer. Their communities were productive and hospitable. Their farming skills changed agriculture; they established schools, universities, and hospitals.
I love how Esther de Waal addresses this need for us to ponder life’s purpose (this whole interview is very inspiring):

‘There’s such a danger of life passing people by unless we stop them in their tracks and say, what are you going to do with this incredible gift of God’s absurd generosity, which makes each of us so different and so interesting?’

We are not machines. We need adequate rest and sleep, nutritious meals (the ordinary things of life); time to think, time for relationships and time to cultivate contentment and thankfulness.
The art of the Dutch Reformation celebrated the ordinary – a woman pouring milk, for example. These commonplace activities were considered to be worth reproducing in art; they were inherently beautiful to the artist.

Susan Schaeffer Macaulay believes that a good education and life at home overlap – a recurrent theme throughout this book but she develops her ideas more thoroughly in her wonderful book, For the Children’s Sake, which was my introduction to the Charlotte Mason Method of education.
She offers further wisdom relating to family life in general e.g.

‘People do best when they are in small enough groups to be known. We need relationships.’

‘…everyday routines are increasingly seen to be restrictive, rather than life-allowing.’

‘Is it actually more valuable to push a pen on paper or buttons on a computer than to be an expert in human life and its care?
Are things really more important than people?’

There are many articles and books about the Benedictine Way but here are a couple I thought were practical. I’ve also added a link to a free online version of his Rule:

Seeking God: The Way of St Benedict by Esther de Waal - linked to my review of the book

The adaptability of the Benedictine Rule to family life

St. Benedict for the rest of us

PDF of the 6th Century Rule of St Benedict

‘Contentment comes when we accept our own or our situation’s limitations…to be contented, we need to look at what we do have (not at what we don’t), give thanks, and cheerfully make the best of our marriage, children, house, and each day, season, and chapter in life.’

- Susan Schaeffer Macaulay

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The main thrust of this chapter is that the home life of anyone, whether they have children or not, needs a regular pattern of life. I read the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder aloud to my children when they were little and remember that Ma did specific things on each day of the week. It went something like this:

Wash on Monday
Iron on Tuesday
Mend on Wednesday
Churn on Thursday
Clean on Friday
Bake on Saturday
Rest on Sunday

In our modern times we still need the stability of a regular life but with the modern appliances available to us, we don’t have to be so rigid in how we implement routines. When my children were all at home I did some laundry just about every day, something I couldn’t have done if I’d lived in the early 1900’s and had to heat water in a copper washer and wring clothes by hand.

I grew up in a large family and we all had to help out around the house. It was good training for when I left home but many of my friends weren’t required to help out at home at all. It made things difficult when they had families of their own later on and suddenly realised they were ill-equipped to run a household. That said, I think it’s important to understand that being at home with young children is hard work regardless of your upbringing and despite having good routines in place. All it takes is something like a bout of sickness, the breakdown of the washing machine, or a sleepless night to cause a major disruption in the life of a family.

‘One of the objectives in a home or community’s routines is to ensure that those who bear the weight don’t burn out.’

Routines and habits allow us freedom from constant decision making. Everyone knows what to expect. If dinner is generally around the same time each night, the children can have a quick bath, a story, and be in bed at a reasonable hour. My husband’s work was demanding and he was sometimes required to travel, but I knew that when he came home at night, I’d get a break. A routine (or some sort of rhythm) enabled us to do this. In the early days of mothering I spent much of any free time I had in the evening researching home education. This was refreshing & intellectually stimulating for me, helping me to offload some of my daily load because it was a completely different type of work.

‘All of us, whatever our age, stage, or circumstances, need unscheduled-by-someone-else personal time.’

This is one area where we need to step back and give our children space – unscheduled time to themselves, even if it’s just for five minutes. Today’s mothers seem to feel that if they don’t play with or entertain their child all the time they aren’t doing their job properly, but we do our children a disservice if we are always hovering over them. I used to think that playpens were a terrible idea, and they would be if you overused them, but I started using one for a short time each day to give the littlest some time ‘on their own.’ I could see them, they were safe, I didn’t use it if they were miserable and kept it short – five or ten minutes. I talked about the idea of Masterly Inactivity in my thoughts on Chapter 3 and this is one way to start getting used to the idea with little children.

Mothers need to have a personal life, too, but if we are always hovering over our children we won’t have much chance to do this. By personal life we include spirit, soul and body. In the early days of raising children this can be a struggle. Susan spoke about her experience trying to fit in a quiet time in Chapter 6 and how she managed it.

I think it’s vital to find out what refreshes you. Of course, as a Christian, time in God’s Word and prayer are first priority, but we can be creative about this. If exercise is important to you, walking and praying may be your answer. I find now that walking actually helps me to concentrate when I pray. Getting up early before the day gets busy, hearing the birdsong that rises in the morning, seeing the dew on the grass or on a spider’s web before the sun evaporates it, may be something that could work for you. It didn’t for me for quite a few years and I’ve found that the different stages of life often require a re-think and a change of routine.

In Charlotte Mason circles the term ‘Mother Culture’ refers to time a mother spends growing her own mind.

‘Mother must have time to herself. And we must not say “I cannot.” Can any of us say till we have tried, not for one week, but for one whole year, day after day, that we “cannot” get one half-hour out of the twenty-four for “Mother Culture?”–one half-hour in which we can read, think, or “remember.”

…if we would do our best for our children, grow we must; and on our power of growth surely depends, not only our future happiness, but our future usefulness.’

One of the most inspirational autobiographies I’ve ever read was Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng, a woman, who in her early fifties, who was locked up in solitary confinement for six and a half years during the Cultural Revolution. During those years she drew upon her interior riches: Poetry and Psalms she had memorised; the intellectual culture of thinking and remembering she had practised throughout her life while she was still free; not to mention the physical disciplines she made herself undergo to keep her body from total deterioration while enduring the effects of starvation in prison.

Interior riches is a phrase I remember reading in Elizabeth Goudge’s book The Rosemary Tree. I often think of it when I read books like the one I mentioned above. We never know when we may be left without external resources to sustain our souls but what we have made a part of us can’t be taken away.

• Scripture memory
• Beautiful artwork stored in the mind
• Intellectual & aesthetic culture
• The discipline of reading, thinking, & remembering
• Inspiring music
• History
• Nature appreciation

Mother Culture: filling my soul with Interior Riches for the present, and to draw upon in the future.

Mealtimes, relaxed and regular times together over food are, ‘The key to the day for communities, families and friends.’

This was something that happened very naturally in our home for about 30 years, but it’s been very difficult in the last few years to have any sort of consistency. Adult children living at home, changing working hours and university timetables, as well as numerous other changes, have upset our routines and will do so for a while yet.

Susan makes an important point about mealtimes together: they should not be used as times for lectures or for attacking others – a bad habit and poor manners that shows our lack of respect for people in our family, especially children.

These were some of my thoughts on reading this chapter. Some questions to consider:

How have you handled changes in routines over the years or how did you implement a new routine in the first place?

Are you getting a half hour out of the twenty-four hours you have each day in which you can read, think, or remember?

Is your spiritual life your first priority?

What have you been reading for your own growth lately? As the article on Mother Culture I linked to said, this doesn’t have to be a ‘stiff’ book. Think of it as storing up Interior Riches.

Currently I’m reading:

• 2084 and the AI Revolution - How Artificial Intelligence Informs Our Future by John Lennox. This is definitely a ‘‘stiff’’ book for me due to its technical nature. My husband read it warned me that some of it would be a slog for me, but it covers some important topics.

• The Return of the Native (1895) by Thomas Hardy. Hardy had a very rich vocabulary & I’m often reaching for a dictionary, but his narrative is compelling. I’d say his writing is on a par with George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda or Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence.

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We’re at the half-way mark of our read along of this book and I hope you have benefitted from what you’ve read so far.
For many of us, becoming a mother and making the decision to be at home while our children are young, has meant putting aside a profession or putting a career on hold for a period of time. Some careers are difficult to put on hold and this puts pressure on mums to return to work earlier. I wrote in an earlier post about the government here dropping the age of school entry to help mothers go back to work earlier but this decision isn’t ‘for the children’s sake’ and doesn’t help those who want to stay at home while their children are still very young.
This chapter is encouraging for those who have put aside their out of home work life in order to spend that time as ‘stay at home mums.’ It’s a misnomer, that term, for obvious reasons – we don’t just stay at home!
’A ‘stay at home mum’ is a label that tends to conjure up an image of a lack lustre life; a person who doesn’t have to use their brain and who is probably bored most of the time; an unpaid labourer doing what needs to be done now but looking forward to better days.

There is no ‘degree of motherhood’ or credentials we need in order to become mothers. We are amateurs in the truest sense. (I wrote an article titled, In Defence of Amateurs for the Common Place Quarterly which was published last year and I will share that here sometime in September.) In that article I mentioned that the word ‘amateur’ comes from the Latin, amator – a lover; from amo, to love.

Linda Lear’s biography Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature, describes a woman who was not only a great artist but an ‘amateur’ naturalist.
In the late 1880’s natural history was a public passion with the Victorians but by the end of the 19th Century, the professionalisation of science, particularly the natural sciences, began to exclude those without degrees or formal training. Increasingly, women especially were shut out of these areas.

Beatrix was unimpressed with the natural science establishment and described them as ‘not even half sharp,’ and ‘less well-informed than an ordinary person on any subject outside their own…’

In G.K. Chesterton’s 1903 biography of Robert Browning he described the Victorian age poet as a strenuous amateur…

The word amateur has come by the thousand oddities of language to convey an idea of tepidity; whereas the word itself has the meaning of passion…A man must love a thing very much if he not only practises it without any hope of fame or money, but even practises it without any hope of doing it well. Such a man must love the toils of the work more than any other man can love the rewards of it. Browning was in this strict sense a strenuous amateur.

The word strenuous comes from the Latin, strenuus, meaning force, impetus and a sense of eagerness; zeal, ardor (warmth/heat).

I paraphrased G.K Chesterton’s thoughts to describe the mother as an amateur:

‘A mother must love her children very much if she not only looks after them without any hope of fame or money…Such a woman must love the toils of the work more than any other woman can love the rewards of it.’

Susan Schaeffer Macaulay notes that,

‘Nothing in this life is perfect, and small essential things make a big difference…
To be dependable, the home atmosphere has to be as consistently regular as possible. And this means that one person has the freedom to respond to needs, give time, and serve.’

Something I often used to hear from mums who didn’t spend much time with their children was – ‘I give them quality time when I’m with them.’
It sounds good, but in reality we don’t get to choose when our children will require our ‘quality time’ with them. What if they are sick and we need to go to work or they have a fear or something they can’t articulate and just need some time to be near us? We are trying to rush out the door and we aren’t able to spare them this particular time. Of course, we can be at home 24/7 and also miss these opportunities if we are insensitive or pre-occupied with other things. It’s not really up to us to choose this special time with our children. We can plan a holiday or special day out but our child’s particular delight could have occurred at an unplanned moment that we may be totally oblivious about. Often it’s the small things that didn’t seem to hold anything noteworthy at the time that become the most pleasurable memories to look back on.

The cost of childcare is a frequent complaint but why should it be work that is low paid? Isn’t it vital that the care of little children should be entrusted to those who will take care of them well if their parents can’t do it?
It is work that can be done by an ‘amateur’ but that doesn’t make it any less important.

‘It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life—the sick, the needy and the handicapped.’

I was a registered nurse before I had children. I didn’t keep up my registration so it’s not something I can go back to now that my children are grown but I’ve enjoyed learning skills since I’ve been a mother that I never had time for before. Full-time nursing was demanding and shift work didn’t leave me much energy. I have friends who continued working part-time but they didn’t have large families. When my older girls were thinking about what they should do when they’d finished their home education, we talked about which careers were more conducive to family life, those that offered part-time work or other options that were more supportive of family life. Racking up monumental debt and feeling guilty about wasting the years you’ve spent studying to get a degree is a burden you don’t need when you have a young family.

Susan ties her thoughts in with those of Charlotte Mason and her belief that ‘children should have the best of their mothers.’
She also writes about Amy Carmichael, a single woman, whose life work was to be a mother to unwanted children in India, work that others considered beneath her.
She said of herself that,

‘My working life until the children came had been spent almost entirely in what is usually called “soul work,” and I was the last person in the world to be of any use where bodies and minds are concerned. But I had to tackle both, and felt very often the “Jack of all trades, master of none” would be written on my tombstone – if I ever had one.’

Susan echoes those words in her title to this chapter:

‘Perhaps this gives us a good title for the mother, the parent responsible for the mix of everyday, humdrum “body needs” plus the wonder of unfolding minds and hearts responding to faith, hope, and life – the jack of all trades.’

May we be strenuous amateurs!

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Most of us probably haven’t had to face been sent into battle anytime, let alone in the first year of marriage, but the intention of these directives still stands. We may not be in a physical battle zone but there are many other ways in which our lives can be bombarded. These Old Testament directives were written to set priorities for the first year of a married couple’s life together and the principles behind them can still be helpful today.

So, what bombards us today?

‘It seems to me that long, traffic-laden commutes and the draining effect of too many duties can have the same effect as a battle. Many careers hinder the new family from laying strong groundwork for the new home, as they take too much time and energy.’

Young women are told they can have it all – children and careers, but I wonder at the wisdom of this. I read an excellent article in The Australian not long ago that addressed this. Here is the link: ‘I’m a young, ambitious woman choosing kids over work,’ but you might need to sign up to read it. Or there is this article by the same author with some similar ideas. Here are some extracts from The Australian article,

‘My position as a mother is steadily being eroded by a society that rushes us back to paid work for economic gain while ignoring important metrics such as mental and physical health, social cohesion and relationships. It’s much harder to put a dollar figure on these concepts, and for that reason they go on mostly unrecognised…’

On ‘having it all’ Virginia Tapscott, the author of the article said:

‘I couldn’t understand why it was so hard to push through the sadness of leaving him in daycare. The illnesses he picked up were relentless and impacted our quality of life. If this is what they call “having it all” then I mustn’t want it all. It wasn’t what I thought equality would feel like. It was like I could only be equal if I pretended I didn’t have kids, if I pretended that caring for others was not a priority for me.

I think it’s a ridiculous notion that women need to position themselves in a workplace in order to be valued and earn respect… Before becoming a mother I championed individual success and completely envisioned myself as a working mum. I was socially conditioned to expect this by the “women can have it all” movement and it made my transition to motherhood awkward as hell. When my first son turned one I felt a sense of urgency and panic that I should be getting back to work, that if I didn’t go back now I’d never be allowed back in.’

Stress and hurry squeeze the life out of relationships. Our inner lives can become hollow and be prone to fracture if outside goals put too much strain on our relationships.

Charlotte Mason said that ‘Education is an atmosphere, a discipline and a life,’ and in this chapter Susan Schaeffer Macaulay takes that idea and applies it to the home – i.e. homes need the right atmosphere, discipline, and life. They should both be places of nurture and good places in which to live and grow at every stage of life. We need a balance between work and leisure to create a life-giving atmosphere. Too much rush and stress make us dissatisfied and anxious.

A healthy, loving atmosphere cannot be faked. And it is in the home that we have the best testing ground for the fruit of the Spirit. We can put on an act for a visitor or if we are out somewhere, but at home the “scum rises to the top sooner or later.”
A healthy atmosphere doesn’t mean perfect conditions. We are all flawed and there are also practical considerations to think about, too.
We went for a bush walk with my daughter-in-law and her three- and one-year old boys. We went well before the youngest was due for a sleep and their Mum brought along some snacks for when the boys started to flag.
These ‘disciplines’ of nutrition and rest also go into making the atmosphere of a home and if they’re not in place it makes for quite a bit of misery. Bedtimes, mealtimes, rest-times, playtimes, quiet times, all play their part in producing the atmosphere of the home, as do the relationships between the people living there alongside each other.
The atmosphere of the home is affected by what we allow into it and our reliance on God’s power.
We are encouraged in this chapter to ‘abide’ (stay, concentrate, give your full attention) to Jesus. To not be distracted by things that stir up resentment, impatience, or bitterness and discontent but to focus on the good, the pure, and the life-giving.

‘Enjoying “the sight and company of Jesus” through careful reading of His Word, thinking it over, and prayer is the first way of abiding.’

When the author was a busy young mother, involved in ministry and running a fifty-room manor house, she used to make an effort to wake up earlier than was comfortable to spend time with God. When that failed she tried making some time last thing at night but it all ended up becoming a duty instead of a joy. It was when she was preparing to write a book based on Charlotte Mason’s method of teaching (For the Children’s Sake) that she discovered a way that would work for her and where she could give it her full attention.

‘Why can’t I treat God in the same way as a friend for whom I prepare and put aside time?…Well, I started to do just that, and I can tell you, it was a watershed in my life.’

There is much richness in this chapter. Forgiveness, her thoughts on ‘character training’ versus qualities arising ‘from the inside out,’ the fruit of a life lived in God and the need for inner transformation.
From a child at the beginning of life to the elderly nearing the end of it, the Atmosphere is either life-affirming or it is not.

Further Reading

The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton - published in 1922, a year before Charlotte Mason died, I was impressed by a couple of passages that touched on education and atmosphere, as they shared a close similarity to Mason's educational ideas. Wharton was American but she spent much of her time in Europe (The Glimpses of the Moon was set mostly in France). During WWI she remained in Europe and established schools for children escaping from Belgium after the German occupation.

Nick & Susy Lansing married after hatching a scheme whereby they’d live off their wedding gifts of money and accommodation with the understanding that if either of them found a way to climb the social ladder, the other would not stand in the way but agree to a divorce. Barely a year later their plans had unravelled and out of desperation Susy agreed to look after the Fulmer children while their parents were in Italy.

The Fulmers were an artistic couple living in a cramped cottage and the Lansings had spent time with them and their noisy family before they had considered marriage. They couldn’t understand how the Fulmers lived as they did with bad food and general crazy discomfort, but they had more amusement in their company than they had with any of their rich friends and their opulent house parties.

'Take care of five Fulmers for three months! The prospect cowed her.'

'But in these rough young Fulmers she took a positive delight, and for reasons that were increasingly clear to her. It was because, in the first place, they were all intelligent; and because their intelligence had been fed only on things worth caring for. However inadequate Grace Fulmer’s bringing-up of her increasing tribe had been, they had heard in her company nothing trivial or dull: good music, good books and good talk had been their daily food, and if at times they stamped and roared and crashed about like children unblessed by such privileges, at others they shone with the light of poetry and spoke with the voice of wisdom.

That had been Susy’s discovery: for the first time she was among awakening minds which had been wakened only to beauty. From their cramped and uncomfortable household Grace and Nat Fulmer had managed to keep out mean envies, vulgar admirations, shabby discontents; above all the din and confusion the great images of beauty had brooded, like those ancestral figures that stood apart on their shelf in the poorest Roman households.'

Young Women Who Prioritize Family Over Career Deserve Respect | Institute for Family Studies

There is a secret out there—a painful, well-kept secret: At midlife, between a third and a half of all successful career women in the United States do not have children. In fact, 33% of such women (business executives, doctors, lawyers, academics, and the like) in the 41-to-55 age bracket are childless—and that figure rises to 42% in corporate America. These women have not chosen to remain childless. The vast majority, in fact, yearn for children. Indeed, some have gone to extraordinary lengths to bring a baby into their lives. They subject themselves to complex medical procedures, shell out tens of thousands of dollars, and derail their careers—mostly to no avail, because these efforts come too late. In the words of one senior manager, the typical high-achieving woman childless at midlife has not made a choice but a “creeping nonchoice.”

Executive Women and the Myth of Having It All by Sylvia Ann Hewlett

From the Magazine (April 2002)

A Philosophy of Education by Charlotte Mason

Atmosphere...is thrown off, as it were, from persons and things, stirred by events, sweetened by love, ventilated, kept in motion, by the regulated action of common sense.

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When I was reading this chapter I thought about some issues we’ve had in the building industry here in recent years. The availability of housing hadn’t kept pace with the growth of the population and this led to an upsurge in the building of residential high-rise apartments. Unfortunately, many of these new apartments have been found to have serious defects. Speed of construction, lack of oversight, deregulation and other factors have contributed to this problem. Individuals bought these new apartments only to discover later on that there was a serious water leak or a wall had begun to crack. There was one case a couple of years ago where a whole high-rise apartment block of residents had to be evacuated because of the danger posed to the building by structural defects. In some cases, the construction companies went bankrupt, and the owners were left with no compensation and large bills. They bought in good faith; the building defects were not noticeable until people moved in and pressure was placed on the infrastructure.

‘A confident, balanced life is built on a ‘sure foundation’ with a strong infrastructure (weight-bearing beams.)’

We all need the right sort of stability and as a tree needs its roots, so our everyday lives need a home, a proper ‘place.’ It might not be the home we dreamed of having and we might have to do the best we can with what we have, but nevertheless, the home is the basic building block of society.

We’ve been in our present home for twenty-two years. It was structurally solid when we bought it but regardless, it has been necessary to maintain it. There’s always something that needs to be done but it’s been mostly wear and tear with the occasional upgrade when necessary. All this has taken time and has had a cost.
Making a home takes time too and costs us something.

Aside from an actual building or place, a home is made up of the people in it and they bring about the atmosphere of the home. Although the author starts off with the husband-and-wife relationship, many of the same principles can be applied to other situations.
She discusses some important aspects about the role of husbands in this chapter. She recognises that we live in a flawed world but the basic Judeo-Christian model where the young family has the support and protection of a good father is important. In a life-giving home we share responsibility and serve one another although,

‘Homes work best when someone is the contented keeper of the home life.’

Homemaking takes time and work; it has to take priority over other things. I appreciate that the author doesn’t make hard and fast rules about who does what in the home but looks at homemaking as a team effort with a balance to be found in each individual situation.

‘In the biblical view, when we marry (one man, one woman), the “team leader” has been designated. The structure has a head or leader for as long as this family unit lasts – the husband. We’ve seen that this is not hierarchy in the way we normally think of power structures – that one individual has more worth, insights, or strengths than another. In the family one person accepts the final responsibility for the welfare and good of each member. This is a privilege – and a burden too. In the “prow-of-the-ship” example, a prow gets battered by the force of stormy waves. In families where the husband has died or has abandoned his responsibilities in some way, the woman takes on the “prow-of-the-ship” position. She has to be the shepherd and will suffer a new hardship if the husband’s headship was a reasonably good one.’

Whoever is in this role of leadership is under a higher authority – God’s – so there is no place for tyranny or dictatorship. Unfortunately, leaders, both male and female, have used their positions of authority in domineering, selfish ways. Christians have Jesus who is ‘gentle and humble of heart,’ not just as our model of what servant leadership should look like, but also as a final authority in our lives.

As I was thinking about structural defects in the building industry, I thought about the ‘personal structural defects’ that negatively affect our home lives. Maybe we had a poor example of family life as we were growing up and this has given us a flawed view of home life and relationships. Lack of trust, isolation, sickness, poverty, and even overabundance of material goods, can negatively affect our homes. Relationships need upkeep just as homes do.

‘Just as a seed can be “choked with weeds” so that it cannot mature, our home life can be “choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures.” (Luke 8: 4-15)’

Struggling with too little that is safe, decent and good in the home, or suffocating under the weight of too much of everything, are like the weeds in the parable Jesus told in the Gospel of Luke.

When I went back to Scotland with my husband and two of our children in late 2019, my cousin took us to one of the areas where my Mum grew up. We went to a block of tenements which looked okay at first sight but on getting closer we saw that most of the windows were smashed or boarded up and there was a look of general neglect. My cousin told us that you could purchase an apartment there for a pittance, but they were often inhabited by drug running gangs and nobody would buy them.

I thought this was such a sad waste. How could families survive in such a place?
Communities are important and so are decent living conditions.
If you’ve read Edith Schaeffer’s book L’Abri, you will understand the role that home played in Susan Schaeffer’s life and her belief that our homes shouldn’t be selfishly guarded or allowed to become self-centred places.

‘We’ve been deceived into thinking that our worth has to do with success or status. Both men and women are influenced by this false view of our significance, which leads to a sort of slavery to achievement.
There is a sweetness in a well-lived life that escapes this confusing tyranny…a freedom to be clear about what really matters in life…the freedom to walk in a middle, balanced path, with self-confidence to choose what is best and right in our circumstances.
Such a confident, balanced life is built on a “sure foundation” with a strong infrastructure (weight-bearing beams). This stable life provides the toughness needed to survive the storms.’

There were many ideas in this chapter and what I’ve written is some of what stood out to me. What were your thoughts on this chapter?

Resources

L’Abri by Edith Schaeffer (1969) - the inspirational story of the beginning of L’Abri Fellowship in post-war Switzerland and its ministry of practical hospitality & spiritual direction to those who came through its doors.

In 1955 an American family moved in to a chalet on the side of a steep Swiss Alp. They did not know why God had brought them there, what he wanted them to do, or where the money to live would come from. This is the story of how God led them step by step.

A Kingdom of Tea & Strangers - a free documentary that follows five students at an English L’Abri community. Thanks to for mentioning this!

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Ellis Peters (1913-1995) is a nom de plume used by Edith Pargeter, an English author who wrote prolifically but is probably best known for her murder/mystery Brother Cadfael series. The title of this chapter is taken from her book, Ellis Peter’s Shropshire. Ellis Peters held a Christian worldview. She never married and travelled extensively, but her home in England was her base; the place she always returned to and loved best of all.

“Other places can be where I exult and wonder. This is where I put my feet up and thank God.”

In this chapter, Susan Schaeffer Macaulay speaks into our fast-moving, rushing age, to pause and consider whether it’s worth making some major changes to enable us to be at home in one familiar place – our home, our community and our surroundings.
Is your home a place you enjoy returning to? A place where you put up your feet and feel thankful? Or is it a place you like to escape from?

We didn’t have a lot of holidays as a family. With nine of us it was expensive and difficult to find suitable accommodation for all of us so if we went away it was usually to see family & we’d squeeze in with them. In many ways it was a relief to get home again! Even now that we don’t have nine of us travelling together, and as much as I enjoy new places and long drives, I always appreciate coming home and doing things here that are not part of my usual daily routine. Some people don’t feel they can relax unless they get away from their everyday situations or get out of mobile phone reception where work pressures can’t interrupt them. Getting away isn’t always possible or affordable, but surely some creative thinking can help us navigate around those issues, even if it’s just for a day once a week.

Ellis Peters saw the exotic places she visited not as escapes but as ‘Sunday treats’ or ‘Graces to ornament and vary the basic stability of a weekday life.’ What a lovely description and attitude!

What we believe as individuals and as a culture dictates how we live. Who we are and what we believe is our purpose in this life are the foundations we build upon.

“Homes are not just for couples with children. All of us from babyhood to oldest age, single or married, benefit from the comfort, familiarity, and security of having a real home.”

We all need stability and a sense of community and many varieties of homes for believers have been modelled since ancient biblical times to the present. Ellis Peters, Charlotte Mason, Amy Carmichael, Elizabeth Goudge, John Stott, and C.S. Lewis (for most of his life) were single people who created homes that were rich in life and hospitality – exceptional people we might think, but ‘good enough’ homes can be made by ordinary people. We all have boundaries and limitations but when these are accepted it may be the making of our souls, and a magnanimous and wise life.

“If (homes) are to endure, it means sticking to homemaking when it all seems bleak.”

The rules the Bible gives us were given by the Designer to enable us to live life at its best and not to make us miserable.

‘The only base for life, either as a single person or for marriage (and for any home or community), is the perfectly dependable Jesus Christ.’

I appreciate the author’s realism in that she addresses situations such as marriage breakdowns or where there are limitations of some sort. She stresses the need for community and to avoid isolating ourselves. We need to bear one another’s burdens. The Covid lockdowns pushed people apart and hospitality was one of the casualties. Even now, a few years later, many people haven’t re-entered communal life to the extent they had before Covid. Watching church online isn’t community living. We need to reaffirm our need for one another and that requires an in-person relationship.

Further reading

‘The Heart of the Family’ is the third book in Elizabeth Goudge’s Damerosehay Trilogy. The three books in the trilogy deal with the home, family relationships, moral dilemmas, and the choice between feelings/emotions and duty. They enlarge on some of the content in this chapter of For the Family’s Sake using a fictional story. I wrote about the second book in the series, Pilgrim’s Inn here.

Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry - an older woman reminisces about her life, love & loss, community & belonging:

You mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks.” I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.

Some articles on singleness

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The title of this chapter, ‘Free as a Bird, Dutiful and Humble as the Angels,’ is part of a larger quote by Charlotte Mason which may be found in Essex Cholmondeley’s book, The Story of Charlotte Mason:

‘It is more life and fuller that we want,
That we crave sometimes with a sick craving…
Life of joyous, generous expansion…
free…as a bird’s life’

Macaulay observes that permissive educators would applaud Charlotte Mason’s initial idea of a full life, but they would shrink from the next part of the quote:

‘Life – dutiful and humble as the life of angels’

“Dutiful?” “Humble!” I hear the typical shocked, questioning exclamation. “Surely not. Where does duty come in? Surely I and all persons have a right to our personal choices!…And humble—honestly! Are you suggesting being a doormat? What about self-esteem?”

Duty has become a dirty word. It means doing what is required of us, doing what we ought to do. It limits our choices and we don’t want to have limitations imposed on us!
I’ve read Corrie ten Boom’s book, The Hiding Place, three or four times and am always inspired by her and her sister Betsie’s lives of faithfulness and obedience that prepared them for their ministries during World War 2. The book tells us about their lives beginning with their quiet, dutiful, hidden lives in Holland, to their involvement in the Resistance Movement, and then their capture by the Gestapo and subsequent time in a German Concentration Camp. Betsie didn’t survive the camp but Corrie
did and returned to Holland after the war, where at the age of fifty-three, she began a ministry to those who suffered during the war. Her speaking engagements eventually took her all over the world.

As Macaulay points out, duty and rules is not about legalism. Duty and rules are not designed to crush us but to provide the structure that holds through the storms of life.
When the author was a child, her dad took her and her sister to see the Mississippi River in flood. She remembered looking out across the water with the feeling that she was standing at “the edge of infinity.”

‘To be beautiful, the river needs its boundaries, or the waters actually become like the muddy Mississippi flood. So with our lives.’

Eastern Australia has been hammered by record-breaking rain and widespread flooding this year. It’s not a pretty sight to see submerged roads and houses and people being evacuated from their homes. It causes chaos and distress to those directly affected and has a ripple effect into other areas. When we overextend our moral boundaries and just do what we feel like regardless of anyone else, we don’t just affect our own lives.

‘No one is ever called to design the pattern of right and wrong. We are asked to fit in…To many it would seem that these two balancing sides to life’s path are plain contradictions. But within the Judeo-Christian design, both are essential. Tip over too much on one side or the other in any area of thought or practice, and you get disasters, rather like the flooding of the “free” Mississippi on one hand or the asphyxiation of life by a hard, mindless legality on the other.’

Children growing up today in the same place where Macaulay grew up fifty years ago don’t ride their bikes around the streets by themselves anymore. The neighbourhood school is still there and providing ‘a ray of light’ for many of its students. The children feel safe…a police unit is based in the school near the entrance door:

‘The easy freedom I knew of coming and going without a care in the world is lost as more and more persons do whatever they feel like doing, rather than obeying life’s basic rules.’

Earlier in this chapter, Macaulay tells of the time her parents took her to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. She was seven years old and she ‘met’ Rembrandt’s Night Watch for the first time. Her parents stood back and let her connect with the painting herself. They displayed “Masterly Inactivity.” I touched on this in my post on Chapter 2 that mentioned ‘play based learning.’ Play initiated by adults is totally different from the play that occurs naturally when the adults stand back and don’t interfere.

Masterly Inactivity was an idea that became popular in Britain in the 1860’s. I’ve seen it used occasionally in older novels and it is an idea that was used in medicine and politics. (I’ll post a link below that explain the concept in more detail) It referred to letting things alone, not micromanaging, but also not being indifferent or neglectful. In medical situations the favoured therapeutic method could be just waiting and seemingly doing nothing while being ready to act if need be – ‘first, do no harm!’ In a political situation it might be not rushing in but allowing the parties to sort things out themselves – a ‘wise passiveness.’

‘We ought to do so much for our children, and are able to do so much for them, that we begin to think everything rests with us and that we should never intermit for a moment our conscious action on the young minds and hearts about us. Our endeavours become fussy and restless. We are too much with our children, ‘late and soon.’ We try to dominate them too much, even when we fail to govern, and we are unable to perceive that wise and purposeful letting alone is the best part of education.’

‘They are free under authority, which is liberty; to be free without authority is license…’

-Charlotte Mason

A child who is aware of his parent’s authority; whose parents are confident as to his comings and goings, enjoys freedom. Masterly Inactivity doesn’t happen if the child is not under his parent’s authority. There’s the balance again – authority and freedom.

‘I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.’
John 10:10

Further Reading/Listening

Masterly Inactivity vs. Micromanaging – an interesting podcast

The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom

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Jean Jaques Rousseau (1712-1778) had a profound, continued effect upon parents and education and was one of the few educationalists who made his appeal to parental instincts. BUT!

We all have our inconsistencies, but it must be mentioned that while he wrote much on education, Rousseau sent the five children born to his mistress off to orphanages. His concepts were as utopian personally as they proved to be politically. - Francis Schaeffer

It was Rousseau's ideas that initiated the beginning of French nursery schools in 1771 and later the development of L'Ecole Maternelle, a free State organised and funded school for two- to six-year-olds. When I first looked into this in 2016, attendance was optional. As of September 2019, the French state declared it mandatory for children from the age of 3 years to attend. Charlotte Mason pointed out many years ago that the practice of giving the training of infants into the hands of institutions or 'Maternal Schools,' was a new thing in the history of the world and that even the Spartans left the children to their parents for the first half-dozen years of life!
The idea that early childhood education in an institution is the best environment for young children has become accepted and unquestioned.
Years ago I had a conversation with a young mother who said that before her daughter was born, she didn’t question the fact that her child would go into day care when she reached the age of six weeks, just like all her friends had done with their children, even though she had at least six months of maternity leave after the birth. Then her little girl was born and she suddenly thought, “What am I doing?!” and completely changed her mind.
In For the Family’s Sake, Susan Schaeffer Macaulay shares her own upbringing and argues, along with Charlotte Mason, that home is the best growing ground for children.

‘In this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social, perhaps a mothers first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet growing time, a full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it spent for the most part out in the fresh air.’
Home Education, Pg 44

Although this government plan is for a year of ‘play-based learning,’ it is directed by adults. They are the initiators and directors; the children are the vessels to be filled. This isn’t what Mason meant by a ‘quiet growing time.’

But organised games are not play in the sense we have in view. Boys and girls must have time to invent episodes, carry on adventures, live heroic lives, lay sieges and carry forts, even if the fortress be an old armchair; and in these affairs the elders must neither meddle nor make…There is an idea afloat that children require to be taught to play––to play at being little fishes and lambs and butterflies. No doubt they enjoy these games which are made for them, but there is a serious danger. In this matter the child who goes too much on crutches never learns to walk; he who is most played with by his elders has little power of inventing plays for himself…

We live in a post-Christian culture. How we live each day is based on our beliefs.

‘What will a culture be like when people believe that there is no truth, no purpose, no meaning – that there are no moral absolutes? This kind of thinking devalues life to such an extent that many younger people (and older ones too) now lack motivation and la joie de vivre (the joy of living). Holding this life-denying post-Christian view, many are ignorant of the value and joy of having an everyday life rooted in a home and a community. The ordinary for them becomes boring or like a prison. Is it any wonder such life-cheated persons (for so they are) cannot enjoy simple delights and satisfactions?’ - pg. 29

When a child is removed from a school situation to be taught at home, they often need a ‘detox’ from the institutional setting where learning is regimented by bells and other methods of keeping order. This de-schooling process helps both the child and the parents to settle into a different way of learning, one that weans the student from reliance on external motivation to that of an internal desire to learn for themselves. Children often have to learn how to enjoy the simple things again. They need to be bored sometimes. They won’t die and don’t need to be entertained but should learn how to occupy themselves and get their creative juices flowing.

A quiet growing time…

I was fortunate enough to spend a lot of my time outside when I was a child. My Mum would send me and my sisters outside to play – it helped keep the house clean, but it also gave us a wonderful freedom to explore. Adults knew where we were, and we were easily seen because we lived in a totally flat scrubby area with one hill in the distance which we would climb and slide down on bits of old metal. I never really appreciated those years until I looked back later on. Day care and after school care would have robbed us of this formative time – my Mum worked night shift so it would have been a good excuse to send us off, but she managed and I’m grateful.
I often read about how beneficial early and extra schooling is – all these wonderful professionals (some very good, well-intentioned educators) who know best what children need, much more than parents do. Susan Schaeffer Macaulay recognised that her childhood home was a very great and godly gift, but she also points out that her legacy did not come from perfect parents.

‘…perfect parents could not prepare us for a life that is to be full of our own and other people’s failings.’

‘In such a diverse world, to be good growing places or living places homes must adapt to actual persons, places, and situations. There is no one model. But certain qualities will be found in all these good-enough homes…’

She touches on an important point in the last paragraph of this page where she notes that although she had a secure childhood, her life was not the scene of ease and plenty that people expect today.
Some young people often want what their parents took decades to have. I was sixteen when my parents bought their first home. My husband and I bought or were given secondhand furniture for years. We rarely went out for meals unless we were doing a long road trip and then it was a short stop at MacDonalds because their food was affordable at that time, and they had clean toilets. It’s only been in the past couple of years that the two of us have been going out for coffee. We rarely did anything like that for over 30 years.

‘…it is in the family home that children can best be seen for what they are – persons.’

This reminded me of something my flat mate observed years ago, before we were both married. She’d been to the home of a largish family for dinner – kids that she had labelled as ‘feral’ in other settings – but in their own home she saw a different side to them. They were settled and secure and she actually enjoyed their company.

There’s much I haven’t touched on in this chapter, but these were the main thoughts I had. What stood out to you?

Some inspiring posts on home life:

Coffee Tea Books and Me: Sunday Afternoon Tea – Our homes as a reflection of our God-given calling

Jenny of ELEFANTZ: The woman who inspired me…

Book Suggestions

Endangered Minds by Jane Healy - an older book that dedicates a chapter to why children can’t pay attention and the benefits of free play.

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto

Boys Adrift by Leonard Sax - the author explores five factors driving the growing epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving young men: changes in education, video games, ADHD medication, environmental toxins, and the loss of positive role models. An important book, especially if you have boys, or if you teach them.

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About three years ago I hosted a book study of For the Family’s Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay on my WordPress blog. As that blog is no longer active, I’m transferring it here to Substack. This is the Introduction, Preface, and thoughts on Chapter 1.

Susan Schaeffer Macaulay grew up in Switzerland at L’Abri Fellowship, which was founded by her parents Francis and Edith Schaeffer. She and her husband Ranald Macaulay established and led the L’Abri branch in England for several years. She is best known for her book For the Children’s Sake which helped to bring the ideas of the 19th Century educational philosopher, Charlotte Mason, to a new generation. The author also contributed to Books Children Love and When Children Love to Learn.
For the Family’s Sake focusses on the value of home in everyone’s life, married or single; divorced or widowed.
Years ago, Edith Schaeffer wrote about family life in a way that helped me rethink and understand the importance of ‘home’ after the fallout from my parent’s divorce. Her daughter’s book, first published in 1999, speaks into our modern lives, into our busy digital society, to give us a vision and blueprint for ‘home’ at a time when it seems to be eroding.
Macaulay’s idea of ‘home’ is one of beauty, attainable and realistic. I appreciate that she understands that life can be hard, but doesn’t let that be an excuse to give up and become bitter about not having the life we might dream about.

There are fourteen chapters in this 286-page book. Some are quite short but others are a fair bit longer. My plan is to read approximately one chapter per week, write about it when I’ve finished, and generate some discussion about what we’ve read. I’m not going to be rigid about the chapter per week but that’s my initial aim. A particularly long chapter can be spread over two weeks.
If you’ve read this book before, feel free to add your insights. It’s been a long time since I first read it, and I’m surprised that considering the popularity of For the Children’s Sake that this book isn’t as well known. It deserves to be, and I hope in a small way to bring it to the attention of more people.

Some reflections on the Preface and Chapter 1. Unless noted otherwise, quotations are from the book.

The concept of ‘home’ and ‘home maker’ is in many ways being relegated to history.
We all need a fresh look at what we’re aiming for at home. We need to discover a balance in our practical lives that is life-giving and works well.

‘Is it worthwhile to give generous time and energy to the home. Is it necessary? And what should the home look like?

What do the most vulnerable of persons, little children, need?
Are homes just a temporary arrangement for the care and development of children?'

Who Needs a Home?

In 2013, Moth and Raynor Winn, a couple in their early fifties, lost the home they had shared for over twenty years. They had spent those years bringing up two children and rebuilding a ruined farmhouse and its surrounding land in Wales. It had been their home and their livelihood, but a failed financial investment left them liable for debts and they lost everything. On top of all that, just a day later, Moth was diagnosed with a terminal illness, corticobasal degeneration (CBD).
They were homeless.
The Salt Path is Raynor Winn’s account of how they coped with their dilemma, which was to walk the 630-mile Southwest Coast Path of England, camping in the wild and surviving on a small allowance which hardly covered the cost of their food.
Who needs a home? The Winns certainly did. The walk was only a temporary solution.

As Susan Schaeffer Macaulay observed, if you were to ask a miserable refugee that question, they would think it a question not worth answering.

'What is a tree without its roots held deeply in the soil? What is a cup without a saucer? What are letters if they aren’t put into words and sentences? What is a child’s life like if there is no home and no family to belong to?'

For The Family’s Sake addresses these questions and many more. Home is not just for families. Single people of all ages, divorced, widowed, empty nesters; we all need a home.

I’ve never been homeless, but I have been rootless.
In my teens I lived for a while in a caravan with six other members of my family. It was a roof over our heads but it wasn’t a home. Later I spent about a year travelling around Australia, basically living in my van. Although I told myself I was a free spirit, I was really running away. I didn't want to be tethered - that sounded boring - but I learned the hard way that I needed stability and relationships.
When I became a Christian at 19, I began to sense that I needed to be tethered; to have some sort of continuity in my life. I had to learn to make a home wherever I was. To have some sort of continuity in my life.

A Utopian view that ‘when we can afford a bigger/nicer/better home…then we will take steps to put down roots;' romantic dreams that dissipate in the cold light of day; the ‘If only…’ excuse, can lead to bitterness and hopelessness:

‘If only I were married.’
‘If only I were married to another person.’
‘If only we could leave this miserable home and have a nice place.’
If only my spouse had not died/left me?

Homes are for everybody - single persons or families with children, young or old, people with good jobs or bad ones. Homes are not a romantic idea to dream about wistfully; homemaking needs to be put into practice as a priority. A good home life is too basic a human need to whine and fuss about with the plaintive words, “if only.”

Unrealistic expectations may cause dissatisfaction with simple basics. We need to ask what ingredients make up a good home.
Macauley points out that a mixture of common sense, realism, and traditions have worked in the past and we should look at how different kinds of people have made a success of life. 'Our needs haven’t changed but today we have overcomplicated and stressed our lives, minds and bodies with the “too much” that we have lost a “pearl of great price”: the basics of wholesome everyday life at home. A balanced life.’

May we all live rooted and generous lives!

Some questions to consider:

• How much do commercial and social media pressures mislead me and breed discontent?

• Am I making excuses for not working at my everyday life? (“If only I had more money;” I didn’t have a good childhood model.”)

• Is homemaking a priority? Am I putting in the thought and action to create a welcoming home?

• What 'if only' is preventing me from creating a balanced home life?

• Is there something practical I can do in the next week to put some good patterns into place? Some 'if only' I can delete from my thinking?

One of the most important aspects of life is the home. And then communities of homes.

Have I put down roots where I’m living? Do I belong to a broader community? I read The Salt Path with a couple of friends and what surprised us all was the couple's lack of a broader community that could have stepped in and helped them. My reading friends and I are all connected to churches and extended families who would make space for us.
Community and hospitality are areas that Schaeffer explores later on in the book. It’s something I feel strongly about because as a single person, I was made welcome in a home that opened its doors to me. A family who barely knew me made me one of them when I was rootless and alone.

I'm finding that even though I've read For the Family's Sake before, there are so many ideas to mull over. I had six children under twelve when I first read this book and we had just moved from a home we'd been in for ten years. I was shocked that I felt so uprooted when we left. Over those ten years I'd put down roots, we'd been part of a local community and six of our seven children had been born while we there. Roots don't establish themselves overnight and it's important not to give up when relationships and community take a while to develop. Roots are amazingly tenacious and create disruption when pulled up. We all need to put roots down in order that we may grow and be nourished.

Further Reading

L’ Abri by Edith Schaeffer - ‘In 1955 an American family moved into a chalet on the side of a steep Swiss alp. They did not know exactly why God had brought them there, what He wanted them to do, or even where the money to live on would come from. But He began opening doors, and people with questions about life's meaning began finding the way to their home.’

The Hidden Art of Homemaking by Edith Schaeffer (Bethany @ is hosting a seasonal slow-read of this book)

For the Children’s Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay

The Salt Path by Raynor Winn - a personal account of a couple who became homeless overnight and the attitudes they encountered. It's a look into the hidden homeless; the 'ordinary' people who are forced out on to the streets due to a change in circumstances.

Fictional Books with a Heart for the Home

The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher - I loved this story of how a father and mother didn't let cultural norms rule them but found a solution to how they could best nurture their children.

Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton - some of my thoughts on a part of this book that shows the importance of 'feeding our children only on things worth caring for,' and that the best atmosphere is made and not bought. Very refreshing.

The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder - fictionalised stories of the author's life that shows how her mother made do in difficult circumstances.

The Hobbit by J.R. Tolkien

Pilgrim’s Inn by Elizabeth Goudge - many of this author’s books are centred around home & belonging.

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Macaulay’s book introduces us to the life and work of Charlotte Mason (1842-1923). Mason’s philosophy of education wasn’t just for a certain time and a particular culture but is an enduring legacy that may be applied in the here and now.

When I first read For the Children’s Sake in 1988, home education was practically invisible here in Australia, but in the last 36 years it has been growing steadily and now Charlotte Mason’s work is readily available thanks to the work of the Ambleside Online creators and others such as Charlotte Mason Poetry who freely share resources on Mason’s method and her principles.

From the founding in 1887 of the Parents National Education Union (PNEU), Mason’s influence has steadily grown. At the age of sixteen, Charlotte Mason was orphaned and poor. Now her educational method is being put into practice in many parts of the world, in homes and schools. The PNEU’s motto, given by Mason as an encouragement to rise above the faults and weaknesses to higher things in the formation of habits,* states:

“I am, I can, I ought, I will.”

I am, I ought, I can, I will'––these are the steps of that ladder of St. Augustine, whereby we

                    "rise on stepping stones
     Of our dead selves to higher things."

'I am'––we have the power of knowing ourselves. 'I ought'––we have within us a moral judge, to whom we feel ourselves subject, and who points out and requires of us our duty. 'I can'––we are conscious of power to do that which we perceive we ought to do. 'I will'––we determine to exercise that power with a volition which is in itself a step in the execution of that which we will.

I am - a person should know about their worth, that he is accepted and valued; be realistic and accept his/her limitations. This is the basis for loving, accepting and serving others. Being truthful about our own knowledge & intellectual limitations allows the fresh air of truth and openness to reach our children & help them accept themselves.

We hinder the child’s assurance of his worth…when we set up artificial development schedules into which we try to cram the child grade by grade. The program then matters more than the child…

We really do have to try to get away from our success-consumed society where people bolster their selfish egos by comparing their achievements as being better than someone else’s. (FTCS pg. 149)

As home educators there is a temptation to advertise our ‘‘successes.’’ Our child was accepted into a prestigious university, or entered university at age 12 etc. I read comments by a home educator who compared the reactions of others to two of her children. One of her daughters was very academic, worked hard and was accepted into university to study something very elite. Everyone praised her achievements & congratulated her mother. However, her sister was an exquisite needleworker, but her work was overlooked and not valued in the same way. Her mother recognised her daughter’s ability & achievement but it was not that valued by others. I’m all for children doing their best and being acknowledged for their efforts, but every child is unique and has their own abilities and I would say vocation. They are not all going to be highly academic but that shouldn’t make them feel less a person. We need skilled carpenters, plumbers and cleaners. We need good farmers, scientists and surgeons. The issue is that ‘Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for (the approval of) others.’ (Colossians 3:23) As Macaulay points out…

We allow peer pressure in this materialistic and godless culture to become like a row of vultures, judging the child with beady eyes.

I Can - some people feel they can, others feel they can’t. Parents and teachers have the responsibility to build up children by helping them turn into ‘‘can’’ people. Sometimes we have to nudge our children. One of my sons was learning to play the double bass. He already played the electric bass and acoustic guitar, so I organised an audition with the youth orchestra where his older sister played the violin. He was not keen as he didn’t think he was good enough. They welcomed him with open arms - double bass players are fairly scarce - and he quickly gained confidence and joked that he was the leader of his section (his was the one and only double-bass). He would never have taken the step on his own, but he just needed to get over the hump of ‘‘I can’t” and experience the freedom of ‘‘I can.”

I Ought - ‘‘ought’’ isn’t a word we like to use; it’s like ‘‘duty’’ and in a world where ‘‘I want’’ is much more common and acceptable, it isn’t very attractive. We don’t impose arbitrary standards and we need to understand behaviour that is appropriate at certain ages and stages in a child’s life so we don’t discourage them. We don’t ask ‘‘What do I/you want?’’ but we need to ask ‘‘What is right?’’ and then determine what we ought to do.

I Will - once we understand what is right, we can then choose what is right.

The adult can ease right-doing by making basic patterns habitual. Consider this: would you be willing to cut off the brainwashing of the media to help the child? No or little TV? Giving your home so much vitality, life, through your creative time and effort that it becomes the ‘‘center of gravity’’ in the child’s life? (FTCS pg. 152)

Home as the centre of gravity means that it has more influence than peer pressure!

A man is no more than the strength of his will. The will's job is to choose. We can find all kinds of ways to get out of committing to a decision, but our duty is to 'choose this day whom ye will serve.' There are two ways we can go: we can serve God and others, or we can serve ourselves…And serving ourselves takes no act of resolved will.

'Choose ye this day' applies just as much to the thoughts we allow to nest in our minds…Having a strong, firm will doesn't happen because one day we resolve it. It is the result of a long, ordered education in which we receive guidelines and examples from the thoughts and lives of great men in history and in our own time…Training the will is a long process, but the moment of decision is instantaneous, and the will acts voluntarily. Therefore, the object of education must be to prepare us for those immediate choices and voluntary actions that will face us every day.

This chapter concludes with the idea that we all have limitations and problems; nothing in this world is 100 percent whole, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t do what we can. I love Susan Schaeffer Macaulay’s concern for disadvantaged children. Wherever we are we may make a difference in a child’s life - and not just in our own children. It’s easy to become unmotivated if we focus on the ‘‘I can’t’’ rather than on what we ‘‘can’’ do. Our child might have to go to a less than ideal school but we could read to them. We might not live in the countryside but we could visit a park.

Something that Charlotte Mason expressed but I don’t think is generally understood is that all education is self-education. We provide nourishment to the child but it is his/her job to learn. Mason’s work with children in the industrial slums of England proved this time and again. We don’t undervalue the child but provide relationships & mental nourishment and let the child do his own growing.

The last three pages of this book discuss Parental Liberty in Education and was written by a constitutional lawyer. It’s an important fundamental right that we should keep in mind.

*When Children Love to Learn, 2004, Elaine Cooper, General Editor, pg. 88

History

Mason believed that History was a vital part of education & we need to know what's happened before our time so that we can be accurate judges of what's going on today. To offer a liberal and generous diet of History to children helps to give weight to their decisions, make their actions well-reasoned and their conduct stable. She linked unrest in a society to a lack of stability in its people.

Our aim in teaching history should be honesty and knowledge of the truth. We make a mistake when we translate the past into our own terms. History isn’t simple.

It is a great thing to possess a pageant of history in the background of one's thoughts. We may not be able to recall this or that circumstance, but, 'the imagination is warmed'; we know that there is a great deal to be said on both sides of every question and are saved from crudities in opinion and rashness in action. The present becomes enriched for us with the wealth of all that has gone before.

• History should be taught chronologically and literature should tie in with the period studied where possible

• Give the child leisure to explore an age in detail; choose a period of history that actually introduces them to the people who lived then

• Include source material as much as possible e.g. books, artifacts, maps, diaries

• Use narrative living history books - I wrote about living books here; get the child to narrate after a reading

• Have the child make a graphic portrayal to help with chronological details (around age 9/10 years), draw & label maps. Some examples:

The quotation below is from a Parents review article I read that discusses the use of fiction in history and from what I've seen in my own children it certainly rings true.

History should narrate truth. Can fiction, such as the historical novel, be in any sense an aid to truth? I think so, with proper selections and under proper guidance. Fiction kindles the imagination, awakens interest, and secures attention; it is the most pleasing form of narration and it need not sacrifice a truthful impression.

What children remember is the characters of the leading actors, their part in the movement, its issue, and the general picture of the period.

My kids love history and have read copious amounts of G.A, Henty, Rosemary Sutcliff, Cynthia Harnett, Sir Walter Scott, and other historical fiction writers and this has given them good background knowledge for works of historical nonfiction. I noticed this when it came to them reading Churchill's A History of the English-Speaking Peoples which can be difficult unless you have some knowledge of English history.

Literature

‘We must remember to separate the teaching of the reading skill from that of the place of true literature in the child’s curriculum.’ FTCS, Pg. 111

Literature gives us the opportunity of developing relationships with other people, places and times. It furnishes our minds with the kind of imaginative impressions that come from wide reading and some familiarity with historic precedents. Literature enables us to get into the other man’s shoes.

Home education allows a non-reader to experience this kind of relationship with the past by being read to. A non-reader or one who isn’t fluent enough to read well, isn’t confined to dumbed down versions of history, or any other ‘subject’ for that matter. Children should be given the best literature.

Moral & Citizenship

Plutarch, read aloud by the parent/teacher, was introduced to children around the age of 10 years. I wrote an article for Afterthoughts some years ago about using Plutarch’s Lives. Charlotte Mason placed the study of Plutarch under the umbrella of citizenship & morals. Plutarch doesn’t label the actions of his people as good or bad but leaves it to his readers to make that judgement. Anne White has written free guides for the study of Plutarch which can be used with children aged about 10 years and up.

Macaulay discusses the differences we face now when it comes to morals compared to the times in which Charlotte Mason lived. My eldest and youngest are 16 years apart and there are moral issues in our culture now that I never dreamed of having to think about with my older kids. Whatever educational situation we choose for our children, we need to give them a centre of gravity away from the current secular culture.

Composition

• Children respond to each subject with a narration; in the younger years this is done orally i.e. oral composition

• Early writing shouldn’t be hindered by worry about details such as spelling & punctuation

• Oral narration starts at 6 years of age - the parent/teacher listens to the child’s re-tellings; written narration begins about 9/10 years of age (some children will be ready sooner, others later)

• The child interacts with the author & makes his own connections; we don’t have to set up activities to do this for them

Art & Music

One of the main aims for including Art and Music in the curriculum is that of cultivating the aesthetic sense. Six reproductions by a single artist are chosen and studied over a period of about 12 weeks. The child looks at one, observing it closely, the picture is then turned face down & the child describes what he saw. Then he turns it over and checks the picture again. This is called ‘picture study.’ Over the course of a term they will become familiar with the artist’s style. A sketch from memory is also something that was practiced. When I introduced Marc Chagall’s work to my youngest daughter and she did some artwork & a sculpture in response.

Music appreciation is a part of a Charlotte Mason education regardless of whether a child plays an instrument or not. Good music is chosen and listened to. Beethoven, Mendelsohn, Bach…Hymns & folksongs are introduced as well.

Science

Where science does not teach a child to wonder and admire it has perhaps no educative value. 

A Philosophy of Education by Charlotte Mason

'I sincerely believe that for the child, and for the parent seeking to guide him, it is not half so important to know as to feel. If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil. Once the emotions have been aroused - a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and unknown, a feeling of sympathy, pity, admiration or love - then we wish for knowledge about the object of our emotional response. Once found, it has lasting meaning. It is more important to pave the way for the child to want to know than to put him on a diet of facts he is not ready to assimilate.'

- Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder, 1956

• Science begins with nature study - children learn to observe & pay attention. ‘‘You see, but you do not observe.” - Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson

• Like other parts of the curriculum living books are used where possible; science textbooks have a place depending on their quality; narrative science books include biographies of scientists, inventors etc.

• Outdoor life is encouraged; children keep a nature notebook (see my blog post for images of notebooks kept in Charlotte Mason schools)

…the teaching of science in our schools has lost much of its educative value through a fatal and quite unnecessary divorce between science and the 'humanities.'

'...as science took a technological turn and as education began preparing students for work rather than for leisure, for the factory rather than for the parlor, the school itself came to resemble the factory, losing its idiosyncratic, intimate, and moral character...’ - David Hicks, Norms & Nobility

Geography

Current events, history, literature, travel & adventure books are intertwined with the study of geography. A couple of fairly recent geography-related books that we enjoyed & which intertwined with history were Prisoners of Geography & the author’s follow up book, The Power of Geography, published in 2021

Choose books which breathe life into real people living in these different places. There are many good stories that can relate to the study of geography. Let the children study good maps…Let them draw and describe the reading…FTCS, pg. 141

Physical Development & Handicrafts

• It’s not a luxury to become & stay fit. We are to see it as a duty for not just our children but ourselves; make it a part of your life

• Mason was unusual for her time as she advocated that boys and girls should share the same activities both physically and in handicraft and work

• Life skills - cooking, working with various materials, caring for the home, looking after animals

• Handicrafts and life skills take time and intentionality, but they are just as important as all the other things we teach. A friend of mine said that she wasn’t required to help out at home during her teen years. Her mum said her study was more important, so she never learnt to look after a home, cook, clean, mend, etc. She was quite unprepared for motherhood & regretted her lack in these areas

I haven’t covered everything in this chapter but we have one more chapter to go through and then I’ll provide some links that are more specific to the different topics we’ve covered. For the Children’s Sake is an introduction to Charlotte Mason & her method. Her six volumes are free to read online and reading them is the best way to understand and implement her method. (The Topical Charlotte Mason Series has been put into modern English and might be a good place to start.) If there’s anything in particular you would like me to elaborate on, let me know in the comments or by replying directly to this email.

A PDF of this article may be downloaded here.

It’s well to remember that education is taking place during all of the waking hours and is not limited to between certain hours. Macaulay emphasizes throughout her book that it is the balance of the entire offering which counts and even if a child has to attend a mediocre school, there are ways that parents and others may play an important role in providing possibilities for a child to build relationships with a vast number of things & thoughts.

Charlotte Mason’s view of education doesn’t see children as blank slates upon which we imprint ideas, impressions & knowledge, but neither does it mean that we should we leave them unattended like weeds growing beside a pavement. She believed that All children should have a broad education; that this was not just for the elite, the academically inclined or the gifted child.

‘A child should not be left to stumble upon educational material by chance. Charlotte Mason took great care to provide a wide variety of curriculum. Otherwise the child will be deprived of the best in ideas, culture, literature, science, etc.’

Charlotte Mason believed there are three sorts of knowledge proper to a child: the knowledge of God, the knowledge of Man and the knowledge of the Universe.

Knowledge of God

Mason believed that this ranks first in importance in a child’s life, but that it needs to be lived rather than imposed upon a child. (See A Philosophy of Education)

The Essence of Christianity is Loyalty to a Person.––Christ, our King. Here is a thought to unseal the fountains of love and loyalty, the treasures of faith and imagination, bound up in the child. The very essence of Christianity is personal loyalty, passionate loyalty to our adorable Chief. We have laid other foundations––regeneration, sacraments, justification, works, faith, the Bible––any one of which, however necessary to salvation in its due place and proportion may become a religion about Christ and without Christ.

There were things I just accepted as ‘right’ when I was growing up because I saw that my Mum & Dad either did them or didn’t do them. They didn’t have to explicitly teach me some of this stuff because they lived it. Their values were passed on through our relationship. As parents, we are responsible for putting the child into direct contact with the One who communicated with us.

Macaulay gives some ideas on how to do this without wearying a child e.g. discussing ideas together, putting children in touch with other Christians by reading interesting biographies and books, including literature that expresses the dilemma of the non-Christian. She shares aspects of her life that helped her growing up in a missionary setting: a grounding in God’s Word; seeing her parents daring to trust God; answered prayers; talking about real questions people have; meeting all sorts of people; listening to the logic of the Christian ideas as they were discussed and seeing where the ideas of the other point of view led.

Charlotte Mason gives this advice which is especially important for our children as they mature:

Lay the foundations of their faith…they should know fully in Whom they have believed, and what are the grounds of their belief. Put earnest, intellectual works into their hands. Let them feel the necessity of bracing up every power of mind they have to gain comprehension of the breadth and the depth of the truths they are called to believe. Let them not grow up with the notion that Christian literature consists of emotional appeals, but that intellect, mind, is on the other side. Supply them with books of calibre to give the intellect something to grapple with––an important consideration, for the danger is, that young people in whom the spiritual life is not yet awakened should feel themselves superior to the vaunted simplicity of Christianity.

Emotional appeals are not strong enough to stand up against life’s difficulties when they come along. This applies to all of us. My own faith started with an emotional bang, which I believe I needed at the time, but it had to be hammered out intellectually over time as well.

An allegory such as Little Pilgrim’s Progress presents truth to children in a way they can grasp. My daughter-in-law read a lovely, HB illustrated edition written by Helen Taylor and illustrated by Joe Sutphin to our three and five-year-old grandsons and they hung on every word.

How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture by Francis Schaeffer is a book we used with all of our children when they were in their teens. The author traces key moments in the history of Western culture and the thinking of the people behind those moments in order to shed light on modern times. Schaeffer draws on his study of theology, philosophy, history, sociology and the arts in this work.

‘…we live in a time when our culture is all-invading, all-persuasive. The population, as a whole, is led like a pig with a ring in its snout. Unthinking opinions are the order of the day. The consensus of opinion is more important that what is right or true…We live in a passive age. “Let the experts decide” about the ethics of abortion, the practices of the educational system, the legality of family laws.

It is an imperative priority, as never before, to allow our children to learn to think, understand, and see the central truths quite explicitly and clearly. This is a central part of the “Christian” aspect of our education.’ Pg 101 FTCS

The God Who is There is another of Schaeffer’s books that is suitable for older students.

C.S. Lewis has been a favourite author in our home both for his fictional and nonfictional work which is intellectual but also very accessible. E.g. The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity.

How to be Your Own Selfish Pig...and Other Ways You've Been Brainwashed by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay - a very readable & practical introduction to Christian apologetics.

Knowledge of Man

Charlotte Mason goes into detail regarding this – six chapters in her final volume, A Philosophy of Education. She covers History, Literature, Morals & Economics: Citizenship, Composition, Languages (English, Grammar) & Art. Before I continue with the some of these details, it’s important to understand what Charlotte Mason meant by the term, ‘Living Books,’ because she required them to be used all across the curriculum.

One of the foundational ideas in a Charlotte Mason education is that just as children need food for their bodies to grow & develop, so they need ‘food’ for their minds. This food comes through ideas. Ideas are sparks of truth passed from a great thinker to another mind. Ideas come via living books.

What are Living Books?

Books that are well written and full of living ideas about its subject. They ought to be the best books, written by someone who is deeply interested in their subject. They may be fiction or non-fiction and should spark the imagination. Non-Fiction books that are living are usually written in a narrative or story form.

How to Know if a Book is Living

Read a chapter & ask:

·       Is the writing of excellent quality?

·       Does it contain living ideas and knowledge suitable for the child?

·       Does it make an impact on the reader's mind (shown by his narrations)?

·       Can you narrate (tell) about what you’ve read?

Nonfiction books such as history, geography, nature, religion or science that we use with children should be living books. The food children need for their minds is knowledge & it should be presented in literary language. There needs to be a great variety of well-planned and disciplined reading. We don’t use a scattergun approach in educating a child, where we just follow what a child wants.

The books we use shouldn’t be Twaddle; goody-goody sort of stuff – writing that’s beneath a child, dumbed down, (that’s like feeding a child junk food – it spoils their appetite for the nutritious food they need) but should feed the child’s spirit – their thoughts, feelings or soul.

If a child tends to consume mostly high adventure stories, it’s a bit like feeding them chillies or food that is too spicy - it deadens the taste buds for regular food.

A book doesn’t have to be old to be worthwhile (although books such as children’s classic literature that have survived the passage of time are usually living) but not all old books are.

Just because a book is Christian doesn’t mean it’s worthwhile.

Children sometimes choose books in the same way they’d choose food if left to their own devices. They pick the junk - lollies & chips instead of a nourishing meal.

In a Charlotte Mason education it’s up to the parent/teacher to choose which books to use.

Children need to develop their mental muscles so the books we use should challenge them. They must dig for their knowledge. Digging is hard work and requires a level of fitness. If a book is difficult and they push back about reading it, we might need to take a bit more time and persevere with it to increase their ‘fitness levels.’ The idea is to challenge but not crush them.

I’m specifically talking here about the books we use for ‘lessons.’ Easy books are helpful & are great for reading practice or leisure.

Books that only provide facts and not living ideas (information rather than knowledge) are like giving your child a meal of sawdust. Living books are ‘padded’ or clothed in literary language. This is also true of science books & is especially important in the primary/elementary school years. For a slightly expanded version of this and some ideas on reading aloud to children I’ve put together this PDF.

On page 105 of FTCS, Macaulay applies the three instruments of education to the Knowledge of God. Relationships are meant to be living and of course, this applies to our relationship with God. There isn’t a three-step programme we use with our children to achieve this and while it is necessary to lay foundations (regeneration, sacraments, justification, works, faith, the Bible) a religion about Christ and without Christ is not a relationship.

A PDF of this article may be downloaded here.

Charlotte Mason’s search for a true education began when she was a young teacher and her growth as an educational philosopher continued on throughout her life. Unlike many others involved in educational reforms who discount the role of parents, Mason’s ‘immediate and lifelong work was in the first place for parents and children.’ She recognized the profound effect of the home on a child’s life; that education begins at birth and that ‘maternal love is the first agent in education.’

In this chapter of FTCS, Macaulay goes back over some of the ground she covered in previous chapters so that we may step back and look at Mason’s ideas from another vantage point.

In her search for a true education, Charlotte Mason’s first professional work as a teacher stripped her of many previous assumptions. She was young and enthusiastic but was troubled by the depressing sense of labouring at education in the dark. (See Home Education, pp. 98-100 for her thoughts on why this was so.)

Charlotte Mason’s experience showed her that education needs to supplement the weakness of will that afflicts not only children, but the rest of us as well. What was needed was a ‘working philosophy of education.’ On pages 61-64 of FTCS, there is a short synopsis of the Mason’s educational philosophy (taken from Mason’s own writing) that serves as a plan and guide for a better educational practice. These are her basic principles. There are many voices that tell us how to practice Mason’s method in our homes but many of them are just adding practices such as nature study or handicrafts to whatever else they’re doing without understanding the why, i.e. the philosophy behind it all.

Macaulay spends some time on Mason’s 4^th principle that states that the personality of children must not be encroached upon by fear, love, suggestion, influence, or undue play upon any one natural desire. Dorothy Whipple gives an instructive example of this in her 1943 novel, They Were Sisters, in which a father so dominated his daughter’s personality (in the name of love) that the girl’s character was totally undermined.

One of the greatest dangers of strong adults is that they can encourage children to be weak or even parasites. (FTCS p. 67)

Suggestion, personal influence, playing upon the natural desires of power and ambition can be used to manipulate children, to their detriment. Knowledge should be pursued for its own sake. Children can be led into excellence and be motivated by the sheer love of learning. Macaulay offers some suggestions towards this:

· Involve the child in real life – in the kitchen, in the garden; involve them with a wide cross section of people.

· Look at the material first – learning shouldn’t be dreary, artificial, repetitious and stripped of life. Children’s minds and imaginations should be captured; they should be fed with ideas from ‘living books.’ (More on that in the next chapter.)

· Look at the use of time – children want to get at real life so teach skills for their own sake; have a wide curriculum; keep lessons short.

We are limited to three educational instruments: the atmosphere of environment, the discipline of habit, and the presentation of living ideas…education is an atmosphere, a discipline and a life.

The Atmosphere of Environment

Marion Berry, a former headmistress of an English Charlotte Mason school, said that atmosphere is, “that subtle and difficult third part of education. Discipline and life, these can be transplanted carefully, but ‘atmosphere’ can only be built up…” *

Atmosphere has to do with relationships. If you’ve ever scrolled through Instagram posts from Charlotte Mason home educators you’ve probably seen curated photos of beautifully presented ‘school rooms,’ home libraries, teatime set ups arrayed with poetry books, pretty china and enticing edibles (not that I don’t like these things but we don’t need them to create an atmosphere.) We think if we can just get the right ‘look,’ the most popular homeschool curriculum, certain products, colour-coordinated, of course, we will have created an educational atmosphere of quality.  Of the three educational instruments we are limited to, education as an atmosphere generally appeals to us the most. 'Look after the environment (the externals) and education will look after itself,' is a comforting thought.

Get the ‘atmosphere’ right and education will drop into our children’s lives without too much effort from us. The environment we create is the evidence that education is taking place - so we think. But these are all just externals that we have transplanted into our homes.

What we often think of as atmosphere is really environment, i.e. our physical surroundings, and Charlotte Mason observed that children brought up upon ‘environment’ soon begin to show signs of inanition (lethargy, lack of healthy curiosity and an inability to pay attention).
Parents and teachers need to make sensible use of a child’s circumstances i.e. atmosphere: the non-physical things that influence us. Such as relationships within the home, the words that we speak, the time we spend with our children – these don’t depend on how much money we have or our home decor.

Edith Wharton describes a home atmosphere in her book, Glimpses of the Moon, which was published in 1922, a year before Charlotte Mason died. In the story, Suzy, a young woman going through a potential separation after only a year of marriage, was asked to look after the five Fulmer children for three months while their parents were in Italy.

'Take care of five Fulmers for three months! The prospect cowed her… But in these rough young Fulmers she took a positive delight, and for reasons that were increasingly clear to her. It was because, in the first place, they were all intelligent; and because their intelligence had been fed only on things worth caring for. However inadequate Grace Fulmer’s bringing-up of her increasing tribe had been, they had heard in her company nothing trivial or dull: good music, good books and good talk had been their daily food, and if at times they stamped and roared and crashed about like children unblessed by such privileges, at others they shone with the light of poetry and spoke with the voice of wisdom.

That had been Susy’s discovery: for the first time she was among awakening minds which had been wakened only to beauty. From their cramped and uncomfortable household Grace and Nat Fulmer had managed to keep out mean envies, vulgar admirations, shabby discontents; above all the din and confusion the great images of beauty had brooded, like those ancestral figures that stood apart on their shelf in the poorest Roman households.'

Our circumstances may have their limitations but if we feed our children on things worth caring about and understand that education is the science of relationships, these often intangible aspects of our lives are the things that bring beauty.

We can make a fake environment that looks great in an Instagram feed but we can’t fake a healthy and loving atmosphere. When we understand this, all the environmental enticements thrust in our faces won’t make us feel we’re second-rate parents and educators. It will also make life simpler.

Atmosphere...is thrown off, as it were, from persons and things, stirred by events, sweetened by love, ventilated, kept in motion, by the regulated action of common sense.

Macaulay points out that even if a child has a limited curriculum and access to limited educational resources but has a teacher who takes pleasure in the books that are used, this was better than being in a well-equipped soulless place. She encourages us to test the atmosphere of any place where our children will be spending time and to ask some important questions. (p.74)

Education is a Discipline

It’s been said that education is the formation of habits and it is our duty to help our child to have the right habits. Habits of attention, concentration, communication, truthfulness, self-control, unselfishness, obedience…we educate our child from babyhood into healthy habits or unhelpful ones and each day we are forming these habits either actively or passively.

Children are mirrors in many ways. They reveal our characters and force us to face what’s in our hearts. This is one reason why habit training is hard. There’s a verse of Scripture I often lean into: ‘Endure hardship as discipline.’ (Hebrews 12:7) Acquiring a habit you don’t have takes patience and endurance, but what you endure disciplines you.

We fall into habits naturally because habit runs on the lines of nature and grows strong with exercise. So a child who is naturally lazy will get lazier if the opposite habit isn’t laid down. Our work as parents and teachers is to lay down lines of habit, like railway tracks, so that our children’s lives will run smoothly, in the right direction, with the minimum of effort.

· Routines form habits; children love routine & it provides a framework. Morning & evening routines, mealtimes; story time.

· Inattention & a wandering mind can be the result of a chaotic educational setting, uninteresting material, long days inside and the overuse of screens.

· Children may be uncommunicative because of busy parents or a hectic family life, being with large groups of children, being with people who are uninterested in them as persons.

Education is a Life

Habit and discipline are not enough. Just as children need a balanced diet for proper growth they also need to be fed spiritually and mentally. A deficiency of B vitamins can lead to severe neurological problems that interfere with normal life. (At one stage we thought my Mum had Parkinson’s Disease. It turned out that she had a B12 deficiency and she quickly lost her neurological symptoms when she was given B12 injections.) An education deficient in ideas is like a child lacking the correct vitamins. It’s not just nutritionally deficient but actually damaging.

Education is a life. That life is sustained on ideas. Ideas are of spiritual origin, and God has made us so that we get them chiefly as we convey them to one another, whether by word of mouth, written page, Scripture word, musical symphony; but we must sustain a child's inner life with ideas as we sustain his body with food.

· The less a child is surrounded by nature, the more creative the adults must be to allow the child some contact with it.

· Let the children at the best of life: living experiences, the best in art, books, music, ideas.

· Share good books with the children; living books stimulate ideas; ideas stimulate discussion, interest & involvement.

· The child takes what is appropriate to him at the time. He is an ‘eclectic.’

 · Have direct contact with nature…watch crystals grow, look at a snowflake, an insect or a leaf through a magnifying glass.

  · Involve the child in real life – in the kitchen, in the garden; involve them with a wide cross section of people.

To Sir With Love is the true story of Edward Ricardo Braithwaite. Born in 1920 in the former British Colony of Guiana, he served in the RAF during WWII and became a high school teacher in a school in the slums of the East End of London when his job applications for engineering were knocked back even though he was highly qualified. His students were rough and their homes were devoid of nurture but this school was life-giving. This scene the author described reminds me so much of Charlotte Mason's ideas of education. A true education can work for all children:

‘Assembly was a simple affair…It began with a hymn and prayer in which every child joined...After prayer the Head read a poem, La Belle Dame Sans Merci. The records which followed were Chopin’s Fantaisie Impromptu and part of Vivaldi’s Concerto in C for two trumpets.

They listened, those rough looking, untidy children; every one of them sat still, unmoving and attentive, until the very echo of the last clear note had died away...they were listening, actively, attentively listening to those records...their bodies were still, but I could feel that their minds and spirits were involved with the music.’

Resources

Tending the Atmosphere of Your Home - by Bethany Douglass (substack.com)

Habit Formation: Topical CM Series (amblesideonline.org)

Chapters dealing more fully with habit formation: Charlotte Mason Homeschool Series (amblesideonline.org) pg 105-118

*When Children Love to Learn – Elaine Cooper, General Editor, p. 73

The Story of Charlotte Mason by Essex Cholmondeley

A PDF of this article is here.

I was talking to my daughter-in-law a while ago and she said that she thought earlier generations of parents tended to be stricter with their children. The old ‘children should be seen and not heard’ idea. But she also thinks that her own generation lean too much the other way.

I remember being at school and thinking that a teacher had been unfair or wrong in some way but my parent’s would never have questioned a teacher’s authority or taken their children’s side against a teacher. One day, when I was about 9 or 10, I ran away from school and didn’t go home but went to my mum’s friend’s house, thinking I might get some sympathy from her.

I thought I had a good reason for running away because in the playground I’d accidentally run into the teacher’s pet, a nasty piece of work, with the result that she dropped and smashed her bottle of fizzy drink and yelled at me saying she was going to tell the teacher.  I was scared of this woman, and with good reason.

I think my mum’s friend did sympathise – she was a kind woman, but she didn’t usurp either my parent’s authority or the teacher’s, so back to school I had to go.

We often err by extremes. Now parents will often promote their children’s position and resent any interference by others. The child is put before everyone else, but this is reacting in an opposite direction.

This chapter, Authority & Freedom, shows us how a balance may be established in our parenting by acknowledging that we are all under God’s authority. An adult is as much under authority of Scripture as the child. We march under the same orders.

When our eldest son married about 10 years ago, he shared an incident from his childhood in his wedding speech. It went something like this:

"When I was about 8 or 9, mum and dad had an argument when we were all having dinner. Dad said something to Mum and she got upset and left the room. Later that evening they were sitting up in their bed and called us all into the room and they both apologized to us kids for not showing love to each other earlier in the evening."

This episode cemented a truth into his life. Mum & Dad were committed to each other, with God as the ultimate authority, and the fact that we were submitted to Him helped embed a deep security into his life. This was a foundation we'd given him that he knew would be a bedrock for his own marriage. Some of our other grown children have made comments at different times about various things they’d seen us do as parents – nothing we thought was very startling, but that obviously lodged in their minds and hearts, that demonstrated that it wasn’t a matter of ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’

Hypocrisy would have to be one of the worst things a parent could demonstrate to a child.

If our children see that we are willing to admit that we were wrong about something and ask forgiveness when we've lost it or over-reacted, it encourages them and gives them a sense of security that we are being led by the Spirit of God and not our own whims. Such honesty strengthens our office. We’ll never be perfect in our parenting so it’s a good thing to learn how to apologise! Authority avoids giving cause of offence.

The first task of education is a moral one, with the Judeo-Christian framework giving direction…

Although we enjoy the good in each child, he needs to be improved. He does wrong. He either ignores or chooses against that which he knows is right. But so do I. (pg. 44)

A wholesome approach to children is appreciating them as people.

…children are before all things reasonable beings, and to some children of acute and powerful intelligence, an arbitrary and apparently unreasonable command is cruelly irritating. It is not advisable to answer children categorically when they want to know the why for every command, but wise parents steer a middle course. They are careful to form habits upon which the routine of life runs easily, and, when the exceptional event requires a new regulation, they may make casual mention of their reasons for having so and so done; or, if this is not convenient and the case is a trying one, they give the children the reason for all obedience––"for this is right."

The single greatest pattern to be formed is the habit of obedience. There are some things to think of here that Charotte Mason presents in some detail in her chapter on authority linked above.

·       Don’t choose an issue that goes against nature, e.g. arguing with a tired toddler is senseless. It’s better to divert his attention and attend to his needs.

·       If something is likely to be dangerous to a child, draw the line and don’t mess around with whys and why nots.

·       Positive acts are important: ‘Listen to your grandmother,’ ‘Be careful with the baby.’

·       If children are used to being treated considerately, they learn that others should be, too.

Helpful Habits

·       Obedience – being consistent in requiring this of them and having expectations that they will do as you ask is important

·       Routines such as regular mealtimes, reading aloud & bedtimes

·       Duties – tidying up, regular responsibilities around the home as they are able

·       Start early; if you are bringing children home after being in school get into regular habits

·       Save the big moral efforts for significant battles and choices; don’t waste energy on issues such as bedtime, screentime etc.

Blessed are the peacemakers

We need not add that authority is just and faithful in all matters of promise-keeping; it is also considerate, and that is why a good mother is the best home-ruler; she is in touch with the children, knows their unspoken schemes and half-formed desires, and where she cannot yield, she diverts; she does not crush with a sledge-hammer, an instrument of rule with which a child is somehow never very sympathetic.

We all know how important this, of changing children's thoughts, diverting, is in the formation of habit. Let us not despise the day of small things nor grow weary in well-doing; if we have trained our children from their earliest years to prompt mechanical obedience, well and good; we reap our reward. If we have not, we must be content to lead by slow degrees, by ever-watchful efforts, by authority never in abeyance and never aggressive… It is a happy thing that the 'difficult' children who are the readiest to resist a direct command are often the quickest to respond to the stimulus of an idea.

Charlotte Mason Homeschool Series (amblesideonline.org)

Balance

You don’t have to look far to see that as a society our greatest priority is SELF. My needs, my career, my feelings come before anyone else’s. Advertising promotes ‘You deserve it…’                          

It takes time to serve others and it takes considerable effort to swim against the tide of our culture. I heard an interview the other day where someone said that ‘when you have a child you recognise that you are making way for another human being. Somebody made way for you and you’re not the centre of the universe; you’re not the only thing that matters…’

We have to set our priorities straight. Can we serve God’s lambs wholeheartedly while we are being confused with career demands? (pg. 49)

Serve the child not the system; direct relationships teach more than textbooks, courses or theories. (pg. 48)

Authority has to be fair; don’t add extra burdens. To be just, we have to respect the person’s individuality.

Faithfulness means consistency. When children know they can depend on us, they will learn to be faithful to their duties. A shepherd gently leads and does not crush. The pasture itself is a discipline because it has boundaries, but there is also freedom to move. (pg. 50)

We need to be careful not to bind our children by our low expectations.

‘When human beings, at any age, are expected to do badly, it is too easy to become discouraged, accept the judgment, and live down to it.’

I think we often go to the other extreme when we tell kids how amazing they are when they do something they should have done anyhow. Balance!

Legalism

In the early years of our parenting there were some popular parenting methods that promised obedient children and a peaceful life for parents. They sounded good on the surface but they were based on legalistic, mechanical, parent-centred approaches that focused on outward behaviour. The emphasis was on the outward appearance of virtue. As Macaulay says so perfectly,

‘I want this child to be the perfect human being that I somehow failed to become.’ !!!

Issues of the heart often go unchecked when we focus on exteriors and later on these methods tend to backfire. I read this in Whatever Happened to Worship by A.W. Tozer:

'Benjamin Franklin...a deist and not a Christian...kept a daily graph on a series of little square charts which represented such virtues as honesty, faithfulness, charity and probably a dozen others. He worked these into a kind of calendar and when he had violated one of the virtues he would write it down. When he had gone for a day or a month without having broken any of his self-imposed commandments, he considered that he was doing pretty well as a human being.

A sense of ethics? Yes.

Any sense of the divine? No.'

In all of my thoughts and intentions regarding moral training, I want to inspire the children God has entrusted me with to godliness, and not just give them ethics.

Authority Never Aggressive

Consequences should fit what was done or left undone.

Sinful natures expand like a malignancy at any age with…passivity, hunger, tiredness…

Charlotte Mason contrasted the child-centred atmosphere of the pleasant kindergarten and its smooth, directed, organised environment with a home situation. The home is not such a scene of peace (wrestling boys, arguments over Lego, accidents, crying babies…) but she thought it was a better growing place.

Parents should seek to become worthy leaders and need to consider carefully the choices they make for their children’s care and who they hand them over to.  

The slave-camp, sledgehammer, or mechanical approach is out…Equally, a fully permissive no-base and do-as-you-feel atmosphere cannot lead to proper development.

We need to make our own decisions for our individual children and one answer won’t fit every situation. If we are reactive in our decision making, we are in danger of being imbalanced. Balance comes through a positive & realistic approach based on the child’s needs, the community we live in, what is available, what alternatives there are.

Updated to add a link to a PDF of this post.

Children are born persons is the very first principle of Charlotte Mason’s Philosophy of Education. It seems fairly obvious to readers at this time in history, on the surface at least, but it was a revolutionary idea in 1886 Victorian England when her ideas on education were first published in book form. 

In the 1850’s Charles Dickens had portrayed utilitarian schools with rampant bullying, harsh headmasters and teachers whose main efforts were to force facts into their student’s heads. Child labour and neglect were acceptable practices and children in the ‘lower classes’ of society were often treated no better than animals. Most of them didn’t receive what could be called an education.

What was Charlotte Mason’s view of a child?

She believed that children are born fully human. They are not blank slates to be written on or empty vessels to be filled up. They are not embryonic beings waiting to grow into true personhood at some time in the future.

They are persons, individuals, who need to grow in knowledge. 

She started with the premise that the child’s mind is the instrument of his education…his education doesn’t produce his mind. This flips our present-day idea of education on its head too, because although we’ve come a long way since Victorian times, there is a prevailing undervaluing of a child’s ability. Children are talked down to, given mentally inferior books, are plied with endless questions, given a standardised education, and presented with “play-approach” lessons that leave no time for real, imaginative play.

Quoting from Charlotte Mason’s School Education: 

But organised games are not play in the sense we have in view. Boys and girls must have time to invent episodes, carry on adventures, live heroic lives, lay sieges and carry forts, even if the fortress be an old armchair; and in these affairs the elders must neither meddle nor make…

There is an idea afloat that children require to be taught to play––to play at being little fishes and lambs and butterflies. No doubt they enjoy these games which are made for them, but there is a serious danger. In this matter the child who goes too much on crutches never learns to walk; he who is most played with by his elders has little power of inventing plays for himself…

Macaulay points out that children can have rich creative play crushed out of them by over-entertainment. We’ve come from one extreme to the other in the way we treat children. Child labour isn’t the problem it was in the Victorian Age (unless the child lives in either of the two regions of the world which account for nearly nine out of 10 children involved in child labour worldwide.)

Instead, they are now herded into institutions, fitted into schedules, put in front of screens.

Living Ideas from Outside of the Child

A few months ago I went to a local supermarket which has a private preschool next door. There was a group of about four boys clustered together near a tree poking around with sticks. They were having a great time until one of the female staff members called them away from their play because ‘there might be spiders.’ How sad.

Children are hungry to know. Their curiosity knows no bounds. Why does the school institution (and this sadly includes many preschools/kindergartens) often blunt this interest? 

Charlotte Mason believed that,

…the children’s lessons should provide material for their mental growth, should exercise the several powers of their minds, should furnish them with fruitful ideas, and should afford them with knowledge, really valuable for its own sake, accurate, and interesting, of the kind that the child may recall as a man with profit and pleasure.

She outlined a sensible plan for teaching reading, writing, and number work - mechanical skills that require each step to be mastered before going on to the next.

She began ‘formal’ education at age six and made sure that the child was read to - really good books, chapter by chapter which would include works of literature, biographies of historical figures, stories about animals and birds etc.

After the reading the young child tells back what he has heard in his own words. Mason called this narration or telling back. No questions, moralising or prompts. This is such a simple practice that it is often questioned.

It’s a good idea to try it for yourself. I read every night and sometimes I go back over a chapter and try telling it back to myself. Sometimes I really struggle! You need to pay attention to what you’re reading in order to do this. If a child knows he will be required to narrate after every book used for his lessons, he learns very quickly to pay attention.

No ‘comprehension’ tests or quizzes. No child left behind because they’re a late reader. If you read aloud and a child narrates or tells back in his own words what he’s heard, he is assimilating knowledge, even if he hasn’t acquired the mechanical skills of reading and writing for himself yet.

See pp. 35-38 of Macaulay’s book for some practical ideas of what a Charlotte Mason education looks like with a child around age 6 or 7 years.

Education should not be fragmentary- little bits here and there, Wikipedia information and extracts. Although we have immediate access to all kinds of information via the internet and T.V. this is not education. A complete book, well-chosen, worked through steadily chapter by chapter and narrated by the child, will become his own. When they narrate, they are the ones who decide what they are going to concentrate on. This is important because we might be expecting a detailed rendition of what took place in the reading. Some children might do that, but many will just focus on some particular passage that spoke to them. Both are valid responses. 

When you read quality literature aloud to young children (e.g. Treasure Island, Little House in the Big Woods, The Wheel on the School) you might be tempted to stop and explain a word you think they don’t understand. Don’t, unless they ask. They will pick up meanings from the context. I used to really annoy my kids when I did this, so I learnt to shut up and keep reading. 

Literary Power & Living Books

We have never been so rich in books. But there has never been a generation when there is so much twaddle in print for children, much of it in schools. (31)

Education has to include the proper use of books. 

If a child can read well he should be encouraged to read his lesson books for himself. I loved reading aloud to my kids and I continued to do so all the way through high school but they did the bulk of their own reading. I used a daily read aloud time to share a book as a family or to read a book that warranted discussion. 

On page 33, Macaulay shares a list of books her family enjoyed. Each family will be different and will take into consideration their cultural background and situation. 

Living books are well-written, literary in style, stir the imagination and intellect, are not too easy or too direct, and are able to be narrated.

Their lesson-books should offer matter for their reading, whether aloud or to themselves; therefore they should be written with literary power. As for the matter of these books, let us remember that children can take in ideas and principles, whether the latter be moral or mechanical, as quickly and clearly as we do ourselves (perhaps more so); but detailed processes, lists and summaries, blunt the edge of a child's delicate mind. Therefore, the selection of their first lesson-books is a matter of grave importance, because it rests with these to give children the idea that knowledge is supremely attractive and that reading is delightful. Once the habit of reading his lesson-book with delight is set up in a child, his education is––not completed, but––ensured; he will go on for himself in spite of the obstructions which school too commonly throws in his way.

We are told by many in our generation that this small child is a cog in a machine, or even that he is a possession, like a pet animal. Many adults now “have” a child, in the same way they “have” a washing machine or a collie dog. (13)

Education is an Atmosphere

There is no such thing as the perfect environment and we often have to accept the limitations placed upon us. But education is an atmosphere and not an environment - there is a difference. I wrote more fully about this here (linked to blog):

What we often think of as atmosphere is really environment, i.e. our physical surroundings, and Charlotte Mason observed that children brought up upon ‘environment’ soon begin to show signs of inanition (lethargy, lack of healthy curiosity and an inability to pay attention).
Parents and teachers need to make sensible use of a child’s circumstances i.e. atmosphere – the non physical things that influence us. Such as relationships within the home, the words that we speak, the time we spend with our children – these don’t depend on how much money we have or our home decor.

Our circumstances may have their limitations but if we feed our children on things worth caring about and understand that education is the science of relationships, these often intangible aspects of our lives are the things that bring beauty .

We can make a fake environment that looks great in a snapshot but we can’t fake a healthy and loving atmosphere. When we understand this, all the environmental enticements thrust in our faces won’t make us feel we’re second-rate parents and educators.

What is a child? 

A child is no ‘ordinary’ person.

With apologies to C.S. Lewis I have substituted some words (in brackets) from a passage in a sermon he delivered in 1941. It’s applicable to every person but I wanted to direct it to those of us who have any dealings with children, whether they be our own or someone else’s. The original passage is here.

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting (child) you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption…

All day long we are, in some degree helping (them) to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with (children)…all loves, all play…(all education).

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal (child). Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortal (children) whom we (chide, engage, ignore, manipulate) and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” 

One of the things that inspired me when I first read For the Children’s Sake was that Charlotte Mason’s ideas are applicable to all children; the bright and the ‘backward.’ At the end of this chapter Macaulay shares some of the creative ways these ideas have been applied successfully with children who were classified as failures or ‘impossible’ cases.

Some suggestions 😊

• Try Susan Schaeffer Macaulay’s experiment: 

Get to know a child. It may be your own or somebody else’s. Don’t think of it as either a menial or a professional task. Do it for its own sake…

Get a few really good books, and read them together aloud…

After reading go to a really nice place outside for a couple of hours at least. Don’t rush…

Talk together.

Relax.

• Read a chapter of a book - something literary such as a book by Jane Austen, Elizabeth Goudge or C.S. Lewis. In your mind, or aloud if that’s easier for you, tell back to yourself what you remember from your reading. No looking back. 😊

• Talk to someone about the ideas discussed in this chapter. What stood out to you? What could you put into practice? Comment below if you like.

• Keep a Commonplace Book & write in it passages from books that have inspired you or spoken to you in some way.

Further Reading

Hard Times and David Copperfield by Charles Dickens - both books depict schools and attitudes towards children during the Victorian Era.

Marva Collins’ Way by Marva Collins – Collins was a visionary teacher who became disillusioned with the failure of the USA public school system. She opened her own private school in 1975 for students from the worst of backgrounds and those considered unteachable. She loved her students and refused to let them fail.

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell - Durrell’s entertaining account of his family’s five year stay on the Greek island of Corfu.  He was ten years of age when they moved there and his education was conducted at home by various interesting & eccentric tutors. During his time on Corfu he made a special study of zoology and kept a large number of various creatures as pets.

An Episode of Sparrows & other books by Rumer Godden - this author had great insight into the inner lives of children. I love her sensitive writing and her ability to honour the child’s personhood by acknowledging the effects parents’ actions, attitudes and poor decisions had on their children. 

Cat’s in the Cradle - a song from the viewpoint of a father who never had time for his son when he was young. It’s a reminder for mums and dads that our children grow up quickly. We’ll never have this time over again.

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Some background on the author:

In 1948, when she was seven years old, Susan Schaeffer Macaulay moved from the USA to post-war Europe with her family. Her parents, Francis and Edith Schaeffer, had left their secure life in St Louis, and arrived in war damaged Europe not really knowing what God wanted them to do or where the money for them to live on would come from. The Schaeffers saw the physical scars of the bombing and the severe conditions people were living under as far as food and shelter were concerned, but they saw beyond the outward destruction to the philosophical and theological damage; “bombs’’ which had torn up and scattered faith and orderly thinking. *

Settling in Switzerland, the Schaeffers began the L’Abri Community. L’Abri is the French word for ‘shelter’ and this community which functioned as a family, reached out to people from all walks of life and from many different countries and helped them in their search for truth and reality.

Susan grew up in this relational atmosphere of open hospitality and a rich home culture. Due to illness, she learnt at home during her high school years. When she married, she and her husband, Ranald, served at L’Abri with her parents and later established a L’Abri home in London.

Introduction

For the Children’s Sake takes the accuracy of the Christian view of the world for granted, but there are many ideas that can be put into practice by those who are not Christians. This book is a practical, balanced and human view of what education and life is all about. 

The author devotes a good part of her book to the work of Charlotte Mason, (1842-1923) an English Educator who spent 40 years of her life establishing a philosophy of education and putting it into practice. She had taught children and established a training college for future teachers; her ideas were put into writing and six volumes called, The Original Homeschooling Series, were published. Mason’s work was known internationally and materials from her schools were sent to families in the British dominions for use by governesses and others in teaching positions. The universal nature of Charlotte Mason’s ideas mean that they can be applied at home, in different kinds of schools, an orphanage in Africa, an Indian village, an inner-city school or a day-care centre.

As the Macaulays discovered Charlotte Mason’s writings in their search for educational options in the United Kingdom, they rightly wondered why her work, which had been prominent and respected in the field of education for so many years, had largely been forgotten. One reason was that the Christian worldview that had predominated in her time had become unpopular.

In the 1960’s “Progressive’’ education became the trend and developed more fully as teacher training shifted from an apprentice-style classroom model to a lecture-based course in colleges. The new liberal ideas rejected the constraints of a framework based on knowledge and moral behaviour and the ideas spread into primary schools in the USA and Britain.

Susan was a young parent in the 1960’s and 1970’s and witnessed the changes brought about by these new ideas:

• Primary school teachers were discouraged from using any structured teaching

• Textbooks and ‘’quiet’’ lessons were out

• The teaching of phonics and times tables were thought to be out of date

• Classes were open plan

Chapter 1

It was in London, as their first child was approaching school age that the Macaulays began their search for the best educational approach for her.

They wanted the best, but what was the best?

They visited schools and were discouraged by the overcrowded, noisy classrooms. They tried to figure out guidelines in education but couldn’t find a practical overview of the subject.

When our eldest child was about two we began to be asked about what school we’d send her to. At the back of my mind I was thinking that I didn’t want to send her to school. There were a number of reasons for this. A big one was that I’d seen the results of some of the schools in our area and they were not good – bad behaviour, poor academic outcomes and lack of respect generally.

I asked the State Department of Education for an outline of what a child at a Kindergarten level would be learning and was sent pages of gibberish, which left me none the wiser.

In Chapter 1 the author asks,

What is Education? What should we aim for when thinking about education?

The Macaulays found the best they could at the time & it went well until they moved. The new school and the programme of learning didn’t fit their child. Like many parents, they realised something was badly wrong & they desperately needed to do something about it. They took her out of the school, read books and played in the garden. But the Education Inspector told them it wasn’t satisfactory, that she needed to be in school. They didn’t realise then that he was wrong.

When we first began to seriously consider teaching our children ourselves instead of sending them to school, our state government was very anti-home education. You were required to register with them for permission to teach at home but if permission wasn’t granted there was no right of appeal. So, when the time came, we just didn’t apply and made sure we put in the work so that our children would get a quality education.

When I first read For the Children’s Sake back in 1988, I thought, “This is what I want my children’s education to look like!” I lived off the vision the book gave me for years before I ever had access to much else. I understood the why of what to teach; once you have that foundation in place you can then build even with minimal resources.

Education extends to all of life.

Since For the Children’s Sake’s publication in 1984, the educational landscape has changed considerably. She wrote then that, ‘’School is only one of the influences in a child’s life.’’

However, over time more and more areas of life have been placed under the banner of the educational establishment: sex education, manners, basic hygiene, good habits, beliefs; areas that were traditionally imparted through the home culture. So these are things we seriously have to consider.

Who should decide what a child learns? What is appropriate, beneficial or even necessary?

Parents need to evaluate their priorities…What is really important? The sacred career? Educational institutions make poor substitute mothers, fathers and homes.

Alongside the observation that T.V (or any type of screen time for that matter) becomes a sedative which interferes with active play, reading, talking, sharing, etc. Macaulay highlights something important,

Planned activities crowd out personal growth and creativity.

I’ve noticed that this is something that afflicts home educators as well. Often in a bid to ‘make up’ for the social stimulation that a school provides, we resort to running around from activity to activity, filling a child’s day. Some families don’t ‘home’ school because they’re never home. There are now so many groups for families whose children are not in school that you can do multiple planned activities every day.

Boredom isn’t a bad thing for a child to feel. When I was growing up we learnt very quickly not to say we were bored - my mum would always find some work for us to do if we did. It was an impetus for us to go outside and get creative.

This chapter ends with this comment:

Much of what follows goes mostly goes against daily pattern of most lives.

Sometimes we have to swim against the current. Are we willing to do that “for the children’s sake?’’

In Conclusion

For the Children’s Sake helped to bring Charlotte Mason’s ideas back for our times. Her principles may be applied to different generations of children wherever they are in the world. 

You may have read quotations from Charlotte Mason’s books and thought her ideas a bit too antiquated for today. You may have seen lists of the books she used and thought that your children would never want to read them. However, as Macaulay points out,

‘Education is an adventure that has to do with central themes, not the particular packages a given generation puts into them…don’t throw out the ideas along with the materials.’

Resources

*L’Abri by Frances Schaeffer

When Children Love to Learn - Elaine Cooper, General Editor

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