Read Along: For the Children’s Sake Ch 4
‘A New Perspective.’
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 4th 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.
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.
· 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