I’ve written a bit about principles recently (here and here) because it’s so easy to get caught up in the “what” and the “how” of our day-to-day educational endeavors that we lose touch with that “why,” which is the living, life-giving touch that makes our busy-ness purposeful and meaningful.

I think most of us who have devoted years and years to educating children with Charlotte Mason’s methods know that just looking at the principles alone—laid out at the beginning of each of her volumes—isn’t going to give you any confidence or guidance about how to get started. It’s lovely that Charlotte Mason has, with the principles, identified the path— “this is the way”—but we are still in need of guidance to make it possible to “walk ye in it.”

Charlotte Mason knew that. I’m going to tell you something rather funny from the annals of modern “CM history,” but I hope you won’t laugh at us.

The CM series was republished (thanks to the Andreolas—we owe them much) in the pink volumes we all know so well in 1989. When I acquired my set in 1994, the internet was in its infancy. I found others who were interested in Charlotte Mason, and we plunged in and read the series together, but, as far as the community goes, no one I ever met had read more than one or two of the volumes. We read them together, and there was no one to tell us that volume 6, Philosophy of Education (such a daunting title compared to the friendlier, more accessible Home Education) was a good place to start, because no one had read that far! We observed that there were 18 principles listed at the beginning of each book. We talked about the “18 principles” and even worked systematically through a study of the “18 principles.”

I had been reading and studying about Charlotte Mason for some years before I got to Volume 6, and noticed the difference there—20 principles! There were two new ones? No, there were three new ones, because Charlotte Mason had combined two of the earlier principles into one. I got out my books, and compared them side by side.
The next generation of younger CM educators knows that there are 20 principles, and probably can’t imagine how we missed that for so long, but that’s how it was. Thank goodness we kept on learning and studying, and didn’t stop after Home Education.

Do you know which of the 20 principles are the “new ones,” that CM added later in her life, after many, many years of experience?

I’m giving them in shortened form for the sake of space, but you can find them in full here.

13. In devising a SYLLABUS (I think we might say “curriculum”) for a normal child, three points must be considered:—
(a) He requires much knowledge, for the mind needs sufficient food.
(b) The knowledge should be various.
(c) Knowledge should be conveyed in literary form.

14. As knowledge is not assimilated until it is reproduced, children should ‘tell back’ after a single reading or hearing: or should write on some part.

15. A single reading is insisted on, because children have naturally great power of attention; but this force is dissipated by the re-reading of passages, and also, by questioning, summarising, and the like.

Thousands of children in Elementary Schools respond freely to this method, which is based on the behaviour of mind.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BR8g2UijEZi/

If you look carefully at these added principles, you will realize, as I did, that they are not just abstract principles in the nature of “Children are born persons”—rather, they are explicit descriptions of the practices that are indispensable to Charlotte Mason’s philosophy. These are the practices Charlotte Mason included in her appeal to the wider British public to adopt.

These vital practices are the ones that should shape our Charlotte Mason homeschools and classrooms. There are some important “dos” embedded in there, as well as a few prohibited “don’ts.”

I was interested to find in The Story of Charlotte Mason, by Essex Cholmondeley, a brief explanation of these additional principles:

Miss Mason added the following paragraphs for the use of teachers when the ‘liberal education for all’ movement was active. [emphasis added]

The other principles were expressed with parents in mind, parents who were bringing up their children, but not necessarily attending to their “school” education (although they are applicable in that setting). These additional practical principles are the ones that were given to those of us actively engaged in teaching. They bear a closer look, and that’s what we’ll do over the next few days (there are five parts in the series).

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

(Pictures are used with permission and are found on Instagram in the community @charlottemasonirl [Charlotte Mason In Real Life]. I’m sure they’d love to have you join in.

This blog series is now available as a short digital book in the “Encore” series for Kindle. The original material from the series, plus bonus content, is collected in one place where you can easily refer to it. Read the Kindle version of Some Practices are Principles or purchase an epub version to read on a platform of your choice.

There’s a quote from Charlotte Mason that I like a lot. I’ve been aware of it for a long, long time, and it has underpinned my own homeschooling efforts. This is the quote:

The reader will say with truth–‘I knew all this before and have always acted more or less on these principles’; and I can only point to the unusual results we obtain through adhering not ‘more or less’ but strictly to the principles and practices I have indicated. I suppose the difficulties are of the sort that Lister had to contend with; every surgeon knew that his instruments and appurtenances should be kept clean, but the saving of millions of lives has resulted from the adoption of the great surgeon’s antiseptic treatment; that is from the substitution of exact principles scrupulously applied for the rather casual ‘more or less’ methods of earlier days. (Philosophy of Education, p. 19)

There was a time when I thought the “practices” mentioned included all the practices of the PUS (Parents’ Union Schools). I thought it meant we needed to adhere to things like strict page counts, and learning three modern languages plus Latin, and doing school in the morning so free time happened in the afternoon, and so on. I really can’t remember now when I realized that isn’t what this is about at all. Lately, I’ve seen this quote misunderstood in the same way I misunderstood it quite a few times, and not long ago, I shared with one Facebook group what I’m going to share here.

It begins with understanding the audience for the book, Philosophy of Education. Charlotte Mason’s first five books were written for the PNEU—the group of parents who adhered to her philosophy and were trying to implement it with their children. This final book was not written for them, but was addressed to the wider British public—to present CM’s philosophy and the work of the PNEU to people unfamiliar with it, in hopes of spreading their work even further. (It worked for a while, too.) Some of the chapters were even published earlier, as stand-alone pamphlets, and part of it appeared as a series of letters to a newspaper.

With that audience in mind, read the quote again, giving special attention to the part I have emphasized— “I have indicated.” What practices? Indicated where? Well, that’s where the context comes in—right there on the same pages. I urge you to read the full context for yourself.

The quote is self-limiting. It can refer to nothing but the principles and practices “indicated” right there, on those pages. I really do invite you to see for yourself what principles and practices Charlotte Mason considered vital—indispensable—in order to make her philosophy work. But I’ll give you a hint—there aren’t that many of them, and none of them are as specific as “have school in the morning” or “do this for history.” Not at all—as principles should be, they are broad and robust. As practices go, they are fairly flexible, involving putting a child in touch with a wide program of living books, and using narration to insure attention and assimilation. That’s the context that goes with that quote, and I hope my fellow Charlotte Mason educators will learn, sooner than I did, how truly freeing it is to apply a set of “exact principles” to your educational practices and watch them take root, germinate, branch out, and bear fruit.

Addendum: I’m editing this post to add some information that I think might be helpful. It has been suggested to me that I am incorrect about the audience for the book—that Charlotte Mason was not actually addressing herself to anyone beyond her colleagues in the PNEU. I just want to let you all know that this is not a fabrication on my part. Charlotte Mason says, herself, in the preface to the volume: “My object in offering this volume to the public is to urge upon all who are concerned with education a few salient principles…” (emphasis added).She addresses herself to “all who are concerned with education”—casting a wide net—rather than those already associated with her work. She assumes no prior knowledge of the PNEU and its work, and explains her principles from scratch, as it were.

I mentioned some time ago that I had one more thing to share about Comenius, and this book, Education That Is Christian, is what I had in mind. Lois LeBar worked at Wheaton College for many years, and this book is one of her contributions to education, specifically as it concerns teaching the Bible.

One of the things that makes it interesting is that Ms. LeBar looks at the educational influence of Herbart (yes, that same Herbart) on the typical teaching in churches and Sunday Schools, and recommends instead practices based on the ideas of Comenius. It is quite interesting and remarkable to read another modern educator’s thoughts on these two older educators.

I have no idea if she ever heard of Charlotte Mason or not, but it is startling to read this in the Introduction and see the points of similarity:

Lois LeBar is a revolutionary. Forty years ago she rebelled against traditional Bible teaching that “starved people with Biblical facts.” …But she also rebelled against so-called progressive teaching that ignored the authoritative Word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Sounds like she and Charlotte Mason would have appreciated each other, doesn’t it? Especially as a good portion of the discussion in the book revolves around psychological considerations, such as inner and outer factors in learning.

Rousseau, Froebel, and Dewey get brief mentions, but this book is less a theoretical work of education than it is a practical one. If any of your teaching activities are conducted in the church community, you might find this book a very valuable read, and it is actually set up to be read and discussed within a group. Above all else, it brings a good deal of Bible wisdom to the task of teaching the Bible, and for that purpose, I do recommend it.

I was startled recently to run across a reference to Comenius in the tribute to Charlotte Mason published after her death, In Memoriam:

Like Comenius, she believed in a course of reading which is massive and many-sided. Like Comenius she had to guard against the dangers of superficiality.

Since I spent a good portion of the fall comparing Charlotte Mason and Comenius, it was interesting to me that even within her own lifetime, one of her colleagues drew a connection between them.

Don’t you love end-of-year recaps of what other people have been reading? I do! That’s why I’m sharing mine.

I used to be a book-blogger wanna-be, but I abandoned that idea. I’m too indifferent a “blogger” (term used in the loosest sense of the word) to be anything other than “occasional.” But I did like having a record of all my reading, and now I keep that in my bullet journal. (Yes, I am card-carrying member of that club–two years and counting.)

Just for fun, here are my year-end stats and the best titles of the year. My grand total is 33 books finished this year. I have a couple more in progress, but they will not be completed this year.

Of the 33, 9 were non-fiction, and 24 were fiction. Thirty-three is a low number–probably one of the lowest ever. I consider averaging a book per week kind of a minimum standard, but I fell far short of that this year, even if I give myself half-credit for books-in-progress.

Of the 24 fiction, a whopping 13 were rereads. This has a lot to do with the fact that I was away from home for over three months, traveling a lot, and I had my Kindle library with me.

Of the 9 non-fiction, 2 of them were re-reads (You will not be surprised when I tell you the re-reads were Comenius and Charlotte Mason–hence, the blog series.)

So, choosing only from the books that were new for me this year, my top 5 non-fiction books (in no particular order)

1. Mere Motherhood by Cindy Rollins

2. 

3. 

4. 

5. 

If you are a mom, do not miss Mere Motherhood. If you want some insight into written narration, I recommend the Zinsser book. I am a Sire fan, and reading this book gave me an appreciation for John Newman. King Solomon’s Ring is a delightful living science/nature book written by an Austrian naturalist. It will be the most fun if you live in Europe and have jackdaws about; however, not all the chapters are about jackdaws, and it is a worthwhile read for anyone. If you follow Charlotte Mason’s methods with highschoolers, this would be a great pick.

And my top 5 fiction books (also in no particular order)

I have nothing to say about these that hasn’t been said elsewhere, I am sure. I am years behind other readers, and not up to date with the latest titles by my favorite authors. If you haven’t read Edith Wharton yet, Bunner Sisters should not be your first pick. It’s achingly sad (typical Wharton), but The House of Mirth remains my favorite, I think.

Looking over my reading for the last couple of years, I am also making plans for 2017. I must plan, or I’ll end up reading deplorable titles on the spur of the moment. Of the 24 fiction books I read in 2016, two of them were absolutely awful, and I don’t have time to waste on awful, while another half-dozen were merely mediocre, and I’m not interested in mediocre, either.

I’m not planning the whole year, but to start with my top-picks for 2017 are:

Fiction:

(Oddly enough, these are all translations–from Russian, Japanese, and Spanish. Further titles will be English originals, maybe something from E.M. Forster and hopefully the Pulitzer winner All the Light We Cannot See)

Non-fiction:

1. (reread)

2. (reread)

3.

And I’m in the middle of Essays on Educational Reformers by Robert Quick, so I’ll be finishing that. I would also like to read Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton and/or Roots Of American Order by Russell Kirk. And it would be lovely to squeeze in something by Jacques Barzun, but have you noticed that a year has only 12 months in it? We’ll see how it goes!

If you’ve something to recommend that you think I’d like, I’m all ears–hit me with some great titles, and I’ll be happy to take a look at them.

(some links are affiliate links)

Now that it’s finished, I feel that this blog series went by in a hurry, but this is the 8th post in as many weeks, and it’s time for me to wrap this up and move on to other projects.

While reading The Great Didactic, there were just so many little things that reminded me of Charlotte Mason, in addition to the things I’ve already shared. I’m going to just make a few notes here.

(1)   In the history of education, many writers examine the questions of education beginning with “school age” children, jumping into the question of curriculum or order of studies as the first order of business. Both Charlotte Mason and Comenius recognized that education properly begins in infancy, and that habits of observation and correct speech, and the beginnings of all kinds of knowledge, are appropriate material for young children and lay the groundwork for more “academic” studies later.

(2)   Both Comenius and Charlotte Mason recommended that school work for children take no more than 4 hours a day, so that there would be plenty of time for outdoor nature study, pursuing interests, and…

(3)  …Handicrafts! Both of them also recommended that children learn to work with tools and materials, for a variety of reasons.

(4)   Both take a high view of man. Charlotte Mason’s first principle is, of course, “Children are born persons.” The title of the first chapter in The Great Didactic is “Man is the highest, the most absolute, and the most excellent of things created.” The first question addressed in any good philosophy is “what is man?”–and they both articulate their positions well.

(5)   Both recognize that children have a natural appetite for knowledge, a desire to learn. I smiled a bit at this quote from Comenius:

To whom is it not a pleasure to go to some new place daily, to converse with some one, to narrate something, or have some fresh experience? In a word, the eyes, the ears, the sense of touch, the mind itself, are, in their search for food, ever carried beyond themselves. (The Great Didactic, p. 195)

Comenius connects this idea to the ancient educator Aristotle: “As Aristotle says, the desire of knowledge is implanted in man: and the mind grows as the body does–by taking in proper nourishment, not by being stretched on the rack.”

(6)   Comenius and Mason, being so convinced of the value of every child, and of the natural appetite in each to learn, believed that education should be for ALL–not the privileged, the rich, the elite, the high-born, but literally for all–including girls as well as boys. In fact, Charlotte Mason herself quotes from The Great Didactic to underscore her point.

I have in this volume attempted to show the principles and methods upon which education of this sort is being successfully carried out, and have added chapters which illustrate the history of a movement the aim of which is, in the phrase of Comenius,–– “All knowledge for all men.”(Philosophy of Education, p. 20)

(7)   Comenius said, “All things that are naturally connected ought to be taught in combination,” and also, “It may be laid down as a general rule that each subject should be taught in combination with those which are correlative to it.”

It reminds me of the way that Charlotte Mason makes literature and citizenship ancillary to history. She liked to correlate subjects when it made sense, although she didn’t like to take it as far Herbartian-style “unit studies.”

I must commend any further study of the rationale of our syllabus to the reader’s own kind consideration; he will perceive that we have a principle of correlation in things essential, but no fatiguing practice of it in detail. (Philosophy of Education, p. 276)

I don’t want to leave the impression that Charlotte Mason and John Amos Comenius are carbon-copies of each other. They are not. Both of them were original thinkers, but because they begin from the perspective of Christianity, and because they purposed to seek out natural, universal laws of mind, teaching, and learning, they both tapped into the same vein of Truth about man, his purposes, and how education can best prepare him for those purposes.

Incidentals like 4-hour school days and handicrafts are interesting similarities, but the interesting point is less that they happened to propose the same things and more that basing their ideas upon universal principles led them to startling similar methods and conclusions.

I think I’ve probably said enough on this topic. I think Charlotte Mason, like Comenius, really stands out from among other educational philosophers because of her strong Christianity, her broad understanding of the humanities to include things like science and handicrafts, and her search for natural, transcendent laws of education–laws which were to be discovered, not manufactured–and above all, for offering practical, workable methods based upon those laws and principles.

I have one more thing to share about Comenius, but not pertaining to Charlotte Mason–a book review of sorts. Look for that in the next few weeks. I hope you’ve enjoyed learning about Comenius as much as I have!

This blog series is now available as a short digital book in the “Encore” series. The original material from the series, plus bonus content, is collected in one place where you can easily refer to it. Read the Kindle version of Charlotte Mason and Comenius or purchase an epub version to read on a platform of your choice.

In this next-to-last post in this series, I am excited to turn our attention to one of those more obscure bits of educational philosophy, and that is the role of education in training a child’s will.

Modern thinking (much the same as in Charlotte Mason’s day) tends to associate the idea of a “strong will” with sheer stubbornness. Mason had a much better understanding, and recognized that association for what it was–a fallacy.

He must be safeguarded from some fallacies. No doubt he has heard at home that Baby has a strong will because he cries for a knife and insists on pulling down the tablecloth. In his history lessons and his readings of tale and poem, he comes across persons each of whom carries his point by strong wilfulness. He…recognises that a strong will is not synonymous with ‘being good,’ nor with a determination to have your own way. He learns to distribute the characters he comes across in his reading on either side of a line, those who are wilful and those who are governed by will. (Philosophy of Education, p. 132, emphasis mine)

In Charlotte Mason’s lists of 20 educational principles, the “way of the will” does not make an appearance until number 17, which can give us a false sense of how vital it actually is. In her book Minds More Awake: The Vision of Charlotte Mason, Anne White walks us through the rationale of how Mason’s understanding of the will affects her approach to everything from literature to science.

The key understanding is this: will only operates when it has an object outside of self. When we choose to place our own desires first and act to protect our own interests, it isn’t will that is at work, but one of those natural desires for pleasure or power that everyone has. Self-interest requires no will.

But Will must have an object outside of itself, just as a guard is not there to protect himself. It cannot be focused on you, even for good ends, such as personal health or salvation, because then it stops being Will. You can be operating with Will when your ultimate intent is to benefit a cause or a country, or to protect just one other person. And you can be missing out on Will if you’re doing good deeds from selfish motives. (Minds More Awake by Anne White, p. 21.)

It might take some thinking and reading to fully appreciate the difference between wilfulness and will, but that basic point–acting in your own interests, or for the interests of other, is the dividing line between them. But no one chooses to will in the service of others unless the conscience has been educated, and that important role of education–enlightening the conscience–was so important to Charlotte Mason she wrote a textbook for young people (Ourselves) to contribute to the process.

(Oh my goodness–I became completely distracted from writing this blog post when I glanced into Ourselves. If you want a crash course on Charlotte Mason’s understanding of the role of the will, I refer you to Ourselves, Book II, p.126 to as far as you want to read.)

But, to return to the point in hand, which is the intersection of ideas between Charlotte Mason and Comenius, we find that Comenius describes Charlotte Mason’s position perfectly. The long-term educational goal is to instruct the conscience so that the mature man consciously chooses (wills) to do right. But that maturity requires time, and children are not yet able to fully control their appetites and impulses, so making a habit of doing what is right eases the processes and strengthens the will.

Comenius echoes Charlotte Mason’s understanding of the relationship of reason, will, and habit.

Fortitude should be learned by the subduing of self; that is to say, by repressing the desire to play at the wrong time or beyond the proper time, and by bridling impatience, discontent, and anger.

The principle which underlies this is that we should accustom boys to do everything by reason, and nothing under the guidance of impulse. For man is a rational animal, and should therefore be led by reason, and, before action, ought to deliberate how each operation should be performed, so that he may really be master of his own actions.

Now, since boys are not quite capable of such a deliberate and rational mode of procedure, it will be a great advance towards teaching them fortitude and self-control if they be forced to acquire the habit of performing the will of another in preference to their own, that is to say, to obey their superiors promptly in everything. (The Great Didactic, p. 364-65, emphasis mine)

(I myself prefer Charlotte Mason’s more cautious approach to reason than Comenius’s. Both recognize the natural power of rationality which belongs to man, but Comenius places more reliance in it than Mason did. I think this difference is easily understood by recognizing that Comenius is a pre-Enlightenment philosopher, and Mason is post-Enlightment. She knew where placing too much faith in human reason could lead.)

An important role of education, for Mason and Comenius, was instructing the conscience to know well what was right, and what was wrong, so that there would be clear understanding when it was time to bring the will into play and choose: do this, or do that.

It is interesting to see that both of them link this function of will to virtue, and understand that virtue is a matter of action–doing (hopefully, what is right), not just knowing right.

Mason:

Another thought that may occur is, that ‘Will’ is synonymous with an ideal.…Self-culture is accepted as the pursuit of an ideal; but when we realise that it is an ideal accomplished in self, and with no aim beyond self, we perceive that [a man pursuing self-culture] is not a man of will, because the first condition of will, good or evil, is an object outside of self.…If it be not goodness, the will is virtue, in the etymological sense of that word; it is manliness.

…Thus far we have seen, that, just as to reign is the distinctive quality of a king, so is to will the quality of a man. A king is not a king unless he reign; and a man is less than a man unless he will. (Ourselves, p. 138-140)

Comenius:

The young should learn to practise justice by hurting no man, by giving each his due, by avoiding falsehood and deceit, and by being obliging and agreeable.…Virtue is practised by deeds and not by words. (The Great Didactic, p. 356)

The pursuit of virtue–by which we mean doing and acting rightly–is integral to the classical ideal of education, but Christian educators like Comenius and Mason have really tapped into one of the keys to achieving this much-desired end. We have been given the use of a will which enables us to choose according to higher purposes than our own natural appetites and desires. When we choose to serve God or to serve others, we are behaving like men–image-bearers of God’s own nature–for to man only, among all creatures, did God give the use of will and reason

This blog series is now available as a short digital book in the “Encore” series. The original material from the series, plus bonus content, is collected in one place where you can easily refer to it. Read the Kindle version of Charlotte Mason and Comenius or purchase an epub version to read on a platform of your choice.