While I’ve been aware of Charlotte Mason’s connection to the past for a very long time, I had never pursued the details of her claims to something new until I began this project. Previously, I simply assumed she was referring to newer science, such as that associated with the formation of habits. As I read through the volumes more recently, I made notes of every mention of educational history and to every idea of something fresh and new. Apart from those references to modern science, I wasn’t sure what Charlotte Mason meant, precisely, by “some of it is new.” As I gathered the references, a pattern began to emerge and the final juxtaposition of old and new is exhilarating. I’ve titled this section “a new hope for the world” because those are the words Charlotte Mason used to explain the new thing she wanted to do.

Before I strike out on the lines of what is new, I want to touch again on what is not new in a Charlotte Mason education. A liberal education based on literary sources is not new. The essential aim of education—to instill character through the pursuit of wisdom and virtue is not new. The preeminence of ideas, the connection between knowing and doing, and the comprehensive vision of the unity of knowledge are not new. Charlotte Mason’s vision of exactly what education should be and what it should do are not new. That’s why her books are full of statements such as “it is time we reverted to the teaching of Socrates.” (Parents and Children, p. 242) Her vision of what education should be was shaped by the educators who came before her.

What is new is the scope of that education. As we look back through history, this kind of liberal education has been traditionally reserved for the privileged few. In Plato’s Republic, he prescribed the richest and best education for the elite group who would rule his city-state. Historically, education was expensive. Books were expensive. Only wealthy families could afford to educate their children beyond the mere rudiments necessary for everyday living.

Charlotte Mason grew up in a world where this division was the norm. Not only was education reserved for the well-to-do, but it was almost exclusively for men. Women were not allowed to study at Oxford and Cambridge before 1870, and the few who were admitted were not permitted to receive degrees until 1920. Since women generally did not go to University, there were few preparatory schools for them, either. Poorer families in the laboring class were entirely excluded from this system, and the most they could hope for was a smattering of the “3R’s.”

Charlotte Mason believed that the right kind of education for every child—a character-forming education—would change the shape of a whole nation, and lift it to a higher level. The thing that is truly new in her vision for education is that she knew a liberal education was not for a privileged few, but for all—and she know how to deliver it. Her pedagogy was so effective that she was confident in bringing it before the attention of the British public and declaring in essence, “this is how we can give a liberal education to every single person.”

In the introduction to Philosophy of Education, Charlotte Mason describes the universal hunger for this kind of knowledge:

The people themselves begin to understand and to clamour for an education which shall qualify their children for life rather than for earning a living.( PoE, p. 3)

At the time, this is the work she and her organization (PNEU) had been doing for several decades. Although their society began with upper-middle class parents who could afford education, it was always a part of their vision to make their ideas understood by “working class” parents as well. When the Parents’ Union School curriculum was developed, some visionary and enthusiastic PNEU members made it their business to carry the work into the schools of very underprivileged children, and it was the results of that experiment that bolstered Charlotte Mason’s conviction that her methods were the right ones for making a liberal education available to all. The children did so well that “the general conclusion is that these are the children of educated and cultivated parents.” (Philosophy of Education, p. 8) But they were not!

And thus, Charlotte Mason could boldly declare:

AT LAST there is hope that the offspring of working-class parents may be led into the wide pastures of a liberal education. (Philosophy of Education, p. 8, emphasis added)

That sentence, in nutshell, gives us the juxtaposition of what is new and what is old in Charlotte Mason’s philosophy. She does not redefine a “liberal education”—that was generally understood to be a literary education based on the liberal arts. The “new hope” is that exactly that excellent kind of education can be given at last to the working class as well as the privileged classes.

Miss Mason introduces her final book by trying to place that vision before the eyes of her readers.

I have to tell of the awakening of a ‘general soul’ at the touch of knowledge. Eight years ago the ‘soul’ of a class of children in a mining village school awoke simultaneously at this magic touch and has remained awake. (Philosophy of Education, p. xxv)

You have to use your imagination to understand what “a mining village” would conjure up in the minds of her readers 100 years ago. These were uneducated, illiterate people who were almost outcasts from society. The response of these children to a liberal education is what inspired Charlotte Mason to declare:

To find that the children of a mining population were equally responsive seemed to open a new hope for the world.(Philosophy of Education, p. xxv, emphasis added)

The White Post #4—A New Hope for the World—will be continued tomorrow.

The first “traditional” aspect of a Charlotte Mason education is that it is a “liberal” education conducted primarily through literature. Her method includes many things which are not directly literary, but it is to this literary tradition, long the foundation of classical education, that Charlotte Mason urges educators.

The modern notion of education, with its shibboleth of “things not words,” is intrinsically demoralizing. The human intelligence demands letters, literature, with a more than bread-hunger. (Philosophy of Education, p. 331)

She also makes a point of reminding us that the Greek educators had the same priority.

Letters, if not (as I said before) the main content of knowledge, constitute anyway the container—the wrought salver, the exquisite vase, even the alabaster box to hold the ointment.
If a man cannot think without words, if he who thinks with words will certainly express his thoughts, what of the monosyllabic habit that is falling upon men of all classes? The chatter of many women and some men does not count, for thought is the last thing it is meant to express. The Greeks believed that a training in the use and power of words was the chief part of education, recognising that if the thought fathers the word, so does the word in turn father the thought. They concerned themselves with no language, ancient or modern, save their own, but of that they acquired a consummate appreciation. With the words came the great thoughts, expressed in whatever way the emergencies of the State called for—in wise laws, victorious battles, glorious temples, sculpture, drama. For great thoughts anticipate great works; and these come only to a people conversant with the great thoughts that have been written and said. (Philosophy of Education, p. 315-16, emphasis added)

Charlotte Mason calls attention to several historical eras in education to highlight the ideas that she thought were worth emulating. One of those of course is Greek education. She declared, “In some ways the Greeks had a more adequate view of education than ourselves.” (Formation of Character, p. 383) She notes that to the foundation of music and gymnastic, the Greeks considered philosophy the proper study for everyone, specifically because of the foundation it laid for right thinking and right acting (a hallmark of classical education). She quotes Plutarch at length, and urges us to realize that Christians have a more certain foundation than the Greeks had, because Christianity not only teaches us what is right, as philosophy does, but also enables us to carry out that teaching.

Elsewhere in her writing, apart from words, Charlotte Mason calls attention to the physical training (gymnastic) that was important to the Greeks—not for personal health or well being, but for the sake of being in the best form to carry out whatever tasks we might be called upon to do.

It is questionable whether we are making heroes; and this was the object of physical culture among the early Greeks, anyway. Men must be heroes, or how could they fulfil the heavy tasks laid upon them by the gods? (School Education, p. 101)

She also highlights certain aspects of medieval thinking, in part because they continued some important classical traditions.

The medieval Church preserved classical traditions. It endeavoured to answer the Socratic inquiry: “What ought we to do and what do we mean by the words ‘ought’ and ‘doing’ or ‘acting’?” (School Education, p. 132)

Miss Mason was also particularly interested in the medieval view of knowledge, which was comprehensive and universal. She speaks of “a great educational principle which was better understood by the medieval Church than by ourselves.” (School Education, p. 153). The principle is illustrated by the fresco she liked so much, and concerns both the origin and the unity of knowledge—“the relations which bind all things to all other things.” (Parents and Children, p. 259) In fact, she declares quite plainly that the PNEU holds the same view as these educators of the past and wants to “restore to the world” something that had been obscured.

We hold, in fact, that great conception of education held by the medieval Church (School Education, p. 95)

Let us set ourselves to labour with purpose and passion to restore to the world, enriched by the additions of later knowledge, that great scheme of unity of life which produced great men and great work in the past. (School Education, p. 156)

The fresco is a visual representation of  the principle that “education is the science of relations.” Miss Mason equates “relations” (and philosophy) with “wisdom”—that object of the classical tradition of education. According to her,  all the kinds of knowledge and relations are a part of the process of developing wisdom.

Now what is wisdom, philosophy? Is it not the recognition of relations? First, we have to understand relations of time and space and matter, the natural philosophy which made up so much of the wisdom of Solomon; then, by slow degrees, and more and more, we learn that moral philosophy which determines our relations of love and justice and duty to each other: later, perhaps, we investigate the profound and puzzling subject of the inter-relations of our own most composite being, mental philosophy. And in all these and beyond all these we apprehend, slowly and feebly, the highest relation of all, the relation to God, which we call religion. (Parents and Children, p. 258-59)

Again, none of these things are new or original with Charlotte Mason—these are the things that she acknowledges as belonging to the “wisdom of the ages” that need to be preserved and cultivated. She asserts that the educators of the PNEU were “experiencing anew the joy of the Renaissance” (Philosophy of Education, p. 9) And what was that joy that the Renaissance brought? It was a return to classical learning, the literature of the ancient world, and the love of knowledge. Miss Mason rejoiced that this new resurgence had better and stronger foundations that she hoped would yield better fruit than the first Renaissance, which was followed by the Enlightenment.

When you look at the material of a Charlotte Mason education, it is clear that she considers her work to be linked to vital educational ideas that form part of the great tradition of education from the Greeks, through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, to more contemporary educators such as Matthew Arnold. She valued the content and the purpose of education that were “long the property of the world”—the ideas that had produced great works in the past—and wanted to secure them for her generation.

Because Charlotte Mason described her principles using the words “some of it is new, much of it is old,” we will examine first the greater part—the “much,” which makes no claims for being new, but acknowledges that within the principles and philosophy there are ideas which have been around for a long time.

We know that Charlotte Mason read widely, not to say voraciously, on the subject of education. We have every reason to be assured that she kept abreast of all the educational thinking that was current during her lifetime. She was familiar not only with the educational trends in her own country, but also those in Germany, Scandinavia, and the United States, and probably others. However, she did not limit herself to modern thinkers. She would probably have considered that absurd. Rather, she reminded us that:

“the lessons of the ages have been duly set, and that each age is concerned, not only with its own particular page, but with every preceding page. For who feels that he has mastered a book if he is familiar with only the last page of it?” (School Education, p. 160)

Only a partial list of the educational thinkers to whom Charlotte Mason refers becomes quite lengthy, and she was in the habit of reading even novels with an eye to the educational philosophy contained within. The list of authors she read is long, from Plato to Rousseau and from Comenius to Ruskin. Few of us can expect to get through as many books in our lifetime as she did.

Miss Mason links her ideas to educators of the past—over and over she points out similarities between her ideas and the ideas of Plato or Comenius or Milton. Her volumes are full of prima facia references, such as “Milton’s ideal of a ‘complete and generous education’ meets our occasions” (Philosophy of Education, p. 249) or:

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)

It is obvious that Miss Mason made a choice to share how her ideas were similar to the ideas of much older philosophers. So the question becomes, what parts of her ideas are traditional?

To begin with, Charlotte Mason considered the education she wanted to provide to children a “liberal education.” This is distinguished from vocational training or a merely utilitarian education. Education should provide children with more than just a working familiarity with the knowledge that they need for work or everyday life.

A human being does not fill his place in the universe without putting out tendrils of attachment in the directions proper to him. We must get rid of the notion that to learn the ‘three R’s’ or the Latin grammar well, a child should learn these and nothing else. (School Education, p. 209)

A liberal education is the education traditionally given to those with leisure for intellectual study. (For the full scope, you might want to read The Liberal Arts Tradition, and my discussion of it, which includes how similar Charlotte Masons ideas are.) It involves literature—books—as well as exposure to ideas in the realms of mathematics, the seven liberal arts, and the sciences. During Charlotte Mason’s lifetime there was a great deal of tension between the claims of a literary, liberal education (traditionally based on the classical languages) and a more “scientific” education, by which was meant a more technical, analytical approach to science. Charlotte Mason herself skipped past this dichotomy and embraced science as a liberal study, founded upon wonder.

But there is a region of apparent sterility in our intellectual life. Science says of literature, “I’ll none of it,” and science is the preoccupation of our age. Whatever we study must be divested to the bone, and the principle of life goes with the flesh we strip away: history expires in the process, poetry cannot come to birth, religion faints; we sit down to the dry bones of science and say, Here is knowledge, all the knowledge there is to know. “I think that is very wonderful,” a little girl wrote in an examination paper after trying to explain why a leaf is green. That little girl had found the principle—admiration, wonder—which makes science vital, and without wonder her highest value is, not spiritual, but utilitarian.
…But the fault is not in science—that mode of revelation which is granted to our generation, may we reverently say?—but in our presentation of it by means of facts and figures and demonstrations that mean no more to the general audience than the point demonstrated, never showing the wonder and magnificent reach of the law unfolded. (Philosophy of Education, p. 317-18)

So the first “traditional” aspect of a Charlotte Mason education is that it is a “liberal” education conducted primarily through literature. Her method includes many things which are not directly literary, but it is to this literary tradition, long the foundation of classical education, that Charlotte Mason urges educators. She did not want the excitement or usefulness of scientific pursuits to replace the literary tradition that made character formation its object.

The White Post #3—The Wisdom of the Past—will be continued tomorrow.

This post is a slight interlude from the main point, because I want to use one clear example from Charlotte Mason about the way that something can be both old and new at the same time. Miss Mason illustrates this idea for us well in her discussion about habit.

Habit-formation figures largely in a Mason education. One of Miss Mason’s key principles is that “education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life,” and the one-third that is “discipline” is centered upon habits.

At one level, Charlotte Mason was quite excited about (then) current research based upon the work of William Benjamin Carpenter (author of Principles of Mental Physiology). Carpenter described the way repeated actions created actual physical changes in the brain—“ruts,” as they were called. This idea—that the brain could be reshaped by the creation of habits—seemed to offer a firm foothold to educational methods. If you could deliberately set out to create certain kinds of “ruts” and oversee them to fruition, your educational efforts would create an indelible impression in the very brains of your pupils, and their habits would establish their behavior in the short term, and in the long term, their very character. Such were the ideas of Carpenter, and Charlotte Mason was an enthusiastic propagator of those ideas. She wrote: “I beg to acknowledge my indebtedness to Dr. Carpenter’s Mental Physiology for valuable teaching on the subject of habits contained in some two or three chapters of that work.” (Home Education, p. 11)

Later in her life, Charlotte Mason became somewhat disillusioned and disappointed in the science that excited her when she was younger. (You can see the difference in her perspective across the span of her writing.) Looking back, she actually declared in a letter to Henrietta Franklin that “Science has done nothing to confirm the ‘rut’ theory in all these years, and Brother Body seems to me much the inferior partner. I think all that I have written is still true but I would emphasize habit and so on less.” (emphasis added). However, although our understanding of the mechanism of habit today is different from the science that was understood in Charlotte Mason’s day, it does not undermine the essential rightness of her ideas nor her emphasis on habit.

And that is because, long before science began examining the physiological mechanism of habit formation in the brain, the role of habit in education had been observed, remarked upon, and incorporated into serious schemes of educational philosophy. One of the earliest observers on record was Aristotle, and many discussions of habit in education begin with Nicomachean Ethics. Charlotte Mason quotes a saying that is sometimes attributed to him: “Sow an act, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.” (Parents and Children, p. 29) When I wrote about Comenius and Charlotte Mason, I discussed their similar views of the role of habit: Habit formation in youth lays a foundation for virtuous living.

While Miss Mason was enthusiastic about the science of habit, she was under no illusion that habit as a part of education was something new. She mentions Thomas à Kempis a number of times to illustrate the long tradition of habit in education—which she considered the recognition of a natural law of education.

To put it in an old form of words—the words of Thomas à Kempis—what seems to me the fundamental law of education is no more than this: ‘Habit is driven out by habit.’ People have always known that ‘Use is second nature,’ but the reason why, and the scope of the saying, these are discoveries of recent days. (Parents and Children, p. 85, emphasis added)

And also:

If science limits our range of work as regards the development of so-called faculties, it extends it in equal measure with regard to habit. Here we have no new doctrine to proclaim. ‘One custom overcometh another,’ said Thomas a’ Kempis, and that is all we have to say; only, physiologists have made clear to us the rationale of this law of habit (Parents and Children, p. 228, emphasis added)

It is evident that Miss Mason was aware of the long tradition of emphasizing habit in education, but the science excited her. She believed it should lend additional confidence and care to the deliberate creation of habits in young children. Her enthusiasm is strong in Home Education, Parents and Children, and Formation of Character. Although she tempered that enthusiasm later in her life, the essential role of habit is not changed. The science is simply somewhat different from what was thought at the time.

When Charlotte Mason added “the science of the day” to “the philosophy of the ages” and declared they were together enough to form a code of education, it was to this physiological aspect of habit training that she referred. Habit-formation had been a part of educational philosophy from antiquity. It was old, but there was something new to think about it. A thing can be both old and new at the same time, as is illustrated here. It is certainly possible for Charlotte Mason’s comprehensive philosophy of education to belong to the long “classical” tradition of education and yet have something new to offer at the same time, as we shall see.

Charlotte Mason’s philosophy of education is a very full and comprehensive one. She did two separate things very well. First, she articulated a foundation of solid principles upon which to base education. Second, she developed extremely effective practical methods based upon those principles. There are many similarities between her ideas and the ideas of other educators, both ancient and modern. The reason for that is simply that her principles are universal principles—they represent truths about human nature and education that others have observed as well as herself.

But Charlotte Mason was not simply recycling old ideas without anything new to add to them. She brought original thought and insight to the question of education, although not without some initial trepidation. She did have some concerns about whether or not her contributions were entirely adequate. However, as her ideas were taken up by home and school teachers and implemented with many children, she had the pleasure of seeing how very well her ideas worked out in practice. After many decades, she had more confidence that the ideas she had shared were in fact of real importance, and she had no hesitation then in urging her work to be taken up by others.

Because she was a prolific writer, we have a valuable archive of her ideas in the six volumes of the Home Education series. Within the nearly 2000 pages of those volumes, you can find some commentary that appears contradictory on the surface of it.

We have chanced to light on unknown tracts in the region of educational thought. (Philosophy of Education, p. 8)

We cannot afford to discard the wisdom of the past and begin anew with the effort to collect and systematise, hoping to accomplish as much and more in our short span than the centuries have brought us. (Parents and Children, p. 205)

An EDUCATIONAL REVOLUTION is before us to which every one of us is bound to put his hand. (School Education, p. 247)

In the same volume, Charlotte Mason writes about “certain fundamental ideas, long the property of the world, which we have embraced in our scheme of thought.” (School Education, p. 100, emphasis added)

What does this mean? How can Charlotte Mason’s ideas about education be “unknown tracts” if they are also “the wisdom of the past”, and how can they be a “revolution” if they are “long the property of the world?” Looking at these statements alone, we can only conclude that either Charlotte Mason was confused about whether her methods were old or new or else she was talking about different things when she made these seemingly opposite claims for her ideas. I suspect the latter is true, and while we may be confused by the apparent contradiction, Miss Mason knew exactly what she was saying.

Toward the end of her life, when Charlotte Mason was full of confidence about her methods and was urging the British public to consider adopting not only the methods but even the curriculum used in the schools run by the Parents’ National Educational Union (PNEU), she presented her philosophy with the clear statement that “Some of it is new, much of it is old.” (Philosophy of Education, p. 27) In light of that assessment, it is easy to suppose that she had a clear understanding of which parts were new and which were old, and how much there was of each. However, she did not see a reason to share that specific information with the world. As she articulates her philosophy, she is not often explicit about which parts are new, and which parts are old, but there are hints. Sometimes she identifies old and new quite clearly:

We really have existing material in the philosophy of the ages and the science of the day to formulate an educational code whereby we may order the lives of our children and regulate our own. (Parents and Children, p. 119, emphasis added)

This statement makes it clear that her works contains a mixture of old and new. One might legitimately ask whether these questions matter at all, and while I was once content to accept her statements of “old” and “new” at face value, it is better to understand the relationship between them. So, for the past two years, as I’ve read through the volumes in the Home Education Series (for the umpteenth time), I’ve kept an eye on these ideas. If Charlotte Mason said that something was new, what was she talking about? If she referred to something as old (“long the property of the world”), what was she referring to?

Gradually, I began to see a pattern and came to understand what Miss Mason thought was new, and what she thought was part of the long tradition of educational thinking—that “philosophy of the ages” that is enough upon which to build an educational theory, especially when bolstered by “the science of the day.”

That’s what this five-part series is going to be about. We’ll take a look at the old, and at the new. If you’ve ever thought Charlotte Mason was “all new” or “all old,” I hope this discussion will provide a clearer understanding of the tradition that gives a framework to her ideas about education, as well as why she believed she was doing something revolutionary.

I’m very excited to share a new project that I’ve been working on. One of the things that makes Charlotte Mason’s methods so effective is the fact that they are based on principles—absolute truths about a person and the way that a person’s mind works. This audio seminar is a discussion about the way that principles operate in our lives, and an introduction into the key principles that stand at the helm, guiding our educational decisions.

Donna-Jean Breckenridge is my host and joined me to talk over the way that we’ve seen these principles work in our own home schools for the past two decades.  We hope that this three-part 90 minute seminar, which includes a handout with references to the passages discussed in Charlotte Mason’s Home Education series, will help those new to the methods to appreciate the way that the principles drive the practices in a Charlotte Mason education, and why that matters. As long-time practitioners of Miss Mason’s method, we found ourselves encouraged by this discussion of the fundamental principles, and I hope it will encourage other veterans as well.

The cost of the seminar is $10, and I hope it will be a great investment in your understanding of Charlotte Mason’s principles and why they matter.

We would love your feedback on this project, so please leave a comment here to let us know what you think!

Purchase Principles at the Helm Seminar

A new school year is beginning, and lots of new families have taken up Charlotte Mason’s methods for their families. Maybe you are new, and maybe you’re a veteran with two, or five, or fifteen years of Charlotte Mason teaching behind you. Either way, you may very well want to connect with others who share your enthusiasm for Charlotte Mason’s teaching methods. This is a great time to begin looking, and to exercise grace.

I want to share part of a letter written by Elsie Kitching, Charlotte Mason’s long-time faithful secretary and helper. During her lifetime, Miss Mason carried on a great deal of correspondence, and Miss Kitching kept up the practice in her stead. This was written not long after Miss Mason’s death, and published in the Parent’s Review for everyone to read, not just the recipient, because what Miss Kitching had to say has a wide application which reaches us today in the 21st century.

I am quite sure that the visitors you have had at various times have been full of admiration of the work of your children. Mr. Y also wrote to me saying how much impressed he was by it, and I should not like to apply your word “unpermissible” to what you have considered it well to do in your school. Miss Mason would not have used the word herself, but in her work with those with whom she came most into contact here she always took any debated point back to the principle at issue, and made us decide whether or not a certain practice could bear the final test of the principle. No doubt able and thoughtful teachers will always interpret Miss Mason’s writings in their own way; but this should not prevent close cooperation between those who are immediately concerned in carrying out a trust which has been left to them, and those who are endeavouring to carry out Miss Mason’s Method in wider fields of action from their reading of her books.

This was written, as you can see, in response to a letter/question. Someone was asking, in effect, “is this practice unpermissible?” Miss Kitching’s reply is significant to me, in several ways.

First, “Miss Mason would not have used that word.” Ponder that long. Next, she points out that the principles are the guide—consider your practices in light of the principles. Is the principle supported or compromised by any given practice? You must decide this for yourself. It’s perfectly possible that one person could follow a practice without violating a principle, while the same practice would be a stumbling block to another. I have seen this, specifically with memorization. Some people manage to make it fun and part of a life-giving education, while for others it becomes a deadening, dreadful chore.

Then, I’m going to repeat this: “No doubt able and thoughtful teachers will always interpret Miss Mason’s writings in their own way; but this should not prevent close cooperation between those who are immediately concerned in carrying out a trust which has been left to them, and those who are endeavouring to carry out Miss Mason’s Method in wider fields of action from their reading of her books.”

This is my take-away from this, and this is what has stuck with me since I read it, and what I think is very relevant as there are more and more Charlotte Mason educators who are seeking to join forces for co-ops, and book studies, and other community-based activities that will enhance their children’s education. “Able and thoughtful teachers will always interpret Miss Mason’s writings in their own way.” Full stop there. Take a moment to think about that sentence.  Because that is us—all of us, without exception, reading and learning from Charlotte Mason in the 21st century. I don’t care who you are or how faithful you think you are, or how correct you imagine your personal interpretation is, this is where you are, and where I am: we are interpreting Miss Mason’s writings in our own way. That matters, in light of the next sentence, in which Miss Kitching refers to “those who are immediately concerned in carrying out a trust which has been left to them.” That was herself, her colleagues, the PNEU. No matter how much we might want to be them, the ones with the special trust, we are not. And again, full stop. And I just want to point out that within 50 years of her death, Charlotte Mason’s influence was greatly diminished in her own organization. I have a PNEU teacher’s manual from the 1970’s, in which parents and teachers are urged to praise their students—I cringe every time I read it, knowing how much CM objected to praise as an educational motivation.

So—the PNEU and its special trust are gone. As much as one might like to, we cannot recover close personal association with Charlotte Mason. We—the ones reading and interpreting her writings—are all that is left.

However, even at that moment in time—when Elsie Kitching was still alive and the PNEU still holding true to Miss Mason’s principles—Miss Kitching said that such variations should not prevent close cooperation between those with the special trust and those “who are endeavouring to carry out Miss Mason’s Method in wider fields of action from their reading of her books.”

In view of that, I can think of nothing further from the practice and principles of Charlotte Mason and the PNEU than jostling for position and staking out of territory, and claims of greater purity, authenticity, and superiority.  If the PNEU itself was prepared to cooperate closely with those “endeavouring to carry out Miss Mason’s Method in wider field of action from their reading of her books,” even if their practices were a little different, why should those of us who fall into that category—and again, that’s all of us—do any less?

I encourage you to reach out to other Charlotte Mason educators and find community. Be kind to each other. If Charlotte Mason would not have have said that a practice was “unpermissible,” then why should we? Let’s read Charlotte Mason’s works together, and think, and learn, and grow, and build each other up. I have said before, and I stand by those words—that’s the best tribute we could pay to her for all that she has given us.

Copyright Karen Glass 2018

Quote taken from this article: https://www.amblesideonline.org/PR/PR39p…tion.shtml

In the final chapter of The Liberal Arts Tradition, Clark and Jain spend some time examining the calling and culture of schools. I suspect most of my readers are homeschoolers, not schoolteachers, so I’m just going to mention that without discussing it. If you do work in a school, you’ll definitely want to consider some of their ideas in this chapter.

I’m going to springboard off of the word paideia. This Greek word is sometimes translated as education, but is more properly understood as enculturation. It’s not just about educating a child in the academic way, but developing his thoughts and behavior to make him the best person he can be. In Charlotte Mason’s terms, we might say that education is the formation of character. The word is even used in the Bible, when Paul writes in Ephesians that parents should “bring up their children in the paideia of the Lord.”

This central aspect of the classical tradition draws our focus to two of the identifying characteristics of that tradition: the development of virtue and the pursuit of wisdom.

According to Clark and Jain,

The basic idea contained in the term virtue was excellence with respect to practice.

In other words, virtue is expressed by action, doing something, and learning to do it well.

I’ve been meaning for a while to share the way these two classical principles (virtue and wisdom) are embedded in Charlotte Mason’s principles, and this seems like a good place to do it. The word virtue is linked to the idea of manliness, in the sense of power and essence. Charlotte Mason considers one of the most important things for a person to learn is how to govern one’s own will.

In principles 16-19, she links will to reason, and underscores how important it is to understand these aspects of ourselves and use them wisely. The will must choose the ideas that the reason will entertain, and so she writes:

Children should be taught, as they become mature enough to understand such teaching, that the chief responsibility which rests on them as persons is the acceptance or rejection of ideas. To help them in this choice we give them principles of conduct and a wide range of the knowledge fitted to them.

The will is not in itself good or bad—it can be used to choose a good course or an evil one. But making a choice at all—using the will—is the distinctive activity of a man (person).

To will  [is] 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. 140)

Having made this clear, Charlotte Mason also gives us a hint that this is, in fact, part of pursuing virtue. To use the will wisely and well is to act, and this is the how virtue is expressed.

The will is virtue, in the etymological sense of that word; it is manliness. (Ourselves, p. 139)

Besides the development of virtue, another distinctive of Greek paideia is the pursuit of wisdom. And again, this idea of wisdom is embedded in Charlotte Mason’s principles; in this case, it is implied by “Education is the science of relations. Actually, Miss Mason is quite explicit about it. I shared this quote earlier in this blog series, but I’ll repeat it here.

Now what is wisdom, philosophy? Is it not the recognition of relations? First, we have to understand relations of time and space and matter, the natural philosophy which made up so much of the wisdom of Solomon; then, by slow degrees, and more and more, we learn that moral philosophy which determines our relations of love and justice and duty to each other: later, perhaps, we investigate the profound and puzzling subject of the inter-relations of our own most composite being, mental philosophy. And in all these and beyond all these we apprehend, slowly and feebly, the highest relation of all, the relation to God, which we call religion. In this science of the relations of things consists what we call wisdom. (Parents and Children, p. 258-59, emphasis mine)

One thing I found fascinating is that Charlotte Mason, as well as Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain, refer to the childhood development of Jesus to underscore their assurance that these are the proper pursuits for education.

We are told that Jesus Christ “grew in wisdom and stature in the sight of God and man.” Clark and Jain suggest that this “stature” is a way of expressing virtue, that perfection of choosing (willing) to do right.

So, there you go—wisdom and virtue embedded in Charlotte Mason’s principles. I think she has a pretty good grasp of paideia, too.

A child should be brought up to have relations of force with earth and water, should run and ride, swim and skate, lift and carry; should know texture, and work in material; should know by name, and where and how they live at any rate, the things of the earth about him, its birds and beasts and creeping things, its herbs and trees; should be in touch with the literature, art and thought of the past and the present I do not mean that he should know all these things; but he should feel, when he reads of it in the newspapers, the thrill which stirred the Cretan peasants when the frescoes in the palace of King Minos were disclosed to the labour of their spades. He should feel the thrill, not from mere contiguity, but because he has with the past the relationship of living pulsing thought; and, if blood be thicker than water, thought is more quickening than blood. He must have a living relationship with the present, its historic movement, its science, literature, art, social needs and aspirations. In fact, he must have a wide outlook, intimate relations all round; and force, virtue, must pass out of him, whether of hand, will, or sympathy, wherever he touches. This is no impossible programme. Indeed it can be pretty well filled in by the time an intelligent boy or girl has reached the age of thirteen or fourteen; for it depends, not upon how much is learned, but upon how things are learned. (School Education, p. 161-62, emphasis mine)

I know that’s a long quote, but it’s the best I know for giving you a bird’s eye view  of how the wide, generous curriculum urged by Mason (and Clark and Jain) should produce a virtuous person.

Clark and Jain remind us as they conclude their book that we are called to raise our children in the paideia of the Lord. Our education—whether in school or at home—should be Christian first. It is only as the classical tradition serves that Christian focus that it deserves our attention.

This is the final post in this blog series. I’ve enjoyed this book very much and will doubtless refer to it again and again. I hope it will be read by many others—everyone who wants to understand classical education a little better.

I’ll be taking a break from the blog for a bit, but I’ll be back soon with some interesting new things—and I hope, a few surprises—to share with you.

Copyright 2018 Karen Glass

Link to all the posts in the Liberal Arts Tradition discussion.

The final letter in that long acronym is “T” for theology. (Just as a reminder, PGMAPT stands for piety, gymnastic, music, arts, philosophy, theology.) This is the culmination of the vision that The Liberal Arts Tradition gives us for a classical education that is more than just the trivium. It partakes of a much broader part of the tradition, and by sandwiching all the rest between piety and theology, helps keep the whole process on track.

Theology is the discipline that the medieval pedagogues called “the queen of the sciences.”

It catches my attention that they refer to it as a “science” and not an “art”—that’s a significant difference. An art is something you do, but a science is knowledge that you comprehend. In light of that, their definition of theology is intriguing.

In the Christian classical tradition, theology is the science of divine revelation.

This is what sets theology apart from philosophy, even “divine” philosophy, because philosophy operates in the realm of what human reason can understand and apprehend. But theology is above and beyond human reason—it is knowledge that could never be known apart from God’s choice to reveal it in Scripture, and ultimately the word is manifest in the person of Jesus Christ.

This knowledge transcends everything. There is nothing in the ancient pagan world that corresponds to the revelation of God in Christ, so that revelation—theology—transforms the classical tradition. It creates a new aspect of the total tradition, but it also transforms—we might say redeems—the rest of the classical curriculum. Thus, “making a distinctly Christian classical paradigm.”

Theology informs the curriculum at its foundations. We saw earlier how piety, gymnastic, and music are foundational to the educational paradigm we inherited from the Greeks. Now we are in the position to appreciate how the integration of Christian theology as the culmination of the curriculum radically reorients these fundamental aspects of education.

This is quite interesting, because there was an educational tradition or paradigm—and a pretty good one, so far as it went—before it was shaped by Christianity. But in the same sort of way that Christian theology through Christ fulfilled the Old Testament Hebrew law and created a new covenant of grace, Christian theology also fulfilled all the highest hopes of the classical tradition and created conditions in which all the loftiest goals of creating virtuous men could actually be achieved. Charlotte Mason expresses this very thought. Prior to the addition of theology to the tradition, philosophy was the end. Thus,

The functions which Plutarch claims for philosophy we ascribe to religion, and by so doing we place life on a higher level. There is this fundamental difference between the two: while philosophy instructs, religion both instructs and enables. (Formation of Character, p. 385)

So, what happens here is that we don’t just tack on theology to the end of the old tradition; we have the old tradition transformed. Theology becomes not merely the “end,” but the “telos” of education. It gives purpose to every aspect. And that is really what Charlotte Mason’s twentieth principle makes clear:

We allow no separation to grow up between the intellectual and ‘spiritual’ life of children; but should teach them that the divine Spirit has constant access to their spirits, and is their continual helper in all the interests, duties, and joys of life

That’s the role of theology in the Christian classical paradigm—it infuses meaning and purpose into everything. Clark and Jain write:

Theology unifies the curriculum; it provides a framework for the liberal arts and sciences, and the philosophies that unify them. In fact, the very notion of unity itself is derived from theology: all things were created by God and by Him all things continue to exist.

You might notice that the inclusion of theology in the classical paradigm isn’t really about adding the study of systematic theology, or one particular interpretation. It’s a very foundational part of the whole, integrated program. Education is the science of relations. All knowledge is connected. The Holy Spirit is the source of of everything we know. Understanding this aspect of the classical tradition is really part of a paradigm shift for educators, and it’s one of the things that Charlotte Mason wanted to transform the educational practices in her own time.

Every aspect of the classical paradigm of education works together. Each part has a place in a greater whole. If possible, we should try to keep our eyes on the big picture above all. Don’t lose the forest while looking at the trees!

If you’ve been supplementing this series by reading Afterthoughts, as I’ve encouraged you to do, you really won’t want to miss Brandy’s contribution to the discussion of theology.

Copyright 2018 Karen Glass

Link to all the posts in the Liberal Arts Tradition discussion.

The final—and also the highest—type of philosophy discussed in The Liberal Arts Tradition is divine philosophy. “Divine philosophy” would be easy to confound with theology, or the special revelation that we have in the Bible, but that’s not quite what is meant. Theology is the final element of the PGMAPT acronym, and has a role in the classical paradigm, but “divine philosophy” is more concerned with the truth that is knowable but not part of the physical world. Hence, Clark and Jain use the word “metaphysics” as an equivalent term.

Metaphysics is the study of being: what can be said of all of reality? For the medievals, metaphysics asked what could be held as true of the world, humanity, and even God. Are there any kinds of attributes that apply to all of these loci of reality?

Those are good questions, and sometimes just asking good questions contributes to education by placing us in the right frame of mind for learning, whether we ever discover conclusive answers or not.

The medievals who asked these questions more or less came to a consensus that there were five essential elements that are present in reality: being, goodness, truth, beauty, and unity.

Obviously, there is no way I can elaborate on all that in a blog post. This is Metaphysics .0101.  Clark and Jain only offer the tip of the iceberg on the few pages they devote to this topic. But it’s enough to start your mind moving in some interesting ways.

For example, I think right away of the way God expressed his identity to Moses: “I am that I am”—the final being, inherent being, the essence of all being. And I think of the way that the God who is created the world and day by day declared “it is good.” Not every philosopher who perceived truth, beauty, and goodness had the revelation of God,  but since we do, metaphysics (or divine philosophy) is even more profound and transcendent.

This is ground that Charlotte Mason meant for her pupils to tread.

Philosophy offers fascinating and delightful travelling, and the wayfarer here learns many lessons of life; but he does not find the same firm foothold as he whose way leads him through the Principality of Mathematics. Still, certainty is not the best thing in the world. To search, to endeavour, and to feel our way to a foothold from point to point is also exhilarating; and every step that is gained is a resting-place and a house of ease for Mansoul. (Ourselves, p. 39)

You see what she’s saying there? Ask the questions. Ask and ask and keeping asking. The search and the endeavour is in itself a rewarding—even exhilarating—process.

When you combine metaphysics with natural and moral philosophy (because they are not really separate pursuits, but aspects of one whole), you get questions like this:

What is man? Is the concept “man” only an amalgamation of the multitude of particular examples of men that exist? Or is there some essence to man that is a universal truth?

I think you won’t be surprised to find Charlotte Mason weighing in on this idea, and in the book addressed to young people:

Many persons think themselves quite different from everybody else, which is a mistake. Self-knowledge teaches that what is true of everybody else is true of us also; and when we come to know how wonderful are the powers and how immense are the possibilities of Mansoul, we are filled, not with pride, but with Self-reverence, which includes reverence and pity for the meanest and most debased, because each of these is also a great Mansoul, though it may be a Mansoul neglected, ruined, or decayed. (Ourselves, p. 34)

The inherent, absolute essence of truth, beauty, and goodness, and being is the proper sphere for all of us, as persons, to pursue. We pursue it concretely via history, art, literature, and nature, and when we are a little older, we can pursue it more directly and abstractly with metaphysical questions. That is the central paradigm of the classical tradition, and that’s part of why my confidence that Charlotte Mason is a part of that tradition grows stronger the more I read.

Clark and Jain remind us that our modern thinking has strayed from this tradition, and some thinkers attribute our modern problems to  that departure. They tell us that from that perspective, metaphysics is “the guardian of the secret questions of culture.”

They shouldn’t be secret, but we are so accustomed to skim the surface of things, we forget that these questions matter. If something like the definition of the word “is” is called into question (and the authors remind us that it famously was), then what is under attack is the metaphysical understanding of being, through the medium of language. That’s why I suggested that the essence of grammar—the noun-ness of nouns—is more vital than the rules that govern their usage. Without the principles of language/grammar we have no way to communicate at all. Nothing would have meaning.

Clark and Jain quote J.I. Packer, and I want to share just a little part of that quote:

“Participating in the truth meant to be mastered by it rather than mastering it.”

I find this very interesting. Our mental posture as we approach knowledge makes all the difference. Will it shape us, or do we mean to wrestle it into a form that suits us?

All three aspects of philosophy—natural, moral, and divine—urge us to participate in the search for truth. Charlotte Mason called it an exhilarating endeavor. It’s a human endeavor. Restoring even a rudimentary understanding of these things into our educational efforts will enlarge our students’ minds and hearts and souls. I can’t do more in this blog post, really, than point out the mere existence of vast realms of ideas to be pursued. It’s a journey for a lifetime, not something you’ll wrap up in a 45 minute class lecture or even a 3-credit college course. Just understanding that is a good beginning.

If you take nothing else away from this, I hope you’ll remember that even when we isolate one aspect of the classical tradition for discussion, nothing is truly separate or isolated. Clark and Jain concur:

All of the curricular categories which we have advocated in this work should be respected and appreciated by a holistic philosophy.

In other words—synthetic thinking. Education is the science of relations. All knowledge is connected.

And the connections matter.

Copyright 2018 Karen Glass

Link to all the posts in the Liberal Arts Tradition discussion.