Parents and Children: A Review

So, I told you here that I would try to share a bit with you about my summer reading.  I told you about Mere Motherhood already.  Today, I'd love to tell you a bit about Parents and Children.

 

Parents and Children is Charlotte Mason's second volume.  I picked it up this summer because it was one of the remaining two hold-outs of her six-volume series that I had not read yet.  (Volume 5, Formation of Character, is now the last hold-out.  Hopefully sometime in the next year I'll be able to get to that one, so that I can say that I've read them all. J  I started reading the Volumes in 2011, I think.  Take heart, dear Mama feeling intimidated by those six volumes.  Slow and steady wins the race!)   It is really a series of stand-alone essays, each somewhat distinct from the others.   That said, there is still a definite theme that runs through all of them and a 'big picture' idea that I am taking away.

 

What is that idea, you may ask?  Very simply this:  Parental responsibility is to provide the child with nourishing, vital, ideas and train him in good habits – and to do this in cooperation with the Holy Spirit.  That last bit is so key.  We have the responsibility to plant the seeds, to keep the soil well-watered, to nurture the plants along – but we can't make them grow.  Ultimately, it is the grace of God poured out over the hearts of our children that will bring the growth.  Charlotte Mason puts it this way:

 

"The object of lessons should be in the main, twofold: to train a child in certain mental habits, as attention, accuracy, promptness, etc. and to nourish him with ideas which may bear fruit in his life…

 

Every habit has its beginning.  The beginning is the idea which comes with a stir and takes possession of us….

 

…the fact that God the Holy Spirit is Himself the Supreme Educator dealing with each of us severally in the things we call sacred and those we call secular.  We lay ourselves open to the spiritual impact of ideas, whether these be conveyed by the printed page, the human voice, or whether they reach us without visible sign."  (p.229-230)

 

In Mere Motherhood, Cindy Rollins expressed a very similar idea this way:

 

"You can't fight your children into the Kingdom. You can pray for them, and you can tell them stories, and you can love them."  (p.130)

 

In so doing, Charlotte Mason tells in at the closing of her book, we do much to advance the Kingdom of Christ.

Charlotte Mason on Books

"One more thing is of vital importance; children must have books, living books, the best books; the best are not too good for them; anything less than the best is not good enough; and if it is needful to exercise economy, let go everything that belongs to soft and luxurious living before letting go the duty of supplying the books, and the frequent changes of books, which are necessary for the constant stimulation of the child's intellectual life."  (p.279)

 

~Charlotte Mason, Parents and Children

 

See honey, my obsession with books (and therefore need for more bookcases) is TOTALLY LEGIT.  Charlotte Mason SAID SO.

 

This may be my favorite Mason quote yet.

 

Tee-hee.

 

 

 

From My Commonplace: Feed My Sheep

"We may not despise them, or hinder them, ('suffer little children'), or offend them by our brutish clumsiness of action and want of serious thought; while the one positive precept afforded is 'feed' (which should be rendered 'pasture') 'my lambs', place them in the midst of abundant food."  (p.81)

~Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education (Volume 6)

 

This quote comes from Chapter 5 of Charlotte Mason's sixth volume, on the Sacredness of Personality.  She spends much of this chapter exhorting parents and teachers to remember that children are *persons* and not to treat them in any way that might suggest otherwise.  We aren't to manipulate them or force-feed them or tease them or even merely entertain them.  We are to shepherd them.  We are to guide them to the green pastures of true knowledge and let them feed themselves in those pastures.  It is this steady diet of knowledge for its own sake that will help our children/students grow into fully-alive human beings.

 

This reference to feeding the lambs – shepherding – brought to mind the recent study our church women's group did on Margaret Feinberg's book Scouting the Divine.  In one section of that book, Feinberg observes and discusses the art of shepherding with an actual, modern day shepherd in an effort to better understand some of the references to shepherds and sheep in Scripture.  I flipped back through that section of the book and noted some of the characteristics of good shepherds discussed. 

 

The Shepherd:

            - is gentle, tender, and patient

 

            - knows her sheep individually – their unique personalities and quirks – and deals with them accordingly

 

            - is trusted by the sheep.  The sheep trust the shepherd not to lead them astray and to feed them that which is nourishing – to lead them to healthy, abundant, green pastures.

 

            - leads gently, without pushing.  "Pushing a sheep produces agitation.  But when I go ahead of the flock and call them by name, they follow me peacefully." (p.61)

 

So much food for thought there. 

 

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My Bookbag This Week:

Devotional: The Daily Office Lectionary Readings and Prayers from The Trinity Mission

 The Rising: Living the Mysteries of Lent, Easter, and Pentecost (Wright)

Theological: On The Incarnation (St. Athanasius, with introduction by CS Lewis)

AO Book Discussion Group: *Between Books*

Personal Choice: The Story of King Arthur and His Knights (Pyle) – Pre-reading for AO Year 5

With my Hubby: Emma (Austen)

Family Read-Aloud Literature: Little Britches (Moody)

 

*I am also reading Charlotte Mason's Volume 6 for a local CM book club, but these meetings are infrequent and so I just read the brief section assigned as our meetings come up.   

 

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Getting Started with AO Year 1: Getting to Know Charlotte Mason

So, friend, are you ready to get started?  If you haven't already read the Introduction to this series, you can click over and read it here.  And then come back for today's coffee-chat: Getting to Know Charlotte Mason.

 

 

So first things first.  If you click over to the Ambleside Online Year One page and open up the booklist.  The very first thing you see is this:

 

Note: These booklists and curriculum suggestions are incomplete without a thorough understanding of Charlotte Mason's ideas and methods. We cannot emphasize enough that you take time to familiarize yourself with her philosophy by reading her books.

 

And then you might freak out a little when you realize that Charlotte Mason wrote 6 rather thick books.  And she wrote them 100 years ago.  And you are still suffering from baby brain.

 

Please don't slam your computer lid and run away now.  The fact of the matter is: they are right - you do need to know something about Charlotte Mason's ideas and methods.  Consider the curriculum offered on the AO site your syllabus and CM's works the teacher's manual.  You will not be able to successfully use the one without understanding the other.

 

But: that doesn't mean that you have to read all 6 of those volumes before you can even get started.  Guess what….we've been doing this for four years now at our house and I still haven't read all six.  I'm working towards that, but I haven't reached the goal yet.  And I hadn't read *any* of them when we started AO, although I had read a lot about her.   It is okay to start small, act on what you DO understand, and make it a goal to learn more as you go and build on what you already know.  This is what I have done, and I assure you that you can start giving your children a rich education TODAY, even if your understanding of CM is small and incomplete.

 

My recommendations for starting small:

 

If you are brand new to Charlotte Mason, I suggest Susan Schaeffer MacCaulay's For the Children's Sake.  This is a short and very accessible overview of Charlotte Mason's ideas.  This book was the introduction to CM's ideas for many, many people.  Just be forewarned: once you've read it, you may never look back. J

 

If you've read that already, or you are otherwise a little familiar with CM's ideas, than you may be ready to dive in to Charlotte Mason's actual works.   You can go a couple of different ways with this.  Volume 1, Home Education, is her book that particularly pertains to children under the age of 9.  If you have all little ones, this is a good starting place.   Or you can start with Volume 6, A Philosophy of Education.  This was published just before her death, and is a good summary of her ideas as tested and worked out over her lifetime.   You can't go wrong with either of those.  I read Volume 1 first, and then 6, and then 1 again, and then 6 again, and then started filling in with the others.  

 

You have a couple of different choices for how to read these, once you've decided which you want to start with.  There are various versions available for free on Ambleside Online's website, including the original text or a modern language paraphrase.   You can also purchase the physical books.  They are unfortunately out of print at the moment, but can be found used reasonably priced.  Look for the books with the pink checked covers (like these or these.)  If you decide to go with Volume 6, there is also Karen Glass' very helpful annotated abridgement, Mind to Mind.  She has taken out some of the dated references and rabbit trails while leaving in the essential 'meat', making it another good starting place for the slightly intimidated.

 

If you have the luxury of having a Charlotte Mason community in your local area, do whatever you can to connect with it.   If you don't have that luxury, though – I well understand.  It wasn't until this year that I did either. If that's your situation, the Ambleside Online Forum is an excellent online community.  I have made lasting real-life friendships through that community.  There is a wealth of knowledge and experience there, and no question is too dumb.  Start reading and come on over and join the conversation.

 

Another resource I highly recommend is the Afterthoughts blog.  Brandy has all kinds of helps for those new to Charlotte Mason.  Subscribe to her Newbie Tuesday newsletter – click over there right now and do it. You'll be glad you did.  I recently read the 2015 compendium, and even as a non-newbie found them a helpful refresher.  Her 31 Days of Charlotte Mason series is also a good starting place, and she has some great talks to download in her shop.  Start with the 20 Principles overview one.

 

When you've exhausted all this, you can check my Classical and Charlotte Mason Resources tab for more ideas….but I think I've given you enough to keep you busy for a while.

 

For newbies: where are you going to start?  And for non-newbies: what was your favorite introductory resource to CM?

 

Reflections on Relationship: Enriching Relationships with Mankind

This is the fourth part of my planning series, Reflections on Relationship.  You can read the other parts here:

Introduction

Enriching Relationship with God

Enriching Relationships with the People Around Us

 

Today, we are going to consider how to enrich our relationship with Mankind.  Charlotte Mason's curriculum recommendations are centered around three areas of knowledge – knowledge of God, knowledge of man, and knowledge of the universe.  Specifically, knowledge of man encompasses the topics of history, literature, morals and economics, composition, languages, and art (see more on this in Charlotte Mason's Sixth Volume, Towards a Philosophy of Education.)

 

It is much simpler to work out how to enrich relationships with mankind in practice than the previous two areas because the Ambleside Online curriculum was designed with this purpose in mind.  So it's really as simple as saying we will continue on with that.   For the most part, we use the Ambleside book selections as scheduled, although I occasionally make a substitution.  Michelle will complete Year 3 and begin Year 4 in early 2016, James will complete Year 1 and begin Year 2, and Elizabeth will have her own special pile of storybooks to read with Mama (she will not turn 6 until next March, and will begin Year 1 at the next natural term break after that.)

 

We will also be participating in a co-op this year which will also foster these relationships in the context of a community.

 

 

How are you planning to enrich relationships with Mankind this year?

Reflections on Relationship: Enriching Relationships with the People Around Us

This is part three in my planning series, Reflections on Relationship.  You can read the other parts here:

Introduction

Enriching Relationship with God

 

Today, let's consider how we can enrich relationships with those around us – our family and our community.   Charlotte Mason's educational motto was "Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life."   While the other three aspects of relationship we are considering – God, Mankind, and God's Created Universe – all fall under the heading of 'education is a life', today's topic falls under 'education is an atmosphere' and 'education is a discipline'. 

 

Education is an Atmosphere

"When we say that education is an atmosphere we do not mean that a child should be isolated in what may be called a 'child environment' specially adapted and prepared, but that we should take into account the educational value of his natural home atmosphere both as regards persons and things and should let him live freely among his proper conditions."  (Charlotte Mason, Volume 6, p. 94)

 

In When Children Love to Learn, Jack Beckman speaks thus of the learning atmosphere we should strive to cultivate:

 

"The atmosphere is supportive, nurturing, and caring, reflecting a sense of safety balanced with challenge.  Good habits of mind and body are deliberately encouraged both in teacher and student.  A sense of community is present – praying and feeding on the Word of God, solving problems, and gathering around vital learning together." (p.55)  

 

I love the picture that he paints of a learning community 'gathering around learning together.'   He also speaks of:

 

"our role as parents and teachers is to reflect the model of our Lord Jesus in relationship with these little ones – to come alongside and encourage them in their ignorance and sin toward a better way…When a child chooses to act in accordance with his fallenness, this time is best used to instruct the child in relationship." (p.59)

 

I see here the idea of cultivating a mentoring/discipling relationship with my children, of fostering a learning community within our family rather than a checklist-driven us-and-them mentality.  How to go about doing this is a little bit tricky because much of it relies on consistently checking my own attitude and setting aside my own convenience.   It means watching how I react to them in our learning times or in times of correction and being willing to take advantage of teachable moments.  It means repenting when I fail and asking my children to forgive me.   I hope (I pray!) that this kind of attitude shift will be a byproduct of attending to my own personal spiritual vitality.

 

On a more practical level, I have thought about some ways that we can restructure our learning time to better foster relationship and community.  For us right now that has meant putting Bible back into our Morning Time, as I mentioned before.  It has meant dropping French completely, at least for now, because of the tension it always caused among all of us.  It has also meant separating everyone for memory work/recitation so that each person can learn their poetry and Bible passages at their own rate rather than fostering a sense of competition or frustration due to children who memorize at different speeds. 

 

In addition to working to foster a greater sense of community in our home, we will also participate in the community around us through hospitality, attending a weekly co-op, and being a part of our church family.

 

Education is a Discipline

"By this formula we mean the discipline of habits formed definitely and thoughtfully whether habits of mind or of body." (Charlotte Mason, Volume 6, p. 99)

 

Ah yes, habit training.  This is one aspect of Charlotte Mason's philosophy that's always made me a little bit squirmy.  And so I have tended to be less than intentional about it.   That said, I was struck by some of Maryellen St Cyr's comments about habit training in When Children Love to Learn:

 

"The necessity of forming habits is an integral part of this philosophy as they aid one in functioning in relationships.  These habits are not tacked onto one's life as another feat to be mastered in a performance culture, but are used as valuable tools in the intellectual, spiritual, and physical development in relationship to oneself, God, and others…Therefore, it is the business of education and the function of the educator to train each child we have been entrusted with in the formation of habits that will allow the child to truly live." (p. 89,99)

 

The idea that habits 'aid one in functioning in relationships' set off all kinds of lightbulbs in my mind.  One area that we have really been lacking in is helping our children to develop habits of courtesy – things like table manners, greeting people, responding to people who greet you, how to treat visitors in our home.  While I could offer a lot of valid-sounding excuses for this, I won't.  The fact is, whatever has happened in the past, we still need to work on these things  now.  Failing to attend to them has at times disrupted the harmony of our home and relationships with others.  So as much as intentional habit training has always made me kind of squirmy, we are going to work on these things this year starting with table manners – things like sitting properly in your chair, not starting to eat until after prayer, not making rude comments about the food, eating quietly with mouths closed, not leaving the table until you have been excused…you get the idea.   I'm still working out exactly what this will look like in practice, but it is a goal for this year.  Once we have made some progress on that front, we will probably move on to dealing courteously with others (greetings and responding to greeting appropriately, etc) and habits of hospitality (treating others courteously when they visit our home).

 

How do you intend to enrich relationships with those around you this year?

Reflections on Relationship: A Planning Series

So, it's that time of year where I see many bloggers posting their plans for the upcoming school year.  I love reading planning posts.  I love making checklists and organizing new books.   I love sharp pencils and new notebooks.  I love just about everything about starting a new school year and always have.

 

That said, I haven't made any new checklists or organized anyone's binder yet.   That aspect of planning comes very naturally to me - so much so that it is easy for me to jump straight to that part of the process without considering the 'why' behind what we are doing.  This has been especially true in the last year or two.  Since returning to the States in May, I have come to realize that I have been functioning in survival mode for…well…for a long time.   Now that we are here in the US again, at least for now, I am slowly starting to replenish some of what has drained away.  Part of that process is thinking through where we are and where we need to be in our family and in our homeschool, and taking those ideas into consideration when I start choosing curriculum and making checklists.  I want to be sure that we are using our time in the best possible way - being intentional to work towards our goals - and not just flying on autopilot.

 

I have been re-reading sections of When Children Love to Learn (Cooper, et al) as part of my reflection time this summer.  This quote in an early section really struck me:

 

"Charlotte Mason's educational ideal was not to remove us from the ordinary but to enrich us, each one, with the best possible relationships…with God, with people in our family and community, with others through books, art, or music, and with God's creation." (p.35)

 

 

The end of Charlotte Mason education is far more than the books and materials that are included on my nice checklists.  The end is relationship – and not just any relationships, but the best.  The relationships that will enrich us and help us become human beings fully alive.  That is really the point of the living books and the narration and the nature study and habit training.  Those things are not ends in themselves, they are the means of helping us to develop those relationships appropriate to us as human beings.  (See more about this in Charlotte Mason's Third Volume, School Education, Chapter VIII 'Certain Relations Proper to a Child').

 

These relationships fall into four basic categories: relationship with God (what Charlotte Mason refers to as 'Knowledge of God' in her writings), relationships with the people in our family and community ('Education is an atmosphere' and 'Education is a discipline'), relationships with 'others' - Mankind, if you will - that we develop through our books and other studies ('Knowledge of Man'), and relationship with God's creation ('Knowledge of the Universe').   I have been reflecting on ways that I can help to enrich our relationships in each of these four areas so that I can ensure that my priorities are straight when I get to the more nitty-gritty-checklist-making part of my planning process.   What does it look like to enrich these relationships?  And how can we do that, practically speaking?  I hope to share some of those reflections in posts to come.

 

From My Commonplace: Delightful Companions

I just began re-reading Charlotte Mason's sixth volume, A Philosophy of Education.    It's my third time through, but this is one of those books that you can read and re-read and still gain new insights every time. 

 

A couple of quotes that caught my eye this week:

 

"…certainly it is twice blessed, it blesses him that gives and him that takes, and a sort of radiancy of look distinguishes both scholar and teacher engaged in this manner of education…" (p.27)

 

"Parents become interested in the schoolroom work, and find their children 'delightful companions.'"  (p. 28)

 

~Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education

 

I loved the idea here that educating with rich living books that feed the mind and nourish the soul  is not only a blessing to the student, but to the parent/teacher as well.  My life has been immensely enriched by homeschooling my children with Charlotte Mason's ideas and Ambleside Online.   We have our difficult days of course, but on the whole educating and learning with my children is a delight.   And the further we go down this path the more I find that my children are becoming 'delightful companions', truly interesting people.   The same day that I read these pages, I happened to allow my oldest daughter to sit up a bit later than her younger siblings.   We had a rather delightful ramble through a variety of topics ranging from Ivan the Terrible (who she had heard about in her co-op class that day and wanted to add to her timeline book), to where the current Queen Elizabeth lives, to rocks, geology, and birthstones ('Mama, can we maybe do a rock term when our bird term is done?').    It was delightful to me to see her curiosity, her thirst for knowledge, the connections she is making from one thing to another to another.   She is at an age where many of her peers are starting to lose that natural sense of wonder – that thirst to know.   Charlotte warns against this, and has devised her method around the idea of feeding and nurturing that thirst in order to keep it alive and well so that "…an education that is begun at school [will be] continued throughout life" (p.29).  It is a beautiful thing to begin to see the first little buds of this truth peep out in our home.   I look forward to seeing the fruit in the years to come.

 

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My Bookbag This Week:

Devotional: Easter Devotions in Living the Christian Year (Gross), The Christian Life: A Doctrinal Introduction (Ferguson)

Theological or Christian Living: The Story of Christianity, Volume 1 (Gonzales)
Book Discussion Group Titles: Macbeth (Shakespeare)

'Great Book': Inferno (Dante)

On Education: How to Read a Book (Adler), A Philosophy of Education (Mason)

Topic of Special Interest: The New World (Churchill)

Novel/Biography/Memoir: Nicholas Nickelby (Dickens), The Princess and Curdie (MacDonald)

Read-Alouds with the Children: On the Banks of Plum Creek (Wilder), The Magician's Nephew (Lewis), Eric Liddell: Something Greater Than Gold (Benge)

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From My Commonplace: On Narration

If you have not yet read this fantastic article on narration, you should.  Go do it.  Now. J

 

I read this article a couple weeks ago.  After I did, I read all of the linked Parent's Review Articles, and made several pages of notes – tips, ideas, quotes.  Those articles are a treasure trove.  I came away with a fresh understanding of what narration really is and why we do it.  That's really where it all starts.  Once you understand the 'what' and the 'why', it makes it easier to put it into practice in an appropriate way, and to help your students grow in a way that doesn't interfere with the process.

 

This week I'm sharing some of the quotes I noted from that exercise.

 

"The less the teacher talks the more the class will have to think."

~GF Husband

 

Narration "properly dealt with leads to mental transfiguration."

~GF Husband

 

"We narrate and then we know."

~EK Manders

 

"[Narration] is not to tell you what you know already or even to find out what they know, but to help them to remember."

~EK Manders

 

"…narration…is founded on this power of mind to recall knowledge gained from a single reading or seeing or doing and the fact that such recollection makes so deep an impression on the mind that it remains for a long time and is never entirely lost."

~Helen E. Wix

 

"Such co-ordination grows from remembered past narrations over a wide field.  Some note in today's reading awakes an echo in some other subject or lesson so the power to compare and contrast and illustrate by example is developed.  This should lead to a valuable use of analogy, and application of past history to modern times and modern problems." (

Oo..that's just what I was talking about the other day….)

~ Helen E. Wix

 

"What a child digs for is his own possession; what is poured into his ear, like the idle song of a pleasant singer, floats out as lightly as it came in, and is rarely assimilated."

~Charlotte Mason , School Education, p. 177

 

"…in the act of narrating every power of his mind comes in to play, that points and bearings which he had not observed are brought out, that the whole is visualized and brought into relief in an extraordinary way; in fact, that scene or argument has become part of his personal experience; he knows, he has assimilated what he has read.  This not memory work."

~Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education, p. 16

 

 

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My Bookbag This Week:

Devotional: Easter Devotions in Living the Christian Year (Gross), The Christian Life: A Doctrinal Introduction (Ferguson)

Theological or Christian Living: The Story of Christianity, Volume 1 (Gonzales)
Book Discussion Group Titles: Watership Down (Adams), Macbeth (Shakespeare)

'Great Book': Inferno (Dante)

On Education: How to Read a Book (Adler), A Philosophy of Education (Mason)

Topic of Special Interest: The New World (Churchill)

Novel/Biography/Memoir: Children of the New Forest (Marryat) – Pre-reading for Ambleside Year 3

Read-Alouds with the Children: On the Banks of Plum Creek (Wilder), The Magician's Nephew (Lewis), Eric Liddell: Something Greater Than Gold (Benge)

On the Back Burner: Nicholas Nickelby (Dickens)

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The Science of Relations

We had an interesting discussion over on the AO Forum recently that has been rumbling around in my mind ever since.  One mom shared how she had just had an "aha" moment and realized that when Charlotte Mason talks about 'the science of relations', she's not just talking about the relationships and connections between topics and subject matter, but also the relationship that the student forms internally between himself and the person/event/topic being studied.

 

When one is just starting out with Charlotte Mason style education, I think it can be hard to see how exactly this is supposed to play out.  It can be tempting to try to force those connections to happen artificially (a la unit studies).  But as time goes along, the student gains more ideas to form relationships and connections with, and you can start to see little glimpses of the tapestry that is being woven beneath the surface.

 

Recently, we had an experience in our house that confirmed this.   Michelle, currently studying Ambleside Online Year 3, came to me to narrate from Explore His Earth – a book about physical geography and earth science.  The section she had just read had described and discussed the continents of North and South America.   She was almost giddy with excitement when she came to me: "Mama! I met an old friend in this book!" she said.  "Amerigo Vespucci!  Do you remember him?   He was the explorer who they named America after even though he wasn't the first person to find it."   We had read about Amerigo Vespucci several weeks previously in our American history book, This Country of Ours, and the story had rather tickled her fancy.   Somewhere inside, she had formed a 'relationship' with the story of Amerigo Vespucci and his explorations.   When she met him again in another book on a completely different subject matter, she recognized him as an "old friend".  Another thread had been laid in the tapestry.

 

In her Philosophy of Education, Charlotte Mason says this:

 

"A small English boy of nine living in Japan remarked, 'Isn't it fun, Mother, learning all these things? Everything seems to fit into something else.' He had not found out the whole secret; everything fitted into something within himself."  (p.157)

It is a beautiful thing to begin to see the truth of this brought to life in our home.

Irrigating Deserts: Why I am a Classical Educator

I recently finished reading CS Lewis' series of essays on education, The Abolition of Man.  I actually read this book years ago as an elementary education major at a Christian university, but to be completely honest it didn't really make an impact on me then - I didn't really have a context by which to really understand it at that time, I don't think.  This time around, informed by much of the study I have done over the past several years of Charlotte Mason's principles and the Christian classical liberal arts tradition, the impact these essays made on me was huge.  All of a sudden a lot of pieces fit together in my mind – it became clear to me why it is I do what I am doing and why it is vitally important to stay the course even with the culture around me tries to pull me away.

 

This post is going to be an attempt to summarize some of my thinking along these lines.  I considered writing a full series exploring the connections I discovered, but to be honest, I don't really have enough time to pull my pages and pages of quotes and notes together into some coherent whole.  After my summary, I will leave you with a list of some of the other reading that I have done over the past several years that informed my understanding of Lewis' words so that you can dig for yourself and see what you find.  J

 

In the three essays that comprise The Abolition of Man ("Men without Chests", "The Tao", "The Abolition of Man"), Lewis describes some of the troubling trends he noted in the field of education in his time.  Although originally written in 1944, much of what he observed then still rings true.   Ultimately, he is warning against subjectivism and the trend away from acknowledging and rooting our educational practice in objective, absolute Truth (what he refers to in his essays as "the Tao").  When we fail to recognize and order our lives by these moral absolutes, we are no longer freeborn men.  Lewis says, "It is not that they are bad men.  They are not men at all."  They become slaves – slaves to impulses, instincts, to the few 'Conditioners' who decide what 'truth' is if it is no longer fixed and absolute.    "The practical result of education in [this] spirit," Lewis tells us, "must be the destruction of the society that accepts it."  The antidote, he says, is to remain in the "Tao": "In the Tao itself, as long as we remain within it, we find the concrete reality in which to participate is to be truly human: the real common will and common reason of humanity, alive, and growing like a tree, and branching out, as the situation varies, into ever new beauties and dignities of application."

 

One way we can 'remain in the Tao', as Lewis puts it, is by following the principles of the Christian classical tradition – of which Charlotte Mason's ideas are one excellent expression.  These principles are firmly rooted in the Truth, Beauty, and Goodness that find their source in God Himself.   The goal is to order the souls of our children and students according to what is True and Good and Beautiful and thereby cultivate wisdom and virtue by the help of the Holy Spirit.   The result of this kind of education – or perhaps formation is a better word since we are dealing with whole persons and not just minds – is free men and free women, not slaves subject to the ebb and flow of the dominant culture around them.  Lewis' essays helped me to clarify why it is so important to 'instruct the conscience' and to help my students understand 'the way of the will' and 'the way of reason' (terms used by Charlotte Mason in her writings).  This is why I am a classical educator and why I follow the principles that Charlotte Mason has laid out in her writings.   It is because, as Lewis put it, "the task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts."

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Reading that has informed my thoughts on The Abolition of Man:

-         Charlotte Mason's writings, especially Volume 4, Ourselves and Volume 6, Towards a Philosophy of Education

-         Brandy Vencel's 20 Principles Study – I did this with a group on the AO Forum a couple years ago, but the same study has now been published as Start Here

-         Consider This by Karen Glass, especially the chapter titled "Finding the Forest amid the Trees" on synthetic vs. analytic learning

-         Various resources from the Circe Institute

-         The Liberal Arts Tradition by Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain, especially the chapters on "Piety" and "Gymnastic and Music"

From My Commonplace: Chief, Saviour, Friend, King

Today I will share one last quote from Charlotte Mason's Ourselves.  This from the final chapter:

 

"One thing we must hold fast – a clear conception of what is meant by Christianity.  It is not 'being good' or serving our fellows: many who do not own the sovereignty of Christ are better than we who do.  But the Christian is aware of Jesus as an ever-present Saviour, at hand in all dangers and necessities; of Christ as the King whose he is and whom he serves, who rules his destinies and apportions his duties.  It is a great thing to be owned, and Jesus Christ owns us.  He is our Chief, whom we delight to honor and serve; and He is our Saviour, who delivers us, our Friend who cherishes us, our King who blesses us with His dominion.  Christianity would only appear to be possible when there is a full recognition of the divinity of Christ.   Let us cry with St. Augustine: 'Take my heart! For I cannot give it Thee: Keep it! For I cannot keep it for Thee.'"

 

~Charlotte Mason, Ourselves

 

Oh, how I wish I had realized this truth earlier in my life.  I grew up with the impression that being a Christian meant asking Jesus into your heart and being good girl, and it is only just in the past five years or so that I have realized that there is far more to it than that.  I am learning to be dazzled by His beauty and His love and His grace and mercy towards such a one as me, and delight to honor and serve Him rather than do so out of a sense of obligation or because it was what I thought was expected of me.  It is my fervent prayer that my children will come to realize this truth while they are still young. 

 

I can't wait to read and discuss this book with them when they are teenagers.

 

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My Bookbag This Week:

Devotional: Revelation, with a commentary The Final Word (Wilmshurst)

Theological or Christian Living: Age of Opportunity (Tripp)

Book Discussion Group Titles: Idylls of the King (Tennyson), Watership Down (Adams)

Great Book: Inferno (Dante)

On Education: How to Read a Book (Adler), Beauty for Truth's Sake (Caldecott)

Topics of Special Interest: The New World (Churchill)

Novel/Biography/Memoir: Nicholas Nickelby (Dickens)

Read-Alouds with the Children: On the Banks of Plum Creek (Wilder), The Silver Chair (Lewis), Eric Liddell: Something Greater Than Gold (Benge), The Milly Molly Mandy Story Book (Brisley)

 

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