When Children Love to Learn E-Book

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 421

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2004

Beschreibung

They're hallmarks of childhood. The endless "why" questions. The desire to touch and taste everything. The curiosity and the observations. It can't be denied-children have an inherent desire to know. Teachers and parents can either encourage this natural inquisitiveness or squelch it. There is joy in the classroom when children learn-not to take a test, not to get a grade, not to compete with each other, and not to please their parents or their teachers-but because they want to know about the world around them! Both Christian educators and parents will find proven help in creating a positive learning atmosphere through methods pioneered by Charlotte Mason that show how to develop a child's natural love of learning. The professional educators, administrators, and Mason supporters contributing to this volume give useful applications that work in a variety of educational settings, from Christian schools to homeschools. A practical follow-up to Crossway's For the Children's Sake, this book follows a tradition of giving serious thought to what education is, so that children will be learning for life and for everlasting life.  

Leseprobe

When Children Love to Learn

Copyright © 2004 by Child Light Educational Trust

Published by Crossway Booksa division of Good News Publishers1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided by USA copyright law.

Cover design: David LaPlaca

Cover photo: Getty Images

First printing 2004

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise designated, Scripture verses are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataWhen children love to learn : a practical application of Charlotte Mason’s philosophy for today / Elaine Cooper, general editor.

      p. cm.

   Includes bibliographical references.

   ISBN 1-58134-259-4 (trade pbk. : alk. paper)

   1. Mason, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Maria), 1842-1923. 2. Education— Philosophy. 3. Education—Curricula. I. Cooper, Elaine, 1947- .

LB775.M362W44    2004

370'.1—dc222003022313

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Contents

THE CONTRIBUTORS

FOREWORD—Eve Anderson

PREFACE—Elaine Cooper

PART ONE

1 THE VALUE OF CHARLOTTE MASON’S WORK FOR TODAYSusan Schaeffer Macaulay

2 THE CHILD IS A PERSONJack Beckman

3 FOUR PILLARS OF EDUCATION

Education Is an Atmosphere—Bobby Scott

Education Is a Discipline—Maryellen St. Cyr

Education Is a Life—Maryellen St. Cyr

Education Is the Science of Relations—Jack Beckman

4 DISTINCTIVES OF A CHARLOTTE MASON EDUCATION

Living Books—Maryellen St. Cyr

Narration—Maryellen St. Cyr

Reading and Literature—Jack Beckman

Spelling and Composition—Jack Beckman

Poetry—Maryellen St. Cyr

The Teaching of Shakespeare—Maryellen St. Cyr

History—Jack Beckman

Mathematics—Jack Beckman

Nature Study and Notebooks—Bobby Scott

Science—Bobby Scott

Picture Study—Bobby Scott

Music Appreciation—Bobby Scott

Bible Instruction—Bobby Scott

Foreign Languages—Jack Beckman

Physical Education—Bobby Scott

Handcrafts—Maryellen St. Cyr

5 BROADER APPLICATION OF CHARLOTTE MASON’STEACHING PRINCIPLES   Susan Schaeffer Macaulay

PART TWO

6 AN APPLIED PHILOSOPHY

RESOURCES

NOTES

The Contributors

Susan Schaeffer Macaulay grew up in Switzerland at L’Abri Fellowship, which was founded by her parents, Francis and Edith Schaeffer. She and her husband, Ranald, have led the work of L’Abri in England over the years and are vitally involved with educational issues.

Jack Beckman (M. Ed., M.Phil., Ph.D.) has recently completed his doctorate in education at Cambridge University, England, where he concentrated on Charlotte Mason’s educational principles and practice. He is particularly interested in her work as applied in the preparation of teachers and is currently a member of the education faculty at Covenant College, Lookout Mountain, Georgia. He is also on the board of Charlotte Mason Schools International.

Maryellen St. Cyr (M. Ed.) has many years of experience as a classroom teacher in both primary and middle schools. She has worked as a curriculum director and a principal of elementary schools. Currently she is Director of Charlotte Mason Schools International (CMSI), a nonprofit organization established to help teachers, parents, and schools develop a Charlotte Mason education.

Bobby Scott (M. Ed. in School Administration and M. Ed. in Counseling) is experienced in teaching both high and middle schools. He is at present principal of Perimeter Christian School, a large private school in Atlanta. He has been pivotal in bringing Charlotte Mason’s ideas into the American educational scene and has helped start schools. Mr. Scott established the Charlotte Mason Institute which, now under CMSI, serves an increasing network of schools interested in the ideas and application of Charlotte Mason’s educational philosophy.

Elaine Cooper runs Child Light Educational Trust in England together with Susan Macaulay. Mrs. Cooper is married, with three teenage children, and is involved in education as a concerned layperson.

Foreword

Following the success and ever widening readership of Susan Schaeffer Macaulay’s book For the Children’s Sake, the number of requests for help and guidance has increased from parents and teachers seeking a deeper understanding of educator Charlotte Mason’s philosophy and teaching methods.

It is so encouraging to know that many good teachers will be helping to take this philosophy on into this century, therefore enabling many children to have the wonderful start in life of a good Christian education, with a broad curriculum, adapting it to modern needs but not forgetting the lasting values in life—appreciation of good literature and the arts, awareness of the environment, and love for God’s world.

Realizing the need to train and help students understand her philosophy and teaching methods, Charlotte Mason (1842–1923) set up a “House of Education” (later named Charlotte Mason College). I was fortunate enough to spend three years at the college, albeit nearly thirty years after the death of Charlotte Mason, but we were given a thorough understanding of the philosophy by reading (and narrating) her educational books. The spirit of Charlotte Mason lived on in her college. It was always a small college where each individual was an important person. Many of the lecturers had been trained at the college, and there were still people around who had known Charlotte Mason.

It is sad that in England the many small PNEU schools (Parents’ National Education Union schools started by Miss Mason) have disappeared, but Charlotte Mason was forward thinking and would have wanted us to advance thoughtfully with our times. I am sure she would have been glad that our national curriculum advocates the reading of good literature, including Shakespeare, the study of great artists and musicians, and developing an awareness of the environment. So although teachers are not necessarily aware of Charlotte Mason, her influence continues in many good schools in England.

In many ways during the last few years I have been the link between the past and the future in Charlotte Mason circles. My connections with Miss Mason started when I was five years old and my parents sent me to a small PNEU school within walking distance of home. I spent three years at this school, and a very happy time it was, learning so many things that have remained with me for life. I learned basic reading, writing, and mathematics in a painless and enjoyable way, but more important to me were the lovely afternoon nature walks with the Head Teacher or her assistant, both of whom had been students of Charlotte Mason. My other great joy was the careful study of the pictures of a different artist each term. Of course education must be shared between home and school; so equally memorable are the visits to London with my mother to seek out the original pictures of the artist that I had been studying. These pictures have remained lasting “friends” to me when I visit the National Gallery or other galleries. Equally important were the weekend trips into the country, my father and I sharing an interest in butterflies, caterpillars, and wildflowers. My Nature Note Book, which I still keep, brings back many special memories.

When I left school, I wanted to become a teacher; so at eighteen I started my three-year training at Charlotte Mason College. When I finished my course, I taught in three different PNEU schools, gaining valuable experience. Then in 1963 I was asked to apply for the job of Head Teacher of a PNEU school near Windsor. I remained in that position for twenty-eight years, a wonderfully rewarding and challenging time, seeing the school grow and develop. I always regarded the school as my “family,” and I am still in touch with many of my former students and teachers.

Many of the PNEU schools started in a very small way, being almost a home schoolroom. Eton End was just one of these. My predecessor (also a Charlotte Mason teacher) had been asked in 1936 to start a school for the children of the teachers at Eton College. During the first two years the school was in a room of the vicarage in Eton. Then Miss Johnstone (the Head Teacher) and her mother were able to buy a Victorian house just a mile away. This was their home as well as their school. The school is still on this site, buildings have been added, and an adjoining field has been bought; so there is still plenty of space for all forms of games as well as wild space for nature walks.

When Miss Johnstone retired in 1963, I followed her as Head Teacher. I always employed good, well-qualified teachers (Charlotte Mason trained teachers were not available), but when I confronted them with the curriculum, they were amazed at the amount that the children would be learning and the breadth of the subjects. They were afraid they would not be able to cope, but they soon saw the “feast” laid before the children and themselves and were grateful for the stimulation of so many interesting subjects.

In 1991 I retired from Eton End myself, but I still visit the school regularly, by invitation. Recently at the end of school year assembly, I was pleased to hear my successor in her words of advice to the graduating girls use the words of the school motto, the motto that Charlotte Mason gave to all PNEU schools: “I am, I can, I ought, I will.”

During my last term at Eton End, I had a visitor to the school—Mrs. Rosemary Moore from South Carolina. She was in England visiting schools, having read Charlotte Mason’s books. When she realized I was retiring, she asked if I would visit the United States, as she was hoping to set up a Charlotte Mason school, and perhaps I could help and advise her. This was a very busy time for me, and I agreed with her suggestion without giving it much thought. But Rosemary persevered, and in October 1992 I visited America for the first time. I spent three weeks there, and it was exciting to be involved in the birth of a new school. I had thought my teaching career was over, little realizing what my American trip would lead to! My annual trips have been exciting and rewarding times, visiting a number of schools that are basing their work on Charlotte Mason’s ideas, spending about a week in each, mainly giving demonstration lessons and talking with teachers and parents. But my main role is to give help and encouragement.

I can talk with experience and confidence, making people realize that Charlotte Mason’s philosophy really is right for the present time and for the future. I have had so many children passing through my classrooms. I continue to hear news of many of them, all leading interesting and worthwhile lives. They are all so grateful for the broad education they received—within a caring atmosphere where each child was respected as an interesting individual. I did not just educate the elite or gifted; we had a wide range of ability, but all students achieved and felt good at their own level. I have met many parents and teachers who have made a brave decision to opt out of public education, having the conviction that this is right for the children. I can assure you that it will be rewarding.

I am sure that this book will be a help and encouragement to many teachers and parents who are seeking further guidance. It is Charlotte Mason’s deep Christian convictions and her real understanding of children that make her philosophy so right for the twenty-first century as well as for her own times. This is not a rigid form of education but one conveying enduring values and knowledge.

EVE E. ANDERSON, former Headmistress Eton End, Old Windsor, England, 1998

Preface

By Elaine Cooper, General Editor

At first glance, the reader may feel somewhat overwhelmed at the task of foraging through this tome. We prefer to think we have been thorough in our treatment of the subject at hand. Some or many of the ideas in this philosophy of education may be new to you. It is our purpose to present a fresh way of thinking about the parent and child, the home and school, the learner and the teacher. Many who read Susan Schaeffer Macaulay’s book For the Children’s Sake were moved to write asking for ways of implementing the vigorous ideas presented in that little classic. Their main questions were:

“What does a Charlotte Mason education look like in this century?”

“What in the world was the PNEU?”1

“How can I be sure my child is really learning when there is such an emphasis on reading ‘living books’?”

“And in any case, what are ‘living books’?”

“What about the three R’s?”

Several of us have come together to try to offer some answers to these questions. Three of the major contributors bring years of experience in the classroom. All three have been principals of schools. As a result the guide will reflect their particular perspectives on their calling as educators. We offer no technique, but rather the simple proposition that children are best educated through careful relationships on the part of the adults—the parents and teachers— who are themselves in a lifelong process of learning and subject to the same duties and freedoms within a Christian worldview. Beyond that, each parent, teacher, or school needs to make thoughtful application of the many ideas presented in the following pages to the specific concerns and goals particular to their situations. In this guide are many practical suggestions and resources from which to choose.

We would like to draw attention to several historical observations that shape the context of this book. The first is that great educators of the past have often made strikingly similar observations about children, the way they behave and learn. So any current and serious approach to education falls within a long tradition of prior thinking, questioning, and practice. We also know, however, that the great ancient, literate civilizations of the past, both Western and Eastern, educated only a small elite of their populations to function as priests/scribes, tax collectors, and lawyers—that is, those who would communicate and perpetuate the religions, cultures, and economies within which they lived.

Secondly, as we look back to the classical period, we notice that while the Greeks and Romans contributed vital insights and asked profound questions regarding the nature of man,2 the purpose of education and law, the best organization of society, and the role of aesthetics in personal and civic life, teachers were not conferred with any social status, and their character or reputation was of no great consequence in the education of Greek children. The Romans, however, were distinct in their emphasis on virtue in both private and public behavior. They strongly emphasized the importance of nurturing virtue within family life. However, both societies also cultivated many unhelpful concepts about what confers worth and value to the individual. Their notions of heroism and paideia (the upbringing of children) never addressed, for example, the fact that they functioned essentially as slave societies.

Lastly, we are struck by an entirely different view of man presented in the Bible in ancient Israel—namely that men and women are made in the image of God. The significance and ramifications of being human rested simply on this premise and was in stark and striking contrast to the surrounding cultures of the time. These cultures viewed only a few select kings, pharaohs, and other rulers as possibly made in a god’s image. (For example, Alexander the Great declared himself a god, and later some Roman caesars and emperors did too.)

This biblical revelation of human origin and identity was further defined by the great commandments revealing God’s character and man’s right relationship to the one true and living God. Consequently, every person in ancient Israel was responsible to know the law and to act upon it. This law (later perfectly embodied and lived out in Jesus Christ) was to be treasured within the hearts and minds of all age-groups, through teaching, reading, memorization, festival, and ritual— to be passed on faithfully from generation to generation (Deut. 6).

The child was part and parcel of this reality. Children enjoyed a special place in the learning and commemoration of God’s dealings with the nation. The Hebrew child’s right to life, unlike in many other cultures, was protected by law. This heritage of a living culture and sacred view of the person formed the backbone of much of Western society until more recent times. It is the bedrock of any thinking about Christian education.

The Hebrew perception of the person and of human behavior was radically different from that of surrounding nations (then and now). Other peoples believe, for example, that a person’s worth is primarily achieved through being either an honorable soldier, highly educated, athletically superior, gifted in speech or looks, vastly wealthy, or, best of all, all of the above. Thus most children remained insignificant, ignorant, small, and powerless and could be treated or shaped in a variety of ways, depending on the ends to be achieved. They enjoyed no inherent status.

While When Children Love to Learn affirms the value of good and great achievements in a wide variety of fields, this book soundly rejects the view that a child’s ultimate worth lies in either intelligence, material circumstances, what he or she might become through grooming or talent, or anything else except in this remarkable fact—that he or she has been made in the image of a personal and infinite God and is especially confirmed by Jesus: “. . . of such is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19:14). “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, . . . Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:1-3).

Charlotte Mason was unequivocal on the most crucial starting point of education—that the child is born a person. This pillar of her thought is balanced by another: “We allow no separation to grow up between the intellectual and ‘spiritual’ life of children, but 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.”

Miss Mason was profoundly Christian, rooted in Scripture and immensely practical. This is what gives her philosophy and practice its unique combination of “form and freedom” (a phrase Dr. Francis Schaeffer used to describe the proper tension between the reality of moral law on the one hand and individual freedoms and creativity on the other). She drew her view of human beings and especially of children from Holy Writ: “And first let us consider where and what the little being is, who is entrusted to the care of human parents. A tablet to be written upon? A twig to be bent? Wax to be moulded? Very likely; but he is much more—the Bible shows the deepest insight into what is peculiar to the children in their nature and estate. . . .”3

She studied widely and wisely. She was able to harness many truthful observations and practices written by previous thinkers on education and accept them as part of the common grace given to all people. She was sharp in rejecting the false ideas of child-centered “freedoms” popularized by Rousseau and followers of the Romantic movement and was not sentimental or idealistic about children. Her attitude was realistic but patiently loving. She was equally clear in her exposure of adults who lord it over children merely on the grounds of a child’s dependence and ignorance. She maintained that people need to be careful not to use children to fulfill adult agendas.

Miss Mason herself did not leave many personal notes or diaries. Her written legacy is contained primarily in the six volumes of her educational philosophy and practice, and also in her six volumes written as a meditation on the Gospel of St. John entitled The Saviour of the World. She opposed any adulation of herself, but focused attention instead on the body of work she felt she had been given to do “for the children’s sake.” This was her unbending goal. She wanted all children to know about their heritage of being made in God’s image—sinful obviously, but nevertheless able to enjoy to their own best ability in a fallen world and in many diverse life circumstances, the life-giving relationship with God through the Savior and the Spirit, and also relationships with others, nature, art, and music.

This guide attempts to follow a tradition of giving serious thought to what Christian education today means for all children everywhere, to enable them to be learning for life and everlasting life. This is education for a purpose and not as a status symbol. Of course it means having skills to earn a living, but it also means glorifying God and enjoying Him forever (The Shorter Catechism, 1647).

Neither is this book offered as a monument to an exceptional person but rather as a continuing record of life-giving education flowing from the source of biblical Christianity. We hopefully share with our readers, along with all the practical aims implicit in this guide, the belief that we are in trust to do our utmost in providing the best education for all.

Our crying need today is less for a better method of education than for an adequate conception of children—children merely as human beings, whether brilliant or dull, precocious or backward. Exceptional qualities take care of themselves and so does the “wanting” intelligence, and both of these share with the rest in all that is claimed for them in the following chapters. Our business is to find out how great a mystery a person is qua person.4

PARTONE

1 The Value of Charlotte Mason’s Work for Today

By Susan Schaeffer Macaulay

Until a few years ago, the name of Charlotte Mason was largely forgotten. It almost seemed as if the vast educational network that had grown out of her ideas had disappeared like an English early morning mist when the sun rises. If she was mentioned, educators and parents would look blank.

This unfamiliarity seemed curious to me. But as I reflected on recent trends in education, I saw why her innovative philosophy, based on Christian values and faith, had declined. In English teacher training colleges over the last decades, A. S. Neil was read assiduously, and his one school, Summerhill,1 was held up as an example. “Progressive” education became the vogue. It was seen as liberating the child from the past constraints of a sure framework of knowledge and moral behavior. It was a sustained attack on the whole system of Western education. This ideology began to capture the minds not of the elementary school teachers, who were far too busy teaching classes of sixty or more, but rather of the educational establishment—teacher training colleges and the school inspectors. “Progressive” education developed in the wake of a change in teacher training from the apprentice-in-the-classroom model to a lecture-based course in colleges. Many of the new liberal ideas became the educational gospel that spread into primary schools in both Britain and the United States. The effect of these ideas has been cumulative; as we begin the twenty-first century, we see widespread results.

I was a young parent in London when the walls came down figuratively and actually in the 1960s and 1970s. At that time primary school teachers (for ages five to eleven) were discouraged from using any structured teaching at all. Textbooks were out; so were quiet “lessons.” Teaching phonics or multiplication tables was definitely frowned on as being as passé as a dunce’s hat or children working in rows on slates. Tables were pushed together with little groups sitting around them working on worksheets or projects, either as a group or individually. A hubbub of unfettered chatter made listening or concentration difficult for all except the most naturally “schoolish” child. This confusion was exacerbated as new schools ceased putting in classroom walls. The “open plan” was the liberated design.

In the various schools I visited, chaos reigned. As classes were large (between thirty-five and forty-two children), it was not surprising that parents were concerned. One of my friends was teaching five-year-olds who were meant to learn to read. She followed the liberating ideas that were de rigueur2 but felt guilty that no one in her class was learning the rudiments of reading by osmosis as the theorists had promised. She sat her class around her on the floor and started teaching them sounds and words as she had been taught as a child. These little sessions lasted fifteen minutes, and the children enjoyed them. They liked learning, they appreciated having the code cracked, and they did not seem to mind the order and discipline of sitting listening together. All went well until the headmaster walked by and caught her at the shameful act. She was soon called into his study to be strongly told: “I never want to see you with all the children listening to you again at the same time. They should not be taught any particular sequence of skills.”

At that time one of my friends, a professional woman, became concerned that her two bright, eager girls, twins, had reached the age of eight without any literacy or numeracy rubbing off on them in spite of long days at school. She visited the teacher of their class, who paused trying to remember the children in question. “Mary? Rachel? I’m not sure that I know which of the children they are. This class is so noisy that I don’t know the children, and it really is too confused to teach them specifics. They’ll be able to learn when they move up next year.”

In this context my husband, Ranald, and I began a search for an educational philosophy. Surely one existed that did not crush or brainwash children and yet would actually teach them certain things they needed to know step by step. Was it not possible that they could enjoy knowledge, books, and discovery? We didn’t know it, but we were looking for Charlotte Mason and the historical PNEU schools that grew out of her philosophy of life and education.

When we did discover her, the ideas and the school did not seem extraordinary. For us, encountering the PNEU was like finding and recognizing a friend. Many others since have had the same experience. When they read about Charlotte Mason’s ideas, they find that she has articulated many of their own thoughts and given form to their experiences and their children’s. This has been as true for parents as for professional educators and others intimately concerned with children’s lives.

People are often amazed at the apparent simplicity and yet clarity of this educational approach and think, Why, yes, of course. Elsie Kitching (1870-1955)3 put this quality of Miss Mason’s philosophy into words for me. She talks of the Wise Men finding Jesus in “a most unroyal place” as an example of finding the truth in an unexpected place:

[W]hen they had arrived they had no doubt. They recognized the truth when they found it.

When we meet the truth, we notice I think, three things. First, that like a jigsaw, the pieces fit into place unexpectedly. Lesser truths dawn, and are seen to be connected; it all ties up. Then, we shrink in size as we see ourselves and our problems from a different and strange angle and like those algebraical numbers with recurring indices, more and more dawns on us. This might be a depressing process but it is not so because truth is always bigger than man and independent of self.

Yet—and this is what strikes me most—although alien in this sense, strange and surprising, truth is always a friend; the stranger is recognized, the surprise is joyful. An old acquaintance!”4

This quote emphasizes a key point in what was happening in the “freed-up” education of the 1960s and 1970s. Our culture has abandoned the framework that had undergirded our shared view of the human being and life. Our Christian-based heritage gave us a worldview in which people acknowledged certain truths. They did not hope that there was a reasonable pattern to life; they knew it.

This framework meant an assured infrastructure for educational thought and practice. Certain facts were true. To understand reality, children and students needed to know these facts. Students were equipped to pursue various fields of knowledge by acquiring the three R’s first of all. In European educational history, this meant knowing Latin and possibly Greek so as to have access to the heritage and culture shared by all European scholars. Latin was the lingua franca, much as English is becoming today.

In the past, academics were a small number of the total population. Most children were not considered academically inclined. Responsible growth into adulthood resulted from living with adults who taught them the code of behavior and accomplishments in different areas of a civilized society. For most children this process took place in the home and then the village or town—a rich enough tapestry of life. They developed discipline, skills, and self-esteem as they were handed a small area of knowledge and/or expertise to master. Usually their learning had a direct bearing on what they would do as their work for the rest of their lives. Everyone agreed that there was one true moral code that could be known for sure. They all agreed that it is wrong to take life, to steal, and to commit adultery. Even nonreligious people felt guilt, shame, and possibly remorse. Things were right or wrong, true or false, a duty or a waste of time. It was accepted that God existed in truth, not as a personal projection or hopeful fantasy. This clear outline gave a map for life.

Children were loved dearly or cruelly treated—as they are today. Human beings have always been much the same. Some are good and love and serve the children in their care; others are indifferent, harsh, dictatorial, and hand out unfeeling punishments. In all centuries some people have treated children as things rather than as unique persons—adults seek to make use of them.

Most of the progressive schools wanted really good things for children. But it is impossible to achieve such aims without the realism of the truth, at least to a certain extent, as a framework. Ideals cannot be reached by wishful thinking alone. Again and again in history hopes have been disappointed because people have not faced reality.

For instance, you cannot give people of any age the license to do whatever they feel like doing, even though it is right and good for them to make free choices. The constraints of what a person ought to do and should do may not be removed. Also knowledge fits into a hierarchy according to what is most worthwhile to know. It is reckless to destroy the distinction between the worthwhile and the trivial, to lose what is of enduring quality. As the century progressed, doubt prompted an exodus from the infrastructures, the core, that held our society together.

For quite a long time educators and theorists naively assumed that the fruits of a “decent society” would continue to grow on a tree whose roots had been cut away. This is romanticism. How can fruit be produced without roots, a trunk, branches? As the infrastructure becomes an increasingly dimly remembered idea, lawlessness and antisocial behavior have resulted. These problems in turn trigger the demand for stronger and stronger measures of control from governments and any in authority. We are trading in freedoms for controls that threaten to bring on the nightmare envisioned by George Orwell: “Big brother is watching you.”

We have all seen how the promise of law and order will gain votes. As predicted, precious freedoms are being exchanged for surveillance and control that try to promise a certain safety.

This trend has also been evolving in schools. Without a framework—an inner skeleton of truth, knowledge, and moral “bones”—and a clear aim, society is trying to rescue the younger generation by slapping on an exoskeleton. Through rapidly increasing iron-fisted rules, regulations, and proscribed behavior requirements, some people think we can resolve the difficulties.

As we have passed the millennium mark, we exhibit a confusion of educational ideas perhaps never before seen in history. Who is the child? A person in a life and reality created by God—or an accident in a cosmic, computer-like machine that itself developed entirely due to random chance?

What are the aspirations that still beat in the human heart? Are these mechanical and an illusion as so much of the twentieth-century literature suggested? Can we know anything for sure? Does anything matter? Is there anything worth living for? These are the questions most people have no answers for. The general atmosphere weakens even those who do think they know.

Education must have an aim, a focus, a raison d’être. Many now seem to have settled on education for utilitarian reasons only—that is, when you get to the bottom line, how much money will the student be able to earn later, what status will he or she be able to achieve? Below that, for society’s underclass, we simply would like to condition them to law-abiding lives.

Complicating the educational picture are several problems. The decrease of family stability (another fruit of that societal tree), disappearing communities with strong neighborhood relationships, and fears about safety hinder children’s healthy development. Then families who aren’t secure tend to either overregulate children or to lack clear boundaries at all. This situation has brought confusion and pressure to bear on schools and teachers. They used to be able to begin with a few hours of teaching the three R’s. Cultural extras were thrown like lettuce and tomato into this sandwich. This method worked because the family and community actually directed and nurtured its children.

The situation has now changed right across the socioeconomic spectrum.

Children arrive at school without breakfast, sometimes pulled out of bed before they are awake. It is not unusual for parents to go to work before the school bus comes. Rarely do children enjoy the comfortable ease of a short walk to school in their own neighborhood.

Children arrive at school lacking more than a good breakfast and a warm send-off hug. They may never have been consistently taught how to live according to a “root-trunk” system of morality. As we now say, “values” differ. A teacher of five-year-olds is typically confronted with children who have not learned to listen or concentrate. No one has treated them with much respect, and they don’t respect each other. It is typical to find them at war with any authority at all, with no idea of cooperation or obedience. They may be glassy-eyed because they’ve emerged from hours and hours parked in front of a TV set.

And there are other difficulties. As marital stability declines, in the average group of children a high proportion suffer emotional turmoil, pain, and confusion. This state of mind obviously affects the quality of their lives and hinders their education.

We don’t have the space here to consider all the problems teachers face. More and more children come to school whose parents did not read to them regularly. Many are no longer part of a family that even has a routine of eating daily meals together. When both parents work, stressful schedules may exclude the leisurely conversations so dear to a little child’s heart and so necessary for their thoughts and language development. Older children often never experience a discussion of ideas. These things are a great loss. Children emerge all too often undernourished both emotionally and mentally. They have not been given the basic tools of education: language, self-expression, questioning and answers, exploration and discovery, stories and imaginative development. They aren’t used to listening to others or having anyone listen to them. Often they’ve also been deprived of free play in the beautiful out of doors. Their eyes are closed to the wonder of the world around them, and they have missed the joy of being drawn into a lifelong love affair with nature. They may lack exploratory curiosity and initiative. Such children are hard to teach. Some professionals feel depressed about it all. There is such a gap between the romanticism and ideals in some teacher training colleges and the reality teachers face every day in the classroom.

These are some of the reasons I believe we need Charlotte Mason’s educational insights more than ever before. Those of us who have discovered her, and then seen fruits in actual children’s lives, experience the “ah-ha” moments of enlightenment. And then the “of course, that makes sense. Yes. This is right.” I would add, “This is truth.” These are insights about who the child actually is, how he or she learns, why and what is worth learning, and the purpose of it all. Like a tree with sound roots in rich, watered soil, here is an educational theory and practice that has a clear, strong infrastructure and that allows for individuality, creativity, cultural differences, technological advance, and historical development.

Miss Mason’s educational philosophy is not about what someone thought as a Victorian; it is not tied into the past, as if trying to hark back to a golden age. (That is why it is inappropriate to illustrate materials about Charlotte Mason with exclusively Victorian pictures.) These ideas, being true ones, have an unchangeable underlying pattern (form) and yet give freedom for individual life and practice. When the Christian worldview gives this form, there is much stability and also freedom for appropriate adaptation. That is what makes this way of educating children so exciting.

Charlotte Mason, and those like Elsie Kitching who worked with her and carried on after her death, used the canon of Western cultural heritage with an English perspective as the core of educational content. That was appropriate, for they were educating mainly British children from nations that were part of this stream of history.

However, even while Charlotte Mason was still living, other peoples recognized that they could use the core ideas while developing their own educational applications. Japanese aristocratic families sent a gifted teacher to Ambleside to study at Miss Mason’s college. The principles then and now remain adaptable. Some Jewish students used many of the educational insights. Charlotte Mason’s books were translated into German.

The Ambleside books by her on education were sent out to India to Amy Carmichael, who founded the Dohnavur Fellowship. She too recognized in the writings the “roots and trunk” she was looking for as she cared for and educated Indian children. Amy Carmichael was ahead of her time in that she tried not to impose British culture on the community. She respected India and wanted the children to be Indian. She quite rightly saw that as long as the “roots and trunk” were in place (which one cannot, must not change), then she could adapt the detail, the “foliage,” so that it was truly Indian. For instance, instead of using English nursery rhymes or tales, she wrote amusing poems in Tamil about local subjects such as insects (“bugs”) and flowers.

In England itself at that time, educational practice was almost as socially stratified as the Indian caste system that Amy Carmichael rejected. The British upper class educated its younger children and girls mostly at home. Boys went off (and still do) to fee-based boarding schools at about thirteen years of age. These “public schools” had been developed and influenced by great educators and produced strong leaders, but the schools were far from perfect.

The subject of educating the working class was a troubling one. Christians started Sunday schools to teach the rudiments of reading, writing, and math to children who worked during the week. There were some creative educators who did great work establishing farm and/or craft-based schools and better primary schools for ordinary working-class children. A few people even thought these children could appreciate folk dancing, stories, and art plus nature study (these children were persons too, not clods).

However, most of the ruling class wanted the working class to be kept firmly in its place. The upper classes feared that workers would get ideas “above their station.” This fear led to strong feelings that split educators into factions. Some wanted to keep an ossified status quo. Others believed that all people should have access to their cultural heritage and be enabled to develop skills. Still others were starting to believe in broader opportunities related to one’s ability. Such pioneers were unhappy with a mechanistic control of individuals and society as “it should be.”

Things are entirely different now, but there are new reasons to fear that a person may be treated like a cog in the machine of society. As we go into the third millennium, new and horrifying social controls abound: genetic manipulation, the extermination of “undesirable elements” in society through selective abortion, and chemicals to control the mind and personality. Our forebears’ eyes would widen in horror at all the tyrannies scientific technology has made possible. We cannot look back at their prejudices and practices with one crumb of complacency.

From the 1880s to the 1930s, when Charlotte Mason was in her zenith, there was a general educational ferment, resulting in controversies over different methods and goals. Many tried to pigeonhole girls’ education into a prescribed “slot.” Working-class girls, like boys, were expected to roll up their sleeves and get on with the business of life. (Many working-class girls had a robust preparation for a satisfying life.) The working young often gained much of their mental nurture in Christian church services or open air preaching meetings. They usually had the Bible to read and The Pilgrim’s Progress, with maybe one or two other books.

Aristocratic boys received a traditional classical education. The girls often languished in home schoolrooms with a limited and weak curriculum along with feeble expectations and stringent social protocols. Although we admire their embroidery, life must have seemed a pretty tiresome business for many a bright young woman. There were notable exceptions—for instance the Oxford and Cambridge families often gave their daughters a substantial education with discipline; there was plenty of interesting conversation and a wide range of books to read. In fact, before the women’s colleges burst on the scene, they existed in embryo on cleared-off breakfast tables in academic homes. Here daughters could be educated and develop their mental ability.

Charlotte Mason was not a product of any privileged minority. She represents one of the fortunate men and women whose good minds were educated mainly at home, in ordinary conditions, as interested parents read through a rich range of books with their children.

However, she did live just at the time that women were generally beginning to seek an education. The great innovators of girls’ education, Frances Buss and Dorothea Beale, were active in that same period:

Let a girl’s education be as serious as a boy’s. You bring up your girls as if they were meant for sideboard ornaments, and then complain of their frivolity. Give them the same advantages that you gave their brothers. Teach them also, that courage and truth are the pillars of their being. There is hardly a girls’ school in this Christian Kingdom where the children’s courage and sincerity would be thought of half so much importance as their way of coming in at a door. And give them, lastly, not only noble teachings, but noble teachers.5

A new wind was stirring. It seemed suddenly that girls should not be merely prepared to be genteel adornments but vigorous human beings in their own right. It was a flowering of the New Testament teaching that men, women, slaves, free, Jews, and Gentiles are all on one plane as persons: “there is no difference.” To Charlotte Mason this meant that all children had wonderful minds that should be fed and developed, just as all children needed wholesome food for their bodies, sleep, and loving care. In other words, we are all more similar as persons than different. She believed in a generously rich curriculum for all.

She knew the great shining truths of Christian belief and teaching. One of the features of her work is that for her these truths were an infrastructure, an underpinning, a solid framework of unchangeable reality that each successive generation could build on. But these truths were not a cage, and that is a huge difference from those who would legalistically impose truths on others.

Many educational theories and prescriptions confine education and childcare practice to a closed box. “It has to be like this or that,” depending on the theory espoused. One theory holds that the child must learn by memorization for so and so many years—all facts. Then students read essays and debate them. Other educators thought that students should sit at desks facing a chalkboard. Still others explain that the “best education” conveys American or British culture. Nowadays some educators try to turn the clock back to a fictitious rosy bygone age. They believe that all will come right as long as we don’t use computers, do use Victorian readers, and have students chant times tables. “Let’s not do this or that . . . and then we’ll get it right” is the mentality.

Charlotte Mason’s ideas are remarkable because all people in all times are alike in certain ways. The reality is that we all share the inner framework of truth. No race is “more human” than another. No gender is higher than another. No culture is superior in itself. (For instance, whether we sit at a table to eat or around a fire on the floor does not matter much.)

If we look at this exceptional woman’s ideas, we see that we can use “living books” that are American, English, Australian, German, Swedish, Russian, Senegalese, Malian, Ugandan, Indian, Chinese, Korean, Brazilian, Guatemalan, or Cuban, and so on. If the “roots” and “trunk” of Christianity are our firm infrastructure, we can use a plurality of cultural literature and histories to “leaf out” what is learned. (All children who live in countries with a link to Europe and the United Kingdom need to know this historical, literary, and religious background as well as more local content.)

All of us need to examine pagan mythological origins of our culture’s literature and decide what to use (or not use). The facts that go into a child’s education can thus be indigenous and related to the surrounding culture. However, with a Christian understanding of truth, all of us share the knowledge and light based on the biblical explanation of reality and who we are. So there will be a profound unity, just as all trees are trees, not ever confused with jellyfish. But at the same time, just as there are palm trees, oaks, and birches, so there can be a wonderful variety too. In philosophy this reality/necessity is expressed in the phrase “unity and diversity.”

Culturally and educationally, this phrase has definite implications. All believing Christians can enhance their cultural identity. If the biblical world-view is indeed reality, we can be self-confident as men and as women, whether we are Anglo-Saxon or Asian, African or Native American. We can also fit in with our historical period—no need to try to make a school or home turn back the clock. It would be a disservice to children to bring them up as Victorians with a misty idea that they’ll live in a rose-covered cottage in a friendly, safe village, for instance.

We were told to be “in the world, but not of the world.”6 Charlotte Mason thought that schools and educational programs had a duty to keep up with the thinking of their times.7 No use fighting battles fifty years old! What do these children face today? What will they face tomorrow?

Some educational theories depend on one curriculum for all—and for all time. Charlotte Mason would disagree. It was intrinsic to her philosophy that a curriculum would stay relevant to a child’s background and up to date while not ditching old treasures.

She was broadminded in a good sense. While never wavering on the infrastructure of truth—our relationship with God through Jesus as set forth in His Word—she was not narrow in vision. She was magnanimous and cultured. To her the mind of a miner’s child was just as hungry for the best educational nourishment as a child of the royal family. In the same way, she did not differentiate between the minds or persons of boys and girls. All were to be given the tools of literacy so they could be nourished at the fountain of the greatest minds—right across all disciplines. Not for her the nonsense of girls being deprived of the classical world, literature, history, the great art, music, scientific thought, or languages. In her view of childhood, girls climbed trees, learned to swim, and ice-skated just as boys did. Girls were to enjoy unfettered freedoms and challenges in the great outdoors. All were to notice and appreciate nature.

God’s Word had the central place, not namby-pamby sentimental or moralistic talks or booklets. It was typical of her open search for the best ideas to develop a full life that she pounced on Baden-Powell’s Scout Handbook8 designed to train soldiers. I doubt that any other Victorian educator saw the potential in that book even for boys, let alone for the demure little girls with their governesses.

Charlotte Mason not only saw potential in it, but she immediately purchased quantities of the handbooks and included them in the PUS (Parents’ Union School)9 curriculum. These she sent to aristocratic homes for the Charlotte Mason-trained governesses to use, to the PNEU schools, and to home schools taught by mothers. Thus while other children were kept indoors to have endless facts crammed into them, these fortunate children had every afternoon outside. One afternoon a week was for “scouting”: tracking, noticing wind direction, learning to set up camp, and enjoying a truly hands-on education that thrilled and energized them. These children took part in the beginnings of the great scouting movement! It led to much good in the lives of boys and girls around the globe. Very few people realize the impetus given to the movement at Scale How, the building where Charlotte Mason had her House of Education for training teachers.

People like Charlotte Mason are rare and vital. They contribute both stability and continuity as they maintain the clear infrastructure of truth in their work; yet life bubbles up in them with freshness. Their response to actual life and persons creates a relevance and newness to their work without sacrificing the roots. This approach contrasts with a more usual trend toward a deadening legalism that squeezes out new ideas.