13 Jan The High And Comprehensive Ideals in a Charlotte Mason Education

Years ago, when our family was just considering homeschooling, I was fascinated, reading about Charlotte Mason and her philosophy of education. I knew there was a vast array of learning to be done, and we would have to start homeschooling without a full understanding of her educational methods. So we began imperfectly, yet committed to ongoing learning. Still today, I am constantly working at gaining a deeper sense of understanding of Miss Mason’s philosophy and methods. I recently found an article from the magazine L’Umile Pianta (a magazine published by ex-students from Charlotte Mason’s House of Education) from 1919 that I would like to share with you concerning Charlotte Mason’s high and comprehensive ideals in education for our children. It conveys a beautiful vision of the goals that Charlotte Mason had for her students, and that we can also have for ours.

The P.U.S. (Parents’ Union School) Ideal in Education

“Our ideal is a very high and a very comprehensive one.

Every Association must have an ideal before it continually. It is a progressive ideal, and will therefore keep the P.U.S. education a living thing. This is shown by the fact that Miss Mason’s methods now benefit the elementary school child as well as the child in the home schoolroom for whom they were originally intended.

When we think of the ideal P.U.S. child it is of his or her character, not attainments. We have in our minds a child who is thoroughly alive every hour of the day; someone who’s life is enriched by many and varied deep interests; someone whom we can rely upon both in the ordinary daily round and also in any unforeseen emergency; someone self-controlled; who takes the trouble to have, as far as is humanly possible, a “right judgement in all things” a character things,” who radiates health and happiness. And such a character the P.U.S. is constantly producing in spite of our blunders – I can think of several examples within my own narrow experience.

Thorough Knowledge, As a High Ideal

But in mentioning the catholic tastes and interests of our ideal child, I think it is very important for us not to forget that she also has an accurate store of knowledge for her lasting possession, and when our pupils pass out of the school with only a hazy acquaintance with most subjects, the failure is not due to the methods we are taught to use, but our own slipshodness in carrying them out. I think there are a certain number of us who do not realize how high an ideal that Miss Mason sets before us in the matter of thorough knowledge.

This part of our pupils’ training is of course of quite secondary importance to the the character building and the love of knowledge that almost everyone whom Miss Mason trains seems to have the power of giving her pupils, but judging from my own experience, it is the weak spot in the P.U.S., and I think some of us lose sight of the fact that it is better to know a little and to know it perfectly, in subjects like French, Latin, or repetition, than to have covered a great deal of ground and know nothing thoroughly.

Though efficiency and a knowledge of facts are not what we aim at, they are only a means to an end, it seems a great pity that we sometimes bring discredit on Miss Mason and her methods, not so much because we are not clever people, and have not a high standard of personal attainments, as by the want of imagination that makes us satisfied with inaccurate knowledge. We are unable, or do not take the trouble to see the consequences in store for the child, if to-day’s lesson is imperfectly learnt. To fail in this way is an offence to the children. It is putting a stumbling-block in their way, for it is natural to them to like accuracy. Have you not found that they would much rather know a thing perfectly, however much “grind” it means for them, if only you keep their eyes open to the importance of not passing over any unnecessary mistakes. Think, for instance, of absolutely word-perfect repetition, a French verb known correctly, down to the last accent, German and Latin declensions known perfectly for good and all. All these things are quite possible to every normal child, but I am inclined to think there must be a few students who never get this accuracy from their pupils, probably because they do not know themselves what it is to be strictly accurate, or have not the patience to keep the children slogging on till they succeed. It has been my experience that the children like drudgery once they have known the joy of doing a thing perfectly, and by no means find it distasteful. People sometimes talk as if we had to choose between enjoying a wide range of interests and being efficient, accurate people. Surely it is both right and possible to combine the two.

Physical Ideals

But to go back to our consideration of the ideal child. Let us see how Miss Mason teaches us to make our children into such attractive people. Her ideal stands before us whichever side of human nature we examine, whether we are thinking of the the physical, mental, moral or spiritual side. It is difficult to separate these different aspects, or to assign to them relative degrees of importance. In starting with the physical idea, we shall be following the order in which Miss Mason herself teaches us; and it needs our careful consideration, for so much of the rest of our training of the children is affected by their physical health and development. A large part of Miss Mason’s teaching on this subject is outside our province as a rule, such as seeing that the children have the right to food and clothes, etc., but as far as we can it is our business to see that the children get every opportunity of approaching the ideal. They are to taste the pleasures of riding, skating, swimming, dancing, etc., and though it does not generally lie within our power to get all of these these, yet we can always see that they get plenty of fresh air and exercise.

We can as a rule teach them to be sure-footed and agile, by encouraging them to climb about, and practice feats of jumping. I do not suppose that anyone finds it difficult to get her pupils to play the “noisy games” Miss Mason advocates! With her time-table the plenty of time for the children to get out-of-door exercise, and then there is the half-hour in the morning during school time, part of which has to be spent in some form of organized exercise, such as ball-exercises, steps, or drill. The consideration of exercise leads us to remind ourselves how the children’s education should be carried on during walk-time. Here is the chance for them to learn out-of-door geography, and gain ideas of distance and direction, and more important still to become students of nature.

Mental Ideals

Now we will turn to the schoolroom, and see how we are taught to develop and train the minds of our pupils. You all know so well the varied and carefully chosen mental diet that Miss Mason offers them, and how she tells us that the mind grows by what it feeds on just as the body does. Like the body, too, it is made strong by exercise. Let us first of all think how we are to help the children’s minds so to digest the knowledge they gain from their books that they may be ever approaching the ideal of mental development. The act of narration which is so distinctive of Miss Mason’s method corresponds to the physical process of digestion, and if we fully realize this, we shall not be tempted ever to “skip” narration. Have you ever thought in giving a lesson, “Well, I’m sure they know that beautifully. I won’t waste time in hearing them narrate that?” But anything not narrated is only partially digested, and older girls who read to themselves for the whole lesson must be taught to narrate to themselves as they go along. Otherwise the part read will not remain clearly in their minds. It is difficult to find enough time in the IV, V, and VI Forms for thorough narration, but we must remember that properly-digested knowledge is more essential than the mere getting through the term’s work. Miss Mason reminded us one day last term, that we must not tire the children by attempting too much in a lesson, for though the lesson may seem to go easily, the process of narration, which involves a continuous asking of oneself, “What next?” means hard work for the children. And here it may be well to remind ourselves of how we learnt at criticism lessons not to interrupt, or even help out, narration with questions, for in so doing, we upset the train of the narrator’s thoughts.

A written report has to be given at least twice each morning, so that the children may learn to express themselves in good English, and they should be trained always to leave time to read a report through after writing it, so as to avoid unnecessary mistakes in spelling and punctuation. Another point that Miss Mason lays great stress upon is that there shall only be a single reading of each passage. We all know that, but sometimes when we leave a child to read to herself, we give her more time than she needs to get through it, with the result that perhaps she looks it through again while she is waiting for us to come and hear her narrate. We must guard carefully against this, and explain to her that if she knows she is going to have a second chance at taking in what she has read, her mind will not attend t0 it properly the first time.

Then the second means of reaching our intellectual ideal is the mental exercise afforded by the study of mathematics and languages. We have not time to go into the study of these in detail, but since the arithmetic of the P.U.S. is almost universally unsatisfactory, let us, in passing, try to discover why it falls so far short of the ideal which Miss Mason gives us. She makes it very clear to us that the child’s reasoning powers must be called into play all the time. Do we try to see that that really happens, or do we shirk finding out if the child thoroughly understands what she is doing? Children are sometimes most extraordinarily at sea over arithmetic, and it requires infinite patience to keep them in a condition of seeing daylight, but often we do not keep ourselves alive enough to the danger of their being able to do sums mechanically without using their understanding, and then it fills us with something like despair when the examination makes it clear that the term’s work has had no educational value for them. I should very much like to know the secret of the success of elementary school arithmetic. Of course they give more time to it, and I have wondered sometimes if one extra half-hour a week in Forms II and III on Wednesdays, when the time-table allows no time for mathematics, would not make a good deal of difference.

Moral and Spiritual Ideals

But we must pass on to consider briefly how Miss Mason teaches us to train the moral side of the children. This is to be done through the discipline of habit. We are to work steadily and patiently at helping them to get rid of bad habits and to form good ones in their place. Do we always remember to put into practice the way in which we have been taught to do this? Are our children gradually but surely acquiring new good habits in the place of bad ones? Have they formed the habits of attention, obedience, tidiness, truthfulness, etc.? As they get older we are to teach them that if only they reject wrong thoughts as soon as they attack their minds, evil will have no power over them.

They have only to resolutely to change their thoughts, whenever they become aware of the attack of a bad thought, and the battle will be comparatively easily won.

And lastly, let us contemplate the spiritual ideal of the P.U. School. We are to give the children such inspiring ideas of God that they may grow up happy in the consciousness that “the soul of man is for God, and God is for the soul.” Then their religion will be the atmosphere of their lives, and nothing that they do will be uninfluenced by it. Their lessons will be more than ever a joy to them, for they will know that all knowledge is the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

B. Millar, L’Umile Pianta: For the Children’s Sake. 1919, July. p. 25-28 (now in the public domain).

(Please note I have somewhat changed the format to fit the blog platform.)