Here Because We're Here

(The photo: My grandmother, my mother, and baby me.--A.W.)

by Anne White

While trekking through Parents and Children for besides-the-point reasons, I found myself almost at the end of the book, and was struck by one of those should-be-obvious things Charlotte Mason likes to throw at us:

It cannot be too strongly urged that our education of children will depend, nolens volens, upon the conception we form of them. (Parents and Children, p. 260)

 The Latin nolens volens can be translated as "willy-nilly," or whether we like it or not, and that actually matters here. A leads inevitably to B; we have no choice about that. New homeschoolers are often encouraged to "philosophy shop," picking a method, or combining two or three, to suit their particular inclinations--"I'm not a very good reader, so I guess classical/Charlotte Mason isn't for me." The advice is well meant, but it points people in the wrong direction. We cannot paste one method of education on top of quite another belief system, and expect to see success. Mason's use of the word "conception" is interesting there as well: it can be defined simply as "idea," but it has more depth than that. It could be rephrased as "the belief we have of children (or human beings)," or "the way we perceive them as existing," or "the essential nature of childhood."

Well, this much we know:

1. Children are born persons.

And, as we sometimes missed in the earlier days of reading Mason, but as has been pointed out more and more in recent years, that does not mean only that our teaching/raising must respect a child's individuality, but (possibly even harder for us to get a handle on), his/her status as a member of the human race. What makes me a person applies equally to him and her and you. And what is that?

[Children are] instruments fit and capable for the carrying out of the Divine purpose in the progress of the world. (p. 260)

There is a Divine purpose: children have a relationship with God.

There is a Kingdom purpose: children are here to carry out God's plans in the world.

Children have been created "fit and capable" for those purposes; "they are "perfectly fitted to receive those ideas which are for the inspiration of life" (pp. 260-261);  but the right sort of education makes them even more so. And if you think all this sounds like another Mason principle, you're right.

13. Education is the Science of Relations; that is, that a child has natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts: so we must train him upon physical exercises, nature, handicrafts, science and art, and upon many living books...

So here, from the same passage, are our directives as educators:

1. "Endeavour to discern the signs of the times," or what Mason referred to elsewhere by its German term, the Zeitgeist. What are the good points (yes, there must be some!) of the current state of the world? What pieces are missing? Look and listen. Pray for discernment.

2. "Perceive in what directions we are being led." In two confusing chapter titles near the end of Parents and Children, Mason asks "Whence" and "Whither," but she later unpacks them as "What is the history, where are the roots of this philosophy? In the 'potency' [potential] of the child," and then "Where does this take us, where will the branches grow? In the living thought of the day." In School Education, Mason pointed out that the Zeitgeist of turn-of-the-century England would not necessarily be the same as that of the future, but that each time and place would have its big questions, big needs.

3. "Prepare the children to carry forward the work of the world," which Mason believed in her time to be "the advancement of the [human] race." How was this to be done? "By giving them vitalising ideas." And then, with her hand perhaps shading her eyes as the crew of the Dawn Treader did when they glimpsed something "beyond the End of the World," she said:

We find that all men everywhere are keenly interested in science, that the world waits and watches for great discoveries; we, too, wait and watch, believing that, as Coleridge said long ago, great ideas of Nature are imparted to minds already prepared to receive them by a higher Power than Nature herself. (Parents and Children, p. 261)

Check that last bit out carefully: Mason believed that God was doing amazing things and giving great ideas to people: but that the minds of those future adults, who happened to be children right now, needed to be prepared to receive them. They needed to be taught to use their reason, but not to depend on it uncritically. They needed to develop all the body, mind, and heart habits that are outlined in Ourselves. They needed some Formation of Character so that they could live with Will. And they needed to acknowledge Authority, since to reject it also rejects its Author.

Zeitgeists change, but minds don't.

Nolens volens.

"Days when the air is full of fallacies"

by Anne White

A due recognition of the function of reason should be an enormous help to us all in days when the air is full of fallacies, and when our personal modesty, that becoming respect for other people which is proper to well-ordered natures whether young or old, makes us [too] willing to accept conclusions duly supported by public opinion or by those whose opinions we value. (Charlotte Mason, Philosophy of Education, p. 143)

Let's pick that apart, shall we?

If we, adult or child, teacher or student, have a well-ordered nature, we will display a certain respect for other people, adults or children, teachers or students, nice or irritating. Full stop. As in, first of all, we are born persons, and so are they; and, second, within that ordered nature, we recognize the need for authority. There are captains in the army, bosses in the office, monitors in the hall, and at any given time, you may find yourself holding one of those roles--or having to obey someone who does. Now, at this point we're only talking about outward behaviour, right? We walk this way or that, we turn in the report, we don't shout in the library. We don't get in trouble.

But the respect owed to others takes us beyond simple behaviour, from  listening to what people command us to do, to listening to and agreeing with what they say. Don't speed over this, now--Charlotte says this is still part of our well-ordered natures. A default setting, maybe, if our dials haven't already been turned too hard towards "cynical." A certain amount of agreement and trust is, we assume, going to be part of a relationship that goes beyond captain-private, foreman-line worker, hall monitor-late student, and more into parent-child, tutor-learner, rabbi-disciple. Or, maybe, just a peer relationship: neighbour to neighbour, colleague to colleague. These are people whose opinions we value. We don't expect to be always disagreeing and arguing, or disbelieving and ignoring. As Charlotte says, a certain amount of that is necessary to keep us modest. 

However, there are days when the air is full of fallacies, and, as that line supposedly written by Martin Luther goes, you can't keep those birds, or fallacies, from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair. The tension comes not so much from the vultures we shoo away (or the Canada geese we run from), as much as friendly sparrows arriving from people we know and respect.

"Reasonable and right are not synonymous terms" (Philosophy p. 142). Respect is one thing, Charlotte says. Reason is another. We owe it to our own minds, our own wills, and our own loyalty to the One we serve, to look for the deepest truth, to do what's right.

Even if it's not reasonable.

Always something happenin' and nothing goin' on
There's always something cooking and nothing in the pot...
Nobody told me there'd be days like these
Strange days indeed, strange days indeed
(John Lennon, "Nobody Told Me")