Charlotte Mason is powerful (Part III)

by Anne White

Part I is here

Part II is here

In the book Marva Collins' Way, the first chapter begins with a description of the first day of school in Mrs. Collins' class, about forty years ago. She did not begin the school year with a game; she began with the words "The first thing we are going to do in here, children, is an awful lot of believing in ourselves." Then she handed out copies of Emerson's "Self-Reliance."

Now we may not all be great fans of Emerson, or think that his essays are an essential part of the second grade curriculum; but Marva Collins had a point. She also had something in common with Charlotte Mason, who insisted that true education was self-education. Self-reliance, strengthening the will, thinking independently (while still recognizing responsibility and duty); knowing that "I can": these were essential goals of a CM education.

Look at some of the goals given in the Notes of Lessons:

To train the pupils to think independently and to cultivate their constructive powers. 

To make the children think, by setting them questions which they cannot answer merely from their book

To increase the children's power of rapid mental work

To increase their power of reasoning and attention

To increase their power of observation

To exercise their reasoning powers

To increase their powers of narration & imagination

To increase their power of reflection by encouraging them to trace the Latin origin of words in our own language

To assist the cultivation of the pupils' mental habits [powers] of attention, promptness, and accuracy

To teach the girls self-reliance (through physical exercise)

To make the children use their common sense by giving approximate answers

To draw out their originality by letting them make designs for themselves.

To give the children exercise in judging various lengths and in drawing straight lines

To give practice in the choosing and laying on of colour 

To get the pupils to arrive at the rules by the investigation of examples

To improve E's reading [so he can do more for himself]

To enlarge his vocabulary [see above]

To increase the girls' knowledge of [the literary subject, Latin grammar, etc.]

To facilitate their translation [i.e. to give them more power in this]

To stimulate interest in algebra by showing how easily many problems may be solved.[i.e. showing them that they can solve problems]

To give the pupils an interest in Latin translation, and help them to attack it in the right way [similar to the previous goal] 

To give training to the ear

To draw from the children all that they have observed for themselves about [some aspect of nature] 

To give a greater appreciation of beauty

To help to train their hands in firmness and deftness

To teach him to use his fingers more easily, and be neater in his work

To enable the children to copy a basket by looking at it 

To establish relations with the past

To connect the past with the present.

To connect the lesson with the history they are doing.

To help the children look upon the separate battles as parts of one campaign

To help them to connect all the facts they know about [a historical figure]

To show how closely literature and history are linked together and how the one influences the other

To increase the girls' love of good literature [and their power to access it]

To inspire them with a desire to study zoology on their own account, both in books and from life

To paint berries.

There is much we could discuss about these, but much of it comes down to this: we want children to be able to. And to know that they are able to.

There are two children's books by Rumer Godden...at least two...that relate to these ideas: The Fairy Doll, and Miss Happiness and Miss Flower. Both books deal with children who feel that they can't do things, don't fit in. Elizabeth in The Fairy Doll and Nona in Miss Happiness come out of their "stuck places" through acts of doing: making a fairy house out of a bicycle basket, building a house for two Japanese dolls. Elizabeth, in particular, suddenly sees "I can's" everywhere: she can suddenly remember her arithmetic, she learns to ride her bicycle, she stops being the child who holds everyone else up.

Even to know that you can paint berries...or make a fairy house...is a place to start.

This series will be completed in Part IV.

You might also enjoy: Head First, first posted here in 2013.

Charlotte Mason is powerful (Part II)

by Anne White

Part I was a long post, but I wanted to show you in detail how even examination questions were not random or afterthoughts in the PNEU schools. Whether or not we ourselves give actual examinations every term, the original questions give us clues about the Charlotte Mason "big picture." What important ideas were the students to appropriate from their schooling? What "power tools" did they now have in their belts?

Along with the exam questions, we can also learn from the Notes of Lessons that appear in Parents' Review articles and in Mason's books. The printed lesson plans begin with a note that such lessons are meant to introduce a new topic, to expand on or bring together something that has been studied in daily work. But for our purposes here, that doesn't matter; the aims of daily lessons would be the same.

I've pulled the goals from about thirty lessons, on subjects varying from needlework to Brazil to algebra. What I've found is that, in many cases, the goals were similar, almost interchangeable between the subjects; they might have been designing a book cover or talking about Latin roots, but the philosophy behind what they were doing reached across the curriculum.  One of the most unique was a lesson on design, where some general principles were demonstrated and the students were to draw a design on paper, but where the actual project (a linen book cover decorated with embroidered flowers) was optional. Here are the goals: 

To give the children an idea of how to fill a space decoratively, basing the design on a given plant.
To show them that good ornament is taken from nature, but a mere copy of nature to decorate an object is not necessarily ornamental.
To give them an appreciation for good ornament and help them to see what is bad.
To draw out their originality by letting them make designs for themselves.
If possible, to give them a taste for designing by giving them some ideas as to its use.

There are several interesting points we could look at there. One is that, in this case, it was not "anything goes"; there was "good" and there was "bad." Also, that just sticking a flower on the table and copying it mechanically isn't art (already we have some big ideas being raised here!). What sort of "originality" is needed in addition? What does it mean, though, that "good ornament is taken from  nature?" How might that relate to larger issues of home decoration or personal adornment? If particular artists (or decorators, or dress designers) chose to flout that tradition, what effects might that have?

 "With intricate welding, Tom delicately veined his leaves, and next stemmed them onto the vines. He felt it good that no two looked exactly the same, as he had observed in nature. Finally, in his seventh intensive week, Tom spot-welded his leafy vines onto their waiting window-grill frames.

"'Tom, I 'clare it look like dey jes' growin' somewheres!' Matilda exclaimed, staring in awe at her son's craftsmanship." ~~ Alex Haley, Roots

More in Part III.

From the Parents' Review: How to Prepare and Present a Lesson

A hidden gem on the Parents' Review page: the article "A Rational Lesson"  by S. De Brath, from Volume 8, 1897, pgs. 119-125.

Here's a sample:

The stages by which the former kind of idea [general truths able to be described in language] is reached are very easy to follow. 

First comes the direction of attention to the matter in hand; then that careful note of successive sense impressions which is called Observation; then the separation by the mind of what is distinct in these different percepts from what is common to them all; and lastly, the expression of this in correct language.

These four stages have been called Attention, Observation, Generalization, and Formulation.... The lesson should move this process as a key moves a lock. Sound teaching, which habituates the mind to move logically, must be adapted to it, and the corresponding stages of each lesson are: Preparation, recalling the old, and directing the attention towards the new; Presentation of the new matter, to all the senses as far as possible; Association of the particulars and that which is essential in each; and Formulation, the expressing of the result attained in good plain English.

The really valuable part of this article is that, using several different school subjects, S. De Brath takes us through each of the four stages in detail. How does all this apply to a geography lesson, a literature lesson? If you want Charlotte Mason nuts and bolts, this is it.