I am rereading Home Education, the first in Charlotte Mason’s six-volume series on her theory and method of education. This time I will expand my reading by narration and personal notes—guided by the study questions provided in the appendix.
You are welcome to join me! Mason’s complete series is available for free online reading at Ambleside Online. I’d love to read your thoughts in a comment or email.
Some Preliminary Considerations [HE/1.1]
Charlotte Mason begins her treatise with reasons for studying education. The mother is marvelously enabled by God to love and teach her children, but she must provide for her task with the attention and diligence of a craftsman. She owes a thinking love to her children—raising them upon a firm understanding of their nature and of educational philosophy, and not on mere hearsay or personal whim.
Favorite Quotes
“It is a great thing to be a parent: there is no promotion, no dignity, to compare with it. The parents of but one child may be cherishing what shall prove a blessing to the world.”
“The mother is qualified, and qualified by the Creator Himself, to become the principal agent in the development of her child… and what is demanded of her is a thinking love… God has given to thy child all the faculties of our nature, but the grand point remains undecided—how shall this heart, this head, these hands be employed? to whose service shall they be dedicated? A question the answer to which involves a futurity of happiness or misery to a life so dear to thee. Maternal love is the first agent in education.” [Pestalozzi]
“That the mother may know what she is about, may come thoroughly furnished to her work, she should have something more than a hearsay acquaintance with the theory of education, and those conditions of the child’s nature upon which such theory exists.”
Cross Reference
related passages from other educational volumes by Mason
“The foundation of parental authority lies in the fact that parents hold office as deputies; and that in a two-fold sense. In the first place, they are the immediately and personally appointed deputies of the Almighty King, the sole ruler of men; they have not only to fulfill his counsels regarding children, but to represent his Person; his parents are as God to the little child; and, yet more constraining thought, God is to him what his parents are...”
from Parents and Children.
Study Questions
1.Show that children are a public trust. What follows?
I would say rather that children, as creations of God, are a trust of God to their parents. They are not ours to manage however we like; we have a sacred responsibility to know and enact God’s will for their lives (as revealed in Scripture).
2.What questions does Pestalozzi put to mothers?
God has marvelously equipped the mother to love and teach her child, but to what end will she educate him? To whose service will this child be raised?
3.What is Herbert Spenser’s argument for the study of education?
The child’s body and mind are subject to natural laws, and perfect maturity can be reached only by complete conformation to these laws. Parents, then, must take pains to understand what these are. “[I]s it not madness to make no provision for such a task?” We do not expect a craftsman to do his work properly or well without training. How can we expect the education of a child—a more complex and important task—to be accomplished without preparation?
4.How do parents usually proceed?
Parents usually begin by considering their child a tabula rasa on which they will write great things. As his personality begins more and more to exert itself, parents give up this idea of doing all for their child, and delight instead in watching his individuality unfold. They take for their main work the supplying of the best in food for body, mind and spirit.
5.What is the strenuous part of a parent’s work?
This “masterly inactivity” is good, but not the whole of a parent’s duty. The strenuous part of the work is the laying down of “lines of law” within which the child will best thrive.
Personal Notes
I find it interesting that Mason, in praising the higher education of women in her time, seemed to believe that most women would find their greatest profession in teaching their own children, rather than leaving the work to “indifferent persons.” That, sadly, has not been the case.
This first section brought out two objections I have to Mason’s teaching.—
Charlotte Mason was very nationalistic (if that is the right word). I don’t believe she realized how grave would be the consequences of considering children a “public trust” and even “the property of the nation.” (See pp. 1-2 and 5-6 for Mason’s statements; see also pp. 14-16 in Volume 2, Parents and Children.) Parents are not responsible to society, but to God, in how they educate and raise their children. (Under God, we do have responsibilities to love our neighbors and obey authorities.) Mason’s use of Roman and Greek models of loyalty to the state, for example, is not something I would incorporate into my own home-school.
Charlotte Mason was a theistic evolutionist. In this section she quotes her contemporary Herbert Spenser, the English polymath who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” and enthusiastically advocated the comprehensive application of evolutionary theory. It will be interesting to see how a belief in evolution will be evident in what Charlotte Mason has to say about education and parenting.
Personal Application
•Continue to study educational philosophy and method, by reading (with Biblically informed discretion) books and papers by Mason and others.
•Apply what I learn to my work with the boys.
Resources
“Herbert Spenser” <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Spencer>
“Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi: The Approach and Method of Education” <http://www.pestalozziworld.com/pestalozzi/methods.html>
“Philosophy of Education” <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_education>
Other Home Education Commentaries
Becoming Three: Charlotte Mason Volume I Part I
Sparrow Tree Square: Charlotte Mason Monday Part 5
Friday, February 10, 2012