PRINCIPLE 2: NOTEBOOK EDITION
[Children] are not born either good or bad, but with possibilities for good and for evil.
While many so glibly accept Mason’s first principle that they miss its revolutionary significance for education, there are those who so glibly reject her second as a doctrinal statement that they miss Mason’s meaning and its importance for education.
This second principle is an educational principle with educational implications. It was a direct rejection of ‘hereditary determinism,’ the view—popular in Mason’s day—that people are born good or bad, that their characters are inborn.
If we accept such a fatalist view, then we must also accept that the development of the student’s character is not an educational concern, or a concern at all. It will do no good to teach a liar to speak the truth, because his father was a liar and all his children after him.
But if we believe, as Charlotte and indeed all classical educators did, that education is a discipleship for the formation of character, for the instilling of wisdom and virtue, then we must reject determinism in all its forms.
When you encounter a flaw in the student’s character, as you doubtless will, the response is not acceptance or grudging tolerance, but active effort on the part of both teacher and student to reshape the character in imitation of Christ.
What might this have to do with notebooks? I don’t want to force every principle into notebooks, so, if you will, allow me some extrapolation.
Like the first, this principle is foundational; it helps establish the idea of education as a work of personal growth and development. It’s not about generating papers and scores, amassing information, and increasing productivity; education {and notebooks} are about creating people—shaping their loves and interests, developing their habits and sense of discipline, feeding their imagination and spiritual being.
The first principle establishes an essential and unchanging nature for the child as a person; the second principle allows for the idea of personal improvement—presents to us the beautiful idea that we are all rich in potential, that can be accessed {as we will see in a later principle} by the disciplined exercise of our wills.
Notebooks are lifelong companions to those who are always seeking to improve themselves and their relationship to the works of God— because change is possible.
• My ‘to-do list notebook’ demonstrates an indefatigable trust in the potential for improvement. :-) •
September 5, 2014