WCLTL: DISCUSSION 1
I love my CM study group; home-schooling mothers are among the most intellectually curious and interesting people I know. I am blessed to have in this {steadily growing!} group so many good friends, old and new; and the hours of discussing educational philosophy and method have been robust and influential.
After reading The Living Page by Laurie Bestvater, and enjoying a summer recess with screenings of SCM workshops, we have begun a new book discussion: When Children Love to Learn, edited by Elaine Cooper.
Here are my notes from leading the first meeting. Typing them together afterwards, I was interested to find certain points I wish I had brought out more in discussion, and certain other points that became more compelling in our conversation than they appear here.
Still, I hope that my notes, such as they are, are a help to those who missed the meeting or just want to ‘listen in.’
{FOREWORD: EVE ANDERSON}
I know the words ‘Foreword’ and ‘Preface’ don't have the same excitement of the words ‘Chapter One,’ and although the ‘Foreword’ and ‘Preface’ of the book were not included in the assigned reading, I do want to briefly highlight a few of the points made by Eve Anderson and editor Elaine Cooper, that might prepare us to better appreciate and anticipate what is to come in the following pages and months.
Those of you who borrowed my DVD series Eve Anderson's Teacher Training Tools for narration, picture study, and nature journals may remember the little old lady who wrote the ‘Foreword’ for When Children Love to Learn.
Miss Anderson attended the Charlotte Mason College for her training as a teacher. She shares more of her personal history and long experience as an educator in these pages, which we will pass over, but her conclusion is one which I think is important to repeat, and which introduces us to a main premise of the book.
{Quote from page 11 from ‘I can talk with experience and confidence...’ to bottom of page}
Is the philosophy and method of a British Victorian school marm in fact ‘right for the present time and for the future’? What makes it so?
{PREFACE: ELAINE COOPER}
The ‘Preface’ was written by the general editor of a book that is the collaboration of a number of Charlotte Mason educators, scholars, and authors.
She introduces the book as a response to the outpouring of questions from parents and teachers who had read Susan Schaeffer Macaulay's book, which reintroduced Charlotte Mason to a world that had nearly forgotten her. That book was For the Children's Sake. How many of you have read it? {It was the tantalizing quotations of Charlotte Mason that were my favorite part of the book and led me to purchase her original volumes.}
This book seeks to provide answers to these questions, but first Ms. Cooper delivers a gentle warning to us formula-loving moderns.
{Quote on page 13 from ‘We offer no technique...’to ‘practical suggestions and resources from which to choose.’}
Even more practical than the much-craved technique is that which is ‘more practical than practical,’ to borrow a phrase from Andrew Kern.—That is, a proper {correct, adequate} perspective {understanding, appreciation} of ‘Who it is we have to do with.’
We haven't even gotten to the assigned portion of our book, so we can't dwell as long as I'd like on the wonderful reflections Cooper shares here on that essential question. I encourage you to take a peek into these introductory sections if you have a chance at a later time. But if your time is short, skip them for now and listen to Andrew Kern's interview with Sarah Mackenzie of Amongst Lovely Things. I shared the link to this podcast on our group's Google+ page because it was so profound, so beautiful, so encouraging; I want to listen to it again. It's certainly apropos to the current question: who are we teaching, and what are they like, really? We're going to address this at length when we get to ‘Chapter Two’ in November.
But between here and there is ‘Chapter One,’ which I've divided into two readings. We have the first section this evening, so please turn with me to page 19, and let's talk about ‘The Value of Charlotte Mason's Work for Today.’
{CHAPTER ONE, p19-32: SUSAN SCHAEFFER MACAULAY}
The first thing you may have noticed is that ‘Chapter One’ was written by the author of For the Children's Sake; she begins by sharing the story of discovering Charlotte Mason as a concerned Christian parent trying to find a good school in a very progressive educational environment. Several things interest me about the account that she gives in pages 19-21. What, if anything, did you find interesting {or troubling, confusing, etc.} about Macaulay's experience?
Macaulay describes her reaction to Mason's philosophy the way many of us do: ‘Why, yes, of course.’ Macaulay shares a beautiful passage written by Mason's private secretary Elsie Kitching.
{Quote on page 21, from ‘When we meet the truth...’ to ‘An old acquaintance!’}
Was this your experience with Charlotte Mason?
In the next passages, through page 23, Macaulay connects this sense of ‘recognizing’ the truth to the reality that an objective truth does exist and must be acknowledged by a successful approach to education {in contrast to so-called progressive education}. This is preaching to the choir, but I think the historical context she supplies, and the power of her expression, made me think of old things in a new way. Can you say the same? What struck you in these pages?
For me, it was the statement ‘Ideals cannot be reached by wishful thinking alone.’ Many of the people working in education have sincere and noble intentions, but are attached to a form of romanticism that hopes for fruit when the roots have been torn away. Truly, that is wishful thinking.
{It can be true for us too. Mason believed fully that a mother was especially enabled by God to be a teacher for her children, but she followed this with the idea that a mother should not fail to equip herself with definite study of children and educational theory, if she wished to make something of her ideals and desires for her children.}
So, two large questions loom in the gap made by such wishful thinking: ‘Who is the child?’ and ‘What is the purpose of education?’ And yet our practice answers this question even when our philosophy does not. How does what you consider ‘typical’ education regard the child, or student? What motivations does it present to the student in reference to its purpose?
The educational picture is further complicated by breakdown of the ‘framework’ in other areas of life, particularly in the family. What kinds of problems outside the school do teachers have to face? Which struck you especially, or which others occurred to you, as you read this section {end of page 23 through all of 24}?
{The one that bothered me the most, having seen it in public school kindergarten: ‘They aren't used to listening to others or having anyone listen to them.’}
So, having looked at a tree without roots, Macaulay invites us to look again at Charlotte Mason's educational insights—’a tree with sound roots in rich, watered soil.’ Here is stability and freedom that allows life. They go hand-in-hand here, stability and freedom; having identified and set down the universal and eternal truths, we see clearly the vast areas of freedom for ‘individuality, creativity, cultural differences, technological advance, and historical development.’
We will understandably find in Mason's programs an emphasis on the history, culture, languages, and nature study topics best suited to her British students. But even in Mason's time, we have examples of those like Amy Carmichael who recognized the essential humanity of Mason's work and used it in an Indian way with her Indian girls.
Mason had her own problems of culture and time—educational divisions between aristocratic and working classes, between boys and girls. Macaulay elaborates on these problems on pages 26-27.
Although these particular divisions may seem irrelevant to us, what societal attitudes and prejudices keep us today from recognizing the truth that ‘all children [have] wonderful minds should be fed and developed’—or, perhaps less bluntly, that a ‘generously rich curriculum’ is suitable for ‘all’?
So, again, this ‘generously rich curriculum for all’ has both ‘unity and diversity,’ recognizing that we share our humanness and at the same time celebrating our wonderful variety. Mason's educational approach does not offer us a ‘cage,’ a legalistic code, a formula, or a recreation of a "fictional rosy bygone age." It offers us a Biblical framework within which to explore, understand, and make sense of the place, time, and culture in which we actually find ourselves.
So banish visions of lace doilies and tea parties {unless they happen already to float your boat}. We sometimes forget that in her own time, Mason was a modern woman, a contemporary thinker. She sought to keep up-to-date with new thinking, new publications to consider for her curriculum. We saw that she was progressive in her insistence that girls get just as robust an education as the boys, intellectually and physically.
I love this description of Charlotte Mason, and think it explains one important reason she was a great educational thinker:
{Quotes on page 30, from ‘People like Charlotte Mason are rare...’ to ‘squeeze out new ideas.’}
What are your thoughts, seeing Mason in this light? She wrote that her ideas were ‘revolutionary’ in their time. Do you think they still are?
One idea that she thought revolutionary was her first principle, that all children are born persons. How do we see this truth in the examples given on page 31. What other essentially human qualities occurred to you?
‘A damaging form of abuse to children is expecting them to be something they are not.’ Abuse is a weighty word. Do you think it is too strong in this context? Why, or why not?
How does Macaulay define Christian education at the top of page 32 {‘education that has due regard for the individual’}? Do you agree that this is a quality that is essentially Christian? Why, or why not?
What is your main take-away from this section?
• detail of 1921 cover for Good Housekeeping by Jessie Wilcox Smith •
October 2, 2015