Marilla is advised by Mrs. Lynde, the Cuthbert’s opinionated neighbor, to place Anne in the town school. There Anne meets many of the town’s children and comes under the tutelage of Mr. Phillips, a didactic teacher who emphasizes discipline and shows favoritism to his champion students. Mr. Phillips doesn’t last long, departing at the end of Anne’s first year at Avonlea school. Altogether, Mr. Phillips would not be missed. According to Marilla, “Mr. Phillips isn’t any good at all as a teacher” (Montgomery 118). After the farewell party in his honor, Mr. Phillips hardly receives a reference the remainder of the series, such was his lack of inspiration or connection with the students.

Replacing the forgettable Mr. Phillips is Miss Stacy, a figure who will play an important role in Anne’s life. Unable to return to school due to the broken ankle she suffered at the Phillips farewell party, Anne learns of Miss Stacy from her friends, and the reports she receives gives her anticipatory delight. She learns that “every other Friday afternoon she has recitations and everybody has to say a piece or take part in a dialogue.” For one so enamored with literature, poetry and imagination, this excites the spirit of Anne. She also hears that “the Friday afternoons they don’t have recitations Miss Stacy takes them all to the woods for a ‘field’ day and they study ferns and flowers and birds. And they have physical culture exercises every morning and evening” (189). In the 1985 movie created by Kevin Sullivan, we see several scenes of Miss Stacy giving an inspirational speech to her class, traipsing across the pastures of Prince Edward Island, drawing in their nature journals, and exercising outdoors.

Among the many programs Miss Stacy implemented – including a school drama and a story-writing club – the program that would have the most significant impact on the direction of Anne’s life is the after-school class for the older students to prepare them for the entrance exams to Queen’s Academy, a teacher’s college in Charlottetown. This program serves as a passing of the baton, inasmuch as Anne would eventually attend Queen’s and go on to become the teacher at Avonlea school. Miss Stacy’s impact on Anne led to a life that followed in her footsteps due to the inspiration and connection Miss Stacy formed with her students. Miss Shirley in her own right would embody many of the same principles that were exemplified by Miss Stacy.

Miss Shirley would go on to teach at her home school in Avonlea for two years, applying the same kind of principles she learned under Miss Stacy, although we are still able to witness the many mishaps that follow Anne in her new role in town. She departs Avonlea for further training at Redmond College and then takes a post at Summerside High School. Summerside is a town run by the Pringles, the social elites of the community. With a class full of Pringle siblings and cousins, Miss Shirley must use all of her imagination and connection to win the hearts of her students, who are set against her from the beginning for earning the post over another candidate, a Pringle relative.

Just one episode in her teaching career will go to show the influence Miss Stacy had on Anne Shirley and her teaching methods. Miss Shirley organized a drama club during her first year at Summerside, directing the play Mary, Queen of Scots. Through the drama club, Miss Shirley was able to spark the imagination of her students and created a connection with even some of the stubborn Pringle children.

For both Miss Stacy and Miss Shirley, there were a few key principles that guided their effectiveness in teaching. Here we’ll enumerate a few of these. As an aside, I have found it interesting, as I read these stories and watch the movies, how much the episodes surrounding the classroom remind me of Charlotte Mason’s pedagogy. Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author of the Anne series, is only a generation younger than Miss Mason. It is difficult to make a connection between the two, with Montgomery residing most of her life in Canada and Mason in England. However, there is a sense that they are or would be kindred spirits, believing in the full personhood of children and expressing sensible ideas of education. So, as I spell out some of these principles, we’ll see how consistent they are with a thoroughgoing philosophy of education as presented in Charlotte Mason’s works.

A Sympathetic Teacher

Creating a connection with students is one of the key principles to effectiveness in teaching. In his book, The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle illustrates repeatedly the essential qualities of highly successful groups. It all boils down to connection. He writes, “Group performance depends on behavior that communicates one powerful overarching idea: We are safe and connected” (Coyle 15). In Montgomerie’s Anne series, her main character is always seeking connection in the form of “kindred spirits,” people who have sympathy. When you break the word “sympathy” down, it means “having mutual (sym-) feelings (pathos).” This mutual feeling can be cultivated in a classroom by a teacher who is seeking opportunities to create an alliance with her students.

Connections and alliances can be formed in all sorts of ways. Both Miss Stacy and later Miss Shirley would use drama as a means of creating sympathy. To act in a play draws upon the sympathetic part of our natures, so it is only natural for students to be drawn together in the effort of putting on a play. Coaching a sports team, going on nature walks, or doing a handcraft together are all ways that being with your students cultivates the sense of togetherness, the safety and connection Coyle describes.

The sympathy we offer to our students is a means of empowering them to accomplish the work of learning. To learn anything takes effort, and we as human beings are averse to effortful work, unless we have a compelling vision of the value of the work to be done. This is where the sympathetic teacher provides the sense of togetherness and sets the tone for the work to be done. The teacher cannot do the work of learning, that is the responsibility of the child. But the teacher can make the conditions optimal for learning through her sympathetic presence. Charlotte Mason writes:

“The children, not the teachers, are the responsible persons; they do the work by self-effort. The teachers give sympathy and occasionally elucidate, sum up or enlarge, but the actual work is done by the scholars.”

Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education, p. 6.

Such a teacher is aware of the needs of her students and provides just the right direction to enable them to put in the effort of learning.

The Love of Reading

A constant theme in the Anne series is a love of great literature. There are wonderful episodes where Anne enacts a scene or delivers a rousing recitation from the great poets. Anne’s love of literature becomes a great temptation for her. In one scene, Miss Stacy catches Anne reading Ben Hur when she should have been reading her Canadian history text. She recounts the incident to Marilla:

“I had just got to the chariot race when school went in. I was simply wild to know how it turned out—although I felt sure Ben Hur must win, because it wouldn’t be poetical justice if he didn’t—so I spread the history open on my desk lid and then tucked Ben Hur between the desk and my knee. I just looked as if I were studying Canadian history, you know, while all the while I was reveling in Ben Hur. I was so interested in it that I never noticed Miss Stacy coming down the aisle until all at once I just looked up and there she was looking down at me, so reproachful-like. I can’t tell you how ashamed I felt, Marilla, especially when I heard Josie Pye giggling. Miss Stacy took Ben Hur away, but she never said a word then. She kept me in at recess and talked to me. She said I had done very wrong in two respects. First, I was wasting the time I ought to have put on my studies; and secondly, I was deceiving my teacher in trying to make it appear I was reading a history when it was a storybook instead. I had never realized until that moment, Marilla, that what I was doing was deceitful. I was shocked. I cried bitterly, and asked Miss Stacy to forgive me and I’d never do such a thing again; and I offered to do penance by never so much as looking at Ben Hur for a whole week, not even to see how the chariot race turned out. But Miss Stacy said she wouldn’t require that, and she forgave me freely.”

Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, 240-241.

It’s a delightful scene that exposes Anne’s fascination with literature, and Miss Stacy’s approach to discipline. In the midst of confession and forgiveness, we see how Miss Stacy comes alongside Anne to help order her affections. History must be read in its proper time, and literature must be read in its time. Care must be given to all forms of reading. Anne goes on to explain to Marilla the influence Miss Stacy has had on her preferences for reading:

“I never read any book now unless either Miss Stacy or Mrs. Allan thinks it is a proper book for a girl thirteen and three-quarters to read. Miss Stacy made me promise that. She found me reading a book one day called, The Lurid Mystery of the Haunted Hall. It was one Ruby Gillis had lent me, and, oh, Marilla, it was so fascinating and creepy. It just curdled the blood in my veins. But Miss Stacy said it was a very silly, unwholesome book, and she asked me not to read any more of it or any like it. I didn’t mind promising not to read any more like it, but it was agonizing to give back that book without knowing how it turned out. But my love for Miss Stacy stood the test and I did.”

Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, 241.

Cultivating a love of reading is not simply about getting a child to simply read books. It’s about helping them to be choosy about the quality of books they read as well as giving them the proper attention and care to expand their minds through a healthy appetite for books. Charlotte Mason describes the role a teacher plays in cultivating this love of reading:

“The child who has been taught to read with care and deliberation until he has mastered the words of a limited vocabulary, usually does the rest for himself. The attention of his teachers should be fixed on two points—that he acquires the habit of reading, and that he does not fall into slipshod habits of reading.”

Charlotte Mason, Home Education, p. 226.

The aim is for the child to gain independence by reading “for himself.” This means they have the autonomy to choose personal readers and has the ability to “read with care and deliberation.” Reading is such an essential skill for awakening the imagination. So many of the richest aspects of life require an active imagination, whether that be the experience of abstract concepts such as love or empathy, the expansion of our intellects through the consideration of alternative perspectives, or the appropriation of a flourishing relationship with God. The cultivation a love of reading, then, is one of the principles to effectiveness in teaching.

Instilling Willing Obedience

A final principle of effectiveness in teaching has to do with preparing a child to be at peace under authority. There is a difference between a child who has been made to obey, and a child who obeys willingly. This requires the teacher or parent to be at peace in their own authority. I have found that the roles that bear authority must be carried out with careful consideration never to erode that authority through being overly familiar or chummy on the one extreme or strict and rules-based on the other extreme. There are a warm and orderly disposition someone in authority must acquire that enables those under authority to willingly obey. At the same time, there is an ability to speak to those under authority that requires, guides and confirms proper obedience.

In the episode shared in length above, we see Miss Stacy correcting Anne by naming two wrongs she had done by reading Ben Hur when she should have been working on history. Miss Stacy identifies how this act was a waste of time as well as deceitful. In the 1985 film, we are shown the episode and hear the words from Miss Stacy. It’s a stunning moment where we see the conviction of what is good and right in the countenance and the words of Miss Stacy. But we also feel the warmth of her connection to Anne. Rather than being made to feel shame or forced to obey, Anne is brought to a place of willing obedience. This properly ordered relationship of authority – being in peace in authority and under authority – actually enhanced the depth of affection Anne had for Miss Stacy. Anne viewed her as a person who had her best interests at heart as well as a person who could guide her towards virtuous living.

Charlotte Mason expresses how important it is to “secure willing obedience” on the part of students. It is the pathway to their own happiness. She writes:

“It is the part of the teacher to secure willing obedience, not so much to himself as to the laws of the school and the claims of the matter in hand. If a boy have a passage to read, he obeys the call of that immediate duty, reads the passage with attention and is happy in doing so.”

Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education, p. 70.

Notice how there is a higher calling the teacher is pointing to. She mentions “the laws of the school,” which in some cases are clearly expressed in, say, a school-side set of rules, or classroom procedures. However, there are many more unwritten rules that are actually an outworking of natural law or divine law. In other words, we are not securing willing obedience to ourselves as individuals, but to a higher order that we are all duty bound to obey. I in my position of authority as a teacher am duty bound to call my students up to that higher calling, and to do so with the view of their abundant sense of duty and ultimate happiness.

There are three tenets to willing obedience that are easily expressed in what I call a mantra. Obedience is right away, all the way, and with a good attitude. Having this framework helps us to coach students of any age to accomplish the effort of learning by assessing these three tenets. For instance, take the child who has been assigned a homework set and given time to complete that in class. Calling that child to work on it right away is essential to cultivating willing obedience. Don’t wait until a later time, strike while the iron is hot! Has the child completed all of the homework set? Here we can point out how obedience is “all the way.” We are only satisfied with a job done all the way. It can happen that when assigning the homework set, we hear grumbling. Here we call for obedience with a good attitude. We are only satisfied with a job done cheerfully.

This on-demand webinar provides an in-depth training session on how to apply Charlotte Mason’s method of habit training in your classroom. Dr. Egan briefly reviews the basics, and then takes you to new levels of understanding that has practical benefits for students of all ages.

Learn practical strategies to cultivate attention, piety, penmanship, and other specific habits. Whether you are a classroom teacher, administrator or homeschool parent, you will find helpful tools to take your craft of teaching to the next level.

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Authority and obedience sound like harsh words in a postmodern world of tolerance and relativism. Most parents and teachers have a sense that children should be taught to obey, but there is so much cultural backlash against authority that we are enfeebled authorities ourselves. Our rules feel arbitrary, and the effort to enforce petty regulations doesn’t feel worth it. Won’t our efforts to teach obedience just backfire, resulting in the very rebellion we hoped to curtail in the first place?

But what if authority and obedience are a fundamental part of our very natures? I have been reading Charlotte Mason’s Toward a Philosophy of Education. She addresses these very topics in her fourth chapter entitled “Authority and Docility.” I think her ideas are worthy of consideration and might provide avenues for you to explore, whether you are a parent or a teacher.

Deputed Authority

To begin with, authority is never our own, it is conferred by a higher authority. Mason begins by locating ultimate authority in the divine Logos. Christ spoke with authority (Matt. 7:29). In the biblical tradition, the divine Logos created all the universe (Gen. 1:3; John 1:1-3) and has authority over all that he has created. This authority is then imparted by the creator to the natural order so that authority exists in a variety of relationships within the very structure of created reality. Natural laws govern the operations of planets. Just try disobeying gravity… the consequences could be fatal. We, too, have a form of authority that is deputed to us. Although we are created as equal to one another in the essence of our being, there are roles that we inhabit that carry the authority due to different kinds of offices. A police officer has an authority to enforce the laws of the land, not because she is a superior human being, but because the office carries an authority in its domain. The judge who maintains order in his courtroom does so because the office demands obedience. As soon as the person leaves that sphere of authority, he is as ordinary as you or me. I can disagree with his views on sports over the weekend grill without committing contempt of court.

Mason addresses our fallacious misgivings about authority.

“There is an idea abroad that authority makes for tyranny, and that obedience, voluntary or involuntary, is of the nature of slavishness.” (Philosophy of Education 40)

Even though tyrants wield a corrupt authority, it is actually an abuse of its essential nature as the means of establishing and protecting order. We hold with great esteem coaches who get the best out of their teams and win championships. Far from being tyrants, they formulate winning strategies, calling out orders that the players are enthusiastic to carry out. The players take pride in their accomplishments. The orderliness on the field of play is a result of authority and obedience. The good coach is not a tyrant. We might be able to think of examples where coaches used tyrannical methods to control a team, but I think we are quick to recognize this as an aberration. When we see the coach applying the means available to him to lead his team well, we applaud the authority and obedience on display. With these ideas in mind, we as parents and teachers can understand our own authority as something good and right without succumbing to the negative assumptions about the nature of our authority or about our the obedience children owe to those roles.

Willing Obedience

If authority and obedience are part of our essential nature, then how do we translate this into the classroom? One faulty strategy is the indirect method of governance. Children are offered freedom to do as they want, with the assumption that most people will have a sense of certain rules and procedures. They are indirectly compelled to follow the rules but never with an awareness that they are following rules at all. This method, though, robs children of the opportunity to learn a “dignified obedience.” Never is a sense of duty or nobility acquired. As soon as the child is held accountable, the child complains of the apparent loss of freedom. This is to completely misunderstand the nature of obedience and freedom.

Many of us make assumptions that to call a child to obedience is to burden them with a load too heavy for them. We shy away from being direct and clear in our instructions and expectations. Instead, we try to extend our silent wills, clenching our stomach muscles and hoping against hope that they’ll make the right choices that conform to unspoken standards. It is an understandable resistance to harshness on our parts. There’s a different view, though. The teacher can take on the mantle of authority, giving simple commands, expecting full adherence, and providing support to children who are learning how to be at peace with themselves while under authority.

Paul explores the seeming contradiction of obedience and freedom in Romans 8. Although Christ frees us from the law’s requirements by accomplishing the righteous requirements of the law on our behalf, we now live according to the law of the Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2). We are not redeemed to disobedience, but our obedience is now shifted to a new order of righteousness. This new order sets us free. Freedom and obedience are not dichotomous, but flow from each other. Consider the illustration of the airplane. It must obey the laws of physics, with the forces of gravity, lift, thrust and drag acting upon the aircraft.

A pilot must carefully operate a number of control systems in order to achieve flight. What we observe as the airplane’s freedom to fly across the sky is the result of the craft’s disciplined obedience. “The mind set on the Spirit is life and peace (Rom. 8:6).” The word “set” here (φρόνημα) communicates a resolute, determined or purposeful psychological faculty (Louw & Nida, Greek-English Lexicon, 325). There is a willing obedience to the Spirit that provides freedom to live in harmony with God’s righteousness.

I shared with my son an idea I heard from Jocko Willink, “Discipline equals freedom.” At first he vehemently disapproved this idea. He felt freedom was the absence of discipline. Interestingly, it was Rousseau who helped the light bulb turn on for him. I read him a simple quote from Emile book 2, “But children’s freedom is limited by their weakness.” In other words, he could be free to lift whatever he wanted, but if he hasn’t trained his muscles, he will be limited and therefore lack freedom. He could read whatever he wanted, but if he lacks the discipline to learn the English language well (or any foreign languages for that matter), he will lack the freedom to explore all the great literature out there. And, yes, the freedom to find your Legos in a timely manner is impaired if you lack the discipline to tidy and organize your Legos. My son learned a key lesson about willing obedience.

A Higher Order of Authority

The child’s willing obedience is not different than our own obedience. All too often we settle for the “because I told you so” rationale for obedience. However, we ourselves are under authority, and often have a higher authority to point to from which our authority as parent or teacher has been deputed. Mason writes,

“It is the part of the teacher to secure willing obedience, not so much to himself as to the laws of the school and the claims of the matter in hand.”

The child is called to attention not merely because I said so (although I did say so, and sometimes that will be enough), but because learning requires attention. I acquired the skill of attention because learning itself is a higher authority over me and my student. Now I call my students to have attention in obedience to the rules of learning. There is a higher authority than me. Mason states later,

“The higher the authority, the greater the distinction in obedience, and children are quick to discriminate between the mere will and pleasure of the arbitrary teacher or parent and the chastened authority of him who is himself under rule.”

Towards a Philosophy of Education, 41

There is no essential difference between me and my student. We are both under authority. We are both called into the kingdom of God and will carry out our own dominion in the world as image bearers. I like how Dallas Willard explores our deputed authority as the “range of our effective will.” He writes,

“In creating human beings God made them to rule, to reign, to have dominion in a limited sphere. Only so can they be persons…. Any being that has say over nothing at all is no person. We only have to imagine what that would be like to see that this is so. Such ‘persons’ would not even be able to command their own body or their own thoughts.”

Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, 21-22

Whether it be family, church, society or our relationship to God himself, we are all under authority, and we can and must appeal to that higher authority as the basis of obedience. In recognizing this higher authority, we can help our students to cultivate a sense of noble duty in whatever enterprise they pursue. Moreover, we can help our students gain “a fine sense of the freedom which comes of knowledge.”

The Responsibility of Learning

As teachers, we often sense that the responsibility of teaching falls squarely on our shoulders, but it is necessary to shift our thinking to the students’ responsibility to learn.

“All school work should be conducted in such a manner that children are aware of the responsibility of learning; it is their business to know that which has been taught.”

Toward a Philosophy of Education, 43

Too often we exercise ourselves with great effort to teach and reteach the lesson in an attempt to ensure that all students have learned the material. That, though, is to remove from them a responsibility that is rightfully theirs. Repeating the lesson, doing a complete review, or re-reading the exercise backfires because the child learns not to take responsibility for their learning. The teacher tacitly communicates that “I’ll see that you know it.” This concept is counter-intuitive as it seems our responsibility not only to know the materials ourselves as content experts but also to verify that our students know the material. However, we cannot make the knowledge appear in the students’ minds by any of our own effort. They must exercise their own brains to assimilate new knowledge.

Mason suggests teachers typically fall prey to any of three fallacies. First, we regard the student as inferior. Yes, the offices of teacher and student entail a necessary hierarchy of authority. However, we are both in essence human beings with inestimable capacity of mind. Our students have the ability to understand great ideas and they have the ability to acquire all the habits of discipline. Second, we doubt their ability to understand “a literary vocabulary.” Elsewhere Mason cautions against instructing children “like young pigeons with predigested food.” Lengthy explanation has the opposite effect we hoped for. It does not lead to deeper understanding, instead it can steal the effectiveness of high expression and clear commands. Third, we misunderstand the nature of attention. The label Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) is bandied about too liberally. Children have the power of attention. If you’ve ever watched a child engrossed before a screen, you can observe attention at work. It is not in deficit, it is just misdirected. Mason’s advice is to be sure to place before our students the best books by the best writers: “Our part is to regard attention, too, as an appetite and to feed it with the best we have in books and in all knowledge.” There is a good deal of student self interest in Mason’s vision of the attentive child. The student looks out for herself, desiring to be delighted and to find genuine helps for navigating her world. Effective teaching, then, comes down to finding the keys to unlock the student’s vantage of interest so that they can properly direct their attention.

Once we recognize these fallacies in our thinking and correct our faulty assumptions about our students abilities, we can genuinely help them to fully realize their potential as students. The nature of the student is to learn and to obey. They can find great pleasure and meaning in learning and in obedience.

The Walking Wounded

Mason concludes this chapter by recalling the wounded soldiers coming home from the Great War (she published this work in 1922, so this would have been a vivid image for her readers), who walked with a limp and wore various prosthetics. When education neglects due consideration of authority and removes from the student the burden of responsibility, the result is that “our young men and women go about more seriously maimed than these.” There is no spark of intellect, ideas, imagination or creativity, at least not stemming from the school room. Renewing our understanding of authority and obedience is necessary to realign ourselves and our students to something greater than us all: intellectual pursuit. Mason writes:

“They are devoid of intellectual interest, history and poetry are without charm for them, the scientific work of the day is only slightly interesting, their ‘job’ and the social amenities they can secure are all that their life has for them. The maimed existence in which a man goes on from day to day without either nourishing or using his intellect, is causing anxiety to those interested in education…”(45)

Towards a Philosophy of Education, 45

We likely have some of those walking wounded in our classroom. They have likely seen the future and all they can see is a lifeless job. If we can help them gain for themselves a fresh vision of their own intellectual flourishing that transcends themselves and their jobs, we can help them also acquire an interest in what we are learning in the classroom, and an interest in the nobility of dignified obedience.

I have been reading from Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education (Seven Treasures Publications, 2009) ISBN 978-1438298139. Mason’s writings are in the public domain and are available online at www.amblesideonline.org.

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