As I wrap up this series of reviews, we turn to Students as Persons: Charlotte Mason on Personalism and Relational Liberal Education by Deani Van Pelt and Jen Spencer. One of the key tenets of Mason’s pedagogy is the statement that “children are persons.” This book delves deeply into this foundational philosophical concept by looking at personalist theory and differentiating personhood from individualism. This is an important book that covers a lot of ground in just over 60 pages.

Deani Van Pelt has been a leading voice in Charlotte Mason education, championing school choice in Canada and adding to our knowledge of Charlotte Mason through her research. The is the current board chair for the Charlotte Mason Institute and is Scholar-in-Residence in Charlotte Mason Studies, University of Cumbria, England. Van Pelt is not only the series editor of the 18 monographs in the Centenary Series, this book is one of two volumes she has had a hand in writing in the series. Co-author Jen Spencer has likewise been a leader within the Charlotte Mason movement, having led study groups and founding a school. Her work includes the digitization of Mason archives at the Armitt Museum in Ambleside, England as well as serving as the program director for the Alveary, a curriculum created by the Charlotte Mason Institute. Spencer was recently appointed as a Visiting Research Fellow in Charlotte Mason Studies at the University of Cumbria, Ambleside.

Situating Personhood

It can be difficult to differentiate Mason’s concept of personhood when there are many theories about childhood and learning that surround the work of Mason. A number of key figures and concepts are therefore helpfully presented at the outset of Students as Persons to establish what exactly personhood is and is not. Blank-slate theory as set forth by John Locke views the child as an empty vessel to be filled. Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed in the inherent goodness of the child, meaning that the child should be left untampered. Frederick Froebel viewed the child like a plant to be tended in a Kindergarten. John Dewey viewed education as a socializing process making them fit for democratic society. Maria Montessori considered that children are individuals “who should be left alone to explore specially created apparatus so that their creativity could flourish” (14). Beyond these individual theorists, the industrialists of North America viewed children as a work force and learning as training for a role in the industrial system. In Mason’s own Victorian context, children were viewed as “personal property, better seen than heard” (14).

Through this broad set of ideas, Mason’s statement “children are persons” takes a very different direction. Originally delivered through a series of evening “Lectures to Ladies” in Bradford, England, the ideas Mason set forth were a philosophical alternative to a host of insufficient views of the child. Even more today, this idea has found resonance:

“When education increasingly places emphasis on credentials to be attained and employment to be secured, thoughtful, searching parents, teachers and educational leaders are finding resonance with educational ideas that focus on the child’s whole wellbeing” (Students as Persons 14-15).

The wellbeing of the child is a grand vision that sets forth an educational enterprise that raises up the child “not only for a useful life but also for learning how to live this life in all its fullness” (15).

The Contours of Personhood

Van Pelt and Spencer ground Mason’s concept of personhood in her career working with children. She set forth her thoughts in the Bradford lectures “having had nearly a quarter-century to observe children and work out her thoughts about teaching and learning” (16). It is interesting to note that Mason’s career as a teacher and then as an educational philosopher occurred between that of Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852) and Maria Montessori (1870-1952). In the philosophies of both these figures, children were viewed as requiring special treatment through the use of carefully developed learning tools and environments. However, for Mason, she took the view that “children are not that different from adults and do not need for everything to be specially organized for them” (17). This conception of the child garners an amount of respect toward the child that finds what the authors describe as a “middle way between ‘despising’ children and worshipping them” (18). In other words, our view of children can tend towards an inaccurate view of the child when we do not grant them the respect of personhood due to them.

The British industrial revolution brought children into the workplace, which meant that society was well prepared to afford them the responsibilities of adulthood but had not really granted them their rights as children. Mason’s concept of personhood was connected to the rights of children in her third book School Education. These rights called for children to enjoy the freedoms of childhood, including the rights “to play freely, to work by their own initiative, to choose their own friends, to decide how they would spend their own money, and to form their own opinions” (18). Issuing these rights within the Victorian milieu was something of a crusade for Mason and the PNEU. However, unlike the child-centric models of education proposed by figures such as Rousseau and Montessori, Mason proposed that there is a burden of responsibility upon parents and teachers to “instruct the child’s conscience and help him to train his will and consider ideas carefully, so that he may grow to live with intention and continually work towards becoming the best version of himself as he conceived is” (19-20).

Considered in this way, the personhood of the child assumes that the child has their own will that must be given strength to choose what is good and right. There is a sense that the child will be self-directed and ought to have a diet of living ideas with which to populate a vision of what it means to live a good life.

Personhood Today

The study of personhood today interacts with insights gained from sociology, philosophy and theology. Van Pelt and Spencer bring to bear a number of recent authors to spell out how personhood has developed in our contemporary setting in ways that are consistent with Mason’s original expression of personhood.

They begin by drawing up on the work of Christian Smith, a sociologist at the University of Notre Dame, in his 2010 publication What is a Person? Amongst several points worth consideration, Smith concurs that personhood is on full display from the start of life:

“Persons do not emerge out of capacities and bodies at some chronologically delayed time, only after some crucial development has taken place. Persons exist at the start of life and are their own agents of development and emergent being across their entire life course” (Smith 457, quoted in Van Pelt and Spencer 29).

This agency on the part of the child is something worthy of respect, even though we as grown ups have a burden of responsibility to nourish and train the young person. Personhood also entails a sense of purpose “to develop and sustain our own incommunicable selves in loving relationships with other personal selves and with the nonpersonal world” (Smith 85, emphasis added by Van Pelt and Spencer 30). This is consistent with Mason’s concept of the science of relationship whereby the child develops three kinds of knowledge—knowledge of God, knowledge of man, and knowledge of the universe.

Based on this understanding of personhood, in distinction from individualism, our authors explain the implications of what this means pedagogically.

“Indeed, it is not to liberal individualism that Mason turns for her anthropology but to relational personhood. Had she rooted her anthropology in the child as individual rather than the child as person, child-centeredness could become a concept leading to license rather than to liberty of the child. It would also have brushed over the relational nature embedded in personhood and it sets one up at best as autonomous and at worst as isolated, free-floating, untethered, and alone” (32).

Thus, the child is a responsible agent learning how to relate as a person with other persons, instead of somehow trying to get off the grid, so to speak, of dependence on other individuals.

Personhood, then, is distinct from individualism, but it is also distinct from collectivism. For this distinction, our authors turn to the philosopher Juan Manuel Burgos, professor at the University of San Pablo in Madrid, in his 2018 publication An Introduction to Personalism. The person, according to Burgos, is a “subsistent and autonomous but essentially social being” (Burgos 32, quoted in Van Pelt and Spencer 34). Burgos goes on to differentiate personalism from that of collectivism and individualism:

“It was distinguished and separated from the egocentric individual by stressing the moral obligation to serve others and the community, but it did not fall into the collectivist orbit because, due to his intrinsic dignity, the person possesses an absolute and noninterchangeable value and a series of inalienable rights” (Burgos 32).

In this understanding of personalism, each person is able to experience true freedom while also maintaining a sense of connection to others that is morally responsible.

Grounding these sociological and philosophical insights is the theological concept of the divine image. Van Pelt and Spencer bring alongside the aforementioned Smith the bioethicist John Kilner, founding director of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, in his 2015 publication Dignity and Destiny. Human dignity stems from God’s creation of humanity in his own image (Genesis 1:26-27). For Kilner, the imago dei, or being created in the image of God “has played a significant role historically in freeing people from the ravages of need and oppression” (Kilner 7, quoted in Van Pelt and Spencer 36). This is the central claim of the theist ground for human dignity. Kilner also notes how oppression and exploitation stem from what he “would call a non-biblical understanding of God’s image” (Van Pelt and Spencer 37).

There is a sacredness to human personhood based on the special relationship all humans have with their Creator. Instead of the autonomous individual or collective humanity, personhood implies the value and dignity of every human being while also promoting the ability people have to relate to their Creator.

Personhood and Self-education

Mason’s view of the personhood of the child is foundational to a constructivist approach to learning, according to Van Pelt and Spencer. To put it simply, constructivist theory posits that the learner actively builds knowledge through their own experience of and interaction with information. John Mays in his 2022 article “Thoughts on Teaching” pits constructivism against essentialism, which helpfully provides categories for us to consider. In essentialism, there is a body of core knowledge and skills delivered to the learner by the teacher. Mays, while spelling out the differences, finds that these philosophies of learning are a false dichotomy. One of the benefits of Van Pelt and Spencer’s book is a fuller understanding of this central debate in education. As classical education untethers itself from conventional education to promote a love of learning, there is a need to engage the learner in ways that Mason directly connects to the dignity and agency of the learner.

The constructivist ideal is best expressed by Mason in her final volume, Towards a Philosophy of Education, where she wrote, “The children, not the teachers, are the responsible persons; they do the work by self-effort” (241). So even someone committed to a teacher-centric approach should recognize that the dissemination of information only goes out into the blank void unless a responsible and motivated learner is there to capture what is sent. Van Pelt and Spencer compare Mason’s constructivism to that of other models. In particular, they review the cognitive constructivism of Jean Piaget, the social constructivism of Lev Vygotsky, and the radical constructivism of Ernst von Glasersfield. We can see, therefore, that the categories are fairly nuanced. Our authors critically examine these three models and conclude that Mason’s “aligns most comfortably among the social constructivists” (46). In this social constructivist model, children learn “by interacting with others, with our culture, and with our society” (45). Again, the personhood of the child in this sense is responsibly related to others, not as an autonomous individual nor as an indiscriminate part of a collective.

An important point made by Van Pelt and Spencer is that knowledge is made personal by each learner. When the personhood of the child is honored as something sacred, then the very form of our assessment must account for the personal. For instance, when listening to or reading through students narrations, we are looking not simply for an accurate record of what the author has said. We are also accounting for the ways in which the child has personally assimilated this knowledge.

“Factual accuracy was not the sole important thing about assessment to Mason. It was equally important to her that each child had engaged with people, places, and ideas as best they could and according to their personhood. In this way, each student’s response contained originality” (49).

Not the both-and within this statement. It is important for students to have an accurate understanding of the information that they have assimilated. But for those of us who deem it important for this education to be formative, we must also take into account how knowledge has shaped character, moral reasoning, spiritual insight, and human understanding.

In all, I found this book to be a fine representation of research into Charlotte Mason. It furthers our understanding of her philosophy by bringing to bear good exemplars of modern thinkers so that we can gain insight into how her methods have relevance and utility today. I could see many benefitting from the thoughtful and engaging prose in this volume, even though some of the ideas are challenging to grapple with. Thankfully, Van Pelt and Spencer have done most of the heavy lifting, so that we as readers can wrap our mind around so many of the key elements of Mason’s philosophy surrounding the personhood of children.

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This is why it has been so crucial for classical Christian educators to return to foundational questions. The average parent or teacher in our movement may tire of such stargazing, but it is necessary. The means that we use to educate young human beings must be consistent with the end or purpose of education. 

But the purpose of education itself and the means we use to educate must also be consistent with our answer to the even larger question of what a human being is. Most of our practical disagreements in how to educate children have these fundamental worldview questions hovering in the background, like a ghost that will continually haunt us if we do not acknowledge its presence. 

To picture worldview commitments as star-gazing or a set of higher level propositions, at the top of a chain of deductions written out on a whiteboard somewhere, tricks us into thinking that we can assume them and get on with application. But this is untrue. The soul of education must enliven our work with children and be embodied in our curriculum, pedagogy and classroom leadership moment by moment, otherwise we will repeat the errors of competing worldviews and beliefs, half-truths and downright falsehoods.

The soul of education is therefore found in our view of the soul. Charlotte Mason’s philosophy of education is a notable example of this recognition. She grounded her educational ideas on the fundamental claim that children were persons. “I believe that the first article of a valid educational creed–’Children are born persons’–is of a revolutionary character; for what is a revolution but a complete reversal of attitude?” (The Parents’ Review 22; June 1911, 419-437). Our attitude toward children will inevitably shape our work as educators in ways that are beyond our immediate awareness. Classical Christian educators advocate a similar reversal of attitude or revolution in education.

We may not think of the word ‘person’ as carrying the same theological or philosophical weight as the word ‘soul’. But Charlotte Mason draws our attention to our modern assumptions about the nature of human beings through this word. Today even as classical Christian educators, we are stymied by a mishmash of terms for the nature of human beings: from traditional and religious terms like ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’, to the language of modern psychology and neuroscience. How do we make sense of it all? And how are these terms and our half-formed understanding of them implicitly shaping our attitude toward the children we educate? 

I have heard one of the leaders in our movement meaningfully claim that in education we are “nourishing souls,” rather than any number of alternatives. At the time there was a collective sigh in the room as we felt at a visceral level the weight of this re-imagination of education. But why? What does the word ‘soul’ even mean? And how can it be more than the ghost of our traditional imagination in a world where human beings are conceived in terms of their amygdala, frontal lobes, and dopaminergic system?

As Christians committed to the language of scripture regarding our flesh, soul, mind and spirit, how can we sift through the varying conceptions of the human person for the fundamental insights that can create a Christian revolution of attitude and methods in our educational endeavors? 

In this series of short articles on the soul of education, I propose to evaluate ancient and modern theories of the soul, from Plato and Aristotle to modern psychology and neuroscience, in order to glean important and revolutionary insights for our day-to-day educational practices. The ghost of these various conceptions of the soul are haunting our schools and classrooms. Like the Stoic Athenodorus we have to keep our heads about us, follow the ghost out into the courtyard of ideas, and learn its story by digging in the spot where it left, if we would no longer be haunted (see Pliny the Younger’s Letter to Sura). In our next article we will begin this process with Plato’s tripartite soul and its implications for education. 

I hope you enjoy this series of short articles as I take a break from my series of articles on Aristotle’s intellectual virtues. The Soul of Education is tangentially related to that extended exploration and will provide me with some needed time to wrap up book editing and writing projects, as well as research for the next series on Aristotle’s intellectual virtue of intuition or understanding (nous). Share a comment or thought on how you think any of the competing theories of the soul might be affecting our attitude and methods in education!

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Consider the painting Marble Champion. This 1939 piece features three children, one girl and two boys. It is painted in such a way that one only sees the children and the marbles. There is no physical context given. The viewer is drawn into a world solely inhabited by children at play. The faces of the children tell a story of triumph and indignation as the red-haired girl seems about to win to the dismay of the black-haired boy. The blond-haired boy expectantly awaits the final throw. Imagine how such a idyllic scene warmed the hearts of Americans in the midst of the Great Depression and on the cusp of war in Europe.

Childhood has not always been idyllic and has undergone transformation over the centuries. Among one of the greatest achievements over the last century was the dramatic increase in the survival rate of children. As recently as 1950, the global youth mortality rate was as high as 27%, meaning that only three of every four children could be expected to live to 15 years of age and beyond. In 2020 the World Health Organization reports global youth mortality at 3.7%. Keeping children alive has been one of the significant factors in growing the world population, which has not been a bad thing. With a greater population, we have seen the rise in new technologies, an expansion of available food, and an actual diminution of deaths by warfare.

One of the great landmarks in the history of childhood was a fresh perspective on children as persons that emerged during the Renaissance era. In this article I intend to explore the ways in which childhood, or the perception of childhood, changed during the Renaissance with a view of understanding better what it means to view children as whole persons.

Renaissance Childhood

The transformation of society from the late Middle Ages to the Renaissance has been variously understood. In many respects, we can see a tremendous amount of continuity between the ancient world, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance era. However, certain landmarks differentiate the old world from the new. The fall of Constantinople, for instance, ushered in a new era of learning in the West, as Byzantine scholars fled military conquests of the Ottomans. These scholars brought with them manuscripts of ancient authors that were either unknown or forgotten in the West. The Italian Renaissance, centered in Florence, brought a cultural renewal based on a flourishing of interest in classical texts.

Renaissance humanism during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries applied the great works and artifacts of Greece and Rome to reconsider the social institutions of the day. This focus on what we might call the humanities contributed to an emphasis on virtue ethics and paideia. With virtue ethics, the humanists saw that the cultivation of moral character emancipated the individual from duties or rules. Virtue went hand in hand with paideia, a view of education as the training of young persons as virtuous members of the state. The humanists envisioned the liberal arts as the means of liberating the individual from the constraints of social institutions prominent during the Middle Ages. Writes:

“The writings of Dante, and particularly the doctrines of Petrarch and humanists like Machiavelli, emphasized the virtues of intellectual freedom and individual expression. In the essays of Montaigne the individualistic view of life received perhaps the most persuasive and eloquent statement in the history of literature and philosophy.”

Steven Kreis, “Renaissance Humanism” at historyguide.org

One can trace transformations in society, from the Protestant Reformation to the democratization of nations, to the humanist impulses of the Renaissance. So, too, the transformation of the view of childhood. Although viewed as an extreme view, Philippe Aries, a prominent French medieval scholar during the 1960s and 1970s, argued that “in medieval society, the idea of childhood did not exist.” (Ariès, Centuries of Childhood (1962): 125.) He reasons that works of art and literature depict children as little adults. In a largely agrarian society, children were expected to work from the earliest ages. The high infant mortality rate also meant adults were less inclined to become attached to an idealized view of childhood. Aries’s view that childhood is largely a social construct is potentially problematic, but there is some veracity that Renaissance humanism went a long way toward transforming what childhood meant.

Viewing children as whole persons emerged during this era. The humanist impulse to train children in virtue considers them as having moral agency even during their youth. Similarly, there was a somewhat sentimental view of the emotional bonds between children and their parents. Educational thinkers of the Renaissance period encouraged the emotional connection between parent and child. Writing about Leon Alberti, the Italian educationist, Julian Vitullo contextualizes his work:

“Male pedagogues in Renaissance Florence participated in debates about different styles of discipline with the assumption that the emotional bonds that children form with adults would influence their own behavior as citizens. Pedagogues stressed the importance of recreation when they discussed the need to raise children with love, joy, and serenity.”

Julian Vitullo, “Fashioning Fatherhood: Leon Battista Alberti’s Art of Parenting.” Pages 341-353 in Albrecht Classen, ed. Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2005), 347.

Notice how discipline goes together with love, joy and serenity. Vitullo spells this out in more detail with regard to Alberti’s educational philosophy, “Alberti makes clear in his dialogue that he is aware of different notions of pedagogy and chooses a model of affection and positive enforcement that had already been detailed by classical thinkers such as Quintillian” (352). Alberti may have in mind here the advice given by Quintillian to fathers in his Institutio Oratio, “I would, therefore, have a father conceive the highest hopes of his son from the moment of his birth. If he does so, he will be more careful about the groundwork of his education” (Inst. 1.1).

This transformation of childhood spread from Italy to other locales in Europe as the Renaissance spread. Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote a brief treatise on the education of children. In this he concludes:

“Consider how dear a possession you’re son is, how diverse a thing it is and a matter of much work to come by learning, and how noble also the same is, what a readiness is in all children’s wits to learn, what agility is in the mind of man how easily those things be learned which be best and agreeable to nature, especially if they be taught of learned and gentle masters by the way of play.”

Erasmus, The Education of Children, transl. Richard Sherry, P.iii.

We see here a recognition that children are ready and eager to learn. Erasmus advises that children be taught by masters who both exhibit expertise but also gentleness, which in this context means a lack of harsh punishments. The word “play” is interesting, and I wonder if there is a play on the word ludus in the original Latin, a term that can mean both play and school.

Connecting the Traditions

The Renaissance holds many compelling connections to our educational renewal movement. The reappropriation of classical texts led to a renewal of educational theories and a reappraisal of the child as a whole person. Yet, we can see echoes of this view of children at other stages in the traditions, both ancient and modern.

To begin with, when we consider the biblical view of children, there are multiple passages that promote a high view of children. Take, for example, Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” The English translation is somewhat misleading, as it literally says to train the child “about his pathway.” There seems to be an indication that the child is fully capable of walking in the right moral pathway in his youth.

The prophet Malachi promises that in the renewal of Israel, God will turn “the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers” (4:6). The emotional connection between parent and child sounds here similar to the advice of the Renaissance pedagogues. The essence of a renewed society resides in the home where there’s a bastion of deep emotional bonds.

Jesus admonition to “let the little children come to me” (Matt. 19:14) speaks to a profound capacity in childhood for faith. Jesus’ view of children is profound indeed. Consider his an earlier passage in Matthew in which Jesus declares, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children” (11:25). The deepest matters of heaven and earth revealed to little children. As we consider a biblical theology of childhood, statements like these point to an understanding of the child as having great capacity for faith and learning.

Viewing children as whole persons – capable of profound thought, faith and moral direction – implies a form of education that trains children in their affections. I like how Christopher Perrin connects ordo amoris to the teachings of Christ. He writes:

“Jesus often signals an ordo amoris, telling the rich, young ruler there is one thing he lacks (Matt. 19) and telling Martha that though she is busy about many things, Mary has chosen what is best: to converse with him rather than prepare dinner (Luke 10). When Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment is, he responds that there are two: to love God with your whole heart and to love your neighbor as yourself (Matt. 22). Jesus seems to believe that there is a divinely ordered hierarchy of loves and pleasures.”

Christopher Perrin, “I Would Like to Order… an Education,” Inside Classical Education.

In the City of God, Augustine expresses how a person can have a properly ordered love for what is good. But this takes training in the affections. He writes, “For though it be good, it may be loved with an evil as well as with a good love: it is loved rightly when it is loved ordinately; evilly, when inordinately” (Augustine, City of God, XV.22). This leads, then to his classic statement, “It seems to me that it is a brief but true definition of virtue to say, it is the order of love (quod definitio brevis et vera virtutis ordo est amoris)” (Augustine, City of God, XV.22).

In his essay “Men without Chests,” C. S. Lewis builds his argument on Augustine’s dictum, “St. Augustine defines virtue as ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind of degree of love which is appropriate to it” (C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, 16). The child must learn to regulate his or her affections based on an evaluation of objective value. The thesis of Lewis’s The Abolition of Man comes down to whether one views education in modernist terms (facts, figures, pure reason, critical analysis, etc.) or as a means to train children to have proper emotional responses to what is true, good and beautiful. Lewis writes:

“Hence the educational problem is wholly different according as you stand within or without the Tao. For those within, the task is to train in the pupil those responses which are in themselves appropriate, whether anyone is making them or not, and in making which the very nature of man consists. Those without, if they are logical, must regard all sentiments as equally non-rational, as mere mists between us and the real objects. As a result, they must either decide to remove all sentiments, as far as possible, from the pupil’s mind; or else to encourage some sentiments for reasons that have nothing to do with their intrinsic ‘justness’ or ‘ordinacy.’”

C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, 20-21.

Now, Lewis uses the term Tao to indicate the most basic universal principles without recourse to theistic language. In doing this, he dispenses with a critique that his argument depends on Christian moral virtue. Instead, by looking to natural law, he is able to demonstrate that the affections are universal in nature and inherent in what it means to be human.

Children as Persons

The educational value of viewing children as whole person is tremendous. The Renaissance humanists reconsidered the purpose of education in light of their philosophical commitment to viewing children as having moral character and emotional capacity. The biblical view of children corroborates this insight. As educators today, we may need a renewal once again to understand the full capacity of every child to think, feel and believe.

Charlotte Mason understood this principle to be foundational when she writes:

“If we have not proved that a child is born a person with a mind as complete and as beautiful as his beautiful little body, we can at least show that he always has all the mind he requires for his occasions; that is, that his mind is the instrument of his education and that his education does not produce his mind.”

Charlotte Mason, Toward a Philosophy of Education, 36.

From the earliest ages, children show a capacity to learn. Consider how easily a child learns language, without any other help than to imitate the language users around them. Mason goes on to illustrate this point.

“Reason is present in the infant as truly as imagination. As soon as he can speak he lets us know that he has pondered the ’cause why’ of things and perplexes us with a thousand questions. His ‘why?’ is ceaseless. Nor are his reasonings always disinterested. How soon the little urchin learns to manage his nurse or mother, to calculate her moods and play upon her feelings! It is in him to be a little tyrant; “he has a will of his own,” says his nurse, but she is mistaken in supposing that his stormy manifestations of greed, wilfulness, temper, are signs of will. It is when the little boy is able to stop all these and restrain himself with quivering lip that his will comes into play; for he has a conscience too. Before he begins to toddle he knows the difference between right and wrong.”

Charlotte Mason, Toward a Philosophy of Education, 37.

Notice how many capacities are within the child: rationality, imagination, morality, conscience, emotions. All of these need to be trained for the person to grow, but the educational point is that training the child does not instill these. Instead, these capacities are already in the child. Our educational renewal movement has the opportunity to bring forward a renewed vision of the child as a whole person, to enact a Renaissance of education in our day.

Training the Prophetic Voice by Dr. Patrick Egan is a must-read for classical Christian educators seeking to build a robust rhetoric program. Grounded in biblical theology, this insightful book provides a framework for developing students’ prophetic voices – the ability to speak with wisdom, clarity, and conviction on the issues that matter most.

As an experienced educator, Dr. Egan understands the vital role rhetoric plays in shaping the next generation of Christian leaders. Through time-tested principles and practical guidance, he equips teachers to cultivate students who can articulate the truth with passion and purpose.

Whether you’re looking to revitalize your existing rhetoric curriculum or lay the foundation for a new program, Training the Prophetic Voice is an invaluable resource. Discover how to empower your students to become effective communicators, courageous truth-tellers, and agents of transformation in their communities and beyond.

Order your copy of Training the Prophetic Voice today and unlock the power of your students’ voice in your classroom.

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Against this backdrop, alternatives to conventional education were developed in remote locations. Already by 1900, an abundance of thought was emerging that addressed the concerns of how the Industrial Revolution was transforming education in negative ways. In this article, I will trace the work of two rather different ladies whose lives paralleled one another for a brief span of time. We will consider the influence of these two ladies and reflect on what we can draw from their pedagogical teachings. The two ladies I have in mind are Charlotte Mason and Maria Montessori.

Charlotte Mason: Creating an Educational Alternative in England

Mason preceded Montessori both in age and in her work. Charlotte Mason was born in Bangor, Wales in 1842. Mason entered into teaching as a young lady, eventually developing a vision for education summed up in the phrase “a liberal education for all.” She began a series of books on pedagogy starting with Home Education in 1886 and concluding with Toward a Philosophy of Education published in 1923, the year of her death.

It was around the time of publishing Home Education that she founded the Parents’ Educational Union (P.E.U.) in Bradford, a small industrial city in Yorkshire that specialized in woolen textiles. This location gave her an opportunity to apply her educational principles in a working-class environment. Mason soon attracted a number of adherents in the form of teachers and homeschool mothers. Her organization soon expanded, becoming the Parents’ National Educational Union (P.N.E.U.) in 1890.

After eleven years teaching and training in Bradford, Mason moved to Ambleside where she would help develop a teacher training center. Scale How, a building that is now part of the Charlotte Mason College of University of Cumbria, became the hub of a growing educational movement in the UK. The movement grew beyond Mason’s personal involvement as several of the teachers she mentored launched publications, training centers and conferences elsewhere in the UK.

Mason established an enduring legacy by writing about her pedagogical ideas as well as pouring herself into teachers, governesses and mothers who came to her for training. Her work carried on through those she mentored after her death in 1923. Our friend Jack Beckman, professor of education at Covenant College, shares stories about interviewing former P.N.E.U. teachers during his studies in England in the early 2000s. He conveys how devoted these ladies were to Mason’s principles, particularly the importance of narration. We know very little about Mason’s life, and this is in part a reflection of her devotion to her educational principles, which we’ll explore a little further below.

Maria Montessori: Creating an Educational Alternative in Italy

Born in 1870, Maria Montessori grew up in a newly unified Italy. In 1875 her family moved to Rome the designated capital of the Risorgimento. Montessori attended the University of Rome studying medicine with an emphasis in pediatrics and psychology. After university she worked with children with mental disabilities. During this time, she developed her thoughts about special methods of education while reading works on pedagogy. Her work caught the attention of the directors of the Orthographic School, which trained teachers to educate children with mental disabilities. She began developing a method of instruction that helped children with mental disabilities to pass the same public exams as mainstream children.

By 1906, Montessori shifted all her efforts to fully realizing her educational methods in mainstream schools. Her Casa dei Bambini (House for Children) featured classrooms specially equipped to carry out Montessori’s methods. We will explore her philosophy of education and methods shortly. She showed a great devotion to observing children to understand how children developed and what materials had the greatest impact in their development. Much of her thoughts at this stage were published in Method of Scientific Pedagogy (1909 in Italian and then translated into English in 1912 under the title The Montessori Method).

Montessori’s methods expanded throughout Italian primary schools. Like Mason, Montessori sought to establish her schools in industrial and impoverished neighborhoods. Her methods attracted international attention, and she was invited to England, the European continent, and the U.S. Unlike Mason who remained in northern England all her life, Montessori traveled and lived abroad. She would eventually settle in Amsterdam, although she lived in India throughout the time of WWII. Initially during the Fascist rise to power under Mussolini in the 1920s, Montessori was able to implement her training courses with government sponsorship. By 1930s, however, ideological tensions brought an end to her role in Italy. She left Italy in 1934 and almost all Montessori-related educational programs were rooted out by 1936.

During her stay in India, Montessori corresponded regularly with Gandhi. With a global war raging, Montessori’s thoughts turned to the role of education in promoting peace. Montessori presented lectures on “Education and Peace” promoting early childhood education as the key to reforming society. Her lectures were published in the book Peace and Education in 1949, and she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize that year as well as in 1950 and 1951. When Maria Montessori died in 1952, she had built an enduring legacy through an international network of schools and training centers under the auspices of the Association Montessori Internationale.

A Comparison of Educational Methods

These two pedagogical thinkers share several common ideas, although we’ll see that they differ in some striking ways. For one, both of these educational philosophers share a commitment to viewing the child holistically. Mason, for instance, writes:

“A child is born a person with a mind as complete and as beautiful as his beautiful little body, we can at least show that he always has all the mind he requires for his occasions; that is, that his mind is the instrument of his education and that his education does not produce his mind.”

Charlotte Mason, Towards A Philosophy of Education, pg. 36

Mason was how the child does not become a person later in life when they achieve some level of education. Instead, a child is full of every capacity to engage with a life of learning. Compare this with Montessori’s perspective:

“It was the discovery of the deeper nature of the child, for when the right conditions were established, the result was the spontaneous appearance of characteristics which revealed not a portion but the whole personality. I must affirm once again that they were not the consequence of a determined or a pre-established plan of education.”

Maria Montessori, Citizen of the World, pg. 12

This affirmation is so important to understand. We as educators are not making children into people, we are providing them with the tools of education that engage every aspect of their personhood already present in the child. There is an innate aspect to the personhood of the child that both educational philosophers found important.

Both Mason and Montessori emphasized the atmosphere or environment of education as one of the tools of learning. Mason considers atmosphere in socio-emotional terms:

“They are held in that thought-environment which surrounds the child as an atmosphere, which he breathes as his breath of life; and this atmosphere in which the child inspires his unconscious ideas of right living emanates from his parents. Every look of gentleness and tone of reverence, every word of kindness and act of help, passes into the thought-environment, the very atmosphere which the child breathes; he does not think of these things, may never think of them, but all his life long they excite that ‘vague appetency towards something’ out of which most of his actions spring.”

Charlotte Mason, Parents and Children, pg. 36

Montessori seems to agree:

“There can be no doubt of the fact that a child absorbs an enormous number of impressions from his environment and that external help given to this natural instinct kindles within him a lively enthusiasm. In this way education can be a real help to the natural development of the mind.”

Maria Montessori, The Discovery of the Child, 261

But here we can also see how the two start to diverge. Mason criticizes the artificial transformation of the child’s playroom or school room:

“We certainly may use atmosphere as an instrument of education, but there are prohibitions, for ourselves rather than for children. Perhaps the chief of these is, that no artificial element be introduced, no sprinkling with rose-water, softening with cushions. Children must face life as it is; if their parents are anxious and perturbed children feel it in the air.”

Charlotte Mason, Toward a Philosophy of Education, pg. 97

Montessori, however, introduced into the classroom a number of specialized materials that were appropriately sized to children. These she intentionally made out of natural materials so that there was a natural aesthetic about the classroom. In Montessori’s thinking, children learned best by working with materials instead of being directly instructed by a teacher.

The divergence grows as we differentiate Montessori’s “scientific education” from Mason’s “humane education.” I pull these designations from Mason’s review of Montessori published in a letter to The Times Educational Supplement on December 3, 1912. Mason’s critique of Montessori is that:

“’Education by things’ is boldly advocated, regardless of the principle that things lead only to more and more various things and are without effect on the thoughts and therefore on the character and conduct of a man, save as regards the production or the examination of similar things.”

Charlotte Mason, “Miss Mason on the Montessori System,” pg. 52-53

Mason concludes her review with the central tenant of her method:

“Because a child is a person, because his education should make him more of a person, because he increases upon such ideas as are to be found in books, pictures, and the like, because the more of a person he is the better work will he turn out of whatever kind, because there is a general dearth of persons of fine character and sound judgment,—for these and other reasons I should regard the spread of schools conducted on any method which contemns knowledge in favour of appliances and employments as a calamity, no matter how prettily the children may for the present behave. Knowledge is the sole lever by which character is elevated, the sole diet upon which mind is sustained.”

“Miss Mason on the Montessori System,” pg. 53

Charlotte Mason promoted the power of ideas as best conveyed through great books. This and only this can raise the character of children. Now, to be fair to Dr. Montessori, 1912 was an early stage in the development of her ideas, when Miss Mason produced this evaluation of her method. However, as I read Montessori’s educational philosophy, I don’t see a substantial development of her understanding of the key tools of education beyond this. The peaceable kingdom she sought during and after WWII was based on a constructivist philosophy of education that emphasizes independent discovery activated by the learner. Her assumption in the innate goodness of children meant that they would naturally learn self-discipline. In this way, we might say Montessori has perhaps most fully realized Rousseau’s educational vision.

This last point on self-discipline pulls in another key difference in perspective between these two educational philosophers. Mason saw that discipline is one of the tools of education, and to this end she promoted habit training. This is a method whereby the teacher or parent enables the child to acquire a practice (like brushing teeth daily) or a virtue (like sharing with others) through simple instruction and regular support. Montessori proposed that children would attain discipline through physical work with objects, through activities like pouring water or sweeping up. She writes:

“When work has become a habit, the intellectual level rises rapidly, and organised order causes good conduct to become a habit. Children then work with order, perseverance, and discipline, persistently and naturally; the permanent, calm and vivifying work of the physical organism resembles the respiratory rhythm.”

Maria Montessori, The Advanced Montessori Method, Vol. 1, pg. 85

Assessing the Alternatives

The need for an educational alternative came about at a time when educational reform pushed schools away from its mooring in the classical liberal arts. The technicism and scientism of conventional education remains to this day, which is why it is worthwhile exploring the works of early advocates for genuine alternatives. Let’s consider a few of the high-level concepts that can guide us today in our educational renewal movement.

To begin with, both Mason and Montessori highlight the importance of the personhood of children. It is not our place to make children into something, instead we receive into our classrooms people made in the image of God with tremendous intellectual and moral capacity. Our work is to care for the life of the mind and feed our children with nourishing ideas. Caring for the content of great books that will sustain the intellect and moral character of the children is similar to providing nutrient dense meals to help their bodies grow. The Christian and classical tradition provides us with an ample supply of nutrient dense books.

The concept of character is clearly a goal for both Mason and Montessori. Our classrooms should be places where students strive after character. Montessori seems to have placed too much trust in the innate goodness of children. Mason seems to take a more realistic view of the child’s capacity for good or for evil. This strikes me as the more biblical paradigm. Left to herself, the child is prone to miss the target. Obviously teachers trained in the Montessori method care for and guide their children, but I think Mason’s method of habit training provides a more sustained level of support to cultivate virtue in the child. Mason is not far off from the classical tradition as Aristotle teaches that moral virtue is learned through habit and practice. The biblical tradition also points to virtue that is cultivated through diligence (2 Pet. 1:5) as we follow our Lord Jesus Christ, walking “in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Col. 1:10).

Finally, we need to be clear to distinguish the locus of learning energy or power on the part of the child from what is called child-centered learning. As we have developed the intersection of Charlotte Mason pedagogy and classical Christian education, the concept we’ve brought forward is the shift of the energy in the classroom away from the teacher (i.e. lecturing) to the learning (i.e. narration and discussion). The role of the teacher, then, is to carefully direct the learning energy toward idea-rich texts that capitalize on the child’s natural hunger for knowledge and joy in learning. Child-centered learning, on the other hand, usually focuses on developing the problem-solving skills of the child. Child-centric learning emphasizes the independence of the learner, but it normally results in an education without any clear goals. Mason is clear that education is about feeding a child’s love for knowledge within the proper authority structure of the teacher-student relationship. We can see how this is consistent with the biblical mandate to “train up a child in the way he should go” (Prov. 22:6).

For many years I have been curious to explore Maria Montessori’s work. My sense is that there is likely more overlap between Charlotte Mason and Maria Montessori than I have been able to uncover in this article. The distinction between the two, though, is abundantly clear to me. Mason seems to be fully grounded in the Christian and liberal arts tradition. Montessori seems to break with the tradition in ways that would not be consistent with the classical Christian movement. I think at points the popular understanding of Montessori as a nature-loving, child-centric model of education has influenced people’s understanding of Mason. Hopefully this comparison of the two helps open a greater discussion of the distinctives between the two.

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The Human Capacity to Learn

First, when God looks upon humanity, what he sees in us is the capacity to learn. He has made us to crave knowledge and understanding. Our minds absorb information. While it is true that other animals think and learn, there resides in the human mind the capacity to think creatively and implicationally. We have the capacity to imagine abstract realities beyond our day-to-day material existence. We can contemplate our consciousness and existence in the world. We can take the information we receive and fit it into larger conceptual frameworks. We are able to consider a personal future and imagine how our present actions contribute to the future. By contrast, a squirrel can identify a nut, bury it for later use, and remember where he left it. That’s pretty complex as it is. But we can take our need for nuts and formulate a plan to cultivate nuts on a grand scale for the benefit of society. We can envision what it would take to deny ourselves the immediate nut for our future wellbeing. We can also take that nut and exchange it with others for goods or services. We might also reflect on what it means to be the kind of person who eats nuts. This example really only scratches the surface of our intellectual capacity. The point is that God validates the depth of our learning capacity in his act of communication to us.

Making the Incomprehensible Known

Second, God fits his divine knowledge to our capacity. In theology, this concept is called accommodation. Even though God is infinite and incomprehensible, he has chosen to express himself to us in language that meets us according to our natures as finite beings. We can comprehend God because he has communicated to us in ways we can understand. John Calvin expresses it this way:

“Thus such forms of speaking do not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity. To do this he must descend far beneath his loftiness.”

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. J. T. McNeill, trans. F. L. Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 1.13.1.

This idea of bringing divine knowledge down to our level is fundamentally an educational enterprise. This is similar to a mother cooing and using baby talk with her toddler. We are able to comprehend true things about God and about his plans because, to put it colloquially, God has put the cookies on the bottom shelf for us. God places in our hands that which he wants us to know about him, about ourselves, and about the nature of life. Much that we need to know can be understood at a very early age. Jesus tells his disciples to “let the little children come unto me.” From our earliest days, God sees in us such tremendous value as persons.

Teaching Salvation

Third, God has given us sufficient knowledge to understand him and his salvation plan. All nature reveals truth about God, such as his power, goodness, beauty or justice. Theologians refer to this as general revelation, in that it reveals truth in very general terms. The act of creation, therefore, can be deemed an educational enterprise. There are lessons all around us, whether looking to the stars or following a trail of ants. A different theological concept – special revelation – gets at the highly specific, direct revelation God provides to humanity. Salvation is only possible through this second kind of revelation. Through verbal communication and the incarnation, God specifies our bondage to sin, the impending judgement of our sins, the gift of eternal life, the atoning sacrifice of Christ Jesus, the appropriation of God’s saving grace through faith, and the sanctifying power of the indwelling Holy Spirit. God teaches us so that our lives can become reordered to conform to his gracious plan. There is much that we don’t know and will never know. Yet he has given us enough to comprehend all his work on our behalf. As an educator, God teaches us what we need to know in order to truly live, a point that leads to my next thought.

The Transformational Power of Truth

Fourth, God has educated in order for people to be transformed. His school is a formative environment. He teaches us not so that we remain the same, but that we are changed into the image of his Son. There is a forward-moving drive to God’s teaching. We are not just learning fun facts or jumping through institutional hoops. I suppose there is a standardized test inasmuch as all have fallen short of the glory of God. God as a teacher is deeply concerned about our life-long welfare. This means there are moments of brutal honesty that must pierce through our thick skulls and our hardened hearts so that we might know the truth, and it might set us free. You and I are the resistant kid in the back of the classroom. Yet God seeks us out because he fundamentally believes that all people are capable of being transformed, even though not all will ultimately receive the gift of salvific transformation.

The Delight of God’s Truth

Finally, God, having made us in his image, has made us teachers as well. We teach because he first taught us. There is this impulse we have to make known to one another what we have learned. Think of the three-year-old who runs to his mother to share his discovery of a bird’s nest. He wants to share what he has learned. We educators have merely formalized this impulse. In creating any educational system, the danger is always present of robbing truth of its transformative power. It is therefore important to maintain this connection to God as educator to vivify our own teaching. When our teaching is seasoned with wonder and awe, our students get drawn into the transcendent nature of truth, and then truth can have its transformative effect in their lives. I like how Charlotte Mason differentiates the stale lesson from something that becomes a sure foundation for the child:

“Therefore, let the minds of young children be well stored with the beautiful narratives of the Old Testament and of the gospels; but, in order that these stories may be always fresh and delightful to them, care must be taken lest Bible teaching stale upon their minds. Children are more capable of being bored than even we ourselves and many a revolt has been brought about by the undue rubbing-in of the Bible, in season and out of season, even in nursery days. But we are considering, not the religious life of children, but their education by lessons; and their Bible lessons should help them to realise in early days that the knowledge of God is the principal knowledge, and, therefore, that their Bible lessons are their chief lessons.”

Charlotte Mason, Home Education, 251.

Our charge as teachers is to present truth to the minds of our young charges so that they may delight in the truth and be transformed. This begins to get at what it means to teach with a prophetic voice.

The prophetic voice is first and foremost about speaking the truth. Truth spoken can correct error and it can redirect our paths. It can meet an individual in a moment of need, and it can alter the course of human events. As we delve deeper into the concept of the prophetic voice in this series, we’ll see how we as teachers can cultivate the prophetic voice in our students. We’ll see some biblical examples of how the prophets exemplified the prophetic voice. We will especially need to overcome a misunderstanding of prophecy as merely predicting the future. We will understand how we as teachers can view our task as something prophetic. And we will ultimately gain a perspective on how our students can become truth tellers to a world in desperate need.

Before we can develop any of these further thoughts, we must see how God himself is prophetic. God speaks the truth, and never speaks anything but the truth. God has spoken truth into the world, whether it was the initial creative logos that made all things or the divine utterances that have guided us. God’s prophetic voice is the theological bedrock from which the rest of this series builds. I conclude by quoting the Psalmist:

“Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth;

unite my heart to fear your name.”

Psalm 86:11, ESV

Other articles in this series, Training the Prophetic Voice:

Part 2: Speaking Truth to Power

Part 3: The Schools of the Prophets

Part 4: Jesus as Prophetic Trainer

Part 5: Internalizing the Prophetic Message

Part 6: Classical Rhetoric for the Modern World

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I am joining a new school this fall, moving from Providence Classical Christian Academy in St. Louis to Clapham School in Wheaton, Illinois. Truth be told, it’s not exactly new to me. I will be returning to Clapham where I previously taught for five years. Although it’s not entirely new, five years have passed, and I return in a new administrative role. I have felt the new school feeling as a student, a teacher and an administrator.

Starting a new chapter is an excellent time to take stock of your core principles. Doing so helps to stay true to who you are as well as transition into the new environment with some semblance of equanimity. Perhaps these thoughts will help you at the start of a new school year, whether you’re new to a school or returning for another school year. 

Principle #1: Maintain the Long-term View

Whenever beginning a new endeavor, it is important to take the long view. We want to contribute something meaningful and of lasting value in this world. To start and flame out in just a year would be a failure. So we must ask ourselves, what does it look like to succeed at this long term? What can I do now to establish a legacy? What can I work on now that will be of lasting value?

I am a huge Liverpool FC fan. For the uninitiated, the Reds are a British football team. They almost won the Premier League last year (coming in second place to Manchester City), but did win the Champions League (the biggest club competition in Europe). At the helm of this footballing juggernaut is Jürgen Klopp, a German manager who has transformed LFC from a team living off the fumes of its former glory to a team that is competing against the best teams in multiple competitions. In his first press conference after joining the Reds in October of 2015, Klopp provided a perspective on his tenure that I quickly jotted on a sticky note on my computer desktop.

“It’s not important what people think when you come in, but what they think when you leave.”

As I was closing out my time at Providence, this quote lived with me as I increased my effort during the waning months of my time there. I wanted to leave a legacy at Providence and close out strong. I’ve seen too many times people decrease their effort at the end, they are already halfway into their next position. This can harm relationships and tarnish the good work one has done for the organization. The lingering impression after walking it in is that the organization has finally gotten rid of dead weight. I remember my track coach telling me to race past the finish line, not to it. We relax right before the finish line when we race to the finish line, allowing a competitor to slip past. In this vein, I intentionally gave 110% not just to the last day, but even beyond; making myself available to support the administrators replacing me. If Providence continues to succeed, then it says something about the quality of work I did there, especially in mentoring those who remain.

Now that I am starting a new position at Clapham, Klopp’s quote takes on new insights. It will matter very little what I accomplish in the first few days, weeks and months of my tenure at Clapham, if I don’t finish well and build something of lasting value during my time at Clapham. Building something of lasting value takes time and never happens solely on the effort of the new guy. One must listen carefully to the people who have been there, building relationships of trust. Obviously coming in new means that changes will be introduced, but it has to be consistent with the mission and values of the organization as it currently stands. One of the most valuable things you can build at a new organization is a sense of teamwork. The new academic standards, or the updated handbooks, or the new program initiatives should stem from a sense of everyone working together as a team, not as something that is dictated from on high by the new guy.

As I join Clapham, I recognize that the organization has had a life without me before I got here, and the organization will be around after my time is done. As much as I might hope to contribute to raise the game at Clapham, I will only play a small part in Clapham’s story. This idea is a powerful check to my ego and positions me well to think in terms of the broader aims of the organization. It’s counterintuitive, but the best way to establish your legacy is to check your ego and pour yourself out for the benefit of the higher cause.

Principle #2: Build Relationships as Your Primary Purpose

Being new to school can feel lonely. You don’t have the background that others have and you are entering into an environment where everyone seems to know each other. It can be hard to break into a group where strong relationships have already been formed.

However, one of the primary purposes for joining a new organization is to build relationships. And the best way to build relationships is to go back to the basics. First, you must listen effectively. You’re listening not only to what people are saying, but you are also paying attention to important topics of conversation, you’re listening to how people talk with you and with others. By paying attention as a listener, you can learn how to speak the language of the new organization. It can feel a bit like learning a foreign language. The better you can speak that language, the more you can accomplish in the environment. Second, you must speak simply and clearly. Make your points succinctly and without too much flowery ornamentation. There will be time for your personality to come through over time, but be careful not to overwhelm others with showy speeches. Third, seek opportunities to help others on their projects. You might think it’s important to get started on your top priorities. But because building relationships is of primary importance, you can quickly build a sense of teamwork and common purpose by helping others. This also fast tracks your acquisition of institutional knowledge. You are also likely to see connections between their work and your work and how they both contribute to the mission of the organization.

Ultimately, you are building bridges of trust. Trust takes time to build. And like a bridge, trust must carry freight in two directions. People want to know that you can be trusted, just as you want to know that you can trust your new colleagues. Every replied email, congenial conversation, completed project and positive social encounter lays down another plank on the bridge of trust. Working as a team requires multiple layers of trust between several people. A great way to destroy trust (and trust bridges are easily broken), is to talk behind the backs of others. Hopefully conflicts won’t arise in the early days at a new organization, but they are bound to come up. Instead of letting conflicts break down trust, use conflicts to reinforce trust. By being proactive to resolve conflict, people will learn that you are a team player who fights to maintain good rapport with everyone.

Whether you are coming in as the new boss or in an entry level position, it is helpful to remember that we are all under authority. There is always some else up the chain of command you answer to. In order to accomplish whatever goals you might have in your new position, it is essential to form good relationships up and down the hierarchy. A boss who doesn’t trust you won’t assign the exciting new initiative to you. But if you start by building trust, more and more responsibilities will be thrown your way. It’s not only your boss, but your peers, those who report to you, and even those who are further down on the org chart. Every person in the organization plays an important role and deserves your full commitment to building relationships of trust.

Principle #3: Contribute to Something Greater than Yourself 

The great thing about working in a school is you are immediately connected to a project greater than yourself. How inspiring is it to influence a new generation through the daily work of training and mentoring students whom parents have entrusted to your care?

Simon Sinek, in his book Start with Why, calls us to begin thinking not about what it is we do, or how it is we do it, but why do we do it in the first place (this is my very poor summation of an excellent book, but see Jason’s later article “Marketing, Manipulations and True Classroom Leadership” for more development of this idea). More recently in his podcasting and YouTube videos, he has begun referring to a “just cause” that your company, or in our case your school, takes on as its fundamental reason for existing in the first place (here’s a video of him talking about “just cause”, complete with bed head). This idea replaces the overused and somewhat mundane expression of the mission statement. There’s a reason this school exists – its just cause. The “why” is something we need to reconnect to consistently and regularly (dare I say daily, even hourly). Our just cause is to make a deep and lasting impact in the lives of students. I don’t know of an industry that has a much higher calling outside the church itself.

Charlotte Mason has been a source of inspiration for me as a teacher. The model I was raised in centered around the teacher in what I call the lecture-and-test method. The student is largely a passive listener until the testing time comes, and must snap into action to regurgitate the previously disseminated information. As a student I found this tedious and ineffective. As a teacher I found this exhausting. What joy it was when I was introduced to Charlotte Mason! She taught that children as whole persons had the capacity to interact with ideas and knowledge. It is not the teacher’s duty to spoon feed children this knowledge as though our students were baby birdies needing prechewed worms. (See Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, 8-20).

Instead, as teachers we guide our students to ideas and knowledge through great books that inspire them. I am not the focus of the students’ attention, but the book is. I am merely the guide. Teaching became something like taking a child on an adventure through all kinds of wonderful vistas of literature, poetry, history, music and artwork. I could set them loose in these fields and then bask in their wonderment, correct their errors, celebrate their breakthroughs and interact with their understandings through discussion. Instead of students who hated school because it was boring, I encountered students who were excited to learn despite the fact they were the ones putting in the greater part of the effort to learn.

When we are connected to the higher values of our learning environment, not only are we inspired, but our students catch that spark of inspiration too. We all get that sense that we are working on something that is both meaningful and fraught with purpose. This kind of work transcends the individual. When you are caught up in something greater than yourself, you begin to lose yourself in your work. And yet at the same time find that you as an individual are being made better. The meaning and purpose of higher value work adds value to our own lives. Unlike the downward spiral of menial work that takes from the individual his best energy, so that he needs to spend his non-work time recovering, the upward spiral of inspirational work feeds the soul of the worker.

Principle #4: Work Smart, Not Just Hard

Teaching and leading in a school is hard work and requires energy . . . significant energy. It’s a challenge to maintain work-life balance. Even if you finish lesson planning and grading during the school day (and few are able to accomplish that), we still bring home our concerns about certain students or are trying to solve classroom management problems. There’s often a school event to attend or a student who wants you to attend their recital or game. It isn’t any one task that makes teaching hard work, but all together it can be a job that is physically and mentally demanding.

If we’re connected to our inspiring motivation, our mindset should be to get after it with an aggressive attitude. However, it can be helpful to think through our top priorities, whether as a teacher or a leader. What is the most important work to be done each day, each hour, each moment? There are many tasks to be done in the day: from mentoring a new teacher to checking emails, from writing lesson plans to teaching today’s lessons, from grading math homework to making copies for tomorrow. The task list can be long. So what should be chosen? Often times we choose the tasks that require time and effort without thinking about long-term strategy or high level values.

It was difficult during my first few years as an administrator to prioritize the most important things. Everyone else’s fires would dominate my day, and most of my high value tasks went undone. There were many authors (Stephen Covey, David Allen and Tim Ferris to name a few) who taught about prioritizing your tasks and literally scheduling them like a meeting. One of my highest values was investing in the teachers. I began to schedule items on my calendar like, “Observe math teacher” and “give feedback to teacher.” By investing in the teaching staff you immediately solve other issues like student discipline, student retention, parent satisfaction, test scores, teacher retention, etc., etc. I could solve some of my long-term strategies (hire, train and retain the best faculty I can) by prioritizing time to observe and mentor my teachers. This is what it means to work smarter, to rise up out of the mentality to just get the work done in order to make sure the work you are doing is synchronized with your highest values.

It is not always obvious which task is the highest value. Here’s where the 80/20 principle, or Pareto’s principle, comes into play. For most of the work we do, usually only 20% accomplishes 80% of what needs to be done. Leveraging this concept helps us to see that some tasks are more obviously attached to, say, teaching a class, whereas several tasks have no obvious connection to teaching a class. So if my goal is to be about the business of teaching a class, why would I attempt the tasks that have little to do with teaching? If I applied my best energy to the 20% most associated with teaching, I could have a more productive and more satisfying day. This kind of thinking helps divert energy away from making copies, arranging the classroom, and checking email first thing in the morning. Instead, my 20% might include strategizing about a struggling student, finalizing the plan for an upcoming field trip or reworking a classroom system. Save some of those lower priority tasks for later when you have less energy and creativity, and perhaps they can be delegated to students (arranging the classroom at the end of each day) or to a parent offering to help after school (making copies).

Sometimes it’s difficult to see which tasks are the highest priority when we are immersed in all of the various areas of work. As an administrator, this was an area where I loved helping teachers out. Some would admit, “I’m stuck!” and offer several tasks that needed to be done. I would simply asks questions based on value and long-term strategy, and they would often be able to see for themselves what needed to be done. I was able to do this because I myself wasn’t immersed in their task list, so I had separation to be able to examine value. I enjoyed helping teachers in this way, but they often didn’t even need me. Separation can be created through sleeping on a decision or stepping out of the classroom for a moment. My advice to administrators is to constantly preach the highest values of the school, which will ultimately help the teacher remain connected to those values when they are making decisions about what to do each day.

Principle #5: Lean into Difficulties and Problems

Despite the planning and efforts to maintain focus on our highest values, fires do need to be put out. Problems and difficulties show up all the time. If you’ve ever watched downhill skiers, you’ll notice as they approach the gates – the obstacles on their course – they lean into them. We can do the same thing, aggressively tackling the difficulties that come our way. 

There is a temptation to avoid problems or somehow plan them away. However, it’s almost impossible to root out difficulties and problems altogether. We know they will arise, so the best approach is to plan for your plans to go awry. Embracing this concept can help alleviate the stress-inducing aspect of the fires that come our way. We know they are coming, so why fret about them? By being prepared for problems, we actually open ourselves up to a problem-solving mindset.

One of the ironies of life is that the pathway to joy passes through patches of challenge. If there were no challenges, difficulties or issues, there would be less opportunity to encounter joy. Teaching is a vocation full of meaning and purpose, but it comes at a cost. We suffer for our art by dealing with the messiness of life. Teaching students brings us into contact with the child’s capabilities and limitations. It involves us in the family’s life, albeit tangentially. The school brings together families with vastly different perspectives, interests and standards. Problems are bound to arise in such an environment. But as we work with our peers, our students and our families, we can cultivate profound joy through our engagement in the problems that come our way. 

The benefits of taking on our most challenging problems is that they provide a context for creativity and the exchange of ideas. Trying to figure out a class dynamic (every class is different and what worked last year likely won’t work this year) forces me to be creative and opens me up to listen to ideas generated by my peers, my boss and even the students themselves. We might fear exposing an area of personal weakness or ignorance, but the fastest way to acquire new growth is through humble admission that I am a person in need of growing. We can cultivate a growth mindset in our classrooms through our own commitment to growing our skills. 

Resources

There are many great books and articles out there on leadership, although very few on educational leadership. The following are a few books that have been foundational in my thinking.

Covey, Steven, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Hughes, Kent. Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome.

Sinek, Simon, Start with Why.

__________. Leaders Eat Last.

Willink, Jocko, Extreme Ownership.

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