For example, the habit of timeliness is indispensable for a life of ease. Imagine how difficult life is for the person who struggles with timeliness. He is constantly behind–missing meetings here, chasing deadlines there–and feels the constant pressure to keep up and keep calm despite the ever-present burden of the clock. On the contrary, imagine the person who has mastered timeliness. He is able to go about his day with an exceptional disposition of nonchalance. He effortlessly moves from task to task, allowing his habit of timeliness to pave the way for peaceful relationships and productive outcomes to emerge.

Charlotte Mason famously taught that the most effortful aspect of being a teacher is not the teaching itself. It is the habit training that goes on behind the scenes. If teachers equip students with good habits, then the lessons, provided they are of the right sort, will take care of themselves (Towards a Philosophy of Education, p. 99). Students will gain a newfound ability to focus, concentrate, follow instructions, and engage the ideas of the lesson with an exceptional degree of independence.

More recently, modern research has confirmed the fascinating neuroscience behind the formation of good habits. It has also confirmed that the formation of habits geared toward strengthening the will are the most reliable indicator for achievement. Modern researchers have given a name for this special bundle of will-power habits: Grit. 

In this article, I will explore how teachers can help foster grit in their students in the classroom through guidance from Charlotte Mason on habit training. The concept that comes closest to grit for the British educator is perfect, or thorough, execution. Perfect execution is the act of completing a task as well as one can within a reasonable amount of time. Cultivating this habit takes strategy and effort to be sure, but the reward is worth it. Over time, children develop habits of perseverance, responsibility, and care for one’s work, all leading to a unique strength of will: grit. 

What is Perfect Execution?

Have you ever wondered why some children write with remarkably elegant penmanship and others rush? Or why some children complete fitness exercises with perfect form all the way to completion while others struggle? 

While it is tempting to attribute these feats to natural talent or even gender differences, the truth is that both tasks were carried to completion through habits of perfect execution. By “perfect” I do not mean literally perfect, but the repeated act of aiming for perfection through giving a thorough effort each and every time. 

For children who complete tasks with thoroughness, two factors are at play: First, they care about their work. They have come to believe that the tasks they execute to some extent matter.

Second, they work with a resolved commitment to do their best. They do not settle for half-measures or shortcuts. They have the perseverance and fortitude to carry out a task to completion. This willpower did not appear over night. It came as the result of deliberate practice and usually, but not necessarily, the encouragement of a supportive mentor. 

Training the Habit of Perfect Execution

We tend to assume students will grow more proficient in a task over time simply through repetition. After all, we are told, practice makes perfect. What we fail to realize is that imperfect practice yields precisely that: imperfection. Admiring the German and French schools of her day, Charlotte Mason observes, “…if children get the habit of turning out imperfect work, the men and women will undoubtedly keep that habit up” (Home Education, p. 159).

To train the habit of perfect execution, Charlotte Mason taught that parents and teachers should hold high yet realistic expectations of children as they work. She writes, “No work should be given to a child that he cannot execute perfectly, and then perfection should be required from him as a matter of course” (Home Education, p. 159). The key to growing in perfect execution is to prioritize quality over quantity, and to expect and support the highest quality the child is capable of each and every time.

When it comes to teaching penmanship, for example, it is tempting to think that a great quantity of practice is the surest way to learn to form letters. But Charlotte Mason cautions that it not so much how many letters are written, but the quality of the letters:

For instance, he is set to do a copy of strokes, and is allowed to show a slateful at all sorts of slopes and all sorts of intervals; his moral sense is vitiated, his eye is injured. Set him six strokes to copy; let him, not bring a slateful, but six perfect strokes, at regular distances and at regular slopes. If he produces a faulty pair, get him to point out the fault, and persevere until he has produced his task; if he does not do it to-day, let him go on to-morrow and the next day, and when the six perfect strokes appear, let it be an occasion of triumph.

Home Education, p. 160

In the quotation above, Mason is clear to emphasize that perseverance and perfect execution matter most in habit formation. Likewise with other activities, teachers should always expect the child to give her very best: “So with the little tasks of painting, drawing, or construction he sets himself––let everything he does be well done. An unsteady house of cards is a thing to be ashamed of. Closely connected with this habit of ‘perfect work’ is that of finishing whatever is taken in hand. The child should rarely be allowed to set his hand to a new undertaking until the last is finished” (Home Education, p. 160).

So often in our modern world we feel the pressure to be efficient and useful. In a block of time, we would rather perform ten tasks poorly than one task exceptionally. But here we see the secret for setting up children for long-term flourishing. The solution is not to pile on hours of homework each night after a full day of school. It is not to assign endless loads of busy work to keep students occupied. It is to assist students in approaching each and every task with the discipline to do their very best. This is how we as educators train the habit of perfect execution.

The Power of Grit

In her New York Times bestseller Grit (Scribner, 2016), psychologist Angela Duckworth shares her findings on the power of grit to drive achievement. She defines grit as the unique combination of passion and perseverance, determination and direction (8). People with grit are resilient and hardworking, propelled by some deeply held belief. They are convinced that whatever they are doggedly pursuing matters.

Central to Duckworth’s research findings is the notion that in examining cases of achievement we tend to be distracted by talent. That is, when we encounter a person who has achieved great things, we often chalk it up to raw ability. While there is certainly something to be said for God-given strengths and abilities, too often we let  natural ability overshadow the dedicated work ethic an achiever cultivated to get there.

To reconcile natural talent and the power of grit, Duckworth argues that “effort counts twice” (35). Rather than drawing a direct line from talent to achievement, the psychologist suggests there is more to the equation. For achievement to occur there are two instances of calculus. First, the achiever invests effort into his or her natural talent to develop a particular skill. Then, the achiever builds on that skill through more effort to reach the level of exceptional achievement. Effort counts twice.

More Important than Grit

It is important to note here that grit in and of itself is not equivalent to character in the moral sense. It is possible to have a lot of grit, and therefore to be a high achiever, but to be a very bad person. In Duckworth’s own social science parlance she distinguishes between strengths of will, heart, and mind (273). Strength of will, or willpower, includes attributes like self-control, delayed gratification, grit, and the growth mindset. Strength of heart includes what we would classically describe as moral virtues: gratitude, honesty, empathy, and kindness. And strength of mind includes curiosity and creative thinking.

In a 2018 interview with the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Duckworth acknowledges that strength of heart does not lead to the same levels of achievement as strength of will, but it is more important. She admits that she would rather her own daughters be good before they are great.

This is an important word for classical educators, including Charlotte Mason followers. All this talk about perfect execution, grit, and achievement can quickly get our minds churning about how we harness this power for, say, elevating standardized test results. We would do well to remember, as Duckworth does in her own secular way, that “while man looks at the outward appearance, God looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). At the end of the day, more than achievement, we will be judged not by what we accomplished, but how we lived.

Fostering Grit Through Habit Training

So how do we help our students become more gritty, not for the sake of worldly achievement, but for true human flourishing? A great place to start is by cultivating the habit of perfect execution in the classroom. Commit to having your students only work on tasks they can complete with excellence and then hold them to it. 

Briefly, here are three steps for cultivating this habit:

1. Clarify your expectations. 
2. Cast vision for the worthiness of the work. 
3. Support them throughout.

By clarifying your expectations, you are making it unmistakably clear what your students are to do and how they are to do it. They should have a good sense of “the final product” so they know what to aim for. And they should understand that process and format matters: the “how” is just as important as the “what.”

When you cast vision for the worthiness of the work, you are giving your students a picture of why this work matters. This is what Charlotte Mason would call “sowing the idea.” If they are working on a map of Asia, for example, you could emphasize the beauty and variety we observe across the globe. Highlight some unique cultural artifacts from the region to help them form a concrete relationship with it. In order for the habit of perfect execution to take, student care is a necessary precondition. High teacher expectations without student ownership and care devolves into micro-management all too quickly.

Once they begin their work, teachers must support students throughout the assignment. There is a reason why the habit of perfect execution is so rare. It is hard work! As humans, our wills often fail us and we take the path of least resistance. We need wise and supportive mentors around us to hold us to the standard we set out to meet. This is the indispensable work of the teacher, and as Charlotte Mason warned, it takes the most effort!

Conclusion

As classical educators, we seek to form humans holistically as virtuous young men and women. We believe that school is not reserved exclusively for the cognitive domain, but that there is work to be done in the moral and spiritual domains as well. Through helping students develop the habit of perfect execution, we are helping students forge wills of perseverance and grit. As we do so let us keep our motivations in check. It is not ultimately to propel our students to chase after worldly achievement or to elevate their will-power over others. It is to help them grow as workers in the field, reaping the harvest the Lord has prepared for His people, as we wait for His return. Habits of perfect execution and grit, I believe, can only aid them in this worthiest of work.

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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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Clearly I have Star Wars on the mind. We are watching all the movies with my son, and they have so much to teach about education. I have to be careful, because once someone gets me started on Star Wars, I can go on and on. Watching through the series of movies, I have been struck by the stages of development young Jedi go through. The very young receive training in the basic Jedi arts in the Jedi temple. Later, a master Jedi will take on an apprentice, called a padawan. Most of the younglings in the temple will not make it to this stage. After being apprenticed for a number of years, the padawan must undergo a series of trials in order to become a Jedi knight. And only after many years of service as a Jedi knight, might one become a Jedi master. The aspect of Jedi training that stands out to me is the role of the powerful Jedi master training the apprenticed padawan. Here we have the more knowing mind enabling the younger Jedi to grow and learn.

In previous articles, I have written about the nature of the mind (is knowledge innate or written on the empty tablets of our minds?) and the stages of development as laid out by Piaget. The Jedi sequence of development strikes me as being more similar to the way Aristotle and Plato understand the stages of development. What I am interested in developing in this article is a more nuanced understanding of development. Even though we can perceive major stages of development, much of the development that occurs for learners happens within the major stages. What I mean is that new knowledge and understanding happens in moments of learning that build over time into true mastery of a topic, subject or skill. The concept we will be dealing with today concerns the level of difficulty the learner must encounter on the pathway towards mastery. Too much difficulty and the learning halts due to frustration. Too little difficulty and the learning halts because there is no challenge to encourage growth. The concept of the right level of difficulty goes by the name “the zone of proximal development.”

Previous article in the series, Human Development:

Part 1: What Do You Have in Mind?

Part 2: All the World’s a Stage

Lev Vygotsky and the Zone of Proximal Development

So far as we have thought about learning, the child has been viewed as an independent learner retrospectively. What this means is that the stages of childhood development have been viewed from the standpoint of the finished article (a child arriving at adulthood) and that children are dependent upon the internal mechanisms that will enable them to learn. Lev Vygotsky turned this viewpoint on its head. Let’s examine the person and work of Vygotsky and then see how his work connects to the learning environments we are trying to create today.

Born the same year as Jean Piaget in 1896, the Russian Lev Vygotsky produced most of his work on psychology in Soviet-era Moscow particularly during the 1920s and 1930s. One of the hallmarks of Vygotsky’s work is a connection of psychology to social or cultural ideas. He also was a pioneer of integrative science that looked at emerging knowledge of the brain alongside studies on behavior and cognitive function. A prominent group of psychologists gathered around Vygotsky, known as the Vygotsky circle. The most well-known psychologist of the twentieth century, Alexander Luria, was influenced by Vygotsky and carried on his work well after Vygotsky’s death in 1934 at the age of 37.

The prodigious mind of Vygotsky worked on many different problems confronting psychology at the turn of the last century. Of special interest in this series on childhood cognitive development are three main areas he addressed. First, Vygotsky was deeply interested in the development of language. He recognized that children learn language as a means of connecting to society. He writes:

“The specifically human capacity for language enables children to provide for auxiliary tools in the solution of difficult tasks, to overcome impulsive action, to plan a solution to a problem prior to its execution, and to
master their own behavior. Signs and words serve children first and foremost as a means of social contact with other people.”

Lev Vygotsky, Mind in Society (Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 28

The language that they learn, which includes not only words but also facial expression and gestures, is a tool to access social connection with other members of the family and then eventually to wider circles of society.

Second, Vygotsky saw how the individual develops holistically within a socio-cultural environment. As noted with language above, child development occurs in connection with the people surrounding the child. Vygotsky’s insights are remarkable in that it placed childhood development within a larger context. One of the liabilities of the scientific method is that it tends to isolate phenomena and processes in order to examine the parts of a greater whole. When it comes to childhood cognitive development, observing a child in isolation can reveal many interesting facets of growth. However, Vygotsky recognized that something was missing when examining childhood cognitive development in isolation from the larger socio-cultural environment. He writes:

“Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological), and then inside the child (intrapsychological).”

Mind in Society, pg. 57

One of the reasons why a child develops is to enhance his or her ability to relate within that socio-cultural environment.

Third, Vygotsky flipped the prevailing understanding of the relationship between development and learning. In the prevailing model of cognitive development, it was assumed that particular kinds of learning can only occur after reaching a certain level of development. What this means, in terms of the prevailing model, is that the brain matures to such an extent that it can now carry out new kinds of learning functions. We could think of the brain as reaching a new size and can now hold a greater volume of learning. Once you have a bigger glass, then you can pour water into it. These analogies break down somewhat, but hopefully this gives a simple picture of the prevailing model. Well, Vygotsky considered an alternative approach. In his own words:

“Our analysis alters the traditional view that at the moment a child assimilates the meaning of a word, or masters an operation such as addition or written language, her developmental processes are basically completed. In fact, they have only just begun at that moment. The major consequence of analyzing the educational process in this manner is to show that the initial mastery of, for example, the four arithmetic operations provides the basis for the subsequent development of a variety of highly complex internal processes in children’s thinking.”

Mind in Society, pg. 90

What if learning actually precedes cognitive development. What if pouring more water forces the brain to get a bigger glass, so to speak? This shifts our thinking of the child no longer as a person who has reached a particular level of development, but as a person with a level of potential development.

These three main ideas come together in what Vygotsky formulates as the zone of proximal development (ZPD). Like language, learning functions as a tool that the mind uses to gain access to a wider socio-cultural network. The mind of the child is interacting with the minds present in the socio-cultural environment such that learning is predicated on more knowledgeable others who provide learning to the child. This contextual picture of learning, then, precedes cognitive development as the mind builds itself based on the learning it acquires. What the zone of proximal development describes is the place of potential development where learning is occurring at the optimal level of challenge to encourage cognitive growth. Let’s take a deeper look at what this means.

The Educational Value of the Zone of Proximal Development

The brilliance of Vygotsky’s insight is that childhood cognitive development rarely occurs in a state of isolation. Children are most often in contact with other people who are more knowledgeable. This contributes to our understanding of the mechanism of cognitive development in new ways. It also points to insights we can glean in practical terms for our classrooms. Vygotsky spells out what the ZPD is:

“[The zone of proximal development] is the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers.”

Mind in Society, pg. 86

What this means is that a child has a certain level or capacity on their own. For instance, a student might be able to accomplish basic addition and subtraction problems independently. This independent level or capacity is the base of the zone. If you continue to provide training at this level, you will not provide enough challenge for the child to grow and develop cognitively. She would be operating below the zone of proximal development.

To take this a little further, that same child has a level of potential development that is just beyond her current capacity. Maybe she is on the verge of understanding multiplication problems. She cannot work these problems on her own. But she can work the problems with the assistance of a teacher or maybe an older sibling. What she cannot do on her own, but can do with assistance from a more knowledgeable other (MKO) places her in the zone of proximal development. At the higher end of this zone is knowledge that is too far beyond the current capacity of the child. Even with the assistance of an adult, the concepts of, say, trigonometry are too far beyond her capacity and have exceeded the zone of proximal development.

Vygotsky goes on to explore the utility of this theory (what he calls a method) for educators:

“By using this method we can take account of not only the cycles and maturation processes that have already been completed but also those processes that are currently in a state of formation, that are just beginning to mature and develop. Thus, the zone of proximal development permits us to delineate the child’s immediate future and his dynamic developmental state, allowing not only for what already has been achieved developmentally but also for what is in the course of maturing.”

Mind in Society, pg. 87

The immediate and distant future for children is independence. What they cannot do now, ultimately they will be able to do on their own. Between these two places stands the teacher who provides just enough assistance to take them from what they don’t know to what they need help knowing, and ultimately to what they then know on their own. And upon achieving a level of independence the next level comes on the horizon for which they require assistance leading to yet another level of independence.

Scaffolding and Retrieval Practice

The concept of scaffolding came many years after Vygotsky developed his theory. It depends upon the presence of the more knowledgeable other, usually a grown up. This adult knows what the child does not yet know. The organic relationship between the child as learner and the grown up as the more knowledgeable other is such that the child can’t help but learn through interaction. We see this through language acquisition. The mother talks with the child. Soon the child imitates the mother’s speech patterns and eventually communicates relatively well, even if there are mistakes. The mother provides scaffolding with little hints and corrections the enable the child to practice language at higher and higher levels of competence.

As teachers, this concept of scaffolding is simply a way to guide a student in learning what we already know. It is like leaving a breadcrumb trail for them to follow along the path of learning. One aspect of being a more knowledgeable other (I prefer this language to being a subject expert) is that the teacher not only knows the subject matter, but also areas of challenge and potential pitfalls a student can fall into. This is important to the concept of scaffolding. We want to provide for the student some amount of challenge in order for them to grow, but not so much that we frustrate the child. The essential characteristic of scaffolding is to be systematic in the building of a child’s experiences and knowledge.

Now we can picture the cascade of increasing complexity in all kinds of subjects: mathematics, science, literature, grammar, spelling, etc. There is a natural progression as a child grows older and older. This is one aspect of scaffolding evident at a macro level. But on the day-to-day basis, we can implement the concept of scaffolding to enable the student to do the primary work of learning. This is the fifth law in John Milton Gregory’s The Seven Laws of Teaching:

“Excite and direct the self-activities of the learner, and tell him nothing that he can learn himself.”

John Milton Gregory, The Seven Laws of Teaching (Veritas Press, 2004), pg. 100

How we go about exciting and directing the learner comes by way of resources, tasks, guidance, modeling, coaching or advice.

One key practice that has recently been associated with scaffolding is retrieval practice. The authors of Make It Stick talk about conventional approaches to learning that emphasize “massed practice” in an effort to “burn into memory” a concept or skill (pg. 47). Instead, spacing out practice and interleaving subjects provides enough time to elapse for the brain to start to forget the concept or skill. Then after a span of time, the mind is called upon to retrieve something from memory. This spaced and interleaved method more deeply engrains the new knowledge in memory.

“When you space out practice at a task and get a little rusty between sessions, or you interleave the practice of two or more subjects, retrieval is harder and feels less productive, but the effort produces longer lasting learning and enables more versatile application of it in later settings.

Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel, Make it Stick (Harvard University Press, 2014), pg. 4

Notice that for the learner it feels harder or less productive than cramming one moment of massed practice. The learner would not choose this strategy, so it is incumbent on the more knowledgeable other to establish this strategy as the scaffold of learning. Recollect that optimal growth occurs through challenge at an appropriate level. And it is the nature of the challenge that counts. It is challenging to mass practice or cram information for a test. But research has shown how ineffective that kind of challenge is. A better form of challenge is spaced and interleaved practice, enabling the mind to create better neural pathways for learning.

The Zone of Proximal Development for Classical Classrooms

In our educational renewal movement, it is important to reclaim the lost tools of learning. As we train our students in the classical liberal arts, we do ourselves a disservice if we make the assumption that lecture-based learning is equally classical in nature. There is so much compelling evidence that lecture is of limited utility. Understanding the zone of proximal development actually helps us make the most of our tools of learning. Let’s look at a few ideas for the classical classroom.

First, learning should be organized around the “energy” of the student. What I mean by energy is that the student should be putting for considerable effort in the learning process. Picking on lecture one again, the energy of lecture-based learning is provided by the teacher as students sit passively listening. Instead, seeking methods to shift the energy away from the teacher and onto the students is essential to optimize learning. Here’s where narration can be so effective. The energy of attention must be provided by the student to listen, see and observe. Then the energy of assimilation of knowledge is borne by the student as he or she tells back. It is not that the teacher isn’t active in this environment. But the kind of energy the teacher provides is maintaining focus, providing feedback, keeping things moving, asking effective questions, etc.

Discussion is another high-energy activity conducive to optimal learning. Students verbally grapple with ideas and listen to differing perspective from other students. The role of the teacher here is to moderate the discussion to get everyone involved. Careful guidance is required to help move the discussion in productive directions. However, the best way to kill good discussion is for the teacher to be the answer man, resolving the debate too soon or giving a definitive perspective at the end. Allowing tension and conflict to remain even for days causes students to continue to chew on an idea over time. A great teacher technique is to come back to a point of discussion after time to see if new ideas have emerged.

Second, there are numerous techniques in Teach Like a Champion 2.0 (TLaC) that create an appropriate amount of challenge and provide ample support. For example, the technique called “Stretch It” (technique 13) builds extension of learning into a rather simple exercise. When a student get a right answer, the reward is to then receive harder questions. Another technique is “Without Apology” (technique 15). This helps build a culture of academic challenge where everyone embraces challenge, understanding the hard work that goes into scholarship.

Teachers can use lesson planning to create scaffolding for their students. TLaC technique 21, “Name the Steps” breaks down concepts into simple steps allowing students to follow a clear pathway toward mastery. In a subject like mathematics, we are used to steps in problems solving. But students can also learn steps for how to memorize foreign language vocabulary or steps to write a good sentence or steps to discuss events in history. There are lots of ways the plan the pacing or tempo of the class to maximize not just the amount of time you have, but also the feel of the time. Check out techniques 27-31 in TLaC.

Third, a significant aspect of growth occurs when students buy into their own development as something they contribute to. So many students think about education as something that happens to them. They become educated. However, when we truly understand what Vygotsky is saying about cognitive development, it is the mind of the child that craves deeper connections with the people and the world around them. Students gain the buy in when they are given greater awareness of their own learning process. Our role as teachers is ultimately for them to have independence. We help them along for a short time as the more knowledgeable other, providing sufficient challenge until they gain enough mastery to work independently. That goal for independence and autonomy actually feeds into further and further loops of challenge. They crave more knowledge and greater mastery, so they turn to you for more. Helping them to self-check the accuracy of their answers can be a powerful tool. “You tell me if that’s the right answer. How would you figure that out?” This is an approach I take frequently with my high school students. Along with this is the concept of self-advocacy. Are they able to seek help when needed from the more knowledgeable other, whether that’s a teacher, parent or peer?

So as you work with your young ones, your padawans, do not be afraid of providing appropriate levels of challenge. “Training to be a Jedi is not an easy challenge, and even if you succeed, it’s a hard life” is equally true of the Christian life. Training to follow Christ means taking up your cross daily. (Yes, I’m spiritualizing Star Wars!) I think of Paul’s admonition to Timothy to “train yourself for godliness” (1 Tim 4:7) and to “practice these things,” meaning reading and teaching the scriptures (1 Tim 4:15). Growth requires challenge, but it results in fruit. May we as teachers devote ourselves all the more to finding ways for our students to experience the growth God has designed for them.

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In this series on child development, I will take a look at a few of these matters bridging historical debates with modern research on topics such as the nature of the mind, the stages a child goes through as it develops and the goals or purposes of child development. Along the way I will also have in view practical take aways that will enable us to make the most of our resources as teachers creating optimal learning environments for our students. In this first part, we will tackle the issue of what the mind knows and how it knows.

We begin by going all the way back to Plato and Aristotle. What we will see is that they come to different conclusions about the mind, especially with regard to how the mind comes to know things. In a previous post I looked at some of the neuro biology of the mind, using Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows as a point of departure. Now we can go way back in time to see how the mind was thought of by a couple of classical thinkers. Plato will assert that knowledge is innate, whereas Aristotle will contend that the mind is a blank slate and knowledge comes to the mind from the eternal world. We’ll take a long look at Plato and Aristotle, since they initiate the long debate about how the mind acquires knowledge. Along the way we will see that despite their differences, both situate their understanding of the mind within a broader context of educational goals. The virtuous citizen is the goal. For one, virtue is innate and must be drawn out. For the other virtue must be acquired through habituating the mind in the direction of virtue.

Plato on the Innate Mind

Plato addresses education primarily in two works, Republic and Laws. In his Republic, a system of education is outlined that would best support a just and orderly city-state. This Socratic dialogue devotes much space to the means and ends of educating everyone in society, yet the ultimate goal of education is to create a ruling class composed of guardians and philosophers. Plato’s Laws was written later in life and is a dialogue with an Athenian stranger. Like Republic, education is considered to be foundational to a properly just and ordered society. A summary statement occurs in Laws 643e, “the education we speak of is training from childhood in goodness (ἀρετή), which makes a man eagerly desirous of becoming a perfect citizen, understanding how both to rule and be ruled righteously” (trans. R.G. Bury [Harvard University Press, 1967]).

For Plato, the chief end of education was to create a ruling class that would ensure the freedom of society. “Our Guardians were to be freed from all forms of manual work; their function was to be the expert provision of freedom for our state” (Republic 395b-c; trans. H.D.P. Lee, [Penguin, 2003]). In order to promote these ends, virtue or arete was the purpose of education. In order for society to be free, its leaders must understand and practice virtue. Plato considered it essential that all children receive education, even though it was only the males of the ruling class that would go on to advanced study in mathematics and philosophy. So there is something democratic in Plato’s view on education (education for all children) that eventually funnels into something much more aristocratic.

Plato divided educational stages into three basic groupings. In primary or elementary education, students would learn music and gymnastics. Around the age of 18 students would then enter into military training. Then around 20 select students would enter into higher education studying mathematics, astronomy, musical theory, logic, metaphysics and so forth. It seems that Plato desired all children, even girls, to participate in primary education, although whether that was applied in practice is difficult to tell. In Plato’s thinking, we can see the emergence of something like stages of development leading to a stratification of education into three levels of education: primary, secondary and higher education. We will keep this three-fold division of education stages in mind in anticipation of part two in this series, which will delve deeper into stages of child development.

The rationale behind Plato’s understanding of primary education is worth exploring. In Laws (2.653d) Plato posits that children are like the young of other animals in that they are incapable of “keeping either its body or its tongue quiet.” This is why the primary mode of education should occur through singing in choir and dancing. “The well-educated man will be able both to sing and dance well” (Laws 2.654b). The proviso is that the person should sing good songs and dance good dances (2.654c). We can relate this back to Plato’s general understanding of education as aimed at virtue in The Republic where he posits that the child ought to have presented to them good speech (εὐλογία), good music (εὐαρμοστία), good forms of dance (εὐσχημοσύνη) and good rhythms (εὐρυθμία) in order that the mind and character of the child be well formed (Republic 3.400d-e).

Now what Plato proposes as the central method of education is mimesis, or the art of imitation. One key passage will suffice to convey his thought here. When a person is presented with items of eternal goodness and beauty “he will endeavor to imitate them and, as far as may be, to fashion himself in their likeness and assimilate himself to them” (Republic 6.500c). Thus, if a person is to be made into a virtuous creature, it is imperative that there is virtuous material for that individual to imitate. They become like the virtuous thing, which is why they must be presented with good speech, music, dances and rhythms.

I think Plato’s idea of imitation or mimesis has merit to it. We can perceive the connection between mimesis and narration, for instance. When we narrate or tell back, we are imitating and assimilating great ideas along the lines of what Plato envisioned. To learn more about the classical background to narration, see Jason’s second article in his series on the history of narration. I also appreciate how the CiRCE Institute has raised awareness of mimetic teaching as a method in the classical Christian movement. However, we might question Plato’s view of the child as dismissive of the child’s true potential. The view of the child is that it is a being that is not fully adult. In many respects this is true; many of the capacities of adulthood are absent in the child. But as we explore this concept of child development, Plato represents a particular view of the child as not adult and therefore lacking in some way.

Vocational Training or True Education?

There is much value in pausing here to consider a key aspect of Plato’s educational program. In Laws, Plato begins his analysis of education by looking at vocational training. He recommends, for instance, that a good builder should be directed to play with toy houses in the nursery (643b-c). This kind of vocational training enables the worker to be happy and possess mastery in a trade (643d). Plato then pivots to a definition of true education. If it was granted that the most happy and skilled craftsman was presented with miniature tools in the nursery, how much more would a virtuous citizen be trained to maintain a good state if presented with virtue in the nursery?

Based on his consideration of Plato’s Laws, Andrew Domanski provides a scathing comparison of Plato’s principles of true education and modernist education. Domanski writes:

“Plato insists on value-based education from the very outset. In so doing, he provides a moral and ethical impetus which is almost entirely absent from today’s secular systems of education. The general absence of Platonic virtue from modern early education goes a long way towards explaining the ills that increasingly beset our societies.”

Domanski, “Principles of Early Education in Plato’s ‘Laws,’” Acta Classica, vol. 50, 2007, p. 71.

As we consider how classical education seeks to renew lost educational principles, Domanski’s remark poignantly addresses a key critique we share. The failure of the modernist educational experiment has left generations adrift in a tempestuous ocean without any light to guide the way. The reduction of education to vocational training, Domanski argues, is not true education in the Platonic sense.

“It is clear by now that the bulk of what we call education today is, in Platonic terms, little more than vocational training. It follows that the majority of highly skilled professionals (for example doctors, engineers, nuclear scientists and economists), who have not received intensive early instruction in virtue, must be regarded as uneducated in Platonic terms. Conversely, a street-sweeper or labourer who has received early instruction in civic and moral values, would be considered to be education in the true, Platonic sense” (“Principles,” p. 72).

It is difficult to swim against this stream. Many students and parents come to us with the assumption that true education is merely vocational training. Many of us in our educational renewal movement were raised in this cultural assumption, making it difficult to not let the classroom collapse into mere vocational training. That’s why we need not only to train in virtue, but also to be advocates for a virtue-based education.

Aristotle and the Blank Slate

Aristotle inherited many of the views on education Plato put forward. In many respects, Aristotle’s views are nuances of Plato. For instance, Aristotle views the goal of education as happiness. Aristotle highly esteems virtue along with honor, pleasure and intelligence, but one pursues these for the sake of happiness (εὐδαιμονία) whereas one does not choose happiness in order to pursue virtue (Nic. Eth. 1097b). Now regarding happiness or eudaimonia, Aristotle puts forward that true happiness is conceived as the good life, which we might also call a life well lived. Aristotle considers that all people would agree that it is the good life that produces true happiness, but that what constitutes this happiness is a matter of dispute (Nic. Eth. 1095a). So from the outset, Plato and Aristotle are not in fundamental disagreement about the goal of education, they simply are emphasizing what we might consider two sides of the same coin. Virtue and living the good life go hand in hand, with both being necessary to promote a civil society.

Another development Aristotle puts forward is the role habit plays in education. He proposes that intellectual virtue comes about through instruction, whereas “moral or ethical virtue is produced by habit” (Nic. Eth. 1103a). Aristotle sees an etymological connection between the words ethic (ἠθική) and habit (ἔθος). A student is therefore to gain moral virtues through repeated exercises that build the character of the individual. You can read more about Aristotle’s view of habits in Jason’s article “Excellence Comes by Habit.” In addition, you can download my eBook “A Guide to Implementing Habit Training.”

Like Plato, Aristotle divided a child’s educational program into three stages. Aristotle’s view of the child was less animistic, as he included alongside music and gymnastic reading, writing and drawing. There was still a belief in the limitations of the child, however, with higher intellectual pursuits reserved for males in their twenties. Between the primary level of education, which tended to be more mechanical, was the military training of youths as they learned strategy and tactics alongside their military drills. The stages of education in both Plato and Aristotle were not based on a fully articulated understanding of stages of human development, so we will wait for the next article to really dive into this matter.

The main point of debate between Plato and Aristotle comes not in the layout of their educational program, but in their view of the nature of the child’s mind. For Plato, all knowledge is innate, residing in the mind of the individual from birth. The role of education is therefore to unlock this innate knowledge through recollection or remembering. Because the soul is immortal, it has this connection to knowledge so that it is possible to discover what we do not know by courageous inquiry (Plato, Meno 86a-b). Plato illustrates this by Socrates questioning a slave boy and helping him discover his innate knowledge of a geometrical concept (Meno 84d-85b).

Aristotle, however, views the mind not as a storehouse of innate knowledge, but as a blank slate or tabula rasa. The mind of the child is like any other sense organ in that it is acted upon by outside forces. So one can write upon this blank slate by helping the child to acquire knowledge by learning and discovery (Aristotle, De Anima, III.4-7). Unlike Plato, who thinks education is the process of unlocking innate knowledge, Aristotle views education as the process of acquiring knowledge. This has been a longstanding debate for educational theorists down the ages.

The Enlightenment Dead End

The debate between blank slate theory and innate knowledge took on new energy during the Enlightenment. Rationalism had prevailed during the Renaissance era as a new humanistic impulse highlighted the role of human rational faculties as the sole source of knowledge over and against divine revelation. We can trace certain elements of the secularization of Western society to this transition, even though the rationalism of the Renaissance was one of the contributing factors to religious renewal during the Reformation.

Having already devoted so much space to Plato and Aristotle, we will rush our way through the major voices in the Rationalism/Empiricism debate. Several of these figures address education at length, and at some point I should come back to any number of them to further develop their nuanced take on education and learning. For now, however, the aim of this brief traipse through the Enlightenment is to see how blank slate and innate theories took on new emphases. In particular, we will see how both theories became divorced from the goal of education to form learners into virtuous individuals.

The Enlightenment questioned whether human rational thought was indeed the source of knowledge, pitting several figures against one another. Rationalists such as Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz were contested by Empiricists like Bacon, Locke and Hume. A new emphasis on scientific method placed more confidence in sensory experience as the true source of knowledge, placing doubt on the role of rationality. The concept of the mind and its nature figured prominently in this debate.

René Descartes (1596-1650), regarded as the father of modern philosophy, argued that ideas are innate, divinely supplied and accessed through the application of logic. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1678), on the other hand, was an early proponent of empiricism, believing that human behavior can largely be explained materialistically. Ideas, he posited, are external to the human mind. This combination of materialism and non-innate ideas meant that Hobbes viewed though, imagination and memory as instances of sense experience working on the matter of the brain.

John Locke (1632-1704) took up the debate, directly opposing Descartes’s view of the mind, believing the mind to be devoid of all ideas at birth. It is experiences acquired through sense that become imprinted on the mind. Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) then categorically critiques Locke point by point. He posits that universally assented truisms must be innate. Anyone not assenting to a universal truth demonstrates that they have not become aware of it, not that it is not innate. This goes against Locke’s idea that universally assented truisms are actually acquired through experience, just that people have forgotten when and where they learned it.

The idea that human knowledge is solely gained through experience is then championed again. David Hume (1711-1776) essentially views human experience as sensate, making us nothing more than a bundle of nerves. For Hume there are no norms, only facts. This move in the empiricist camp moved rapidly toward skepticism. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was a rationalist who took a different view on norms, finding morality to be natural or innate. Surprisingly, though, he proposes that society has a negative influence impinging on the child’s innate perfectibility.

This review of the rationalist/empirical debate is far too succinct, but it lands us in a place where both innate knowledge and blank slate notions are no longer tied to the sense of virtue espoused by Plato and Aristotle. On the one hand, the blank slate theory of the empiricists leaves the individual a mass of sensate nerves, and knowledge as a store of facts disconnected from a sense of “ought.” On the other hand, innate knowledge can be likened to the “noble savage,” or humans in their natural state. Civilization corrupts this innate knowledge in the attempt to indoctrinate the individual with some moral code.

Confronted by Neuro-biology and Cognitive Science

Recently Steven Pinker challenged this state of affairs in his book The Blank Slate: The Denial of Human Nature (2003). Pinker’s concern is that people have committed to a view of human development as a blank slate to explain problems like racism or sexism as learned behaviors. He draws upon advances in neuro-biology and cognitive science to demonstrate that there are elements of the mind that are innate. He points to Noam Chomsky’s theory of language to show that underlying all human language are universal concepts of grammar. There is a certain amount of genetic code that determines, to some extent, cognitive behaviors. Furthermore, the brain has sets of neural networks that preprogram the mind to accomplish different cognitive functions, such as learn language, calculate quantities, or put one thought with another.

Pinker combines this notion of innateness with breakthroughs in neural plasticity to show that even though the mind is not a blank slate, the innate aspect of the mind is not predetermined solely by our genetic code. Yes, genes do a fair bit of work to determine certain outcomes, but genes work with feedback from the environment. Interestingly, the sense perception work that was so powerful an argument for empiricists in the Enlightenment didn’t account for genetic code. What Pinker shows is that aspects of our personality and temperament, which are genetically determined, create something like a sieve that regulates how we interpret our environments. Nature and nurture are working with and against each other, causing our minds to develop in somewhat unpredictable ways. Even though Pinker demonstrates how our minds are composed of far more innate factors that the blank slate accounts for, he also shows how neural plasticity means our brains change as they learn, acquiring new, non-innate knowledge. Pinker’s work, then, seems to move us in the direction of a synthesis of innate and blank slate theory in helpful ways.

One last idea I want to draw out from Pinker, which is why I have devoted so much attention to him, is that in light of the innate yet malleable mind, he demonstrates that morality is a universal. Every culture shares a great deal of common moral code traits. This concept reminds me of Jordan Peterson’s connection between the snake reflex and dragon narratives. Our brains are wired to flinch away from snakes or anything that looks like a snake. This is an innate, hard-wired reflex that requires no conscious thought. If we were to see, think and then react, we would already be bitten by the snake. This deep neurological structure is something Peterson connects to a universal fascination with dragon narratives. It seems that just about every culture has stories of heroes confronting dragons to rescue the maiden. What Peterson is observing is something that seems to be universal in every culture and that has a basis in our neurological brain structure. This corresponds well with what Pinker is talking about. Whereas the result of the Enlightenment project left us with a material brain and no virtue, Pinker has applied recent science to show a more nuanced understanding of the human mind connected with virtue.

Practical Take Aways

Having walked this long road through philosophy and theory, let’s consider a few practical results of this study of how the mind develops. First, we see how theories of the mind brought us to a fairly destitute place devoid of values. As an educational renewal movement, we can now understand that the goal toward which the mind is developed is a value-rich end. We are cultivating virtues. Certain aspects of virtue are inherent in the child, while others require us to bring virtuous knowledge into contact with the mind. We can agree with Plato that courage already resides in the person and only needs to be unlocked. But we can also agree with Aristotle that a truly courageous person is one who is practiced in courage, who has formed the habit of courage. Let us not shy way from connecting learning to values.

Second, the mind seems to come preprogrammed for learning and that certain avenues of learning are optimal for acquiring new knowledge. I was struck by this quote from Charlotte Mason which seems to anticipate some of Pinker’s conclusions:

“I have so far urged that knowledge is necessary to men and that, in the initial stages, it must be conveyed through a literary medium, whether it be knowledge of physics or of Letters, because there would seem to be some inherent quality in mind which prepares it to respond to this form of appeal and no other. I say in the initial stages, because possibly, when the mind becomes conversant with knowledge of a given type, it unconsciously translates the driest formulae into living speech.”

Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, pp. 333-334

Notice how she finds that the mind has a certain “inherent quality” that enable the mind to acquire knowledge. That quality is a literary bent. The mind really likes story. So when presenting new information, embedding that knowledge in story form optimizes learning. I think this is why a vast majority of Scripture is in narrative form and why children love to hear stories. Let us not shy away from placing before our children great stories full of rich ideas and noble values.

Finally, the notion that children are persons takes on new significance when we realize that their minds are composed of innate qualities and yet are capable of learning much new knowledge. When we consider how children are beings with genetic data and predispositions but are also beings capable to tremendous change, there is a sense of marvel we should have when beholding a child. When we educate there is untapped potential that will grow and learn regardless of our influence on the child. In this way the teacher really needs to get out of the way so that the child can flourish. But because the child can also be molded, we as teachers must be careful to place before the child that which is worthy of his or her attention. Let us not shy away from promoting a growth mindset among our children.

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