This hearty plant can survive the harsh conditions of different locations such as Sweden, Japan, and Montana. In my own Illinois it thrives in a region known for hot summers and cold winters. Compare this profile to the Zinnia, which is also known for its heartiness, but cannot survive the deep cold of Illinois.

I recently pulled up a patch of Lily of the Valley with a view of keeping it indoors. And while this is a hearty plant, it will be necessary for me to be careful to establish a healthy culture for this plant in ways I wouldn’t have to when it is outdoors. For plant tissue to grow well indoors, there needs to be slightly high humidity, the temperature needs to be stable, the light conditions must be rigorously attended to, and the plant must be fed nutrients on a regular basis. The very same plant which cares not whether I tend to it all year round, once brought inside becomes very particular about its environment. For it to grow well, I must tend to the culture of my house.

Tending to our culture to optimize growth for individuals in an organization or students in a classroom is analogous to the care I must take with my Lily of the Valley cutting. Like it or not, every classroom and every school has a culture. The question is not whether we have a culture, it is rather what we do about it. There are better and worse cultures, so the goal is to be able to understand what kind of culture we have and then be able to apply tools to help improve the culture of our classroom or school.

Analyze the Culture

The first step in optimizing our culture has to do with deep learning and focused attention on the culture as it currently stands. You can accomplish this through simple observation and description. I recommend taking a notebook and capturing every moment of the day. What are students like when they arrive? How do I feel when I leave for work each day? Is there a moment of the day that I dread? What are the transitions like during the day? Are students responsive and engaged in their work? What are the best moments of the day? The approach here is to get at both the problems or issues in the day as well as the best or most productive parts of the day. Even a few days of observing and noting will spell out the differences between the ideal culture you are going for and the ways it is falling short of that ideal.

Another step to take is to survey your people. This can be done in a formal way by using a tool like Survey Monkey, Google Forms or some other tool. If you choose to use a formal survey, be sure to keep the survey of a manageable length. Survey Monkey recommends using less than 30 questions, or to put it in terms of time, that it should take someone 10 minutes or less to complete the survey.

Questions should be open-ended and fair, allowing the respondent to provide an accurate answer. Allowing the respondent to use a sliding scale or Likert scale (strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree) helps mitigate survey bias. Here are a few questions that you could use in a student culture survey:

Students in my school treat one another with respect: strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree.

I and the other students in my class care about learning: strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree.

Now, you can survey your people less formally. Having a bank of questions that you can ask students, parents, colleagues in conversations can help you get amble feedback as you try to analyze the culture of your classroom or school. At parent-teacher conferences, for instance, you can ask parents to share stories their child has shared about school. Be listening for clues about the cultural values you are trying to build. Some parents or students will be very free, even to the point of offense, when they share their thoughts about the culture of your class. Try to listen for the kernel of truth even if you find it difficult to receive someone’s thoughts.

Having put in the work to describe the culture and survey your people, you are now in a position to determine some of the key factors that are driving the culture of your classroom. You may determine that despite students feeling safe and cared for, they still exhibit lots of anxiety. Or you might find that the culture of enthusiastic learning that you are trying to cultivate is hindered by things like the arrangement of the desks or distractions in the classroom. The ultimate goal is to get to a place of clarity about different levers you might be able to pull to begin influencing culture in a certain direction.

A Vision for Culture

Having described the current culture and surveyed your people to determine the factors that are driving the culture of your classroom or school, you are better positioned to get down to the work changing the culture for the better. Yet, we cannot enact positive changes without a clear vision of where you are heading. Work must be done to get clarity about your highest values and the goals you will be striving towards. I am quick to point out that casting vision is work that can be done simultaneously or even before assessing your current culture, even though I’ve placed point after doing the work of analysis.

Jim Collins in Built to Last articulates how core values are inherent, almost sacred, principles or traits that can never be compromised. We can identify some of these through the analysis exercise above. What is it that we are already doing based on high-value principles. For instance, your students might be going after good grades because there’s already a value placed on excellence. Identifying these core values takes reflection on what might already be in place.

Patrick Lencioni in his HBR article “Make Your Values Mean Something” differentiates core values and aspirational values. He defines aspirational values as “those that a company needs to succeed in the future but currently lacks.” As you consider driving the culture of your classroom or school forward or upward, you will need a combination of core values and aspirational values working together. For instance, if your class is already driven by excellence, but they are completely stressed out, you may find that an aspirational value such as joyful learning needs to be incorporated.

To get at these values, you will actually need to detach from your classroom or school for reflection and deliberation. I think of this as similar to the moment Moses goes up the mountain, communes with God, and then returns to his people with a set of high-value principles, ten to be specific. Getting at core and aspirational values is very much a spiritual exercise, because what you are trying to get clarity on is the set of inspiring ideas that will capture the hearts and minds of those you are leading. The work here is to find a way of articulating something that is both meaningful and abstract. Keep in mind, that there really should only a few of these inspiring ideas.

Once these inspiring values are spelled out, you are ready to begin connecting these up with a plan. How do we live out these values? This entails goal setting. For example, if we are compelled by a vision of joyful learning, I can set a goal of giving one expression of joy every day for the next month. Notice how there are specific and measurable details in this goal. George Doran in his 1981 article in Management Review entitled, “There’s a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management’s goals and objectives” lays out the now-famous acronym for goals that are specific, measurable, assignable, realistic, and time-based. Setting out goals in such a way provides a means for measuring what really matters when it comes to building the culture you are striving towards.

The Habit of Practice

Creating a culture is the ultimate practice of habit training. I believe this is what Charlotte Mason meant by atmosphere. She is very clear that atmosphere is the not the creation of some artificial space where “a child should be isolated in what may be called a ‘child environment’ specially adapted and prepared.” (Philosophy of Education, 94) What she describes positively about atmosphere is quite inspiring:

“The bracing atmosphere of truth and sincerity should be perceived in every School; and here again the common pursuit of knowledge by teacher and class comes to our aid and creates a Current of fresh air perceptible even to the chance visitor, who sees the glow of intellectual life and moral health on the faces of teachers and children alike.”

Charlotte Mason, Philosophy of Education, pg. 97

We might restate this as a culture of truth and sincerity where the fresh air we breathe is initiated by core and aspirational values carried out with clear goals in mind touching on intellectual life and moral health. And in this atmosphere or culture the child very naturally pursues the goals or objectives set forth. It is not as though they are forced to be kind by the environment, but there is clearly a sense that “that’s the way we do things around here.” The child does not mechanically become intellectually stimulated because we have put particular paintings and plants in the classroom, but it is obvious when you look around that “people like us get really excited by what we learn.” A well-considered culture begins to generate habits in keeping with our values. Mason writes, “We may not leave off the attempt to form good habits with tact and care, to suggest fruitful ideas, without too much insistence, and to make wise use of circumstances.” (School Education, 185) The circumstances of our classroom form the opportunities to train in orderliness, thoughtfulness, kindness and so forth.

In this mode of thinking, we can create routines that establish our cultural values. These might be as simple as a handshake upon entering the room in the morning, a process for handing out texts, or a class job that is a delight to all. You might find yourself compelled by this vision, but doubtful that you can create the change necessary to guide your classroom or school toward your inspiring vision. Yet, you can create rapid change through rehearsals. For instance, let’s say you want to create a culture of tidiness. You begin with an inspiring vision of the satisfaction and utility of a clean space. Then you have everyone practice every morning, potentially multiple times, organizing their cubbies, lockers, desks, room, etc. You share a mantra, “a place for everything and everything in its place.” Day after day, the routine is practiced. The culture of tidiness takes root, and you can see on everyone’s faces a sense of pride in the classroom, in their work and even perhaps in their homes.

In modern research, habits have been boiled down to three basic components, a cue, a response and a reward. This approach to modifying our behaviors has a good deal of neurological basis to it. The area of sophistication I would add to this basic model is that the nature of the reward makes a big difference. A simple or trite reward such as a piece of candy, a star on a paper or a letter grade can be effective in enacting change, but usually not lasting change. This has to do with issues encountered in the dopaminergic system. Simple stimuli have diminishing returns because low-level stimuli are simply not that motivating because at a fundamental level basic rewards are not meaningful to us. The better framework for rewards is a feeling of satisfaction such as completing a long-term project, working at something difficult, or accomplishing a goal. These are associated not with dopamine but with the neurotransmitter seratonin, which results in higher levels of positive mood, such as satisfaction, happiness and optimism. (see “Happiness & Health: The Biological Factors- Systematic Review Article,” Iran J Public Health 43 (2014): 1468–1477.) One of the ways I’ve expressed this is that “the habit is the reward.” What this means is that when we create a culture imbued with inspiring values, the reward we are working toward is the serotonergic effect of a happier, calmer, more stable set of emotions.

Now in light of this sense of the reward we are working toward, it is worth celebrating the cultural breakthroughs we achieve. To the extend we are measuring what matters, as expressed in the previous section, we want to celebrate what matters. Once again, the inspiring values guide us to ways we can celebrate. If we have been developing a culture of kindness, perhaps the way we celebrate is to devote a Friday afternoon to sharing personal stories with one another. If we are working on a culture of deliberate practice, we can celebrate by sharing our accumulated skills with one another.

Practical Tools to Build a Culture

To close out this topic, there are five practical tools you can build an inspiring culture in your classroom or school. First, use a mimetic approach. It is frequently the case that we need to model what we are asking our students to do. I can demonstrate how I use kind words, or I can show the steps I use when I am organizing my desk. The mimetic method shows how and then asks the students to imitate.

Second, get others involved. Bring in visitors. Tell parents ways they can be reinforcing these values at home. Partner with another class to build the culture together. This approach builds some synergy and accountability to support the efforts you have in mind.

Third, have strategic conversations. You may have heard of the 80/20 principle or the Pareto distribution, which indicates that roughly 20 percent of the individuals in your class are going to have an outsized influence on the culture of the classroom or school. So be strategic to get these individuals on board with the program, simply because you know that most other will follow suite if they lead the charge.

Fourth, get the group talking. This can be a bit tricky, because you aren’t looking to engage in a debate about whether the value you are putting forward is actually a value. Instead, you want to stimulate their interest and enthusiasm by having them voice ways they could contribute to the culture by embracing this value. If I am cultivating kindness, I could ask the group a question, what could we do to be the class with the reputation for kindness?

Finally, praise is more powerful that chastisement. Immediately upon seeing evidence for the value your are leading, praise the class for exhibiting this so well. Make your praise specific and descriptive. Instead of a general “good job” it would be better to say “way to go class for keeping your desks so organized.”

Add some great books to your personal library with recommendations from the carefully curated list in The Educational Renaissance Bookstore.

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‘Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life’––is perhaps the most complete and adequate definition of education we possess. It is a great thing to have said it; and our wiser posterity may see in that ‘profound and exquisite remark’ the fruition of a lifetime of critical effort.

So writes Charlotte Mason, educational philosopher and herald for a new-but-old way of approaching education. Many would follow in her footsteps, championing the simplicity of the notion that an endeavor as complex as education can be defined using three basic elements: atmosphere, discipline, and life. 

If Mason is correct, then all approaches to education, even ones we would not fully endorse here at Educational Renaissance, incorporate, in some way, these elements, or as Charlotte Mason called them, instruments. Let us take “life,” for example. All educational methods promote aspects of life. Rousseau insisted upon the uninhibited natural development of a child. Montessori highlighted her individual creativity. And Dewey prioritized learning through experience.

For Charlotte Mason, the instrument of life refers to the life of the mind and its need for nourishment through ideas. For a growing mind, facts and information simply will not do. It is ideas, and ideas alone, that will capture a child’s imagination and inspire a love for knowledge and life-long learning.

How about atmosphere? Again, if Mason is correct, then all methods of education implement some element of the instrument of atmosphere. The question is: what kind of atmosphere? You can imagine the atmosphere of a Victorian-era classroom in which the taskmaster-teacher institutes order throughout his tiny kingdom, yardstick in hand. Or the atmosphere of a freshman 101 course, crammed with students in a cavernous lecture hall as they await for their wiry old professor to take the stage.

In both cases, the instrument of atmosphere is present and has an impact on the educational method being deployed. We might describe the first atmosphere as strict, orderly, and intimidating.. We could describe the second as crowded and distant, yet full of energy.

In contrast to these two sketches, in this article, I will explore what sort of atmosphere Charlotte Mason had in mind as she defined education as “an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.” Through this exploration, we will learn how to create an educational atmosphere befitting of persons, which will serve as a foundation for relationships to emerge and a conduit for passing on a Christian “paideia.”

An Atmosphere for Persons

Charlotte Mason’s philosophy of education hinges on the premise that children are persons. So much so that if one could prove that children are not persons then her whole philosophy would fall apart. So what does Mason mean by “persons”? I think she has three big ideas in mind.

First, children have genuine thoughts and ideas about the world. School is not the first time they gain knowledge or begin to engage in intellectual activity. As soon as children are born, they engage the world in which they are born and seek to understand it. They are not empty buckets to be filled with grains of sand of information. They are living, breathing people created with the capacity to dynamically interact with God’s created world. 

Second, children possess an internal and psychological capacity that requires development. Specifically, children are created with affections that desire and wills that choose. Both affections and wills can and are shaped over time through outside influences. Therefore, we can say that children have real agency in this world and cannot simply be set aside as robots. 

Finally, children are creatures of relationship. Like all of us, they long to belong, to be affirmed, and to contribute to something greater than themselves. Consequently, all activity, especially education, contains a relational dimension. Education, therefore, is the science of relations, another way Mason defines the term. Real knowledge is touched with emotion and part of a wider web of relationships. 

Built for Relationship

Now that we have Mason’s view of children as persons in view, we can begin to think about an educational atmosphere that would be appropriate for such persons.

In For the Children’s Sake (Crossway, 1984), Susan Schaeffer Macaulay, an early promoter of Mason’s philosophy, writes, “When teachers value and trust the individual, a special atmosphere is created. Here it is possible to have structure and yet suitable freedom. The atmosphere can be friendly, purposeful, relaxed. In fact, it can be an oasis for the child who finds it the only place where he is able to have a satisfying life” (73). 

Here we see that an educational atmosphere befitting of persons begins with trust and respect. So often, a modern classroom can feel like either an industrial factory or amusement park. Extreme restriction or entertainment. But what if an atmosphere fit for persons offers a different way? We have all experienced managers who either do not care about their employees or do not want to take time to develop them. They become heavy-handed task masters constantly on the look out for errors or simply nowhere to be found when support is needed. Classrooms can feel like this, too, when teachers are too harsh on the one hand or disinterested to come alongside their students on the other.

Bill St. Cyr, founder of Ambleside Schools International, captures the heart of the caring teacher with the phrase “It is good to be me here with you.” In this relational context, an atmosphere emerges that will shape the child’s affections more than anything else. As Bill puts it, the children inhale the atmosphere that their teachers exhale. More than whatever the teacher has planned for the lesson today, the desire for goodness, truth, and beauty will be caught within the atmosphere, not taught. In short, a child will admire what the teacher admires.

Of the three instruments of education, it can be argued that atmosphere is the hardest to get right. Bobby Scott, a long-time leader at a Charlotte Mason school, points out in When Children Love to Learn (Crossway, 2004) that while discipline and life can be transplanted, atmosphere can only be built up over time. It is an atmosphere of relationship that begins with how we interact and treat children (73). It is then strengthened over time as teacher and students together engage in inquiry through their studies and love for God and His creation.

I would be remiss if I did not mention that while relationships are the core of an atmosphere, we cannot dismiss the significance of physical space. The thinking today is that a classroom’s physical atmosphere should match the maturity of the child. This is why modern classrooms are often decorated with cartoonish posters, glittery pictures, and the like. But if we begin with the premise that children are born persons, as Charlotte Mason encourages, then we will be led to build a different kind of space: one of beauty, nature, and order–an extension of real life, rather than an environment manufactured for children.

Passing on a Christian “Paideia”

In the classical tradition, education was always about passing on a particular culture. As Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain note in The Liberal Arts Tradition (Classical Academic Press, 2019), “The word the Greeks used for education was paideia, which meant not only learning intellectual skills, but also the transmission of the entirety of the loves, norms, and values of a culture” (211).

In fact, in Paul’s oft-quoted command in Ephesians 6:4, “Fathers, do not provoke your children, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord”, the Greek word translated “discipline” is paideia. For the apostle Paul, parents have a responsibility to promote and pass on a God-centered culture as one of their parental duties. By extension, Christian schools come alongside parents by promoting and transmitting this culture as well.

There are several ways to think about what a God-centered paideia might look like, including fruit of the Spirit, membership in a local church, the centrality of scripture, a heart for evangelism, and a transmission of church tradition. Behind all of these, I want to argue is the concept of atmosphere. Teachers who want to engage in real paideia, should begin not with curriculum, but with atmosphere–how they relate to their students and what sorts of values and ideas they will promote in their classrooms.

In the last several decades, we can see how the obsession with testing in schools has led to a decline in real learning. To be sure, assessments are important and master teachers regularly check for understanding through both formative and summative methods. But a truly Christian paideia, I believe, is undermined when the greatest purpose of the classroom is test performance or competition. To truly form lifelong disciples, teachers do better when they build the sort of atmosphere in which hard work is celebrated, questions are praised, and the unified goal of the class is to grow in wisdom and love for all that is good, true, and beautiful.

Conclusion

Teachers can use the instrument of atmosphere in their classrooms to promote relationship, goodness, and a genuine love for learning. As we have seen, all classrooms effuse a particular atmosphere. The question we ask ourselves is “What kind?” and “For whom?”. The best classrooms I have seen are ones in which genuine belonging is detected, emanating from the teacher, and students are called up to do their best work as they seek to live out their identity as creatures made in God’s divine image. As we seek to pass on a particularly Christian paideia to the next generation amidst a growingly secular world, we can begin with the instrument of atmosphere.

Want to learn more about implementing Charlotte Mason’s principles in the classroom? Join my virtual workshop this fall, provided through the Society for Classical Learning. You can also subscribe to our Educational Renaissance weekly blog.

Thanks for reading!

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Of these groups, which is most critical for the success of the school? While a compelling case could be made for each one of them, I have come to believe that the answer is faculty. Faculty are the front line workers and first responders of the school. They are not only expected to interface with school customers (parents) on a regular basis. They are responsible for facilitating the day-to-day service (curriculum and instruction) of the organization. In short, their role is indispensable for the success of the school. 

For this reason, it is crucial for school leaders to recruit, retain, and professionally develop their teachers. And while factors like compensation, workload, and administrative support are important, I contend that it is the faculty culture that is most pivotal for the overall flourishing of individual faculty members. In this blog, I will offer some ideas regarding what makes for a strong faculty culture and conclude with questions administrators can ask themselves as they seek to lead the faculty culture in the right direction.

A Positive Work Culture

Recently I was speaking with a friend of mine who works for a financial services company. His job is to help people manage their money prudently and effectively. In our conversation, he shared that his company consistently ranks nationally as a place where employees love to work. Having now worked for the company himself for about a year, he could confirm the positive report personally. 

I pressed my friend on the secret to his employer’s success in this area, and his response was simple: culture. The culture of the company, he observed, was supportive, encouraging, and full of integrity. It therefore provided a place where employees loved to work. When describing the company, my friend shared that the financial advisors are trained to always do what is in the best interest of the client. Additionally, each advisor is valued and therefore equipped and empowered to excel at their jobs. Leadership ensures that each employee is reaching their full potential. These factors combined contributed to a strong work culture in which employees were happy, fulfilled, and committed to doing as best they could for the company.

The Wells Fargo Scandal

What my friend shared may sound like common sense when it comes to company culture, but it is rarer and harder to achieve than it sounds. Consider what happened with the Wells Fargo account fraud scandal in 2018 as a counter-example. The New York Times reports:

“From 2002 to 2016, employees used fraud to meet impossible sales goals. They opened millions of accounts in customers’ names without their knowledge, signed unwitting account holders up for credit cards and bill payment programs, created fake personal identification numbers, forged signatures and even secretly transferred customers’ money.

In court papers, prosecutors described a pressure-cooker environment at the bank, where low-level employees were squeezed tighter and tighter each year by sales goals that senior executives methodically raised, ignoring signs that they were unrealistic. The few employees and managers who did meet sales goals — by any means — were held up as examples for the rest of the work force to follow.”

Can you hear the difference? At my friend’s company, the needs of the customer are always put first. At Wells Fargo, serving customers became a means to an end. As a result, employees began to cut corners, going so far as to create fraudulent accounts in order to make more money. But it was not even merely about the money. The management of the company became so constrictive that employees felt that the only way to meet their sales goals, and keep their jobs, was to lie, cheat, and steal. 

In contrast to a culture marked by support, encouragement, and integrity, this culture had become toxic. It became marked by high demands, no support, unrealistic expectations, and a vacuum of values.

School as a Service Industry

While schools and financial service companies are very different industries (to state the obvious), I do think there are insights here we can glean as we seek to build a strong faculty culture.

For example, it can be helpful as a thought exercise to think about school as a service industry. Classical schools exist to shape and develop students into particular types of people. This service is performed at a price agreed upon between school and family called tuition. At the end of the day, parents with children enrolled at our schools are looking to see evidence that their children are growing. 

One important way schools can increase the quality of this service is by being very specific about the ways in which our school programs are helping students grow. At Christian, classical schools, growth is not only measured by academic output. There is more to being human than cognitive firepower. Teachers at our schools are helping students grow holistically–in mind, yes, but also in virtue and wisdom, in body and soul. We need to keep putting this vision before teachers and parents, educating them in the “service” we provide. To do so most effectively, I have learned, requires a robust philosophy of our students, viewing them as persons made in God’s image.

It is also important to let core values guide the school’s approach to instruction. In the Wells Fargo example, the work culture’s decline merely followed the path of its lack of values. Employes were given unrealistic goals and harsh threats, prompting many of them to cut corners by creating artificial accounts to meet deadlines. Values of honesty, integrity, and humility were replaced by a Darwinian survival of the fittest mentality. It was only a matter of time before a collapse would occur. 

At our schools, we need to lead with our core values. What do we care most about? What are we measuring? Regardless of outcomes, what approach to work are we committed to? These are the questions school leaders need to ask in order to build a strong and healthy faculty culture.

Reforming the Formers

Of course, there are limitations to thinking about school as a service industry or as a company. The purpose of a school, after all, is not to maximize profit, but to achieve the mission of the school. And in order to achieve an organizational mission, we need to help teachers understand the role they play in this mission.

In You Are What You Love (Brazos Press, 2016), James K.A. Smith proposes that teachers should be thought of as “formers.” His general thesis of the book is that humans are, in essence, embodied affective creatures. That is, we are lovers who are shaped over time by what we do. 

Education, in light of this view of humans, is not primarily a project of knowledge-transfer, but in love formation. Teachers are not primarily instructors, lecturers, or information disseminators. They are formers and shapers, leading students in a process to become particular types of people. In the classical tradition, this vision is rooted in virtue. We seek to grow and help our students grow in virtues, that is, the objective moral ideals that God has woven into the very fabric of the universe.

Smith writes,

“Since education is a formative project, aimed at the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, then the teacher is a steward of transcendence who needs to not only know the Good but also to teach from that conviction. The teacher of virtue will not apologize for seeking to apprentice students to the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. But she will also run up against the scariest aspect of this: that virtue is often absorbed from exemplars” (159). 

Smith goes on to offer four communal practices for reforming the formers at our schools: eating, praying, singing, and thinking and reading together. While these practices are not directly related to teaching per se, they are doing something even more important: creating a culture. By taking time to eat together, worship the Lord, and grow in understanding, schools communicate to teachers that they care more about bottom-line outcomes. They care about all constituents of the school growing as persons, including faculty. This emphasis, more than anything else, is what is going to shape a strong faculty culture for years to come.

Questions for Continuing the Conversation

As school leaders seek to build a strong faculty culture in their schools, they need to consider how they can best shape, support, and encourage each faculty member. Instead of pressuring teachers with unrealistic goals guided by a “win-at-all-costs” mentality, school leaders need to lead with core values, provide strong support, and make time for practices oriented toward helping teachers grow themselves as humans in wisdom and virtue.

To this end, here are some closing questions I pose to school leaders as they think about faculty culture:

1. Are the goals and benchmarks we set for teachers specific and realistic?
2. Are we providing appropriate support for them to reach these goals?
3. Are we taking time to celebrate victories as a faculty? 
4. How are we showing that each employee at the school is valued? 
5. Are we cultivating a faculty culture in which every decision is made in the best interest of the student (without being child-centered)? 
6. How are we appropriately (and inappropriately) incentivizing faculty members?

May God guide and strengthen you as an educator as you seek to not only achieve particular organizational outcomes, but contribute to a culture that is growth-oriented, teacher-supportive, and ultimately, a small taste of the coming kingdom of God.

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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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Mentoring as a Program

When we think of mentoring programs, we often picture something like Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (BBBSA), a non-profit organization that pairs adult volunteers with youth. Para-educational programs such as this have been the focus on numerous studies conducted over decades and show various results. For instance, the 2011 study published in the journal Child Development found mixed results in the BBBSA program.[1] Students tended to improve academically, and yet these improvements were limited with students not sustaining higher academic performance after the first year of mentorship. Mentoring programs like this also tended to have little impact on behavioral issues.

Another study aggregated over 5000 mentoring programs in a meta-analysis of over 73 studies on mentoring programs directed at children during the decade 1999-2010. The study, published in 2011 in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, found that mentored youth exhibited positive outcomes whereas non-mentored youth showed declines in outcomes.[2] This seems reasonable enough and is what we might expect. When non-parental adults invest in youth, that investment predominantly yields positive returns in the life of the child. We can conclude that mentorship of youth, even if it results in modest social, emotional and intellectual gains, is superior to the alternative: leaving children to their own devices.

As I think about mentoring programs, much of the emphasis found in modern studies of mentorship focus on para-educational programs. But mentorship does not depend on an outside organization, it can happen within a school by training teachers who help establish an atmosphere of learning. The implementation of mentorship within a school utilizing teachers strikes me as a way to leverage the benefits of mentoring without the encumbrance of an outside organization. The idea here is that if teachers are the mentors, we create a culture of mentorship that leverages the relationship between student and teacher.

On Permissiveness and Micro-managing

So what is the opposite of an atmosphere of mentorship? It strikes me that there are two opposite kinds of atmospheres. One atmosphere that is easy to create is one of permissiveness or a laissez faire approach to the care of students. When a school is oriented solely toward the delivery of course content, the teachers are not inclined to reach students in the hallways, playground or cafeteria. The permissive approach is a justifiably rational approach. For one, the faculty already devote so much time to planning, teaching and grading, that it feels a burden to have them spend more contact hours with students. This approach has also been justified on the rationale that if students are going to leave for college and have an abundance of independence and self-direction, shouldn’t they be given lots of freedom now in order to succeed at the next level. In this way of thinking, only students who are struggling academically or morally receive interventions, whereas the rest are left to their own devices.

While there are many studies on mentorship programs, there are very few studies on permissive environments. The difficulty is that permissiveness in the school environment has to be evaluated through self-report. For instance, one study examined students in government schools in Faridabad, India.[3] Schools were deemed to be permissive based on the self-reports of students. With a study comprised of 400 students, the conclusions must be taken cautiously. But the findings of the study showed that there is a significant correlation between permissiveness in the school environment and underachievement in the field of science. As I read this albeit limited study in a field that rarely gets analyzed, it seems that the strategy to bolster science achievement by allowing students to follow their desires has not been corroborated by this evidence. When it comes to achievement in academic subjects as well as social and moral domains, mentoring seems to be the better strategy to foster success.

A very different environment seeks to root out any deviancy or failure by micro-managing students. Rules and procedures are carried out with exacting regularity. It’s possible to get high performance in this situation, but it is equally difficult to have a deep and lasting impact in the hearts and minds of students. As much as we would want to shield students from deviancy or failure, we must understand the child as a whole person who has an independent and autonomous will. The best conditions for learning occur in an atmosphere where failure or error are met with grace. Often times it is failure and error that provide the most productive avenues for growth. An atmosphere that helps students learn how to learn is essential. You can read more about the concept of ratio in Kolby’s series on Teach Like a Champion.

I really like how Jason put it during our podcast, the optimal learning atmosphere occurs in the “moral and authoritative presence of a caring, thoughtful and wise adult.” (Episode 10, 39:58). So, what we are suggesting here is that mentoring is the golden mean between a laissez faire approach to school atmosphere and a strict, rules-based approach to atmosphere. When we place students under the masterful care of adults who are well trained to mentor and disciple their students, the opportunity for success in multiple domains of life is promoted.

Mentoring and Habit Training

As we think about establishing an atmosphere conducive to mentorship, it is helpful to turn to the concept of habit training. The method that Charlotte Mason spells out provides good avenues for mentorship to occur. In her Towards a Philosophy of Education she writes:

“There is no other way of forming any good habit, though the discipline is usually that of the internal government which the person exercises upon himself; but a certain strenuousness in the formation of good habits is necessary because every such habit is the result of conflict. The bad habit of the easy life is always pleasant and persuasive and to be resisted with pain and effort, but with hope and certainty of success, because in our very structure is the preparation for forming such habits of muscle and mind as we deliberately propose to ourselves.”

Charlotte Mason, Toward a Philosophy of Education, 101-102

From this we learn that mentorship invites a certain kind of conflict. The child becomes internally conflicted in a battle of will. The good habit will only be established through self-discipline all the while the bad habit offers all the allurements of pleasure. Mentorship offers support to the child by providing strength to the child’s will to fight the good fight. Mason continues:

“We entertain the idea which gives birth to the act and the act repeated again and again becomes the habit; ‘Sow an act,’ we are told, ‘reap a habit.’ ‘Sow a habit, reap a character.’”

Philosophy of Education, 102

An atmosphere of mentorship has in view the moral and spiritual formation of the child. And this occurs through the steady and regular influence of teachers who themselves have godly character and the mindset to disciple the children given into their care. Mason goes on:

“But we must go a step further back, we must sow the idea or notion which makes the act worthwhile. The lazy boy who hears of the Great Duke’s narrow camp bed, preferred by him because when he wanted to turn over it was time to get up, receives the idea of prompt rising. But his nurse or his mother knows how often and how ingeniously the tale must be brought to his mind before the habit of prompt rising is formed; she knows too how the idea of self-conquest must be made at home in the boy’s mind until it become a chivalric impulse which he cannot resist. It is possible to sow a great idea lightly and casually and perhaps this sort of sowing should be rare and casual because if a child detect a definite purpose in his mentor he is apt to stiffen himself against it.”

Philosophy of Education, 102

Habit training begins with inspiring ideas and helping the child gain a vision of themselves as mature human beings. Mason cautions against habit training or mentoring originating on the basis of the convenience or manipulation of the teacher or parent. A child can sense this and will stiffen against it. Along these lines, Mason concludes her thoughts by cautioning teachers against permissiveness:

“When parent or teacher supposes that a good habit is a matter of obedience to his authority, he relaxes a little. A boy is late who has been making evident efforts to be punctual; the teacher good-naturedly foregoes rebuke or penalty, and the boy says to himself,––‘It doesn’t matter,’ and begins to form the unpunctual habit. The mistake the teacher makes is to suppose that to be punctual is troublesome to the boy, so he will let him off; whereas the office of the habits of an ordered life is to make such life easy and spontaneous; the effort is confined to the first half dozen or score of occasions for doing the thing.”

Philosophy of Education, 102-103

My hunch is that permissive environments occur when we grown ups feel uncomfortable with the authority we have. When we are at peace with our authoritative role, however, we can mentor children because we can see how we have been placed in this child’s life to help support his or her betterment. The best part of the child wants to be punctual, and we are here to support that. Permissiveness comes in when we shy away from supporting the child due to our own fear of manipulation or a sense that by challenging the child we are somehow not loving the child.

Train Up a Child

Raising children today is no easy task. Mainstream culture is a factor we all have to deal with, and good parents and teacher will come to different decisions about how much exposure to the artifacts of culture (television, movies, music, social media) to let into the home or classroom. Proverbs 22:6 advises parents to “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” A well-trained child is one who knows the right way to go. The path of life is laid out before them, and they stay the course. I am reminded of the quote by Miyamoto Musashi, “If you know the way broadly, you will see it in everything.” True mentorship of children and youth provides them with insights about the nature of life and how to live a life with meaning and purpose.

As we train up children, we must have a genuine picture of what it means to live life. Because life is full of adversity, pain, suffering, challenge and failure, it is important to prepare children to meet these on the battlefield of life. In addressing the nature of life in this way, the value of genuine happiness, true friendship and the strength of conviction are magnified. We need to be careful not to shelter children from the challenges of life. Instead, we should walk alongside them to so that they can meet the challenges they face with grace and dignity. I want to highlight a great insight Jason shared in our podcast on atmosphere. He says,

 “Many of us unfortunately, and for understandable reasons, have the sheltering issue completely backwards we have flipped it on its head. We’re sheltering them from the wrong things so that they won’t have to face the pain and suffering and challenge of the world but can have things handed to them and life just smoothed and eased for them. But we are not willing anymore to shelter them from the bad moral and spiritual influences in their lives, which is exactly what we should be sheltering them from until they’ve got the training and are standing on their own two feet as mature Christians. I think the idea that we would send out our children to be missionaries in public schools, that’s not how the New Testament, as I read it, thinks about missionaries. You send your solid, spirit-empowered, well-trained and discipled apostles out to be missionaries to the world and to proclaim the gospel to them. You don’t send weak, frail, young-in-the-faith children out to be gobbled up by a world that is completely contrary to where they are coming from.”

Educational Renaissance Podcast, Episode 10 – “Atmosphere,” 46:14

The impulse to shelter our children from pain, suffering and challenge is understandable. We want what is best for our children. But it is far better to train children to be strong to meet life’s challenges rather than keep them safe from them, or to exist in ignorance of the many challenges that surround them.

As I mentioned above, we want children to encounter genuine life, which means they must experience pain, suffering and challenge. C. S. Lewis in his book The Problem of Pain reasons, “Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.” From this idea I would advise educators to consider the following two ideas. First, we as teachers must be people who are experienced at encountering life in its manifold nature – full of pain, yes, but also full of deep and profound joy. It is really only from this position of genuine living that we can hope to mentor the young ones given into our care. I am not saying that we share every struggle and burden with them, quite the opposite. What I am saying is that as mentors, there is a mantle of genuineness that becomes part of the learning atmosphere when we have partaken in real life. In a word, we must be mature. Second, we as teachers must be prepared to seize the opportunities that present themselves regularly to meet our students at the moment of challenge or pain to support them. We cannot shelter them from all challenge and pain. So we must therefore help them to encounter challenge with courage and perseverance.

May the Lord uphold you in this high calling. And may you take deep and profound joy in this work.

[1] Herrera, Carla; Jean Grossmen; Tina Kauh; Jennifer McMaken. “Mentoring in Schools: An Impact Study of Big Brothers Big Sisters School Based Mentoring.” Child Development 82 (1): 346–381.

[2] DuBois, David L., Nelson Portillo, Jean E. Rhodes, Naida Silverthorn, Jeffrey C. Valentine. “How Effective Are Mentoring Programs for Youth? A Systematic Assessment of the Evidence.” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 12 (2011): 57-91.

[3] Kapri, Umesh C. “A Study of Underachievement in Science in Relation to Permissive School Environment.” International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology 4 (2017): 2027-2032.

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