If you are new to this blog, you will notice that we typically focus on wisdom and modern research for the classroom or homeschool. As classical Christian educators who have been profoundly influenced by the educational philosophy of Charlotte Mason, we believe that children are born whole persons and their schooling should reflect this reality. 

Unfortunately, so often today, precisely the opposite occurs. In our post-industrial revolution world, modern education has become a training ground for our children as mere test-takers and future wage-earners. Siren songs of college readiness, job preparation, and high-wage incomes have replaced the classical vision for a formative education in the good, true, and beautiful.

Interestingly, the classroom is not the only area of education that has been negatively impacted by industrialist assumptions. Likewise, children are not the only victims of this mindset. Educational institutions are complex entities with multiple departments and a variety of constituents. The underlying philosophy of an institution will inform and shape the parts through the whole, and in turn, the whole through the parts. It is therefore of upmost importance for school leaders to regularly take inventory of these parts, evaluating the missional alignment of what is said and done across departments and roles.

In this article, I want to hone in specifically on practices relating to fundraising, what is sometimes called the development shop of a school. Whether the funds are used to meet an operational gap or strategic initiative, schools rely on the generosity of donors to advance their missions and achieve their future visions. While the classroom is, and must remain, the central focus of any educational institution, it is the contention of this author that the development shop, too, is in need of an educational renaissance.

Philanthropy on the Rise

What kind of a renaissance is needed?

Interestingly, it is not a rebirth in generosity, at least for now. Despite economic challenges caused by the pandemic and rising inflation, giving is up more than ever before, especially in the United States. In a recent Forbes article, the author observes three particularly positive trends in philanthropy.

First, charitable gifts increased to $471 billion in 2020, a 5% increase from 2019, despite a 2.3% decrease in GDP. This upward trend has not changed since the nation transitioned out of the pandemic. Second, donors are growing more sophisticated in how they give. More and more Americans are using private foundations, charitable trusts, and donor-advised funds as giving vehicles. This sophistication has elevated the overall generosity, tax savings, and specificity of giving for donors. In other words, donors are not just giving bigger gifts; they are giving better gifts. Finally, there is a demographic mindset shift in the next generation. On average, more millennials than boomers view themselves as philanthropists, leading them to make decisions about their time, money, and resources through a charitable lens.

Nevertheless, our culture continues to face challenges generated from ideologies of individualism and consumerism. As religious belief remains on the decline in the West, the focus shifts more and more to the self-actualization of the individual. This leads to an inward focus and dependence on one’s self for finding lasting happiness rather than viewing God as our greatest source of happiness and meaning. In addition, the consumeristic mindset continues to place things before people, leading society to objectify humans as mere sellers and buyers in a transactional process.

With these societal shifts in view, let me suggest that an educational renaissance in the development shop will have three prominent features, relating to:

1. God’s Provision
2. Donor Engagement
3. Leadership Transparency

God’s Provision

In Giving and Getting in the Kingdom (Moody Publishers, 2012), R. Mark Dillon suggests there are two prevailing attitudes about God’s financial provision.

The first attitude is a pietist waiting upon the Lord with no practical action. This approach is famously illustrated by George Mueller, a German-born pastor who later moved to Bristol, England, and opened an orphanage. Mueller would regularly pray for his orphanage’s needs but refused to share them publicly, waiting instead for the Lord to provide miraculously (which He did time and time again).

The second attitude, illustrated by Chicago evangelist D.L. Moody, is a business-savvy call to action. Ever the entrepreneur, Moody would identify an evangelistic or societal need, cast vision, and enlist financial support. Through this approach, Moody inspired countless to give to the kingdom and, in doing so, support the saving of a multitude of souls.

Summarizing these two attitudes, Dillon writes,

The danger of Mueller’s approach is that what seems to be childlike faith in God for His provision may be missing an opportunity to call God’s people to obedience and generosity. The inherent danger in creating a vision and boldly calling God’s people to fund it, as in Moody’s approach, is the human tendency to stray from discerning God’s leading into merely fulfilling personal or corporate ambition and perhaps missing the elements of dependent prayer and humble gratitude (44).

To avoid these two pitfalls, schools must adopt a biblical mindset of God’s provision, which embraces the paradox of divine action and human responsibility. Development officers must begin, saturate, and culminate their fundraising efforts in prayer, while faithfully taking steps to see what doors God might open. The reality is that neither Mueller nor Moody receives the credit for the gifts that came in to bless their ministries during their years of service. God does. We can prayerfully depend upon the Lord and faithfully share publicly our schools’ needs when we realize that God is the ultimate source of every gift.

Donor Engagement

It is common to approach fundraising as a game of numbers. Maximize the number of mailed letters, email campaigns, golf outings, and first time gifts, and you have a successful development shop. 

But what Jason Lewis argues in The War for Fundraising Talent and How Small Shops Can Win (Gatekeeper Press, 2017) is that deep relationships and meaningful partnerships are the key to successful fundraising. And yet, so many development shops are reluctant to do this. It is easier to keep donors at arm-length and ask through impersonal methods. But what talented and seasoned fundraisers have learned through years of practice is that it is all about relationships and shared passion for a vision. Through intentional engagement with donors, having meaningful conversations, and communicating with respect and gratitude, the partnership can go deeper, become more meaningful, and last for a lifetime.

As schools engage donors in a meaningful way, the goal is to prevent these relationships from becoming merely transactional. An authentic partnership occurs when both schools and donors believe they can give and receive from one another. Here I think of Paul’s gratitude for Phoebe at the church in Rome. Paul refers to Phoebe as a “sister,” “deacon,” and “benefactor” (Rom. 16:1-2). It is clear that the relationship Phoebe experienced with the church, including the apostle Paul, went beyond the financials. It was spiritually uplifting, relationally deep, and mutually beneficial.

Leadership Transparency

Finally, an educational renaissance in the development shop must include leadership transparency. School leaders need to cast a compelling vision for the future and be honest about current challenges. R. Mark Dillon writes,

Sometimes people assume that being the messenger on behalf of the organization to the giver requires knowing all the answers and defending your institution at every turn. Nothing could be more antithetical to a genuine relationship than refusal to acknowledge shortcomings or gaps in our knowledge.

R. Mark Dillon, Giving and Getting in the Kingdom (Moody Publishers, 2012), 95

Certainly there are times when one must explain with fortitude certain institutional decisions. It is important to help donors understand the complexity of particular issues as well as the thought process that went into reaching a decision. At the same time, no institution is immune from criticism. No leader has all the answers. School leaders can build trust with donors by being honest, preparing informative reports, and admitting when there are weaknesses. If a donor brings up a criticism, explore it together. Find it out what reality of the school it likely touches. If a donor asks a question and you do not have a response, acknowledge the fact and commit to finding the answer.

Conclusion

While there is much more to be said about an educational renaissance for the development shop, I hope this article can be the start of a new conversation. We are all recipients of the generosity of others, and the principles of God’s provision, engagement, and transparency are applicable. As school leaders, we can push back against the reigning ideologies of individualism and consumerism by adopting a biblical view of God’s provision and understanding that how we are interact with all people in our organizations reflects what we truly believe about them as persons made in the image of God.

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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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