Introduction to Ourselves

Within the six-volume series on education written by Charlotte Mason, her book entitled Ourselves is unique unto itself. It is written directly to the student unlike the other books which are written to educators. The intention is to teach students about themselves so that they have a deep understanding of their own inner working. She likens the person to a kingdom—the “Kingdom of Mansoul.” Even this analogy teaches the young person that they are to master themselves. Mason aims to equip young people with knowledge of themselves in order to make good choices in life and to be of good service to God and the world.

The book is highly structured, falling into two major parts: self-knowledge and self-direction. Within the first part, there are four main headings—body, mind, heart and vocation—each addressing aspects of personhood in keeping with the kingdom analogy by casting these aspects as offices within a ruling counsel or cabinet. Then in the second part, there are three main headings—conscience, the will and the soul. Throughout the volume there are references to the Bible, literature and poetry, which ornament this imaginative approach to Mason’s work. I have found it to be an enjoyable read and has the feel of a spiritual classic such as Pilgrim’s Progress or The Interior Castle.

Our selected chapter comes towards the end of the book, as part of self-direction within the soul. Mason defines the soul as a temple dedicated to “the service of the living God.” (174). Living out our Christian faith takes practice, so one can hear in this section advice for the young person to heed in terms of the dangers that would beset us and the ways we ought to practice gratitude.

Thanksgiving: The Nine

Mason begins with the story in Luke 17:11-19 of the ten lepers who were cleansed. Only one of the ten, a Samaritan, returns to give thanks to Jesus. The one who gave thanks was honored, but Jesus questioned, “Where are the others?” In our fallen condition, are we not like the nine when we neglect to give thanks.

The Nine: “Whoso offereth Me thanks and praise, he honoureth Me,” saith our God; and we are abashed when we realise that it rests with us to add honour to the Highest, and that we refrain our lips.

“Were there not ten cleansed, but where are the nine?” Alas, how often are we among the nine, the poor, pitiful souls who received everything and gave nothing, not even a word of thanks! It is worth noting that “the unthankful and the evil” go together in that list of lost souls which we find in the last book of the Bible. Even if we have our moments of thankfulness, when we cry,

“When all Thy mercies, O my God,
My rising soul surveys,
Transported with the view I’m lost,
In wonder, love and praise”

our fault, and our very great misfortune, is, that we fail to take at regular intervals that survey of our life which must indeed cause us transports of gratitude. We fail to give thanks, partly because we are inert, partly because we are preoccupied with some fret or desire of the moment, and partly because of the petulant turning away of the shoulder from God which is our danger. But let us take time for the survey, if only on the Sundays, or, less frequently still, at the great seasons of the year. (191-192)

As we train our children and students, we can highlight the preoccupation that distracts us from reflection and offering our thanks to God. Moreover, there should be times set aside, even if it is only once a week, to spend in reflection and to articulate thanks to God.

Thanksgiving: My Rising Soul Surveys

Next, Mason helps to shape our gratitude towards God around the common things of life. Notice how she is cultivating the affections very much in the tradition of Augustine. The simple things that cause us delight are the springboard towards the upward thoughts that rise to the Father.

‘My Rising Soul Surveys:’ How good is life, how joyous it is to go out of doors, even in the streets of a city! Surely a pleasant thing it is to see the sun! How good is health, even the small share of it allotted to the invalid! How good and congenial all the pleasant ways of home life, all family love and neighbourly kindness, and the love of friends! How good it is to belong to a great country and share in all her interests and concerns! How good to belong to the world of men, aware that whatever concerns men, concerns us! How good are books and pictures and music! How delightful is knowledge! How good is the food we eat! How pleasant are the clothes we wear! How sweet is sleep, and how joyful is awaking!

The Soul that surveys these and a thousand other good things of our common life is indeed a ‘rising soul,’ rising to the Father,––who knoweth that we have need of all these things,––with the gratitude and thanksgiving that are forced out of a heart overflowing with love. Even an occasional act of thanksgiving of this kind sweetens the rest of life for us; unconsidered thanks rise from us day by day and hour by hour. We say grace for a kind look, or a beautiful poem, or a delightful book, quite as truly as for a good dinner––more so, indeed; for it is true of us also that man doth not live by bread alone. (192)

The goal of habit training is to instill the best practices of life so that they easily flow as a matter of course. Consider how the habit of reflection on the simple events and happenings of the day followed by an expression of thanks to God can support the spiritual life of the child throughout the rest of his life.

Thanksgiving: We Honor God by Thanking Him

Mason rounds out her thinking about the habit of thanksgiving by contrasting the thanks we offer in exceptional circumstances with the daily thanks we offer for simple things. It reminds me of what the ancient philosophers taught about virtues such as courage or prudence. We ought not to wait for exceptional circumstances to show courage, for in those moments, we might not have the strength to withstand such circumstances. Better to practice the virtues daily in simple circumstances so that we are well acclimated to the virtue at the hour of need. The same holds true for offering thanksgiving to God.

We honour God by thanking Him: But we think so little of ourselves that it does not seem to us to matter much whether or no we thank God for all His surprising sweet benefits and mercies towards us.

Indeed, we should not have known that it does matter, if, with the condescending grace that few earthly parents show, He had not told us that He is honoured by our thanks! How impossible it seems that we should add anything to God, much less that we should add to His honour! Here is our great opportunity: let us give thanks.

Perhaps most of us fall on our knees and give thanks for special mercies that we have begged of our Father’s providing care––the restored health of one beloved, the removal of some cause of anxiety, the opening up of some opportunity that we have longed for. For such graces as these we give ungrudging thanks, and we do well; but the continual habit of thanksgiving is more;––

“Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
As if Thy blessings had spare days,
But such a heart whose pulse may be,
Thy praise.”

HERBERT. (192-193)

Three Practical Applications

As we think about these concepts from Charlotte Mason, I think there are many practical applications for us as teachers in our classrooms. Here are three that seem most immediately applicable.

First, schedule time in your classroom each day to have students reflect on the simple thinks and offer thanks to God for those things. This can be a great practice at the end of the morning or the end of the day. As students trace back over the day, have them notice people, events, activities or objects that catch their attention. Once they have something in mind, then coach them on appropriate ways to express thanks to God. A moment of prayer at the end of the day can occur in small groups or as a big group.

Second, gratitude journals can be a helpful tool in cultivating the habit of thankfulness. Designate a line in a homework steno or a section in a copybook for writing short expressions of thanksgiving. Start each day by reminding students to be on the lookout for opportunities to express gratitude for simple things in their gratitude journals. These journals can feed into an end-of-day gratitude session, by having students review their journals to populate their minds with occurrences from the day.

Third, lead by example from the front of the classroom. Find things to be grateful for and express your thanksgiving regularly. You can set the tone for this habit by demonstrating what it looks like to be a person who gives an “occasional act of thanksgiving” to sweeting your own life as well as the atmosphere of your classroom. Furthermore, by acknowledging and honoring God in this way, it serves as a regular reminder of His presence in our midst.

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

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

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Some, no doubt, will respond to this critique with raised eyebrows. After all, the movement has unlocked a rich treasure chest full of wisdom and insight from master teachers throughout the centuries. These riches include Hebrew wisdom literature, Plato’s dialogues, catechesis practices of the church fathers, the rhetoric schools of Rome, and all sorts of reflections on education throughout the Middle Ages and Enlightenment era. So what’s the problem? 

One core challenge is that many teachers aren’t equipped to go out into the fields of old to glean. It is difficult to pick up a book from several centuries ago and comprehend it, much less know how to apply it in the 21st century. Even if a teacher develops a sense for how things were done once upon a time, it can be difficult to implement those practices in a modern day classroom.

Recovering these lost tools of learning, of course, is one of the challenges and joys of being a classical educator. Those of us who have wandered into this small but growing corner of the educational universe often feel both inspired and humbled by this old-but-new reality for how we ought to think about and practice education. Reading Aristotle on virtue formation, for example, can be both rewarding and perplexing. Sometimes the philosopher uses language that is unfamiliar or draws upon antiquated analogies. Nevertheless, reading Aristotle within a community of curious educators can lead to fresh insights and inspiring dialogue on the craft of teaching. The challenge is worth it. 

An Educational Renaissance

The aim of Educational Renaissance is to help promote a rebirth of ancient wisdom for the modern era. We seek to achieve this through engaging in rigorous exegesis of both ancient texts and modern research. If modern education made the error of jettisoning the insights of education before, say, 1900, an equal but opposite error exists: dismissing all the insights about education that come after 1900. In order to avoid both extremes, we need to view the history of educational philosophy as it truly exists, as one extended conversation across time and space in search of what is true, good and beautiful. This is what scholars call the Great Conversation. 

One primary way we have sought to join and contribute to the conversation here at EdRen is through retrieving the educational writings of Charlotte Mason. Mason lived one hundred years ago, at the turn of the 20th century. Her years of teaching experience in Britain equipped her with striking insight regarding what education is and what it could be. 

[If you haven’t already, I encourage you to download Jason’s and Patrick’s free eBooks on Charlotte Mason, one on the practice of narration and the other on habit training.]

The foundational premise of Mason’s philosophy is that children are persons made in God’s image, created with a unique capacity to think, relate, and ultimately, live. For her, the notion that children are persons serves as the ultimate litmus test for what educational methods are and are not permitted. Methods which take seriously the eternal value of the minds, hearts, bodies, and souls of students should be embraced. Methods that view students as clay to be formed or cattle to be herded should be shunned. 

Educating Persons, not Economic Producers

Fortunately, we inhabitants of the 21st century are situated comfortably away from those dehumanizing methods of a bygone era. Through modern educational theory and public policy reform, children, at least in the United States, have been rescued from working brutal hours in unsafe conditions and given a proper education.

Or have they?

Certainly children today have it significantly better than children ever did in the history of the world. This claim can be verified both quantitatively (the overall percentage of students enrolled in schools today) and qualitatively (the knowledge and skills students learn). And yet, it remains to be seen whether “a proper education” is, in fact, provided. Proper for whom?

In today’s technocratic, scientistic, and pragmatic society, the vision for modern education is clear: a cohort of college-educated, high-earning, tech-savvy, numbers-driven careerists. To achieve this vision, one must simply follow the steps of the celebrated recipe: Train students in college-prep skills. Make STEM the central component of the curriculum. Focus on what is most expedient. Take college entrance exams over and over. What you bake is what you make: students stepping into high-earning careers. 

Now don’t get me wrong: this vision does have its merits. College is important. STEM skills are as valuable now as they ever have been. Earning a living wage to support one’s family is admirable. We ought to glean the good contained in this vision for all that it is worth. But at the same time, we must recognize its shortfalls. This vision fails to take seriously the full-orbed humanity and personhood of its students. People are worth more than the sum of their W2’s and careers are not the only things that count as callings. 

In other words, today’s educators aren’t simply teaching tomorrow’s economic producers. They are educating future fathers and mothers, neighborhood volunteers, city council members, and church congregants. Potential for these roles can’t be summarized in a GPA, but preparation for them can occur during the school day all the same. This is a humanizing education with a humanizing goal: to make good humans. Not “good” in the moralistic, pharisaical, compliant sense. Actually good: honorable, virtuous, noble.

Good Bankers or Good Humans: The Goal of Classical Education

In his own way, C.S. Lewis makes precisely this point. He writes that a proper education transforms a student from “an unregenerate little bundle of appetites” into “the good man and the good citizen” (Image and Education: Essays and Reviews, ed. Walter Hooper, 24). Lewis goes on to differentiate between this sort of humanizing education and mere training. Such training, he writes, “aims at making not a good man but a good banker, a good electrician, . . . or a good surgeon” (22).

Now certainly we cannot do without good bankers, electricians, and surgeons. Nor could we get very far without scientists, engineers, and computer programmers. But we must not mistake the preparation for these disciplines with education. True education frees (Latin: liber) a person from appetitive instincts and equips her for self-rule. This is another way to talk about the goal of a humanizing education: liberating humans for a life of seeking the good. Along this road to virtue, humans can pick up all sorts of different skills and training, in consonance with their God-given abilities, careers, and vocations, including banking. But this sort of training should always come second to a greater purpose.

Interestingly, psychologist Jordan Peterson touches on a similar point in his bestseller 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. After refuting Rousseau’s doctrine that children are born innocent and only become evil through the corrupting influence of society, Peterson goes on to argue that children must be morally shaped and informed in order to thrive (122). It is the parent’s responsibility to discipline a child, indeed, parent rather than befriend, and provide the structure for a self-regulated life. Job preparation is not enough, nor are temporary states of happiness. Children need to be called to pursue a certain standard, a standard of goodness, and they need support from a loving adult to help them along the way. This is equally true both in the home and at school. 

Insights from “Teach Like a Champion”

Recall what I wrote earlier: there are two pitfalls when examining the history of educational philosophy. One is to ignore all the insights that came before 1900 and the other is to ignore all that came after. In this spirit, I want to conclude this article by introducing a handbook on teaching practices that was published in 2015: Teach Like a Champion 2.0 by Doug Lemov. In articles to follow, I intend to distill helpful practices and principles from this book for the classical classroom.

Admittedly, the subtitle of this book is reminiscent of the pragmatic vision of modern education I decried above; it reads: 62 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College. One may judge based on this messaging that the content of this book would have little that is beneficial for the moral purpose of education for which I am advocating. However, beyond a cursory reading, it becomes clear rather quickly that there is, in fact, much gold to be mined.

But first, a word about the book’s background. Teach Like a Champion 2.0 is a product of the broader charter school movement. Charter schools are private schools that receive public funding for the purpose of introducing school choice to families in typically low-income areas. Since they operate semi-autonomously from the state, charter schools don’t have to follow the same curricular policies as public schools. Doug Lemov, the author of the book and former director of Uncommon Schools, is a seasoned teacher and administrator in this movement.

Lemov begins the introduction to Teach Like a Champion 2.0 with the fundamental insight that great teaching is an art and that great art relies on “the mastery and application of foundational skills, learned through diligent study” (1). In other words, a four-year degree in education isn’t enough to produce great teachers. It can be a great foundation, to be sure, but great teaching requires what all great art demands: practice, experience, and careful study of the discipline. 

But how do you coach great teaching? This is Lemov’s fundamental question and it connects back to the introduction of this article. In the classical education renewal movement, the true purpose of education has been highlighted, but not the practice. It is one thing to laud the merits of classical education; it is quite another to implement it in the classroom.

Ideology-Driven Advice

Lemov suggests three general drivers for the typical advice offered for coaching teachers: ideology, research, and data (6). For now, I will focus solely on the first driver: ideology.

Ideology-driven advice tends to focus on some predetermined vision of what a classroom should look like and is usually followed up by a checklist for teachers to follow. In classical classrooms, much of the advice is ideology-driven. Schools espouse their convictions about a morally formative education and a liberal arts curriculum and teachers are instructed to follow suit.

Somewhat predictably, Lemov critiques this approach. He writes, “Ideology-based guidance contributes to the development of schools where teachers are always trying to do lots of things that people are telling them to do, instead of using their insight, problem-solving abilities, and a wide array of tools to achieve specific goals. The result, often, is an administrator with a checklist” (7). In short, this method prioritizes the adherence to principles over tangible outcomes. 

We need to tread carefully here. On the one hand, Lemov’s critique is a reflection of modern education’s obsession with technicism and its notion of success. Jason and Patrick have both written articles on this obsession and provide wisdom for avoiding its pitfalls. It is all too easy for educators today to be lulled into a false sense of confidence regarding their educational efforts through examining “the data.” 

But on the other hand, Lemov has a point. Even if we agree with the ideological driver in question (e.g. classical education), we can fail to take outcomes seriously. Noble intentions are to be praised, but we must not be afraid to look behind the curtain and determine to what extent actual learning is occurring. How we measure this determination, of course, requires wisdom and prudence. But it is important nonetheless.

Sorry to end on a cliff-hanger, but my time is up. In my next article, I plan to continue this discussion on optimal coaching advice for teachers and then move into teaching techniques presented by Doug Lemov that are amenable for the classical classroom.

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