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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Mason reflects, after years of implementation both in homes and schools, the result of narration for students:

“Oral teaching was to a great extent ruled out; a large number of books on many subjects were set for reading in morning school-hours; so much work was set that there was only time for a single reading; all reading was tested by a narration of the whole or a given passage, whether orally or in writing. Children working on these lines know months after that which they have read and are remarkable for their power of concentration (attention); they have little trouble with spelling or composition and become well-informed, intelligent persons.” (Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, 15)

Narration is a curious tool for the educator, since it is fairly expansive in its forms and uses. As we endeavor to look at narration from the perspective of its application in science, we must understand that narration can be of different sorts and utilize different thinking processes. Students can draw, dramatize, describe, discuss, or diagram. They can evaluate, compare and contrast, list, question, and chart. If we view narration as a means of assimilating knowledge through actively retelling in any number of ways. When we first learn narration from Mason’s writing, we tend to lock into a mode of simple retellings of narrative texts. But as we work with students at older ages and grade levels, these more complex thinking skills can and should be incorporated into their retellings.

I think it is helpful to visualize narration as situated on a spectrum from memorization on one end and summary on the other end. Narration fits somewhere in between these two. What exactly narration is can be differentiated from the two alternatives. When a student encounters the text, their narration is not a rapid memorization of the text. True, memory plays a significant role, but we are not listening for a word-for-word memorization of the text. Similarly, narration is not mere summary. A student who shares, “the text basically says such and such,” has not actually narrated. There is no rich retelling of the text, but a boiling down into something that is too distilled. Within this range from memorization to summary, there is much scope to develop cognitive and affective skills in students’ retelling.

To spell this out further, I think it instructive to look at Mason’s thoughts in her third book, School Education. Here she develops the basic method of narration within a school context. She insists upon a single reading of the text with full attention:

“The simplest way of dealing with a paragraph or a chapter is to require the child to narrate its contents after a single attentive reading,––one reading, however slow, should be made a condition; for we are all too apt to make sure we shall have another opportunity of finding out ‘what ’tis all about.’” (Charlotte Mason, School Education, 179)

One reading! That’s it! Notice how sensitive Mason is to the pacing this requires. In some cases, one can take on an entire chapter of material, but in others a paragraph only. She also uses the word “slow,” which indicates that at times the density of materials requires deliberation and concentration. If students expect that they can wait for a second reading, their ability to attend at the initial reading decreases. In fact, waiting for a second exposure to the materials – which may feel like a means of reinforcing learning – is not nearly as effective as learners might think. The authors of Make It Stick point out that singular readings followed by retrieval practice is the optimal process for learning. “Today, we know from empirical research that practicing retrieval makes learning stick better than reexposure to the original material does” (Make It Stick 29).

Continuing on with Mason’s more elaborate thoughts on narration, she writes:

“There is much difference between intelligent reading, which the pupil should do in silence, and a mere parrot-like cramming up of contents; and it is not a bad test of education to be able to give the points of a description, the sequence of a series of incidents, the links in a chain of argument, correctly, after a single careful reading.” (Charlotte Mason, School Education, 180)

What we find here is a recognition that the older student reads texts of different sorts. There are philosophical and political treatises, chronicles of historical events, and descriptions within scientific texts. The way we narrate these kinds of texts can take the form of outline and description.

“But this is only one way to use books: others are to enumerate the statements in a given paragraph or chapter; to analyse a chapter, to divide it into paragraphs under proper headings, to tabulate and classify series; to trace cause to consequence and consequence to cause; to discern character and perceive how character and circumstance interact; to get lessons of life and conduct, or the living knowledge which makes for science, out of books; all this is possible for school boys and girls, and until they have begun to use books for themselves in such ways, they can hardly be said to have begun their education.” (Charlotte Mason, School Education, 180)

The simple narrations of the elementary years are but the beginning of the ways we can utilize the power of narration. Students who are able to be tested in their telling back by incorporating these thinking skills become powerful learners. It matters not what books are placed before them. They apprehend not only the contents of the text, but also have the means of working with what they are acquiring as they are assimilating it.

Inspirational vs Disciplinary Subjects

The next idea we must delineate pertains to the nature of different subjects. Some are what we might call inspirational, meaning they are rich in ideas that are generally delivered in a literary form. For example, history tells stories about people and events from the past. Other subjects are disciplinary in nature, meaning that there is a focus on developing skills. Grammar and mathematics are two such subjects where students are trained to identify parts of speech or to work mathematical problems.

Over the years, I have developed the view that subjects tend toward either an inspirational or disciplinary nature. While literature is predominantly inspirational in nature, there are times when literary texts are analyzed for characterization or plot devices. The analytical tools are, of course, disciplinary in nature. So we can say that there are moments within inspirational subjects where skills are developed along disciplinary lines.

Mathematics, which tends to be highlighted as the chief disciplinary subject, can be a highly inspirational subject. There ought to be times when mathematical ideas are explored for their philosophical and aesthetic inspiration. For instance, I have led students in a discussion about the nature of the number zero. Zero means nothingness, and we delight in the idea that there is no place in the universe where zero exists, and yet everywhere in the universe, zero exists.

What we mean by subjects tending towards an inspirational or disciplinary nature, then, is that by and large, the mode we are operating in is one or the other. Even when we incorporate disciplinary or skills-based elements into inspirational subjects, or explore living ideas within disciplinary subjects, each subject can be generalized as one or the other. This is helpful because it shows us the modes we ought to operate within for each kind of subject. For instance, in inspirational subjects, we will largely be reading texts that are literary in nature, while in disciplinary subjects, we will be learning skills to accomplish certain kinds of work.

With this background in mind, we should note that science has both inspirational and disciplinary aspects to it. Charlotte Mason quotes Sir Richard Gregory, a leading British astronomer and scientist in her day, “The essential mission of school science was to prepare pupils for civilised citizenship by revealing to them something of the beauty and the power of the world in which they lived, as well as introducing them to the methods by which the boundaries of natural knowledge had been extended. School science, therefore, was not intended to prepare for vocations, but to equip pupils for life” (Philosophy of Education 222). For Mason, science contains both living ideas as well as techniques and methods that are carried out in field study and the laboratory. It contains a rich history that ought to be accessed through texts of literary quality. Yet science also contains the language of mathematics to calculate measures and processes.

Because of the dual nature of science, we need to expand our notion of narration beyond what we might consider the basic retelling of a narrative. In certain moments, there are narratives of great scientists whose stories tell of significant breakthroughs and advances in science. These moments will call forth a very recognizable type of narration as is found when a young child retells a tale from a story book. Yet there are other moments when a text delves into the intricacies of chemical change, the structures within a cell, or the formulas that are applied to motion. These cause the young reader to slow down and take in smaller portions at a time. Thus, the narrations become much more focused. They must assimilate the technical terminology fitting to the subject. They must be able to reproduce calculations that are properly formatted according to the conventions of a given scientific field. In such cases, there are moments when narration involves listing, outlining, defining, describing, illustrating and diagramming. These acts of knowing, then, form the means by which students assimilate and work with what they are learning.

A science curriculum that has become well loved amongst classical as well as Charlotte Mason educators is the Novare series written by John Mays. It’s a series of science texts that is sensitive to the dual nature of science by including sufficient historical context, that students can pick up on the narrative of science, while also cultivating the skills required to use mathematics, the language of science. I think it is instructive to consider some of the pedagogical principles Mays lays out, since they are in alignment with what we have described about the developing role of narration for older students in more technical subjects like science.

Mays is a big advocate for retrieval practice. At a number of points in his book From Wonder to Mastery, he reiterates the value of regular retrieval practice. For the younger years, narration is a natural practice as the texts we can access retain a narrative flair and literary quality. For instance, students can cultivate wonder by reading nature stories such as That Quail, Robert by Margaret Stranger. There are fascinating books that are image rich and accessible to young readers such as A Drop of Water by Walter Wick or the books in the “Scientists in the Field” series. There’s a wonderful series on the history of science called The Story of Science produced by the Smithsonian and written by Joy Hakim. All of these prepare elementary and middle school students for learning science alongside subjects such as nature study which gets them outside observing the natural world around them. Mays includes a list of books by great naturalists that likewise will expose older students to a rich world of authors who observed the natural world and wrote their findings in a literary style (see From Wonder to Mastery, 49).

As proponents of retrieval practice, the methods that Mays advises for science teachers are in the main quite sound. Jason Barney in A Classical Guide to Narration spells out the connection between narration and retrieval practice.

“Retrieval practice is not just what you do in studying for a test, though it is the most effective way to do that. It is the process of learning itself because it requires your brain to re-access the neural networks that were originally lit up as you were attending to that material.” (Jason Barney, A Classical Guide to Narration, 33)

And this is exactly what narration is, a process of “re-accessing” the material. And what this looks like in science is lots of regular short reviews. The ideas and calculations of science require effort and practice on the pathway towards mastery. I really like how Mays recommends an atmosphere of mastery. He writes, “Every single day in your class should be a mastery experience for your students” (185). Thus, taking moments to do short-form narrations of scientific concepts goes a long way towards shaping and molding students in the ways of scientific thought.

An Example Lesson from Novare

I think it is helpful to see how one would use narration with an example from an actual text. The following image is from page 107 in General Biology published by Novare (this is one of the pages from their sample pages available for free preview at Classical Academic Press).

Looking at this passage, you can see how the text already breaks the content down to small and accessible episodes. I would provide a “small talk” by listing the four reactions on the board. We would read carefully and closely the first paragraph one time and then turn the book over. My narration cue would be simply to say, “tell me what you recall about glycolysis.” One student might share that it means “sugar breaking” and that a small amount of ATP is released. Then I call for another student to add more to the picture, and that student says that a six-carbon molecule is broken down into a 3-carbon molecule. Another student might say that an electron is carried by a molecule, but can’t remember the name. Then the first student remembers that it was a NADH molecule. By this point, much of the paragraph has been narrated by what we would call a string narration. Now I can have the text turned back over, and I ask the students, “what did we miss?” They can see that the 6-carbon molecule is a glucose molecule and the 3-carbon molecule is an acid. In a few minutes we have accomplished a great deal to assimilate the knowledge of glycolysis and can move to oxidation of pyruvate.

Another narration technique we could use is to spend a few minutes closely observing the illustration at the bottom of the page. After those few minutes, we turn the text over and take out our white boards and dry-erase markers. I ask them to draw the illustration labelling as many items as they can remember on their own. Then I have them compare their illustration with their table partner, filling in any information they left out. Again, in very short order, they have assimilated a considerable amount of knowledge in a short amount of time.

Taken all together, this page might take an entire 45-minute lesson to get though all four reactions and the illustration. The next lesson begins with some guided questions to recall details from the text and the illustration, which might come in the form of a short quiz taking five to eight minutes. The retrieval practice is challenging but reinforces much of the information they need to know about how cells create energy.

Hopefully this deep dive into narration as it relates to science helps you deepen your understanding of the method of narration. Even if you don’t teach science, the skills described here are easily applicable to other subjects that contain detailed prose. The point is that narration is a sophisticated tool that can grow in complexity and nuance as students rise through the grade levels.

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

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The Visual Arts in the Classical Tradition

The visual arts have encompassed everything from painting and sculpture to architecture, tapestry, furniture, pottery, and more recently photography. The visual arts have been a part of the human experience since prehistoric times, with cave paintings being some of our only means of understanding the earliest civilizations, since the visual arts predate written language. In fact, wherever civilizations have emerged, the visual arts have been produced. We often think of the sculpture of ancient civilizations such as Greece and Rome. Included amongst these ancient works are artifacts from Eastern civilizations such as China, the Middle East such as Egypt and Babylon, and the Americas such as the Aztecs, Incas and Mayans.

In the Western tradition, the guilds that developed during the Middle Ages shaped our understanding of the visual arts. In order to become a master who could take on apprentices, artisans would have to produce a “chef d’oeuvre” or a masterpiece (also referred to as a magnum opus). By the time of the Renaissance, this masterpiece idea led to advancements in architecture and painting, particularly through the application of mathematical formulas that enabled the building of taller structures, such as the dome on the Florence Cathedral, and the discovery of linear perspective by Brunelleschi in the early 1400s. Virtuosity became the litmus test for true masters, and artists continued to push the envelope of effects that could be created on the canvas. Painting in particular took on epic proportions in part due to the promotion of the great artists in Vasari’s publication of Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1550). Art history was now created and the personalities of individuals such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michaelangelo came to dominate the landscape of painting for generations to come.

In and amongst this personality-driven approach to art history, the creation of works of enduring beauty and significance were produced in a succession of art movements down through the centuries. What gives these creations such significance is the fact that they are idea-driven works with religious and philosophical insight. For instance, the famous Creation of Adam by Michaelangelo is simultaneously a religious interpretation of Adam’s creation by God showing an intimate connection between God and his creation. At the same time, we can see the philosophical humanism of the Renaissance in the details of the painting, such as the depiction of God in human form, an outline of the human brain behind God, and an idealized depiction of Adam.

Picture study, then, becomes this valuable treasure trove of idea-rich artifacts that have historical significance as the means by which some of the most important aspects of Western culture are handed down through the ages. Through works of art, we encounter truth, goodness and beauty in ways that can cultivate the affective domain. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I’m not certain one can create some sort of equivalency between art work and the written word. That being said, a classroom and a course of study ought to incorporate the visual arts alongside all the other areas of the curriculum from literature to history and from science to mathematics.

How to Do Picture Study

Our ability to teach a picture study lessons does not rely on any expertise we bring to the subject, but on a clear and consistent method of interacting with works of art. In fact, picture study can be approached just like reading a text, only the “text” we are “reading” happens to be of a visual nature. I cannot stress this point enough, as there ought not to be the thought that one must have studied art history or gained some competency as an artist in order to teach picture study. If you find yourself lacking in expertise, great! You get to encounter works of art alongside your students, growing in your own appreciation of artists and their works.

Charlotte Mason spells out what picture study looks like in her sixth volume, A Philosophy of Education:

We recognise that the power of appreciating art and of producing to some extent an interpretation of what one sees is as universal as intelligence, imagination, nay, speech, the power of producing words. But there must be knowledge and, in the first place, not the technical knowledge of how to produce, but some reverent knowledge of what has been produced; that is, children should learn pictures, line by line, group by group, by reading, not books, but pictures themselves. A friendly picture-dealer supplies us with half a dozen beautiful little reproductions of the work of some single artist, term by term. After a short story of the artist’s life and a few sympathetic words about his trees or his skies, his river-paths or his figures, the little pictures are studied one at a time; that is, children learn, not merely to see a picture but to look at it, taking in every detail. Then the picture is turned over and the children tell what they have seen,––a dog driving a flock of sheep along a road but nobody with the dog. Ah, there is a boy lying down by the stream drinking. It is morning as you can see by the light so the sheep are being driven to pasture, and so on; nothing is left out, the discarded plough, the crooked birch, the clouds beautiful in form and threatening rain, there is enough for half an hour’s talk and memory in this little reproduction of a great picture and the children will know it wherever they see it, whether a signed proof, a copy in oils, or the original itself in one of our galleries. We hear of a small boy with his parents in the National Gallery; the boy, who had wandered off on his own account, came running back with the news,––”Oh, Mummy, there’s one of our Constables on that wall.” In this way children become acquainted with a hundred, or hundreds, of great artists during their school-life and it is an intimacy which never forsakes them.

Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education, 214-215.

Let’s break this down into some clear steps. First, notice that the interest students bring to picture study is innate and universal. Children are predisposed to bring their own intelligence and imagination to the task of viewing works of art. All we need to do is place before them a healthy diet of various great paintings and they devour the meal quite readily. Second, the children encounter the works of art themselves by way of prints. Today we have access to so many via the internet. We can print out copies on printer paper, or can purchase postcard sized reproductions. Hanging great artwork on the walls is another means of placing these works of art in front of them.

With this philosophical framework in mind, let’s turn to the method itself. The lesson begins with a short reading about the artist and the artwork. This shouldn’t be too lengthy, only enough to spark interest in the painting to be looked at in the lesson. Then the students look at one painting at a time. This is a full-focused immersion in the painting. Mason has the children “look at it, taking in every detail.” They can spend several minutes just looking at the print, noticing quite a number of highly specific details. Once the print has been looked at, students turn the picture over and narrate what they have seen. Notice how narration occurs just like we would expect of students reading a literary or historical book. They tell back the details they have noticed: colors, people in the picture, obscure items in the background, little details we ourselves may never have noticed. We will take a look at how we can develop art vocabulary in a moment, but for those just beginning, children can use simple descriptive language to tell back what they see.

I generally have students turn the picture back over to do another round of observations. This time they will notice items shared by other students. Sometimes debates emerge as to what some of the obscure objects might be. At other times, a teacher can focus their attention on key details, such as the source of light, the nature of the subject, the use of color, the development of perspective, and a host of other topics that helps develop their understanding of art.

A lesson of this sort – a short reading, focused attention on one painting, narration, and discussion – does not take very long. In fact, such a lesson is a great one to have in hand on days where there’s only a short amount of time between other classes. If you have a good set of prints, it is easy to distribute a set and encounter another new painting by the artist being studied. The simplicity of the method means that over the course of weeks and months, the student accumulates a good number of paintings of a single artist. The students develop a sense of the artist’s style and immediately notice similarities between paintings studied according to this method. Over many years, as they encounter numerous other artists, they develop a sense of differences in style.

Formal Elements of Art

I myself never studied art in any formal way. There has always been an appreciation, but my own study of art began when I started teaching picture study in the way outlined. It has become one of my favorite subjects to teach, and along the way I have fallen in love with the landscapes of William Turner, the works of Caravaggio still move me, and the philosophical ideas of Eduard Manet still compel me. One of the best ways to help students (and sometimes ourselves) to encounter art is to develop their art vocabulary. Here I’ll lay out the basic or formal elements of art: line, shape, space, texture, color, light.

Taking the first three together – line, shape, space – these are essential to the way an artist conveys three dimension in two-dimensional representation. We can find lines, whether well articulated or implied in the work of art. Sometimes the lines are straight, angled, curved or otherwise. Many times the lines move our eyes throughout the painting or focus our eyes on the subject. With shape, we are looking at the basic shapes being used – such as circles and triangles – and how they are arranged. All of these exist in the space depicted on the canvas. Are the shapes of flowers, vases and fruits placed on a table? Do ships sail on a rolling sea? Is there a window behind a lady in a portrait that gives a sense of the setting? All of these questions point to the use of space.

Texture, color and light are effects that play with our perception of what is happening in the picture. Artists use these effects to create visual realism or to trick the eye through impressions. Texture gives the sense of roughness or smoothness. Even without touching the painting, the eye gets the impression that there is a tactile aspect to the painting. As to color, even a basic understanding of the color wheel can help students see the use of contrasting colors – such as blues and oranges – or the use of warm and cold colors – red hues versus blue hues. The concept of light pertains to the way a source of light plays off of objects, so that there are faces that appear brighter and faces that appear darker. You can often look for shading to identify where the source of light is located.

As you prepare lessons for your students, bringing in these formal elements can open new lines of observation. I recommend choosing one or two formal elements per painting during the second round of observations. I might say, “Okay, this time when we look at our painting, look at the way our artist has used color.” Then I would have students tell back what colors they found, where they are located, contrasts they see, interesting or odd uses of color, and so forth.

Art Movements and Artistic Techniques

Mason recommends reading from a biography of the artist being studied. There are many biographies that can be found for the most prominent artists throughout history appropriate for whatever age level you are working with. The goal with these readings is to understand the personal life of the artist, perhaps their early years, where they studied art, breakthrough moments in their career. Most biographies will indicate what sort of art movement the artist contributed to or was reacting to. For instance, Claude Monet was a prominent figure in the impressionist movement in France during the late nineteenth century. Unpacking what impressionism was as a movement gives a sense of the historical setting as well as the techniques used by artists associated with that movement.

Using impressionism as an example, we know that it was a movement that was reacting to the art of the establishment which has become very staid and formal. Eduard Manet expressed the philosophical concept that “art is artifice,” an idea that inspired a controversial new art scene to emerge. There’s a sense of rebellion amongst the impressionists. As a movement, the artists of this scene contributed to a cultural revolution associated with the modernism of the late 1800s. We can trace some of the tendencies to break with tradition in later art movements to the ideals of impressionism, such as the depiction of everyday life scenes rather than classical or historical subject matters. The irony is that today impressionist art is looked upon as some of the most beautiful artwork ever produced, but in its day the original audiences of these works of art were scandalized by much of what was produced during this era.

The techniques associated with impressionism are tied to the philosophical ideas these artists espoused. For instance, the quick and unblended brush strokes create blurred effects where they eye perceives objects in the painting, but can also see splashes of paint and brushstrokes. In some cases, the canvas itself is left untreated and peaks out amongst the brush strokes. When observing these paintings in a museum, you will often find people standing very close to the painting to see the individual brushstrokes and then moving away from the painting to more clearly see the subject matter of the painting. The brushstroke techniques used by impressionist painters gives a sense of lightness and energy to the paintings, in part because the activity of the artist remains visible in the completed work.

As you read about artists, there will emerge a strong connection between the historical setting of the artist and their works as well as specific techniques that artist used and developed over the course of a career. These readings enable students to see items in the paintings they observe and provide even more language for them to describe what they are noticing.

Hopefully this exploration of picture study has inspired you to incorporate paintings into your classroom or school. No matter what subject you teach, works of art can make lessons come alive.

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RICHer Habits

As I was wrapping up the 2023 calendar year, a book captured my attention called Rich Habits by Thomas Corley. At first I dismissed the book since the title sounded trite and my initial scan of the book seemed oriented around something like a get-rich-quick framework. However, I gave it time to develop and was surprised to find that the main point of the book had less to do with wealth creation than I had at first expected. Instead, the kinds of habits that were delineated had more to do with good living. My initial misgivings gave way to a new appreciation for what Corley was on about. Quite a few of his habits aligned well with my own moral outlook.

While some of the advice in Rich Habits is squarely in the domain of financial advice (such as “save 20 percent of your net income”), many of the habits explored by Corley seem almost unrelated to wealth and finances. For instance, he notes that over 80 percent of wealthy people read at least 30 minutes daily. Corley writes about habits such as emotional control, listening more than you talk, avoiding toxic relationships and seeking a mentor. As a classical educator, I found that many of Corley’s habits align well with the kinds of insights one gains from the rich intellectual and religious traditions delineated in the great books. I expected to find trite and trivial material, but instead found wisdom.

What Corley really gets right is the inspiring idea that must be present to generate the effort that goes into forming a new habit. My initial read was that whatever Corley was on about, it would not truly inspire me to form new habits. It is not as though riches hold no attraction for me. It’s just that I have an aversion to money making for its own sake. Perhaps I have taken too close attention to the verse “For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.” (1 Tim. 6:10). I am not saying that it is evil to earn money, nor is it evil when one has the opportunities of utilizing the wealth-making tools available to us today. But for me I have often not been motivated by money and instead desire some higher cause. This is where philosophy and theology have gotten me: the higher calling. Thus, in discovering the extent to which the Rich Habits aim towards higher ideals, I really started formulating some thoughts on habits I could go after in this next calendar year.

Reviewing Habit Formation by Charlotte Mason

Let’s take a moment to consider once again how one forms habits. Mason writes, “In all matters of physical exercise it is obvious to us that–do a thing a hundred times and it becomes easy, do a thing a thousand times and it becomes mechanical, as easy to do as not.” (School Education 105). This principle of repeatability is core to habit formation. Having begun with an inspiring idea such as living a fuller, richer life, we need to detail specifically what the habit is. Take for instance, the desire to read more. We sense that reading more will make us wiser and more knowledgeable. But simply telling ourselves to read more won’t get us there. Instead, we need to spell out the details. When, where, what and how are essential here. A more detailed habit will be articulated as “I will read for at least thirty minutes daily by placing a book next to my favorite chair and setting a reminder when I get home from work.” Notice how specific such a program is. It implies that the necessary materials are set out. A time and location are set, and a numerical measure is established to know when the habit is performed each day. Being specific like this helps us track when we have accomplished one of the many times we need to practice the habit for it to be fully formed.

We must be diligent and vigilant with ourselves. When training a child, we are the grown up that can assist them with reminders and accountability. But if we are on our own, we may need to recruit the support of others. Telling a spouse or a friend of the habit is really effective to support this new area of growth. Set some check in times to report on how things are going. Or find someone who wants to develop the same habit as you. Getting the details right can be helpful here. You don’t need to overdo it on what your daily routine will be. Set reasonable standards. Make it easy to comply. If you get started into your habit routine and discover it is a little overbearing, tinker with it a bit. With the reading example, it may be that 15 minutes is the right dosage. If you’ve only been reading zero minutes a day, even five minutes a day is a massive improvement and puts a peg down on the daily habit of reading.

Aim for full compliance, or at least be honest with your progress. It is worth having some sort of tracking device (a simple notebook would suffice, but there are also apps for this). If you aimed for 30 minutes, but your time got interrupted, no worries. Simply mark the 23 minutes spent that day. Accept it for what it is and aim all the more to fulfill your goal the next day. One piece of advice I’ve heard from numerous sources is to never let a habit lapse for two days in a row. Life throws us curve balls, so we can allow for a one-day lapse. But it is then up to us to regroup and recommit to never let two blanks to occur.

Finally, consider the reward of your habit. I think the truest reward is the acquisition of the habit itself. With our example of reading daily, the true reward is a growing list of books read. It is becoming the kind of person who reads daily. Now, it can be helpful to have little rewards along the way. But be careful not to become behaviorist about your habits. You are not trying to become your own trained monkey after all. What I try to do is picture pleasant things that would induce me to continue my habit training regimen. For instance, would a nice cup of tea, sipped slowly during my reading episode better incline me towards maintaining a daily reading ritual? Most certainly! For others it might be a chat in the kitchen with a spouse who have mutually agreed to a reading routine and delightfully share what they’ve read. There are all kinds of little rewards that fit well the overarching goal of living a life that is fuller and richer.

My 2024 Habits

So what is my list of habits for this next year? Here are three of my most important habits along with a brief description of each.

1. Begin each day with morning prayer. As an Anglican, we have a rich tradition of the Book of Common Prayer. It really only takes about 20 minutes to read the morning prayer, which incorporates confession, adoration, intercession and Bible reading. I have an app on my phone that makes it super easy to do the readings as well. Deepening my relationship with God is very important to me, so this is one way to habitualize a standard process that will daily work toward this goal.
2. Read for a minimum of 30 minutes daily. I already read a lot and have opportunities to access great books as well as professional journals. However, my reading habit occurs in fits and starts. I tend to go days and even weeks without reading and then go on a reading binge. So this habit is more about making reading a regular part of each day. I am still likely to binge read when approaching a deadline, but I think I can curtail the drastic on and off again nature of my reading. I have accumulated a number of books that I am very interested in reading, and now this habit will see me systematically make my way through them.
3. Write a minimum of 500 words daily. This is actually transforming an old habit into a new format. Previously I cultivated a habit of writing a minimum of 20 minutes a day. This fit nicely into my morning routine and gave me a sense of accomplishment before I even started working. Now I have some new goals on the horizon to develop at least one of the book ideas which will require a more consistent output. So I shifted from a time-based approach to a word-count approach. I am aiming to send one book proposal by March 31^st.

SMARTer Habits

Breaking down these habits, they have several things in common. First, there is an embedded inspiring goal, such as a deep relationship with God or a book proposal. Many New Year’s resolutions are inspiring goals, but they often lack specific routines that leverage daily effort to accomplish those goals. This leads to the second things these habits have in common which is a specific daily action. Here I draw from the SMART goals framework to spell out habits that are Specific, Measurable, Ambitious, Realistic and Time-related. Now, there are some different ways the acronym SMART has been constructed, but I find this one the most helpful for me. Let’s break this down a little bit more. By specific, we mean that details get spelled out. I add in another “S” by keeping the details simple as well. I should be able to recall in a few short phrases what the plan is. By measurable, we mean that it should have some form of numerical measurement that demonstrates that you have actually done or not done something.

By ambitious, we mean that the goal ought to be a bit challenging and aim at something that you feel is important to you. This draws upon what we learn from the Zone of Proximal Development. We grow when we challenge ourselves a little bit. If our goal is too easy, we become bored with it and hinder our own growth. By realistic we mean that the goal can actually be achieved. A goal that is too challenging, in other words, also hinders growth. If we’ve set ourselves an impossible task, then we shut down any hope of accomplishing it.

Finally, by time-related, we can mean an amount of time is allocated each day or we set some sort of deadline by which the goal is accomplished. For two of my habits, I have set a daily amount of time devoted to the habit. For the last one, I have set a deadline for shipping a book proposal. Using the SMART framework can help quickly map out a habit that actually works for you.

In my previous work on habits, I spelled out ways we can incorporate Charlotte Mason’s method of habit training for the children we are working with. I think if we are taking habit training seriously as a tool to enable our students to enjoy freedom and masterful living, it behooves us to likewise habit train ourselves. Taking inspiration from our educational values, we can imagine ourselves as carrying out our calling, appropriately handling stress, taking care of ourselves in healthy ways, and being well connected with God and our family and friends. So as you go into this next year, consider how you can aim at your highest values and then develop habits that will give you the best opportunity of achieving that inspiring vision.

Take a deeper dive into Charlotte Mason’s practice of Habit Training with our on-demand webinar. Learn practical tips to guide students towards their best, most mature selves with this training video.

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Marilla is advised by Mrs. Lynde, the Cuthbert’s opinionated neighbor, to place Anne in the town school. There Anne meets many of the town’s children and comes under the tutelage of Mr. Phillips, a didactic teacher who emphasizes discipline and shows favoritism to his champion students. Mr. Phillips doesn’t last long, departing at the end of Anne’s first year at Avonlea school. Altogether, Mr. Phillips would not be missed. According to Marilla, “Mr. Phillips isn’t any good at all as a teacher” (Montgomery 118). After the farewell party in his honor, Mr. Phillips hardly receives a reference the remainder of the series, such was his lack of inspiration or connection with the students.

Replacing the forgettable Mr. Phillips is Miss Stacy, a figure who will play an important role in Anne’s life. Unable to return to school due to the broken ankle she suffered at the Phillips farewell party, Anne learns of Miss Stacy from her friends, and the reports she receives gives her anticipatory delight. She learns that “every other Friday afternoon she has recitations and everybody has to say a piece or take part in a dialogue.” For one so enamored with literature, poetry and imagination, this excites the spirit of Anne. She also hears that “the Friday afternoons they don’t have recitations Miss Stacy takes them all to the woods for a ‘field’ day and they study ferns and flowers and birds. And they have physical culture exercises every morning and evening” (189). In the 1985 movie created by Kevin Sullivan, we see several scenes of Miss Stacy giving an inspirational speech to her class, traipsing across the pastures of Prince Edward Island, drawing in their nature journals, and exercising outdoors.

Among the many programs Miss Stacy implemented – including a school drama and a story-writing club – the program that would have the most significant impact on the direction of Anne’s life is the after-school class for the older students to prepare them for the entrance exams to Queen’s Academy, a teacher’s college in Charlottetown. This program serves as a passing of the baton, inasmuch as Anne would eventually attend Queen’s and go on to become the teacher at Avonlea school. Miss Stacy’s impact on Anne led to a life that followed in her footsteps due to the inspiration and connection Miss Stacy formed with her students. Miss Shirley in her own right would embody many of the same principles that were exemplified by Miss Stacy.

Miss Shirley would go on to teach at her home school in Avonlea for two years, applying the same kind of principles she learned under Miss Stacy, although we are still able to witness the many mishaps that follow Anne in her new role in town. She departs Avonlea for further training at Redmond College and then takes a post at Summerside High School. Summerside is a town run by the Pringles, the social elites of the community. With a class full of Pringle siblings and cousins, Miss Shirley must use all of her imagination and connection to win the hearts of her students, who are set against her from the beginning for earning the post over another candidate, a Pringle relative.

Just one episode in her teaching career will go to show the influence Miss Stacy had on Anne Shirley and her teaching methods. Miss Shirley organized a drama club during her first year at Summerside, directing the play Mary, Queen of Scots. Through the drama club, Miss Shirley was able to spark the imagination of her students and created a connection with even some of the stubborn Pringle children.

For both Miss Stacy and Miss Shirley, there were a few key principles that guided their effectiveness in teaching. Here we’ll enumerate a few of these. As an aside, I have found it interesting, as I read these stories and watch the movies, how much the episodes surrounding the classroom remind me of Charlotte Mason’s pedagogy. Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author of the Anne series, is only a generation younger than Miss Mason. It is difficult to make a connection between the two, with Montgomery residing most of her life in Canada and Mason in England. However, there is a sense that they are or would be kindred spirits, believing in the full personhood of children and expressing sensible ideas of education. So, as I spell out some of these principles, we’ll see how consistent they are with a thoroughgoing philosophy of education as presented in Charlotte Mason’s works.

A Sympathetic Teacher

Creating a connection with students is one of the key principles to effectiveness in teaching. In his book, The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle illustrates repeatedly the essential qualities of highly successful groups. It all boils down to connection. He writes, “Group performance depends on behavior that communicates one powerful overarching idea: We are safe and connected” (Coyle 15). In Montgomerie’s Anne series, her main character is always seeking connection in the form of “kindred spirits,” people who have sympathy. When you break the word “sympathy” down, it means “having mutual (sym-) feelings (pathos).” This mutual feeling can be cultivated in a classroom by a teacher who is seeking opportunities to create an alliance with her students.

Connections and alliances can be formed in all sorts of ways. Both Miss Stacy and later Miss Shirley would use drama as a means of creating sympathy. To act in a play draws upon the sympathetic part of our natures, so it is only natural for students to be drawn together in the effort of putting on a play. Coaching a sports team, going on nature walks, or doing a handcraft together are all ways that being with your students cultivates the sense of togetherness, the safety and connection Coyle describes.

The sympathy we offer to our students is a means of empowering them to accomplish the work of learning. To learn anything takes effort, and we as human beings are averse to effortful work, unless we have a compelling vision of the value of the work to be done. This is where the sympathetic teacher provides the sense of togetherness and sets the tone for the work to be done. The teacher cannot do the work of learning, that is the responsibility of the child. But the teacher can make the conditions optimal for learning through her sympathetic presence. Charlotte Mason writes:

“The children, not the teachers, are the responsible persons; they do the work by self-effort. The teachers give sympathy and occasionally elucidate, sum up or enlarge, but the actual work is done by the scholars.”

Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education, p. 6.

Such a teacher is aware of the needs of her students and provides just the right direction to enable them to put in the effort of learning.

The Love of Reading

A constant theme in the Anne series is a love of great literature. There are wonderful episodes where Anne enacts a scene or delivers a rousing recitation from the great poets. Anne’s love of literature becomes a great temptation for her. In one scene, Miss Stacy catches Anne reading Ben Hur when she should have been reading her Canadian history text. She recounts the incident to Marilla:

“I had just got to the chariot race when school went in. I was simply wild to know how it turned out—although I felt sure Ben Hur must win, because it wouldn’t be poetical justice if he didn’t—so I spread the history open on my desk lid and then tucked Ben Hur between the desk and my knee. I just looked as if I were studying Canadian history, you know, while all the while I was reveling in Ben Hur. I was so interested in it that I never noticed Miss Stacy coming down the aisle until all at once I just looked up and there she was looking down at me, so reproachful-like. I can’t tell you how ashamed I felt, Marilla, especially when I heard Josie Pye giggling. Miss Stacy took Ben Hur away, but she never said a word then. She kept me in at recess and talked to me. She said I had done very wrong in two respects. First, I was wasting the time I ought to have put on my studies; and secondly, I was deceiving my teacher in trying to make it appear I was reading a history when it was a storybook instead. I had never realized until that moment, Marilla, that what I was doing was deceitful. I was shocked. I cried bitterly, and asked Miss Stacy to forgive me and I’d never do such a thing again; and I offered to do penance by never so much as looking at Ben Hur for a whole week, not even to see how the chariot race turned out. But Miss Stacy said she wouldn’t require that, and she forgave me freely.”

Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, 240-241.

It’s a delightful scene that exposes Anne’s fascination with literature, and Miss Stacy’s approach to discipline. In the midst of confession and forgiveness, we see how Miss Stacy comes alongside Anne to help order her affections. History must be read in its proper time, and literature must be read in its time. Care must be given to all forms of reading. Anne goes on to explain to Marilla the influence Miss Stacy has had on her preferences for reading:

“I never read any book now unless either Miss Stacy or Mrs. Allan thinks it is a proper book for a girl thirteen and three-quarters to read. Miss Stacy made me promise that. She found me reading a book one day called, The Lurid Mystery of the Haunted Hall. It was one Ruby Gillis had lent me, and, oh, Marilla, it was so fascinating and creepy. It just curdled the blood in my veins. But Miss Stacy said it was a very silly, unwholesome book, and she asked me not to read any more of it or any like it. I didn’t mind promising not to read any more like it, but it was agonizing to give back that book without knowing how it turned out. But my love for Miss Stacy stood the test and I did.”

Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, 241.

Cultivating a love of reading is not simply about getting a child to simply read books. It’s about helping them to be choosy about the quality of books they read as well as giving them the proper attention and care to expand their minds through a healthy appetite for books. Charlotte Mason describes the role a teacher plays in cultivating this love of reading:

“The child who has been taught to read with care and deliberation until he has mastered the words of a limited vocabulary, usually does the rest for himself. The attention of his teachers should be fixed on two points—that he acquires the habit of reading, and that he does not fall into slipshod habits of reading.”

Charlotte Mason, Home Education, p. 226.

The aim is for the child to gain independence by reading “for himself.” This means they have the autonomy to choose personal readers and has the ability to “read with care and deliberation.” Reading is such an essential skill for awakening the imagination. So many of the richest aspects of life require an active imagination, whether that be the experience of abstract concepts such as love or empathy, the expansion of our intellects through the consideration of alternative perspectives, or the appropriation of a flourishing relationship with God. The cultivation a love of reading, then, is one of the principles to effectiveness in teaching.

Instilling Willing Obedience

A final principle of effectiveness in teaching has to do with preparing a child to be at peace under authority. There is a difference between a child who has been made to obey, and a child who obeys willingly. This requires the teacher or parent to be at peace in their own authority. I have found that the roles that bear authority must be carried out with careful consideration never to erode that authority through being overly familiar or chummy on the one extreme or strict and rules-based on the other extreme. There are a warm and orderly disposition someone in authority must acquire that enables those under authority to willingly obey. At the same time, there is an ability to speak to those under authority that requires, guides and confirms proper obedience.

In the episode shared in length above, we see Miss Stacy correcting Anne by naming two wrongs she had done by reading Ben Hur when she should have been working on history. Miss Stacy identifies how this act was a waste of time as well as deceitful. In the 1985 film, we are shown the episode and hear the words from Miss Stacy. It’s a stunning moment where we see the conviction of what is good and right in the countenance and the words of Miss Stacy. But we also feel the warmth of her connection to Anne. Rather than being made to feel shame or forced to obey, Anne is brought to a place of willing obedience. This properly ordered relationship of authority – being in peace in authority and under authority – actually enhanced the depth of affection Anne had for Miss Stacy. Anne viewed her as a person who had her best interests at heart as well as a person who could guide her towards virtuous living.

Charlotte Mason expresses how important it is to “secure willing obedience” on the part of students. It is the pathway to their own happiness. She writes:

“It is the part of the teacher to secure willing obedience, not so much to himself as to the laws of the school and the claims of the matter in hand. If a boy have a passage to read, he obeys the call of that immediate duty, reads the passage with attention and is happy in doing so.”

Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education, p. 70.

Notice how there is a higher calling the teacher is pointing to. She mentions “the laws of the school,” which in some cases are clearly expressed in, say, a school-side set of rules, or classroom procedures. However, there are many more unwritten rules that are actually an outworking of natural law or divine law. In other words, we are not securing willing obedience to ourselves as individuals, but to a higher order that we are all duty bound to obey. I in my position of authority as a teacher am duty bound to call my students up to that higher calling, and to do so with the view of their abundant sense of duty and ultimate happiness.

There are three tenets to willing obedience that are easily expressed in what I call a mantra. Obedience is right away, all the way, and with a good attitude. Having this framework helps us to coach students of any age to accomplish the effort of learning by assessing these three tenets. For instance, take the child who has been assigned a homework set and given time to complete that in class. Calling that child to work on it right away is essential to cultivating willing obedience. Don’t wait until a later time, strike while the iron is hot! Has the child completed all of the homework set? Here we can point out how obedience is “all the way.” We are only satisfied with a job done all the way. It can happen that when assigning the homework set, we hear grumbling. Here we call for obedience with a good attitude. We are only satisfied with a job done cheerfully.

This on-demand webinar provides 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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And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

Our modern world does not know what to do with nature. As a result, neither do our schools. For some, nature is a victim of humanity, a primordial entity (Mother Nature?) in need of rescue from the sins of industrialism. For others, nature is a tool, a utilitarian pathway to increased lifespans, decreased global poverty, improved technologies, and an overall brighter future. 

In scripture, we see that nature is the result of God’s creative activity. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” we read. The earth, in its earliest moments, is formless, empty, and dark. And yet, as the creation narrative unfolds, things change quickly. A once formless world is now given shape. Emptiness is replaced with life to the full even as darkness is swallowed up by light. “And God saw that it was good.”

A Calling to Cultivate

How might we lead our students to study the natural world in a way that is aligned with this biblical vision?

To do so, it seems, we must keep reading:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”… And God blessed them. And God said to them [humankind], “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.

Genesis 1: 26-31 (ESV)

Here we see humankind’s distinct responsibility: to rule creation as God’s royal deputy, stewarding the natural world with authority, dominion, and prudence. To rule is not to oppress as some might interpret the word “subdue,” but rather to oversee or govern toward a state of flourishing. This is the creation mandate, a divine injunction for the human race to bring order to creation, which will be latter mirrored by Christ’s own mandate to his followers to bring this order to fulfillment in the kingdom of God.

Wisdom of the Natural World

In the classical tradition, the study of nature was considered a subset of philosophy, “the pursuit of wisdom.” Natural philosophy, hence, is “the study of wisdom about the natural world.” And yet, in modern schools today, we study science, not nature. Our students learn the scientific method, the process for conducting experiments, and the importance of evidence-based reasoning. Through this study, they become devotees to scientism, modern scientific investigation, and are trained to gather “data” about the natural world to attain the desired ends of society.

But amidst this process, are students actually encountering this world for themselves? Are they being equipped to prudently rule and steward creation as God commands them? Are they learning to see it rightly for what it is, indeed, to love it?

Here I am reminded of a famous scene from the 1997 film Good Will Hunting. In a crucial moment of dialogue between Will (played by Matt Damon) and his professor-therapist Dr. Maguire (played by Robin Williams), Dr. Maguire confronts his pupil with a prophetic word:

You’re just a boy. You don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about. You’ve never been out of Boston. So if I asked you about art you could give me the skinny on every art book ever written…Michelangelo? You know a lot about him I bet. Life’s work, criticisms, political aspirations. But you couldn’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You’ve never stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling.”

In the story, Will, a self-taught genius, can rattle off facts like a human encyclopedia, and yet, he does not actually know in the deepest sense. Why? He has not experienced the truth, goodness, and beauty of what he has studied for himself. He has not opened himself up to real experiences, becoming vulnerable to these things, and risking the opportunity to love.

Connecting Children with Nature

If we are not careful, we as educators can inadvertently commit the same error in our modern educational approaches to studying nature. In efforts to make knowledge useful, we can seal off the possibility of encountering beauty. In aims to train students to have power over nature, we fail to experience its healing powers over us. In objectives to increase A.P. test scores, our students can tell us everything about flora, except which specimens grow in their own gardens.

To be clear, I fully support and respect the processes and achievements of modern science. I would not be able to write this article in the nexus of modern technologies swirling around me in good conscience if I did not. But if we are going to educate children to study nature in the fullest sense, we must lead them to encounter nature for themselves.

In Volume 1 of her Home Education Series, Charlotte Mason writes,

He must live hours daily in the open air, and, as far as possible, in the country; must look and touch and listen; must be quick to note, consciously, every peculiarity of habit or structure, in beast, bird, or insect; the manner of growth and fructification of every plant. He must be accustomed to ask why–Why does the wind blow? Why does the river flow? Why is a leaf-bud sticky? And do not hurry to answer his questions for him; let him think his difficulties out so far as his small experience will carry him.

Home Education, p. 264-265

Here we see Mason’s instruction that for children to properly love and know nature, they must spend time outdoors. This time can be spent with generous amounts of free and unstructured play as well intentionally led nature studies. During these studies, students can observe a specimen closely and allow their minds to ponder what they observes.

In a later volume, Mason writes,

On one afternoon in the week, the children go for a ‘nature walk’ with their teachers. They notice for themselves, and the teacher gives a name or other information as it is asked for, and it is surprising what a range of knowledge a child of nine or ten acquires. The teachers are careful not to make these nature walks an opportunity for scientific instruction, as we wish the children’s attention to be given to observation with very little direction. In this way they lay up that store of ‘common information’ which Huxley considered should precede science teaching; and, what is much more important, they learn to know and delight in natural objects as in the familiar faces of friends. 

School Education, p. 237

Formal science instruction has its place, including the opportunity to conduct experiments and practice the scientific method. But in the earliest years, the goal of nature study is to put children in direct contact with nature. Through the nature walks described above, students self-direct their own observations, empowering their minds to explorer, wonder, and discover.

From Abstract to Concrete

In “The Parents’ Review,” the monthly magazine edited by Charlotte Mason, guest writer J.C. Medd, writes of nature study:

Its aim is to bring the child into direct relation with facts, to lead him from the abstract to the concrete, and to stimulate him to investigate phenomena for himself. This is to promote that process of self-instruction which is the basis of all true education.”

J.C. Medd, Volume 14, 1903, pgs. 902-906

In conclusion, a philosophy of nature study must begin with what nature is and our role as human beings in relation to it. In scripture, we see that nature is nothing less than God’s good creation, a masterpiece of God’s perfect design, echoing His love for beauty, design, physicality, life, and growth across ecosystems. We, as humans, are called to govern this great masterpiece, cultivating the natural world toward a state of flourishing. To lead our students to know nature for what it truly is, we must vacate our classrooms for a different classroom, one created a long time ago, and accessible by every child to be discovered, known, and loved.

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We might posit the source of this confusion in the modern turn to pragmatic considerations as the main focus of educational theory. Or we could note the human tendency in general to focus on a part of the truth, the need for a student to be prepared for a job, for instance, as if it were the whole of education. We set our sights too narrowly on a certain educational outcome and miss the forest for the trees. We can detect these problems in Mason’s diatribe on the topic:

We do not sufficiently realise the need for unity of principle in education. We have no Captain Idea which shall marshal for us the fighting host of educational ideas which throng the air; so, in default of a guiding principle, a leading idea, we feel ourselves at liberty to pick and choose. This man thinks he is free to make science the sum of his son’s education, the other chooses the classics, a third prefers a mechanical, a fourth, a commercial program. . . . 

Everyone feels himself at liberty to do that which is right in his own eyes with regard to the education of his children. Let it be our negative purpose to discourage in every way we can the educational faddist, that is, the person who accepts a one-sided notion in place of a universal idea as his educational guide. Our positive purpose is to present, in season and out of season, one such universal idea; that is, that education is the science of relations. (Mason, School Education, 160–161)

I am grateful to Karen Glass for pointing out this passage in her book In Vital Harmony: Charlotte Mason and the Natural Laws of Education (23). This diatribe is remarkable for Mason’s insistence on a harmony, coherence or unity to the philosophy and practice of education. Her allusion to the biblical book of Judges reinforces her point that confusion and disorder reign when a guiding law is not followed. Salvation from the oppression of educational faddism can only be attained by a Captain Idea, a Judge, who will unite the tribes and marshal the hosts to restore right worship of the divine. 

The tone of religious authority for such a “guiding principle” is further reinforced by her second biblical allusion to the apostle Paul’s instruction to Timothy:

Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. (2 Tim 4:2-4 KJV; emphasis added)

The danger of faddism is clear in this passage as well, which describes “itching ears” of those who will not continue in sound Christian doctrine. Mason has made herself the Apostle of Educational Philosophy in beginning to propound her sovereign principle: education is the science of relations. 

To understand Charlotte Mason as Educational Philosopher par excellence, it will be helpful to consider two battles she fought in the war of educational philosophy. One of these was near to home and involved Mason defending her own turf for leadership of the Parents National Educational Union (PNEU) against Lady Isabel Margesson. The other involved a confident Mason going on the offensive through a newspaper article review of Maria Montessori (Have you read Patrick Egan’s article comparing Charlotte Mason with Maria Montessori?). Each of these battles reveals something unique about Mason’s relationship with the classical tradition and new educational movements of her day.

Battle #1: The PNEU Identity Crisis

Lady Isabel Margesson represented a major challenge to Charlotte Mason’s leadership of the Parents National Educational Union. In part, the seeds of controversy had already been sown from the union’s founding. After Charlotte Mason’s breakthrough at Bradford with her Home Education lectures (later revised into the book Home Education) and the founding of the first parents union there and then in London, the PNEU constitution was written in such a broad and general way, that it is not surprising that conflict would arise over the direction of the organization. The issue in this case concerned the importance of the new educationists or modern reformers, like Herbert Spencer and Friedrich Froebel.

In the first edition of Home Education, Mason had explicitly endorsed these educational reformers, a move that she would come to regret (as seen by the fact that she excised the comment in later editions). Mason appealed to natural law and the emerging sciences of physiology and psychology as important sources for parents and teachers in the education of their children. In doing so, she struck a chord with the late Victorian mood. Herbert Spencer, however, as one of the most famous English philosophers of her day, also had coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” and propounded social darwinism, in addition to his “idiosyncratic take on non-coercive upbringing, parental defects, good health, and the sound Pestalozzian education in which [Mason herself] had been trained” at the Home & Colonial Training College. With Froebel, the disciple of the Christian Romantic educator Pestalozzi, she was at least on more clearly Christian ground, even if the Kindergarten play-way methods were still controversial. Charlotte Mason was walking a tightrope by endorsing traditional conceptions of habit training and character development and these new educationists.

Lady Isabel was an aristocratic member of the Belgravia branch who advocated for a strong endorsement of the new educationists. By 1892 she had already been conducting classes in her area for parents on Froebel, Pestalozzi, Locke, and Spencer. The PNEU executive committee pushed Mason to include her essay, “What Is the P.N.E.U.?” in the Parents’ Review magazine that Mason edited to promote the organization. In the winter of 1894 Mason departed for Florence, Italy, as a sabbatical of sorts for her health. While she was gone Lady Isabel made her move. She pushed through a number of reforms that would centralize PNEU operations in London and which effectively excluded Mason’s Bradford supporters who could not appear regularly there for meetings. Her goal seemed to be to remake the PNEU along explicitly new educationist lines. 

When Mason returned from her inspiring trip to Florence in May 1894, she became aware of the looming threat. She received Lady Isabel at her home in Ambleside to assess the situation, and wrote to Dr. Schofield who was one of her close allies on the executive committee.

Lady Isabel is charming, her ardour and enthusiasm a pure delight—but the rush with which she takes things is appalling. I well understand it must leave the Committee panting. The situation seems to be this— the Froebel people have got hold of Lady Isabel & are endeavouring to use her, & our Society through her, as an agency to advance KG [i.e., kindergarten] principles and work. For a whole day we contested the point—! The discussion was a little feminine and droll. At one moment it was—that I had drawn all our P.N.E.U. teaching out of Froebel & was to be honoured as an interpreter of that great sage—The next moment, I had not read, did not understand Froebel & that was why I held aloof! I think the talk did some good . . . but they both cling to Froebel as a mystic who has said the last word on Education. In fact I think they rate him with Wagner and Ibsen amongst the “eternities & immensities.” . . . We managed to agree a sentence to be submitted to the Committee—“Herbert Spencer & Froebel supplemented by the progressive scientific thought of the day”– though personally I should rather we boldly claimed to originate our own school of educational thought, hanging on, not to the educational reformers—but to the physiologists of today & the philosophers of all time, but I trust all to the Committee—only we must be on the alert. (Quoted in Margaret Coombs, Hidden Heritage and Educational Influence, 181-182)

A few points stand out from this masterful letter of political positioning. First, Mason’s skillful positioning of Lady Isabel and her friend as rushed innovators, who engage in hero worship of Froebel, gave her own contingent a stronghold of philosophical strength. By refusing to contest Froebel, she left Lady Isabel on the offensive and made her into an outsider insinuating the interests of another organization (“the Froebel people”). Her mockery of Lady Isabel’s extreme endorsement of Froebel resonates with Mason’s later distaste for faddism. 

The subtle suggestion she makes, while conceding a sentence on Spencer and Froebel, that she and the other PNEU founders had originated “our own school of educational thought” was perhaps her master stroke. If nothing else, it foreshadows the role she envisioned for herself, which the PNEU later recognized, as the PNEU’s resident educational philosopher. We can note here that she defines her stance not with the educational reformers, but by a synthesis of modern research (“the physiologists of today”) and “the philosophers of all time.” 

In the end, Mason won out and the 1890 constitution was retained, leading Lady Isabel and her followers to resign from the executive committee. The PNEU identity crisis resulted in Charlotte Mason taking a clearer stance as an educational philosopher in her own right, and with the tradition of classical or liberal educational philosophy. 

Battle #2: Confronting Scientism

Charlotte Mason engaged in another battle much later on in her life, when she was the established Matron of Educational Philosophy for her movement. She had recently published six fiery letters in The Times called The Basis of National Strength, where she prophesied doom for a material education not centered on living books and ideas. A scientistic pedagogy developing the “faculties” of children but void of living and imaginative content was gaining steam.

In 1912 Mason took on Maria Montessori through a review in a public journal (Have you read Patrick Egan’s article comparing Charlotte Mason with Maria Montessori?). Mason criticized Montessori for her “neglect of books, and her utilitarian, scientific pedagogy, which segregated children in simplified environments while denying their personalities” (Coombs, Hidden Heritage, 229). As she wrote in The Times Educational Supplement, 

The Montessori child . . . sharpens a single sense to be sure at the expense of a higher sense but there is no gradual painting in of the background to his life; no fairies play about him, no heroes stir his soul. God and good angels form no part of his thought; the child and the person he will become are a scientific product.

Charlotte Mason, “Miss Mason and the Montessori System,” in The Times, 3 November 1912. Quoted in Coombs, Hidden Heritage, 229 (see also 305n39). The article can be accessed online here.

The problem with scientism and materialism in education is that they are literally soul-killing. For Mason, modern education has lost something essential to humanity from the imaginative, poetic and religious traditions of humankind. “It is on this basis that Mason rejects the notion of training the faculties that was utilized by traditionalists and progressive educators alike in their war over the utility of classical languages and higher mathematics. In her view, reducing the mind to various faculties had little support from the latest research of her day, and it collapsed a Christian philosophical understanding of mind as spirit.” (From the author’s forthcoming Charlotte Mason: A Liberal Education for All, 39)

Perhaps Mason herself explains it best in her Towards a Philosophy of Education:

Our errors in education, so far as we have erred, turn upon the conception we form of ‘mind,’ and the theory which has filtered through to most teachers implies the out-of-date notion of the development of ‘faculties,’ a notion which itself rests on the axiom that thought is not more than a function of the brain. Here we find the sole justification of the scanty curricula provided in most of our schools, for the tortuous processes of our teaching, for the mischievous assertion that ‘it does not matter what a child learns but only how he learns it.’ If we teach much and children learn little we comfort ourselves with the idea that we are ‘developing’ this or the other ‘faculty.’ (12)

Here Mason the educational philosopher outflanks the materialists and scientists of her day and explains how raising a faulty philosophical banner (the faculty theory) results in dangerous educational practices. Educational ideas have consequences and children bear the brunt of this faddism that results in “scanty curricula” and little learning, when students could be narrating from living books.

Charlotte Mason is a unique figure in the history of educational philosophy because of how she is able to draw from different streams and yet “marshal… the fighting host of educational ideas” to engage in polemic when necessary. She sounds a clarion call against faddism and for educational philosophy, not neglecting modern resources, but also not abandoning the tradition of the great “philosophers of all time.” To learn more about Mason’s life and thought, make sure to preorder my book with Classical Academic Press, Charlotte Mason: A Liberal Education for All!

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In this series, I have been exploring Charlotte Mason’s notion that education should be approached through a trifold lens of atmosphere, discipline, and life. Stemming from her view of children as persons, Mason argues that we are limited to three and only three tools to educate. All others encroach in some way or another upon the inherent dignity of the child.

She writes,

Having cut out the direct use of fear or love, suggestion or influence, undue play upon any one natural desire, emulation, for example, we are no longer free to use all means in the education of children. There are but three left for our use and to each of these we must give careful study or we shall not realise how great a scope is left to us.

Towards a Philosophy of Education, p. 95

In the first installment of this series, I took a closer look at what Mason calls the instrument of atmosphere. I explained that for the British educator the goal is to cultivate an environment of learning for persons: one oriented toward relationship, order, and natural beauty. From a classical perspective, we can say that cultivating an atmosphere in this vein is a foundational step for passing on a Christian paideia. 

In the second installment, I explored the instrument of discipline. Here I underscored the importance of training students in good habits as opposed to promoting mere behavioral compliance. While behaviorism focuses on reproducing particular external behaviors through systems of reward and punishment, habit training aims at the heart. Through the repeated practice of good moral habits, children develop virtuous character and the strength, with God’s help, to choose good over evil.

In this third and final installment, I will examine Mason’s notion that “education is a life.” For those unfamiliar with Charlotte Mason, the term “life” could conjure up a few different meanings. Does she mean one’s practical, or everyday life, in the sense that learning should become part of a child’s daily experience? Could she mean “life” in the sense that formal education cannot be contained within the perimeters of a physical classroom or schedule of lessons? Or does she mean “life” in the sense that real education is oriented toward the holistic flourishing of the child, during the school years and beyond?

In this article, I will aim to demonstrate that all three aspects described above are present in Charlotte Mason’s broader notion that our educational efforts ought to be oriented toward feeding the life of the child’s mind. The mind is not a blank slate to be inscribed with the thoughts of others nor is it a receptacle to be filled with atomized pieces of information. Rather, the mind is a living, even spiritual, entity that requires sustenance through ideas encountered in books, art, music, and nature. When the mind is fed probably, the whole child receives the intellectual, spiritual, and moral nourishment to lead a life of flourishing.

The Mind of a Person

Like the first two articles in this series, I will begin this discussion with Charlotte Mason’s notion that children are persons. This is the foundational premise upon which the entirety of her philosophy hangs. Children begin their formal education with a pre-existing intellectual appetite as well as thoughts about how the world works. They are eager to engage, explore, discover, and learn, long before they are led to do so in the classroom or homeschool.

While a conventionally modern analogue for the human mind is a blank slate, Mason compares the mind to an organism– an active and living thing that requires sustenance to continue living. She writes,

The mind is a spiritual octopus, reaching out limbs in every direction to draw in enormous rations of that which under the action of the mind itself becomes knowledge. Nothing can stale its infinite variety; the heavens and the earth, the past, the present, and the future, things great and things minute, nations and men, the universe, all are within the scope of the human intelligence.

Towards a Philosophy of Education, p. 330

Here we see the sheer breadth of the human’s ability to explore, discover, and understand. The mind longs to truly know and insofar as it can continue to find knowledge, it lives on.

The Transformative Power of Knowledge

For Mason, it is important to note that knowledge takes on a transformative role as it becomes part of a child. Now, in contemporary society, we have become all too accustomed to the idea that truth is subjective and, therefore, relative to the individual. This generates mass confusion and the ultimate breakdown of rational dialogue as people speak of “my truth” or “your truth,” as if facts change based on who believes them.

However, as Christians, our foundation for truth is Christ himself . Our epistemological framework for knowledge is God’s transcendent nature, which is immutable. As a result, we can believe with confidence that ultimate truths about reality do not change; they are objective, or outside of us. True knowledge, then, is when people believe believe what is actually true (and have some warrant or justification in this belief).

When Mason emphasizes that knowledge must become part of a child for true learning to occur, she does not mean in the subjective sense that prevails in our culture. Rather, she is emphasizing the transformative power of knowledge. Karen Glass offers a helpful analogy to explain this phenomenon:

If you go to the cupboard looking for sugar and sugar is there, the cupboard is functioning as it should. If you ask a question and a child can produce the correct answer, you might assume that education was successful. The child “learned” the correct answer to the question. But what if that is entirely the wrong picture, and education is not about producing correct answers to drear questions? What if the mind is a hungry, living entity and not a receptacle at all? The cupboard is unaffected and unchanged by the presence of the sugar and other items within. It produces them upon request, but it remains exactly as it was before. So it is with children who dutifully produce the right answers but are unmoved by what they know.

In Vital Harmony, p. 67

Glass, in her exposition of Mason’s thought, makes the point well here that real learning ought to change a person. Mere information recall does not constitute true knowledge in whole-person education. While a cupboard is ambivalent to whether it holds sugar or not, a mind is transformed by the ideas it digests. You can gauge the nourishment of a child’s mind, not be how much they know, but by general indicators of life in general: eagerness, diligence, passion, and a zeal for growth.

Facts vs. Ideas

To truly feed a child’s mind, we must move beyond presenting them with mere facts or information. The instrument of “life” that Mason is referencing is the life of the mind fed on living ideas. To be sure, facts are important, and we want children to form true beliefs about God, creation, and humankind. The key is to present these facts within inspiring ideas that will feed a child’s soul, not merely fill a mental repository.

What is an idea? Charlotte Mason writes,

A live thing of the mind, seems to be the conclusion of our greatest thinkers from Plato to Bacon, from Bacon to Coleridge. We all know how an idea ‘strikes,’ ‘seizes,’ ‘catches hold of,’ ‘impresses’ us and at last, if it be big enough, ‘possesses’ us; in a word, behaves like an entity. If we enquire into any person’s habits of life, mental preoccupation, devotion to a cause or pursuit, he will usually tell us that such and such an idea struck him. This potency of an idea is matter of common recognition. No phrase is more common and more promising than, ‘I have an idea’; we rise to such an opening as trout to a well-chosen fly. There is but one sphere in which the word idea never occurs, in which the conception of an idea is curiously absent, and that sphere is education! Look at any publisher’s list of school books and you shall find that the books recommended are carefully dessicated, drained of the least suspicion of an idea, reduced to the driest statements of fact.

Towards a Philosophy of Education, p. 105

In short, an idea is an aspect of knowledge that comes in contact with the mind, like two objects colliding in motion. Not all facts are ideas, but they become ideas when the mind assimilates and grasps knowledge for itself. This is why the teaching tool of narration is so powerful (you can read about its history in the classical tradition here). When we give children meaningful books to read and narrate, ideas are unlocked through the telling-back process. No two narrations are the same because no two minds are the same. Each mind will be drawn uniquely to distinct ideas even as they ideas remain grounded in objective truth.

Shedding light on how facts become ideas when they are integrated into a child’s broader base of knowledge, Maryellyn St. Cyr, of Ambleside Schools International, writes,

Facts are clothed in ideas. Facts are taught in relation to a vast number of things and integrated into a body of knowledge (part to whole). The learner assimilates this knowledge when it is reproduced or carries a meaningful connection. Learners can act upon information seen or heard through verbal and written narration, individual or cooperative relationships, or visual demonstrations of art and movement .

When Children Love to Learn, p. 103

Conclusion: Towards a Liberal Arts Curriculum in Ideas

For children to love learning and cultivate a vibrant intellectual life, they need more than an inspiring classroom atmosphere. They need to be taught a curriculum that is ideas-rich and be given opportunities to assimilate these ideas for themselves. Rather than pre-digesting knowledge as adults and transplanting it into bite-sized pieces for children to swallow like a pill, Charlotte Mason advises that we have children read living books with rich narrative content.

A classical liberal arts curriculum, complete with stories, poetry, music, art, and nature, is the key to nourishing a child’s mind in this way. The goal is not for students to recall every bit of information from their studies with scientific exactitude, but to provide avenues for their minds to latch on to a few select ideas that will change them forever. Coupled with the teaching tool of narration, educators will find that through ideas-rich education that children will learn more and retain more as their minds are awakened and inspired to truly know in the fullest sense possible.

How to begin? I will leave the closing word for Charlotte Mason herself:

All roads lead to Rome, and all I have said is meant to enforce the fact that much and varied humane reading, as well as human thought expressed in the forms of art, is, not a luxury, a tit-bit, to be given to children now and then, but their very bread of life, which they must have in abundant portions and at regular periods. This and more is implied in the phrase, “The mind feeds on ideas and therefore children should have a generous curriculum.”

Towards a Philosophy of Education, p. 111

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In the quotation above, Charlotte Mason identifies what she believes are the three instruments of education at a teacher’s disposal: atmosphere, discipline, and life. In my first article in this series, I explored the instrument of atmosphere. 

In Mason’s view, the sort of atmosphere a teacher builds is dependent primarily on her view of her students. If students are primarily future contributors to the economy, then the efficiency-driven model of a factory will do. The priority will be to standardize the content as much as possible and boil down the educational process to an assembly line of simple, repeatable acts and interchangeable parts. Likewise, if students are information processors at core, then the atmosphere of a computer lab will suffice. Pack as much information as possible into a lecture, or textbook, and call on students to analyze the data as if they were little Microsoft Excel humanoids.

But if students are persons, relational beings made in the image of God, that are endowed with 1) minds to contemplate and create 2) wills to choose the good (or evil) 3) physical bodies to steward and 4) souls to connect with God Himself, then the task of education, and the atmosphere of a classroom by implication, will look very different.

In today’s article, I will move on to the second instrument of Mason’s triad: “Education is a Discipline.” We will see that, like atmosphere, discipline, or training, is very much an instrument with the idea of students as persons in view. God created humans as persons hard-wired for growth. Either they grow or decline over time; there is no such thing as a static human being. It therefore falls to parents and teachers to consider how they will help children grow, especially through supporting them to develop good habits from a young age. These habits over time become the soil for a child’s moral life to spring up. This is the instrument of discipline. 

Preparing Children for the World…But Which World?

Let us acknowledge it: life is difficult. People face a variety of challenges throughout life, whether they be financial, relational, professional, physical, or otherwise. This realization finds credence across philosophies and religions. The writer of Ecclesiastes observes that life is full of toil and ultimately meaningless (apart from God). The Buddha built a whole religion on four noble truths, the first being that “life is suffering.” There is no shortage of trials we will encounter as human beings. Our posture should therefore pivot from one of full avoidance of these trials, but rather an acceptance and preparation for how to overcome them.

In the classic dystopian novel Brave New World (First Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006), originally published by Harper and Brothers in 1932, author Aldous Huxley imagines a future world state in which the trials described above are all but eliminated. Through genetically engineering humans for specific castes, abolishing traditional moral norms, and mass producing happiness-producing drugs for daily consumption, the brave new world is one of ever-present, uninterrupted, happiness.

Interestingly, in this world, there seems to be no need for nobility, heroism, or discipline for that matter. It is a tailor-made civilization in which natural impulses are free to run their course with no fear of the consequences. Habits can continue to be helpful, but there are mechanisms already built into society to prevent real negative consequences from occurring. The startling result: “Anyone can be virtuous now” (238).

Of course, this is not our world, at least, not yet. The children we instruct, whether in our homes or classrooms, must be prepared to encounter challenges, friction points, trials, and opportunities to do what is right. This struggle is constituted both externally (in the circumstances they face) and internally (in mastering their own thoughts, desires, and choices).

Raising children to be disciplined, therefore, should be no afterthought in education. It is a primary responsibility for raising strong, thoughtful, noble, and virtuous men and women.

The Discipline of Habits 

Charlotte Mason believed that the key to helping children build strong moral wills and productive intellectual lives is through instilling good habits. These habits are to be trained, not through the harsh ruling of a Victorian task-master, or the behavioral manipulation of rewards systems, but through relationship, accountability, and support. Maryellen St. Cyr, co-founder of Ambleside Schools International, writes, “The idea of education as a discipline encompasses the full realm of education, taking into account its varied relationships–intellectual, moral, physical, religious, and social, as well as the great potential of persons to move in directions of change and growth” (When Children Love to Learn, 89).

This growth can be developed from a young age through habit training. In modern education, the general thought is to “let kids be kids” and by that it is meant for teachers to permit the majority of children’s natural impulses to run free in the classroom. The heart behind this sentiment, of course, is a desire for the children to be happy. But Mason’s profound insight, which is replete with biblical truth, is that equipping students to develop control over these impulses is actually what will set them up well for a life of flourishing. As one proverb puts it, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6, ESV).

We can begin to see that through helping students develop good habits–attention, self-control, respects for others, kindness, and responsibility–we are preparing them for a life of growth. In Home Education, Charlotte Mason writes, “It is unchangeably true that the child who is not being consistently raised to a higher and a higher platform will sink to a lower and a lower. Wherefore, it is as much the parent’s duty to educate his child into moral strength and purpose and intellectual activity as it is to feed him and clothe him” (103).

As teachers work to train habits in the classroom, they must always keep the vision of building up persons in view. To differentiate between building up persons and mere external conformity, Maryellen St. Cyr makes this table of distinction:

What Neuroscientists Have to Say

As we have noted on Educational Renaissance on multiple occasions, such as here, the practice of habit training, which is what Charlotte Mason primarily means by the instrument of discipline, finds encouraging support in modern neuroscience. Each time we perform an act, we are rewiring our neural pathways and even creating new brain cells, processes called neuroplasticity and neurogenesis.

Mason, herself a lover of modern research, was tracking the earliest scientific discoveries of this phenomenon. She writes, “New brain tissue is being constantly formed at a startlingly rapid rate: one wonders at what age the child has no longer any part left of that brain with which he was born (Home Education, 115). 

Later she goes on to conclude:

“What follows? Why, that the actual conformation of the child’s brain depends upon the habits which the parents permit or encourage; and that the habits of the child produce the character of the man…”

Charlotte Mason, Home Education, 118.

What a profound and even mysterious insight, this connection between moral philosophy and modern neuroscience. God, in His providence, truly created us as mind-body unities. Our brains affect our morals and our morals affect our brains. And while the non-religious materialist might use these scientific discoveries to make the case that even moral phenomenon has a natural explanation, I find the more compelling conclusion to be that this sort of moral-biological synthesis is exactly what we should expect of a universe fashioned by a wise Creator.

From Habits to Virtues

The Greek philosopher Aristotle is one of the earliest proponents of habit training. He draws a straight line from habits through virtue to happiness itself. But unlike in Brave New World, in which happiness is the maximization of pleasure, Aristotle tethers happiness to virtue. Happiness is an activity that is manifested over a whole life as humans align their lives with virtues laid down by reason (A History of Philosophy, Volume 1: From Greece to Rome by Frederick Coppleston, p. 334). However, unlike Cynic contemporaries in his day, Aristotle did not excise pleasure from the equation completely. He acknowledged that circumstances can and do play a role in one’s overall flourishing. But the pathway to happiness is ultimately through virtuous activity, not pleasure-seeking. To be truly happy, one must live a life of activity in accordance with virtue. 

So how do humans become virtuous? Aristotle believed it was through practice, by cultivating good habits. People become virtuous by doing virtuous acts. A soldier becomes courageous, not through reading about it, though that will help, but through stepping foot in the arena. Likewise, a child becomes honest by practicing telling the truth.

Now, some may anticipate the objection of circular thinking. How can one do virtuous acts without being virtuous? But how can one be virtuous without doing virtuous acts? 

Philosopher Frederick Coppleston offers this response on behalf of Aristotle: “We begin by doing acts which are objectively virtuous, without having a flex knowledge of the acts and a deliberate choice of the acts as good, a choice resulting from an habitual disposition…The accusation of a vicious circle is thus answered by the distinction between the acts which create the good disposition and the acts which flow from the good disposition once it has been created” (335). 

In other words, virtue formation is a process. We train children to begin acting in certain ways, holding them to certain expectations, even before they fully understand the “why.” To be sure, we want to relationally come beside them and discuss how particular habits are for the good of themselves and others. But we also need to be patient, understanding that the process of moral development is a lifelong journey, even for adults, one in which moral knowledge and practice slowly grow more and more aligned.

Towards a Christian View of Virtue Formation

So far, I have been discussing the notions of happiness, virtues, and habits without much reference to our Christian faith. To begin making these connections, I find Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain’s comments in The Liberal Arts Tradition (Classical Academic Press, 2019) really helpful.

Clark and Jain augment a Christian, classical notion of Aristotle’s conception of virtue by connecting virtue to participation in Christ (137). Virtue is more than human effort accompanied by the goods that come of it. It is the path of following Christ and growing in Christlikeness. It encompasses increasing spiritual intimacy with Him through obedience and reliance on the Holy Spirit. Virtue for a Christian begins by being raised with Christ and becoming a new creation (Colossians 3). When this happens, the righteousness of Christ becomes ours, and we are empowered to begin down the path of sanctification, or personal holiness.

There is much, much more to unpack here theologically, but I will need to put this work off for another article. Suffice it to say that for Christians, habit training and virtual formation should be inextricably linked to our walk with Christ and growing in unity with Him.

Conclusion

C.S. Lewis once wrote, “For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue (The Abolition of Man, 77). By training students in habits, we are preparing students for the real world. This world is not one free of struggle, pain, and unrestricted passion, as fantasized in Brave New World. Rather it is a world of both comfort and struggle, joy and pain, self-restraint and pleasure.

The well-trained student can navigate both, but not by accident. Rather, it is through year after year of virtue formation through habit training. As the metal worker bends his material into proper shape, so we has humans, through practicing habits, can gradually build lives aligned with virtue. United with Christ, we acknowledge that this strength comes not from us, but from the Holy Spirit, as His power is made perfect in our weakness.

If you want to go deeper into habit training, your next step is to download our free eBook. Enjoy!

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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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