In 1750, for example, it took 4-6 weeks to sail by ship from New York to London. By 1850, with the advent of the steam engine, the trans-Atlantic journey was reduced to around 1 week. Today, we can fly from New York to London in just 8 hours.

This acceleration in travel illustrates a new value that has emerged for us in the modern world: speed. “Time is money,” we are told and the finance report does not lie. The litmus test for the quality and success of an endeavor is how fast we can complete it. For the sooner we can cross a task off our list, the more quickly we can move on to the next task. Then the next task. Then the next task. Only here’s the catch in a knowledge economy: the list is infinite. 

In education, this obsession for speed materializes in daily schedules, pacing charts, and lesson plans. We move from subject to subject, concept to concept, and assignment to assignment at the speed of light. But is this approach best for students? Is it cultivating virtue? Are they actually developing mastery over what they are learning? Or are these moments of quick exposure creating the illusion of learning instead? 

Festina Lente: Make Haste Slowly

In The Good Teacher (Classical Academic Press, 2025), Christopher Perrin and Carrie Eben argue that it is not. Of the ten principles for great teaching they present in their book, the first is “Festina Lente, Make Haste Slowly.” They propose that instead of engaging in the rush to cover content, it is better to master each step in a lesson, setting a pace that is fitting for the time available. 

Perrin and Eben go on to provide two examples of this principle in our world today. The first is drawn from Aesop’s beloved fable, “The Tortoise and the Hare.” In this well-known tale, two creatures, a quick-footed hare and a contemplative tortoise, engage in a foot race. While the hare is expected to win with its focus on speed, it is actually the tortoise who wins the race. The upshot is that while the hare was certainly faster, its pace was not sustainable. The tortoise, on the other hand, moves at a slower yet sustainable pace, making haste slowly, and ultimately becomes the victor. 

The other example is Jim Collins’ “Twenty Mile March” concept in Great by Choice (Random House, 2011). Imagine two hikers setting out on a three-thousand mile walk from San Diego, California, to the tip of Maine. One hiker commits to twenty miles a day, no exceptions. Whether the conditions are fair or poor, the itinerary is the same. The other hiker adjusts his daily regimen to the circumstances before him. Depending on weather, terrain, and energy levels, some days he may walk 40 miles, other days he may not walk at all. Like the tortoise in Aesop’s fable, the winner of the race is the hiker committed to the wise, disciplined journey, choosing sustainability over speed. 

Now, it must be pointed out that every analogy has its limits. Not every speedster struggles with the overconfidence exhibited in the hare or the weak will of the second hiker. It is possible to be both fast and virtuous.The key insight is not that we need to choose between the two, but in our present culture’s emphasis on speed, we would do well to slow down, resist the lure of speedy completion, and focus on a process that will instill virtues of diligence and perseverance.

Connecting the twenty-mile hike example to teaching, Perrin and Eben write,

Classical education can be compared to the long journey in this story. Each segment should be intentional, planned, and exercised wisely, with ample allotted time. Students, like the winning hiker, should use time well, as they are guided and modeled along each segment of their academic journey. (p. 24)

Working at a Natural Pace 

Interestingly, Cal Newport, the author of Deep Work, Digital Minimalism, and A World Without Email, is on to a similar idea in his latest book, Slow Productivity (Penguin Random House, 2024). 

Newport observes that we as a culture have succumbed to what he calls pseudo-productivity, “the use of visible activity as the primary means of approximating actual productive effort (22). So we work longer hours, send more emails, and complete more projects, all in the name of productivity. The only problem is that we burn ourselves out, ultimately accomplishing less and at a lower quality. 

Newport’s solution is to adopt a different philosophy of work, one in which we accomplish tasks in a sustainable and meaningful manner. His three principles for this approach are:

1. Do fewer things.
2. Work at a natural pace.
3. Obsess over quality.

My colleague at Educational Renaissance, Jason Barney, has written extensively on these principles for the classical educator in this blog series. I encourage you to check out all four articles as he interacts with the likes of Aristotle, Quintilian, Charlotte Mason, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyiy, and others.

Regarding our present focus on how to manage time in the classroom for the sake of virtue formation, Jason writes, “There must be a purposeful movement in a meaningful direction at the same time as a willingness to delay over the details to ensure quality and a student’s developing mastery. Great teachers can discern when to slow down and when to hasten on.”

Rather than sending students off to work on a frenzy of assignments at once, moving from one worksheet to the next, it is better to slow down and hone in on one worthy assignment that will lead students toward a greater depth of understanding.

True Mastery: Getting the Practice Right 

Here we come to a key distinction that must be made. Thus far, I have been encouraging teachers to focus on virtue over speed, process over outcome, and mastery over pseudo-productivity. But what does true mastery look like? And how is it achieved?

I suggest that mastery is achieved when a student can repeatedly demonstrate a particular skill or lucidly explain a concept on demand. In The Good Teacher, Perrin and Eben are adamant that until this happens, teachers should not move on to the next objective, whether it is moving on from addition to multiplication or 3rd to 4th grade (21-22). They are also careful to identify a distortion of festina lente, namely, using the principle as an excuse to focus too long on one concept at the expense of others (27). 

The key clarification I want to make as we seek to implement a mastery-focused approach is regarding the type of practice we ought to implement to meet this end. It would be natural to assume that if the focus is mastery, teachers should engage in what is called massed practice: practice over and over a specific skill until it is mastered, and only then move on to the next skill. Make haste slowly, right?

In Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning (Belknap Press, 2014), the authors draw upon cognitive science to argue that this sort of practice can only take you so far. They seek to dispel of the myth that the focused, repetitive practice of one thing at a time is the way to mastery. 

They write:

If learning can be defined as picking up new knowledge or skills and being able to apply them later, then how quickly you pick something up is only part of the story. Is it still there when you need to use it out in the everyday world?…The rapid gains produced by massed practice are often evident, but the rapid forgetting that follows is not. (p. 47)

Interestingly, the authors of Make it Stick are putting their finger on the same concern as Perrin and Eben: prioritizing speed over mastery. Instead of practicing one skill over and over again until students can demonstrate mastery, they suggest mixing up the practice. 

In a past article, I write more about this topic, unpacking three key ways from Make it Stick to practice toward mastery:

Spaced Practice: Instead of intensively focusing on one skill for a single, extended session, space out the practice into multiple sessions. Work on it for a while and then return to it the next day or week. The space allotted between each session allows for the knowledge of the skill to soak into one’s long-term memory and connect to prior knowledge. Revisiting the skill each session certainly takes more effort, but that’s the point.

Interleaved Practice: While we experience the quickest gains by focusing on one specific skill or subset of knowledge over a period of time (momentary strength), interleaving, or mixing up the skill or concept you are focusing on in a practice session, leads to stronger understanding and retention (underlying habit strength). It feels sluggish and frustrating at times, for both teachers and students mind you, because it involves moving from skill to skill before full mastery is attained, but it leads to both a depth and durability of knowledge that massed practice does not (50).

Varied Practice: Varying practice entails constantly changing up the situation or conditions in which the skill or concept is being applied. It therefore strengthens the ability to transfer learning from one situation and apply it to another, requiring the student to constantly be assessing context and bridging concepts. Because this jump from concept to concept triggers different parts of the brain, it is more cognitively challenging, and therefore encodes the learning “…in a more flexible representation that can be applied more broadly” (52).

To be clear, these forms of mixed practice will be more difficult for students and the practice sessions will take longer. But that is the point. To “make haste slowly” when it comes to practice, you want to support your students in meaningful practice that will lead them toward long-term, not temporary, mastery. 

Conclusion

As classical schools, we are playing the long game as we seek to instill wisdom and virtue in our students. In our fast-paced world, this commitment will surely be misunderstood. We are told that a school’s effectiveness ought to be measured by the number of students enrolled, the number of accolades of its graduates, and the impressiveness of test scores.

But if our goal is true mastery for a life of virtue, instilled with the principle of festina lente, then we need to think more like the tortoise than the hare. We need to be intentional with practice, focus on depth over breadth, and mix it up in order to strengthen the durability of the knowledge gained. This is no doubt the harder road, but with our own perseverance at work, we trust that over time it will bear much fruit.

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In this series on Slow Productivity in School, we’ve been exploring the paradox of festina lente (“hasten slowly”). When it comes to the work of learning, sometimes you must go slow to go fast. Or, perhaps more accurately, you must slow down to be truly productive. Taking our cues from Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment without Burnout, we are applying his three principles for slow productivity to our teaching practices in classical Christian schools (1. Do Fewer Things, 2. Work at a Natural Pace, 3. Obsess Over Quality). 

After first diagnosing the problem of pseudo-productivity in modern schools, analogous to the hustle culture of modern work environments, we then explored the well-known Latin phrase multum non multa (“much not many things”) under the principle of doing fewer things. The key takeaway is that rather than cutting down on “subjects” to the bare essentials, this principle really applies best to the number and quality of “assignments.” Students in our classical Christian schools can read and study widely without suffering through busywork. Second, we explored the need to work at a natural pace as an explanation of how we can recover school as scholé or leisure. The point is that there are rhythms to ideal learning and racing through worksheets and covering pages of textbooks like the wind isn’t necessarily the best for deep understanding and long term retention.

In this final article, we’re focusing on the principle that we might call the main goal of it all: “Obsess over quality.”  In a way, doing fewer things and working at a natural pace are pointless if they don’t lead to an increased focus on quality. At the beginning we set out the idea that what really lurks behind the phrase multum non multa is a prioritization of depth over breadth and quality over quantity. Slowness is not an end in itself but is meant to serve the real or genuine productivity. Newport describes this final principle of obsessing over quality this way:

“Obsess over the quality of what you produce, even if this means missing opportunities in the short term. Leverage the value of these results to gain more and more freedom in your efforts over the long term” (173). 

For those of us who work in classical Christian schools, as I have argued elsewhere (see Rethinking the Purpose of Education), the true purpose of our educational efforts should be the cultivation of moral, spiritual, and intellectual virtues in our students. If that is the case, then haste can be the enemy of progress. Instead, as master craftsmen, we teachers and educators need to take the necessary time to cultivate mastery in our students. Slipshod, shoddy work, rushed through quickly, without attention to the details and to a host of minor improvements necessary for quality do not “move the needle.” 

There is a real mental shift that must occur here for many of us. We have had the rat-race of school so ingrained in our psyche, that we feel like we are wasting time if we’re not completing a worksheet or a powerpoint buzzer quiz every 20 min. Our media-saturated world too has reduced our attention span and given us ADD for the type of focused effort that actually forges increased quality.

Another culprit to our busyness of attitude is the knowledge-transfer vision of education, as opposed to the traditional liberal arts approach. We tend to envision the main part of education as a process of information download, rather than students developing mastery in handling certain well-worn tools. When we view K-12 education instead through the lens of helping students hone their artistry in the liberal arts, then we will focus more on the students producing high quality interpretations, arguments, and persuasive compositions. 

Students would then develop an artist’s eye for quality and mastery in the creative productions of the liberal arts, including of course in math and science. This focus then multiplies labor by making their own independent reading and thinking that much more effective. They are then able to hasten along the path of lifelong learning with ease, because the way has been smoothed for them by mastering the fundamental skills.

What does this all mean practically for teachers working with students in the classroom? In her book Home Education, Charlotte Mason proposed the habit of perfect execution as a major guiding vision for training young children. She explained,

‘Throw perfection into all you do’ is a counsel upon which a family may be brought up with great advantage. We English, as a nation, think too much of persons, and too little of things, work, execution. Our children are allowed to make their figures or their letters, their stitches, their dolls’ clothes, their small carpentry, anyhow, with the notion that they will do better by-and-by. Other nations–the Germans and the French, for instance–look at the question philosophically, and know that if children get the habit of turning out imperfect work, the men and women will undoubtedly keep that habit up. I remember being delighted with the work of a class of about forty children, of six and seven, in an elementary school at Heidelberg. They were doing a writing lesson, accompanied by a good deal of oral teaching from a master, who wrote each word on the blackboard. By-and-by the slates were shown, and I did not observe one faulty or irregular letter on the whole forty slates. (110-111)

If what Mason says was true of Victorian England, how much more would she note “the Habit of turning out Imperfect Work” in 21st century America. Her example demonstrates that this feature is to a large extent cultural, and may have to do with our Rousseauian focus on children’s “personality” and “developmental readiness.” Our teachers may make excuses for failing to hold out the standard for careful execution of work based on how large the class is (“I simply can’t get around to all sixteen students!”), but this German class of forty puts us to shame.

To be fair, Mason does have a category for setting the bar too high for students. It is possible to obsess over the wrong details or expect a type of detailed quality that is not yet attainable by a young novice. Mason explains, 

No work should be given to a child that he cannot execute perfectly, and then perfection should be required from him as a matter of course. For instance, he is set to do a copy of strokes, and is allowed to show a slateful at all sorts of slopes and all sorts of intervals; his moral sense is vitiated, his eye is injured. Set him six strokes to copy; let him, not bring a slateful, but six perfect strokes, at regular distances and at regular slopes. If he produces a faulty pair, get him to point out the fault, and persevere until he has produced his task; if he does not do it to-day, let him go on to-morrow and the next day, and when the six perfect strokes appear, let it be an occasion of triumph. So with the little tasks of painting, drawing or construction he sets himself–let everything he does be well done. An unsteady house of cards is a thing to be ashamed of. (111)

It can be seen from this that Mason endorses explicitly the principles of doing fewer things at a natural pace, in order to enable an obsession over quality. Clearly she wants students to internalize the mindset of mastery from an early age. 

It’s important to clarify that this is not the sort of perfectionism that expects to never make mistakes in the first place. She is endorsing rather the type of growth mindset that believes that every child can produce high quality and accurate work, if they are given the time and held accountable for doing so. This mindset actually functions to empower the student and enable progress. Filling a slate with incorrect strokes does not improve a student’s handwriting, but tends to solidify bad habits. As my gymnastics coach drill in to us when we were young, “Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Perfect practice makes perfect.” 

This paradoxical focus on perfection by actively attending to and correcting mistakes is characteristic of what Daniel Coyle calls deep practice. As he explains, “struggling in certain targeted ways–operating at the edges of your ability, where you make mistakes–makes you smarter. Or to put it a slightly different way, experiences where you’re forced to slow down, make errors, and correct them–as you would if you were walking up an ice-covered hill, slipping and stumbling as you go–end up making you swift and graceful without you realizing it” (The Talent Code, 18). This provides a helpful counter to a misunderstanding of Mason’s insistence that “no work should be given to a child that he cannot execute perfectly,” which might lead us to ease the way too much and avoid appropriate challenges. We have to read in to her version of “cannot” a much stronger belief in the capability of children than we tend to have.

The practical applications of this habit of perfect execution and obsession over quality are endless and as varied as the nature of the many subjects and arts that we teach. So, instead it might be more helpful to open out our gaze again to all three principles, and provide a series of practical applications to the classroom that fuse a holistic vision for slow productivity in school through 1) doing fewer things, 2) working at a natural pace, and 3) obsessing over quality.

Practical Applications of Slow Productivity in School

First, emphasize deep engagement with material over superficial coverage. This will involve a reduced workload, time for contemplation, and the ability to marinate in the knowledge and skills they are gaining.

• Reduced Workload: Instead of assigning a vast quantity of assignments to complete, or having students race through reading the textbook at home, teachers should prioritize fewer, more substantial readings, projects, and discussions. This reduced workload will allow students to delve more deeply into the material rather than skimming or memorizing for tests.
• Time for Contemplation and Reflection: Working at a natural pace means allowing sufficient time for students to truly wrestle with ideas, formulate their own thoughts, and engage in meaningful discussions, rather than rushing from one topic to the next. This leisurely approach coheres with the movement’s emphasis on school as scholé or leisure and the necessary slowness for true contemplation. The time spent discussing and thinking through ideas, even if it includes some rabbit-trails and dead-ends will be time well spent for students making these ideas their own.
• Marinating in Knowledge: Learning isn’t always linear, but has its natural ups and downs, periods of lying fallow and moments for break-throughs. A natural pace acknowledges that some concepts require time to “marinate” in the mind. Teachers should schedule in times of review and moments to pause and revisit challenging texts or ideas over time, allowing for deeper understanding to develop organically.

Second, in agreement with a mastery mindset focus on artistry, teachers should encourage Deep Practice with a focus on correcting mistakes to develop mastery. This will involve favoring perfect execution over speed, process-oriented learning, and slow reading with commonplacing.

• Perfect Execution Over Speed: Instead of rewarding quick completion, focus on mastery of skills and concepts. This might mean allowing students to re-do assignments until they achieve a certain level of understanding, or providing ample practice opportunities without the pressure of a ticking clock. It’s important to remember that education is a not a one-size-fits all: one student may need to repeat the same assignment until it is correct, while other students have gone on to the next. A misplaced emphasis on “fairness” can get in the way of the real goal of coaching each student to mastery.
• Process-Oriented Learning: Emphasize the learning process itself, including research, careful thinking, revision, and refinement, rather than just the final product. Ironically, this aligns with the “obsess over quality” principle. It’s not that the end destination doesn’t matter, but when we let students focus on just getting an assignment done, rather than getting it right, quality gets lost. When we’re willing to linger in the details with a student, then the genuine questions and focus on accuracy make the whole experience that much more meaningful to student and teacher alike.
• Slow Reading and Commonplacing: Encourage students to engage in “slow reading” of classic texts, marking up pages (when possible), asking questions, copying out quotations into a Commonplace Notebook, and truly grappling with the author’s arguments and literary artistry, rather than speed-reading for information. This is where the rubber meets the road in terms of how many Great Books you’re actually trying to get through in that course. At the same time, it’s important to remember that it is possible to go too slow, and so every delay should be qualitatively meaningful. Festina lente (“hasten slowly”) can help the teacher navigate this dance.

Third, we should protect unscheduled time for intellectual play and the pursuit of meaningful interests. There is something to be said for us trying to accomplish too much in school and that backfiring, as students become overly dependent on the structure of school for their ongoing learning. This will look like preserving time for independent exploration both at school and at home and reducing the homework burden by prioritizing the completion of quality work at school:

• Time for Independent Exploration: A natural pace includes periods of less structured time for students. Students need unscheduled time for independent reading, creative pursuits, exploring ideas that pique their interest, and simply thinking without a specific assignment. The idea that “Every minute matters” (popularized by Doug Lemov in Teach Like a Champion) is not without merits, but it depends on the culture into which it is speaking. In low-achieving communities it might bring helpful discipline, but in suburbia with our overscheduled, oversaturated lives, this approach can make children high-strung. Teachers shouldn’t feel the need to cram every minute of every school day but should embrace a proper sense of leisure. This will help to foster the type of genuine curiosity and intellectual growth in students that is not solely dependent on the teacher.
• Reduced Homework Burden: A slow productivity approach means that we should re-evaluate our homework policies and aim for fewer, more meaningful assignments that take a longer time to complete. Our goal should be to reinforce learning rather than simply creating busywork. Also, many of the challenging assignments that we would give them, like writing assignments, should be started in class with the teacher walking around to assist, double check for errors in spelling, punctuation, proper formation of cursive letters, etc. Even in the upper grades a return to this sort of artistic writing process under the guidance of a teacher can help avoid issues with plagiarism and AI-dependence that are only becoming more and more prevalent in our age.

Finally, a focus on slow productivity in school should foster a culture of patient endurance rather than an obsession with a quick fix and short-term results. This will look like embracing the long-term vision of classical education, recognizing that some of the best growth in students occurs over the course of years rather than months, and therefore fostering resilience and grit in students and parents alike:

• Long-Term Vision: Classical education plays out as a long game, building a strong foundation over many years. A natural pace reinforces the idea that significant intellectual growth is a marathon, not a sprint. Slow productivity sees the results of genuine accomplishment over the course of the whole K-12 sequence, rather than week, month or quarter of the school year. This long-term vision helps us sit patiently in the here and now and focus on mastery of the basics in a given area where a student struggles, rather than giving up or opting out.
• Resilience and Grit: By allowing for a natural pace, students learn that challenges take time to overcome and that persistence, not frantic effort, leads to genuine accomplishment. The insistence on facing our mistakes and learning from them, rather than fleeing to easier tasks, develops a resilient attitude that will serve them well for life. Ultimately, a slow productivity mindset makes kids gritty, while also giving them adequate recovery time to maintain the long trek of their education.

I hope you enjoyed the Slow Productivity in School series. I’m planning a webinar and consulting pathway to follow up on these ideas and help your teachers apply multum non multa, festina lente and the habit of perfect execution or coaching in deep practice in your school.

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Up first is a volume written by Elaine Cooper entitled The Power and Neglected Voice of Charlotte Mason: A Coherent, Holistic Approach to Education for Our Times. Her thesis is many ways is captured by the two adjectives in the subtitle: coherent and holistic. I could see this book being a centerpiece for introducing parents and teachers to Charlotte Mason who may have only a passing acquaintance with her life and work due to the far-reaching scope of such a succinct volume.

Cooper has been at the heart of the Charlotte Mason revival since the 1970s, working alongside Susan Schaeffer Macaulay to establish the Child Light Trust to promote Charlotte Mason education in England. In 2004, Cooper edited the book When Children Love to Learn (Crossway), bringing together leading voices in the US and England to provide practical applications for Mason’s philosophy. Cooper was also involved in the start of Heritage School in Cambridge, England, which opened its doors in 2007.

Biography

Cooper begins her work with a succinct biography of Charlotte Mason. The contours of this biographical sketch of Mason follows the work of Margaret Coombs, who published Charlotte Mason: Hidden Heritage and Educational Influence in 2015. I appreciate how Cooper retraces the hidden childhood of Mason without dwelling on her birth out of wedlock or the potential influence either parent or their families might have had on her subsequent achievements. Mason rarely mentioned her upbringing, which could be due to her embarrassment of that upbringing. But equally, she could have just as easily viewed those years as irrelevant to the person she became as an educational thinker. To that end, Cooper’s sketch devotes the bulk of the section to her experiences in teacher training schools and posts at Birkenhead, London, Worthing and Chichester.

One of the important points Cooper brings out pertains to the collapse of the positivism of late Victorians progressivism. World War 1 had swept away much of this positivism, and with it many turned to modernist views of education. Cooper writes:

“But the horrors of the First World War and the disillusionment with western civilisation sent shock waves through society. Many educators and leaders at the time felt that old ways of thinking and doing needed to be swept away, and the new be emphatically implemented for the 20^th century. Mason’s educational vision and model for a full and abundant life binding knowledge and virtue and shaping Britain as a righteous nation no longer fitted in.” (19)

From this we may derive two insights. First, this factor demonstrates how in the height of Mason’s reach within British culture—she had established the House of Education in Ambleside, she was a respected author, moved in important circles in society, and a growing number of state schools were adopting her methods—she became almost anonymous and forgotten in history. It wasn’t due to a deficiency in her educational philosophy or pedagogical methods, but rather to a radical turning away from traditional values. A turn, one might add, that demonstrably was for the worse not only in Britain but throughout the world, as a Second World War so soon after the First would confirm.

Second, Cooper hints at the fact that Mason is well grounded in the liberal arts tradition. This is something that Cooper identifies at various points in the book. Many advocates for educational renewal, particularly in the classical educational landscape, doubt Mason’s compatibility with classical education. Cooper spells out that at a fundamental level, Mason shares convictions with proponents of a renewal of the liberal arts tradition.

Philosophy of Education

Cooper next develops Mason’s philosophy of education by highlighting the core tenets of her work as well as spelling out interactions she has with numerous other philosophers of education. She grounds Mason’s philosophy within a Christian perspective, meaning that Mason’s “understanding of the world and the person” fit squarely “within a Christian metaphysical framework” (22). I think this points to an aspect of the coherent and holistic approach Mason provides in her approach to education. In a modern world driven by technology and economic outcomes, grounding education in scripture and a vital connection to God is essential.

The singular foundation to Mason’s philosophy of education, according to Cooper, is the personhood of the child. After quoting Mason, who views the child’s mind as complete—“his mind is the instrument of his education and his education does not produce his mind” (Mason, Philosophy of Education, 36)—Cooper expands upon this view of the personhood of the child:

“In her view—Mason’s understanding of identity and personhood—someone, rather than something is located in the imago dei, bearing the image of a personal, creator God. Children are separate and complete beings even in their dependency, capable of reflecting some of God’s attributes. They have language and reason and imagination. Each one exists as a real physical and metaphysical entity—an embodied self, a spiritual being with a soul and the powers necessary to appropriate knowledge, beauty and goodness.” (Cooper 24)

Grounded in the biblical concept of the image of God, the personhood of the child means that we are not educating blank slates and manipulating them to become something of significance at a later stage in their lives. They are born with capacities to learn and grow, and thus our job is to provide suitable means for them to acquire knowledge and wisdom. The respect due to the child as a learner with a powerful mind well equipped to assimilate what is to be learned is not only a foundational aspect to Mason’s work, but sets her apart from other modern educational theorists. After quoting Martin Marty, University of Chicago professor, regarding the shortcomings of modern approaches to childhood education, Cooper concludes regarding the personhood of the child that there is a “need for thoughtful and critical evaluations of popular developmental and educational theories, suggesting there is much more to understanding the child and person than hitherto assumed.” (27)

To this end, Cooper segues into a series of educational theorists with whom Mason grappled in the development of her own educational philosophy. The list of interlocutors is substantial—John Locke, Johann Friedrick Herbart, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Friedrich Fröbel, Maria Montessori, Herbert Spencer, and William James—and indicates a wide range of thought and power of mind on the part of Mason. Cooper’s development of each interaction is succinct yet helps develop in compelling ways Mason’s concern with “the increasing influence of intellectual rationalism and scientific reductionism flowing out from the Enlightenment.” (27) Seeing Mason in light of this series of educational theorists makes it difficult to simply categorize her as an educational reformer in the progressive mold of Rousseau or Dewey, and yet she is not merely a traditionalist unwilling to take on board, for instance, Pestalozzi and Fröbel’s insistence on the natural capacities of the child. In fact, Mason proved herself quite capable of incorporating modern research into psychology and neurology while also breaking the mold of traditionalist conceptions of class, making a liberal arts educational available to all.

A thorough educational philosophy relies not only on a the quality of the anthropology—a high view of the child in Mason’s case—but also on a sound epistemology. For Mason, the mind does not emerge as a property due to education, the mind is what acts upon knowledge to produce the education person. There is a “spiritual nature of mind” that “requires the food of ideas for its daily bread” (45). The mind is active and seeks out knowledge, according to Mason. This differs from the empirical views of philosophers such as Locke and Herbart who view children as empty slates or sacs to be filled with knowledge. Mason abhorred predigested information and desired children to read books full of living ideas that would feed not only the minds of children, but also form their character. The goal of education, therefore, is to give every opportunity for the child to experience the wide array of insights available in a rich and generous curriculum.

To that end, the qualities of the materials Mason sought to present to children are in keeping with the best cultural artifacts produced across generations. Cooper connects this with the classical liberal arts:

“Mason ([Philosophy of Education] 1925) was passionately concerned to education all pupils broadly in the classic, liberal arts tradition—‘the joy of the Renaissance without its lawlessness’ (p. 9)—a holistic tradition which could cultivate imagination and good habits, train judgement and engender wide interests, after which anyone would be able to master the intricacies of any profession. (Cooper 50)

Methodology

Having established the main contours of Mason’s educational philosophy, Cooper then develops the key elements of Mason’s educational methods. The two keystones here are narration and habit training. What I like about Cooper’s work here is that she connects the dots, so to speak, between philosophy and method.

For instance, with regard to narration—the ability “to individually narrate back, in their own words, what they had heard” after a single reading—Cooper connects narration to the power of the mind, or the high view of the child explored in Mason’s philosophy:

“Narration was founded on her belief in the intrinsic and natural power of mind, through attentive listening, to recall knowledge gained from a single reading or seeing or doing, and the fact that such direct recollection makes so deep an impression on the mind that it remains for a long time and is never entirely lost.” (60)

Thus, narration is an active outworking of the high view of the child. Not only do we view the child as capable of assimilating knowledge, we place those capabilities in the driver’s seat of the child’s learning. Cooper shares a delightful quote from Comenius, the Czech reformer and educational philosopher, “teachers shall teach less and scholars should learn more.” (61 quoting The Great Didactic (1907), 4). In other words, the energy of learning is rightly placed within the sphere of the child, rather than energies being wasted by a teacher who overprepares and overdelivers materials that the learner can access directly through living books.

Regarding habits, Cooper again connects method to the high view of the child. Each child is naturally equipped to follow certain pathways when the parent or teacher rightly guides them along those pathways. There are physical habits (cleanliness, tidiness), moral habits (obedience, kindness), and intellectual habits (attention, accuracy), which must actually make life easier for the child. The temptation exists for parents and teachers to consider these habits as burdensome and therefore neglect to properly instill them, yet worse habits will be fixed within the child, making life ultimately harder for the child.

The rich curriculum of living books gives feet to Mason’s epistemology since the mind craves living ideas. Cooper notes how these living books are “written in literary language” or in a “narrative style.” (63) Some of the hallmarks of a Charlotte Mason education are the inclusion of nature study, picture study, composer study, and architecture, all of which Cooper situates within the methods of Mason.

Conclusion

Cooper wraps up her volume by evaluating the legacy of Mason. As someone who has been part of the Mason revival, she suggests an exciting potential outcome in the flourishing of homeschools and schools that adopt her philosophy and methods:

“It is possible that widespread interest could spearhead both a faithful and contemporary understanding of her applied Christian philosophy of education, backed up by the practical evidence of thousands of children educated in over 300 of her schools and many home schools in early 20^th-century Britain and beyond.” (69)

I for one agree that this revival of interest in Mason is having profound effects in North America. I am grateful that Elaine Cooper has put this very readable book together. For anyone wanting a clear and concise overview of Mason, this book is essential reading. If you provide leadership at a school using Charlotte Mason’s philosophy and methods, this is a great book to give to new faculty as part of their onboarding.

The post A Coherent and Holistic Education: Book Review of Elaine Cooper’s The Powerful and Neglected Voice of Charlotte Mason appeared first on .

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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“In a typical lesson you decide, often quickly. Then you decide, decide, and decide again. You are a batter facing a hundred pitches in a row…What do you need to decide quickly, reliably, and well, while thinking about other things under a bit of pressure in the form, of, say, twenty-nine restless students, twenty-five minutes’ worth of work left to get done, and a ticking clock to remind you that you have fifteen minutes left in the class period?” (3). 

His solution is a mental model, that is, a framework to understand complex environments. In this case, teachers can filter the plethora of time-sensitive decisions before them through a grid of principles for a successful lesson. While teaching is a craft that takes extended time to master, Lemov believes that growth in the craft can occur much more rapidly through adopting a mental model composed of core principles. 

While Doug Lemov was developing his mental model for a successful lesson, classical education expert Christopher Perrin has been refining his own set of principles for sound classroom pedagogy. His course Principles of Classical Pedagogy through ClassicalU offers ten principles, or pedagogies, of great teaching. 

In this article, I will briefly review Lemov’s and Perrin’s lists of principles before going on to suggest three points of similarity, followed by three areas of difference. In doing so, I will demonstrate the value of insights gained through cognitive psychology and learning science, while arguing for the importance of situating any great teaching practice within a broader philosophy of education that takes seriously the full-orbed reality of what it means to teach and form human beings.

The Mental Model for an Effective Lesson

Through offering a mental model, Lemov seeks to help a teacher, first, grow in understanding of how learning works and, second, perceive accurately what their students need most to thrive in their classrooms. It is one thing, Lemov thinks, to have a set of teaching principles, such as “check for understanding” or “ratio,” two common phrases in the TLaC series. It is another thing to have an additional set of learning principles that “…can help explain why certain methods work as well as how and when to use them” (5).  In this way, Lemov’s five principles that comprise his mental model seek to offer guidance for both teaching and learning simultaneously. 

Let us review them now:

Principle 1: Understanding human cognitive structure means building long-term memory and managing working memory.

Lemov’s first principle focuses on the distinction between long-term and working memory in order to implement teaching practices that build long-term memory. The general idea is that while working memory is immediately accessible, it is extremely limited in capacity. Humans can only hold so much new information in their mind’s eye. Immediately following the exposure to new information, the forgetting process begins. The way to build long-term memory and strengthen the durability of knowledge is to implement retrieval practice techniques in which students are called upon to remember, or retrieve, what they were taught in the past. 

Principle 2: Habits accelerate learning.

Similar to the first principle, this second one offers guidance on how to use one’s cognition as efficiently as possible. The reality is that each day we are bombarded with common, everyday activities that require our attention. But what if we could put the mental effort of these mental tasks on autopilot in order to focus on more important work? This is the concept, described in cognitive terms, of a habit. The more we can help students put menial scholastic work on autopilot, from reading fluency to math fact automaticity to getting out a notebook to begin writing, the more they can focus their minds and wills on understanding deeper, more complex concepts. If you haven’t already, be sure to download Patrick Egan’s free Ebook and watch the webinar on how to help students build great habits.

Principle 3: What students attend to is what they will learn about.

This may go without saying, but focused concentration is the key to efficient and effective learning. And yet, we are all aware that there is a growing deficit of ability to attend to something for an extended amount of time in our world today. This principle seeks to equip students “…to lose themselves in a task and work at it steadily for a significant period of time, which means a setting where concentration can reliably be maintained and tasks and activities where the ability to focus is carefully cultivated” (20). Jason Barney’s The Joy of Learning offers a great path forward to implement this idea, known as “flow,” in the classical classroom. His webinar on the topic is also excellent.

Principle 4: Motivation is social.

It can be tempting to focus on the learning of each individual student, but this principle reminds us that humans thrive when they work together. In this way, the learning process, including the motivation to learn, occurs at both the individual and social level. Successful lessons occur within classroom cultures in which the norms and values of the classroom encourage individual hard work and intentional team work.

Principle 5: Teaching well is relationship building. 

The final principle Lemov identifies for an effective mental model of teaching and learning focuses on the power of relationships. Specifically, he emphasizes that the teacher-student relationship is one in which the student feels safe, successful, and known. Safety includes physical safety, yes, but also the intellectual safety to take risks. Success refers to the fact that a key objective of any lesson should be to help a student learn or do something. Finally, a student feeling known fulfills a core desire wired into all human beings for them to develop a sense of belonging. 

Overall, I find Lemov’s mental model, understood through these five principles, to be a helpful framework. The task of learning and mastering 63 “techniques” for a new and developing teacher is daunting. But equipping them with five big ideas, or principles, through which to filter their classroom decision-making and priorities, can simplify the teaching craft and clarify where to focus.

Perrin’s Principles of Classical Pedagogy

Now let us turn to classical education expert Christopher Perrin’s ten principles of classical pedagogy. According to an article written this past summer, Perrin is currently working on a book with fellow classical education consultant Carrie Eben that will seek to unpack these principles in order to equip great teaching. As a side note, we interviewed Eben on our podcast, which you can listen to here.

While Perrin does not use language of a mental model, it seems that his principles function in a similar way. By call them principles, rather than practices, he is directing us to think about the broader convictions teachers can adopt to govern specific practices. In other words, these principles exist less as a checklist and more as a filter. Teachers can measure a lesson against these principles in order to gain insight about how to strengthen the teaching and learning that goes on in their classrooms.

Given that Perrin’s article linked above provides brief descriptions for each principle, I will simply refer you to that article and list them out here. They are as follows:

1. Make haste slowly: take time to master each step.
2. Do fewer things, but do them well: it is better to master a few things well than to cover cursory content.
3. Repetition is the mother of memory: revisiting and reviewing past lessons deepens both affection and understanding.
4. The one who loves can sing and remember: the importance of songs, jingles, and chants.
5. Wonder commences learning that will last.
6. Order time and space for deep thought: cultivate leisure (schole) and contemplation. 
7. Embodied rhythms, liturgies, and routines shape the soul.
8. Students learn by teaching: knowledge taught is twice-learned.
9. The best teacher is a good book: the teacher becomes the tutor and a three-way conversation begins.
10. Learn in community through conversation: this creates a friendship of the soul that gives birth to deep and mutual learning.

What a fascinating list! Immediately, we can see the contrast between Lemov and Perrin in light of the language they deploy. Lemov’s focus is primarily material, in nature: cognition, socialization, and relationships all exist within an immanent frame of being in the world. In contrast, Perrin clearly values the spiritual and transcendent dimension on the same plane as the immanent. His desire for students to grow in love, virtue, reverence, and contemplation–beyond mere cognitive achievement–stands out.

What the Principles Have in Common 

There are three key ways I see Lemov and Perrin displaying similarity in the principles they prescribe. 

First, both approaches respect deep work and the building of durable knowledge. Lemov captures this value through his distinction between working and long-term memory as well as his emphasis on habits and attention. Perrin encourages teachers to proceed slowly and deeply through a lesson in order to build a strong foundation.

Second, both approaches appreciate the power of habit and attention. Obviously, habits and attention are the explicit focus for Lemov. He underscores the value of cultivating the right processes for learning to occur. It is not merely what or how much a student learns; it is how. Similarly, Perrin encourages the mastery of each step and using strategies like liturgies and chants to strengthen the learning experience.

Third, both approaches underscore the centrality of relationship in the learning process. Lemov grounds relationships in the power of motivation and social-emotional learning. Perrin looks to classical ideas about friendship and the formation of the soul to demonstrate the centrality of community in the classroom. 

How the Principles Diverge 

Nevertheless, there are core differences in which the prescribed principles diverge.

First, it is clear that while Perrin conceives of education as the full formation of a student (mind, heart, body, and soul), Lemov prioritizes the cognitive and emotional. While I do not think it is fair to say that Lemov values product over persons, I do think his view of humanity is limited by his secular vantage point. This anthropology lacks a moral dimension as well. If students are basically a bundle of cells directed by a nervous system, then the most that teachers can do is strengthen cognition and build “productive” social environments. But if students are eternal and embodied souls made in God’s image, then we need a different list, such as Perrin’s, to shape these souls accordingly. 

Second, and related, Perrin offers a compelling vision for learning, whereas Lemov only offers pragmatic motivation. From the very beginning, Perrin is clear that the goal of all education is wisdom and virtue. He writes, “By employing the following principles, teachers will naturally cultivate virtues of love, humility, fortitude,  diligence, constancy and temperance in the lives of their students.” In contrast, Lemov’s focus continues to be college and career readiness. While his preface does indicate a vision for cultivating an equitable and just society, within the D.E.I. stream of thinking, you can tell he is wrestling with the merits of this ideology, and ultimately fails to move beyond a myopic focus on the pragmatic benefits of education.

Finally, Perrin honors the situatedness of students in time and not merely space. He does so by recognizing the value of carrying on the rich tradition of goodness, truth, and beauty from the past into the future. His emphasis on great books, contemplation, poetry, and liturgy remind us that education possesses a broader cultural and civilizational significance, and therefore, responsibility. While both Lemov and Perrin rightly emphasize the paradox that humans both exist as individuals and members in communities, Lemov fails to address that we exist in communities of both space and time. A central goal of education includes honoring one’s intellectual, cultural, and religious heritage, and passing on the torch of this heritage to future generations.

Conclusion

In sum, there are benefits to both the mental model that Lemov proposes and Perrin’s list of pedagogical principles. Where Lemov falls short is where modern education usually does: failing to grasp the full-orbed nature of a human being and the implications this places on educators. Insights from cognitive psychology and the latest learning science will continue to improve the learning that goes on in our classrooms, and classical educators do well to implement these strategies in the classroom.

But we must not lose sight of the deeper and fuller reality of what it means to be human: that our students are made in God’s image, that they are embodied souls, that there is a moral universe to navigate as well as a physical one, and ultimately, that there is a God who intentionally designed and commissioned the human race to cultivate His goodness, truth, and beauty in the world. Through the incarnation of the Son of God, we are reminded that humanity is indeed special and unique in God’s sight, that our embodiedness is indeed good, and that through Christ, our fallenness can be redeemed for His purposes, including in the classroom.

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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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Of course, not all resolutions are created equal. There’s a resolution to get in shape by working out more, and then there are The Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards, full of profound thought and purposeful Christian spirituality. Are written goals and resolutions classical? Should personal goal setting be a deliberate feature in our educational programs? I believe the answer to both questions is yes. There is a rich classical tradition of personal goal setting, especially as it relates to virtue and habit development. Helping our students cast a positive vision for their own personal growth and detail the steps they can take toward their own development is a powerful and undervalued lever in the classical, Christian educator’s hands.

Classical Goal Setting

To demonstrate that resolutions and goal setting are classical, we need look no further than the Stoic philosophers. Their handbooks and meditations are full of the stuff of resolutions. Classical goal setting might be said to differ from many modern New Year’s resolutions in its overarching focus on character as the outcome rather than money, beauty or career. Living a good life, developing areté or virtue, and serving God and neighbor better should be the aim of a classical and Christian set of resolutions. This is in contrast to goals centered merely on increased discipline to promote personal fulfillment. 

At the same time, even goals with a narrow focus tend to work, or at least substantially increase the likelihood that a person will hit their goal. The reason why is articulated well by Aristotle. It is as simple and profound as saying that those who have a clear target are much more likely to hit it:

If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good. Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right? If so, we must try in outline at least, to determine what it is, and of which of the sciences or capacities it is the object.

Aristotle, Ethics and Poetics (Veritas Press: 2019), 10 

Aristotle believes the chief good is eudaimonia, happiness or, we might say, personal fulfillment. We have already had occasion to modify Aristotle’s endorsement of happiness to suit the transcendent frame of a Christian worldview in the opening foray into a series on Aristotle’s intellectual virtues (see “Aristotle’s Virtue Theory and a Christian Purpose of Education”). We can merely note for our purposes here that Aristotle’s metaphor of archers having a goal or target is incredibly helpful. 

In life we all make choices. In fact, we all deliberate about what is good for ourselves. Having in mind the ultimate goal that we are aiming at will necessarily clarify the mechanics involved in taking a successful shot. Of course, here Aristotle is showing how our life is not an infinite regression of goods that are merely useful for some other good. Classical goal setting does not settle for the immediate desired end but pushes its participants to ask why. Why do you want to go to the gym? Why do you want to be more physically fit? Why do you want to have more energy and vibrancy as well as look better? For Aristotle, these questions lead up and out to his big picture vision of eudaimonia and the good life. 

This questioning and clarification process helps sort our immediate wants from bigger goals and our future vision. It also makes classical goal setting more effective, because in the process we are also sorting out our various priorities and connecting our short term goals and objectives to our ultimate telos and vision of human flourishing. The clarity achieved will then increase motivation to stick to a new habit or practice in spite of obstacles. If our goals are connected to a lesser vision, which, say, identifies human pleasure as the end-all-be-all, the misguided vision of happiness that Aristotle says most human beings operate with, then we will be easily led astray from our goal of regular exercise when the pain increases and the Siren song of some other pleasure is calling our name (read Educating for Self-Control, Part 1: A Lost Christian Virtue).

Modern Research on Goal Setting

Similarly modern research has shown that there are better and worse ways to set goals. Brian Johnson explains the importance of imagining both a positive future vision and the presence of obstacles to making that vision a reality. He draws from the research of Rick Snyder in his book The Psychology of Hope to detail the need for not only goals, but a sense of agency and multiple pathways (i.e. plans B, C, D, etc.) to get there (Areté: Activate Your Heroic Potential, Heroic Blackstone: 2023; 88-89). Genuine hope distinguishes itself from mere wish by involving both a sense that I can personally contribute in some way toward a better future and the realism that struggle, failure and the need to try-try-again will be part of that process.

Johnson also draws from the work of Gabriele Oettingen to much the same effect (90-91). In her book Rethinking Positive Thinking Oettingen uses the acronym WOOP to delineate the most effective set of steps to turn resolutions into reality: Wish, Outcome, Obstacles, Plan. Each step should be written down and articulated. A wish for the future must be connected to the overall purpose or vision of the good life (think Aristotle’s eudaimonia). Obstacles must be anticipated with some plans or “implementation intentions” for how to deal with them. This process helps us stick to the vision when the rubber of good intentions meets the road of reality. 

Jordan Peterson, the now famous Canadian Psychologist and author of 12 Rules for Life, has independently worked out something similar in the form of his Future Authoring program:

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, decided to ask his students to sit down and write about their ideal future. They were asked to specifically describe the type of person they wanted to be, the skills they wanted to attain, and the relationships they wanted to have, among other things. (see Self Authoring – Future Authoring)

Notice that writing out the “ideal future” constitutes the major element in this process. From public lectures we know that Peterson’s Future Authoring program also involves imagining a negative picture as well of what the hellish version of the self would be if it went down a dark path instead. 

(Read Patrick’s series on Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life: Rules for Schools?, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.)

In addition, like the work of Snyder and Oettingen, Peterson’s process also involves getting down into the nitty gritty of daily habits and potential obstacles. It also has the support of research studies to demonstrate its effectiveness (see Self Authoring – Research). For instance, a single intensive goal setting session significantly improved the GPA of undergraduate students who were struggling academically within a semester (see Hirsh and Peterson, “Setting, Elaborating, and Reflecting on Personal Goals Improves Academic Performance,” 260). The research is clear, despite the low success rate of New Year’s resolutions. Goal setting in a detailed way with written goals and articulated obstacles has been shown to be incredibly effective. 

Applying Goal Setting to Education

The study cited above makes the application of goal setting to education obvious in one sense. It can be used powerfully as an intervention for students who are struggling academically. This should not be overlooked in our K-12 classical Christian schools and homeschools. Too often we resort to lecturing a student about what they should do or not do in order to improve their academic performance. Part of why this does not work is because it doesn’t appropriately harness a student’s autonomy or will, in Charlotte Mason’s terms. 

Sometimes we are tempted to think of habit training as something we do to a student, rather than something we do with a student. But Charlotte Mason is clear that a student must own his or her own character development, otherwise it is a mere veneer: 

We who teach should make it clear to ourselves that our aim in education is less conduct than character; conduct may be arrived at, as we have seen, by indirect routes, but it is of value to the world only as it has its source in character…. What we do with the will we describe as voluntary. What we do without the conscious action of will is involuntary. The will has only one mode of action, its function is to ‘choose,’ and with every choice we make we grow in force of character. (vol. 6, p. 129)

A goal setting process allows an individual student to make their own assessment of their future vision, their obstacles, and the pathways forward. The student then choses to follow the positive goals that they set for themselves. The voluntary and personal nature of this process make it ideal for developing character. 

Now we must add in to this process the classical goal setting features we discussed before. We should direct them in their resolutions not just toward improving academic performance or an exercising habit but their ultimate purpose from a Christian perspective and how their immediate goals relate not only to their personal fulfillment but also to the glory of God and their salvation in Christ. Christian classical goal setting should not only WOOP (Wish-Outcome-Obstacles-Plan), it should do it Jonathan Edwards style. 

What does this look like in our education settings? The first and most obvious note is that a classical goal setting exercise should most likely not be an assignment with a grade. The tang of artificiality and forced reflection might undercut the autonomy and will of the student. It is important to have times and seasons set apart perhaps at the start of the year and the beginning of a new quarter or semester, or even a unit in a course, where students are given the opportunity to reflect in writing on their own learning and progress, as well as their ultimate goals and personal growth. I have conducted a writing session similar to the future authoring prompts for students during an Upper School student orientation time. Students were told that what they wrote would not be collected or graded and were encouraged to reflect seriously and purposefully on their own future vision of themselves and their goals for the year. 

In some classes and courses, specific virtues and vices can be used as prompts or options to articulate their own assessment of themselves. The classical and Christian content of history, literature and biblical texts can be helpfully applied in a meditation journal, where students regularly react personally to questions that ask them to apply the examples and thoughts of these subjects to themselves. Most of all, we can conclude that the development of character and specifically the intellectual virtue of prudence or practical wisdom hinge on these sorts of practices. Prudence involves a person deliberating about the real decisions they are making on a daily basis in light of a future vision of flourishing. Goal setting and resolutions are necessary part of that process. In order to turn out men and women of prudence we should carve out periodic class time for intentional reflection regarding personal development.

A series entitled “Counsels of the Wise” explores and applies the intellectual virtue of prudence or practical wisdom (Greek: phronesis):

1. Counsels of the Wise, Part 1: Foundations of Christian Prudence
2. Counsels of the Wise, Part 2: Why Reviving Moral Philosophy Is Not Enough
3. Counsels of the Wise, Part 3: The Practical Nature of Prudence
4. Counsels of the Wise, Part 4: Preliminary Instruction in Prudence
5. Counsels of the Wise, Part 5: Principles and Practice, Examples and Discipline
6. Counsels of the Wise, Part 6: A Pedagogy of Prudence
7. Counsels of the Wise, Part 7: Leadership, Liberal Arts, and Prudence
8. Counsels of the Wise, Part 8: Aiming at the Intermediate or Aristotle’s Moral Virtues

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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 article, we will develop a framework for the classroom centered around the idea that each class is a team. This framework revolves around two general concepts: strong relationships and strategic routines. These might seem either obvious or overly general. But we shall see how essential both are if we want to foster a successful culture in the classroom.

A Good Apple: Cultivating Relational Safety

In his book The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle describes how organizations can create cultures that flourish based on studies of various teams such as the Navy SEALs, the San Antonio Spurs and the Brain Trust at Pixar, to name a few. Coyle structures his book around three skills essential to culture creation: build safety, share vulnerability, and establish purpose. Each of these skills address ways individuals connect to a shared culture, which can be expressed in several diagnostic questions.

When we are aiming to build safety, we can ask a few important questions. Does every individual feel safe to share?  Is there a bond of connection that everyone feels? Is there a sense of identity individuals sense by belonging to this group? Perhaps the most important of the three skills is creating relational connection.

In his chapter entitled, “The Good Apples,” Coyle describes how an experiment was run in Australia studying group dynamics. Planted inside a number of four-person groups was an individual who was intentionally supposed to sabotage the group. This person was a bad apple, attempting—and usually succeeding—in reducing the quality of each group’s performance. Yet, in one instance, a group involved an individual named Jonathan, who effectively checked the attempts of the bad apple. Jonathan—dubbed the good apple—exhibited subtle characteristics that made everyone in the group feel welcomed and valued. Every gesture and statement made by Jonathan enabled the group to feel a connection with the others in the group.

Coyle lists a number of patterns that Jonathan—and other connectors like him—practiced that cause this feeling of safety and connection. He notes “close physical proximity, often in circles” as well as “profuse amounts of eye contact.” There are “lots of short, energetic exchanges (no long speeches)” along with “lots of questions” and “humor, laughter” (Coyle 8). These patterns make a group “sticky.” Members of these groups come to feel a sense of belonging through many reinforcing patterns and practices. While it can be difficult to manufacture such cultures, we can note these patterns and implement them strategically. For instance, when I want to initiate a project, I will call a class to huddle up. American football has made this such a recognizable practice, that my student immediately circle up in a hunched over position. I can give simple pointed instructions and generate excitement, connection and buy in by this “close physical proximity, often in circles” pattern. “Okay, guys, we need to put away all the chairs from assembly. What’s our strategy?” In the huddle, I let them share their ideas and then we get down to work. Moments like this create a culture of belonging and connection. Find simple ways to incorporate patterns like this into your day.

Later in the same chapter, Coyle dives into the work of Pentland to break down five factors of optimal team performance. Like the list of patterns above, these can be implemented to cultivate a sense of teamwork and build culture. Coyle writes:

“1. Everyone in the group talks and listens in roughly equal measure, keeping contributions short.

2. Members maintain high levels of eye contact, and their conversations and gestures are energetic.

3. Members communicate directly with one another, not just with the team leader.

4. Members carry on back-channel or side conversations within the team.

5. Members periodically break, go exploring outside the team, and bring information back to share with the others.”

Daniel Coyle, The Culture Code (Random House, 2018), 14-15.

Notice how much culture is built around quick moments of conversation. As teachers, we are often inclined to stop side conversations. These can be distracting and show a lack of attention towards the subject at hand. Yet, when our goal is building culture, we actually want a good amount of intra-group dialogue to occur. What this means is that we ought to train our students to shift between focused attention and then side-to-side group engagement. Coach students in topic-driven discussion. Provide feedback on roundtable debates and dialogue. This entails that our classrooms are not dominated by mono-directional instruction, such as lectures. Instead, we must become effective at practices like dialogue, debate and discussion.

Another feature of these factors is what we could call distributed leadership. Sure, as teachers we are the leaders of the classroom, often giving orders and instructions and always guiding the class throughout their learning. However, there are ways we can empower students to become champions of the culture we are building. This can occur by training them in how to lead discussions. We can give them rules for effective debate and argumentation. Break down the big group into platoons of teams, assigning different groupings and team leaders each time. These moments of empowerment get the students invested in the creation of a culture that has the stamp of their personalities. While it might feel like this detracts from the teacher’s leadership and authority, when done correctly, the teacher actually accumulates more leadership capital through guiding, coaching and correcting these young, emerging leaders.

The concept of “go exploring” can also feel risky. But notice how that is likewise a major contributor to empowerment and buy-in. The teacher as leader gives clear instructions as to what ought to be explored and what information would be worth sharing. This can be done in the classroom by having students scan back through the chapter for identify beautiful word choices of an author. Students can be assigned the task of coming up with discussion questions for the next chapter. Young students love exploring and finding specimens in nature study. They come back to the teacher and the group with a joyful, “Look what I found!”

I highly recommend reading through all of Coyle’s book whether you are a teacher or administrator. Learning the tools to guide and shape culture enable you to have intentionality in what is built but also a “stickiness” that makes your culture hard to resist. My thesis here as I interacted with Coyle’s first chapter is that we as leaders in our classrooms and schools can be the “good apples” promoting the safety and connection that makes culture possible.

A Champion Culture: Principles and Practices

Here at Educational Renaissance, we really like Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion. Now that he has come out with a new edition, we need to navigate a world where there are great qualities that are the domain of his 2.0 edition as well as new insights published in his 3.0 version. One of the greatest frameworks he provided in the 2.0 version was a write-up of “Five Principles of Classroom Culture”: Discipline, Management, Control, Influence, and Engagement (342-347). Here we’ll walk through a few of these principles and spell out some key practices to implement to build a thriving culture.

Lemov is spot on when it comes to a description of discipline. I am reminded of the classical sense that Latin root discipulina means instruction (much as the Greek word for disciple, μαθητής, means “learner” or “pupil”). Discipline is not about punishment, but about inculcating what Lemov calls “self-discipline.” Charlotte Mason connect this idea to habit training. “There is no habit or power so useful to man or woman as that of personal initiative,” Mason claims (Home Education 192). True freedom comes when we are able to hold ourselves accountable to what we know to be true, good and just.

The second principle Lemov elucidates is management. Unlike what many might expect, he does not promote a system of rewards and punishments. Instead, he equates management to relationship building. He writes:

“To truly succeed, you must be able to control students—that is, get them to do things regardless of consequence, and inspire and engage them in positive work. You also are building relationships with students that are nontransactional; they don’t involve rewards or consequences, and they demonstrate that you care enough to know your students as individuals.”

Doug Lemov, Teach Like a Champion 2.0 (Jossey-Bass, 2015), 344.

This really is Leadership 101. If your class is going to have a healthy culture, there must be a strong relational connection between student and teacher. This relationship serves as a bridge that must hold the weight of coaching, training, instructing and counseling.

Third is control, with Lemov describes as “your capacity to cause someone to choose to do what you ask, regardless of consequences.” Notice how this overlaps with management. There must be a safe and connected group dynamic such as Coyle describes where the teacher can call students up firmly and confidently. This comes from what Lemov expresses as “faith in students’ ability to meet expectation” (Lemov 345). We are not lowering expectations to make it “easy” on the students. Instead, the teacher supports students to reach high and offers support to get there.

The relationship building inherent in management and control leads to the fourth principle, influence. “Influence gets them to want to internalize the things you suggest” (Lemov 346). The control principle is all about the teacher believing in a student’s potential to reach high. Influence now gets the student to believe in herself. This comes through celebrating victories, reflecting on challenges overcome, and setting new goals to reach even higher.

Finally, the principle of engagement centers on compelling lessons. We must be careful here to avoid mere entertainment. A teacher might be gifted in sparking laughter or eloquently delivering lectures. But if the material itself is not appreciated for its intrinsic value, the whole culture can crumble. Exciting lessons are often associated with challenge and complexity. It is fascinating to see how children enjoy trying to solve interesting problems. Reading great books, writing effortfully, and calculating complex problems can be a pathway to flow for students. Engaging students in meaningful work is how to build a culture of excellence.

This philosophical introduction to the late chapters of Teach Like a Champion 2.0 lead to numerous techniques that help build classroom culture. Here I will highlight a few that can maximize your leadership as a teacher. We begin with “Strategic investment” combined with “Do it again.” In both of these you lead rehearsals of the routines, procedures and practices of the classroom. Here you can show exactly how things get done in the classroom, and then repeat the practice until it meets expectations. Consider how this framework leads to organized desks, clear routes for classroom traffic, homework steno checks, hand-raising, or rules for proper discussion.

You as a teacher project something of your personality and authority into the classroom. These next techniques leverage that presence you have in the classroom. From “Be seen looking” to “Firm calm finesse” and “Strong voice,” you convey to the classroom that you are in control of the environment—creating a safe and connected culture—through your ability to notice when students are doing what is expected and calling them up when they fall below standards. Being at peace in the presence of your students lets them know that you are both happy to be with them, but also not ruffled when things get a little out of control. You can bring them back with your strong voice. Now this is not yelling or raising your voice. Instead, you are clear, pointed, and confident in what you have to say.

The words we use make such an impact on the culture we are building. The techniques “Precise praise” and “Joy factor” go a long way towards building up a culture of excellence. With both of these techniques, we avoid phrases such as “good job” or “well done,” instead preferring to specify exactly what was praiseworthy. “Great job raising hands to share your thoughts, class.” “I really appreciated how you supported your claim with evidence.” By being precise, you clearly identify actions that are praiseworthy. This removes mere affirmation of the individual while demonstrating your watchfulness for the excellent standards that are central to your culture. Hard work and new understandings ought to be celebrated, not as a reward but as the natural consequence of the joy intrinsic is such things. Make these moments tangible for your students and provide a framework for taking satisfaction in their work.

As the leader in the classroom, you become the champion of the excellence that will mark your culture. We can be the good apples that create the safe and connected culture where students can thrive. By applying the principles and techniques outlined here, you can create a classroom culture that is a delight.

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

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

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

Analyze the Culture

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Vision for Culture

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

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

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

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

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

The Habit of Practice

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

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

Charlotte Mason, Philosophy of Education, pg. 97

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

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

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

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

Practical Tools to Build a Culture

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

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

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

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

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

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