So far in this series we have had occasion to develop the Christian underpinnings for prudence. “Be wise [phronemoi, prudent] as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matt 10:16), Jesus tells his disciples, utilizing the same word for prudence that Aristotle had named among his five intellectual virtues hundreds of years before. And while the New Testament does not consistently endorse this linguistic distinction between practical and philosophic wisdom (phronesis vs sophia), still the emphasis of the Bible lands squarely on the practical ability to discern the difference between good and evil, to see through the deceitfulness of sin and value goods rightly. Augustine’s ordo amoris, or the proper ordering of loves, provides an important theological development of the Greek philosophical vision of the prudent man. 

Practical wisdom is thus necessarily contrasted with philosophic wisdom (sophia), which for Aristotle involved perception (nous) of first principles and scientific knowledge (episteme) about invariable things, things that never change. We might call these invariable things eternal truths and think more readily of mathematics and metaphysics, than history and literature. What is best for human beings differs with different particulars. Christians might likewise contrast abstract or theoretical knowledge about the divine being, that He is eternal, immortal, impassible, etc., with knowing God himself in a saving relationship. As James writes in his letter, “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe–and shudder!” (James 2:19 ESV). In the same way, prudence has the heart of action in a way that other intellectual virtues do not. 

Adopting a prudential perspective thus has the potential to transform our classical Christian educational paradigm by pumping the lifeblood of practicality back into it. To do that we must now begin to answer in earnest the question of how. What are the proper methods of instructing the conscience and instilling moral wisdom? We must begin with the preliminary stages of instilling prudence in the young, before delineating a pedagogy of prudence for our older students. The full dawning of prudence requires the later stages of reflection and rationality that await higher intellectual development in high school and college years. 

Can We Even Teach Prudence? 

At first, in consulting Aristotle we might be tempted to despair of a pedagogy for prudence. After all, the main requirement for developing prudence in Aristotle seems to be experience, a notion that is illustrated by the fact that scientific knowledge (episteme), while technically of a higher rank among the intellectual virtues, is attainable much earlier than prudence (phronesis):

What has been said is confirmed by the fact that while young men become geometricians and mathematicians and wise in matters like these, it is thought that a young man of practical wisdom cannot be found. The cause is that such wisdom is concerned not only with universals but with particulars, which become familiar from experience, but a young man has no experience, for it is length of time that gives experience; indeed one might ask this question too, why a boy may become a mathematician, but not a wise man or a natural scientist. Is it because the objects of mathematics exist by abstraction, while the first principles of these other subjects come from experience, and because young men have no conviction about the latter but merely use the proper language, while the essence of mathematical objects is plain enough to them? (Nicomachean Ethics VI.8, p. 1803 in The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 2)

In modern teaching circles we are inclined to believe that it is abstractions and universals that stymie the young mind. Aristotle provides a good counter to our inclinations here, as does the documented Flynn effect: “the increase in correct IQ test answers with each new generation in the twentieth century.” In his book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, David Epstein explains the increasing understanding of abstractions for children in the modern world:

A child today who scores average on similarities would be in the 94th percentile of her grandparents’ generation. When a group of Estonian researchers used national test scores to compare word understandings of schoolkids in the 1930s to those in 2006, they saw that improvement came very specifically on the most abstract words. The more abstract the word, the bigger the improvement. The kids barely bested their grandparents on words for directly observable objects or phenomena (“hen,” “eating,” “illness”), but they improved massively on imperceptible concepts (“law,” “pledge,” “citizen”). (39)

It turns out that abstractions are not as impenetrable to the young as we had thought. The linguistic environment of modern societies, which is rich in such abstractions (if deficient in other ways…), has provided for a steady advance in this sort of thinking. 

It has not, we can assert anecdotally, seemed to afford any meaningful advance in the particulars of prudence. Experience, we are tempted to believe, may not be the best teacher, but perhaps it is the only teacher of practical wisdom. We might forgive Gary Hartenburg, the author of Aristotle: Education for Virtue and Leisure (from the Giants in the History of Education series from Classical Academic Press), for claiming that the development of prudence must wait for after the conclusion of formal education (53-54).

I think that this pessimistic conclusion, however, is incorrect. Even if we must go beyond Aristotle’s admittedly incomplete writings on education (the section of his Politics which concerns education is corrupt and ends abruptly before its actual conclusion), we have reason to hope that we can influence the development of prudence in the young. In addition to a host of classical and Christian resources that answer the question, “Can virtue be taught?”, in the affirmative, as David Hicks memorably put it in Norms and Nobility (Buy through the EdRen Bookstore!), we need look no further than the great Christian educational reformer John Amos Comenius. 

Sowing the Seeds of All the Virtues

You might recall that John Amos Comenius, the brilliant Czech educational celebrity of the late Reformation era, came to our aid earlier in this series on Aristotle’s intellectual virtues. His reflections helped to establish the ultimate goal of Christian education as the cultivation of all the moral, intellectual and spiritual virtues. In this way we were able to effectively replace Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives in the cognitive domain with a more holistic Christian paradigm focused on the virtues. Prudence uniquely ties together the moral and spiritual virtues at the rational center of human thought. It has therefore rightly been regarded as a hinge virtue, one of the cardinal (from the Latin cardo for hinge) virtues of classical and medieval tradition. 

Comenius, also, provided us a pedagogy of artistry through his method of the arts, laid out first in his Great Didactic, then refined and developed in the Analytical Didactic, which he published much later in life. The first of these developed analogies from nature to detail a thrilling and vibrant (if at times startling) educational vision. The second delighted in the bracing air of analytical logic and method, rather than continuing the playful analogies of his first great educational work. 

In a chapter of The Great Didactic entitled, “The Method of Morals” he begins by stating programmatically, “All the virtues, without exception, should be implanted in the young. For in morality nothing can be admitted without leaving a gap.” We can pause to note the natural metaphor of implanting, sowing the seeds of virtue we might say. (I explored this idea for the benefit of parents on Coram Deo Academy’s website: intro, memory, habits, ideas.) For Comenius, like Aristotle, the virtues do not “exist in separation from each other…, for with the presence of the one quality, practical wisdom, will be given all the excellences” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VI.13, Rev. Oxford Trans., 1808). 

Comenius goes on, drawing from medieval and classical tradition, to endorse the cardinal virtues explicitly, as the hinges on which the door of virtue is swung open:

Those virtues which are called cardinal should be first instilled; these are prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice. In this way we may ensure that the structure shall not be built up without a foundation, and that the various parts shall form a harmonious whole. (211-212)

Comenius’ ordering of these virtues seems deliberate, as he continues through them in the order named, delineating certain “fundamental rules” for “shaping the morals” and “instilling true virtue and piety” in schools (211). It is refreshing to see Comenius’ clear endorsement of the classical tradition’s call to teach virtue and establish a bedrock of piety in our students (on which we might reference Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain’s chapter on piety in The Liberal Arts Tradition). 

But why does Comenius list prudence first? Most of the time the cardinal virtues are enumerated with prudence last as the crowning achievement after the preliminary moral virtues. Surely our awareness of Aristotle’s categorization of prudence as an intellectual virtue would cause us to place it after the moral virtues of temperance, justice and fortitude. We must read on to see that Comenius’s practical advice on how to instill these virtues requires the seeds of prudence to be sowed alongside every virtue. We cannot really train in virtuous habits, unless we are at the same time laying the foundation of prudence in the hearts and minds of the young. 

The Method of Instruction in Prudence

Charlotte Mason distinguished her method of habit training from mere behaviorism by her insistence on going back further than simply “sowing a habit” to “reap a character”. We must sow the idea that makes the habit valuable and good. In the same way, Comenius regards prudential instruction as the basis for the development of the moral virtues. He begins by stating, “Prudence must be acquired by receiving good instruction, and by learning the real differences that exist between things, and the relative value of those things.” Surprisingly, perhaps to our postmodern ears, Comenius asserts that “good instruction” on values is not only possible, but is grounded in objective reality. 

In our contemporary culture ‘fact’ and ‘opinion’ are sharply distinguished, and opinions and value judgments are classed as unimportant because they are contested in the public square. But practical wisdom is precisely concerned with, in Aristotle’s words, “that part [of the soul] which forms opinions” (Nic. Ethics, VI.5, 1801), and “correctness of opinion is truth” (VI.9, 1804). Understanding the “good instruction” of a teacher on the “real differences… between things” and the “relative value of those things” is therefore a preliminary to prudence. As Aristotle explains, 

Now understanding [nous] is neither the having nor the acquiring of practical wisdom; but as learning is called understanding when it means the exercise of the faculty of opinion for the purpose of judging of what some one else says about matters with which practical wisdom is concerned–and of judging soundly. (VI.10, 1805)

The key point for our purposes is that, while understanding a teacher’s “good instruction” is not prudence itself, it does exercise the faculty of opining and judging soundly. It therefore constitutes sowing the proper seeds for prudence, or laying the right foundation, to continue with Comenius’ vivid metaphors. 

Comenius elaborates on this preliminary instruction in prudence quoting from John Ludovic Vives, one of the great educators of the sixteenth century:

A sound judgment on matters of fact is the true foundation of all virtue. Well does Vives say: “True wisdom consists in having a sound judgment, and in thus arriving at the truth. Thus are we prevented from following worthless things as if they were of value, or from rejecting what is of value as if it were worthless; from blaming what should be praised, and from praising what should be blamed. This is the source from which all error arises in the human mind, and there is nothing in the life of man that is more disastrous than the lack of judgment through which a false estimate of facts is made. Sound judgment,” he proceeds, “should be practiced in early youth, and will thus be developed by the time manhood is reached. A boy should seek that which is right and avoid that which is worthless, for thus the practice of judging correctly will become second nature with him.” (212)

We can pause here to note that this sort of instruction cannot be given by a man or woman without sound judgment and some measure of prudence herself. You cannot give what you do not have. In matters of prudence, John Milton Gregory’s Law of the Teacher could not be truer: a teacher must know that which he would teach. We should also fix in our minds clearly that our modern dichotomy between fact and opinion has been entirely done away with (at least in this translation…). The fact is that riches are less valuable than friendship; you can call this an opinion or judgment if you want, but it does not reduce the importance or truth of such a fact. 

Proverbs provide a collected store of such judgments or estimates of the facts of a case, which can provide a preliminary to prudence for the young. Even where the reasoning of moral sayings and aphorisms is not spelled out, they are of immense value to the young in averting prudential error in valuing things rightly. As Aristotle claims, “Therefore we ought to attend to the undemonstrated sayings and opinions of experienced and older people or of people of practical wisdom not less than to demonstrations; for because experience has given them an eye they see aright” (Nic. Ethics VI.11, 1806). 

It is in the realm of prudence, then, that we must question Charlotte Mason’s outlaw of opining before children:

One of our presumptuous sins in this connection is that we venture to offer opinions to children (and to older persons) instead of ideas. We believe that an opinion expresses thought and therefore embodies an idea. Even if it did so once the very act of crystallization into opinion destroys any vitality it may have had…. (Toward a Philosophy of Education, vol. 6; Wilder, 2008; 87)

If by “opinions” we are talking primarily about personal views on contemporary issues or debatable matters of history or literary criticism where solid evidence is lacking, Mason’s point is well-taken. The precious class time should not be concerned with such trivialities and the accidence of their teacher’s preferred opinions. 

But if instead we are talking about matters related to living a good life and the general human condition, with what is truly valuable in life and what dead ends and roadblocks have prevented many people for making virtuous choices, then Charlotte Mason’s opinion about opinions must be soundly discarded. If a teacher’s hard-won opinions about such matters are not worth passing on to the young, the teacher should not be employed to give care to the young. In fact, we might go so far as to state that the most important quality of a teacher or tutor of the young is that he or she be a man or woman of prudence, with the ability to give instruction in the form of good opinions about life in the midst of all the studies. As John Locke openly declares in Some Thoughts Concerning Education:

The great work of a governor is to fashion the carriage and form the mind, to settle in his pupil good habits and the principles of virtue and wisdom, to give him by little and little a view of mankind, and work him into a love and imitation of what is excellent and praiseworthy, and in the prosecution of it to give him vigor, activity, and industry. The studies which he sets him upon are but as it were the exercises of his faculties and employment of his time to keep him from sauntering and idleness, to teach him application, and accustom him to take pains, and to give him some little taste of what his own industry must perfect. (70)

The studies themselves pale in comparison to the training in “good habits” and the teacher’s instruction in “the principles of virtue and wisdom.” 

So, our conclusion, for the moment, is that the teacher of the young should not muzzle herself when it comes to opining on matters of wisdom and virtue. She should proactively and deliberately seek to share all the accumulated wisdom on living a good life that she has available to her, from proverbs and sayings, passages of scripture, lessons of life from history, literature, and modern examples. It is the job of a teacher of the young to thus opine. In the next article we’ll continue to explore the methods of instilling prudence in the young through not only “good instruction” but the use of examples, rules and discipline.

The post Counsels of the Wise, Part 4: Preliminary Instruction in Prudence appeared first on .

Mason’s revival of narration therefore stands as a signpost of her larger project. And it is a project that we find inspiration from here at Educational Renaissance. The renaissance had a healthy respect for and appreciation of the classical past, while at the same time being quite innovative in a number of areas. In a way narration is simply one piece of this broader puzzle: all the pieces will help create a more accurate picture of Charlotte Mason as an educator within the liberal arts tradition of education.

In this article we come to Charlotte Mason herself to see how her recommendations for narration square with those of the classical and renaissance educators we have surveyed. We will see that Mason’s use of narration was at least as innovative as any other educator in its history, even if the steps she took make perfect sense as natural developments. In the process we will discern some new possibilities for narration, including how we could revive the narration practices of earlier educators to supplement Charlotte Mason’s recommendations, or even reach out into new and uncharted territory with narration to attain new pedagogical goals. 

We will begin by looking at three issues raised by Charlotte Mason’s practice of narration: 1) the focus on rich texts, 2) the main goal of knowing content, and 3) the methods of narration.

Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Narration, Issue 1: Focusing on Rich Texts

Readers who are familiar with Charlotte Mason will be aware of some of the ways that Mason’s narration differs from that of the educators we have surveyed so far.

The first and most obvious difference, perhaps, is that the focus of Mason’s narration is upon a rich text, and not an informative lecture, as in Erasmus or Comenius, or else the telling of any story that the child knows, as in John Locke. In this way Mason sides with Aelius Theon, Quintilian and the secondary steps detailed by Locke. 

Charlotte Mason has a very practical and down-to-earth set of considerations for her decided preference for what she calls “living books” over “oral teaching” (not to mention the “dry-as-dust” textbooks of her era). Her thoughts in her third volume School Education are worth reproducing in full:

“Reason for Oral Teaching.––Intelligent teachers are well aware of the dry-as-dust character of school books, so they fall back upon the ‘oral’ lesson, one of whose qualities must be that it is not bookish. Living ideas can be derived only from living minds, and so it occasionally happens that a vital spark is flashed from teacher to pupil. But this occurs only when the subject is one to which the teacher has given original thought. In most cases the oral lesson, or the more advanced lecture, consists of information got up by the teacher from various books, and imparted in language, a little pedantic, or a little commonplace, or a little reading-made-easy in style. At the best, the teacher is not likely to have vital interest in, and, consequently, original thought upon, a wide range of subjects.

“Limitations of Teachers.––We wish to place before the child open doors to many avenues of instruction and delight, in each one of which he should find quickening thoughts. We cannot expect a school to be manned by a dozen master-minds, and even if it were, and the scholar were taught by each in turn, it would be much to his disadvantage. What he wants of his teacher is moral and mental discipline, sympathy and direction; and it is better, on the whole, that the training of the pupil should be undertaken by one wise teacher than that he should be passed from hand to hand for this subject and that.”

Charlotte Mason, School Education, vol 3 pg 170

For Mason an inspirational lecture requires a master-mind, in a way the type of teacher that Erasmus called for in his work on education, who could interpret to his students the best of a whole host of great classical works of literature on all topics. But in Mason’s day and age, the master-mind teacher approach would require experts on a variety of subjects, like science and literature, history and math, art and Bible—a feat that was becoming less and less attainable as scholarship proliferated in the modern era. At the same time schooling was spreading to more and more children of the British empire, making this ideal less and less viable, or even desirable for teachers specifically. Teachers were no longer scholars. Specialization had virtually ruled that out. 

And for Mason the practice of narrating from rich texts allows the teacher to focus more, not less, on the “moral and mental discipline, sympathy and direction” that students really need. As she says at the end of her 1st chapter on “self-education” in her final volume Toward a Philosophy of Education:

“In urging a method of self-education for children in lieu of the vicarious education which prevails, I should like to dwell on the enormous relief to teachers, a self-sacrificing and greatly overburdened class; the difference is just that between driving a horse that is light and a horse that is heavy in hand; the former covers the ground of his own gay will and the driver goes merrily. The teacher who allows his scholars the freedom of the city of books is at liberty to be their guide, philosopher and friend; and is no longer the mere instrument of forcible intellectual feeding.” (vol 6 pg 32)

Narration focuses on living books or rich texts as a means of providing the most vibrant and vital source of thought, while relieving the average teacher of the burden of inspiration. She can be a philosopher-guide even in territory she has not mastered to the point of being able to speak on it with power and conviction. 

Exceptions to Focusing on Rich Texts Only

There is an exception clause to Charlotte Mason’s nixing of oral teaching, and that is foreign languages. In her 6th volume Toward a Philosophy of Education, Mason reports on a development in foreign language instruction at her House of Education (the training school for future teachers and governesses) and the Parents Union School at Fairfield where they were apprentice-teachers:

“The French mistress gives, let us suppose, a lecture in history or literature lasting, say, for half an hour. At the end the students will narrate the substance of the lecture with few omissions and few errors.” (vol. 6, p. 212)

It should be noted that this occurred with the senior students, and was a less frequent exercise than narrating from a text. Early training in French, German, Italian or Latin consisted of narrating from texts after they had been translated or “thoroughly studied in grammar, syntax and style” (vol. 6. p. 213). 

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Mason’s concession to the value of oral teaching. As she herself admitted:

“We cannot do without the oral lesson—to introduce, to illustrate, to amplify, to sum up. My stipulation is that oral lessons should be like visits of angels, and that the child who has to walk through life, and has to find his intellectual food in books or go without, shall not be first taught to go upon crutches.” (Parents Review, Vol. 14, 1903, “Manifesto Discussion with Charlotte Mason”, pp. 907-913)

We have to wonder if Mason’s concerns would have been quite the same, if podcasts had been available in her day… or equally, if books had not been so cheap and readily available. Mason seems to base her advice to focus on narrating from books upon the practical realities of lifelong learning that were available in her day. Books would be the chief source of intellectual nourishment for her students, and so they should learn to walk on their own two feet in reading books from the start. 

Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Narration, Issue 2: The Main Goal of Using Narration

The second area in which Charlotte Mason’s practice of narration differs from the other educators of the classical era or renaissance is in the main pedagogical goal. For Quintilian, Aelius Theon and John Locke the main goal had been rhetorical training: the development of style through imitation. Students were learning, through narrating texts or stories, to speak fluently and to the point, with concise and clear expression. They might very well remember many of the exact details of things they narrated, and certainly stocking the memory with words, phrases, ideas, and common topics was necessary. But the point of all that memory-stocking and practice was the students’ own rhetorical style and fluency. 

As you’ll recall, this changed with Erasmus and Comenius in the renaissance. Now the focus was on the content of the teacher’s lecture or explanation. And they even made a point of emphasizing that the substance of the things, rather than the style of the teacher’s expression, was the important thing to be narrated in the child’s own way. For them, the main goal of narration is the students’ knowledge or memory of content, a scientific rather than rhetorical pedagogy, if you will. Students were learning, through narrating their teacher’s lecture or explanation, certain truths either as background to a text or as pictures of the way the world works. The emphasis is entirely upon narration as a sealing up of new knowledge, and not upon the development of style. 

Well, Charlotte Mason made an innovative leap. Familiar with John Locke’s narration from texts to develop style and fluency in speech and writing, and perhaps also with Comenius (given her quotations from him), she fuses the approach of the two to focus narration upon rich texts, with the main goal of memory of content or the development of knowledge. If you take a moment to glance at the table I have made below, “Narration in Historical Perspective Table,” you can see that she has pulled from the left and top right sections down into the bottom right.

Now here we must note one or two exceptions that seem to indicate that Charlotte Mason had rhetorical training in mind, even if she preferred for various reasons not to emphasize it as the main goal of narration. For instance, when discussing composition of the youngest students (Form I) in her 6th volume, she mentions the style of students’ narrations, as well as the accuracy of the content, saying, “The facts are sure to be accurate and the expression surprisingly vigorous, striking and unhesitating” (vol. 6, p. 190). However, she is still adamant against Locke’s method of coaching students to correct their narrations, whether written or oral, in the younger years: 

“Corrections must not be made during the act of narration, nor must any interruption be allowed.” (vol. 6, p. 191)

“Children must not be teased or instructed about the use of stops or capital letters. These things too come by nature to the child who reads, and the teacher’s instructions are apt to issue in the use of a pepper box for commas.” (vol. 6, p. 191)

“But let me again say there must be no attempt to teach composition.” (vol. 6, p. 192)

Even for the oldest students (Forms V and VI), Mason’s emphasis is against too much active focus on matters of style and rhetoric, preferring a natural imitative process that comes passively through a focus on content:

“Forms V and VI. In these Forms some definite teaching in the art of composition is advisable, but not too much, lest the young scholars be saddled with a stilted style which may encumber them for life. Perhaps the method of a University tutor is the best that can be adopted; that is, a point or two might be taken up in a given composition and suggestions or corrections made with little talk. Having been brought up so far upon stylists the pupils are almost certain to have formed a good style; because they have been thrown into the society of many great minds, they will not make a servile copy of any one but will shape an individual style out of the wealth of material they possess; and because they have matter in abundance and of the best they will not write mere verbiage.” (vol. 6, pp. 193-194)

In essence, Mason’s approach to the development of style was as an afterthought that will take care of itself by narrating rich texts if the teacher doesn’t get in the way. This approach will fall short of what many modern classical Christian educators desire, who value the revitalization of active teaching of the art of rhetoric as a major goal of the movement. We might situate Charlotte Mason in this conversation by imagining the dangers of a “stilted style” or overly programmatic formalist structure, that might result from certain types of prescriptive rhetorical training. The long, natural process of narration that Mason envisioned might, in and of itself, subvert the dangers of formalism in our students’ writing and speaking, even if our schools do engage in somewhat more active coaching in grammar, punctuation, style and rhetorical forms than she envisioned. 

Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Narration, Issue 3: The Method of Narration

We leave to the last the method of narration, whether oral or written. As we saw, classical educators often emphasized one or the other, or else both in sequence. Aelius Theon seemed to envision older pupils, trained in writing previously, coming into his rhetorical school ready to write their narrations immediately. Quintilian, and John Locke after him, envisioned a process that started earlier with oral narration, moving to written narration and composition exercises as students grew in facility with the skill of putting pen to paper. From reading in between the lines of their comments, Erasmus seemed to envision written narrations to be turned in to the teacher, while Comenius implied students becoming teachers explaining truths aloud to the rest of the class after the teacher had first done so. 

Charlotte Mason provides the fullest vision for narration as a consistent pedagogical practice, where both oral and written narration play a consistent role in students’ education. Students gently progress to writing their own narrations as they are able. Examinations at the end of the term utilize written “narration” of any amount of knowledge previously stored in students’ memories by initial narration. Given how central narration became in Charlotte Mason’s schools, it is not surprising to find her and her schools after her innovating other creative ways to narrate through the fine and performing arts. Karen Glass quotes from an article in the Parents’ Review long after Mason’s death about the practice of artistic narrations:

“But is narration…always merely ‘telling back’? It must be, we know, the child’s answer to ‘What comes next?’ It can be acted, with good speaking parts and plenty of criticism from actors and onlookers; nothing may be added or left out. Map drawing can be an excellent narration, or, maybe, clay modelling will supply the means to answer that question, or paper and poster paints, or chalks, even a paper model with scissors and paste pot. Always, however, there should be talk as well, the answer expressed in words; that is, the picture painted, the clay model, etc., will be described and fully described, because, with few exceptions, only words are really satisfying.” (Know and Tell, pp. 46, 48)

It may be a matter of debate how much these dramatic and artistic forms of “narration” began during Charlotte Mason’s lifetime, and to what extent they would fall under her definition of narration. Interestingly, Helen Wix, the author of this article, emphasizes the need for words. Acted narrations require words necessarily and are attested nearer Miss Mason’s time (see the second block quote on Know and Tell, p. 48 from The Parents’ Review of 1924, the year after Mason’s death). We also know that illustrations of particular moments from a literature or history book were a common practice in PNEU schools that Mason supported. So I have included drawn and acted narrations as innovations of Charlotte Mason. But it seems clear that oral and written narration were always the core and regular daily methods of narration, while other artistic “narrations” featured as occasional experiences that kept things fresh. 

The Practice of Narration for Charlotte Mason and Classical Christian Educators Today

What can we learn from this history of narration to guide our practices today? I will conclude this series with a list of propositions and suggestions for the future of narration in our movements today. These twelve points summarize what we’ve learned and point forward to exciting possibilities for using narration as classical Christian and Charlotte Mason educators.

1. Narration began in the rhetorical tradition with the main goal of developing students’ style in rhetorical training.
2. Renaissance educators shifted the focus of narration from books to lectures and the goal of narration from style to knowledge of content. 
3. Charlotte Mason adapted narration from the tradition for her context in accordance with her philosophy of education and mind. 
4. Her innovations in narration included taking the focus on rich texts from the classical era and joining it with the main goal of knowledge of content from the Renaissance educators. 
5. She also elevated it to the core status of the primary teaching and learning tool of the PNEU, a development that has support from modern research on retrieval practice.
6. Therefore, classical Christian educators who adopt narration may want to revive some of the rhetorical training pedagogy from John Locke, Quintilian and Aelius Theon.
7. Educators who follow Charlotte Mason may also want to consider more carefully her concerns about training in style or composition and whether or not the concerns she had about creating a “stilted style” were responding to specific trends in composition or rhetoric instruction during her day. 
8. Perhaps some Masonites will opt for more explicit rhetorical training than she might have envisioned, even while avoiding the errors she was warning against.
9. Given the technological developments of our modern world in audio and video recording and the free accessibility of high quality material from “living” voices and scholars, both Masonites and classical Christian educators might want to expand the role of inspirational lectures and oral teaching in education, with narration as the learning tool for either content or style. 
10. Classical Christian educators may feel that many of their teachers (or video instructors) reach the level of “master-minds” (in Charlotte Mason’s terms) and therefore inspirational lectures should play a larger role in their schools, or online courses. 
11. If the power of the spoken word is gaining new prominence through video recording and sharing technologies, then perhaps the next important innovation in narration would be to employ video recordings of great modern orators for students to narrate with the goal of developing their own rhetorical style, while also learning content.
12. At the same time, the use of lectures/speeches as a focus of narration should not crowd out the central importance of rich texts (either for Charlotte Mason or the classical tradition). In our day and age, a facility with the thoughts of the best minds of earlier eras has never been more crucial for students’ development of moral wisdom and historical judgment. 

Hope you have enjoyed this series! Share your thoughts in the comments on why you think the history of narration matters.

Earlier articles in this series:

Part 1: Charlotte Mason’s Discovery?

Part 2: Classical Roots

Part 3: Narration’s Rebirth

The post Why the History of Narration Matters, Part 4: Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Narration in Historical Perspective appeared first on .

As we saw, narration has its roots in the classical era with rhetorical teachers like Aelius Theon and Quintilian, where its goals included the development of memory, fluency and style for future orators. It was particularly powerful as a practice because it fused the natural oral story-telling of pre-literate cultures with the refinements of classical Greek and Roman rhetoric. Before moving to the rebirth of narration in the Renaissance and early modern era, I have to admit to an unfortunate gap in my own knowledge. 

I cannot claim to know that narration was absent from medieval pedagogy. In fact, I suspect that it was not. But I have not (as yet) found any direct evidence of it. There are undoubtedly more places to look than I have had the opportunity of doing so to date. So I would encourage any interested readers to keep an eye out and let me know if you find mention of any narration-like practices occurring in the Middle Ages. However, for the purposes of this series I will have to temporarily conclude that, like much of the tradition of classical rhetoric, narration went into dormancy during the Middle Ages. 

After all, the political situation changed drastically after the fall of Rome, and as a result rhetoric training itself underwent a shift. Without democratic political bodies to convince of a particular course of action, ceremonial and legal rhetoric predominated and crystalized into a more literate and scholastic form. As George A. Kennedy, a leading rhetorical scholar, put it: 

“With the end of orderly civic and economic life not only did public support of education disappear, but the reasons for rhetorical education in its traditional form declined. Fewer councils remained in which an orator could speak, and legal procedures were disrupted; on the other hand, barbarian kings easily acquired a taste for being extolled in Latin prose or verse, even if they did not understand what was being said.” (Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition, 2nd ed.; Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999; 196)

The golden age of oratory had passed. It was no wonder that grammatical training predominated, followed by the refined logic of scholasticism. And likewise, it is no wonder that, when the tides turned toward the Renaissance and a return ad fontes (“to the sources”), back to the rhetoric of the classical era, that we would see narration reborn as well.

Narration’s Rebirth, Stage 1: Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536)

I owe to Karen Glass my awareness of the first two stages in narration’s rebirth: Erasmus and Comenius (see Know and Tell: The Art of Narration, p. 16). However, the context of Desiderius Erasmus’ work is enlightening, because it illustrates just how indebted he was to the grammatical and rhetorical tradition. The chapter leading up to his mention of narration reads like a passage out of Quintilian. In fact, Erasmus himself references his dependence on Quintilian, saying,

“As regards the methods of the rudiments—that is, of learning to talk and knowing the alphabet—I can add nothing to what Quintilian has laid down.”

Desiderius Erasmus, Concerning the Aim and Method of Education, translated by William Harrison Woodward (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1904), p. 168

Erasmus affirms the value of teaching students to speak both Latin and Greek as the main sources of all the important knowledge then available. Then he gives instructions for exercises in composition, followed by how the teacher should guide students through reading classic texts. His composition exercises are based on the classical principle of imitation: “The Master in the course of his reading will be careful to note instances which present themselves as models suitable for imitation” (170). He then recommends the more challenging exercises of Quintilian, like “paraphrasing poetry into prose and the reverse process” (171). 

While we judged this exercise of Quintilian’s to be an extension of narration, in which the student would write a paraphrase from memory rather than with constant reference to a text, it is almost certain that this is not the case for Erasmus’ recommendations. One clue comes in his recommendations for translating from Greek into Latin and vice versa in the same section—what Walter Ong might call an art of high literacy and one which almost certainly relies on being able to reference the text itself (see Erasmus, Aim and Method of Education, 171-172).

Given the invention of the printing press before Erasmus’ lifetime, highly increasing availability of texts, we are probably right to assume that the educational situation of Erasmus’ day was quite different from the Roman era. Narration of texts from the teacher’s single reading would have become more counterintuitive because texts were cheaper and more accessible. Why would one narrate merely the text itself when it is there at hand?

We might bemoan this fact as the fulfillment of Plato’s dire predictions in the Phaedrus (see the final section of the previous article). However, the challenging composition exercises that Erasmus proposes would have probably compensated for the loss. And this isn’t even to mention how Erasmus himself transformed narration into a practice for assimilating the teacher’s lecture in a passage that out-flanks Plato’s objection:

“The master must not omit to set as an exercise the reproduction of what he has given to the class. It involves time and trouble to the teacher, I know well, but it is essential. A literal reproduction of the matter taught is, of course, not required, but the substance of it presented in the pupil’s own way. Personally I disapprove of the practice of taking down a lecture just as it is delivered. For this prevents reliance upon memory which should, as time goes on, need less and less of that external aid which note-taking supplies.”

Erasmus, Aim and Method of Education,177-178.

Here we can see narration endorsed as “essential” in the case of the teacher’s lecture, rather than with texts. Of course, we have to remember that Erasmus has already discussed imitative composition exercises on topics taken from the classic texts that the students would read. So it is not as though there would be no opportunity for students to assimilate the subject matter of texts through their own writing.

What may be more surprising is Erasmus’ stance against note-taking during the teacher’s lectures and in favor of narration. His reasoning involves the training of the memory and the reduction of an “external aid” over the course of a student’s education. For Erasmus “note-taking” is a crutch, or better yet, corresponds to the use of training wheels for the memory. They should be taken off as soon as possible. 

Narration, then, in the first stage of its rebirth, has shifted its focus from the text read aloud to the spoken lecture on the text. In a similar fashion, the training of a student’s rhetorical style has been almost entirely subsumed in the training of the memory for content (note “the substance of it presented in the pupil’s own way”), and the narration is most likely a written enterprise, since it causes “time and trouble to the teacher,” most likely because of the extra work involved in reading and assessing the students’ narrations. 

Narration’s Rebirth, Stage 2: John Amos Comenius (1592-1670)

The great Czech educational reformer, philosopher, pastor and theologian, John Amos Comenius, sometimes called the father of modern education, represents the next stage in the history of narration. The opening statement of his stunning work on the philosophy of education Didactica Magna or The Great Didactic promises much in terms that are familiar to advocates of narration:

“Let the main object of this, our Didactic, be as follows : To seek and to find a method of instruction, by which teachers may teach less, but learners may learn more; by which schools may be the scene of less noise, aversion, and useless labour, but of more leisure, enjoyment, and solid progress ; and through which the Christian community may have less darkness, perplexity, and dissension, but on the other hand more light, orderliness, peace, and rest.”

John Amos Comenius, preface to The Great Didactic

Charlotte Mason found in narration an ideal “method” for attaining Comenius’ golden key of education: teachers teaching less and learners learning more. Of course, the extent to which Comenius anticipated Charlotte Mason, or Mason followed Comenius, is an area ripe for more study, at least for me. 

My Head of School Dave Seibel and I are planning to read Comenius’ Great Didactic together starting this January to see what we will make of it. Classical Academic Press also has a short introduction to Comenius in their Giants in the History of Education series, which I plan to purchase and read as well. But I already know from Karen Glass that Comenius recommended that “every pupil should acquire the habit of acting as a teacher. This will happen if, after the teacher has fully demonstrated and expounded something, the pupil himself is immediately required to give a satisfactory demonstration and exposition of the same thing in the same manner” (as qtd in Glass, Know and Tell, 16). Glass quotes from another of Comenius’ works The Analytical Didactic (trans. Vladimir Jelinek; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953; 193), in which Comenius “reinterpreted the principle of nature that he had described in The Great Didactic as a principle of logic” (John E. Sadler, “John Amos Comenius” in Encyclopedia Britannica; accessed January, 2021). 

As stated, Comenius’ variant on narration embodies the golden key of his Great Didactic by turning the student into the teacher after a teacher’s “demonstration” or “exposition”. It thus follows Erasmus in focusing on a spoken lecture or explanation by the teacher rather than a text. The new development present in Comenius is to emphasize the ironic transformation of student into teacher. Chris Perrin of Classical Academic Press has referred to this pedagogical idea as the classical principle Docendo Discimus (“By teaching we learn”) in his course Introduction to Classical Education. (I wonder where Perrin himself derived this Latin phrase from…. Was it from Comenius or an earlier thinker in the tradition? Or is it a phrase he himself quipped to represent a traditional conception?) Similarly, I have often referred to the classical principle of self-education, citing Charlotte Mason’s quip that there is no education but self-education and Dorothy Sayers’s remarks about students learning how to learn in “The Lost Tools of Learning”.

I am confident that more remains to be said on Comenius and narration, but I have not as yet been able to procure the rarer work that Karen Glass quoted from (though a used copy is now in my Amazon shopping cart). However, for now we can conclude that in Comenius’ hands narration of the teacher’s lecture became the mechanism for learners learning more and teachers teaching less. The narration most likely occurred orally, given the internal logic of the student becoming the teacher, but we cannot be sure without looking closer at the context.

Narration’s Rebirth, Stage 3: John Locke (1632-1704)

John Locke represents a final and perhaps unconnected stage in narration’s rebirth. To suppose that he did not engage with either his partial contemporary Comenius, or with the famous Erasmus, would probably be going too far. But his early modern Enlightenment philosophy no doubt registered itself in his treatise, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (Hackett, 1996; orig. published 1693). I have already expressed my view elsewhere that he, like Erasmus, was directly dependent on Quintilian (see the author’s A Classical Guide to Narration; CiRCE, 2020; p. 96, n. 122). So his recommendations on the topic are best categorized as a part of narration’s renaissance or rebirth. 

For Locke narration is the solution to a problem with the “classical” education of his day. He begins his section on rhetoric and logic with a defense for speaking so little of them up to this point in his treatise:

“The reason is because of the little advantage young people receive by them. For I have seldom or never observed anyone to get the skill of reasoning well or speaking handsomely by studying those rules which pretend to teach it; and therefore I would have a young gentleman take a view of them in the shortest systems [that] could be found without dwelling long on the contemplation and study of those formalities. Right reasoning is founded on something else than the predicaments and predicables, and does not consist in talking in mode and figure itself.” (140)

In objecting to “rules” rather than practice, Locke continues a theme that he has already established in the book about training young children by habit rather than memorized rules. In A Classical Guide to Narration I pointed out that this error of the “classical” training of Locke’s day amounts to a misunderstanding of the classical distinction between an art and a science: 

“The rhetoric teachers of Locke’s day had been treating the art of rhetoric as if it were a science that could be mastered through acquiring knowledge about the art: various names of figures of speech and rules for types of speeches. But without the facility with with language based in practice and cultivated habits, all of it was useless! (A Classical Guide to Narration, 96)

Of course, this antagonism toward logic and rhetoric might make John Locke seem anti-classical in his philosophy of education. But this would be a misunderstanding. Locke is simply endorsing the renaissance humanist stream of classical education over the encrusted scholasticism of the late medieval era. He was refocusing attention on the great authors of the past (ad fontes) and on imitation of worthy models. As he goes on to say, 

“If you would have your son reason well, let him read Chillingworth [an Oxford scholar and churchman, who was a skillful debater, mathematician and theologian]; and if you would have him speak well, let him be conversant in Tully [Marcus Tullius Cicero, the great Roman orator and statesman] to give him the true idea of eloquence, and let him read those things that are well written in English to perfect his style in the purity of our language.” (140)

Developing the arts of reasoning and eloquence, for Locke, come by reading the right authors to provide ideas and models of proper thought and speech. But it also comes by practice, as he says later:

“They have been taught rhetoric but yet never taught how to express themselves handsomely with their tongues or pens in the language they are always to use: as if the names of the figures that embellished the discourses of those who understood the art of speaking were the very art and skill of speaking well. This, as all other things of practice, is to be learned not by a few, or a great many rules given, but by exercise and application according to good rules, or rather patterns, till habits are got and a facility of doing it well.” (141)

Locke’s point accords well with the modern research on elite performance that Anders Erikson and others have brought to light in delineating the value of deliberate practice (as well as near proxies like purposeful practice) for acquiring high level skill. The arts are complex skills and are best trained through coached practice, not mere comprehension of concepts, however true and inspiring. 

Locke’s narration recommendations remarkably embody the principles of effective practice, including the importance of critical feedback, specific focused efforts on improving one aspect of performance at a time, and systematic development of mental models. The entire passage is worth sharing here:

“Agreeable hereunto, perhaps it might not be amiss to make children, as soon as they are capable of it, often to tell a story of anything they know, and to correct at first the most remarkable fault they are guilty of in their way of putting it together. When that fault is cured, then to show them the next, and so on, till one after another all, at least the gross ones, are mended. When they can tell tales pretty well, then it may be time to make them write them. The Fables of Aesop, the only book almost that I know fit for children, may afford them matter for this exercise of writing English, as well as for reading and translating to enter them in the Latin tongue. When they are got past the faults of grammar and can join in a continued coherent discourse the several parts of a story without bald and unhandsome forms of transition (as is usual) often repeated, he that desires to perfect them yet farther in this, which is the first step to speaking well and needs no invention, may have recourse to Tully and, by putting in practice those rules which that master of eloquence gives in his First Book De Inventione §20, make them know wherein the skill and graces of a handsome narrative, according to the several subjects and designs of it, lie.” (141-142)

Like Quintilian, Locke begins with young children telling stories, though he is content for them to tell “anything they know” at first, as the tutor or parent simply plays the role of coach: correcting one fault at a time, as the child practices telling again and again. Instead of focusing narration on the content to be learned, like Erasmus and Comenius, Locke has brought into sharp relief the skill of story-telling and the fluency of speaking gained thereby. While he does recommend Aesop’s fables, like Quintilian, the shift to written narrations form the main focus, and fixing the student’s “faults of grammar” and “bald and unhandsome forms of transition” is his main concern. 

In essence, Locke has restored narration as the foundation stone of rhetorical training, rather than as a method for learning content in any subject. Narration is, for him, the backbone of an English gentleman’s practical skill in speaking and writing that will equip him for the duties of his life. Daily practice in imitating classic authors and especially in learning to write letters (“The writing of letters has so much to do in all the occurrences of human life that no gentleman can avoid showing himself in this kind of writing.”) form the bedrock requirements for his education (142).

Readers who are familiar with Charlotte Mason’s practice of narration alone may be surprised by some of these different applications of narration. Whether it’s narrating from a teacher’s lecture, or correcting the faults in a student’s narration with a focus on skill rather than content, narration’s rebirth through Erasmus, Comenius and Locke defies the standard assumptions of Charlotte Mason’s practice of it. After all, Charlotte Mason seems to almost exclusively envision students narrating from texts without stylistic corrections but a primary focus on content.

In the next and final article in this series, we’ll compare Charlotte Mason’s pedagogy of narration with its classical roots and its renaissance rebirth. Our aim will be to distill some further conclusions for educators today, both practically in terms of how we should use narration in our 21st century context, but also philosophically in what this all means for the classical Christian education and Charlotte Mason movements today.

Other articles in this series:

Part 1: Charlotte Mason’s Discovery?

Part 2: Classical Roots

Part 4: Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Narration in Historical Perspective

The post Why the History of Narration Matters, Part 3: Narration’s Rebirth appeared first on .

It’s been some time since I’ve written explicitly on narration for Educational Renaissance. The last article that addressed it directly (Narration as Flow) came shortly after launching the popular eBook “How to Implement Narration in the Classical Classroom” that I recently retired because of incorporating it into a larger book. (Don’t worry! I replaced it with a similar resource “Charlotte Mason and the Trivium: Planning Lessons with Narration”.) But that doesn’t mean the teaching tool of narration has been off my mind since. 

Narration on My Mind

Last winter I did most of the leg work in terms of research and writing to get my book A Classical Guide to Narration (forthcoming with the CiRCE Institute) into the right place for the editorial process. Lugging that stack of books home for nights and weekends, I plugged away while watching the kids as my wife taught voice lessons. I didn’t know I could write while monitoring a toddler and a baby… but after all necessity is the mother of invention. Then during the discussions last spring that led me to take a new position as Principal at Coram Deo Academy, narration was my one non-negotiable. If I came, Coram Deo would be implementing narration.

Over the summer I had the opportunity to share about narration at several conferences: the Association of Classical Christian Schools, the Society for Classical Learning, the University Model Schools International, the CiRCE Institute, and the Charlotte Mason Family Camp. Lastly, as the school year got started, I trained my own faculty in the practice of narration, as well as the Ecclesial Schools Initiative by Zoom. I even had the opportunity to share narration with Asian Christian educators as part of a team-taught virtual course on poetic knowledge led by Ravi Jain. That all might sound exhausting, but for me it was exhilarating, not least because of the chance to share about a practice that really matters to me and is life-changing for children.

All this is to say that narration has been on my mind quite a lot as I’ve first researched then rehearsed material from the book in presentations. One of the most interesting and significant discoveries that I made in my research about narration is its history before Charlotte Mason in the grammatical and rhetorical tradition. Since my first hints at this fact years ago while reading John Locke and Quintilian, I’ve been fascinated by earlier educators’ endorsement of practices very like Mason’s narration. 

But I think this history is especially significant for two movements today: the Charlotte Mason movement and the classical Christian education movement. You can see why. If narration has a history in the liberal arts tradition, then it makes it hard for either Masonites or CCE leaders to claim that never the twain shall meet. 

Charlotte Mason vs. Classical Christian Education?

For instance, Art Middlekauff of Charlotte Mason Poetry has claimed that Charlotte Mason did not “look to the classical tradition to guide her theory” but instead “looked to the Gospels, science and her observations of children.” While containing a grain of truth, this claim ends up being a simplistic reduction of Mason. It would be more accurate to say that Mason regularly makes rhetorical appeal to advancing science (as a good Victorian British Christian might be expected to). But by science, it’s also worth wondering whether this is necessarily against the classical tradition. After all, science itself is a term and sphere dependent on the tradition of the liberal arts and sciences. 

Also, Art Middlekauff has picked his evidence with care and neglected Charlotte Mason’s own references to classical philosophers of education as authoritative, as well as her refutation of new educational thinkers on the basis of the principles of the liberal arts tradition. While she does claim some newness for her methods—as many classical educators have over the course of the tradition, by the way… the liberal arts tradition has never been opposed to innovation—she is also happy to confess her reliance on tradition. 

As she says explicitly of her educational theory in the first chapter of her final book Towards a Philosophy of Education,

I have attempted to unfold (in various volumes) a system of educational theory which seems to me able to meet any rational demand, even that severest criterion set by Plato; it is able to “run the gauntlet of objections, and is ready to disprove them, not by appeals to opinion, but to absolute truth.” Some of it is new, much of it is old.

(2008 Wilder, 28-29; emphasis added)

This hardly sounds like an extreme modernist who opposes engaging with educational theorists of the past in favor of the new science. The very fact that she quotes from Plato belies such an assumption. Moreover, the implication of her wording is that more of her theory is old than it is new (“some” is less than “much”).

Opposing Charlotte Mason and the classical tradition in this way also presents us with a false dichotomy that is unfortunately present in the thinking of both some Masonites and some classical Christian educators: either we must look to the past or we look to modern research and methods. In an educational landscape obsessed with scientism, it is no wonder that the classical education movement has taken a hard turn toward historical theories and methods. Mason had much less pushing her to such an extreme, and, in fact, with the tide just beginning to ebb out toward the new depths of scientific discovery about the brain, psychology and the nature of habit formation, she had to make an appeal that garnered the attention of a very different crowd. 

Given the differences of time and place, the fact that Mason’s rhetoric differs from the modern classical education movement is not at all surprising. But this should not confine Masonites and classical Christian educators to separate camps and antagonism, especially given the amount of essential agreement between them. Besides, the opposition of Charlotte Mason and the classical tradition makes little sense; they are such different things! Unless we think of the classical tradition as some monolithic, unified theory and practice of education, opposing a single thinker to it is a strange notion. We could just as easily set up Plato, or Aristotle, Quintilian, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Melanchton, Bacon, Locke or Comenius to it. There is always a gap between any individual educational thinker and the tradition as a whole (if one can even view it that way); otherwise, they would be mere parrots. Sometimes this gap represents a departure from a core value, but other times it represents a fruitful development from within. Such a question cannot be solved by simplistic dichotomies.

More important perhaps is the gap between movements that should be allies. Educational Renaissance exists, in a way, to bridge this gap, not only between Charlotte Mason and the classical tradition, but between new and old educational theory in general… between the insights of ancient wisdom and the legitimate advances of modern research. The real glory is in an appropriate synthesis of seemingly opposite ideas and data, as no less revered a figure than Thomas Aquinas revealed in his own dialectical method. 

Charlotte Mason’s Claim of Discovery

Narration is a test case of this broader claim for Charlotte Mason and the classical tradition. While some will still want to emphasize the disagreement and opposition, narration tells a different story. And that is because narration is a teaching practice that Charlotte Mason adapted from the rhetorical tradition. 

But if this is the case, as I contend in my forthcoming book, then what of Charlotte Mason’s own claims about discovering narration? I know very well that she nowhere cites any explicit classical sources for the practice, like John Locke (her likely source based on similarities in language and detail in Home Education) or his source Quintilian. On the other hand, she does confess in her final volume that she “was reading a good deal of philosophy and ‘Education’ at the time.” And she does cite Plato’s conception of the forms or ideas for support of the mind needing proper sustenance (see Towards a Philosophy of Education, Introduction, Wilder: 18). This is one of many instances that at least puts the lie to the claim that she doesn’t draw her philosophy from the tradition; in fact, whether or not she draws from it as a source for her theory, she often feels the need to justify it in the philosophical terms of the classical tradition. 

But of course, she does also mention her observation of children and general reading, as stepping stones on her journey of discovery:

It is difficult to explain how I came to a solution of a puzzling problem,—how to secure attention. Much observation of children, various incidents from one’s general reading, the recollection of my own childhood and the consideration of my present habits of mind brought me to the recognition of certain laws of the mind, by working in accordance with which the steady attention of children of any age and any class in society is insured, week-in, week out,—attention, not affected by distracting circumstances. (20)

While this may seem like a claim that she derived the details of narration from observation and her own philosophical reflection, instead we should see it as an account of how she came to the principles that undergird the practice of narration. (I’m reading Karen Glass’ In Vital Harmony now and am definitely enjoying it.) For Charlotte Mason the practice of narration had to have a number of attendant circumstances for it to work optimally: a rich text, a single reading, a moral impulse in the students, etc. The practice of narration becomes a valuable and global tool of learning when embodied in the right atmosphere, as a means of training in the habit of attention, and through the natural curiosity of the mind feeding on living ideas. 

Narration itself is a common and simple enough exercise that it was used here or there, in rhetorical training, as far back as we have record. It was the principles of the child’s personhood and the nature of mind that she claimed to have discovered and applied more uniformly to the how, when and what of narration. As she remarks later in the introduction to her final volume,

The reader will say with truth,—”I knew all this before and have always acted more or less on these principles”; and I can only point to the unusual results we obtain through adhering not ‘more or less,’ but strictly to the principles and practices I have indicated. (24)

This account from Charlotte Mason herself seems to answer the charge that she claimed to have “discovered” narration, and so it cannot be derived from the classical tradition. 

As we’ll see in the next article, there are a variety of earlier sources that detail the regular use of narration in a manner very like what Charlotte Mason recommended. There are even two of her contemporaries across the Atlantic, rhetoric professors in America, who recommend narration-like exercises in their rhetoric and composition textbook for use in secondary schools. 

Of course, none of these earlier examples call for exactly what Charlotte Mason recommends, but in a way that would have been impossible. Only at Charlotte Mason’s time in England were a wealth of books finally cheap enough and widely available enough for the sort of book-based education she envisioned. The mass publication and commercialization of books in Victorian England was, arguably, a necessary ingredient in the history of narration entering its final stage with Charlotte Mason’s ‘liberal education for all’ movement. 

But more on that next time after we walk through the various stages in the history of narration, as best as I have been able to piece them together so far.

Later articles in this series:

Part 2: Classical Roots

Part 3: Narration’s Rebirth

Part 4: Charlotte Mason’s Practice of Narration in Historical Perspective

The post Why The History of Narration Matters, Part 1: Charlotte Mason’s Discovery? appeared first on .

I was first introduced to Simon Sinek by one of my former students. He was working on his Senior Thesis with me, and his topic was the negative ramifications of the smart phone. So naturally he shared with me a YouTube video of Simon Sinek’s rant on millennials and smart phone protocol. I watched a few of his other talks and was impressed with his frank and insightful analysis of our smart phone addiction, as well as his heart for proper leadership and genuine purpose in business.

Of course, starting with why is one of the things the classical education movement does best. We’re always questioning the base level assumptions we’ve fallen into about the purpose of education. We’re always pointing up and out into this broader more holistic conception of education’s ultimate why. It’s not just about getting good grades or job-preparation; it’s about wisdom and virtue, passing on a rich heritage, and inspiring a generation of humble and winsome Christian leaders. The classical tradition has helped to focus our minds back on the big picture.

Parents and Teachers as Leaders

But I think one of the most important applications of Sinek’s idea is actually not to school leadership or marketing our big picture vision to teachers and parents, as important as that is. Instead, one of the most crucial places to start with why is the classroom or homeschool. At least as far back as my 2017 fall benefit address on rhetoric as leadership, it’s been my conviction that teachers are leaders in their classrooms. And in my experience behavior management systems are like the manipulative marketing practices that Sinek decries: less and less effective the more you use them.

Instead of reading books on classroom management, we should be taking our cues from leadership books from the likes of Sinek and Jim Collins, or old school gurus like John Maxwell and Peter Drucker. Of course, we could also read some of the great philosophers of education, like Aristotle, Quintilian, John Locke or Charlotte Mason (especially for her practice of habit training). But we’d come to much the same conclusion, that in the long run true classroom leadership beats our clever manipulations hands down.

The reason why can be summarized in the foundational principle of Charlotte Mason’s philosophy of education: Children are persons. And as persons, children are worthy of the dignity and respect, the proper autonomy under authority, and the genuine and authentic leadership of those in authority over them that all human beings deserve. As creatures made in the image of God, we have an inherent dignity that puts to shame all tactics of pure manipulation. The behaviorist can with consistency treat children as mere animals to be poked and prodded with carrots and sticks, but the Christian must lead souls and inspire hearts.

Simon Sinek describes the value of true leadership in a way that reminds me of this principle:

 “Great leaders… are able to inspire people to act. Those who are able to inspire give people a sense of purpose or belonging that has little to do with any external incentive or benefit to be gained. Those who truly lead are able to create a following of people who act not because they were swayed, but because they were inspired.” (Penguin: 2009; 8)

The call to this sort of leadership should fall upon the shoulders of every classical educator, every parent and teacher, who wants to see the children in their care inspired to act and not simply manipulated into it.

The Problem with Marketing Manipulations

First, let’s tackle the problem with marketing manipulations. In his book Simon Sinek is careful not to disparage marketing manipulations unduly. He makes the point that “there are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it” (17). He calls manipulations a “fairly benign tactic” and lists as typical examples things like: “dropping the price; running a promotion; using fear, peer pressure or aspirational messages” (17). All these things should be pretty familiar to us during this season of the year, from Black Friday to the post-Christmas, end-of-the-year sale binge.

The problem with such tactics isn’t that they don’t work. In fact, it’s important to stop for a moment and acknowledge that the reason companies engage in these manipulative tactics is because they do work. They help sell more products and human psychology is such that when they are used, we do en masse buy more. As Sinek puts it:

“I cannot dispute that manipulations work. Every one of them can indeed help influence behavior and every one of them can help a company become quite successful. But there are trade-offs. Not a single one of them breeds loyalty. Over the course of time, they cost more and more. The gains are only short-term. And they increase the level of stress for both the buyer and the seller.” (28)

Throughout the book Sinek details the stress and short-term nature of their gains and how overuse of marketing manipulations has crashed many a Fortune 500 company. His solution is for companies to focus more on why their organization exists, and then to filter all the how’s and what’s of the company’s products and services through that lens. Then people who share the same vital convictions as the company will be inspired by the integrity of purpose and product, the unity of the medium and the message. Inspired customers will then want to commit their undying loyalty to the company as an expression of their own identity and values.

Again, Sinek is careful not to overblow his case against manipulations, and instead tries to afford them their proper place:

“Manipulations are a perfectly valid strategy for driving a transaction, or for any behavior that is only required once or on rare occasions. The rewards the police use are designed to incentivize witnesses to come forward to provide tips or evidence that may lead to an arrest…. In any circumstance in which a person or organization wants more than a single transaction, however, if there is a hope for a loyal, lasting relationship, manipulations do not help.” (31)

This idea of a “loyal, lasting relationship” may strike you as a bit much for companies making certain types of products; after all, it’s just a car, a cup of coffee or a computer. But Sinek marshals the evidence of psychological research to convince you of this aspect of human nature. Look around. How else do you explain the buying habits of your friends and neighbors? We affiliate with Starbucks or Apple because of the type of person we envision ourselves to be, and not just because of the quality and “low cost” of their products.

But for our purposes it’s going to be most valuable to shift focus to how we use manipulations as parents and teachers, whether in the classroom or the home. What are the equivalents for teachers and parents of dropping the price, running promotions, using fear, peer pressure and aspirational messages? How do we sacrifice the promise of a “loyal, lasting relationship” for the short term gains of compliance?

The Problem with Manipulations in Home or Classroom Discipline

Common parental and teacher manipulations include but are not limited to the following:

• the guilt trip lecture,
• abstract letter grades,
• gold star charts,
• extra credit assignments,
• monetary rewards for high grades or good behavior,
• a merit system for good and bad behavior,
• detentions, etc. etc.

Of course, like with marketing, rewards and punishments have their place in parenting and teaching. They are endorsed, after all, by no less than the book of Proverbs in the Bible. However, those proverbs about “spare not the rod” are set with in the context of inspiring parental instruction. Simply open to the first chapter and you’ll hear of voice of rich communication and relationship:

⁸Hear, my son, your father’s instruction,
    and forsake not your mother’s teaching,
⁹ for they are a graceful garland for your head
    and pendants for your neck. (Prov 1:8-9 ESV)

In such a context rewards and punishments play a critical role in communicating the natural consequences of wicked and rebellious behavior. But too often parents and teachers can major on the manipulation and minor on this sort of inspirational communication.

John Locke is one of my favorite educational philosophers to address the problem of manipulative rewards and punishments. He makes the point that “beating… and all other sorts of slavish and corporal punishments” should be used only rarely, in situations of real rebellion and danger that are serious enough to merit it. This sort of statement, of course, was going against the grain of his culture. But he wasn’t the first classical educator to object to harsh and unnecessary corporal punishment. Quintilian, the famous Roman orator and educator of the 1^st century AD, had already pointed out the negative effects on the psyche of young boys so treated, and argued for a more inspirational approach (see Institutes of Oratory, Book 1.3.14-16, pp. 19-20 in Honeycutt’s revision).

But Locke goes on to express the dangers of manipulative rewards so well that he is worth reproducing in some length:

“To flatter children by rewards of things that are pleasant to them is as carefully to be avoided. He that will give his son apples, or sugarplumbs, or what else of this kind he is most delighted with, to make him learn his book, does but authorize his love of pleasure and cocker up that dangerous propensity which he ought by all means to subdue and stifle in him. You can never hope to teach him to master it whilst you compound for the check you give his inclination in one place by the satisfaction you propose to it in another. To make a good, a wise, and a virtuous man, it is fit he should learn to cross his appetite and deny his inclination to riches, finery, or pleasing his palate etc. whenever his reason advises the contrary and his duty requires it. But when you draw him to do anything that is fit by the offer of money or reward the pains of learning his book by the pleasure of a luscious morsel; when you promise him a lace-cravat or a fine new suit upon the performance of some of his little tasks; what do you by proposing these as rewards but allow them to be the good things he should aim at, and thereby encourage his longing for them and accustom him to place his happiness in them? Thus people, to prevail with children to be industrious about their grammar, dancing, or some other such matter of no great moment [i.e. importance] to the happiness or usefulness of their lives, by misapplied rewards and punishments sacrifice their virtue, invert the order of their education, and teach them luxury, pride, or covetousness etc. For in this way, flattering those wrong inclinations which they should restrain and suppress, they lay the foundations of those future vices, which cannot be avoided but by curbing our desires and accustoming them early to submit to reason.” (Some Thoughts Concerning Education 34-35)

Here we have it in a nutshell. If we manipulate children with rewards to get them to do something else, we only attach them to the reward. And in a way, we flatter their lower nature, especially if we propose to them a reward that is less worthy than the attainment we are actually after. I love his comment that grammar or dancing are no very important things after all, especially when we compare them with the virtue and character of our children.

This topic always makes me think of my 7^th grade math teacher. She was a dear old lady who proposed to give us gummy worms at the end of nearly every class period for the work we had done. I don’t see how gummy worms connect to pre-Algebra, but somehow a normal day’s work in her class seemed to her to deserve the reward of a diabetes-inducing sugar rush.

The problem with such manipulations is that they belittle the human consciousness by implying that what we really want is the little treat, rather than the elevation of mind and honor of exploring the secrets and mysteries of the world that God has made. It ignores the sort of curiosity that made the proverb-writer say,

“It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.” (Prov 25:2 ESV)

We human beings are royal inheritors of all the knowledge of our ancestors. The job of the educator is to stir up that fire of curiosity that runs in our blood, not pamper our base cravings with sugar plumbs. But in too many classrooms today glory has been exchanged for gummies.

The Solution in True Leadership and Natural Consequences

In other words, the solution to the problem with manipulations is a healthy dose of real inspiration. And beside it, rewards and punishments should take the secondary place as an expression of the natural consequences of conduct, enforced more to bring the message home than in a Pavlovian behaviorist fashion. So first, let’s unpack the inspiration of starting with why in your home or classroom.

How often do you take time in the classroom or with your son or daughter to step back and reflect on the big picture? Do you start with why this subject, why this course of action, why this way of life is valuable, right, ideal? Without sowing the seeds of inspiration, it is unlikely that children will develop the motivation.

In his book Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us Daniel Pink uses the story of Tom Sawyer painting the fence from Mark Twain’s famous novel to illustrate the power of intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. In short, Tom Sawyer is told that he has to paint the fence. While he himself is not very enthusiastic about this task, in a stroke of genius he pretends in front of his friend that it is the most exciting and enjoyable thing he could possibly do. And what a unique privilege he’s had bestowed on him by his aunt. In no time at all he has the rest of the boys paying him for the opportunity to paint the fence for him!

One of the most interesting research findings that Pink presents in Drive is that when you offer to pay children to do something that they had already been doing, like practicing their instrument or taking out the trash, they actually become less motivated to do it and do it less consistently. Extrinsic motivations, like carrots and sticks, can backfire by communicating to us that the activity is not intrinsically valuable. In fact, it’s something you wouldn’t want to do on your own unless you were paid to do it. That social message is heard loud and clear by children, who are intent on learning from parents and peers what is really valuable in life.

This principle means that parents and educators need to take the time to think through the why of everything we do in education, and then modify our methods and practices to ensure that they are in line with that. We can’t accept the grades and merits unthinkingly. And no, just because Harry Potter had a house system with merits and demerits, doesn’t mean it’s a favored feature of classical education. Believe it our not, we actually have to test out whether or not some “traditional” and “classical” methods are just as manipulative and demotivating as our modern ones.

At this point, the voice of Charlotte Mason speaks loud and clear with solid Christian guidance:

“There is a law by which all rewards and punishments should be regulated: they should be natural, or, at any rate, the relative consequences of conduct; should imitate, as nearly as may be without injury to the child, the treatment which such and such conduct deserves and receives in after life…” (Home Education 104).

Mason agrees with Locke (and Sinek) that we cannot do without rewards and punishments, and her principle for the proper administration of them is to consider the consequences which the natural order that God set up would bestow on such conduct. If we fail to do our work on time, often we must do not only that work but more to make up for the tardiness of that initial project. If we do our work quickly and well, we have the natural blessing of choosing what to do with our free time.

It takes discernment to conform our rewards and punishments to the analogy of nature in Charlotte Mason’s mind. We can’t have one simple fix-all to hand for every disciplinary issue or character flaw. A hammer is not well suited for a screw, and will cause much damage to the wall if so unnaturally wielded. But that is the complexity of leading human beings. If all we want to do is train dogs or horses, then a bone or a carrot will work every time. The personhood of our children demands more from us.

The principles of authority and obedience are fundamental for Charlotte Mason, but like Simon Sinek they are constrained to the proper ordering of why, leading to how, and then what in a way that respects the follower. As Charlotte Mason summarized it in the short synopsis of her educational philosophy,

“These principles are limited by the respect due to the personality [i.e. personhood] of children, which must not be encroached upon whether by the direct use of fear or love, suggestions or influence, or by undue play upon any one natural desire.”

Children must be inspired by true leadership, rather than manipulated by our marketing gimmicks into the good life. In my experience, it’s the only way that works over the long haul.

For a fuller answer to what true leadership looks like, download Patrick’s eBook on habit training.

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Michael Hobbiss, a researcher from the UK on attention, distraction and cognitive control in adolescents, remarked in an interview on the Learning Scientists website, that there’s been too much focus among educators on how to grab students’ attention, and not enough on how the attentional systems actually work.

Of course, we’ve all heard of the rising diagnoses of ADD/ADHD (66% increase from 2000 to 2010!). Perhaps that fact is simply a function growing popular awareness of the problem, and therefore more doctor visits for a diagnosis. But Daniel Goleman, the bestselling author of Emotional Intelligence and Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, hypothesizes that we’re recognizing it more because it’s becoming more of a problem, even for us adults.

In his book Focus Goleman memorably tells the story of a conversation with a doctor, who recounted how professionals are beginning to self-medicate for attentional issues and narcolepsy. One lawyer was even complaining that he couldn’t write contracts without such drugs, many of which would have required a prescription just a few short years ago (8-9).

A possible cause for our crisis of attention in the modern world is our addiction to the new media and screen time. Those glowing orbs in our hands and on our desks are powerful brain manipulators. I’ve heard the attention-grabbing industry estimated at $6 trillion; that’s a lot of money, time and effort from experts focused at diverting our attention. And perhaps by the law of habit the industry’s power—and our giving into it—is turning us and our students into less focused people.

The upshot to these dire pronouncements is that there is a rich tradition of reflection on the human faculty or habit of attention. Those familiar with Charlotte Mason’s work will recognize it as a theme that she keeps coming back to. Yet Charlotte Mason wasn’t the first educational theorist to spend some focused thought on the attention, and she wasn’t the last.

So in this article, we’re going to explore the practical recommendations for training the attention that Charlotte Mason had in common with one of her predecessors, the famous British Enlightenment philosopher John Locke, followed by a slightly younger contemporary, the American educator John Milton Gregory, known in classical education circles for his book The Seven Laws of Teaching.

Then we will link up with modern cognitive psychology and neuroscience for how they support and confirm this tradition. This research will provide some greater clarity as to what’s going on in our brains and why Locke, Mason and Gregory’s sage advice still stands today. That will take us through the science of attention then and now.

The Science of Attention Then

John Locke on Attention

More than a century before Charlotte Mason, John Locke anticipated her in many of his ideas about education, including his reflections on the nature of young children and the importance of gentle training in habit. The habit of attention, proper accommodations for children, and the need for training in focus are some of those areas of substantial agreement.

In his treatise on education John Locke begins his reflections by considering the nature of children:

The natural temper of children disposes their minds to wander. Novelty alone takes them…. They quickly grow weary of the same thing, and so have almost their whole delight in change and variety. It is a contradiction to the natural state of childhood for them to fix their fleeting thoughts. (Some Thoughts Concerning Education 124)

Unlike many thinkers of his day and earlier, Locke’s reflections on children’s inattentiveness do not lead him to despise children, but instead to accost parents and tutors for their unrealistic expectations. It is absurd to expect a child to have the developed faculty of attention of a grown scholar, and taxing a student far beyond their capacity is, to him, simply an exercise in frustration.

He briefly wonders why children might naturally have a short attention span, as a 17^th century medical practitioner might be expected to do, before concluding that whatever the cause it is surely the case:

Whether this be owing to the temper of their brains or the quickness and instability of their animal spirits, over which the mind has not yet got a full command, this is visible, that it is a pain to children to keep their thoughts steady to anything. (124)

Next he moves on to propose the same type of gracious treatment and training that Charlotte Mason enthusiasts have come to appreciate from her:

A lasting continued attention is one of the hardest tasks [that] can be imposed on them; and therefore he that requires their application should endeavor to make what he proposes as grateful and agreeable as possible; at least, he ought to take care not to join any displeasing or frightful idea with it. (124)

John Locke thus recommends a tactic of accommodation and understanding toward students’ challenges with wandering attention. This is in great contrast to the usual methods of his day, which employed frequent “rebukes and corrections, if they find them ever so little wandering” (124). Locke finds these methods ineffective and more likely to stifle attention than develop it.

These ideas might make Locke seem like a softy, but he has a place for rigor and aims definitely at a student’s growing excellence in learning. He has just shifted the method of ensuring students’ attention from negative to positive tactics. As he concludes later,

The great skill of a teacher is to get and keep the attention of his scholar; whilst he has that, he is sure to advance as fast as the learner’s abilities will carry him; and without that, all his bustle and pother will be to little or no purpose. (125)

Locke recognizes the necessity of a focused attention for learning and recommends a “certain tenderness” in the teacher to “make the child sensible that he loves him and designs nothing but his good” as the surest way to inspire the child to “hearken to his lessons and relish what he teachers him” (125). This no doubt develops out of his Christian view of children as made in the image of God, a trust to be nurtured and cherished, and not harshly accosted for weaknesses they can’t help.

Charlotte Mason on Attention

Similar to Locke, Charlotte Mason focuses on attention as a habit, and a chief educational virtue at that. A student’s learning and abilities depend upon it, because it makes them possible. As she explains in Home Education,

First, we put the habit of Attention, because the highest intellectual gifts depend for their value upon the measure in which their owner has cultivated the habit of attention. (97)

Developing on Locke’s reflections about the natural state of childhood, Charlotte Mason recommended short lessons for younger children and variety in books and subjects; she famously quipped that “a change is as good as a rest.” In this, like Locke, she accommodates the attention of young students, while at the same time recommending a positive program designed to improve and develop students’ attention over time.

Her reflections on the nature of the attention are a little more up-to-date than Locke’s “animal spirits,” as she grapples with the faculty theory of her day and attempts to articulate an integrated and interconnected view of the mind:

Attention is hardly even an operation of the mind, but is simply the act by which the whole mental force is applied to the subject in hand. This act, of bringing the whole mind to bear, may be trained into a habit at the will of the parent or teacher, who attracts and holds the child’s attention by means of a sufficient motive. (102)

Here too she focuses on the parent or teacher providing the proper motive for attention in a way that attracts the child. Of course, the highest intellectual motive is that of curiosity, which should be aroused and cultivated in any way possible. (John Locke had said much the same thing, and came back to the theme of curiosity again and again in his treatise, which is another reason I suspect him as a source for Charlotte Mason’s reflections.) But other motives (like a sense of duty or achievement) are acceptable and sometimes necessary, as long as students are not nourished too intensely on one natural desire such that it ventures into the arena manipulation or unhealthy influence.

But perhaps the most important tactic for Charlotte Mason in the cultivation of the habit of attention is that students be expected to know and tell after only one reading or exposure. The practice of narration is the supreme way of inducing in the child that habit of attention which will make a scholar of him. The expectation that one will have to tell gives the mind the necessary energy to attend fully and completely to the content at hand. This practice, when regularly followed, is of supreme value for moving students along the path of learning just as quickly as their natural abilities will allow them.

John Milton Gregory on Attention

It is a wonder to see so many theorists speaking with one voice on the science of attention. John Milton Gregory’s second law of teaching says just what we could expect from Locke or Mason:

“The learner must attend with interest to the fact or truth to be learned.” (The Seven Laws of Teaching, Canon Press, 37)

Gregory admits the commonsensical nature of this assertion, but bemoans how often teachers break its principles in practice.

“However much teacher may neglect it in practice, they readily admit in theory that without attention the pupil can learn nothing. One may as well talk to the deaf or the dead as to teach a child who is wholly inattentive.” (40)

Like Mason, he prefers to describe the attention as more than an isolated faculty of the mind, latching onto the word “attitude” as a helpful word-picture:

“Avoiding as much as possible all metaphysical discussion, we may describe the attention as a mental attitude—the attitude in which the thought-power is actively bent toward, or fastened upon, some object of thought or perception. It is an attitude, not of ease and repose, but of effort and exertion.” (38)

The same activity of the student that we would expect from Charlotte Mason’s philosophy is here recommended by Gregory. The student must engage in the effort and exertion and the teacher’s job is to entice her to do so.

Like Locke, Gregory believes that the method of rebukes and harsh punishments for inattentiveness is counterproductive. But he explains why by making a distinction between compelled and attracted attention:

“Compelled attention is short-lived and easily exhausted. Its very painfulness wearies the powers of body and mind…. Attracted attention, on the other hand, is full of power and endurance. Its felt interest calls dormant energies into play, and the pleasure given by its efforts seems to refresh rather than weary the mind.” (39)

Clearly we are to prefer attracting attention whenever possible, and compelled attention should only be used when necessary to gather the class back together from some distraction, before attracting their attention again by interesting content or, in Charlotte Mason’s words, “a sufficient motive.”

A few of Gregory’s practical instructions connect so well with the spirit of Locke and Mason that they are worth reproducing in full:

• “Never exhaust wholly the pupil’s power of attention. Stop when signs of weariness appear, and either dismiss the class or change the subject to kindle fresh attention.
• “Fit the length of the exercise to the ages of the class: the younger the pupils the briefer the lesson.
• “Arouse, and when needful rest, the attention by a pleasing variety, but avoid distraction. Keep the real lesson in view.
• “Present those aspects of the lesson, and use such illustrations, as fit the ages, character, and attainments of the class.” (48)

Locke, Mason and Gregory seem to speak with one voice on the subject of attention. They discuss its over-arching importance for learning and attaining excellence. They recommend against negative methods and for the positive and caring influence of the teacher. Their goal is to accommodate a child’s natural state, while also developing the focus ability of a scholar in him. The process should involve the slow, faithful inducement of the child to attend as long as he can, but no longer, followed by change and variety. Over the years, the attention of the child will grow with practice, and the love of learning and curiosity will flourish in him, leading him to a willing and settled intellectual excellence.

Now let’s turn to modern neuroscience and cognitive psychology to see these recommendations confirmed and explained.

Modern Learning Science on Attention

What have we learned about the science of attention since the days of Locke, Mason and Gregory? Research confirms that the ability to focus directly correlates with accomplishment in virtually any domain of learning or life. As bestselling author Daniel Goleman puts it in his book Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence,

In very recent years the science of attention has blossomed far beyond vigilance. That science tells us these skills determine how well we perform any task. If they are stunted, we do poorly; if muscular, we can excel. Our very nimbleness in life depends on this subtle faculty. While the link between attention and excellence remains hidden most of the time, it ripples through almost everything we seek to accomplish. (2-3)

Attention is the overarching mental “faculty” that traditional educational theorists described it as. It’s a “subtle faculty” that hides under our radar and yet is always operating, having far-reaching effects on every activity or task we engage in, especially those involving learning.

But why is attention so important for learning and skill development to take place? First, it’s worth mentioning that modern neuroscience has discovered that there are at least two different modes of attention, what Barbara Oakley in A Mind for Numbers calls the focused mode and the diffuse mode. The focused mode is the experience we normally think of as focusing or attending closely to something. The diffuse mode, on the other hand, is when we are relaxed and letting our mind wander.

Dr. Daniel Levitin, Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Neuroscience at McGill University, nicknames the diffuse mode the “mid-wandering mode” (The Organized Mind 41). He remarks that the discovery of this mode as “a special brain network… was one of the biggest neuroscientific discoveries of the last twenty years” (38). One of its features is that it continuously seeks to monopolize your consciousness: “it eagerly shifts the brain into mind-wandering when you’re not engaged in a task, and it hijacks your consciousness if the task you’re doing gets boring” (38). Here we have a fuller explanation for Locke’s remark that the natural state of children’s minds is to wander. In fact, it’s a natural human brain state.

Dr. Levitin goes on to explain that it is a zero-sum game between these two modes:

 “When one is active the other is not. During demanding tasks, the central executive kicks in. The more the mind-wandering network is suppressed, the greater the accuracy of performance on the task at hand” (39).

Daniel Goleman describes these two attention systems as top-down and bottom-up, drawing from research in cognitive science. The subcortical brain machinery (bottom-up) is much quicker in brain time, more impulsive, emotional and intuitive, and manages our habitual ways of engaging with the world, as we would say, without really thinking about it. The top-down focused mode is slower, more logical, voluntary, and based in the seat of self-control, the pre-frontal cortex (Focus 25-26).

Because of this we know that too much effort to stay in the focused mode, without the training up of habits of attentive focus, will deplete the brain’s reserves of willpower. At this point the brain will automatically switch into diffuse mode to find the needed rest and recreation. This explains the insight from our traditional educators of the fruitlessness of stern corrections for inattentiveness. If a child has reached her limit of attentive focus, the willpower system needs time to refresh; of course, it’s possible to light up the fear and pain centers of the child’s brain, but those will not induce attentiveness to linguistic or abstract learning.

The growing body of literature on elite performance has also illuminated how integral focus is to the development of complex skills, from liberal arts like deep reading, to world-class sports or musicianship. Attention is a necessary requirement of what has been variously called deliberate practice (Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers) or deep practice (Daniel Coyle in The Talent Code).

For instance, in his book Deep Work Cal Newport mentions two core components of deliberate practice, drawing from the research of Anders Ericsson:

• your attention is focused tightly on a specific skill you’re trying to improve or an idea you’re trying to master;
• you receive feedback so you can correct your approach to keep your attention exactly where it’s most productive.

Both of these components, the uninterrupted focus on the skill or idea and the feedback, require the focused mode of attention in order to optimize skill development or learning. Like Locke explained, when a student’s attention is focused, that student is sure to progress just as quickly as natural ability will allow. But without this focus the time is almost wasted.

Cal Newport goes on to explain the role of myelination of neural circuits in this process:

By focusing intensely on a specific skill, you’re forcing the specific relevant circuit to fire, again and again, in isolation. This repetitive use of a specific circuit triggers cells called oligodendrocytes to begin wrapping layers of myelin around the neurons in the circuits—effectively cementing the skill. The reason, therefore, why it’s important to focus intensely on the task at hand while avoiding distraction is because this is the only way to isolate the relevant neural circuit enough to trigger useful myelination. By contrast, if you’re trying to learn a complex new skill (say, SQL database management) in a state of low concentration (perhaps you also have your Facebook feed open), you’re firing too many circuits simultaneously and haphazardly to isolate the group of neurons you actually want to strengthen. (Deep Work 36-37)

The modern crisis of attention is explained! The problem is that our brains are receiving too much stimulation from our glowing orbs, and so our ability to learn and develop is hampered. Myelination requires focus of mind and avoidance of distractions.

There are few experiences this reminds me more of that the peaceful experience of standing in a classroom with a group of attentive students, who are under the thrall of an engaging book. As I or a student finishes reading, I quietly ask a student called at random to begin telling back for the class, and he narrates what was just read with graphic language, fitting details and a faithful account of the sequence of thought. Other students then add a detail or two and we proceed to discuss the deeper meaning and relevance of the text. This is Charlotte Mason’s practice of narration, and its powerful sequence trains students in the habit of attention.

In my previous role as Academic Dean of Clapham School, I’ve discussed the topic of attention before in a series of articles. I was also interviewed in a webinar for parents. I’ve listed these below in case you’re interested in going further in this topic.

• A Call for Focus in Learning: Part 1, Traditional Views of Attention
• Part 2, The Science of Attention
• Part 3, Practicing Attention
• Webinar: Attention, Please! Tips for Keeping Your Child Focused

If you’re interested in learning more about a method for training in habits generally, check out Patrick’s “A Guide to Implementing Habit Training”.

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