When Children Love to Learn: A Practical Application of Charlotte Mason's Philosophy for Today

by Eve Anderson

These ideas, being true ones, have an unchangeable underlying pattern (form) and yet give freedom for individual life and practice. When the Christian worldview gives this form, there is much stability and also freedom for appropriate adaptation. That is what makes this way of educating children so exciting.

Charlotte Mason’s ideas are remarkable because all people in all times are alike in certain ways. The reality is that we all share the inner framework of truth. No race is “more human” than another. No gender is higher than another. No culture is superior in itself.

children are abused if their developmental stages and abilities are not taken into consideration. The child is, after all, a whole person.

In Charlotte Mason schools lessons end for younger children at lunchtime, and they are raring to go the next morning. They are neither underfed or overfed educationally. Older children naturally can do more, but still they are not under stress. They have a broad, interesting “diet” for their minds in the mornings, with afternoons a contrast including play, picture study, acting, or nature walks. Charlotte Mason did not want homework given out either. Life itself is too important to crowd out with busywork.

Made by God.

“Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life.” She called it perhaps “the most complete and adequate definition of education we possess.”

Charlotte Mason calls this atmosphere the thought-environment,

Atmosphere Is a Living Relationship, Taking Time, Patience, and a Few Bumps Along the Way to Become Authentic

but ‘atmosphere’ can only be built up [emphasis mine]

The culture, the society, the information, and the environments of children do change, but the desire of children to know and to learn does not. Why? Because they are persons created in the image of a God who is unchangeable. And when this is understood and internalized, the teachers who are dutiful and diligent to create the proper conditions can simply get out of the way, because that same unchangeable God allows His Spirit to quicken and guide the minds of the children into His truths and beauty in spite of us.

Before we chastise ourselves too much for our past failures, it is good to remember that we have a God who understands our weaknesses, redeems our failures, and can make a garden out of our mess. So many times I lament, “Oh, if I only knew then what I know now! How did those children grow and learn in that atmosphere?” Well, they did grow, and they did learn, because in spite of my poor practices, they were loved. But now with the insights of Charlotte Mason, we can become less of an obstacle to what God will intentionally do in the lives of children. We can provide conditions in our classrooms and homes that are consistent with what we know is true about children and about learning.

But as Eve Anderson says, we must avoid praise that is “over the top” and ask for the wisdom to see when a child desires to do right because it is the right thing to do, or desires to do right only to win another’s approval or affection.

Awe and wonder of the truths and challenges of math, even the joy of solving a problem, were replaced with the pride of success.

As a byproduct of rewarding a certain kind of success, they breed pride, self-centered motivation, and great discouragement among the “losers.” The atmosphere sought in schools influenced by Charlotte Mason is one where all students thrive in a spirit of cooperation, where the love of learning produces, in the words of Marion Berry, not a pep rally for winners, but “a good time had by all.”

The absence of four toxic practices—competition, prizes and marks, stress, and comparison—purified the air for learning.

“Every hour that teachers feel compelled to try to raise test scores is an hour not spent helping kids become critical, creative, curious thinkers.”10

The atmosphere of relationship and treating teachers and children as persons is what Sizer is describing. These attitudes lead to “cheerful industry and enjoyment of work and play.”

To eliminate the stress of long lessons and long days, to emphasize cooperation over competition, to encourage rather than compare, to motivate by loving affirmation rather than stars and candy—all of these practices create a stronger academic atmosphere because learning becomes a lifelong pursuit congruent with the child’s nature and the nature of learning.

Masterly inactivity implies that there is a master—the teacher. It also has other meanings as we see in the following discussion.

Though the masterly inactivity of Mason does imply a master, it is the role of the teacher to get out of the way.

Overall she lets the living books and other resources speak for themselves and does not consider herself the students’ only source of information.

Individual pursuits are encouraged as the teacher realizes that students will not remember or comprehend every detail; nor should they be expected to.

“The danger exists; but lies, not in giving the child too much, but in giving him the wrong thing to do,

the sort of work for which the present state of his mental development does not fit him”

She continues, “But give the child work that nature intended for him, and the quantity he can get through with ease is practically unlimited.”26 In the abundant feast of appropriate ideas, the child’s appetite is never quenched.

It is precisely because the children know who is in charge and respect that authority that the atmosphere is healthy. As Mason said, “This element of strength is the backbone of our position. They [the children] are free under authority, which is liberty; to be free without authority is license.”27

Charlotte Mason said that good humor was a key element in the masterly inactivity of the classroom, where the “wise passiveness” of Wordsworth lends itself to allowing the natural humor and good-natured tendency of children to run its course. It is a teacher to be pitied who cannot laugh at the children’s jests and even at his own mistakes and gaffes.

“When in truth, all persons are subject to weaknesses and faults and these, when left to themselves, become the bane of each of us in our adult years unless divine grace is exerted on the lives with enlightened human effort.”

The idea of education as a discipline encompasses the full realm of education, taking into account its varied relationships—intellectual, moral, physical, religious, and social, as well as the great potential of persons to move in directions of change and growth.

When one sees the learner as an individual created to bear dominion in this world, the necessity of training in habits of “good learning and godly living” becomes a guiding principle.

As with any debility, consistency of training and accountability will encourage growth and strength. This habit of attention can be attained through reading, listening, and observation.

All habit is a result of conflict of sorts, and it is here that the child can learn to live and embrace the realities of life and choose accordingly.

??

Charlotte Mason was adamant concerning training in habit. She went as far as to say that almost anything could be accomplished through the correct and consistent training.32

This discipline is instead training that comprises relationships with oneself, one’s world, one’s God, and others.

The children will have habits, and we as parents and educators are engaged in forming these habits actively or passively every day, every hour.

As a classroom educator of more than two decades, I have seen the application of habit as the line that divides the effective student from the ineffective one.

Yet the labor begun in the classroom or at home is easily lost if one does not bear true to the other. For it is unchangeably true that the child who is not being raised to a higher and higher level will sink to a lower and lower level.40 There is a certain amount of strenuousness in forming habits as one acts contrary to one’s nature. Charlotte Mason admonished the parent and teacher to use tact, watchfulness, and persistence in forming habits with a twofold policy: • Never let the child slip from his responsibility in the habit. • Never let the matter be a cause of friction between you and the child (let her suffer the natural consequences).

Some people go through life without many acts of deliberate will. They are amiable, easygoing, hedged in by favorable circumstances.42 And others go through life falling prey to their senses and slothfulness. Both kinds are unable to live active, vigorous lives because they lack the power of a rectified will.

The work before us as parents and educators is to make the child do what he lacks the power to compel himself to do,

Give children opportunities to choose appropriate to their growth and maturity.

Choosing requires discrimination, and a child often lacks the knowledge and power necessary to make choices along this line. She resorts to immediate gratification unless she has been trained in habit.

The child should never be given the freedom to not do the work, but instead let her know the choice rests within her as to how strenuous the doing of this may be.

It is imperative to make the child suffer for his poor choosing, or he will increase in inaccuracy and sloppiness.

Charlotte Mason instructed adults to “[l]ay down lines of thought that shall initiate the thoughts the child should think, the desires he/she will cherish and the feelings he/she shall allow.”

Charlotte Mason stated that the fortification of the will was one of the greatest purposes of education and that prior to instructing in this area, the child’s eyes should be opened to the possibilities that lay before her as she learns to direct herself.

They should themselves know of the wonderful capacities to enter upon the world as a great inheritance, which exist in every human being. All its beauty and all its thoughts are open to everyone. Everyone may take service for the world’s use; everyone may climb those delectable mountains from whence he gets his vision for the City of God. He must know something of his body with its senses and appetites: of his intellect, imagination and aesthetic sense: of his moral nature, ordered by law and justice. Realizing how much is possible to Mansoul and the perils that assail it, he should know that the duty of self-direction belongs to him; and that powers for this direction are lodged in him, as are intellect and imagination, hunger and thirst.46

the child needs to be made aware of the temptations before him—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. These assaults on the flesh and spirit of persons are attacks on the will,

the teacher and parent should make every effort to get the child to do what she ought to do at the earliest possible age.

This thoughtful, deliberate training is accomplished in the context of relationships, not mere automation. The training is not fashioned in conduct in the realm of the external, but as the cultivation of internal relationships with self, God, others, and the world, resulting in both character and conduct. In relationship the parent/teacher is able to be the initiator of the thoughts the child should think upon, the desires he cherishes, and the feelings he allows. These thoughts should give the child control over his own nature. This training is in thoughtfulness

Miss Mason firmly believed that the child’s natural affinity “to want to know” should not be substituted for any other natural desire for the purposes of education.