Consider This: Charlotte Mason and the Classical Tradition

by Karen Glass

We don’t have to ask which side won, because we live in the world, and were probably educated in the system, that grew out of the “science” side of the question.

In every age, in every generation, there is a sort of dissatisfaction with educational practices—a constant seeking to improve the methods and systems that were widely practiced.

At the same time, there are common, consistent threads that bind together nearly all of the classical writings about education, even when they differed in methods.

A machine-child must learn what he needs to know in order to perform with optimum efficiency those tasks which fall to him, and little else is needed except perhaps some entertainment to keep him content between tasks.

If we answer the question “what is man?” with “man is a living soul created in the image of God,” our educational task will be much different, as we seek to discover all the potential in each child so that he can become everything that God meant him to be. All that we can give him will not be too much nor go to waste.

Education at every level reflects our primary assumptions about the nature of man, and for this reason, no education is innocent of an attitude toward man and his purposes.

We must either reverence or despise children; and while we regard them as incomplete and undeveloped beings who will one day arrive at the completeness of man, rather than as weak and ignorant persons, whose ignorance we must inform and whose weakness we must support, but whose potentialities are as great as our own, we cannot do otherwise than despise children, however kindly and even tenderly we commit the offence. (Philosophy of Education, p. 238)

He calls her “naturally bad,” and he means it literally, as if she were “born bad” and there was nothing that could prevent her from acting according to her nature. This should “console” her parents because they bear no responsibility, and it was not their fault that they could not change her nature.

we have a tendency to look at how, rather than why, they did what they did. We imitate their methods in an attempt to achieve similar results, while failing to ask ourselves first whether the educators of the past were primarily concerned with developing the intellect at all.

But intellectual prowess was not the primary concern of the classical educators.

It is not a difference merely of methods, but a difference of purpose.

“The purpose of education is not the assimilation of facts or the retention of information, but the habituation of the mind and body to will and act in accordance with what one knows.” This idea, that education is more about doing what is right rather than merely knowing information, is founded on a long tradition. When our knowledge is transformed into action, it becomes virtue, and virtue was the goal of the classical educators.

It was their desire to teach children not only to know what was right, but to love what was good, true, and beautiful so that their conduct would reflect their wise understanding.

These older writers considered knowledge not merely an accumulation of information, but a process of learning how to live rightly.

both the reasoning must be true and the desire right, if the choice is to be good,

All areas of education were brought into service for this single goal—to teach children to think and act rightly.

The end then of Learning is to repair the ruins of our first Parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection. (Milton, Of Education)

education is about developing a vision of goodness and virtue, and then—most importantly—bringing that knowledge to bear on actual conduct.

enflamed with the study of Learning, and the admiration of Virtue; stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men, and worthy Patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages.

we might say that education should create a metanarrative (or worldview) for children which will make sense of the world and create a standard of conduct by which they will desire to live.

Education, as conceived in our earliest records and understood through many centuries, was never about intellectual achievement alone, or even primarily. The development of the intellect was meant to serve in the formation of good character, and good conduct was the desired end of wise thinking.

We learn to know in order that we may know how to act rightly, not merely to perform well on tests.

while philosophy instructs, religion both instructs and enables.

If virtue is the true goal of classical education, pride in intellectual achievement is the perfect stumbling block to ensure that the goal is never reached.

Sometimes we consider humility a spiritual virtue, but it is an intellectual virtue as well.

There is no reference to above or below in the humble soul, which is equally humble before an infant, a primrose, a worm, a beggar, a prince.

Synthetic thinking can be understood as an approach to knowledge that places things together, comprehending the relationship of new knowledge to old knowledge, one discipline to another, and man to all things.

Analysis should not be our primary approach to knowledge or our primary mode of thinking, especially in the earliest years of education. We should not begin taking apart the things that we learn until we have put them together first, and so solidly unified our understanding of the world that we will not lose sight of the relationships between things when we do begin to analyze.

Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking—the strain would be too great—but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest. We

The question is not,—how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education—but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and therefore, how full is the life he has before him?

Synthetic thinking is about wholeness—considering each new piece of knowledge as one piece of a larger puzzle and finding its place within that ever-more-complete big picture.

Let us who teach spend time in the endeavour to lay proper and abundant nutriment before the young, rather than in leading them to criticise and examine every morsel of knowledge that comes their way.

What does this look like when considered as lessons? Suppose the lesson is a historical one. A synthetic approach to history will tell us a continuing story, a comprehensible sequence of events with people, places, or dates included as needed. The story will show us people interacting with each other. There will be choices and consequences; causes and effects. There will be promises made and kept or made and broken. There will be places or events that give rise to determinations or provocations; there will be the whole gamut of human experience and emotion—love, passion, hatred, war, reconciliation. We will not learn everything at once, but we will learn each lesson in its turn as part of a whole pageant of human experience. There will be continuity, connection, and, it is to be hoped, compassion and fellow feeling, because the people of history were real people exactly like ourselves.

Our education does not spur us to right action, which is virtue, if we feel no personal attachment to our knowledge.

The entire object of true education is to make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy the right things—not merely industrious, but to love industry—not merely learned, but to love knowledge—not merely pure, but to love purity—not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice. (John Ruskin, The Crown of Wild Olive)

The man was right, but his knowledge did not encourage him to act. Analytical thinking rarely does.

When we are more concerned with what the classical educators were doing than why they were doing it, we are unlikely to achieve what they achieved.

Latin was important to them, not for its own sake, but because it was the language of the books—no Latin was the equivalent of being illiterate. If you couldn’t read Latin, you couldn’t read at all.

Over time, Latin ceased to be a stepping stone to great literature and wisdom, and became a mental exercise in grammatical rules and translation.

If we implement classical practices without the impetus of the classical ideals, we will never achieve those ideals.

“his mind is the instrument of his education and that his education does not produce his mind.” (Philosophy of Education, p. 36)

Children no more come into the world without provision for dealing with knowledge than without provision for dealing with food. They bring with them not only that intellectual appetite, the desire of knowledge, but also an enormous, an unlimited power of attention to which the power of retention (memory) seems to be attached, as one digestive process succeeds another, until the final assimilation. (Philosophy of Education, p. 14–15)

So, in our educational pursuits, our job is to provide the right mental food, and trust to the children’s natural ability to process knowledge and make it a part of themselves. If we devoted our efforts to teaching children how to digest food before we fed them, they would die of starvation, and needlessly, as they are already equipped to digest their meals. If we devote our educational efforts to teaching them “how to learn” before we offer them real knowledge, we starve them intellectually. Their hunger to know is just as real as their hunger for food.

A simple reflection of all that young children learn before they begin formal schooling should reveal that they lack no intellectual tools necessary for learning.

much and varied humane reading, as well as human thought expressed in the forms of art, is, not a luxury, a tit-bit, to be given to children now and then, but their very bread of life, which they must have in abundant portions and at regular periods.

We understand that the classical educators interested themselves in giving children a synthetic picture of virtuous heroes to emulate, and presented an ideal to strive for. Their earliest efforts in education were meant to inspire. And therefore it is an eminently sound practice to begin reading with Homer and Virgil, though maturer judgement is required for a full understanding of their merits. But for that there is time enough, for they will be read more than once. Meanwhile, let the pupil’s mind soar to the sublime levels of epic song, and draw the breath of inspiration from the majesty of its theme and become imbued with its noble sentiments. (Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory) Living ideas, not information, should form the foundation of our educational efforts, especially in the earlier years. We are not building an instrument that will be able to learn or think when we are finished with it, but rather we are feeding the living mind of a person, which will grow and flourish according to the nourishment it receives.

Each child’s mind will take what it requires, and we respect the personhood of children by not substituting our insights for their own needs. If they are to be nourished, they must take that nourishment for themselves. If one takes more or something very different from another, we accept this. If the feast is wide, various, and composed of only the best, there will be something for everyone.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge about Plato’s educational aim. “He desired not to assist in storing the passive mind with the various sorts of knowledge most in request, as if the human soul were a mere repository or banqueting room, but to place it in such relations of circumstances as should gradually excite its vegetating and germinating powers to produce new fruits of thought, new conceptions and imaginations and ideas.” (Coleridge, quoted in School Education, p. 125)

When we will ourselves to act for others, or for God, or for the sake of an ideal, we are behaving like men rather than animals. “There are but two services open to men—that which has self as the end and centre, and that which has God (and, by consequence, man) for its object.” (Ourselves, p. 172)

every child should be trained to recognize fallacious reasoning and above all to know that a man’s reason is his servant and not his master; that there is no notion a man chooses to receive which his reason will not justify,