Consider This: Charlotte Mason and the Classical Tradition

by Karen Glass

She never questioned that classical scholarship, as it was generally understood (fluency in Latin and Greek and familiarity with the texts read in those languages) should continue. But that type of education was always, historically, an education for the few, the elite, and not the many. Charlotte Mason’s vision was for “a liberal education for all,” and the practical truth has always been and still is that there is not time to make a classics scholar of every pupil, besides the fact that not everyone is suited for such studies. There is time, however, to do so much more than the “three R’s,” which are no more than a utilitarian acquisition of basic skills, and to give every student a rich feast of all the best knowledge the world has to offer: a liberal or generous education. This is where she placed her focus, and she left the intense “grind” of Latin, Greek, and higher mathematics to their special schools, noting only when she thought it most appropriate to begin such work.

In Norms and Nobility, David Hicks considers the traditions of classical education and describes the fairly uniform understanding, among educators from the classical era, of what they hoped to achieve: “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.

Both Plato and Aristotle, who give us the oldest writings on education that we have, linked knowledge to action or behavior. 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.

Charlotte Mason was familiar with the thinking of both Aristotle and Plato, and reiterates their idea as part of her own philosophy. She defined virtue in much the same way they did, as the actions that result from acquiring wisdom. We are aware that good life implies cultivated intelligence, that, according to the Platonic axiom, ‘Knowledge is virtue,’ even though there be many exceptions to the rule. (Philosophy of Education, p. 235)

Quintilian goes even further and declares, “I should judge the principles of right living of more importance than those of the noblest oratory.” Education was intended to result in right action.

The idea of approaching education—even that part of education that we consider “school”— as a process of developing character and virtue rather than developing the intellect requires a paradigm shift for most of today’s educators. We might understand character-training as a task that belongs to parents, or churches, but we tend to separate that kind of teaching from the teaching of school subjects such as math or grammar. The classical educators did not make such a distinction. All areas of education were brought into service for this single goal—to teach children to think and act rightly.

What the educators of history have to tell us is that education is about developing a vision of goodness and virtue, and then—most importantly—bringing that knowledge to bear on actual conduct. Right thinking is an important step toward that end, but knowledge alone without conscience or virtue was never an object. David Hicks assures us that “the sublime premise of a classical education asserts that right thinking will lead to right, if not righteous, acting.” (Norms and Nobility, p. vi) Only within the past several generations has education become entirely divorced from moral development, and we see the results around us every day.

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.

“To know is not synonymous with to do,” says Charlotte, but nevertheless, the pursuit of knowledge is a part of that greater pursuit of wisdom and virtue. The principle of “right thinking leads to right acting” is not infallible, but it was the guiding motivation for the classical educators. They pursued all areas of knowledge—even arithmetic or grammar—as a part of the process that would lead to wisdom, and ultimately, character and virtue.

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. In other words, we must not only become humble, but remain humble if we want to continue our pursuit of wisdom and virtue.

Unfortunately, because the foundations of classical education have not been exposed for a long time, they have been very nearly forgotten, and perhaps the time has come when we must dig a little deeper and remember that they are there. We do not list “humility” among our school subjects or put it on a transcript, but that is actually the little secret of classical education. The things that make it truly classical, truly worthwhile to pursue, aren’t school subjects at all, but principles that add depth and cohesion to everything we study in all areas of the curriculum.

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? (School Education, p. 170–71)

We have looked at three things that will never appear on a transcript, and yet are vital to the classical tradition of education. First, the primary purpose of education is wisdom and virtue, and every part of the program should serve to teach learners how to think and act rightly. Second, humility is vital to the pursuit of virtue because it keeps us teachable. Third, our approach to knowledge should be relational, synthetic, so that we develop a foundational understanding of the unity of knowledge and our own place in the universe.

It is almost universally agreed that the beginning of classical study is grammar, but grammar meant something very different to the Greeks and Romans, and even the later Renaissance educators, than it does to most teachers today. We tend to think of grammar as the study of the structure of a language—how the various parts of speech are inflected or ordered to create meaningful sentences. But this is not precisely what the ancient educators had in mind when they spoke of grammar. Quintilian remarks almost casually, “Let us assign to each calling its proper limits, and let ‘grammar’ or ‘literature,’ to give it its Latin name, recognize its boundaries.” (Institutes of Oratory) Quintilian equates grammar—a word with Greek origins—to literature, a Latin word. If we have learned any Greek and Latin roots, we can see that gram and lit both mean “letter,” and call to mind that slightly antiquated expression for someone who was classically educated—“a man of letters”—that is, a man well-read in great books. When we pause to consider that grammar is equivalent to literature, we see how education was originally begun—by learning to read, and by reading the best books. Rules for how to pronounce words or mark sentences correspond to our modern phonics and punctuation, and these things were learned in the course of reading books. But Quintilian does not limit the study of grammar to merely learning how to read. He understands it to continue to the level of reading with comprehension, w...

While they understood and even agreed with the ancient educators that education should begin with literature, the Renaissance educators had an additional hurdle to overcome. They did not speak Greek and Latin naturally, and so they had to acquire those languages before they could read the books at all. All the books were written in the classical languages—all of them.

The study of grammar, therefore, had to begin by learning the languages themselves, and then proceed to reading the literature of ancient Greece and Rome. 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. Very little was written in the common (vulgar) tongues, although this is the era in which we see the beginnings of literature in modern languages—Dante wrote in Italian, Chaucer wrote in English, and Montaigne in French, for example.

Over time, Latin ceased to be a stepping stone to great literature and wisdom, and became a mental exercise in grammatical rules and translation. Rather than being a hurdle to be overcome on the way to a larger purpose, so that the learner could enjoy reading great literature, the classical languages became the goal in themselves. In other words, the purpose or “why” for learning classical languages altered. It was not merely a stepping-stone to literature, but was seen as a way of developing or disciplining the mind. This change coincided with the shift in the world from a preference for synthetic thinking to a more scientific, analytic approach to knowledge. We have already mentioned the Victorian controversy between classical and scientific education. One way in which the classical studies were justified was that learning Latin developed thinking skills. Contemporary educators have taken a leaf from that book. Latin is still considered a key component of classical education, but if we ask an educator today why he is teaching Latin, the answers are almost tragic. A quick internet search brings up these reasons and others like them: Latin makes learning other languages easier. Latin helps with the vocabulary of scientific subjects. Learning an inflected language increases logic and reasoning skills. And worst of all, Latin boosts vocabulary scores on standardized tests. These reasons are utilitarian and pragmatic, but not classical when we consider the classical ideal. Th...

The happy phrase of Mr. Matthew Arnold—‘Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life’—is perhaps the most complete and adequate definition of education we possess. —Charlotte Mason

Having answered that philosophical question “What is man?” with “Children are born persons” who have “possibilities for both good and evil,” it now rests upon Charlotte Mason to explain exactly what she means by “person.” A child is a person in whom all possibilities are present—present now at this very moment—not to be educed after years and efforts manifold on the part of the educator; but indeed it is a greater thing to direct and use this wealth of spiritual power than to develop the so-called faculties of the child. It cannot be too strongly urged that our education of children will depend, nolens volens [whether we will or not], upon the conception we form of them. (Parents and Children, p. 260) I return to this first principle because it is first for a reason, and all that follows is dependent upon an understanding of what Charlotte Mason means when she says, “Children are born persons.” Out of her conception of a person grows her plan of how education must be undertaken.

Her emphatic conclusion about a child is that “his mind is the instrument of his education and that his education does not produce his mind.” (Philosophy of Education, p. 36) Charlotte Mason uses the word mind in a way that is distinct from the word brain. A careful reader of her writings must understand the difference between the two in order to fully comprehend all that she says. Mind is the non-material, living essence of a person, while brain, of course, is the material, physical brain. When Charlotte Mason asserts that children are persons, she means that they have both brain and mind. Anyone who has watched a one-year-old child examine a problem—a desired object out of reach, for example—and create a solution (usually involving standing on something unsafe) has seen how much intelligence and even logical thinking we are endowed with from the start.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. —Aristotle

Charlotte Mason gave further consideration to that primary goal which was the business of classical education: the formation of character, shaped by the idea that right thinking leads to right acting.

We know that the Will acts upon ideas; that ideas are presented to the mind in many ways—by books, talk, spiritual influences; that, to let ourselves be moved by a mere suggestion is an act of allowance and not of will; that an act of will is not the act of a single power of Mansoul, but an impulse that gathers force from Reason, Conscience, Affection; that, having come to a head by degrees, its operations also are regular and successive, going through the stages of intention, purpose, resolution; and that, when we are called upon for acts of will about small matters, such as going here or there, buying this or that, we simply fall back upon the principles or the opinions which Will has slowly accumulated for our guidance. We know that what we do or say matters less than what we will; for the Will is the man, and it is out of many acts of willing that our character, our personality, comes forth. (Ourselves, Book II, p. 165)

The second guide that Charlotte Mason calls into service of the classical goal to establish right thinking and right acting is “the way of reason.” What she wants children to understand is the limitations of reason or logic, rather than focusing on formal logic. She tells us that reason has two functions—to provide logical demonstrations of mathematical truths (in which it may be trusted) and to provide logical reasons for ideas which we have already chosen to accept. This second function of reason is not widely considered, but Charlotte draws attention to it by way of warning. Once we permit an idea to cross the threshold of admittance, our minds naturally look for, and find, reasons to support that idea. Rather than training ourselves to do what we already do, she asks us to take a step back and look at the initial idea. It is there that we must accept or reject (an act of the will), not according to reason alone, but according to some other, higher standard.

For this reason it is well we should make children perceive at a very early age that a man’s reason is the servant of his own will, and is not necessarily an independent authority within him in the service of truth. This is one of the by-lessons of history which quite a young child is able to understand,—how a good man can, as we say, persuade himself that wrong opinions and wrong actions are reasonable and right. Not that he does persuade himself, but that his reason appears to act in an independent way, and brings forward arguments in favour of a conclusion which he has already unconsciously accepted. This is a piece of self-knowledge upon which every child should be brought up if we would not have him at the mercy of chance convictions. Perceiving this, he would see for himself the object of his education; and young people would be eager to acquire knowledge were they brought to perceive that wide knowledge of men and events is a necessary foundation for convictions which shall be just as well as reasonable. This is one reason why children should have a wide and generous curriculum. We try to put them off with a parcel of ready-made opinions, principles, convictions, and are astonished that these do not stick to them; but such things each of us has to get by his own labour. It is only a person of liberal mind whose convictions are to be trusted, because they are the ripe fruit of his knowledge. (Formation of Character, p. 406–7)

Children must understand that it is not safe to assume logical and right are the same. If they choose to do wrong, good reasons for doing so will present themselves, much as they did to Eve in the Garden of Eden. If they choose to do right, good reasons for doing right will also present themselves. Our rational mind will support the choices made by the will, so reason must not be our guide.

I have no patience with the stupidity of the average teacher of grammar who wastes precious years in hammering rules into children’s heads. For it is not by learning rules that we acquire the power of speaking a language, but by daily intercourse with those accustomed to express themselves with exactness and refinement, and by the copious reading of the best authors.—Erasmus

But what of the trivium? No discussion of classical education can be complete without reference to this time-honored tradition. Grammar, logic, and rhetoric define classical education for many, and I have taken my time to get to them. The trivium, of course, is only a part of the seven liberal arts and is accompanied by the quadrivium of music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. All of these things were addressed or studied in the classical world, but we have seen already that there was not a consistent, uniform approach. Plato, for example, makes music the beginning of his educational program, and he explicitly interprets music to include literature, especially stories. In fact, all arts practiced by the muses were “music” to the Greeks.

First of all, the seven liberal arts were not intended to be a course of study for elementary school-children, but rather for university students. The ancient universities of Europe were founded, either during the late medieval or Renaissance era, to pursue those arts. To be sure, students sometimes enrolled in universities as young as age twelve or thirteen, so we may consider the seven liberal arts appropriate for our high school students, but the seven liberal arts were historically a university course.

The word, the logos, is the foundation of the “right thinking” which should lead to “right acting” in every area of life. The Greeks believed that a training in the use and power of words was the chief part of education, recognising that if the thought fathers the word, so does the word in turn father the thought. They concerned themselves with no language, ancient or modern, save their own, but of that they acquired a consummate appreciation. With the words came the great thoughts, expressed in whatever way the emergencies of the State called for—in wise laws, victorious battles, glorious temples, sculpture, drama. For great thoughts anticipate great works; and these come only to a people conversant with the great thoughts that have been written and said. (Philosophy of Education, p. 316) Quintilian, that Roman teacher and writer who informed all the Renaissance educators such as Erasmus, Montaigne, Elyot, and Comenius, offers some interesting perspectives on grammar that might serve to enlighten us even today. He says in the Institutes of Oratory that “no part of grammar is harmful save what is superfluous,” which is a valuable hint that some parts of it are, indeed, superfluous. He further proposes that, in lecturing, the grammarian will also have to give attention to minor matters, e.g. he should require that a line of poetry be analysed and the different parts of speech named to him. (Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory)

The classical tradition included the seven liberal arts, but it was not confined to them, nor was there a universally accepted approach to them. Throughout history, the trivium arts were learned, but not always by the same method. Charlotte Mason’s methods may be considered one very valid way for making use of these three “roads” to wisdom. This consideration is further confirmed because she borrows her ideas and convictions freely from the educators of the past while keeping her focus on the synthetic nature of education throughout most of the years of youth.

Narrowly focusing on the seven liberal arts alone—or worse, only a few of them—is part of the error that brought the classical tradition to its knees in the face of science and analytical thinking. When the concept of scientific thinking and analysis came to be seen as a superior approach to knowledge than the older, traditional approach of synthetic knowledge, classical thinkers capitulated. Rather than holding fast to synthetic thinking, they recast the study of the trivium into an analytical model. Grammar, logic, and rhetoric can be used analytically, of course, but when the synthetic use of reading and understanding wise authors was sacrificed to developing “thinking skills” and analyzing the minutiae of grammar, the heart of classical learning was gone.

I will only briefly address the reinterpretation of the trivium as stages of child development, because this idea is actually a recent one without classical precedent. Dorothy Sayers presented the concept first in her 1947 essay/speech, The Lost Tools of Learning. Modern educators, looking for something better than our woefully inadequate progressive practices, have built her non-traditional ideas into an entire educational movement commonly called “neoclassical,” which distinguishes the newer idea of stages from traditional, historical classical education. Unfortunately, this view places the burden of rote memorization, often without understanding, upon young learners who would be better served by a relational, synthetic approach to knowledge. To know by rote, is no knowledge, and signifies no more but only to retain what one has entrusted to our memory. That which a man rightly knows and understands, he is the free disposer of at his own full liberty, without any regard to the author from whence he had it, or fumbling over the leaves of his book. A mere bookish learning is a poor, paltry learning; it may serve for ornament, but there is yet no foundation for any superstructure to be built upon it. (Montaigne, Of The Education of Children) We have already discussed how the definition of grammar changed from the delightful study of literature to a dreary analysis of orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody. Using Dorothy Sayers’ essay, the definition of grammar has been...

We form an ideal—a, so to speak, embodied idea—and our ideal exercises the very strongest formative influence upon us.—Charlotte Mason

The first application of the practical principle that “education is the science of relations” is that a wide variety of knowledge is necessary. We should not limit our children’s exposure to knowledge, not because they need to acquire a great deal of information about everything, but because they need to develop relationships with every area of knowledge. During the earlier, synthetic years of education our task is to open as many doors as possible for them, to set their feet in a “large room” which it will be their privilege to explore in depth later, according to their own inclinations.

At least some classical educators were aware that it was well within the capabilities of children to learn more than one thing at a time, and that a change of subject produces a refreshed attention.

And if these in all their diversity are, as it were, the product of a single effort, why should we not divide our hours of study among a number of different subjects? Especially as change of occupation in itself refreshes and restores the mind, while, on the other hand, it is considerably more difficult to concentrate for long upon a single task. (Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory)

Charlotte Mason had very definite ideas about how these different areas of knowledge should be approached. With the principle—minds must be fed with ideas—firmly established, she reminds us that there is only one place in which ideas may consistently be found. A corollary of the principle that education is the science of relations, is, that no education seems to be worth the name which has not made children at home in the world of books, and so related them, mind to mind, with thinkers who have dealt with knowledge. We reject epitomes, compilations, and their like, and put into children’s hands books which, long or short, are living. (School Education, p. 226) Education is of the spirit and is not to be taken in by the eye or effected by the hand; mind appeals to mind and thought begets thought and that is how we become educated. For this reason we owe it to every child to put him in communication with great minds that he may get at great thoughts; with the minds, that is, of those who have left us great works; and the only vital method of education appears to be that children should read worthy books, many worthy books. (Philosophy of Education, p. 12) And what is a living book? Simply put, a living book is one that conveys living ideas. It should be of the highest literary quality and should present its subject in a way that engages both the mind and the heart of the reader. Charlotte rejects diluted texts, from which the living ideas have been reduced to mere informatio...

This is the logos of classical education—that the bulk of our educational efforts are going to take place within the context of words—reading them, thinking about them, and then producing our own words. Regardless of subject matter, the child is practicing the arts of grammar and rhetoric when he reads with understanding and retells what he has read.

The practical application appeals to many. The idea of reading many great books is a wonderful one, but Charlotte Mason warns us that reading the books alone, without understanding and implementing the philosophy behind the method, will not yield the same result. I feel strongly that to attempt to work this method without a firm adherence to the few principles laid down would be not only idle but disastrous. “Oh, we could do anything with books like those,” said a master; he tried the books and failed conspicuously because he ignored the principles. (Philosophy of Education, p. 270) I might venture to say that the same is true of implementing th...

Having determined, then, that books and literature—often understood as “letters” in previous generations—will be the foundation of our educational methods, the next step is to select the books. Here, the wide field of knowledge opens before us, and Charlotte Mason, following Matthew Arnold again, divides it into three categories. If then, the manners and the destinies of men are shaped by knowledge, it may be well to inquire further into the nature of that evasive entity. Matthew Arnold helps us by offering a threefold classification which appeals to common sense—knowledge of God, knowledge of men, and knowledge of the natural world; or, as we should say, Divinity, the Humanities, and Science. But I think we may go further and say that Letters, if not (as I said before) the main content of knowledge, constitute anyway the container—the wrought salver, the exquisite vase, even the alabaster box to the hold the ointment. (Philosophy of Education, p. 315-16) In other words, there is no area of knowledge which we should neglect in our attempt to lay a generous feast before our pupils, and there is no area of knowledge in which books—well-written, living books—cannot be the “exquisite” container by which that knowledge is conveyed. It is not the purpose of this book to propose a fully-realized curriculum (that has been done elsewhere*);

History was not a traditional part of classical education. It is not, of course, one of the seven liberal arts. However, most contemporary educators who are interested in the classical tradition, which is historical in itself, find that history is an area of knowledge—actually a framework for other knowledge—that must not be neglected. We desire to read the works of the thinkers of the past, and in order to fully appreciate their thoughts, we need to know something of the times that they lived in, the forces that shaped their thinking, and the results that proceeded from their ideas.

Charlotte Mason makes reference to Montaigne as one of the classical writers on education who influenced her own opinion about teaching history, as well as the Lives of Plutarch, which were always featured in the PNEU programs. In this conversing with men, I mean also, and principally, those who only live in the records of history; he shall, by reading those books, converse with the great and heroic souls of the best ages. ‘Tis an idle and vain study to those who make it so by doing it after a negligent manner, but to those who do it with care and observation, ‘tis a study of inestimable fruit and value; and the only study, as Plato reports, that the Lacedaemonians reserved to themselves. What profit shall he not reap as to the business of men, by reading the Lives of Plutarch? (Montaigne, Of The Education of Children)

But there is a region of apparent sterility in our intellectual life. Science says of literature, “I’ll none of it,” and science is the preoccupation of our age. Whatever we study must be divested to the bone, and the principle of life goes with the flesh we strip away: history expires in the process, poetry cannot come to birth, religion faints; we sit down to the dry bones of science and say, Here is knowledge, all the knowledge there is to know. “I think that is very wonderful,” a little girl wrote in an examination paper after trying to explain why a leaf is green. That little girl had found the principle—admiration, wonder—which makes science vital, and without wonder her highest value is, not spiritual, but utilitarian. A man might as well collect matchboxes, like those charming people in one of Anatole France’s novels, as search for diatoma, unless the wonder of the world be ever fresh before his eyes. (Philosophy of Education, p. 317–18)

I assume, for the sake of this discussion, that most readers are at least somewhat familiar with what is meant by narration. After reading or hearing a lesson from a living book, a child “tells back,” in his own words, what he has just heard. It is simple enough on the surface—so simple, it seems as if it might be easily set aside. But for the sake of classical education, let us consider further. Charlotte never tells us where the idea arose to ask children to tell back their lessons, but it is unlikely that she imagined it herself. We know that she delved into the educational writings of history, and perhaps it was there that she picked up the whispers that led her to try it. Erasmus recommends it in fairly strong terms. 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. (Erasmus, Upon the Right Method of Instruction) Comenius suggests something similar. 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. Furthermore, pupils should be instructed to relate what they learn in school to their parents...

Narration requires mental attention from the first word to the last. The mind must sift and evaluate everything that was included in the material. What were the salient points, and what merely illustration? What is the order or organization of this material? In other words—Where do I start, and what comes next, and next, until I come to the end? Quite unconsciously, a narrator will often make use of the vocabulary or turn of phrase used by the author, thereby appropriating them for himself.

Also, by not merely going over everything in his mind, but by actually speaking it aloud or composing it in writing, the learner is making the knowledge his own. What he has heard or read, then narrated, he knows. It has been said that teachers learn more than those taught. Charlotte Mason found, as have hundreds of parents and teachers since who have tried her methods faithfully, that children retain the knowledge they have narrated better than we can imagine. Ask them about it again, weeks later, and they are able to tell it again, because they know it. Lastly, I urge, as undeniably the surest method of acquisition, the practice of teaching what we know: in no other way, can we so certain...

Quintilian appreciates the value of what he calls “paraphrasing” (Latin paraphrasis), not only for its immediate proof that meaning has been understood, but as an exercise that develops the mind for future learning. First they must learn to break up lines of poetry, then to put the meaning into other words, and then to paraphrase more boldly, with freedom to curtail or to adorn provided only that the meaning of the poet remains unchanged. Such paraphrasing is not an easy task even for accomplished teachers and one who has handled it in an adequate fashion will be fit to learn anything. (Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory)

All of Charlotte Mason’s practical methods—narration, nature notebooks, history notebooks, making notes in the margins of schoolbooks—are intended to contribute to synthetic thinking. These methods encourage children to make knowledge their own, and the notebooks and sketches the children create themselves become another way in which they form relationships with what they are learning.

Although she encourages teachers to give children “freedom,” this is not a child-led method of education. Charlotte Mason tells us that children are no more fit to choose their own schoolbooks than their physical diet, and that what they like is no fit guide—“they like lollipops but cannot live upon them.” (Philosophy of Education, p. 117) So the teacher is a guide—a sort of “intellectual dietician” who selects the most nourishing and appetizing dishes to be found and sets them before the learner. Then, too, the teacher’s own enthusiasm for the knowledge to be consumed will be communicated to the learners. This is part of the “atmosphere of environment” that the teacher must create—a sense of delightful, purposeful effort to acquire knowledge.