Consider This: Charlotte Mason and the Classical Tradition

by Karen Glass

In Charlotte Mason’s methods, the teacher is not the source of knowledge, doling it out to pupils in predigested form. The children are reading their living books and taking in knowledge for themselves. But the teacher must be the guide—the one who has gone before and laid out the program because he knows, as the children cannot, the best plan for proceeding. A trail guide knows when the path is easy and when it is steeper and requires a rest, how much ground can be covered in the time allotted, and where the smoothest ways and finest views are to be found. A teacher, in the role of guide, leads his pupils through the books, allowing them time to assimilate each lesson, and making sure that each lesson is assimilated by requiring narration and lending a sympathetic ear to the pupil’s efforts. In the role of philosopher, the teacher will help the students order the knowledge they are taking in. We cannot give children our own opinions or understanding of relationships, but we can help them to make their own connections by way of a judicious word, by providing a map or timeline, and by arranging readings so that books of science, history, and literature correlate. A teacher should have his own synthetic understanding of the world in order to develop synthetic thinking in the children he teaches. 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 t...

Truth and reason are common to every one, and are no more his who spake them first, than his who speaks them after: ‘tis no more according to Plato, than according to me, since both he and I equally see and understand them.—Montaigne

Before concluding this consideration of the classical ideals, I would like to develop further the topic of synthetic thinking and a synthetic understanding of knowledge, because I believe that understanding this mode of thinking and working to establish it both in ourselves and in our children is possibly the most vital aspect of classical education, the one thing that will make a lifelong difference, regardless of the level of proficiency reached in any of the liberal arts. The medieval educators, when depicting knowledge, often showed the liberal arts grouped around or arrayed beneath the larger idea of philosophy or sometimes theology—love of wisdom, or the study of God himself. Charlotte Mason had a special fondness for Andrea da Firenze’s fresco that showed how the liberal arts could be considered outpourings of divine knowledge. Educational philosophy throughout history gives us a consistent picture of knowledge as a whole. We may look at one aspect of knowledge at a time, as we may look at a hand or a foot, but we never, when we think in the synthetic mode, lose sight of the fact that the hand is part of a whole person. For this reason, our educational efforts must teach us to consider all knowledge as a whole. We should never imagine that because we know a part well—even very well—we therefore comprehend all knowledge. This perception of knowledge as always being greater than we can apprehend allows us to retain that intellectual humility which is so necessary to c...

Throughout the ages in Greece and Rome, education sought to develop in the heart of the learner an ideal—a perfect type that he would desire to emulate. The Homeric epics were meant to portray heroism, faithfulness, and other virtues, which would present an image—an ideal image—toward which to strive. The fundamental purpose of ancient education was to create wise and virtuous men.

The ancient educators knew that their system ultimately failed to make truly good men. Quintilian said, “there has never been a wise man,” (Institutes of Oratory) and Charlotte Mason knew it, too. We have read how she quotes Plutarch extensively about what “philosophy” will do toward building moral virtue, and then tells us that we do not leave that role to philosophy, but to “religion” (by which she means Christianity), asserting that philosophy merely instructs, while religion both instructs and enables.

Charlotte Mason’s Twenty Principles of Education 1. Children are born persons. 2. They are not born either good or bad, but with possibilities for good and for evil. 3. The principles of authority on the one hand, and of obedience on the other, are natural, necessary and fundamental; but— 4. These principles are limited by the respect due to the personality of children, which must not be encroached upon whether by the direct use of fear or love, suggestion or influence, or by undue play upon any one natural desire. 5. Therefore, we are limited to three educational instruments—the atmosphere of environment, the discipline of habit, and the presentation of living ideas. The P.N.E.U. Motto is: “Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life.” 6. When we say that “education is an atmosphere,” we do not mean that a child should be isolated in what may be called a ‘child-environment’ especially adapted and prepared, but that we should take into account the educational value of his natural home atmosphere, both as regards persons and things, and should let him live freely among his proper conditions. It stultifies a child to bring down his world to the child’s level. 7. By “education is a discipline,” we mean the discipline of habits, formed definitely and thoughtfully, whether habits of mind or body. Physiologists tell us of the adaptation of brain structures to habitual lines of thought, i.e., to our habits. 8. In saying that “education is a life,” the need of intellectua...