The Oxymoron that is Christian Classical

I try not to spend my time beating up on other philosophies of education but I was struck by this quote from Susan Wise Bauer, classical education guru and co-author of The Well-Trained Mind:

“What we are talking about here is the embrace of classical education by a group of particular socially conservative Christians who otherwise would seem unlikely to latch on to a model of education that was conceived of and taught my ancient polytheists who were sexually permissive, certainly not by and large heterosexual, and often ended up being the enemies of the conservative governments of their time. It’s a very odd sort of historical connection there.” (“Where is Classical Education Going?” The Well-Trained Mind Podcast, episode 5)

Bauer here is criticizing some particular people and movements within the classical world which she would rather disassociate herself and her movement from (see also this earlier post on the classical label). These are very socially conservative Christian folks and her point is that classical education which they have latched on to and tried to make their own is actually a very bad fit for what they believe. Bauer herself seems to be a Christian but the method of education which she has described at length in The Well-Trained Mind and which so many, of all faiths and no faith, have adopted is meant to be a model for everyone and not a distinctly Christian way of educating.

And today I would like to just say: listen to her. Bauer is absolutely correct. It is not that there is nothing good that we can get from the ancient Greeks. I do believe that all truth is God’s truth and that that which is good and true and beautiful will often come to us through non-Christian sources, but at the same time we need to be discerning and not swallow something wholesale when we don’t know its source and the ideas behind it — and even more so when we do know the source and ideas and when they are not things that we fundamentally agree with.

I have argued on this blog that any approach to education inherently asks and answers questions about who we are as human beings and what our ultimate purpose is. These are big questions and they are religious questions. As Christians, our starting place for answering them and therefore for building a philosophy of education should be in God’s Word, in the things that we as believers know to be true.

I don’t agree with everything Charlotte Mason says. Her version of Christian theology is not mine, but she was Christian and she sought to found her philosophy on what she called “gospel principles.” If you are looking for an alternative to classical education, I would suggest that her ideas may be a place to start.

As kind of an addendum, there is some debate as to how much modern classical education (another oxymoron) actually connects with the ancient Greek ideas. If you are tracing your roots back not to Greece to but Dorothy Sayers, do take the time to read her “Lost Tools of Learning,” the article which jump-started this whole thing. You can read my review of it here (spoiler: I was not a fan).

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See also:

Why Not Classical

Ways to Approach Education

Where is Classical Education Going — and What Can CM Learn?

Through one of those internet rabbit holes, I ended up listing to an episode of The Well-Trained Mind Podcast entitled “Where is Classical Education Going?” Susan Wise Bauer, co-author of the WTM book and classical education guru, was being interviewed on the state of classical ed today looking specifically at curricula that use the classical label and its perception in the media.

It is not new news that “classical” is a label that is so widely and diversely used that it becomes hard to define (see my posts on Sorting Out Classical  and Characteristics of Classical Education) but one gets the impression that Bauer has reached her breaking point. What does seem to be new (at least it was new to me) is that “classical” has now also become political. Apparently the term is used by the likes of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to describe a style of education that is not “woke” but otherwise perhaps has little to do with what we would normally have described as “classical.”

As Bauer discusses on the show, there is a general tendency for terms to be co-opted over time so that their meaning gradually becomes lost (think “fundamentalist” and “evangelical”). This has certainly happened with “classical.” My concern today is how we are also beginning to see this happen with “Charlotte Mason” as a label affixed to various books and curricula.

I would be very surprised if Gov. DeSantis began talking about “Charlotte Mason” education as the antidote to wokeness (though if there is one thing the modern political climate has taught us it should be: you never know), but there has definitely been a co-opting of the CM label. The world we live in is a marketplace. If companies perceive that a term is gaining some traction, they are going to try to use it to sell their product. “Classical” got there first but “Charlotte Mason” is catching up. We see more and more curricula describing themselves as CM, often with little attention to what her ideas actually were. (Curious if the curriculum you use actually follows CM’s ideas? See this chart on CM, CM-inspired, and CM-labeled curricula.)

I do think we have a but of a leg up in the CM world because she was a single person who created a philosophy of education. It is easier for us to look back to a source and say “yes, she said this” or “oh no, she didn’t.” “Classical” by its very nature is a little more amorphous. (Bauer in the podcast points to Sayers’ “Lost Tools of Learning” article as the fountainhead of modern classical ed, and of course her own WTM book.) On the other hand, there are also going to be legitimate areas where we can have disputes about what the CM way would be, particularly when we come to situations and resources she never had — how, for instance, would Mason herself have felt about a TED talk in which an expert talks about a subject he is passionate about?

A label which is degraded becomes useless. The warning for us in all this, the lesson we can take from the classical ed world, is that it is worth guarding the meaning of the “Charlotte Mason” label. I am not a CM purist and I have had my reservations about those who are, but I do really appreciate that they can help keep us on track by always bringing us back to the questions “What did Mason say?” and “How did Charlotte do it?”

I do also want to say that it is okay to take parts of Mason’s philosophy and not to use the whole. There are areas where I disagree with Mason and have adapted her methods. I would urge us all to be intellectually honest, though, and not to call CM what is not. We can keep the term pure while still adapting in our own homeschools.

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See also:

Myth: CM is Interest-Led

Charlotte Mason Fact Check

Is It CM?

The Well-Educated Heart vs. Charlotte Mason

Last time I introduced you to the Well-Educated Heart (WEH) philosophy of education. Marlene Peterson, the woman behind the WEH, sees herself as having not created but discovered a new approach to education with deep roots. She cites many influences, among them Charlotte Mason, a late 19th/early 20th century British educator. My own philosophy of education is based largely on Mason’s and I have written much on her approach so I thought it would be interesting to compare the WEH with Mason to see just where they agree and where they differ.

Sources and Origins

Though they do not end up in the same places, both Peterson and Mason claim to have found (not created) a philosophy of education and both claim some religious basis for their approach. Mason bases her philosophy on what she calls the three gospel principles which she finds in the biblical book of Matthew. Peterson does not cite a specific textual source for her philosophy but does say that she sought God’s methods for education.

Peterson cites a number of earlier thinkers that informed her ideas. She mentions Masons specifically though as far as I have seen the main, if not the only, idea she gets from Mason is that “true education is between child’s soul and God.” Though Peterson cites this line specifically more than once, I cannot find where Mason said these exact words.¹ It is true, however, that Mason speaks of the Holy Spirit as “the Great Educator” and her 20th principle reads:

“We allow no separation to grow up between the intellectual and ‘spiritual’ life of children, but teach them that the Divine Spirit has constant access to their spirits, and is their Continual Helper in all the interests, duties and joys of life.”

Based on the how much she discusses him, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi seems to have been a bigger influence on Peterson. Like Pestalozzi, she places a large emphasis on the role and influence of the mother and she sees the child as a basically good creature who will develop along the right lines without outside negative influences. She attributes to Pestalozzi her emphasis on educating the feelings before the mind.

Perhaps second after Pestalozzi, Peterson cites Friedrich Froebel, the founder of the modern kindergarten movement, as one of her influences. Mason also knows Froebel but largely rejects his kindergarten movement. For Peterson, the child is a plant to be cared for tenderly, an image which Mason again rejects.

“Now persons do not grow in a garden, much less in a greenhouse.” (Mason, Home Education, p. 186)

” . . . it is questionable whether the conception of children as cherished plants in a cultured garden has not in it an element of weakness.” (Mason, School Education, chapter 6)

The Parts of the Person and His Abilities

Peterson’s approach, as its name suggests, is primarily about educating the heart. Feelings are prioritized over reason. Then child in the WEH philosophy develops through stages and in the youngest years it is not clear that he has intellectual abilities as such. Peterson says, for instance, that little children hear and respond to the music, not the content, of language. There is skepticism about human reason but seems to be no corresponding qualms about the emotions.

Mason is explicit that the child is born as a person with all the faculties of an adult. He does not need to be taught to think and from the youngest ages he is to be fed a diet of ideas.² Ideas, for Mason, are the food of the mind and to withhold them from a child would be to starve him intellectually. Yet we should not think that Mason elevates the mind to the exclusion of other parts of the person. As I have argued elsewhere, Mason does not see the mind as separate from the child’s spirit but rather to feed the child’s mind on ideas is also to feed his spiritual nature. The two are so closely entwined as to be inseparable. Nor does the mind operate in isolation from the heart. The goal of education for Mason is to teach the child to care — to build relationships with what he studies about and to develop affinities for all manner of things. So one might say feeding the mind/spirit builds the heart as well. We must not make too big a distinction here; I believe Mason tends to see the person as a unified whole and tends not to distinguish parts within his nature.

Mason has a skepticism of the child’s reason but also of his emotions. Both, if left untrained, can lead one astray. In terms of the goodness of the child’s nature, Mason seems to take a slightly more pessimistic view. Both would see potential in any person to accept the good.³ However, Mason acknowledges that, if left to his own devices, the child will not choose the good, true, and beautiful. His mind must be filled one way or another and if we are not deliberately giving him good spiritual and intellectual food, he will ingest the bad. Mason also devotes a chunk of her time to what he calls “habit training.” There is in this a recognition that we will not naturally form good habits and that there does need to be some degree of discipline that occurs.

For Peterson, there is less explicit recognition of how a child might go wrong. Perhaps it is just not a topic she feels the need to bring up in her writing on education, but I saw no talk of discipline. While the implication is there that a person’s heart can be hardened and that he might not find joy or return to God in heaven, this comes across as more of the absence of goodness than of a turn to badness per se.

The Goal of Education

The goal of education for Mason is to, as she says, set the child’s feet in a wide room. By this she means that he should form relations with as many things as possible. Other words she uses for these connections we build are “intimacies” and “affinities.”

“Our aim in education is to give children vital interests in as many directions as possible –to set their feet in a large room.”   (Mason, School Education, p. 166)

For Peterson, as we saw last time, the goal is joy. There is also an element of putting things together, however. She does not make forming relations as Mason would phrase it the goal of education but she does criticize curricula for making connections for children and speaks of their need to create order out of chaos for themselves⁴.

Methods

When it comes to the practical details of education, we can consider what the two philosophies have in common and where they differ.

Both Mason and Peterson eschew the use of force or coercion in education. For Peterson, this seems tp mean that the child is not obligated in any way to participate in his education but that he may be won over by the example of others (particularly his mother). She would allow the use of some incentives (read: ice cream) to help with early rough spots. The principle behind this stance is that as God does not force anyone to come to him, so we should not force children to learn (which ultimately is to lead them back to him). Mason would use natural consequences to get a child to do his schoolwork, e.g. not being able to have free time because he has wasted school time with dawdling, but she does not allow parents or teachers to be manipulative in how they deal with children. They must not for instance predicate their love upon the child’s obedience. Again, this is a principled stance — we are to respect the personhood of the child by not encroaching upon it or using his natural tendencies (eg. his desire for approval) against him.

For Peterson education is more about how the child learns (heart first) than what he learns. For Masen I would say the how is important but the what is also key. We must give children’s minds quality food — good books, beautiful art, etc.

Peterson has an emphasis on early learning through the senses which Mason would reject. For Mason, the mind is always in play, even in the early years.

Both Peterson and Mason use living books. In a Charlotte Mason education the child responds to what he reads and internalizes it through narration. The WEH uses notebooking. While there is some similarity here in terms of an emphasis on the child making what he reads his own, narration is designed to build composition skills in a way that notebooking cannot.⁵

Both give the arts a large role, value time in nature, and accord history a place of prominence in the curriculum. For Peterson, history and science/nature form the two educational tracks because they have to do with people and creation. Mason speaks again of relations and would see three areas of learning, including relations with people and things but also with God.

Though I have said that the WEH does not mention discipline as such, there is a emphasis on reading stories of heroes as a means to build character in children by their example. Peterson is careful though to say that we cannot be deliberate in how we do this. We cannot target these stories in such a way as to determine what they child will get from them because each child will come away from the story with his own lesson. Mason’s approach would be the same (and it is actually a pet peeve of mine that so many CM educators miss this and try to target stories to teach particular lessons — eg. “What book can I read to teach my child to be kind?”).

Peterson favors a spiral approach with a short rotation of subjects (each topic coming up once a year) and lots of repetition. Here is is quite different from Mason who eschews repetition and favors a slow, deep reading of books. For Mason, to repeat is to allow the child to develop the bad habit of not paying attention the first time.

Conclusions

Peterson does not claim that the Well-Educated Heart is a Charlotte Mason approach to education. While there are some significant overlaps in the practical details particularly, there are also many significant philosophical differences between the two, the emphasis on the heart as opposed to the mind being perhaps the most obvious. Though the two might use the same books, works of art, etc., their ideas will come out in how these materials are used.

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1. An online search turns up sites which quote Mason as saying “Look on education as something between the child’s soul and God” but give no specific reference. I cannot find this quote in Mason’s Home Education series. ↩︎
2. Though one must acknowledge here that a formal education for Mason does not start till age 6 so she has less to say on the toddler years. ↩︎
3. As a Calvinist, this is where I most differ with Mason. See How I Do Charlotte Mason, Part 1. ↩︎
4. This idea of Peterson’s — that what we are doing as we learn is mirror God’s creative act by to creating order ourselves within our minds — is I think the biggest contribution of her philosophy. ↩︎
5. I highly recommend Karen Glass’s book Know and Tell for an explanation of Charlotte Mason style narration and how and why it works. ↩︎

Approaches to Homeschool: Well-Educated Heart

When the Well-Educated Heart came to my attention, I thought I would be adding another Charlotte Mason curriculum to my list. What I found when I looked more closely was a full-orbed philosophy of education in its own right which, while it has some CM-influences, stands on its own.

The Well-Educated Heart (WEH) is the work of one woman, Marlene Peterson, a homeschool mom and now grandma. She has put together a truly impressive quantity of material. The curriculum she gives us, called the Rotation, is fairly straightforward, but she has also supplied the books for this curriculum in her Libraries of Hope and, because what Mason would have called “Mother Culture” is a big part of WEH, she also gives us lots we can use as we think about education. I will not claim to have read everything that Peterson provides (I am not even sure that is possible!). I have watched a video or two on the website and have read her Introduction book and large portions of her books on the Philosophy and Methods of WEH (the first half of the Methods book was actually more useful in initially grasping the philosophy). Because she presents her philosophy in such a straight-forward way, I feel I have a pretty good grasp on what she believes but, of course, there may be gaps and elements I am missing.

When I have looked at various philosophies of education, I have asked four questions of each:

1. What do they assume about how learning works?

2. How do they view children?

3. How do they view human nature?

4. What do they believe is the goal of education?

My goal in this post is to present a broad overview of Peterson’s philosophy and to answer each of these questions. In another post, I would like to compare her philosophy to that of Mason and to offer more of a critique of the ideas behind it.

One of my arguments in this series has been that the ideas we hold will come through in our approach to education and that therefore we need to make ourselves aware of the beliefs of those who create our curricula. Peterson provides the perfect example of this. Though I have not seen that she states it explicitly, it is clear from her work that she is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS, aka Mormon). Though I thought I was pretty educated on such things, I actually learned quite a lot from her writing on education about what LDS believe so it was fairly interesting on that level as well. Her beliefs are not only front and center, they have clearly shaped her philosophy of education. I don’t know how much variation there is in the LDS community; I would assume that if you are part of the same community that Peterson’s ideas would resonate with you and fit your own beliefs and values well. For those who come from different belief systems, one might want to pause and consider a little more deeply before diving into WEH.

So what are the ideas behind the Well-Educated Heart? I don’t know how Peterson herself would characterize it but I see two strands, one theological and one political, which come together to form this philosophy.

On the theological side, Peterson believes that we all existed with God before our births. We were sent to this earth to learn to love and our ultimate goal is to return to be with God. Love leads to joy and so our goal — in life and in education — is joy. In Peterson’s words: “We can’t go wrong when we align our will to God’s, and His will is: ‘Man is that he might have joy.’” (Philosophy, p. 89; Peterson does not that I see attribute the proverb she quotes but a quick Google search shows that this verse is from the Book of Mormon)

The child is not an empty vessel but more like a tender plant. It is the mother’s job in particular to educate and tend to him and she is uniquely gifted for this task. Her job is to soften her children’s hearts so that they are receptive to the work of God in their lives. God shines His light on everyone. The difference is our ability to capture the light — the more we capture, the more joy we have. It is the arts which soften hearts and attract light into the child’s soul. This light gives the spiritual light something to attach to and gives the divine spirit room to work.

Thus the heart is first and foremost in education (hence the name of the philosophy) and there is a pattern of always addressing the heart before the mind. Emotions come before intellect. The heart is fed not on facts and information but images and feelings so there is a lot of use of art, music, and story, especially in the early years.

WEH is a fairly individualized approach to education. There is a pattern (heart then mind) but not a formula or precise curriculum because each child is a unique individual with a unique calling. There is no force or coercion in this approach. There is a big emphasis on the mother setting an example in education by working on her own heart but she does not impose on her children if they are resistant. The reason behind this is also theological — God, Peterson believes, does not force anyone to heaven so we too do not and cannot force the softening of our children’s hearts.

Perhaps because of the emphasis on patterns, repetition is key to the WEH. This is a spiral approach to learning which is designed to prepare the child by establishing neural pathways. Other curricula may debate 4 versus 6 year history cycles but WEH uses a one-year cycle of history and science/nature topics. This is the Rotation. With a month per subject, the child does not go deep but will come back to each topic annually.

It is when we consider what is studied that we find the second, political strand that informs the WEH. Peterson believes that we live in a time of crisis. The differences between men and women have been obscured; heroes have been knocked off their pedestals; America’s founding stories have been denigrated. She sees a golden age of children’s literature as having occurred at the end of the 19th/beginning of the 20th century and so the stories she selects (and reprints in her Libraries of Hope series) are older ones. There is an emphasis on heroes, especially for ages 8-11 when children are naturally focused on such things.

The Rotation follows the arc of American history and Peterson urges even those in other countries to follow this sequence. She has a strong belief in American exceptionalism. Because the US is a melting pot, the study of American history will inevitably bring in the study of other cultures and societies. There is good in many cultures (example: we get respect for elders from Chinese culture) but it is only here in the United States that these cultures have all come together and that freedom has truly been achieved. It is only in freedom that we can obtain joy, which again is the goal of education and of life.

There is much more that could be said but this is the core of the WEH philosophy of education so now we may turn again to our four questions to see how Peterson’s approach would answer them.

1. What do they assume about how learning works?

In the WEH, learning is first and foremost a work of the heart. The intellect or mind is secondary. So the arts which are of the heart come first. History is prioritized over science, the latter being most of all the realm of the mind. Education is not forced but is something that is caught and so the role of the example is key, particularly the mother’s example. She may spend as much time on her own education as on her children’s because they will follow where she goes. Education is also very cyclical as patterns and neural pathways are established so this is a spiral approach which emphasizes repetition over depth.

2. How do they view children?

Children are unique individuals with their own calling from God. Peterson compares them to plants tenderly cared for by their mother but warns the mother not to be disappointed if she thinks she is growing a rose but ends up with a peony. Children do go through stages of development. The earliest years are most about the heart. Toddlers respond to the music of language more then the content and so we give them songs and nursery rhymes. Up to age 8 or so is the time of imagination so stories are key. Ages 8-11 are a time for hero worship and stories of great men. It is only in the tween/teen years that children begin to put the pieces together and they are not fully developed till age 26.

3. How do they view human nature?

If not inherently good, human nature at least has the potential for good.. Peterson does speak of hardships which will come in life, but there is no indication that these struggles are internal ones. The great threat seems to be a hardening of the heart but even in that there is no talk of personal sin. There is a lot of choice and freedom in human nature. Anyone could obtain joy and return to heaven but not everyone will. God sends forth his light but does not compel anyone to receive it.

4. What do they believe is the goal of education?

The immediate goal of education is the softening and preparing of the heart so that it can receive the divine light and thereby obtain joy and return to heaven to be with God again.

This then is the philosophy of the Well-Educated Heart. Next time we will compare Peterson’s ideas to those of Charlotte Mason.

Is It CM?: New Entries

The homeschooling marketplace seems to be always expanding. One of the most frequent questions I get is “What about . . . curriculum? Is it CM?” My own days of active homeschooling are near their end, but I am going to try to keep up with what is out there just so you have it all on one place. Today’s curriculum reviews will be added to my master Is It CM? page as well as to my Google docs chart of CM and CM-inspired curricula. For a look at how I evaluate these curricula, please do see that Is It CM page where I discuss methodology and criteria.

Here then is today’s game of: Is it CM?

Lamp + Light Homeschool

Lamp + Light calls itself a “Christian minimalist” approach with elements of many different philosophies from Unschooling to Classical.

What’s CM about it?

Lamp + Light makes use of narration, copywork, and dictation. It includes nature journaling and some art and music. It uses some living books.

What isn’t CM?

As far as I can tell, most of the books that L+L uses are readers from Pathway or The Good and the Beautiful. These readers are not living books though they may contain material that is living. I do not see picture/artist study. While narration is used, I am not sure that the approach is quite what I would call CM-style narration. (L+L links to Heart to Heart Homeschooling articles to explain topics like narration and dictation.)

Quick Take Summary:

There is a lot here that could be used in a CM way. The biggest drawback I see is that there is just not a good supply of true living books.

The Peaceful Press

The Peaceful Press began as a preschool curriculum and has expanded through the elementary years and also includes resources for older years as well. It bills itself as a “living” approach to education and seems to have close ties to the Wild + Free community (read my takes on Wild + Free here and here). You can sign up for a free sample of their curriculum but it is hard to see much so my analysis may be somewhat limited.

What’s CM about it?

The books it uses seem good.

What isn’t CM?

Since Peaceful Press started with the early years and has a lot of preschool materials there is the issue that formal learning before age 6 is inherently not CM. Beyond that, it adds a lot of activities and does not seem to emphasize CM-style narration. It seems a little light in terms of the number of readings and what is read. The site mentioned art but I didn’t see that in the bit I looked at so I would also like to see art and music study and also nature lore and nature journaling.

Quick Take Summary:

I don’t see a lot here that is inherently CM.

How to Start CM without Buying a Whole Curriculum

This is a version if an answer I gave on a Charlotte Mason discussion group. I thought it would be worth sharing here. Though I have looked at many Charlotte Mason and CM-inspired curricula, I always put together my own thing, sometime using resources from various companies but never buying or using an all-in-one curriculum. You can see a longer discussion of how I have done/would do a Charlotte Mason education here. You might also want to read Getting Started with Charlotte Mason and, if you are new to her ideas, Introducing Charlotte Mason and Her 20 Principles.

If you are just gearing up and don’t want to pick one whole curriculum, I would start by thinking about one subject at a time. We always used a curriculum of some sort for math so I would just get something for that and not worry about making that subject CM to start (we liked Math-U-See in elementary and Life of Fred as a supplement).

Language arts in a Charlotte Mason education comes through copywork or dictation as well as through the reading and narration that kids do (see this post on CM language arts). I like using passages from my kids books for copywork and dictation but that can be a lot to start with. If I had to pick materials to use, I would go with Simply Charlotte Mason’s stuff for that. Really you can just do the copywork/dictation to start in elementary. Don’t worry about grammar till middle school. You can always add more later.

History to me is the core of a CM education. Pick a time period and get living books on it. Have them read and/or read to them and have them narrate (read Karen Glass’s Know and Tell if you are new to narration and how to do it). You can see my history booklists here.

If you start with these core subjects, then you can slowly add in others. For science just read nature lore and have them narrate again and then spend time in nature and keep nature journals (you do it too). Long walks and a lot of time are not necessary. 15 minutes spent sitting and observing can be more valuable.

Try to do picture study and composer study once in a while (once a week is ideal). As they get older you can add in Shakespeare (start with narrative versions of his plays; I also recommend How to Teach Your Child Shakespeare) and Plutarch (I save that for middle school and beyond). Read a poem to them once a week or so. And find ways to fit other good fiction books into your day. I always read to mine while they are lunch and did audio books in the car (captive audience in both cases).

The Educability of Children: Why a Reformed Approach Has to be Different

I have been revisiting my series on approaches to education and rethinking what distinguishes the various approaches. Recently I looked at 10 approaches to education and asked how their view the child’s nature and how much they trust to that nature.

In doing so, I found myself thinking that none of these exactly captures my own (reformed Christian) view of human nature. Charlotte Mason’s philosophy, which I have largely followed in my own, comes closest and it is certainly Christian, but, as I have argued again and again, it is not reformed.

Unschooling, on the far end of the spectrum, believes utterly in the child’s innate goodness and trusts entirely to his nature to guide him. Mason, who is perhaps close to the other end, does not believe unequivocally in the child’s goodness. She is perhaps the only one to explicitly acknowledge the possibility of badness in the child’s nature. But for her the two are both open possibilities, and her belief was that given the right mental and spiritual food, the good would win out.

We can imagine a Dickensian approach to education in which learning is beaten into the child as his innate badness is driven out, but such conceptions are, thankfully, not common in the modern world. Even those philosophies which seek more than others to mold the child — classical education being a prime example — on some level assume the educability of the child. In many incarnations of classical, the driving force in education comes from outside the child but there is still an expectation that the child can and will respond appropriately, even eagerly, to what is being given.

As reformed people who believe not just in man’s sinfulness but in total depravity, we have to ask how it is that we can expect any good, any movement towards goodness even, from fallen people. (I am assuming here that to be educated, to grow in knowledge, even knowledge in “secular” subjects, is good.) Our theology tells us that man, apart from the grace of God, is not capable of this, but yet we do educate our children and we do see them grow in knowledge.

There are a few answers which come immediately to mind — we can talk about covenant children, the image of God, and “common grace” — but ultimately I think what we need to do is reframe the question. Education does not work because children are educable. Education works because it is a work of God who is able to educate even the uneducable. (To give Mason credit, this is the gist of her 20th principle, that the Holy Spirit is the active force in education.)

Every other philosophy of education assumes that education is doable and is worth doing because of something in the child that can be educated. A reformed approach assumes that education happens not because of something in the child but because of God who is Himself the first actor in all things.

Approaches to Homeschool: Trusting the Child’s Nature

There are many questions we can ask when comparing various philosophies of education – What is the role of the teacher? What is the goal of education? Is there a common body of knowledge that all should obtain? How does learning happen? My proposal today is that some of the most fundamental questions have to do with the child’s nature and how much we can trust it.

For each of the approaches below (9 philosophies and one method), I am going to ask:

1. Development: What is believed about the child’s development? How does he differ from the adult and how does he need to change, develop, or grow?  
2. Nature: Is the child’s nature inherently good? Does it have tendencies toward good?
3. Trust:  To what degree can we trust in the child’s nature, that it will develop as it ought? To what degree are outside forces necessary to shape the child?

Unschooling

Development There is no development per se. The child has the ability to learn already. The child does not change as much as he reaches his potential or finds and fulfills his passion.

Nature Good, very good.

Trust The child’s nature is completely to be trusted and the parent/teacher is a primarily resource-finder. The necessary forces are within the child.

Reggio Emilia

Development Reggio Emilia speaks of children as “knowledge bearers” and having “a hundred languages” but it is not clear to me if this is different from adults. The goal is not for change as much as to achieve one’s potential.

Nature Good.

Trust There is a fair degree of trust in the child’s nature. The child’s interests drive the curriculum; the teacher is mainly facilitator.  

Wild + Free

Development Childhood differs from adulthood. The goal is not to move the child into adulthood but to so invest him with the virtues of childhood (wonder and curiosity being foremost among them) that they stay with him into adulthood.  

Nature Good, but not perfect, with a natural inner trajectory.

Trust Development is mostly, but not entirely, trusted to the child’s nature. The child is the primary driving force and learning is interest-based but the teacher has a role in guiding, encouraging, and removing obstacles.

Enki

Development Children are not the same as adults and must evolve like a caterpillar into a butterfly. This development seems to mainly involve integration of body, heart, and mind.

Nature Seems to be basically good with the right trajectory within the child.

Trust A fair degree of trust with gentle shaping and the teacher as a role model.

Montessori

Development The child must evolve into an adult.

Nature Basically good but with the possibility of going astray. The right trajectory is within the child.

Trust There is trust that the child’s nature will develop as it should in the right environment. Good environment will produce good output.

Waldorf

Development The child is very different from the adult and must go through a series of births, a kind of spiritual evolution.  

Nature Basically good. The right trajectory is within the child.

Trust There is a level of trust in the innate trajectory but also with a fair role for the teacher in providing the right things at the right time and being a role model.

Charlotte Mason

Development The child has the abilities of the adult but must learn to have a taste for what is good, to choose well, and to control his will.

Nature The child is born with the potential for good and the ability to choose the good but also with the very real possibility of going the other way.

Trust There is a lot of trust in the child’s abilities and that he will respond appropriately if given the right intellectual food. Good input will produce good output; in this case the input is mainly intellectual.

Classical (including Christian Classical)

Development There are distinct stages through which the child passes. He must be taught to reason. There may also be an aspect of confirming to an ideal based on virtues. **

Nature While one might not say the child’s nature is bad, it is clear that he must be molded to a significant degree.

Trust The forces for right development come mainly from without the child. The teacher and curriculum drive development.  

** There are many varieties of classical education including both secular and Christian streams. Some emphasize the building of virtue more. Some downplay the stages of development.  

Values/Character/Principle Based (one exemplar here)

Development This may vary but it is clear that the child must become or obtain things that he does not inherently have.

Nature The child must be molded to a significant degree.

Trust It is things external to the child which must shape him.

Unit Studies

Unit studies is more of a method than a philosophy so does not give full answers to all these questions.

Trust There is often a reliance on the child’s interests as a starting point but there is also the assumption that the teacher must put things together for the child and build or keep his interest and/or entertain him. The active are mainly external to the child.

How We Know and How it Affects Education (a Book Review)

To read Esther Lightcap Meek’s Longing to Know [1] is to do exactly what the book describes — to begin to know. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It takes bit and pieces that I had previously and, with Meek as guide, weaves them together into a coherent pattern that has helped me understand what it is to know, not just in a theoretical way but also on a very practical level. And this process is exactly what Meek herself proposes. It is her theory of knowing.

Meek begins with a little historical overview of epistemology [2] in western philosophy. She then proposes her own theory of knowing. This is on one level a very bold move. More than 2,000 years after Socrates and Plato, can we really have anything new to say about such a basic human activity as knowing? And yet everything Meek says makes one say, “Oh, yes, that makes perfect sense.”

Meek’s main focus is on what it means to know God. My main interest on this blog is education, which may include knowing God but is not limited to it. What I’d like to do today is to give a brief flyover of Meek’s theory of knowing and then to talk about how we can apply her ideas to education. For a fuller understanding, I do encourage you to read Meek in her own words [3].

Meek’s Epistemology

Narration-style, then, here is my attempt at summarizing Meek’s philosophy of knowing:

We need to think of all knowing as not just learning facts but as something akin to how we know a person. I may say I know a celebrity when I really just know a lot about them, but to truly know is analogous to how I know my friend or my child or my spouse, or even, as in Meek’s extended example, my auto mechanic (Meek knows hers pretty well). In this conception we have to realize that knowing is not an all or nothing affair. There are degrees of knowing which means there is also continued growth in knowing and rarely if ever is there an end-point when we can say “I know all about that” and move on.

The process of coming to know is like doing a connect-the-dots puzzle that has extraneous dots. We have to decide what dots are important and we need to connect them in a way which allows us to begin to see the pattern in them. We start out with a lot of information and we may have some intuitions about it but we don’t really know what is important and what isn’t. Meek talks about clues, subsidiary knowledge, and body sense as things that begin to guide us. We may also have a guide, someone who gives us some direction and helps us know what is and isn’t important or who gives us some idea of what we are looking for.

We begin to truly know when we can see a pattern. We take the many dots, the bits of information we have, and we connect them in some way. We are also then able to look back at all the input we have had and to say which dots are important and which aren’t. There may be dots that didn’t seem to fit and now we can see how they relate. Maybe there are have been gaps and once we see the pattern we can say: “Aha, I don’t see a dot there but now that I have the pattern I know there must be one because . . .” In this way we use the threads of information we started with to create the pattern but we also use the pattern to be able to look back and reevaluate the threads.

As we begin to see patterns we develop something coherent, something that hangs together. All this can happen on a small scale but on a bigger scale what we are forming is what we might call a worldview or a framework.

One big question that other epistemologies raise is how we can know truth. When knowledge is propositional, truth is an either/or. In Meek’s view there can be degrees of truth and no one is likely all right or all wrong in their views. There can be wrong patterns, of course, but even someone with a wrong pattern may still have some aspects correct and some degree of truth in what they believe. We can know that we are right when our pattern accounts for the gaps and for new information. (Of course one wonders if confirmation bias also plays a role here; we likely seek information which confirms our pattern.)

Implications for Education

My own philosophy of education is based largely on that of Charlotte Mason. There is a lot on Mason’s philosophy that I see echoed here in Meek’s thought. Though Mason did not advance a theory of knowing per se, my inclination is that if she had it would have been very like Meek’s. For Mason the goal of education was not to know facts but to build relationships with the material. She called education “the science of relations.” This is about connecting disparate areas of knowledge but also about the relationship the learner builds with the material itself.

Meek’s main concern is knowledge of God so she speaks to very big picture issues but I think it is helpful as well to consider what knowledge of other, more mundane, subjects looks like. When we truly know a person — as Meek does her auto mechanic — we can predict what they would do in a new circumstance. We can see the same sort of knowing in the art expert who is able to look at a newly discovered painting and know (or at least make a very good guess) if it is a real Michelangelo or a forgery. Most of us will never get to that level of knowing Michelangelo, but we will have those moments of recognition. It may be simply that we recognize a painting we have studied in a museum. Or maybe we recognize a bird call in the wild for the first time. Or we can sense where a story is going because we have read so much of that author. These examples fit Meek’s theory of knowing but they also are very “CM.” They are the sorts of knowing that a Charlotte Mason education aims for.

There used to be a kind of saying in the CM world (sorry I don’t know the origin) that in classical education one learns facts first but in Mason’s philosophy ideas are needed first like pegs to hang the facts on. The image given was of a coat rack — you can’t hang the coats without the pegs. Meek’s philosophy seems to say there is a little of each. The pattern is the idea, the relation that is made. You need some input to even form a pattern but once formed the pattern also makes sense of all the dots of information, both those one already has and any new ones that come up. I am not sure what the practical application is here but it could be interesting if there were a way to study how younger children make patterns and incorporate facts. One thing I think we can say is that even the youngest are pattern-building creatures. We can see this even in the first years of life. Babies born into loving environments with the appropriate stimulation form a solid basis for future development and relationships. And, conversely, those who don’t have loving adults in that first year of life establish patterns of relating to others that are very hard to overcome even well into adulthood. This makes sense within Mason’s philosophy. Children are in her words “born persons” [4] and share all the capacities of adults. They form relationships and build knowledge in the same way that we do.

As they grow, we may perhaps have to think more about the bigger patterns as well. I have in the past spoken of the necessity of a framework. Others have called this a worldview. We might also call it a template. Whatever the language, it speaks to the importance of helping children develop a model or a lens through which they can understand the world. For people of faith, of course, this model will very much be about God, who He is, how He acts, and how He relates to man and to the individual specifically. Which brings us right back to Meek’s work — she speaks primarily of knowing God. Though we establish other patterns in life, it is our God-pattern (if you will) that to some degree controls all others. We cannot truly know anything else apart from our knowledge of God. [5]

Because we are worshipping creatures, every child will develop some kind of “God-pattern” even without an acknowledged belief in a deity. While for Mason the role of the teacher is in selecting materials and is relatively hands-off, Meek’s paradigm argues for a slightly more involved role as the parent/teacher serves as a guide as Meek speaks of them. I say this with caution because I think it needs to be done in a very careful manner because we cannot establish patterns for another and it is important that we don’t go overboard here. The child needs to form their own patterns, but at the same time I do think that sometimes they will need help in knowing which “dots” are important or even in knowing what kind of pattern they are looking for. This gets back to what has been one of my main differences with Mason — I don’t think she accounts enough for the fallenness of our natures. She trusts too much to an innate goodness, or at least an ability to chose and do good, in children. I tend to think that we need to give them a little more direction and correction (and I think it is biblical to do so).

The best analogy I can think of for this is in how we do picture study. We began very simply by just looking at pictures. The children were asked to observe and narrate what they have seen but there was little if any direction. Then we tried a curriculum that gave us a little direction. We learned to look at the painting’s composition and to ask questions: Where are the figures in the painting looking? Is there a triangle shape? How are the figures framed? Where does one’s eye go and how does the artists get you to look there? On this way we gathered some tools for looking at pictures and we could take those skills and apply them to others we studied later so that we didn’t need to keep using the curriculum. This is how I imagine the direction we give children working. We give pointers, perhaps often in the form of questions, that allow them to discover the patterns for themselves. The goal of the questions ultimately is not to get at certain answers but to give them the tools they need to find their own patterns.

Wrapping it Up

I very much enjoyed Longing to Know and would call this one a “highly recommended.” I am intrigued as well by the implications for how we know in other areas and particularly for education. Meek has helped me clarify some things in my own thinking and given me new ideas about how education should work to explore as well.

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Notes:

[1] Meek, Esther Lightcap. Longing to Know: The Philosophy of Knowledge for Ordinary People. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2003.

[2] Epistemology is the study of what it means to know and how we know.

[3] Meek seems to have at least two other books on knowing, Loving to Know and A Little Manual for Knowing. I am not sure how the three relate to each other in terms of the development of her ideas beyond that fact that A Little Manual (which is sitting beside me waiting to be read) is indeed much shorter.

[4] This is Mason’s first principle.

[5] Meek didn’t get into this as much as I like but I feel she would say that all true knowledge, all Truth that is, ultimately resides with God. I would like to see more discussion of this specifically and perhaps how it relates to Plato’s idea of ideals.

More on Charlotte Mason’s Theology

Recently, Art Middlekauff at Charlotte Mason Poetry published a piece [1] discussing E.A. Parish’s “Miss Mason’s Message” [2]. His aim in doing so was to talk about how Mason grounded her ideas in the gospels. My focus is slightly different — I want to look at the snippets Parish gives us and to see what they can tell us about Mason’s theology.

When in the past I have written on Charlotte Mason’s theology, I looked at her Home Education series and her Scale How Meditations and as well as some of her influences, but I knew that I was neglecting one large body of work, Mason’s series of poetic works on the gospels known as The Saviour of the World. It is portions of The Saviour of the World that Parish gives us, tying them specifically to Mason’s P.N.E.U. motto — “Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life” — and her children’s motto — “I am. I can. I ought. I will.”

For a little background if you have not read all my earlier posts, my contention is that Mason, while she believed in original sin (and perhaps even total depravity though this is much less certain), also believed in a doctrine known as prevenient grace which says that Christ’s sacrifice has had a kind of preparatory effect which applies to all people (or at least those in “Christian” countries) and which enables everyone to do good at least to the degree of being able to genuinely respond to the gospel message. [3] For Mason the main act that a person is called to is an act of the will, a choosing, that is the beginning of faith. Prevenient grace allows men to make this act of the will and to freely choose. All people, then, are able to be saved. When Mason in her infamous second principle says that “[Children] are not born either good or bad, but with possibilities for good and for evil,” she means this to apply to the whole person, body, soul, mind, and spirit (not as some say just about their educability).

We turn now to those portions of The Saviour of the World which Parish discusses. I cannot say if these few are representative samples but perhaps we can at least say that they are significant examples since Parish finds in them the roots of some of Mason’s key ideas.

We find, first of all, the emphasis on a decision of the will as the first act of faith:

“Only those valiant would who choose

To take the good, the ill refuse,

Nor pleasures seek, nor pains evade,

Are worthy to follow where He leads

. . .

To will is all God asks of thee;

Impulse, strength, scope, He granteth free;

But man must choose, or right, or wrong!” (emphasis original; p. 63)

Because the ability to thus will is available to all, salvation also is available to all:

“So God hath made us, that for every man

Are many chances of being born anew

Into a life still higher than the first: . . .” (p. 64)

Children, for Mason, have a kind of innate innocence which brings with it a closeness to God. [4] Here she tells us that it is the child’s lack of self-promotion or pride which gives him particular access to the Divine Presence:

“In the children’s hearts no strivings

That to them be honour brought.

Therefore finds the King an entrance;

Freely goes He out and in; . . .” (p. 65)

These examples admittedly are few and brief but they do seem to indicate that Mason’s theology had a consistency. While we do not see anything here that points us specifically to prevenient grace, the idea that man is able to will and that this is a necessary precursor to salvation and faith assumes an innate ability, either because man is not that fallen or because there is some act of God which enables him to choose the good.

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Notes:

[1] Art Middlekauff. “The Source of Miss Mason’s Teaching,” Charlotte Mason Poetry (Mar. 15, 2022).

[2] E.A. Parish. “Miss Mason’s Message,” In Memoriam: A Tribute to Charlotte Mason. Bakersfield, CA: Afterthoughts Books, 2017 (originally published by the Parents National Education Union, 1928).

[3] This is to be distinguished from common grace, a doctrine accepted by most reformed people. Common grace is available to all but has no saving power.

[4] See “‘The Greatness of the Child as a Person‘” from my series “Is CM Biblical?”