Monthly Archives: July 2012

Offend Not

Charlotte Mason pointed out to us that Christ gave us a code of education. It is summed up in three commandments, and all three have a negative character, as if the chief thing required of grown-up people is that they should do no sort of injury to the children:

Take heed that ye OFFEND not–DESPISE not– HINDER not–one of these little ones.

God has granted within the child a desire to please, a desire to learn, a desire to be praised, a desire to imitate, a longing for love and affection, therefore, if we are careful to not offend, despise, or hinder him, his achievement of a good character should be readily grasped.

Offending We offend our children when we do to them what we shouldn’t and when we don’t do what we should. An offense is literally a stumbling a block, something that causes someone to fall. When babies are beginning to walk, we clear the floor so his unsteady little steps will not be hindered by any object. Why do we not continue to “clear the floor” so when he takes his first steps into the world, his unsteady little steps won’t be hindered by his own defects of character?

Charlotte Mason asserts that children are born law-abiding. Scold a baby and watch the infant soul rise visibly before your eyes. This display of feeling, of conscience, before any human teaching can have reached him, points to a child’s readiness to live according to the law. He has a sense of may and must not, of right and wrong. But through parents winking and ignoring misbehavior, a child’s senses of right and wrong become deadened. And, this being so, we see tweens and teens who have unlearned

what must means, who are not moved by ought, whose hearts feel no stir at the solemn name of Duty, who know no higher rule of life than ‘I want,’ and ‘I don’t want,’ ‘I like,’ and ‘I don’t like.’

What pain that child will cause his employer or employees, his wife or her husband, and their children! What pain that child will experience. Life is a hard task-master. Wouldn’t it have been kinder for the parents to have taught him limits and boundaries sooner?

How does this happen? Here is how — the little hand sneaks into the cookie jar. “No,” the mother says. The little eyes seek hers, mischievous, furtive, and the mother laughs. She can’t help it. She is so cute. The trespass is allowed.

The great divide has begun. When she finds that her little angel has been dealing drugs or stealing to get drugs, she’ll wonder, “How did this happen?” Or when he sneaks out at night or flouts her rules, she’ll wonder where she went wrong. She’d have to look a long way back. The stumbling block was tossed into his path when she overlooked his small sins.

The child learns that he does not have to overcome the Great and Unchanging Law. He only has to overcome his mother. The Law has been intercepted by her interference.

Children must perceive that their parents are law-compelled. They must use the weighty force of the law behind their authority to back their choices. Both “yes” and “no” should not be said according to personal moods, but have the weight of absolute RIGHT and WRONG behind them.

Parents begin with no sense of duty. They think themselves free to allow and disallow, to say and unsay, at pleasure, as if the child were theirs to do whatever they like with. The child is wise enough to perceive whether a parent’s decision is backed by must and must not. He recognizes that his mother or father are operating from their own weak wills and not by a greater power. A spoiled child doesn’t know that she must not break her sister’s toys, gorge herself with cake, or spoil the pleasure of other people because it is WRONG.

Let the child perceive that his parents are law-compelled as well as he, that they simply cannot allow him to do forbidden things, and he submits with sweet meekness. Often, fits and tantrums are caused by this very desire to find the boundary. How far are you willing to let him go? Can he do this? What about this? What about that? If parents would set the boundary quickly and firmly, the child would feel safe and the tantrum would subside.

To give reasons to a child is out of place and a sacrifice of parental dignity. If one feels compelled, then do it quickly and be done with it. Don’t prattle on incessantly about the reasons behind your decision. Children are quick to discern which adults are backed by the power of a greater authority. Parents will find their children doing their duties for others without argument and their parents wonder at it, never recognizing that the fault lies within their own shoes.

Parents may also offend their children by disregarding the laws of health — by giving her unwholesome food, by giving her too much food, letting him sleep in unventilated rooms, and allowing his time to be spent in activities that do not give him exercise for his mind or body.

Parents may also offend the intellectual life of their children by providing or putting him in a place where the day is dreary, the lessons dawdling, in which the joy of learning is killed. By the tweens and teens age, their wits are gone, their vocabulary severely limited, their love of learning disappeared.

Parents may also offend the moral life of their children, especially with unequal affections. Favoritism is out of vogue, now, thankfully, but in Charlotte Mason’s lifetime, it often played foul with a child’s heart. One person’s testimony:

My childhood was made miserable … by my mother’s doting fondness for my little brother; there was not a day when she did not make me wretched by coming into the nursery to fondle and play with him, and all the time she had not a word nor a look nor a smile for me, any more than if I had not been in the room. I have never got over it; she is very kind to me now, but I never feel quite natural with her.

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A Prince(ss) Raised by Peasants

 

 

A child in the midst — Charlotte Mason reiterates the child’s estate by alluding to Jesus’ words to his disciples.

 

“And He took a child and set Him in the midst of them: and when He had taken him in His arms, He said unto them, ‘Whosoever shall receive one of such children in My name, receiveth Me: and whosoever shall receive Me, receiveth not Me, but Him that sent Me.’”—Mark 9:36, 37.

 

What is a child in our culture today? C.M. repeated a few ideas from her own culture and time– a tablet to be written upon, a twig to be bent, wax to be molded. We have our own ideas of children’s purposes– products of a system, useful tools for society, good citizens, good employees, consumers, etc.

 

But it takes a great poet to put into words the child’s estate: Wordsworth‘s estimate is …

 

Stained glass windows in the Mausoleum of the ...

 

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

 

The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,

 

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

 

And cometh from afar;

 

Not in entire forgetfulness,

 

And not in utter nakedness,

 

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

 

From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

 

 

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie

 

Thy soul’s immensity;

 

Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep

 

Thy heritage; thou eye among the blind,

 

That, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep,

 

Haunted for ever by the eternal deep,

 

Haunted for ever by the eternal mind–

 

Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!

 

On whom those truths do rest,

 

Which we are toiling all our lives to find

 

Thou, over whom thy immortality

 

Broods like the day, a master o’er a slave,

 

A presence which is not to be put by;

 

Thou little child, yet glorious in the might

 

Of heaven-born freedom, on thy being’s height

 

Trailing clouds of glory, best philosopher, an eye among the blind … see how Wordsworth changes the present view of children as a product into someone to learn from? And Christ in his simplicity and efficiency best sums up the child’s estate by reminding us that childhood is the gate through which we must enter the kingdom of heaven. “Of such is the kingdom of heaven.” “Except ye become as little children ye shall in no case enter the kingdom of heaven.” “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” “And He called a little child, and set him in the midst.”

 

By meditating on the words and actions of Christ relating to children, the child’s estate would elevate to its proper place in our minds and hearts– not a being ignored or annoying, but a prince or princess entrusted to the foster care of peasants.

 

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System vs. Method

Charlotte Mason

Charlotte Mason (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If a human being were a machine, education could do no more for him than to set him in action in prescribed ways, and the work of the educator would be simply to adopt a good working system or set of systems.

But the educator has to deal with a self-acting, self-developing being, and his business is to guide, and assist in, the production of the latent good in that being, the dissipation of the latent evil, the preparation of the child to take his place in the world at his best, with every capacity for good that is in him developed into a power.

Here, Charlotte Mason brings to the forefront again that our view of our children is what matters. If we see them as only requiring the right system to bring about necessary ends, we undervalue them and view them as beings that are mass-produced.

Schools often undergo expensive adoptions of new curriculum in the hopes that by following it will bring about mass results.

A teacher’s first requirement is a deep love for the kids she will teach. The second requirement is a strong sense of duty to them. The third requirement is the freedom to adopt whatever methods she deems fit for the variety and levels of souls before her. If new curriculum is used, let her use it according to her own wisdom and knowledge of the spirits she guides and the curriculum she is familiar with and loves.

We are dealing with a human soul. If we wish to reach it, we must love and use all our wisdom, prayer, and tools to work with the spirit-being before us.

The mother or father has, of course, a great advantage in the teaching of his or her child because of the many ways in which they interact that can improve the child’s education. All parents should use this advantage.

But any teacher should distrust curriculum that promises mass-produced results and remember she deals with human beings — people who are best taught through story and ideas.

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