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The Family is the Unit of the World

A generation ago, a great teacher amongst us never wearied of reiterating that in the Divine plan “the family is the unit of the nation“: not the individual, but the family. There is a great deal of teaching in the phrase, but this lies on the surface; the whole is greater than the part, the whole contains the part, owns the part, orders the part;

I agree with Charlotte Mason but would change her words to fit our times. The family is not only the unit of the nation, it is the unit of the world.

The Family is the Unit of the World

Pages could be written about this statement. First, one must look at history. Charlotte Mason wrote before communism and Naziism had bloomed and produced its drastic effects. Both attempts at social change (communism and Naziism) depended upon removal of children from homes and placed in schools where they could be educated into the new ideas. The family was the enemy of the state, an unnecessary mediator, an old-fashioned idea impeding the way to utopia or power.

Today, when I take my teenage daughter to the doctor, the doctor can attempt to interact with her without my interference. My daughter could get birth control, vaccinations, and an abortion without my consent. When I receive a welcome letter from a principal at a school, it says things like … “thank you for sharing your children with us. We promise to take good care of them.” At another high school, the motto is “We Are One, We Are a Family.” Many school officials envision their institution as the social center for a community.Teachers spend their time challenging the many accepted tenets of children’s families, encouraging students to “think for themselves”, “be an individual”, and “free your minds.” Schools have usurped parental roles in all basics. Parents are separated from children. Siblings are divided from siblings. This is the path we deem “normal”.

At a class I was teaching, one elementary student admonished another:

I wish your (little) sisters would quit coming to talk to you while we’re standing in line. They distract the other kids and then we get into trouble. Our line gets messed up.

I defended the poor student. I said,

How wonderful that her little sisters want to be near her! She must come from a close family that encourages sibling harmony. Imitation is the best form of flattery and here her little sisters come, wanting to stand next to the line where her big sister is. They want to show everyone that they belong to one of the cool kids, one of the big kids. This is a good thing. This is something to encourage, to foster, to repeat!

I couldn’t help adding,

That’s one of the main reasons I homeschool — so my daughters don’t have to stand in line all the time and shoo their little sisters away into their own grade!

One of the other teacher’s assistants in the room straightened immediately and retorted,

Standing in line is a part of life! How will they know how to get their licenses or jobs?

I couldn’t help firing back (the sarcasm was a little heavy):

Really? You really think that children wouldn’t know how to stand in line unless they learn it here? When they get their licenses, they won’t know how to grab that little number and sit until they’re called? At least there, they can read a good book while they wait!

I thought to myself,

I’m sure when my daughters are grown, they will mill around in the grocery store, completely at a loss as to how to pay for their food because they are so deficient in the school experience of standing in lines. What would we do without you? How do my children survive?

I almost started to wring my hands in pretended worry, but I realized that would be stepping too far. I dislike myself when I sneer. I changed the subject and brought it back to the shunned little sisters.

Anyway, I think it is lovely that O____’s sisters want to be near her. I think you should welcome them and be kind to them — even if it means standing slightly out of line.

But do you see my point? In Germany, it is still illegal to homeschool. Germany educates children according to state ideals and goals. In America, we’re less overt, but we’re doing the same thing — using schools to inculcate nationalistic ideals. The family is split apart. They isolate the individual under the guise of its glorification. And then, they conquer the individual.

The family is the unit of a nation. As parents, it is our responsibility to 1) feed our children 2) clothe them 3) provide protection 4) model a good character and deliver a moral upbringing 5)  deliver an education (we have many ways to do this, but it is still our responsibility to make sure it is the best we can afford).

If we give these responsibilities over to our nation, it will form the nation’s goals and ideals in our children. The government will feed our children food that benefits it (government subsidized food and an addiction to it). The government will encourage our children to dress according to its values — consumerism. It will protect itself — teaching children to vote in a direction that will make them reliant upon the government and depend upon it for all their needs. The education will make the children fit for government ends.

The river can only rise as high as its source. If the source is the government, then its ideals are the highest our children will attain when educated in a government institution. If our children must be part of it, then parents must take precautions to counteract the many insidious ways the institution tries to separate families and form automatons. We should give them the best of the greatest minds (through the reading of great books) and a good deal of logic so they aren’t subject to wolves in sheep’s clothing. From grade levels to sex ed to special ed to bells and standing in line, a government institution will create food for itself. A government has its uses. Just don’t let your kids become one of them.

This video depicts so vividly what happens in schools. Notice the boy ridiculed for reading poetry. In school, he’s not allowed to read during class, because the teacher believes his material is more important. As long as teachers replace reading with lectures and worksheets, they bolster the conspiracy theory that the institution intends to keep children stupid and compliant. While I don’t agree with children burning their desks and throwing their teachers into the inferno, the violence reflects a truth we already see — that latent, seething revolution waiting to ignite. Shootings, fights, violence, bullying, suicides, drug use — if these symptoms occur among a group of adults, we’d blame poverty and oppression. But since it happens to children, we blame parents, TV, video games, sugar… anything but the institution where they spend their days. Truth is, the worst of public school life closely resembles prison life, from the violence to the sex going on in the bathrooms to the deep hatred of the establishment.

The Wall

There is a second part to Charlotte Mason’s section that I have waited to include because it seems to contradict what I just wrote.

and this being so, the children are the property of the nation, to be brought up for the nation as is best for the nation, and not according to the whim of individual parents… we should remember that the children are a national trust whose bringing up is the concern of all.

Charlotte Mason wrote when nationalism was reaching a fever pitch. She, too, was a product of her time and place. She had not yet seen World War I or II or a communist state and their methods of dividing families to inseminate state ideas. In other words, I believe she was ignorant or blind to nationalism’s dark side.

What I believe we can take from her words, though, is our children are not for our own caprices. Eventually, they will become husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, employees and employers. We should raise our children to be …

I find myself searching for phrases like “gifts to the world”, “blessings to others”, “assets”, and I must throw them all away. If children are persons, then we must treat them so from the beginning. We cannot raise them to be gifts. They are persons. They carry the divine light.They are made in the image of God, a little lower than the angels. We must not objectify them. We should avoid terms describing how to use them.

We must remember children belong to God — that Supreme Being who is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. We should tread softly when speaking of children at all. They are not us. They are not ours. They deserve respect, ideas, and a thinking love.

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The Versatile Blogger Award

This nomination comes from Heather from The Homestead At Spring Creek. Heather writes about the joys and trials of living a life of faith, homeschooling, homesteading, homemaking, and being a wife and a mother. I love to read about her journey in home education and her courage in doing so many self-sufficient things (from haircuts to seed starts). Her support was a confirmation to keep writing. Thank you so much, Heather, for encouraging me in my endeavor to interact with Charlotte Mason‘s wonderful philosophy!

The rules for accepting the nomination are:

1. Nominate 15 fellow bloggers who are relatively new to blogging ( or whose blogs you enjoy most ).

2. Let them know that you have nominated them.

3. Share 7 random facts about yourself.

4. Thank the blogger(s) who nominated you.

5. Add the Versatile Blogger Award picture to your blog post.

7 random facts about myself:

1. My husband, Paul, and I are certified teachers who home educate. As we teach, we realize that it is very difficult for any  teacher to provide individualized education with immediate feedback and a requirement of excellence as a habit, which is part of the reason we brought them home. Also, we like our kids to sleep in, eat applesauce pancakes, identify birds, play the guitar and sing, and paint rather than sit in rows and stand in lines.

2. I’m a tomboy who has four daughters. On the school playground, I went straight to kickball and soccer. I thought I was meant for sons. God has a sense of humor. I had to learn how to do hair! I had to play Barbies! I had to pretend to be fairies! Uggh! Just kidding:) My beautiful daughters are sooooo much fun. Aaaaand, though my daughters are very feminine, they’re not so bad on the court/track/field either. They all love to play hard, run barefoot, get dirty, look at bugs, catch snakes, and keep up with my husband.

3. I’ve traveled extensively. My parents were way cool and took us backpacking throughout Europe for a month when I was a junior. I lived in Costa Rica for a semester. I backpacked Europe again with my sister, just before marrying Paul. Paul and I visited Chile, along with the rest of my family, to see where my grandparents were missionaries and where my dad grew up. And I just visited Italy and Spain a couple of years ago, again with my sister.

4. I’m a Scandinavian protestant. My best friend is an Irish Catholic. She says I make her a better Catholic. She makes me a better person.

5. I’ve never had a cavity.

6. I’m an English major who loves math. This strange affinity developed into a tutoring niche. I help high school and college students with their math troubles.

7. I live in a small town where everyone waves at each other. I’m totally lost in thought all the time and so I don’t see people waving wildly at me. My daughters all make fun of me for being rude. I hope people understand. I’m trying to become more aware — but … yeah. About that.

And now for my nominations:

1. Elida’s Supercool Awesome Train. Elida calls herself a “free” (single) mom who is set on living her dreams now, not later. She writes about the joys and difficulties of living life on her terms.

2. Blip in the Cosmos. Bethany is a young, hip barista who writes about life. All grown up now, meet a testimony for homeschooling. She’s neither bitter or jaded. Instead, she’s confident, smart … and she writes well.

3. A Man Looks at 40. A prolific writer, Michael Green is someone who just goes for it. He’s played in rock bands, acted, and authored two books. He’s taken risks, struggled with life, and writes about it. I like reading his work because he’s honest.

4. When It Rains. Will and Matt are millenial filmmakers investigating other millenials’ faith (or lack of it). They’re raising money to travel across the states interviewing their own generation. Way cool!

5. Mere Inkling. Rob Stroud writes about C.S. Lewis‘ writings. I’m a fellow fan, so I enjoy this blogger for his willingness to engage with great minds.

6. They Call Me Keeks. An avid reader, Keeks writes reviews about all kinds of books. She is smart, thoughtful, and to the point. I like her writing because she edits. Also, she is like-minded in faith issues. Authentic. Not gushy. Drops the cliches.

7. Running Over Mountains and Around the World. Moire Sullivan is an author and top runner who runs in the most interesting places. She just ran the Camino d’ Santiago, a pilgrimage I’ve wanted to make (long before The Way). She keeps her blog focused on the places she runs but she always manages to humanize it by adding interesting historical tidbits or snippets of conversations. She is a published author and her words always speak to me.

8. James Birchenough. James makes me smile because he’s such an earnest, young man. He’s asking all the questions I used to ask. He helps me to remember how we all must travel our own road and seek out our own salvation.

9. A Modern Christian Woman. Stephanie’s blog makes me hungry. She is experimenting with cooking from scratch and includes delicious recipes and helpful tips. Her blog is really beautiful, full of gorgeous photos of her food.

10. Craft Crazy Gran. She lives on a farm in South Africa. Need I say more? Being a traveler, I love to hear about her home.

11. JoKars Wild. Joe and Kara are wonderful parents, fellow homeschoolers, and friends. They own a bookstore in my hometown. I enjoy Kara’s writing because we have similar views on how to raise kids and we struggle with similar issues — like how to work, homeschool, be a good wife and mother, and still seek our own personal dreams in the process.

12. Putting On My Big Girl Panties. Krista Colvin is so talented. She’s involved in everything it seems. She has an organizing website and does television shows for AM Northwest giving tips on organizing your life. She’s also fighting breast cancer. She shares these trials with wit and humor on this blog.

13. Modern Prairie Girl. Lara Blair is a photographer and puts out a beautiful photo blog. She’s very creative and insightful. Her pictures inspire me.

14. Underground Biz. This woman writes about New York. I’m a schizophrenic re: country girl/city girl. I live in the country. I read Paige Graham’s blog on The Big Apple to get a touch of the city. Crazy, I know. It’s been a few years since I’ve been, but I hope to return soon (maybe for a book deal?)

15. Oregon Pilgrim. Sorry, but I couldn’t help plugging my other blog here. Oregon Pilgrim is probably the blog I read the most (because I’m constantly editing it). I write about the quest for the timeful life. I’m struggling to walk the right path. I think we all are. Here’s where I share about it. Paul and the girls are the heroes. I’m the narrator. We’re trying to stay “alive” in the deepest sense while keeping the wolf from the door.  Here, I record our experiments in cultural disobedience, taking risks, recording failures and triumphs, and staying true to who we are.

That’s it, folks! Thanks for reading. Thanks for sharing.

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Masterly Inactivity

 

The parents‘ chief care is, that that which they supply shall be wholesome and nourishing, whether in the way of picture-books, lessons, playmates, bread and milk, or mother’s love. This is education as most parents understand it, with more of meat, more of love, more of culture, according to their kind and degree. They let the children alone, allowing human nature to develop on its own lines, modified by facts of environment and descent.

Nothing could be better for the child than this ‘masterly inactivity,’ so far as it goes. It is well he should be let grow and helped to grow according to his nature; and so long as the parents do not step in to spoil him, much good and no very evident harm comes of letting him alone. But this philosophy of ‘let him be,’ while it covers a part, does not cover the serious part of the parents calling; does not touch the strenuous part of the parents’ calling; does not touch the strenuous incessant efforts upon  lines of law which go to the producing of a human being at his best.

 

Let them be. For many parents, we think we’re doing a good thing by scheduling multiple activities and opportunities for them. The picture of the mom in the minivan shuttling children from one activity to the next is the iconic picture of today’s positive parent. We can overdo this and I am chief of sinners in this area. I’ve been trying to at least enforce a car-free sabbath once a week in an effort to assuage the overscheduling of my girls’ time.

 

Charlotte Mason wrote for another time when letting children “be” meant playing outside, alone or with siblings and friends, and they were free to interact with field and meadow or the town and townspeople or the library. They had a cohesive culture where most families followed the same rhythm of chores, holidays, religious observances, etc.

 

What would she say to our culture today? We no longer have a cohesive culture. Some of us watch these shows, others read that news, some work nights, weekends, others live in apartments, cities, or isolated in the country. Our individualistic society has fragmented and, for good or for ill, we must work with it.

 

As Paul and I walked together, we stopped at an irrigation pipe that pooled in a ditch. Paul said, “This is the type of place where I’d spend hours as a kid, digging for insects, splashing in the water, looking for snakes.” He left the house in the morning and returned at dark. This practice bred in him a love for the outdoors and an aversion to television and indoor activities. Later, when he moved to Central Oregon, his bike connected him to his job as a paper boy and to all his friends. Connection meant miles of riding in the open air.

 

Not so today. We fear to let our children roam. We fear to leave them unsupervised. And rightly so. We either know someone who has experienced abuse from an unsupervised moment or we are that person.

 

But how can we breed that ‘masterly inactivity’ so important for a child’s well-being? With electronic devices, children are rarely alone and always alone. Even sitting side-by-side, you might find them texting each other rather than talking. We still cannot understand the effects this rapid technological change has upon our children’s brains and health. Really, we must operate from our reason and our gut. And ask the Holy Spirit to multiply our efforts. Here’s how Paul and I have tried to follow C.M. principles in our distracting world.

 

We follow the overarching concept that whatever we supply be wholesome and nourishing.

 

1) In our home, we eat healthy. I realize that I cannot control many of the temptations in the world in regards to food, but I can influence what goes on in our homes. We eat three meals a day. Nothing Paul and I serve is bad for them. If we serve dessert, which is rare, it must me home-made and have some redeeming value such as berries or apples. For birthdays and special occasions, we break this rule and serve gooey chocolate cake or cheese cake, but, again, no high fructose corn syrup or msg enters our home. I try to buy organic when I can. Fruit, dried fruit, and nuts are the only snacks allowed. If they are truly hungry, they’ll eat these things.

 

When they are at a party or anywhere else, we allow them to make their own choices. We don’t try to micromanage what happens outside the home. If our child wants a gross marshmallow cookie filled with red dye and high fructose sugar, we let them. I call this “innoculation.” If we are too controlling, the child will seek these things more. If we let them have some choice, they are much more likely to “buy in” to our values. It is not uncommon to find our kids circled around the vegetable tray instead of the cookie tray because their tastes grow accustomed to what we serve on a daily basis and they have the freedom to choose.

 

We never cook separate meals for the kids to eat. They eat with the adults and enjoy the same fare. I give them a very small portion of everything served and include a sure-fire “like” in every meal like biscuits or cornbread. They are not allowed to have seconds until everything on their plates is finished. Usually, the cornbread dripping with honey or jam is reward enough to force down the salad.

 

Every one of our children would have been classified as a “picky” eater. None of them (Dagne is coming around) are considered so now. Moreover, they dislike unhealthy food and prefer vegetables and fruit over sweets and snacks.

 

2) Today, publishing companies mass-produce a great deal of badly-written material. We do not follow the idea that “at least they are reading!” I pitch all badly-written books. Twaddle is like high fructose corn syrup for the brain. I search out the best books in the library and stack our car with them. I don’t tell the kids they have to read, but … sure enough, the box is emptied and they soon are flipping through the pages. Making sure that everything in that box is wholesome and good gives me the freedom to “let them be.” If one of the girls grabs something from the shelves once in awhile, and it looks like crap, sometimes I’ll allow it just to “inoculate.” It might be a stupid cartoon movie or a ghost-written book with the same worn out plot. But again, if I’m too controlling, it gives twaddle a forbidden power that becomes desirable. Let them read a stupid book and judge how stupid it is. It can be a teaching moment.

 

3) We don’t have TV. Since we’ve never had TV, the kids don’t know the difference. It’s harder for parents to take away TV once kids are dependent on it. If we want to see a series, we rent it through netflix and watch it that way. This slow, unimpulsive choosing of what to view gives us time to pick the very best of things. We try to watch the best of cinema, what is highly recommended. Sometimes, we’ll choose some “twaddle” for inoculation. But it is not our common diet. We also watch movies at most one or two times a week, sometimes not at all.

 

The joy of this is television or movies are a real treat. When they go to Grandpa‘s or Grandma’s, they are excited to be able to watch television. In school, the kids are so satiated with technology that a teacher cannot even show an educational video and have them pay attention. Not so, with our kids. They are absorbed. They remember everything from it. By way of it being unusual, they get all the benefits of TV and little of its poor effects.

 

Our kids have cell phones. Texting is another inoculation. We encourage them to limit their time on it — to avoid all addictions. There’s been a few times Paul has had to ban a phone from the dinner table or demand one of the girls to shut it off. Generally, however, the phone is stuffed deep in a sports bag and can’t be found unless they search for it to call us. We remind them that this is its primary use — to communicate with us during their activities. We gently tell them that their talents and bodies and minds should be spent on useful and beneficial activities — practicing music, drawing, birding, walking, praying, talking, … creating.

 

4) Which leads us to my next point. Setting limits to what is popular in our culture is a terrible idea unless we have something better to call them to. Parents who tightly control access to technology and demand chores to be done will have angry, resentful children unless there is some positive alternative. We arranged our living room to support art and drawing and the spotting scope usually sits in a prominent position to view any birds in the area. We go on walks with our children. We go on bike rides with our children. We play bird trivia and ask each other about a bird in the distance. I have them draw while I read aloud to them. I encourage them to bring drawing materials into the car. I hang their pieces up and compliment them on their work. Our children need to see us living a superior lifestyle to what is offered by their culture. If they do not see any benefit to forgoing what the culture has to offer, why should they follow it? Their bodies should be healthier, their stomachs should feel good, their minds should be busy, they should have healthy loves and desires, boredom should be banished from the home.

 

5) When our homes are set up, chock full of healthy and nourishing food for the body and mind, then parents can engage in “masterly inactivity.” We can “let them be.” Until we’ve created a home atmosphere that leads to healthy choices, our children are likely to dissipate into our culture’s defaults: mundane conversations through texts, you tube videos, television commercials, slimy romance novels, fashion magazines, and other activities that encourage consuming rather than creating.

 

We must have a balance between creation and consuming. Our culture trains us from children to consume and deters us from creating. The inoculations of the culture will come naturally. Our homes must be where we offer something, not just different, but far better. This is our witness, our evangelism. If it isn’t more beautiful, enriching, and lovely, than why would our children choose a different path than what our culture feeds them?

We must be culturally disobedient to our culture and help our children to be creators rather than consumers. We need to make it easy by shutting out many of the distractions, feeding our children only the very best (to their bodies and minds), and giving them multiple inspirations and opportunities to create.

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An Ounce of Prevention …

For shoe-making or house-building, for the management of a ship or of a locomotive engine, a long apprenticeship is needful. Is it, then, that the unfolding of a human being in body and mind is so comparatively simple a process that any one may superintend and regulate it with no preparation whatever? If not — if the process is, with one exception, more complex than any in Nature, and the task of ministering to it one of surpassing difficulty– is it not madness to make no provision for such a  task? Better sacrifice accomplishments than omit this all-essential instruction …

We have so many conflicting “experts” clamoring for our patronage. Psychologists, psychiatrists, and family counselors grasp for their piece of pie by selling their books and their conferences promising seven ways to bring harmony to your family, the five Ps in Parenting, and 30 days to a peaceful home. The problem is most parents don’t pay attention to these things until it’s too late. Their children have long since bothered them to the point of distraction before parents seek help.

Why do we not make provisions for these things? Why do we wait until the problem is glaring? If parents would approach their duties as an apprentice, as someone who must master the task at hand, they would not need the services of self-help books and counseling. They would avert the crisis.

It is a gross mistake to assume that well-behaved children are well-behaved because they have mild personalities. People think, “My child is a “strong-willed” child.  I wasn’t blessed with a mild-mannered child. My situation is different.” Though this provides the comforting illusion of alleviating responsibility, it does nothing to improve my situation. The Charlotte Mason method provides a path other than enduring my naughty child for the rest of his days at home. This we’ll discuss later. Here, she implores parents to take their child’s education seriously from the beginning. Discipline should begin as soon as the child understands “no,” and that is very, very soon. Obedience should be a habit. Disobedience should never be tolerated.

If possible, say yes. If you must say no, mean it.

By the time a child is five, regardless of his personality, the one achievement available to every child is almost his …

a good character.

One other thing, many parents shy away from discipline because it is the only interaction they have with their children. They ignore their children until a problem arises. Little do they know that they are creating the problem by their neglect. My grandfather once said:

You can NEVER spoil a child by giving him too much affection, only by withholding discipline.

If you cover your child in affection and attention when it is possible, you are free to discipline when the need arises without guilt. The child is not reacting to an unmet need but is testing the boundaries. Affection during neutral times reassures your child that your discipline is motivated by love and not caprice or annoyance.

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A Thinking Love

The children are, in truth, to be regarded less as personal property than as public trusts put into the hands of parents that they may make the very most of them for the good of society.

This quote rankles me. In a world where so many entities clamor for a piece of our child’s soul — factories, companies, clubs, sports, schools, churches, advertisers — I do not wish to regard our children as belonging to anyone but themselves. Paul and I hide them from all of these hooks and grabs and picks that want to use our daughters for their own ends.

But Charlotte does not say that children are a public trust. They are not. She says parents should regard them as such. We are often shoddy with our own work and perfectionist when working for someone else. I’ll be punctual for a work meeting and slack on attending church on time. I’ll keep my work desk clean and allow my home to become messy. We are more professional when working for someone else, bottom-line. If we consider our parenting as a professional endeavor and the raising of our children as a product that will be evaluated, we may take our jobs seriously and do for our children better than if we considered them our own. Sad, but true.

I remember when I had Elsa, I actually wrote out a job description (in the form of a mission statement), and decided to “clock-in” hours. Too often, we stay-at-home mothers are tempted to do less by our children because so much of our society does the same thing. We have the sole direction of the children’s early, most impressible years, yet parents are encouraged to give these years over to strangers for the making of our children. Children inhale their environment and it becomes a part of them. The first five years of a child’s life may be the most important learning curve in their lives. Those years lay the foundation for all else.

Regarding our children as a gift to be given to the world may help our minds to battle against societal pressure to undervalue them. It will place children in their rightful place. They deserve a thinking love. We owe our children a careful training, a thoughtful upbringing, a loving, firm path.

Today’s model for child upbringing is a terrible cycle: ignore them until they demand attention in a negative way, be dismayed that they would act in such a way, feel guilty for ignoring them and placate their negativity with some sort of quasi-reward, and as soon as they are happy, ignore them once again.

The mother is qualified and qualified by the Creator Himself, to become the principal agent in the development of her child; … and what is demanded of her is — a thinking love. … God has given to thy child all the faculties of our nature, but the grand point remains undecided — how shall this heart, this head, these hands, be employed? to whose service shall they be dedicated? A question the answer to which involves a futurity of happiness or misery to a life so dear to thee. Maternal love is the first agent in education. Pestalozzi

We owe our children and the world a thinking love. They need our attention, our focus, and all of our experience to guide them. We do not realize that every happy hour, every peaceful meal, every restful nap, is actually the very education our world needs so badly. We underestimate the gifts we bestow in a well-managed, loving home. We undervalue the brain growth that occurs from hugs, kisses, interaction at meals, good food, cleanliness, order, daily and weekly routines. We hinder our children from obtaining an education when we ignore them and leave them to themselves too much. They require a thinking love.

A Continual Helper

We should allow no separation to grow up between the intellectual and ‘spiritual’ life of children; but should 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.

Yesterday, Paul mowed the lawn. Elsa watched him with interest.

“Dad is kind of chyuckinish about mowing the lawn,” she noted. (Translation: chyuckinish is Greta-ese for “messed up” or “weird”.)

“Why do you say that?” I asked. He wheeled around the yard with Dagne on his lap.

“You should see the pattern! He does a section over there. He misses pieces along the way. Then, he’s over here doing a section.”

“You mean there’s no logical pattern? Wow, that is so unlike Dad.” I said, sarcastically.

Paul’s playful, random way of doing things attracted me. He was refreshing, light and spontaneous. But it was also a source of major communication breakdowns between us. I always list everything in step-by-step order. He might listen to step 2 and 8.

Maybe.

Frustrated, I felt like I was wasting my breath.

Then came Greta. I remember watching her run around the church with one arm swinging in a wide wind-mill. Curious, I wondered why she swung just one arm and not the other. I asked her.

“Cause it makes me go faster,” she retorted.

Her look said, Duh, Mom, don’t you know anything?

Dealing with Greta has helped me to understand Paul. Somehow a mother’s heart is more understanding than a wife’s. We expect more. I sought to understand Greta and, through her, Paul was redeemed. I gained a deep love and admiration for both their random, creative ways of thinking.

Homeschooling Greta has had many miscommunications like this. I explain step-by-step. Her mind does not see steps. She bursts into life and assesses it with an uncanny gut-feeling about things. Her choices and thinking spring from an intuition and joy in life that is completely foreign to me. My mind sorts knowledge into patterns. Paul’s and Greta’s minds go like Paul’s lawnmowing job — willy-nilly. If I mowed the lawn, I probably wouldn’t miss a spot …

but I think I’d have less fun.

When I taught Greta math, we both shed tears of frustration. With Elsa, I explained once. Elsa, who started sorting as soon as those little fingers could pick up an object, grasped what I said with alacrity and never forgot it. It was filed in the correct spot and she could retrieve it anytime she wished. Then … Greta.

I prayed for wisdom. I prayed for Greta. I prayed for myself. I prayed with Greta. Turning to the Father who made us seemed only natural. We were at our wits end and needed help. So we asked for it.

I discussed this with Paul on a walk yesterday.

“I’ve figured out how to teach math to Greta. I skip the explaining. It just weighs her down. Instead, I explain the steps as she does the problem. Then she’s dealing with a step at a time. She doesn’t get bogged down.”

We watched an American Goldfinch balance on the twig of a bush.

I added,

“Teaching is really a spiritual exercise. Love brings the wisdom. It is through love that we find the answers.”

I’m so thankful for the Divine Spirit that has access to our spirits. I am grateful to be able to teach while integrating the spiritual and intellectual life. We are not a bundle of compartments. We are not machines or products. We are spiritual beings.

The Way of the Will and The Way of Reason

14. There are also two secrets of moral and intellectual self-management which should be offered to children; these we may call the Way of the Will and the Way of the Reason.

15. The Way of the Will. — Children should be taught –

(a) To distinguish between ‘I want’ and ‘I will.’

(b) That the way to will effectively is to turn our thoughts from that which we desire but do not will.

(c) That the best way to turn our thoughts is to think of or do some quite different thing, entertaining or interesting.

(d) That, after a little rest in this way, the will returns to its work with new vigor.

(This adjunct of the will is familiar to us as diversion, whose office it is to ease us for a time from will effort, that we may ‘will’ again with added power. The use of suggestion — even self-suggestion — as an aid to the will, is to be deprecated, as tending to stultify and stereotype character. It would seem that spontaneity is a condition of development, and that human nature needs the discipline of failure as well as of success.)

16. The Way of the Reason. — We should teach children, too, not to ‘lean’ (too confidently) ‘unto their own understanding,’ because the function of reason is, to give logical demonstration (a) of mathematical truth; and (b) of an initial idea, accepted by the will. In the former case reason is, perhaps an infallible guide, but in the second it is not always a safe one; for whether that initial idea be right or wrong, reason will confirm it by irrefragable proofs.

17. Therefore children should be taught, as they become mature enough to understand such teaching, that the chief responsibility which rests on them as persons is the acceptance or rejection of initial ideas. To help them in this choice we should give them principles of conduct and a wide range of the knowledge fitted for them.

These three principles (15, 16, and 17) should save children from some of the loose thinking and heedless action which cause most of us to live at a lower level than we need.

I love how C.M. respects the child by reminding parents to offer them tools. Parents sometimes overcome children’s wills with our own stronger wills. We should not have battles of willpower. This has only short-term advantages. A parent solves the issue at the moment but tramples the child’s spirit. He is left seething or sorrowful. We diminish the child’s ability to choose the right course if we cause an angry, rebellious spirit or a meek, submissive one. We cannot encroach upon the spirit of the child. Parents should view their authority as a responsibility, not a right. The full power of natural law should back a parent’s actions, not personal vexation or manipulation.

A parent’s authority is God-given. When a parent winks at a child’s misbehavior, he is taking this God-given authority and shrinking it into personal caprice. The child senses this and understands that his battle is no longer with great forces in the world, but with a single person’s will. Sensing the shrinking of his competition, she is more likely to engage in battle. She is a child, full of personal power, the natural outcome of which is to test her strengths against the elements. Therefore, a parent should never impose authority for personal reasons (I’m tired, I’m suspicious, I’m angry, I feel out of control, I’m happy, I’m busy). The authority should have the unemotional, impassive force of natural law behind it.

A tool a parent can offer her child is to distinguish between “I want” and “I will”.

I want to play instead of accomplishing the math problems set before me.

C.M. suggests diversion to train the will in the way it should go.

You cannot play instead of doing math, but, why don’t you practice music for now and come back to math in a half hour?

This takes away the dread for the moment and helps the child to come to math with new force. Moreover, C.M. suggests that a child’s school schedule alternate between difficult and light to do subjects with efficiency. Do not arrange all difficult subjects at once. For my children, we arrange our subjects like this: math (difficult), music (light), reading (medium), writing (difficult), read-alouds (light), history (medium), science (varies by child). We spend the rest of the afternoon in pursuit of enjoyable but worthy activities: sports, art, music, hikes, and nature study.

Notice that C.M. warns us from guilting our children into forcing their wills to win against a difficulty. She says it stereotypes our characters (picture the rigid stoic with a tight mouth and passions raging in her chest whose personality has receded beneath her will). We must work with who we are. Do we love the humanities? Do we love the outdoors? Do we dread certain subjects? Let us push ourselves gently. Let us massage our personality into obedience and not pound it into submission. Arrange a schedule for your child that breathes success. With these successes comes good habits.

In proving geometrical proofs, one always starts with a “given.” “Given that angle 1 and angle 2 are supplementary …” we can, step-by-step, make conclusions about the entire figure. If that given is not true, then all our conclusions are likely to be false.

Mathematics is a clean, pristine spring for all reasoning. Mathematics could be seen as the diamonds in the earth of thinking. Harder than all other minerals, it will scratch everything else. Try to live in obstinacy to the laws of mathematics and science and you’ll soon be receiving the Darwin award. They are innate, immoveable, and absolute. We cannot even comprehend beyond the boundaries of it.

Charlotte Mason argues that people’s chief responsibility is the acceptance or rejection of initial ideas. Once we accept an idea, our minds rapidly supply logical arguments to prove its verity. Givens all have their string of reasoning that follow. But if the given is wrong, the entire proof is wrong. With the rise of the informational age, initial ideas inundate us. Consider the headlines: “Breivik rails at psychiatrists for calling him insane.” Notice the “if …, then …” statements.

“I think that you couldn’t comprehend that a normal person could do something like that,” he said. “You think that a person who does something like that… must be sick.” (If a man kills 77 people, then he must be insane.)

“If I had been a bearded jihadist, there wouldn’t have been any psychiatrists whatsoever,” Breivik said on Monday. (If I am a jihadist, then people would not question my sanity. People recognize jihadists as accepting an initial idea — right or wrong– and following it out with reasoning).

We cannot live apart from our reasoning. We must, with our will, accept and reject initial statements. Our children’s acceptance or rejection of initial ideas can lead them in wonderful and terrible directions. Therefore, we must teach them to take this role of humanity seriously. How? Question them.

The girls at school are mean to each other.

Where did you get this idea? From your own observations? From stories from other girls? Did you take a survey or are you generalizing a single event?

This spring is rainier than last spring.

Are you sure? Or is the rain affecting your schedule more than last spring? Perhaps it is an emotional observation?

This questioning will train children to avoid generalizations, to support statements with facts, and to give logical reasons for which initial ideas they’ve chosen to accept. Furthermore, parents model the questioning for their children. Hopefully, when they read those slanted headlines or accepted myths, or hear a loose statement that has no substance, they can see right through it with clear, pristine thinking.

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Education is the Science of Relations

12. But, believing that the normal child has powers of mind that fit him to deal with all knowledge proper to him, we must give him a full and generous curriculum; taking care, only, that the knowledge offered to him is vital– that is, that facts are not presented without their informing ideas. Out of this conception comes the principle that, –

13. EDUCATION IS THE SCIENCE OF RELATIONS; that is, that a child has natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts: so we must train him upon physical exercises, nature, handicrafts, science and art, and upon many living books; for we know that our business is, not to teach him all about anything, but to help him to make valid as many as may be of–

‘Those first-born affinities

That fit our new existence to existing things.’

Remembering that education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life, Charlotte Mason focuses on the method of teaching. Assuming the child enters your presence already having a multitude of relations with many things, our purpose as teachers is to make valid those relations. But how?

Our present day school system asserts these points: 1) the teachers’ purpose is to teach state standards. Many states are moving toward national standards. The powers that be derived these standards so the child serves the state or nation. Since we are a mass-production economy, they carefully cultivate our children for that economy — training our children to squabble over a place in it as workers to earn money so they can buy the products provided by corporations.

Anyone who tries to tell you different is lying.

2) the child is a product of and for the government. Instead of being a person, as the Charlotte Mason method begins, a child is a product produced for the engine of commerce. Ask any teacher why a child needs to earn a good grade — the answer is so he can go to college (another institution that rakes money in for the government) and get a good job (so he can buy mass-produced goods from major corporations).

Therefore, the school system trains children to receive their education and not produce it. The government and corporations do not need any competition. They do not want producers or builders.

They need receivers of their services and buyers of their goods.

For documented proof of this, one must read The Underground History of American Education, written by John Gatto, a public school Teacher of the Year who blew the whistle on the system. The factory-like bells and same-age groups is a cultivated effort by corporation and government giants to create fodder for themselves.

Charlotte Mason, however, begins with the supposition that children are persons who come to us full of relations to many things. She sees them as God does: as human beings with a soul breathed into them, destined for eternity, and made in the image of God.

Our purpose is to train them on physical exercises, handicrafts, nature study, science and art and on many living books. In other words, we feed children’s brains natural food — that is, ideas, and we train them in self-reliance. Education is not something we give to them, but it is something they already possess. We should water a child’s education and set it in the sunlight to grow while God works the miracle.

The basis for this sort of education is living books — books written by authors who are experts in their fields and passionate about their subject. No one should interfere with a child’s mind and the greatest minds in the world –

which is exactly what textbooks and teachers often do.

Moreover, once a child has read, he should produce thoughts and ideas from it. This habit of production will do more to protect him from the sinister attempts of mind-control than any other. Interact with great minds and produce organized thought to make a free man or woman. This is our hope for children.

This is our duty to children.

Children should not be enslaved.

Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. John 8:32

They should remain free.

A final thought: we are so entrenched in this system that we believe it hasn’t enslaved us or our children. But consider any “normal” teen. Worried about grades, unable to pursue passions and strengths because they must focus on weaknesses, swayed by peers, afraid to act, afraid to live, and afraid to take chances — a few exist who have made it through, but they have done so in spite of and not because of the system. Instead of becoming a man or woman at 12 or 13, the system stretches adolescence into the twenties and thirties, filling our world with hollow, trapped adults — servants to the work and buy cycle while the unhappiness and disillusionment only grows.

It’s the harsh truth. Anyone who seeks the answer will find it is true. Today’s teens (including my own generation) are a far cry from the self-reliant teens (when such a word didn’t exist — a word, by the way, used by marketers as a target) we used to have before mass-production dominated our present day.

Children Feed on Ideas

8. In the saying that EDUCATION IS A LIFE, the need of intellectual and moral as well as of physical sustenance is implied. The mind feeds on ideas, and therefore children should have a generous curriculum.

9. But the mind is not a receptacle into which ideas must be dropped, each idea adding to an ‘apperception mass’ of its like, the theory upon which the Herbartian doctrine of interest rests.

10. On the contrary, a child’s mind is no mere sac to hold ideas; but is rather, if the figure may be allowed, a spiritual organism, with an appetite for all knowledge. This is its proper diet, with which it is prepared to deal, and which it can digest and assimilate as the body does foodstuffs.

11. This difference is not a verbal quibble. The Herbartian doctrine lays the stress of education — the preparation of knowledge in enticing morsels, presented in due order — upon the teacher. Children taught upon this principle are in danger of receiving much teaching with little knowledge; and the teacher’s axiom is, ‘What a child learns matters less than how he learns it.’

Children are in danger of receiving much teaching with little knowledge. This one sentence sums up the failure of the school system. Teachers spend four years (now five or six) to learn “how to teach.”

Yet, children’s literacy levels have consistently fallen.

By 1940, the literacy figure for all states stood at 96 percent for whites, 80 percent for blacks. Notice that for all the disadvantages blacks labored under, four of five were nevertheless literate. Six decades later, at the end of the twentieth century, the National Adult Literacy Survey and the National Assessment of Educational Progress say 40 percent of blacks and 17 percent of whites can’t read at all. Put another way, black illiteracy doubled, white illiteracy quadrupled. Before you think of anything else in regard to these numbers, think of this: we spend three to four times as much real money on schooling as we did sixty years ago, but sixty years ago virtually everyone, black or white, could read. Underground History of American Education

Here’s the issue: learning is the natural state of the child. Teach him or her to read and write, which is easy to do, and an education is obtained. Insert six hours of doing something else other than reading or writing, and the illiteracy rate rises alarmingly.

Reading and writing are the basis for education. Period. Class time not spent in reading or writing is robbing children of an education.

Children don’t need teachers to pre-digest the ideas for them.

Therefore, teaching credentials are unnecessary, in fact, they impede a child’s learning by creating the false belief that learning is complicated.

Learning is the natural state of a child. As young children, they are eager, hungry, intense learners. Somewhere along the way, they are trained differently. The imprisonment model of seat hours, bells, and constant supervision kills it in them.

It takes years of “school” to eliminate it — to oust it from a spirit.

Learning is the natural state of a child.

Homeschoolers are proving this point all the time as un-credentialed parents teach their children to read their way into top colleges all over the states. The hours spent in participation of their own education rather than in receiving morsels one piece at a time will always prove more effective.

Children need ideas. Thousands of them. They need to interact with them directly. Learning is going on while they count to set the table, while they construct something with Dad, while they chop onions, while they read fairy tales, while they listen to Bible stories, while they tell stories at night, while they write letters, while they skip and hop and crawl and yell, while they …

I think I make my point. A little guidance, a generous curriculum of ideas, and the child takes it all in as naturally as breathing.

If teachers are having to learn “engagement strategies” to ensure students are paying attention, the natural state of the child has been lost. A trust has been broken.

The view of children is faulty. Their minds are not sacs in which to drop ideas, one at a time. Their minds are organisms that need to be fed informing ideas all day long. The most efficient way to do this is to interact with authors directly. But this will be discussed in further posts. For the moment, it must be deeply internalized in any teacher’s or parent’s mind that a child needs a generous curriculum, full of ideas, not pieces of information dropped into their heads one at a time.

At the end of a school day, it is the child who should have produced the bulk of work. The teacher should not be tired at all, unless she has been interfering with the interaction of children and ideas.

 

Education is a Discipline

By EDUCATION IS A DISCIPLINE, is meant the discipline of habits formed definitely and thoughtfully, whether habits of mind or body. Physiologists tell us of the adaptation of brain structure to habitual lines of thought – i.e., to our habits.

This line of thinking is out of vogue now. Rather than taking responsibility for our habits, we blame our habits on our genetics. I have a conviction that science asks the wrong questions to get the right answers. It’s a personal conviction and I’ll keep it, because I see no advantage to seeing it differently. If I raise my children to believe that habits are being formed all the time. Whatever they do or don’t do forms pathways in their brain, and as they do or don’t do something continually, the paths in their brains deepen and strengthen. Eventually, the paths are so deep, they are powerless to change it — whether the habits be of cleanliness or laziness or excellence or distraction. Thus, they must take care to form good habits or they will be at the mercy of bad ones. I have not conducted thousands of experiments to confirm my findings. I’ve only tried this on my own wee ones. I feel that I’m equipping them with a great power, if I help them to have power over themselves. Self-control is an achievement available to every child, but grows increasingly out of reach with every year. Teaching self-control to a ten-year-0ld or a teenager is a daunting task. By adulthood, it’s near impossible and scientific experiments will prove a definite difference in the brain. Allowing your little one to be “strong-willed” which really means having no strength of will at all to control himself is a travesty.

Character is the one achievement available to every child. Take the formation of it seriously. Carefully shape it. Do not let it run ”free.” Such freedom is really a slavery to one’s own wants and desires.