Homeschool parents recognize that there is more to education than academic subjects. Charlotte Mason was careful to ground the teacher’s understanding in the moral responsibility of training children. This episode addresses moral development in the child and how to foster it through authority, habits, and the living ideas children are served in the curriculum.
Listen Now:
School Education (Volume 3), Chapter 12
“…the little fellow writes, in the verses he makes for his grandmother’s birthday; and then, when the verses come to be read, ah! The humiliation of the soul he goes through, and how surely he expects father and grandmother to find him out for a hypocrite. “Why did I write it? She’s not here, and it was not necessary to mention her; I love grandma, it’s true; I reverence her, but still she is not the same. Why did I write it? Why have I lied?” This is the sort of thing there is in children. We recognise it as we read, and remember the dim, childish days when we, too, had an ‘organ of truth’ just so exquisitely delicate; and the recollection should quicken our reverence of the tender consciences of children.” (1/183)
“Facts like this afford a glimpse of the appalling responsibility that lies upon parents. The child comes into the world with a moral faculty, a delicate organ whereby he discerns the flavour of good and evil, and at the same time has a perception of delight in the good––in himself or others,––of loathing and abhorrence of the evil. But, poor little child, he is like a navigator who does not know how to box his compass. He is born to love the good, and to hate the evil, but he has no real knowledge of what is good and what is evil; what intuitions he has, he puts no faith in, but yields himself in simplicity to the steering of others. The wonder that Almighty God can endure so far to leave the very making of an immortal being in the hands of human parents is only matched by the wonder that human parents can accept this divine trust with hardly a thought of its significance.” (1/333)
“‘God does not allow’ us to do thus and thus should be a rarely expressed but often present thought to parents who study the nature of the divine authority where it is most fully revealed, that is, in the Gospels. They see there that authority works by principles and not by rules, and as they themselves are the deputy authorities set over every household, it becomes them to consider the divine method of government.” (3/127)
Our harsh governing always produces revolt. God allows
man to make a free choice of obedience, rather than forcing it. The
law of God, according to his word, is exceeding broad, it “encompasses
us as the air we breathe, only more so, for it reaches to our secret
thoughts, which is not a hardship, but a delight.” Parents love and
see to the best for their children, and the children learn they are
happy when good, and sad when they are not. They must learn that we
are all ruled by the law of God, which ‘is another name for the will
of God.” (3/128)
“Children play with Moral Questions.––There is no part of education more nice and delicate than this, nor any in which grown-up people are more apt to blunder. Everyone knows how tiresome it is to discuss any nice moral question with children; how they quibble, suggest a hundred ingenious explanations or evasions, fail to be shocked or to admire in the right place––in fact, play with the whole question; or, what is more tiresome still, are severe and righteous overmuch, and ‘deal damnation round’ with much heartiness and goodwill. Sensible parents are often distressed at this want of conscience in the children; but they are not greatly in fault; the mature conscience demands to be backed up by the mature intellect, and the children have neither the one nor the other. Discussions of the kind should be put down; the children should not be encouraged to give their opinions on questions of right and wrong, and little books should not be put into their hands.” (1/336)
“First and infinitely the most important, is the habit of obedience. Indeed, obedience is the whole duty of the child, and for this reason––every other duty of the child is fulfilled as a matter of obedience to his parents. Not only so: obedience is the whole duty of man; obedience to conscience, to law, to Divine direction.” (1/161)
“the training of the child in the habit of strict veracity is … one which requires delicate care and scrupulosity on the part of the mother. … The vice of lying causes: carelessness in ascertaining the truth, carelessness in stating the truth, and a deliberate intention to deceive. That all three are vicious” (1/164)
“These departures from strict veracity are on matters of such slight importance that the mother is apt to let them pass as the ‘children’s chatter’; but, indeed, ever such lapse is damaging to the child’s sense of truth––a blade which easily loses its keenness of edge.” (1/164-65)
“As for reverence, consideration for others, respect for persons and property, I can only urge the importance of a sedulous cultivation of these moral qualities––the distinguishing marks of a refined nature––until they become the daily habits of the child’s life; and the more, because a self assertive, aggressive, self seeking temper is but too characteristic of the times we live in. (1/166)
“Again, let us keep before the children that it is the manner of thoughts we think which matters; and, in the early days, when a child’s face is an open book to his parents, the habit of sweet thoughts must be kept up, and every selfish, resentful, unamiable movement of children’s minds observed in the countenance must be changed before consciousness sets in.” (3/135-36)
“[The child] learns to read in a way that affords him some moral training. There is no stumbling, no hesitation from the first, but bright attention and perfect achievement. His reading lesson is a delight, of which he is deprived when he comes to his lesson in a lazy and dawdling mood. Perfect enunciation and precision are insisted on…” (1/221-22)
“The book should always be deeply interesting, and when the narration is over, there should be a little talk in which moral points are brought out…” (1/233)
“[In Bible lessons] let the teaching, moral and spiritual, reach them without much personal application.” (1/233)
“We cannot live sanely unless we know that other peoples are as we are with a difference.” (6/179)
“Perhaps the main part of a child’s education should be concerned with the great human relationships, relationships of love and service, of authority and obedience, of reverence and pity and neighborly kindness; relationships to kin and friend and neighbor, to ’cause’ and country and king, to the past and the present. History, literature, archaeology, art, languages, whether ancient or modern, travel and tales of travel; all of these are in one way or other the record or expression of persons, and we who are persons are interested in all persons, for we are all one flesh, and we are all of one spirit, and whatever any of us does or suffers is interesting to the rest.” (3/80-81)
The Naturalist’s Notebook, Nathaniel Wheelwright and Bernd Heinrich
