Monday, March 17, 2014

{My CM Journal} What it is, is Classical

I know I said a couple of weeks ago that I would compare Classical education with Charlotte Mason's philosophy. The more I think about it, the less ready I feel to take that on. I am realizing more and more that Charlotte Mason's philosophy is a plant with its roots firmly in Classical education and as such is as valid an expression of Classical education as the one put forward in The Well-Trained Mind or any other Classical Christian approach you might come across.

I have CiRCE Institute to thank for this thought. As I read "What is Classical Education?" I realized that everything they say about Classical Education is also true of a Charlotte Mason education.

But why, then, does a Charlotte Mason education look so different from what's commonly called a Classical Christian education?

I believe the key is in Charlotte Mason's first principle: Children are born persons. Yes, this is a belief held in Classical Education, but Charlotte Mason worked out the implications of this principle in a broader way. To her, children as persons come equipped to deal with ideas. Indeed, ideas are the only proper food for their minds, even from their earliest school years. Facts must never be presented without their informing ideas. This is very different from the common view of the Grammar stage of the Trivium, where young children spend a lot of time memorizing the facts that form the structure of language, of mathematics, etc, whether or not they understand them. Dorothy Sayers put forward this view in her essay "The Lost Tools of Learning:"
"...it is as well that anything and everything which can be usefully committed to memory should be memorized at this period, whether it is immediately intelligible or not. The modern tendency is to try and force rational explanations on a child's mind at too early an age. Intelligent questions, spontaneously asked, should, of course, receive an immediate and rational answer; but it is a great mistake to suppose that a child cannot readily enjoy and remember things that are beyond his power to analyze--particularly if those things have a strong imaginative appeal (as, for example, "Kubla Kahn"), an attractive jingle (like some of the memory-rhymes for Latin genders), or an abundance of rich, resounding polysyllables (like the Quicunque vult)." 
Why am I going with Charlotte Mason, and not Dorothy Sayers, on this one? It is because I remember myself as a child. I know that I myself came equipped to deal with ideas from a very young age, and that ideas were the proper food for my mind. I did not need to be prepared to deal with ideas by learning many facts first. (My mother has a story of me making some profound observation while she was changing my diaper...at least, I think that's how the story goes. "If Adam sinned, that's not my fault." Clearly I must have been toilet trained a bit late, but not as late as you might think.) I did love my grammar as well, but I don't believe it was a prerequisite to logical thinking.

It seems to me that Charlotte Mason did not neglect any aspect of the grammar, logic, and rhetoric of the trivium, though. They are all included in her process of narration, though not in an "ages and stages" way. In her method, logic and grammar go hand in hand throughout a child's education. The facts are always informed by the ideas that give them their meaning, and this is what makes them a joy to learn. Even the seeds of rhetoric are cultivated from the very beginning, as in narration children interact with living ideas, assimilate them, and communicate their understanding of them. This ability is allowed to grow and develop as the child grows. It is not that Charlotte Mason denied any developmental stages in children, but that "children are born persons" throughout all their stages of growth. To her, that meant that their minds must be nourished with ideas in the same way as their bodies must be nourished with food throughout their lives.

12 comments:

  1. I really like your charlotte mason posts. Keep 'em coming!

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  2. I really like your charlotte mason posts. Keep 'em coming!

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  3. Okay weird...my other comments disappeared!

    Oh well. Wait. Did you just change your comments? Maybe that was it.

    Anyhoo...that is neither here nor there. I was just going to say that if you wanted a taste of Sayers without a big commitment, the collected Lord Peter stories are the easiest because each chapter is its own complete story. I read these aloud to my husband and it took about a year because we only read one every once in a while, but it was perfect for that. FYI

    I love her writing. :) (Not that you don't already have enough to read!)

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    1. It was weird...Intense Debate just disappeared from my blog. I think it's a Blogger issue, since I tried to re-install and it didn't "take"...the joys.

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    2. That *is* weird! You made me go check mine, and mine are still there. But I own a domain, and that might change things.

      I'm sorry! I hope it comes back someday. I don't know why you changed exactly, but for me I was tired of all the spam. :(

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  4. I really like how you said, "I am realizing more and more that Charlotte Mason's philosophy is a plant with its roots firmly in Classical education and as such is as valid an expression of Classical education as the one put forward in The Well-Trained Mind or any other Classical Christian approach you might come across." I happened upon an old post of Brandy's the other day which led me to listen to a lecture by Doug Wilson (the post is here, if you're curious - http://www.afterthoughtsblog.net/2012/04/is-charlotte-mason-classical-follow-up.html) and I was struck by how he said that as a classical educator, you have to decide if you accept or reject the "Sayers insight" as he called it, and depending on your decision, this would change what you would be doing in your school on a day to day basis. I think I could also make an argument that you can either accept or reject the "Charlotte Mason insight" that children are born persons and should be exposed to living ideas, and depending on the answer this would also greatly influence what your school/homeschool looked like. I was also struck by how is defense of Sayers insight largely seemed to be that he was pleased with the results he was seeing... without defining the results. But that's another matter!

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    1. Thanks for that link! I just looked it up, and now I feel awed that Brandy deigned to come over and agree with my post. Obviously the thoughts I was so excited about have all been thought before, and by people who understand the history of it all so much better than I do at this stage in my life. :) I'm so happy you stopped by.

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    2. You're welcome for the link! I happened to notice the subject line of your most recent blog post on your comment on Brandy's blog, and since Charlotte Mason and Classical education is something I've been thinking about recently, it caught my eye. And yes, many things have been thought through before, but as "Self-education is the only possible education" we have to think the ideas through ourselves in order to have any hope of understanding them. And I'm glad you wrote about it too - what you wrote helped solidify some thoughts I have been working through in my own mind.

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  5. Very helpful, thanks Nelleke. I get so much out of both Ambleside Online & Circe and I've felt I had my feet in two camps at times but in essence agreement with one doesn't exclude the other at all. I've been thinking for years about the idea of 'less is more' or 'much, not many' being the core of Classical ed and how that fits in with a CM education. Still not sure but I enjoy reading how others view both views.

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  6. Circe Institute is right about what constitutes a classical education, and you are right, that Charlotte Mason's educational principles are rooted in classical ideals. Ambleside Online and Circe are not different camps--they are merely different tents within the same camp.

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  7. It helps that Andrew Kern likes Charlotte Mason. :)

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