How to Safeguard the Love of Learning

How to Safeguard the Love of Learning

Editor’s Note: My first introduction into the world of Charlotte Mason was not through For the Children’s Sake, like I know it was for many others; it was through Karen Andreola’s lovely purple book, A Charlotte Mason Companion. It gave me firm footing in philosophy and a glimpse into the day-to-day or how-to of a Charlotte Mason education. Through Andreola’s book I could see the beauty in this lifestyle, but also how attainable it could really be for me and my family. That is why I consider Karen to be my first Charlotte Mason mentor and why I continue to enjoy her blog, Moments with Mother Culture.

In the following article Karen tells us why the methods used throughout our society to affect the behavior of children (and even adults) simply do not work. As the mother of three young children, I encounter this everywhere from the dentist’s office to the grocery store. What should be considered normal behavior is rewarded with candy or prizes. And the practice of bribing children is considered so normal people don’t even ask the parent if they may do it. Only in recognizing this societal habit and making a commitment to form new habits in our own families and communities can we hope to change for the better. Charlotte Mason Poetry is honored to share this article by Karen Andreola which explains the problem and offers Miss Mason’s remedy to it.

-Brittney

In the book, The Enchanted Places—A Memoir of the Real Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh, I read one of Christopher Milne’s cherished memories. It is of his father, A. A. Milne, reading aloud at bedtime. Sometimes his father made up a story on the spot, about a little boy and his toys.

I was struck by the part in the book where Christopher Milne mentions a dinner party his father attended. Around the table sat talkative preparatory schoolmasters who gave speeches. They all agreed that the biggest burden of their job was parental interference. Normally A. A. Milne was quiet. But upon hearing the schoolmasters’ speeches he couldn’t resist a speech of his own. His own boy would often choose to hear the ideas of Euclid for a bedtime story over Treasure Island. He used this as an example (rather rashly wrote Christopher Milne) stating that all children have a keen interest in many things. Young children are eager to learn, he told them. “And then we send them to your schools, and in two years, three years, four years, you have killed all their enthusiasm. At fifteen their only eagerness is to escape learning anything. No wonder you don’t want to meet us.”[1]

In the 19th century Miss Charlotte Mason observed the lack of enthusiasm in the students of Great Britain. She strove to remedy it. She developed a new method of educating children (different than that of the preparatory schools). Traveling by train in a circuit, she spread the news of the success of her method far and wide.

Oh, if only we could have such a revival in America’s schools today!

How is curiosity schooled out of children? What makes them care little for learning? First, we undervalue them, says Miss Mason. Next, we depend upon an array of artificial inducements.

 “B. F. Skinner could be described as a man who did most of his experiments on rats and pigeons and wrote most of his books about people.” (Alfie Kohn)[2]

A hand is raised in the classroom. “Is this going to be on the test?” School teachers accustomed to this, hardly bat an eye. They don’t recognize it for what it is—a distress call. The student has surrendered to a broken system of education that squelches curiosity. Long before B.F. Sinner’s behavior experiments (do this and you’ll get that) entered psychology, Miss Mason was sharing her findings that “[grades], prizes, places, rewards, punishments, praise, blame, or other inducements are not necessary to secure attention, which is voluntary, immediate and surprisingly perfect” without them.[3]

According to Miss Mason, a system of education that relies on bribes, continual testing, grades, and other over-controlling measures to get children to do their schoolwork, is trusting in the wrong things. To cope, a child learns how to work for the grade. Well-meaning adults, once conditioned by the system, will even coach the child on how to cram. This strategy works in the short run. But in the long run, what does the student know? Does he care to know? Gray clouds gather on the horizon. The eyes of a child can be so fixed on the grade that his very identity becomes wrapped up in it.

Competitive group games are used with the rote memorization of names, dates, and assorted facts. It occurs to those in charge that since this is working and the children like it, let’s add more facts—for greater “academic achievement.” But it is the fun, the co-op friends, and the winning of prizes that these children care about.

“Do rewards motivate people? Absolutely. They motivate people to get rewards.” (Alfie Kohn)[4]

In Alfie Kohn’s big book, Punished by Rewards—The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes, he has unsettling things to say. He references hundreds of studies. The studies show that people (preschoolers up to adults) will work for rewards but will avoid anything challenging. They avoid risk-taking too, because they are afraid of making mistakes. He says that when you are promised a reward you come to see the task as something that comes between you and it. The fastest and easiest way is chosen to get at the prize.[5]

To entice children to read, sometimes money, ice cream or a pizza-party is given for reading a book. I wanted to do things differently. When my children were learning to read I kept our stack of easy-readers boxed and closeted. My intention was to reveal them at intervals. When the children had finished one reader in the series, along with its accompanying phonic exercises and sight word practice, they went on a treasure hunt. Their next reader was hidden somewhere in the house. This tiny bit of anticipation and mystery was exhilarating. The reward for finishing the last book, was the joy of finding another.

When older students are bribed to read thus-and-thus many books, given a choice, shorter and less challenging books are picked to obtain the reward. This is often the case with library summer-reading programs. Although my recollection is hazy I came across an anecdote some years back, in an introduction to one of C. S. Lewis’s books. I searched our shelves but couldn’t find it. Anyway, I remember that when C. S. Lewis was in a hospital a nurse recognized his name.

“I read your book,” she said brightly.

“Oh? Which one?”

The Screwtape Letters,” she said.

“How did you come by it?”

She confessed, “In school we had to a pick books off a list and that was the shortest.”

Miss Mason put her trust in a child’s ability to gain knowledge for the sake of knowledge. She avoided anything that would encourage children to become preoccupied with what they will get for what they are doing. What motivators did Charlotte Mason use?

The Remedy

Children are born with God-given curiosity. If protected, a desire to know will stay alive and be engaged through high school.

The Holy Spirit is the Supreme Educator. He applies learning to the mind and heart. Learning isn’t entirely accomplished by a teacher’s burdensome effort. She sets up an atmosphere, the conditions that make learning possible. She supplies ideas—varied and worthwhile—to think about. Her students receive a wide curriculum under three headings: Knowledge of God, Knowledge of Man, and Knowledge of the Universe.

Self-Education

There is no substitution for self-education. In place of a lecture Miss Mason’s students derived knowledge from books. She put them directly in touch with the carefully chosen words of an author—one enthralled with his subject. She tells us that a schoolteacher in his “desire to be serviceable… believes that children cannot understand well-written books and that he must make himself a bridge between the pupil and the real teacher, the man who has written the book.”[6] What was her appraisal of the schoolbooks and lectures of her day? They were a bore. A dull education suppresses initiative. Charlotte Mason wanted students’ minds to be engaged.

(Some textbooks available today, created by home teachers, are written more lively.)

An Active Questioning Mind

A young child, eager to learn, has questions. In the classroom he is expected to sit still and be silent—for long stretches of time. Consequently, he becomes sleepy or restless. A young mother once shared with me a reason she decided to home educate. As is frequently the case with a firstborn child, hers was a chatterbox and always asking questions. This lively little girl had a skip in her step. She was riveted at read aloud times, loved her pets, and spent hours exploring by (and in) the creek in the back yard. After spending a year in a typical first-grade classroom she was less lively, had far less to say. And tragically, she stopped asking questions. Why should she? The teacher did all the asking of questions—a never ending stream of them.

Something to Think About, Something to Say About it

With Miss Mason’s method, a student’s mind is open. And his mouth is open. His reaction and opinion are welcome.  By putting the reading in his own words with her method of narration, the student’s mind puts questions to itself. (What next? Where? Why? How? What else? How does thus-and-thus fit-together and make sense? What’s the outcome of so-and-so’s action or decision?) His mind is more active and engaged with narration. It works in a more natural way than when memorizing lists or recalling fragments. We can replace multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, match-the-columns, or a long questionnaire with “What do you think?”

Educators are pressured to prove in black-and-white that students are “getting it.” Frequent testing is also supposed to keep students on their toes. An infestation of tests may hang heavy in the air. But when we trust in Charlotte Mason’s principles a fresh wind of change revives us. To safeguard enthusiasm and create a refreshing atmosphere:

give children something interesting to think about,

let the authors teach,

require children to think, show and tell—all the way through high school,

expect their obedience to your big choices; give them small choices,

inspire them to share and serve others with what they know as they grow.

In Punished by Rewards Alfie Kohn wrote extensively that the more we use bribes to motivate people the more they lose interest in what we are bribing them to do. Charlotte Mason did not have the benefit of the 20th century research that Mr. Kohn had. Yet, separated by one hundred years, they are in agreement, uncovering the same truth. Isn’t this neat?

“Studies serve for delight” it occurred to Miss Mason. It’s the better way to educate persons. There are higher aims by which persons live and learn. Opening up our 1965 copy of the Boy Scout Handbook puts a few at my fingertips. A boy scout is… trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, reverent. These are codes of action by which we aspire to live.

About twenty-five years ago I spotted in The Parents’ Reivew, a bold concluding line of an article, a quotation by the ancient Greek, Plato. “Punishment-and-reward is the worst form of education.” Must we keep re-inventing the wheel?

My Disclaimer

In life we act with mixed motivations. This is the plain reality of it. We are willingly devoted to our family day and night. We are commanded to love. This shows people God is real. But we also love because we, too, long to be loved. As I see it we need not apologize for this.

Above all—Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. (1 Cor. 10:31)

Postscript

After reading The Enchanted Places, I put my finger on what had left me feeling down. At the end of the book Christopher Robin Milne reaches a decision. He was serving in WWII when he sent his father a letter stating that there is no Christian God—a statement his father was relieved to hear. Our family thinks the Winnie-the-Pooh stories are delightful, cute, clever, and humorous. Disguised in fake fur the characters bring human nature to light. But pity joins my admiration for the author and his family.

Endnotes

[1] Christopher Milne, The Enchanting Places, p. 119.

[2] Alfie Kohn, Punished by Rewards, p. 6.

[3] Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education, p. 7.

[4] Punished by Rewards, p. 67.

[5] Ibid, p. 65.

[6] Philosophy of Education, p. 260. See also School Education, p. 226.

©2017 Karen Andreola

11 Replies to “How to Safeguard the Love of Learning”

  1. I usually take the time over summer break to read through A Charlotte Mason Companion every year, Brittany. I agree that it is so inspiring and a breath of fresh air. Dear Karen, this is lovely, as usual, and such a wonderful reminder. Thank you so much!

  2. Thank you, Amy Marie, for saying hello and sending your appreciation my way. Doesn’t Brittany have a beautiful and sensitive way of reading podcasts? I felt so honored to be here this morning hearing something I wrote read like poetry. And then I thought, the little girl with the skip-in-her-step is now a young lady of marrying age. From what her mother told me, this young lady retained all her enthusiasm for learning.

  3. Thank you, Karen, for your thoughtful, well stated article on the topic of preserving a love of learning with our children. This is such an important topic, yet all too often it is neglected. During my first year of teaching, prior to becoming a mother, the first grade teacher at the elementary school where I taught brought up her concern to the other teachers about how children begin school eager to learn, but in a very short time that eagerness is gone. The first grade teacher was asking why this is true. It troubled her as it should all of us. We were working for a school district that used all textbook curriculum. Our elementary school didn’t even have a library with wonderful children’s literature available for the students. Knowledge was not served as a delightful feast for the children. I read Alfie Kohn’s book Punished by Rewards several years ago and found it quite informative. Charlotte Mason’s wisdom concerning the importance of preserving a love of learning with our children is a vital aspect of her educational philosophy and a beautiful picture of what education is meant to be. Her practice of short lessons and no homework is another aspect of her philosophy that helped safeguard a love of learning, too. If we weary our children to death with schoolwork for many hours each day, and from dry as dust textbooks and books, the love to learn will be drained right out of them.

    Thanks again for your thoughtful, beautifully written article, Karen!

    1. Thanks for sharing your memory, Sheila. To recognize the loss of an eagerness to learn in the young children and be troubled by it, but be powerless to change things, must have been a sadness for that teacher. Your experience teaching in a school, Sheila, no doubt, added to your insight and helped shape how you taught your own children, especially after you studied Miss Mason’s practical philosophy. I agree that children are wearied with too much busy-schoolwork and long hours. I’ve seen the heavy back-packs on the children getting off the school bus. We have so many blessings to thank God for, when it comes to the freedom we have in America to teach our own children, and to apply Miss Mason’s practical philosophy.

      1. You are correct about how that year shaped the way I taught our children and had an enormous impact on why I was attracted to Charlotte Mason’s education philosophy, Karen. I did not want to stay in that school. I found a different school to teach in after my first year. The two experiences were night and day differences. My second year of teaching was in an elementary school that did not use many textbooks at all, if any. The school used children’s great literature and living books. The 6th grade teacher was a master teacher when it came to this approach. She taught the other teachers in the school. Students left Leal School after 6th grade going on to junior high and then high school. Some came back to this literature rich school and told the 6th grade teacher that no education they had after leaving Leal School compared to what they had there.

        In the first school where I taught, which used all textbooks and no literature, I used my own money to purchase wonderful children’s literature books to bring into my classroom for the children to read when their textbook work was done. While still in college I had done volunteer work at Leal School and knew the impact the rich literary approach had on the students there. Leal School didn’t have any openings when I graduated from college that I could apply for. I was thankful that Leal School had an opening for a teacher after my first year of teaching!

        My heart sinks when I hear of schools, Christian schools included, sending homework home with kindergartners. That news saddens me, Karen. It is so unnecessary to do that and is not good for the children.

        A mother, whose children are in the public school system, told me several months ago that with all the testing required in the elementary school where she works as a teacher’s aide and where her children attend school, that her children have been struggling with anxiety problems because of all the tests each week. How tragic that is! These young children are missing the love of learning that should be the right of every child.

        Thank you for all the work you and Dean have done and continue to do so parents can learn about Charlotte Mason’s philosophy of education! You and Susan Schaeffer Macaulay were my mentors to help me learn about Charlotte Mason from the early days of homeschooling my children. My favorite homeschooling magazine was The Parents’ Review magazine you published for several years. I devoured each issue when it arrived in my mailbox. I never found another homeschooling magazine that I liked as well as yours, Karen. I thank you and Dean for rescuing Charlotte Mason’s education volumes and having them republished. What a blessing to so many that has been!

  4. Dear Sheila, You are kind and generous. And I’m certain, those in your Charlotte Mason Support Group are taking advantage of your knowledge of a wide array of lovely children’s books. Thank you for making your insight and experience accessible to young parents here, too.

  5. Karen, I am so blessed to help lead a couple Charlotte Mason book study groups. The moms are delightful and teach me much as well!

  6. Hello,
    I know I am late to post, but as I just discovered this article I wanted to ask a question. A homeschool graduate myself, I have been homeschooling my 4 children for the last 4ish years (my oldest is 8). I have always had “instill a love of learning, become lifelong learners” as one of my educational goals for our family. I have always wondered though HOW we do this! This article helped clarify my thoughts some and led me to think a change of wording/thinking may be required, to “safeguard” the love of learning rather than “instill”. I do not know how well I am doing that, though I try very hard! My question is this: in this modern world of ours with tv and video games that flash a different stimulating picture and sound every second invading our lives how do we get our children to be excited about listening to Bach or studying DaVinci’s paintings? They participate, but excited like they are for Mario? I don’t think so. How do I shape their taste, form them to love the good, true, and beautiful? How can their education compete with the world? It ought not, we cannot give in and make it all fluff I know in order to entice their baser desires, but how to get them to *love* learning?

    Hoping and desiring the good,
    Valerie

  7. You make a good point, Valerie Lacaria. Thanks for sharing.

    Computer games are exciting with their fast-paced interactive aspect. There’s nothing quite like them. I agree. They were just becoming available when I was near the end of home-teaching. Compared to screen-time, lessons are not split-second, edge-of-your-seat exciting. This is one reason it’s wise to greatly limit screen-time.

    Even so, because a child doesn’t show signs of being excited about those slower things such as: picture study, music appreciation, nature walks, or poetry, etc., this doesn’t mean these things are not affecting him. These slower things are becoming part of his “inner life.” A subtle “intellectual glow” eventually becomes apparent over time from the mutual appreciation of what is true, just, pure, lovely, and praise-worthy. An 8-year-old boy can listen to the reading aloud of an inspiring biography of a scientist, inventor, or builder, and with a little spark of interest be quietly impressed by it. His narration may be short. It’s much effort to put his thoughts into words. And he doesn’t act as enthusiastic about this effort required of him, as he would when playing baseball out back with Dad. Still, he is growing by this inner (and invisible) life of ideas. We sow the seeds of a variety of ideas not knowing which will impress him most.

    I hope this encourages you, Valerie. I can relate to your heart’s desire for the good. Karen A.

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