CMP Review 2023-06-25

Charlotte Mason’s twelfth principle introduces a phrase famously associated with her method: “Education is the Science of Relations.” The principle asserts that the child is born with aptitudes and abilities that equip him for self-education. In the 1923 book In Memoriam, Ellen Parish attempted to explain the source of this and other key elements of the Charlotte Mason method. She pointed to a common source for them all: the Holy Gospels.

For Principle 12, Parish pointed to Mason’s poem “What is truth?” This poem is included in Volume 5 just after Mason explores Christ’s words about truth in John 8:45–47. However, the title of the poem clearly evokes John 18:38, when Pontius Pilate asks “What is truth?” Mason’s poem points directly to that moment, opening with the line, “Nay, what is truth? the cynic lightly cried; But not to him the Incarnate Truth replied.”

From this starting point, Mason proceeds to an inquiry about truth, and she points out that light, music, harmony, and truth all presuppose persons with senses to apprehend such things. The poem closes with these lines: “As though that simple man would say, ‘The light Is its own evidence for men with sight!’”

Mason’s twelfth principle asserts the presence of “first-born affinities [t]hat fit our new existence to existing things.” As teachers, we assume our children are born with sight. Read or listen to the poem that, according to Ellen Parish, lies behind this inspiring thought. Find it here.

@artmiddlekauff