Ask Art #6 — A Classical Education Perspective on Charlotte Mason
In December and January, the Classical Et Cetera podcast of Memoria Press released a three-part series entitled “Charlotte Mason Explained: A Classical Education Perspective.” These recorded conversations between four classical education experts provoked much reaction and discussion within the Charlotte Mason community. Although opinions vary, I think there is one thing we can all agree on: the three episodes do not say the final word about Charlotte Mason and classical education.
After carefully reviewing the audio, video, and transcript of the Classical Et Cetera series, I joined Charlotte Mason enthusiast Mariana Mastracchio for a detailed analysis of the perspectives shared in the episodes. We brought every assertion to the test of Miss Mason’s writings and the writings of her followers. And you may be surprised by what we found. Listen in and then share your comments and questions below:
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Links
The Classical Et Cetera podcast series:
Part 1: Mason vs. Classical Ed
Part 2: The Classical Divide
Part 3: Two Methods, One Goal
Writings by Charlotte Mason:
A Short Synopsis (the 20 principles)
Two Educational Ideals
P.N.E.U. Principles
Mothers’ Education Course
The Home Education Series
Writings by the Charlotte Mason community:
Early Influences by Helen Webb
On First Looking into Miss Mason’s Books by E. F. Bozman
The Child in Literature by Miss Shakespeare
The Conflict of Philosophies by Sir Fred Clarke
“God with Us” as the Lost Tool of Education by Sara Timothy
By the authors:
8 Replies to “Ask Art #6 — A Classical Education Perspective on Charlotte Mason”
Art,
I just listened to your podcast and I very much enjoyed it. It is refreshing to know that we are in good company in how we read Charlotte Mason. Obviously we differ on whether we agree on following her method, but we concur that the reason for it is our moderate realist philosophy in contrast to Charlotte’s romanticism. I appreciate you linking our statements to Charlotte’s direct words.
I must quibble on a couple points, namely Latin and nature studies. I totally understand how in our response to Charlotte’s stance on Latin, a listener might think we only want students to master the humanities through Greco-Roman works, but in practice we do both Greco-Roman and English works. There is a lot of truth in how Charlotte elevates English literature as there is so much good to be found there. Also, you cited nature studies as a development or evolution of classical education; we see nature studies as coming from Aristotle who spent a large portion of his works on observing, naming, describing, and categorizing the natural world. It is not a major point, but one I thought you might be interested in.
Paul Schaeffer
Paul,
Thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode and for sharing your thoughts here. I also appreciate the time you and your colleagues spent on the development of your three-part series for the Classical Et Cetera podcast. I believe that series provided a much-needed restatement of some of the core tenets of classical education and how they relate to the views of Charlotte Mason as expressed in her writings.
Respectfully,
Art
Thank you for this informative episode! I remember listening to Art talk about this topic back when Karen Glass was writing about it in 2017. One question that was most pertinent to me was the topic of pre-reading for the CM mother/teacher. Art–would you say we should pre-read everything but write our own narration? What is the purpose of the pre-reading and what should be prioritized when planning time is short?
Alissa,
Thank you for listening to this episode and for bringing up this great question. I think pre-reading is especially important if the parent has any doubts about whether the content is suitable for his or her children. I believe the parent should protect the child’s heart, mind, and soul, and sometimes that involves screening books.
If the book is trusted, on the other hand, I still think it is valuable for the parent to read it. I personally don’t usually “pre” read in the sense of reading the book cover-to-cover before my child gets started. Usually I “co” read in the sense that I read at the same time as my child (with my own copy of the book). That way the material is fresh in my mind at lesson time. I don’t do my own written narration but rather listen attentively to (or carefully read) my child’s narration. When the original content is fresh in my mind, I am usually better able to understand the narration and answer any questions or discussion topics that my child brings up. I normally don’t have preconceived notions about what the narration will include. I recall what Charlotte Mason said: “[the child] is an eclectic; he may choose this or that; our business is to supply him with due abundance and variety and his to take what he needs.”
I hope this helps!
Blessings,
Art
Art,
This was an exciting podcast to listen to and a fresh one on its response to the Memoria Press Podcast. Thank you! It helps to provide increased clarity to working out this method — and perhaps brings out a few extra questions, which is part of our ‘philosopher’ role, that perhaps gets lost a bit as we live out our roles as guide and friend for our children. As an aside, the ‘friend’ role of the parents is one that I found was quite missing from the memoria approach — perhaps intentionally so.
As I listened to this wonderful summary of Mason’s key principles, I was particularly struck when you both spoke about the child’s natural capacity for attention. A few moms from our co-op also listened to the podcast and while we were encouraged by these reminders we were also struck how new children coming into the co-op from traditional learning systems, and certainly those also who have grown with the method, struggle more with attention in a co-op setting. We explored this a bit and wondered if the co-op setting restricts the degree to which we can evaluate each book in light of the child we have before us? Is this book digestible for this child? Maybe there is a danger of catering too much to the program of study — but maybe not? At the same time we are all acknowledged that there are choices we would make for each individual child that might differ if we were not in a co-op setting. However, we were also reminded that Mason allowed her method to reach the public school system and therefore she too may have struggled with this reality – and did! We remembered the principal from the boy’s grammar school who adopted this method and wrote about the drawbacks of books in communal study (as well as the gains) but that it was best to have the method working at some level. We take great courage of that example and also try to find ways we can continue to consider each child before us even in a group setting.
I am also wondering more about the obvious dichotomy between how the classical approach sees the nature of the child and how Mason does. It is clear that the child’s estate is an elevated one and and princely one, but I also appreciated (in the idyll readings from Parents and Children) the realist approach of Mason — even though Paul (above) says realism is a hallmark of the classical approach. While Mason, I agree, sits with the Romantics on many things and that her final interpretation of things is different from both the classical and romantic outlook. A realist ought to get at the real heart of things — as so does Mason. I think in this way she moves past the romantics who might get stuck. A reading from the idyll challenge came up right away for me —
“Children have a sense of sin, acute in proportion to their sensitiveness. We are in danger of trusting too much to a rose-water treatment; we do not take children seriously enough; brought face to face with a child, we find he is a very real person, but in our educational theories we take him as ‘something between a wax doll and an angel.’ He sins; he is guilty of greediness, falsehood, malice, cruelty, a hundred faults that would be hateful in a grown-up person; we say he will know better by-and-by. He will never know better; he is keenly aware of his own odiousness. How many of us would say about our childhood, if we told the whole truth, ‘Oh, I was an odious little thing!’ and that not because we recollect our faults, but because we recollect our childish estimate of ourselves. Many a bright and merry child is odious in his own eyes; and the ‘peace, peace, where there is no peace,’ of fond parents and friends is little comfort. It is well that we ‘ask for the old paths, where is the good way’; it is not well that, in the name of the old paths, we lead our children into blind alleys; nor that we let them follow the new into bewildering mazes.” (Parents and Children, 49).
She is saying so many fascinating things here: warning about many educational theories that can make our children into wax dolls (maybe Montessori?) or barbarians (though here she seems more concerned about seeing them as angels). They can lead us into ‘blind alleys and bewildering mazes’. And instead of putting the blame entirely in our court she says we must look deeper into how the child may see herself. It reminds me of what insightful and practical Martha says to Mary in The Secret Garden, when she is slighting everyone around and presenting herself as a miserable little thing — “How does tha’ like thysel’? “Mary replies, “Not at all—really”. Martha, like Mason, truly understands children. So Old Paths ( perhaps the classical way of understanding the nature of children) and equally new paths (perhaps an overly romantic view of children) are not helpful?
Celeste Cruz has done a wonderful talk about Mason’s affinity and alignment with the romantics (and also the classicists — in philosophy not education) but also a beautiful exploration of how she moves beyond them both in her talk “The Source of our Joy: A Christian Conception of Beauty”. She quotes James Baikie, author of Peeps of Many Lands: Ancient Greece (a popular book in Mason homes and classrooms):
“Only there is one thing. It is the last thing I have to tell you, and perhaps it holds the secret of how Greek faith, and culture, and art, great and noble in many ways as they are, failed and passed away at last. And that one thing you see perhaps more clearly than anywhere in the art of this noble race. It had no place for the dark and broken side of human life, out of which come all the greatest and highest things that we know. The Greek loved strength, wholeness, beauty, and put away from him as far as possible all thought of sorrow and suffering. It was not till after Jesus Christ had come into the world that men began to realize that the greatest things on earth are not beauty and strength, but love, sympathy, and sacrifice. The Hermes of Praxiteles is beautiful and strong; but I wish I could have put beside him Donatello’s great Christ on the Cross at Padua, for the contrast would have shown you, far better than I can tell it, where the Greek failed. The Greek god is far more beautiful than the Christian Saviour; but the Italian sculptor has done an infinitely greater thing, and taught an infinitely greater truth, than Praxiteles ever dreamed of (pp. 114-115).”
She then talks about where the Romantics fall short — (if I remember correctly) they also remain in images of beauty or despair, that while poignant and perhaps even more insightful to us than the classical philosophers, are not the last word. She refers to some writings of Keats to really show the difference. But nonetheless I saw the greater affinity of Mason with the Romantics perhaps.
Lastly, the thing I struggle with the most, is this idea that the medieval educational system, or perhaps mainly the renaissance as referred to here (though I am not sure we can put these together) was aligned away closer to a classical approach (and therefore pagan?) than what Mason offers. I am largely in agreement that the Mason method and classical method are quite different. I am not convinced yet that there is a coherent definition of the classical method that is followed in most quarters — despite the clear one offered by the founder of Memoria (not sure if it was founder?) as relayed in the podcast. As a catholic I see so many writings that embody the philosophy and ideas about children and spirituality mentioned in the Mason books. Perhaps I am overtly on the lookout for alignment between the teachings of my faith and Mason — of course we are both Christians. so there is much! However, I look for this in ideas of education in the catholic atmosphere of medieval christendom (dare I even try!). While the monks of medieval Christendom may have preserved and kept a classical library I don’t think this means they subscribed to everything within those books — and I think there is much evidence they didn’t. Mason loved The Imitation of Christ — a deeply medieval piece of writing. Maybe its stands out differently than the rest. I am also curious about your own appreciation of Catherine of Siena and that you have said in the past she had many living ideas — was this in complete contrast to the church around her at the time? I hope that the ideas that came from such writers was not only a direct gift from God but was somehow given to them through home, church and community life. I am not sure, but it’s something I wonder.
In this podcast as well as the Memoria Press series, there was much talk of the ‘goal’ of this education. My favourite writing from Charlotte Mason that inspires my own ‘goal’ for doing this everyday with my children is:
“Thus it rests with parents to ease the way of their child by giving him the habits of the good life in thought, feeling and action, and even in spiritual things. We cannot make a child ‘good’; but, in this way, we can lay paths for the good life in the very substance of his brain. We cannot make him hear the voice of God; but, again, we can make paths where the Lord God may walk in the cool of the evening. We cannot make a child clever; but we can see that his brain is nourished with pure blood, his mind with fruitful ideas.” (Vol. 5, 141-142).
Thanks for this wonderful addition to the Ask Art Series!
Marlon,
Thank you for this thoughtful comment. I appreciate that you are taking seriously your “philosopher” role and I am grateful that you are bringing the conversation here.
Thank you also for sharing that wonderful quote from Peeps of Many Lands: Ancient Greece.
You wrote that what you struggle with most “is this idea that the medieval educational system, or perhaps mainly the renaissance … was aligned away closer to a classical approach (and therefore pagan?) than what Mason offers.” I’m afraid that I must insist that this is an undeniably true idea, however. I’ll just cite one point of evidence: Carl Trueman, who wrote:
“Boethius’ contributions to Western civilization in general and theology in particular are wide-ranging and significant. Indeed, he adapted a number of Greek works into Latin, probably including Euclid’s Geometry; these works laid the ground work for the so-called quadrivium, or group of four academic disciplines (music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy). The quadrivium combined with the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic), to form the seven liberal arts (though we should remember that each of the subjects then covered much more ground than that with which we would typically associate them today). Thanks to the influence of Alcuin (ca. 740–804) and the intellectual circle surrounding Charlemagne, the seven liberal arts became the foundation of Western higher education; thus, the work of Boethius was, in the long run, instrumental in profoundly shaping the whole concept of university education.”
Boethius has been called the last of the ancient philosophers and the connecting link between the classical and the medieval age. It is simply a fact of history that classical education was the dominant philosophy of education in the West as Cheryl Lowe, founder of Memoria Press, asserts. It is also a fact that the PNEU broke from this. In the 1890 Parents’ Review Archdeacon Blunt wrote that “There is a good deal of truth in that statement; for although potentially this solicitude for children was contained in Christ’s treatment of them and commands concerning them, practically it has taken centuries to arouse the conscience of Christendom to the duty of copying His example and of doing His behest.”
I agree with you that we cannot put Mason in a classical box or a romantic box. She defied categories in her rigorous devotion to Christ’s teachings in the Gospels. If Archdeacon Blunt was right, then Miss Mason was part of this awakening of “the conscience of Christendom” to Christ’s teaching about children. This awakening, however, seems to be a positive progression, perhaps consistent with John Henry Newman’s concept of “development of doctrine.”
Yes I love Catherine of Siena and I read her writings daily. I am inspired by other medieval writers as well, and I believe the Holy Spirit was working mightily in that age, as in every age. But I do not find in Catherine of Siena a philosophy of education. There was a dominant philosophy of education in her day, and I would not want to bring it back. Catherine teaches me some timeless truths. Charlotte teaches me others. Sometimes they speak with one voice, sometimes their voices are complementary, and occasionally they are contradictory. In those cases I rest in the notion that doctrine develops. I am thankful for the truths that Mason has uncovered and elucidated. I think she has brought us more light.
Blessings,
Art
Hi Art,
Thanks for a helpful and thought-provoking podcast! Prior to listening, I had accepted the claim that “Charlotte Mason is in the classical tradition” without giving it much thought. I wouldn’t say that I’m entirely convinced she didn’t develop her own unique contribution to that diverse tradition (I want to read Karen Glass’s book, Consider This and The Liberal Arts Tradition by Clark and Jain before forming an opinion on that, but if you have any other suggestions for essential reading to do on classical education and how CM does or does not fit within that tradition I am open to ideas!). However, I certainly agree that your podcast episode demonstrates she is not a classical educator as defined by Memoria Press. Ultimately I agree with Charlotte and you that our primary sources for developing a philosophy of education must be God’s special and general revelation above any human musings on that topic, although we can certainly also follow Charlotte’s example in learning from and joining the great conversation as it pertains to education.
I do have two questions. The first is about the liberal arts. If I remember correctly, you essentially agreed with the Classical Etcetera podcast that Charlotte Mason does not teach the 7 liberal arts, because she instead believes that those skills are in children by nature. However, she does teach English grammar and Latin (grammar), said that “every child should be trained to recognise fallacious reasoning and above all know that a man’s reason is his servant and not his master” (logic), advocated for “some definite teaching” in composition in the last few years of high school (rhetoric), and included instruction in arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music in her curriculum. I certainly agree that she approached these arts in very different ways from many (if not all) in the classical tradition, but could you elaborate on why you believe that she did not teach the 7 liberal arts, or point me to resources that would explain this to me?
My second question is about paideia. You contrasted the classical approach of paideia as “outside-in” with Mason’s “inside-out” approach (again, please forgive and correct if I am misremembering or misstating this contrast–I listened to this podcast episode broken up in several chunks over several days, so I am a little fuzzy on the exact wording), and you agreed with the Classical Etcetera podcast that Mason was not a proponent of paideia, of the intentional enculturation of children. However, isn’t paideia a biblical concept? This Greek word is used in Ephesians 6:4 to describe how fathers are to raise their children (“bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord”), in 2 Timothy 3:16 to describe how the Bible is profitable for us (“training in righteousness”), and in Hebrews 12:5-8 to describe God’s loving discipline of us as his children. Does Charlotte Mason ever address any of these verses and how they apply to education, especially Ephesians 6:4, since it directly addresses the duty of parents towards their children? In my reading of Charlotte Mason, I think she advocates for both an inside-out and an outside-in approach, not one or the other; I see the outside-in aspects of her educational philosophy in the three instruments of education (what are they but the intentional application of external elements to effect internal change?) and her emphasis on teaching citizenship through tales, fables, Plutarch, and reading her book, Ourselves. What are your thoughts on the biblical concept of paideia and Charlotte Mason? Any resources you would recommend on this topic?
Sarah,
Thank you for listening to this episode and asking these questions. Regarding your first question, it is important to understand what is meant by art and science in classical education theory; in this model, the arts are the tools necessary for acquiring knowledge and the sciences are the bodies of knowledge themselves. This understanding is correctly explained in the Classical Et Cetera podcast and you can also read more about it in The Liberal Arts Tradition by Clark and Jain. I agree with the Classical Et Cetera panelists that Charlotte Mason does not encourage the sequencing of art before science. This does not mean that Mason did not encourage the teaching of grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy in one form or another. But recall that even public schools teach these subjects. The simple fact that public schools require instruction in grammar and geometry does not mean that they should be considered forms of classical education. To do so essentially destroys the term classical education as a meaningful label for a discrete philosophy of education.
Similarly, the word paideia in the Greek New Testament is the general word for upbringing or education, and it means “the whole training and education of children.” There is no other word that Paul could have used to convey the sense of education by fathers. But not all education is classical education. Similarly, not all paideia in the Greek language refers to the specific concept of paideia as defined in classical education theory. Paul uses a verb form of the word paideia to describe his own upbringing in Jerusalem in Acts 22:3 at the feet of Gamaliel. His was a thoroughly Jewish education, not an implementation of the Greco-Roman model advanced by classical education theorists. (Acts 7:22 also uses a form of the word paideia to describe Moses’s learning in Egypt.)
When you ask whether Charlotte Mason ever addresses the ideas in verses such as Ephesians 6:4, I would answer that her first two volumes, Home Education and Parents and Children, are heavily focused on the duty of parents to their children. Interestingly, Mason points to Rousseau, not Plato, as a prophetic voice that awakened parents to this duty (see p. 1 of Parents and Children). But what the Classical Et Cetera panelists recognized, and I wholeheartedly agree with their assessment, is that the form of education described by Mason does not conform to the description of paideia as understood in classical education theory.
If you do read Consider This by Karen Glass, please also read my review of the book (and my response to a rebuttal). To better understand classical education, I do think The Liberal Arts Tradition by Clark and Jain is helpful. I also think Norms & Nobility by David Hicks is helpful (see my review here). I think it is hard for one to read those two books and imagine that they advance the same philosophy as Miss Mason.
Blessings,
Art