CMP Review 2024-08-20

August 20, 2024

Charlotte Mason said that “we are limited to three educational instruments—the atmosphere of environment, the discipline of habit, and the presentation of living ideas.”

When explaining the first instrument — education as an atmosphere — Miss Mason was careful to explain that this should not be an artificial “child-environment.” Rather, we should “let [the child] live freely among his proper conditions.” We get a picture of masterly inactivity where a child is free to roam in his “his natural home atmosphere.”

But in the decades since Mason wrote these words, the “natural home atmosphere” has become filled with things that are not normally considered natural. Liquid crystal displays on more than a dozen devices in the average American home project video and imagery captured real-time from all over the world. Words and ideas of every provenance and ideology are no more than a tap away. Flowers and fauna face stiff competition for the attention of children of every age.

What should masterly inactivity look like now? Joan Molyneux lived in two worlds. Born to a PNEU family and taught at the House of Education, she learned the Charlotte Mason method in a mostly tech-free world. But by the 1970s she was beginning to live in our world. A world of technology and screens. So she clarified the Mason method for her new world. And that world is ours.

And what did Miss Molyneux advise for the atmosphere of education in our era? An atmosphere that envisions children in nature and painting in nature notebooks even in a world full of screens. Read or hear her vision here.

@artmiddlekauff