CMP Review 2024-09-19

September 19, 2024

When Charlotte Mason explains what she means by “Education is the Science of Relations,” she says that “our business is not to teach [the child] all about anything, but to help him to make valid as many as may be of—‘Those first-born affinities That fit our new existence to existing things.’”

The image is that the child comes into the world with certain built-in affinities. These embryonic affinities have great potential. But they are also quite fragile. We want to help our child turn those affinities into life-long relationships and life-long loves.

The explanation includes a quotation. Mason does not tell us the source; she assumes we will know it. I was told that it was from William Wordsworth. It is a beautiful line, but little did I know “that this dear prize of mine was but a block hewn from a mighty quarry.”

Reading The Prelude and finding this line in context gave me a deeper appreciation for Mason’s twelfth principle. One of our first-born affinities is for poetry, and one way we make it valid is through recitation. It has been a joy for my son and me to store this passage our hearts. We cannot memorize the whole quarry. But we can hold on to this prize forever.

@artmiddlekauff