Some Thoughts on the Education of Children

By E. Kitching
The Parents’ Review, 1938, pp. 732–743

PART I.

Children up to School Age.^†

We have been asked to give in this pamphlet some brief indications of the help which Miss Mason offers to young parents in answer to the question, ‘How can we best prepare ourselves for the education of our children.’

The title ‘Up to School Age’ is used with intention. Education must be a ‘continual going forth of the mind,’ a continual progress towards that vision of the end which is enlarged in proportion as further nourishment is gathered for the mind. ‘Educāre’= to feed, to nourish.

Happy is the child whose parents have thought upon this counsel before his arrival, for in these exacting days when so much falls upon the mother’s shoulders there is little time for reading and not much for thought, and the mother must be furnished cap-à-pied with emergency remedies in thought and in deed to meet the constant and sudden raids that will be made upon her love, her knowledge, her forbearance, her sense of humour, and her patience. The reward is great for the mother who willingly gives herself up to the most important work in the world—the care and nurture of her children; and again happy is the child whose father takes a due share in this work.

It is a far cry from Tom or Mary, not yet one year old, to Tom and Mary at seventeen and eighteen, and yet never was there a time when it was more necessary for parents to get a far-reaching vision of education, above and beyond schooling, not only in its various aspects but as a whole. How far new theories of education are wise, how far the increase of scientific knowledge should alter or modify our practices, is not a question to be decided easily. Scientific thought comes and goes, and though the teaching of Science is a message of God to this age, the ‘results’ are often a matter for further experiment before they can be applied. In the meantime parents who do not follow a carefully thought out method of education, find it difficult to fulfil the claims their children have and make upon them.

‘Method implies two things—a way to an end, and step-by-step progress in that way. Further, the following of a method implies an idea, a mental image, of the end or object to be arrived at. What do you propose that education shall effect in and for your child? Again, method is natural; easy, yielding, unobtrusive, simple as the ways of Nature herself, yet watchful careful, all-pervading, all-compelling. Method, with the end of education in view, presses the most unlikely matters into service to bring about that end; but with no more tiresome mechanism than the sun employs when it makes the winds to blow and the waters to flow only by shining. The parent who sees his way—that is, the exact force of method—to educate his child, will make use of every circumstance of the child’s life almost without intention on his own part.’¹

‘In this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social, perhaps a mother’s first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet growing time, a full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it for the most part out in the fresh air.’²

‘The educational error of our day is that we believe too much in mediators. Now, Nature is her own mediator, undertakes herself to find work for eyes, ears, taste, and touch; she will prick the brain with problems and the heart with feelings; and the part of the mother or teacher in the early years (indeed all through life) is to sow opportunities and then to keep in the background, ready with a guiding or restraining hand only when these are badly wanted. Mothers shirk this work and put it, as they would say, into better hands than their own because they do not recognise that wise letting alone is the chief thing asked of them, seeing that every mother has in Nature an all-sufficient handmaid, who arranges for due work and due rest of mind, muscles and senses.’³

‘It is well he (a child) should be let grow and helped to grow according to his nature; and so long as the parents do not step in to spoil him, much good and no very evident harm comes of letting him alone. But this philosophy of “let him be,” while it covers a part, does not cover the serious part of the parents’ calling; does not touch the strenuous incessant efforts upon lines of law which go to the producing of a human being at his best.’⁴

And the child is not alone. Miss Mason perceived that, in the words of F. D. Maurice, ‘the family is the unit of the nation.’ Parents will together look before and after, and will each secure and contribute their own quota, if education is to be allowed to bring Tom and Mary to be their best, physically, mentally, morally and spiritually, providing for all their needs in the great relationships of life, to Man, to Nature and to God.

The home is the right and the best place for children—a place where the parents can share the quiet growing time and give them their first delightful intimacies with things and books, a place where (when the difference between autocracy and authority is recognised) the spirit of disciplined freedom makes the general atmosphere natural. In these busy days, it is not easy for parents to secure the sense of leisure with the serenity and faith which are necessary to wise government, but it is in the home that children may most easily be taught to face the discipline of life. Parents who know something beforehand of the child’s estate, his powers and his hindrances, will not be unduly uplifted when they see his wonderful sweetness and reasonableness, nor unduly alarmed when he gives way to temper, to deceit, to vindictiveness, to domineering ways, or when, after an illness, good habits fostered with much patience, seem to have taken wings. Upon the parents’ attitude to these tendencies, both good and bad, and to such as these, will depend the growth in grace in the years to come of Tom and of Mary.

Even before Tom and Mary are there to assert themselves, most parents know that much may be done in the way of preparation for them. But method, a way to an end, must always be borne in mind, the step-by-step progress, with a guiding principle to light the way. A system of observing certain rules to achieve certain results may succeed with a machine or at the gambling table, but even a machine may fail for weariness, and chance may wreck the rules evolved by the player. Method waits upon the growth of a living being, with an end in view, and upon principles which not only light the way but are adaptable to the circumstances of the moment: a principle is in touch with life and can pervade it.

For a knowledge of the child’s estate, parents are asked to turn to the pages of Home Education. ‘Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven’ is the one profound description we have of the child’s estate, and in Home Education Miss Mason shows how we are greatly helped in considering what we may do to educate children by knowing first what we are forbidden to do—‘offend’—‘despise’—‘hinder.’ She then goes on to consider the formation of habits in detail, as one of the assets we are allowed to give children. There are some chapters on early lessons (from six to nine), and the final section deals with the Will, the Conscience, and the Divine Life in the child from his earliest years.

Miss Mason had great faith in parents and believed that their individuality was a great possession for their children; she therefore hesitated to put forward directions and practical suggestions which might interfere with the true relations of parent and child.

‘But,’ she says, ‘our greatness as a nation depends upon how far parents take liberal and enlightened views of their high office. Mother love is not enough to secure for children that continual progress which is necessary if character is to be achieved.’ So in Parents and Children⁵ Miss Mason examines some of the principles which underlie the office of parents. The limitations and scope of authority are considered, also the provision of ideas upon which the children’s minds will grow as their bodies do upon food.

A child of nearly two will pull your hand with confidence in a strange place and say ‘ ’ook, ’ook,’ as he explores the ins and outs of his new home with its outbuildings, and this is his attitude to all that he meets in the world around him, both as regards persons and things. And his parents should be ready to go with him and let him look and satisfy his natural curiosity in the natural questions that follow. This is not always an easy task, for children must not be ‘hustled’ with information. Wise parents know when and where to fortify their children with just so much knowledge as they are likely to need for the present, realising that experience and knowledge must come gradually.

But a wide view of the whence and whither of education must be taken so that ideas may have time to grow and distinctive qualities opportunity to flourish; there must be time too for the training of the sensations and feelings and for the considered correction of defects of character. Parents need time to ponder upon the teaching of morals, the work of faith and duty, and above all the things of the Spirit for they stand as revealers of God to their children.

Even children untaught in religious matters will ask questions about God, and many children will express very candid opinions, moralise, criticise their elders, say ‘Why shouldn’t I?’; they will feel interest in, and superior to, that ‘naughty little boy,’ show extraordinary powers, for example, of sympathy, pity, goodwill, a sense of justice. But in all these matters they need the helping hand of their parents, both as regards the knowledge convenient for them and definite training lest the rough and rude winds of life catch the tiny sails hoisted and submerge the delicate craft with its little captain.

In the pamphlet ‘Children are born Persons’⁶ come further considerations of the child’s estate, and Miss Mason discusses the various forms of tyranny which militate against the freedom that is due to children.

In School Education⁷ Miss Mason deals with ‘Masterly Inactivity’ (Chapter III) and the necessary qualities it calls forth on the part of parents; like peace it is not absence of action but has constructive and abiding power. It waits upon knowledge, the self-revealing knowledge, of a child, bearing in mind the old saying (marginal reading) ‘Train up a child in his way’ (his nature and his gifts), ‘and when he is old he will not depart from it.’

This and much other knowledge the waiting parents may ponder until they come to the happy if anxious time when they are face to face with their own child, when Baby’s own point of view must be considered. The supply of nourishment, food and love, is not enough without thought that ponders upon the fact, for example, that Tommy, under one, is so entirely different from what Mary was at the same age; that Mary at twelve months was in some respects in advance and in others behind Tommy; that each child from the first is like his father, or his mother, or one of his forbears, in this or that physical feature, and, later, in his ways. Here is the parents’ opportunity to cultivate with love and patience the habits which both Tom and Mary need, and upon which they may achieve character. There are, too, later traits of character which Tommy must be brought to practise, and tendencies (of which the parents are often only too conscious as their own feelings) which must be starved out in Tommy. Mary, who screams at two until she gets her own way, may become an unpleasantly managing woman; Tommy, who sulks and is silent, a morbid, self-pitying man; Tim, at three, always wants to see the wheels go round, and prefers some such occupation to his food, for which he never seems hungry; while John, at two, is always hungry for his meals, likes making a noise, splashing in water, for example, when Tim would rather throw stones and watch what happens. ‘He has such a strong will’ is sometimes a description of what is really obstinacy, that is, the paralysing of the will by the obsession of one idea, when Tom cannot make himself do what he ought.

But the small boy who from an early age can hammer a piece of wood or help in the garden beside his father, and the small girl who can ‘help’ mother in the house, and both Tom and Mary who can look forward to an evening hour of stories and games, are saved from many handicaps which come to children who are sometimes homeless in their homes.

Again, wise parents realise that they must be on the watch lest they should encroach upon the respect due to children by constant admonition, undue praise, unwanted suggestions as to how to do things which the children have already learned to do quite well; by making the most of every opportunity for moral suggestions on the example set, for instance, by other ‘good’ children; by suggestions that the child should appreciate or pity when his experience is not yet ready for it. Happily brought up children learn gradually from the parents’ own attitudes of sympathy, love, kindness, but such lessons must be unconsciously learned; they are part of the natural and proper atmosphere in which a child should live.

‘Change his thoughts,’ we say, with regard to a baby, and so too there are opportunities for presenting an idea later on; when, for instance, a child needs his thoughts changed, he may be taken out of a self-pitying frame of mind by the thought of the needs of children who are less well off than himself; and, as his small world enlarges, he is taught of the great and good deeds of noble men and women. But long before this is possible, children will show signs of dispositions of mind which it may tax mother or father to the utmost to deal with, signs of jealousy, resentment, domination, cruelty, for which apparently there is no cause, but which the mother must watch and guard against and even nurse her child against, as she would nurse him through an attack of measles. Parents who have helped to form habits of mind or of body in their children have the comfort of knowing that such habits have the assistance of bodily, if invisible, nerve structure. So too parents who have supplied food for the mind as well as for the body have the assurance that they are putting their children in possession of that ‘expulsive power of a new affection’ which does such wonderful rescue work in time of temptation. Parents who know, too, that a child is able to deal with the mental food proper for him are careful to provide that which is various and life-giving for the mind, just as they are careful in choosing various and life-giving food for his body. And though ‘table manners’ are necessary, Tommy is as able to deal with what feeds his mind as with his bodily food.

Every father and mother can tell of the amazing powers of young children in perceiving, apprehending and making use of knowledge.

Rosanna (aged eighteen months) was out in her ‘pram’ in September and was offered a bit of Dutch clover to smell. She did so and then with a beaming smile blew upon it, evidently remembering that in the previous March she had been shown how to blow a head of dandelion seeds.

Tommy (aged six) is very strict with the teller of stories who is not allowed to omit or alter anything in the version of the story first heard.

Dick (aged six) sometimes offers his own solution to a question. ‘How could God make the world in six days, Mummy?’ And ‘Mummy’ perplexed and wise, says she must think about it. Dick later, ‘I know, a thousand years with God is as one day, and one day as a thousand years.’

John (aged eight) had been told that in this world it was not possible for everyone to have the same as everyone else, and after much pondering he said: ‘Yes, I see that justice is not always equality.’

George (aged four), was heard to say to May (aged six) the other day: ‘What type of mother have you. Is she short and fat and old’? George’s mother is very charming and the opposite in all these respects.

So education does not start without a foundation; the child is a person, a whole person with all the powers latent that he ever will have. Therefore education must advance altogether if it advance at all. One-sided development will leave other sides maimed. ‘Wisdom is justified of all her children’ and varied knowledge in many directions is as necessary for the growth of the mind as varied food for the body.

·····

Miss Mason called her latest book An Essay towards a Philosophy of Education, a word that has lost much of its meaning to-day, the modern conception of a philosopher being a specialist interested in certain branches of abstract thought.

‘We must remember,’ says Sir R. W. Livingstone, ‘the literal meaning of the word, “love of wisdom,” and envisage the sort of person whom Plato had in mind when he said that the philosopher was “a man ready and eager to taste every kind of knowledge, who addresses himself to its pursuit joyfully and with an insatiable appetite,” and that “the mood of the philosopher is wonder; there is no other source of philosophy than this.” There are no restrictions on the appetite of the “philosopher” for knowledge; science, history, metaphysics, every branch of study, fascinate him, excite his curiosity, awake his “wonder,” and stir him to press on, by their means but beyond them, to something higher still than knowledge—wisdom.’⁸

And it was with this far-reaching vision of education as wisdom—a philosophy of life, that Miss Mason drew up the short synopsis of her philosophy and dealt with it in detail—a chapter to each clause—in her Essay towards a Philosophy of Education. In this book parents who desire to read further will find the summary of her theory and practice which she left in manuscript at the end of her life.

So to the words of Juvenal, ‘Let us pray that the spirit in a healthy body may be healthy,’ let us add our knowledge that the spirit is there, and a prayer that we may never ‘despise,’ ‘hinder,’ or ‘offend’ it.

‘Weigh his estate and thine: accustom’d, he,
To all sweet courtly usage that obtains
Where dwells the King. How, with thy utmost pains,
Canst thou produce what shall full worthy be?

One “greatest in the kingdom” is with thee,
Who all-unhindered sees the Father’s face,
And thence replenished glows with constant grace:
Take fearful heed lest he despisèd be!

Order thy goings softly, as before
A Prince; nor let thee out unmannerly
In thy rude moods and irritable: more,
Beware lest round him wind of words rave free:

Refrain thee; see thy speech be sweet and rare;
Thy ways, considered, and thine aspect, fair.’

C. M. Mason.

We constantly receive letters from mothers who would like their children aged between four and five to join the Parents’ Union School, and we need to remind ourselves that children deprived of a quiet growing time suffer later when ‘lessons’ should begin, showing signs of a lack of vitality or a want of concentration, ‘so unlike what R. used to be’; but these signs are an indication that R. has been living at too great a speed. Again, we are told that B. at 4½ is quite able to do as much as J. at six, that he is indeed quicker in some ways. There is no doubt about it; B. has ‘lived up to’ J. in everything. J. has not had anyone but his mother or nurse—a very different matter! But B. must still have his quiet growing time, especially as in any case he works harder up to the age of six than he will at any other period of his life. He should still enjoy the nursery freedom; he should still have ‘occupations’ but not lessons.

A child should enter the P.U.S. at six ready for the serious work of ‘lessons.’ His early years should have prepared him as regards the discipline of habit and the joy of life out of doors; he should also have learned that knowledge is desirable and he should understand something of what it means to say ‘Our Father.’

It should be remembered that home discipline is attained in the formation of habits. There should be no so-called ‘lessons’ in the nursery. ‘Occupations’ is the word Miss Mason used, and for these no time-table should be set and there should be a sense of much freedom both in the manner and matter of ‘What shall we do next?’ Again, just as the best-loved toys are the simplest in construction because they give full scope to a child’s imagination, so all material used should be of the simplest kind. ‘Apparatus’ should be avoided. A children’s special ‘hour’ should be a time of happy occupation and should be arranged at a time when the children cannot be out of doors. Stories, pictures, materials of all kinds are necessary because the provision must be no less liberal of its kind than that for an older child.

In addition to the use of Miss Mason’s books, upon which this leaflet is written, parents will find many useful suggestions in Children and the Stress of Life, by Dr. Helen Webb (P.N.E.U., 3/6). She writes of the possibilities of gaining stability for children in the rush of life, showing why small things matter; that the stress of life has its uses and its evils; and that change of thought is an important factor in bringing about right conduct in the nursery.

In Appendix I books are also suggested as giving help in modern methods of dealing with the physical care of children, clothes, food, ailments, accidents, preventive measures, as indicated in the list. From these books, too, may be secured wise advice upon the handicaps from which some children suffer, such as speech and sight defects, clumsiness, over-sensitiveness, and other nervous handicaps, which are not always recognised at first for what they are.

It is possible that some parents and teachers may welcome a few suggestions⁹ as to suitable books and things, for the nursery and playroom, though in these days the supply is usually abundant and easily obtained. The suggestions cover a wide field and may be varied in many ways. Classification according to age is little indicated, as so much depends upon the individual child. Cheaper books and materials may be had, but little children should have large, well illustrated books and make models with good material, and in the case of clay, they should make large models. (See Appendices II and III.)

In continuing the education of boys and girls after the first six years of preparation, Miss Mason provided the work of the Parents’ Union School, dealing with the education of children and young people up to the age of eighteen. Children who have learned to work independently use their various powers freely upon the assimilation of knowledge, but as the claims of schooling become more and more exigeant and more complicated, the need of continued definite training as well as schooling becomes more urgent, lest the early promise should lose its bloom. To this end, Miss Mason wrote Ourselves,¹⁰ a book which can be put into the hands of boys and girls; but long before this, it is of use to parents in showing how a child may be prepared gradually to ‘weigh his own estate’ and to learn the management of it. The two parts of Ourselves deal with self-direction and self-knowledge.

Part II of this pamphlet will deal with the further aspect of the work, in connection with the Parents’ Union School, the assimilation of knowledge, the Way of the Will, and the Way of the Reason, all of which coming to young people under the direction of the teaching power of the Spirit of God, should carry them on towards their vocation in some form of useful and happy service.

Endnotes

^† Reprints of this article may be had from the P.N.E.U. Office. (Price 6d.)

¹ Home Education, by C. M. Mason (P.N.E.U. Office, 5/6), p. 8.

² Home Education, p. 43.

³ Home Education, p. 192.

⁴ Home Education, p. 5.

⁵ Parents and Children (P.N.E.U. Office, 3/6).

⁶ (P.N.E.U. Office, 6d.)

⁷ School Education. (P.N.E.U. Office, 5/-.)

⁸ Portrait of Socrates, Introduction, p. lii (Dent, 6/-).

⁹ Appendices I, II and III can be obtained at the P.N.E.U. Office by members.

¹⁰ Ourselves (P.N.E.U. Office, 7/6).

Editor’s Note: The formatting of the above article was optimized for online viewing. To access a version which is formatted more similarly to the original, and which includes the original page numbers, please click here.