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Charlotte Mason in Modern English

Charlotte Mason's ideas are too important not to be understood and implemented in the 21st century, but her Victorian style of writing sometimes prevents parents from attempting to read her books. This is an imperfect attempt to make Charlotte's words accessible to modern parents. You may read these, print them out, share them freely--but they are copyrighted to me, so please don't post or publish them without asking.
~L. N. Laurio


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Chapter 4 - Some of the Rights of Children as Persons

Children Should Be Free in Their Play

We've just finished discussing how right and wise it is to include 'wise passiveness' or 'masterly inactivity' in our plan of bringing up our children. Now we need to look at the different areas of a child's life where we should use 'masterly inactivity.' The first area is in the child's play. In these days when there's so much emphasis on education, we risk crowding out time to play, or, just as bad, managing and arranging it until children have no more choice in the way they play than they do in their work. We have nothing against the educational value of games. We know that there's a lot to be learned from sports. The qualities we think of when we think of an English gentleman are mostly learned from such games. There's a move to bring these games with their benefits to girls, so that they too can grow up with a concept of abiding by rules, moral stamina, and resourcefulness that usually result from playing organized sports.

Organized Sports are Not Play

Although there are benefits to organized

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sports, they are not the same as playing in the sense we're talking about. Children need time to make up episodes, carry on pretend adventures, live heroic lives, lay sieges and defend forts, even if the fort is only an old armchair. Adults must not interfere or tell the children what to play. They need to accept the fact that this is something they don't understand, and, even more, their very presence carries the cold breath of reality that makes the pretend illusion dissipate and fade away. Think what it must be like for a commanding general leading his soldiers when some intruder into his play-world tells him to tie his shoes! There's an idea going around that children need to be taught how to play--and that we need to teach them to pretend how to be little fishies and lambs and butterflies [Froebel's novel idea called 'kindergarten!'] Children undoubtedly enjoy these games that are made up for them, but they carry a risk. A child who gets used to crutches may never learn to walk on his own. Children who spend a lot of time playing with grown-ups won't learn to create their own games and make believe, so they miss the education that comes from being allowed to go their own way and live

'As if his whole job
Was continual imitation.'

Personal Initiative in Work

Even in children's work, adults tend to interfere too much. We all know how much personal initiative is valued and how much children love doing anything that they're allowed to do their own way. They love doing anything that gives room for building skills, using their imagination, or developing their thinking ability. Our current philosophies of education don't leave much room for children to have any personal initiative. There's so much busy work to be finished, so many things that need to be learned about (but not really learned), that it's only

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rarely that a child gets an opportunity to create anything himself. We should use opportunities as they come up. At the School Field at Hackney (1884–1905), Edmund Beale Sargent tried an interesting and eye-opening experiment. He got eighty children together much like any other elementary school except that he personally paid for his school instead of it being funded by educational taxes or private tuition. The results were wonderful. The students learned to draw very well. That's probably because, as soon as they could outline the flower and leaves of a specific plant, they were encouraged to create designs using those shapes. After just a short period of art training, these children were able to create truly beautiful floral designs that might surprise other parents whose children have had years of art training but still can't draw. These students at School Field produced much of their own school magazine, too. They wrote stories, poems and essays--not because it was assigned as school work, but because they wanted to. Their minds had been stimulated to think so that they felt like they had something to say about topics like a doll's ball, or Peter, the school cat. They experienced the feeling of thinking and creating for themselves. Our failure in education is largely due to the fact that we carry our children through their school work instead of letting them expend their own effort and concentration.

Children Need To Succeed or Fail by Their Own Efforts

There's another way that we don't leave children alone enough to do their work, and this is even more in our control. We prod them constantly and don't let

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them stand or fall as a result of their own efforts. One of the characteristics (and disastrous features) of modern society is that we've become lazy and dependent on being prodded. We've encouraged a whole system of various prods to get us to do anything. We have to be prodded to do our social duties. If we help support a charitable institution, we expect to be reminded when it's time to pay. If we go to an event, do we go on our own because we've decided we want to, or do we go because someone else asked us to and reminded us of the day and time a half dozen times? Maybe the odd division of labor is a result of our hurried lives--our society seems to be divided into those who prod, and those who are prodded [prodders and proddees?] I don't mean that some people do nothing but pressure everyone else about everything, and some people just suffer under the pressure. What's more accurate is that all of us prod in some situations, and all of us are prodded in others. An occasional prick to remind us can be healthy and stimulating, but the sluggishness of human nature makes us more willing to lean against a wall that has spikes than to stand unsupported in our strength! When we train children, we need to be careful that they don't get into the habit of needing to be reminded to do every one of their duties, and prodded to make any kind of effort. Our entire educational structure is mostly a system of prods. A system of prods is likely to obscure a child's sense of 'must' and 'ought' if he gets used to mentally and morally resisting prods.

Children are Generally Dutiful

It would be better for children to suffer the consequences of not doing their work from time to time, rather than to always do their work because they were so urged and prodded from all sides that they were never given a choice in the matter. The more

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we're prodded, the lazier we get and the less we're able to expend the effort of our will, which is supposed to get us started on our tasks and help us follow through and complete them. Children are, for the most part, good enough to want to do what they should. If we expect a chore to be done at a certain time without urging, pleading, rewarding or punishing, nine times out of ten, it will be done. The mistake that many of us make is in relying on our own wisdom and our own efforts instead of trusting the dutiful impulse within our children that will carry them through the work that's expected of them.

Children Should Choose Their Own Friends

When it comes to choosing friends and people to hang out with, we should train children so that we'll feel we can trust them with a generous confidence. If we give them that kind of confidence, we'll find that they will be worthy of it. If Franklin has started spending time with Haskell Jones and Haskell isn't a very nice boy, Franklin will figure that out as quickly as his mother if he's left alone. He'll probably come and ask for advice and suggestions for getting out of a friendship that he doesn't feel comfortable with. But if the parents ban Haskell and forbid Franklin from doing things with him, or put different boundaries on what they can do together, then Franklin, if he's a kind-hearted child, will feel bound in honor to side with his friend. As a result, a friendship that might have been easily discarded becomes cemented. Emily won't understand why she, as the daughter of an upper middle class family, shouldn't make friends with Melissa, who sits next to her at school and is from a lower-class neighborhood. But these are minor issues and should be left to chance. A mother who questions her children's choice of friends on the basis of outward things like social class or appearance

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is clouding the consideration of the more important issue of character, which is the most common cause of ruined lives. In this matter, just like other matters, the parent's inactivity must be masterly. In other words, the child should be able to tell whether his parents would approve or disapprove, and he should be able to base that on general principles of character and conduct, even though his parents never say anything or even give disapproving looks about this week's new buddy.

Children Should Be Free To Spend Their Own Pocket Money

Spending pocket money is one more opportunity to give children initiative and give parents practice in restraining themselves. The father who distributes the weekly pocket money has probably never given his children any principles about handling money--namely, that no matter how small an income is, it can be divided into a portion to give away, a portion to keep, and some to save so that after a few weeks or months, there's enough to buy something that's really worth having. As far as wasting money on treats, that should be a rare indulgence, and only if we're going to be sharing it. As far as thinking carefully before making a purchase, the lesson of Rosamund and the Purple Jar will be useful. If a father hasn't taught his children these things, then he shouldn't be surprised when his children think of money merely as a way to indulge themselves. Lessons like these shouldn't have any bearing on the week's pocket money. That should be theirs to spend however they want, after they've had some instruction about handling money. Little by little, weekly allowance should include the cost of belts and scarves until, finally, when a girl is

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in her late teens, she can be trusted with her own allowance for clothing and personal expenses. If a parent can't trust their older child with money after training them, then they haven't properly prepared their child to survive in a world where wise, fair and generous handling of money is a mark of character.

Children Should Form Their Own Opinions

We only have room to mention one more area where we should practice 'masterly inactivity.' There are compelling issues being discussed these days, controversial opinions burning in people's minds--issues of religion, politics, science, literature, art, every kind of social project, and we all tend to have strong opinions. A person who hasn't kept abreast of the latest evolution of thought in the world about these matters should be ashamed of himself. It's our responsibility to form opinions carefully, and to hold them loyally unless facts persuade us to change our mind. But we have no right to pass these opinions on to our children. It's so easy to make strong partisan followers of our children, at least children who appear to be loyal. But with every action comes an equal and opposite reaction, and the swinging of the pendulum will probably carry our children to the totally opposite opinion of ours. The mother of the Newmans [probably Huegenot Jemima Fourdrinier, mother of Cardinal John Henry Newman and atheist Charles Robert Newman] was a devoted evangelical. When they were children, she passed her ready-made opinions over to her sons. Maybe she thought that the ideas they received from her on the matter was their own reasoned opinion. But when they were out from under her domineering influence, one allied himself with the Catholic Church in Rome,

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and another refused to have any restriction on his freedom to think and do what he wanted, so he chose to create his own creed, which was a rejection of God altogether. Perhaps this religious mother would have saved herself some grief if she had given her children the living principles of Christianity, which aren't matters of opinion. Then she could have let them accept her particular denomination as children without requiring that they believe that her evangelical opinion was the only real way of salvation.

In politics, too, children should be allowed to proud of their country and taught what their duties are. But it's best to keep them away from the partisan conflict of elections. Children are more likely to adopt their parent's opinions when they reach the age where they're ripe for forming opinions if their parent's opinions haven't been forced on them all their lives, when they were too inexperienced and lacked knowledge to form opinions for themselves. It's only by 'masterly inactivity,' or 'wise passiveness,' or capable 'letting alone' that a child can be trained

'To respect his conscience enough to let it rule him.'

Spontaneity

Being naturally good, as if spontaneously, is something we all admire. But, even in children, this grace isn't something inborn, like a native wild-flower. It's the result of training. It's the product of years of pleasant chats about the general principles of how we should act, and years of self-restraint from parents who were practicing 'masterly inactivity' to let their children work out those guidelines in their own lives as they saw fit. Parents have the ability to guide the direction that the next generation takes. Since they have such a big responsibility, they need to be even more careful [not to make their children mirror-images of themselves, but allow them to choose their own paths, live their own lives, decide what's best for themselves. The old ways of the parents must give way to the new ways of the next generation.]

'The old ways change and are replaced by new ones
And God fulfills Himself in many ways
So that one good custom doesn't corrupt the world.'
               [from Tennyson, The Passing of Arthur]



[One preacher noted about the Tennyson quote, 'It is ordained, the new generation must have their chance to test their ideas and skills.']



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Paraphrased by L. N. Laurio
Please direct any comments or questions to me by emailing me at cmseries-owner at yahoogroups dot com.



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