Education is an Atmosphere, a Discipline, a Life

I am re-reading some of Charlotte Mason's original writings, again. Though I have known Cm's writings for over 10 years now, they always refresh my thoughts. I have her six volumes on my bookshelf, but was pleased to see they are now all on line.

You can find them here.

One of my favorite tenants of hers was the motto:
Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.

As I read her words from Volume Six, Towards a Philosophy of Education, I found her ideas as poignant and true as ever.

A passage from Volume Six, page 94:

"Seeing that we are limited by the respect due to the personality of children we can allow ourselves but three educational instruments. The atmosphere of environment, the discipline of habit and the presentation of living ideas. Our motto is, educationtion is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.' When we say that education is an atmosphere we do not mean that a child should be isolated in what may be called a 'child environment' specially adapted and prepared, but that we should take into account the educational value of his natural home atmosphere both as regards persons and things and should let him live freely among his proper conditions. It stultifies a child to bring down his world to the 'child's' level."

I see that we are 'limited' to the personality of the child. But truly, this is not a limitation. It puts us on a track to discover who is this child that God made? We cannot change their personality and why would we? Cm saw children as born persons. She saw that we have three tools to help them learn, to make connections.

We can create an atmosphere- a postive emotional atmosphere that encourages the child and learning. I loved how she also wrote that there can be an atmosphere that encourages questions, inquiry, learning. One where asking questions is the norm and adults will mostly answer if they can juggle the current demands! And an atmosphere is rich with ideas.. books, movies, music, conversation, ideas. A place we want to be where learning happens.

And when I read that paragraph from Cm, I see that she sees the value of our children being in the real world. They don't need contrived situations. We need not 'stultify' the child.. I love that word! I think I will use it on someone tomorrow and see if they look confused. lol

Anyway, I see that our children can learn from real people: our priest, our neighbor, our relative, our grocer. They can make connections with all the happenings in this real world. I see it happen every day. I wonder if my grocer would know what stultify means? Humm... how could I work this into a conversation?

Oh.. I could go on and on but I won't. I think I'll go read some more Charlotte.