Greek in Public School, conclusion

Previously

This is an article taken from volume II of the Parents' Review, edited by Charlotte Mason.  The author is Oscar Browning.  All the Parents' Review articles we find are freely made available to the general public at Ambleside’s website. 

Oscar Browning has been talking about the benefits of a study for both character development and scholarly learning, and he says “I know of no study which produces such results as history, if only the history be properly taught,’ and that is where I quite typing. He continues,

“Even in the lower classes the frivolous boy is turned by it into a thoughtful man. The reason for this is not far to seek. It is essentially a manly study. The schoolboy coming to the University if he takes to classics has merely to repeat the exercises of this childhood; if he takes to history he is plunged at once into those studies and those considerations on which the most mature men are accustomed to exercise their minds. History may, of course, by bad teaching be turned into a mere exercise of the memory. But if the political side is kept clearly in view and the student is made to trace events to their cause, to explain the present by the past, to distinguish in the records of ancient times what is permanent from what is temporary, what is essential from what is accidental, he must acquire a robustness of intellect which few other studies can give. It also calls out what I before described as the highest organon of thought- the power of balancing probabilities. In history there is no certainty either or prediction or of judgment, or even of the relation of facts. “Do not read history to me,” said Bolingbroke; “I know that must be false.” False it is , tried by the test of science; true in the highest sense if measured by that standard of probability which is the only criterion within the grasp of weak and fallible man.

This modern literary training, based on the highest use of language, culminating sometimes in history and sometimes in philosophy, will , I believe, be the training of the future, if in the future the highest intellectual training is to exist at all. Let us therefore begin it it as well as we can. Science is claiming every day a larger scope; she is spreading her influence far and wide over the land, extinguishing fancy, imagination, and belief, hardening the mind against those eternal voices which can only be heard in whispers. If we would protect mankind from a mental leprosy whose influence may last for centuries, we must call to our aid all the assistance which literature in its widest sense can give us. It will be obvious from what I have said that while I believe most strongly that Greek should continue to be an essential part of classical education wherever that is pursued, yet I think that literary education, of which classical education is a branch, cannot hold its own against the advancing tide of science unless it call to its aid the literature and the literary thought of the modern world, and this can be done by establishing a new kind of literary education in which not only Greek, but perhaps also Latin, has no place. I should therefore, wish to see some substitute for Greek admitted at our Universities, but such a substitute as would ensure that it was given up not out of mere indolence or indifference to culture, but from the desire to pursue some other worthy object of study with effective industry. The substitute for it should be either a competent knowledge of French and German taken together, or of mathematics and sciences. I trust that what I have said, if it does not command assent, will at least suggest ample topics for discussion.*”

And the editor, Charlotte Mason, attaches this comment to the conclusion of the article, “Discussion is invited.- Ed.

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Charlotte Mason, Education, and Ideas over Faculties

There are a couple of things to keep in mind while reading Charlotte Mason. One of them is that she liked to be gracious and to fairly represent the ideas of others, including their good points. So when she’s about to reject an idea, she first spends several pages explaining all the good points behind that particular theory and why we owe a debt of gratitude to its principle proponent. Only then does she go on to say, “but the idea is flawed, I disagree with it, and here is why.”  She's also seldom that direct about it, although she does have some delightful moments.

Another thing to keep in mind is that she did not develop her principles in a vacuum, out of thin air, or out of her head with no reason behind them. Her principles are the result of careful consideration of educational ideas, theories, and practices she had studied or seen applied in school practices then in place.

Over the course of her life she honed her education method and ideas into a statement of 20 principles (that’s the number in the preface of her final volume on education, book 6, ‘Towards a Philosophy of Education).  Previous books had a different number. You can read her final list of 20 principles in the preface of volume 6, and I recommend that you do, and many times. After you've read that a few times, know that the first several chapters of volume 6 each address one of the principles, expanding on the theory behind it.

Each of her principles is a statement in favor of one idea, and at the same time, a rejection of another, prevailing idea of the day.  As she explains her educational philosophy, she is also stating how her education differed from that of educational models of the day- and sometimes what Miss Mason took issue with was not so much the ideas as originated by the initial philosopher, but as applied and practiced by educators of her day.

Consider these principles in particular:

9. We hold that the child’s mind is no mere sac to hold ideas; but is rather, if the figure may be allowed, a spiritual organism, with an appetite for all knowledge. This is its proper diet, with which it is prepared to deal; and which it can digest and assimilate as the body does foodstuffs.

10. Such a doctrine as e.g. the Herbartian, that the mind is a receptacle, lays the stress of education (the preparation of knowledge in enticing morsels duly ordered) upon the teacher. Children taught on this principle are in danger of receiving much teaching with little knowledge; and the teacher’s axiom is,’ what a child learns matters less than how he learns it.”

11. But we, believing that the normal child has powers of mind which fit him to deal with all knowledge proper to him, give him a full and generous curriculum; taking care only that all knowledge offered him is vital, that is, that facts are not presented without their informing ideas. Out of this conception comes our principle that,––

To truly understand what she means by principal 11, we have to take into account that first word- but. That ‘but’ implies a rejection of something previously mentioned, and we find that in the previous principle, where she mentions Herbartian philosophy.

One popular idea she is flatly contradicting in principle 11 is that the ‘faculties’ need to be developed, and this was best done by intensive instructor led education. As I understand it, the idea was that the child had no capacity, no real appetite for knowledge itself, but had to be coaxed along and trained to *create* the individual faculties before he could use them.

CM is saying that this faculty development is a waste of time- the child is already prepared to learn, his ‘faculties’ are intact, a whole- he doesn’t need training in how to develop them any more than a normal child needs training in how to use his legs, what he lacks is _knowledge_ and _ideas_- later she adds ‘clothed in literary language.’ She says the children are fully equipped- that is because some educators of her day believed the children were not equipped, or to spell that out, did not have the mental equipment they needed to learn. These people were insisting that what was most important was to help the children develop and build their mental equipment, and later give them the knowledge they needed.

Charlotte, IMO, is saying that she does not believe we need to build their mental equipment for them- it’s already there, ready to go, simply waiting for the material appropriate for it.

I think she didn’t really believe in the ‘faculties,’ but also felt that, at any rate, if they did exist, the best way to develop them was to give the child knowledge and ideas, rather than tiny, isolated facts.

She talks in one of her books about how impertinent, dangerous, and interfering it would be to constantly be inspecting the child’s digestive system to make sure it was working properly, or to try to separate the functions and strengthen each one individually.

Instead, we give the child healthy, nourishing food, and trust the digestive process to take care of itself. In the same way, she suggests we give the children healthy,
nourishing, generous material for him to set his mind upon, and let the faculty development take care of itself- in, again, ‘normal’ children. She acknowledges some children will need special help, just as some children need special assistance to learn to walk.

I think she also believed that the balance was skewed and was trying to correct it- that the student was the one who needed to be doing the mental work, but with the apperception mass nonsense floating around, the teachers ended up doing all the work and making all the connections for the student- about as helpful as moving a normal child’s legs for him to help him walk. They needed to let go of his mental legs and give him plenty of space and opportunities to walk and interesting places to explore on his own two feet- if that makes any sense at all.

If the child already has the powers of mind which fit him to deal all that knowledge, then we have no need to ‘educate the faculties,’ to teach them *how* to learn. This would be about as useful and productive an activity as it would to create a special, child-world which will ‘enable’ them to walk.
Both are superfluous.

Normal children (and as a mother of a disabled child, I appreciate the distinction Charlotte makes) will walk. All we need to do is get out of their way, make sure the places they walk are safe, give them many opportunities to walk and make sure _we_ do not hinder their walking through unnatural interventions.
Normal children do not need their minds ‘developed.’ They do not need special programs designed to help their brains develop. They need for us to get out of their way, to make sure the places they learn are safe,give them many opportunities to learn, and they need us to be sure we do not hinder their minds through unnaturalinterventions (some of which have been addressed in other principles and other posts- things like t.v., performance style teaching, unit studies based on unnatural and contrived connections, etc).

Charlotte Mason disagreed with this theory about education being necessary for children to develop their ‘mental faculties,’ and while she tried to be gentle about her disagreements most of the time,  in volume 3 Miss Mason came right out and said that the whole idea about developing these separate ‘faculties of the mind’ was a “pestilent fallacy which has, perhaps, been more injurious than any other to the cause of education.”

Shreds of this theory have come down to us as ‘it doesn’t matter what a child learns as long he learns how to learn. She dismissed that idea once by pointing out it was about as sensible as saying it doesn’t matter what we eat so long we learn HOW to eat. Of course what we learn is vitally important- both in food for the body and food for the soul. As a sidenote, I have come to realize that when people say “it
doesn’t matter what our children learn as long as they learn how to learn”- well, most of the time, if you ask, they aren't even sure what they mean.  Something hazy about being open minded, and if they have any specifics at all, usually, the ‘learning’ they are talking about isn’t really learning at all- it is only research skills.

Charlotte Mason didn’t want to focus on the faculties, but on the whole child. She wanted children to receive vital knowledge, facts beautifully clothed in their informing ideas, the best result of a good education, she felt, was a person who cared about knowledge in as many fields as possible- broad and generous, to use her phrase.
And here is a simple means by which an education can be tested and assessed, weighed in the balance to see if what your children are getting is an education or merely a bunch of data. If their education can be ‘tested’ or measured through multiple
choice/ fill in the blank/true false testing, then it is probably NOT a living education, but merely a dreary introduction to facts.

If nothing less than an essay question (narration) is required to adequately repeat what one has learned, then there are probably some informing ideas in that education.

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Place of Greek in Modern Education, Part IV

Previously

Background- this article was originally published in the 1891/2 edition of the Parents’ Review edited by Charlotte Mason. The author is Oscar Browning.  All the Parents' Review articles we find are freely made available to the general public at Ambleside’s website. 

He has been discussing the place of Greek and Latin in a classical education and whether classical education as such should continue to hold the place it did in British public schools, but now he wishes to address another topic:

I must now pass to another subject. I mentioned above that there appeared to me to be four possible curricula in these modern days- the classical, the mathematical, the scientific, and the modern literary. The last of these has yet to be created; but I believe that if it were properly developed it would be found to be in educative effect and instructive value in no way inferior to the other three. A serious attempt was once made to introduce it during the Second French Empire by Napoleon III. and his minister of education, M. Duruy. It went by the name of Enseignement Secondaire Special. But there were great difficulties in the way. First, books had to be written for it. It was then discovered that there were no competent teachers, and a normal school had to be founded to provide the necessary instructors. The scheme had got no further when the Second Empire broke up, although I believe that something has been done to carry it by the present Republican Government.

The central idea of such an education is that it should fit a man for the problems and the work of modern life; that it should not be scientific nor mathematical, nor should it be professional. It should deal as classical education deals with that higher preparatory education which ought in every case to precede the professional or breadwinning training. A man disciplined in it would understand the best thought, the best literature, the best art of the day; he would be acquainted with the problems with which the wold has to deal- political, social, and moral; he would be cosmopolitan in taste and culture; he would be at home in any civilised country, and his interest in the life which he had to lead and the environment in which he would move would not be depressed and overweighted with the burden of an exhausted erudition.

There is nothing more remarkable than the general ignorance of classical scholars. It is difficult for them to put themselves in touch with the modern world. If you speak to them of politics they are apt to think that it is an animal in the Zoological Gardens. Grote was a politician before he was an historian, Gibbon acknowledges his obligations to his experience as a member of parliament, but Curtius, the German historian of Greece, is a mere scholar. He describes events by putting texts together, but he has no skill in animating events with the life of action. Heine visited Poland at the age of twenty-one, and wrote an account of that country which is said never to have been surpassed in truth and insight.

This is what I should like any scholar trained on modern lines to be able to do. He should have the linguistic facility of a Russian, the political understanding of an American, the erudition of a German, and the common-sense and sound judgment of an Englishman. Nothing should be thrown away in his education. Nothing should be regretted or thought better of when forgotten. He should not begin with a laborious scaffolding of a dead past. He should proceed from the known to the unknown. He should study the past only to understand the present better. I would of course begin with languages. He should learn French, German, and Italian, as many English children learn them from their nurses or their governesses. But as soon as I could I would make him aim at a scholar’s perfection. He should grind at grammar, and labour at translation and composition enough to satisfy the severest pedant. He should also be made to feel that the principal use of language is as a key to literature, that the power of mere speaking was a mere courier’s gift, and that the worth of language lies in its giving approach to the thoughts of men. He should know his Dante as well as a University scholar knows his Poetae Scenici. He should have studied with diligence and enthusiasm Goethe and Schiller, Racine and Pascal. But the main training of his mind I would draw from history, and especially political history.

I have now taught history at the University for about the same length of time as I had previously taught classics at school, and every year I have a stronger belief in it as a means of the higher education. Setting aside those students who have a marked aptitude for moral or natural science, or who are born classical scholars- and these classes form a small proportion of the whole- I know of no study which produces such results as history, if only the history be properly taught.

Sounds good to me.

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Place of Greek in Modern Education, III

Previously

Background- this article was originally published in the 1891/2 edition of the Parents’ Review edited by Charlotte Mason. The author is Oscar Browning.  All the Parents' Review articles we find are freely made available to the general public at Ambleside’s website.  This one should be there by now as well.  He continues:

But the question is not whether Greek shall be reduced in our schools to the position of Hebrew, but whether it is to remain compulsory on all who proceed to a University of education. To decide this we must take a survey of the present condition of knowledge. All education which is worth the name conduces to a definite end. But nowadays it would be difficult for a master to say at any given moment which particular end he is aiming at in the education of a particular boy. Our public-school education which gives the tone to all the rest has never been subjected to a thorough revision. We retain the old classical basis which was once an end in itself, and we add to it mathematics, modern languages, history, and science. We attempt to embrace everything and to surrender nothing. We do not even allow specialisation, because in our schools questions of discipline, and even of society, are quite as pressing as questions of education. There arises, therefore an internecine strife between these conflicting claims; each study gets what it can in the struggle; and as when thieves fall out good men come by their own, so, while masters are squabbling as to what they shall teach, athletics and amusements, which have a clear and simple end in view, and which always know their own minds, step in and occupy the field. Therefore, as Mr. Gladstone wrote thirty years ago, the most crying want in the education of the present day is to distinguish between what is principal and what is subordinate.

Now, as has often been remarked, there are four main lines on which education may be based- the classical, the mathematical, the scientific, and the modern literary. This last has never been developed to the fulness of its power, but I believe that it is capable of very large extension. Leaving this latter alone, let us say a few words about the educational value of the three first. What effect do they severally produce upon the mind regarding them as organs of thought?

I am disappointed that he left aside the modern literary track, because I suspect this is the one that interested Charlotte Mason (and interests me) the most.

Science makes great pretensions for itself in the present day. Mr. Herbert Spencer has said that it is the only thing worth learning. It bases its claims partly on its intrinsic importance, partly on the stimulus it gives to the faculty of observation, but principally on the certainty of its conclusions. It claims to teach what is, to believe in nothing, to ask its learners to believe in nothing which cannot be seen, weighed, and handled. Now in this very certainty its weakness lies. In all the domains of human speculation, just as we become certain we become false. The mind of man is incapable of ascertaining absolute truth; all it can reach is a very high degree of probability. There is no reason to suppose that if the Creator could give an account of His own work it would correspond in any particular to what we have imagined that we knew about it. Time and space have no real existence, but are merely limitations o our own minds; the law of gravity, the discovery of which is reckoned as a triumph of inductive reasoning, might be found to have quite another explanation. In the complicated affairs of life, in law and politics, in love and war, we have to proceed by probabilities; certainties are impossible to us. The same is, of course, true of religion. A mode of reasoning, therefore which is based on certainty has not only a narrow scope, but it unfits us for the solution of these most important questions which can be decided by probability alone.

Hmph.

A similar charge may with good reason be brought against mathematics. They teach accurate reason, but they do not, except in their highest branches, stimulate the imagination, or accustom the mind to that familiarity with probabilities which is after all the highest degree of certainty which the human mind is capable of acquiring.

The great merit of classics is that their study does develop this habit of mind to a very great degree. Let me take two examples. A number of persons translate a passage of Shakespeare into Greek iambics. A competent scholar will have no hesitation in saying that one version is better than the other, and a consensus amongst competent scholars on the point would be found which would astonish anyone who was not familiar with these matters; yet these judges would not be able to assign reasons for their opinions which would satisfy the average mind, for instance a British jury. No reason could be given which would not break down under the cross-examination of an experienced counsel. Yet the opinion would be no less valid for that. It would be derived from an absolutely certain instinct, derived from a habit of weighing probabilities which had become a second nature. So also in a suggested emendation of a corrupt passage a practised scholar would be able to say that a particular reading must be the right one, or perhaps more often that it could not possibly be the right one. Yet it would be difficult to explain in words precisely the reasons which determined this decision. Iy is this training of a careful and well-balanced judgment that gives to classical studies their special and peculiar value.

I’m curious (and I really do not know)- would the informed consensus of these competent scholars be duplicated by another set of competent scholars 150 years later?
I know we have at least two sometimes readers and the spouse of another reader who have studied Greek and Latin- if you’re reading, would you concur with what Browning is saying? Can you figure out what’s saying and explain it to the rest of us?

I should therefore be inclined to conclude that of the three curricula which I have mentioned, the scientific, the mathematical, and the classical, the last is by far the best if it is applied to a mind suited to it. It is not difficult to ascertain at an early age whether a boy is likely to turn out a scholar or not. The class of mind which attaches a value to language, and is capable of appreciating minute differences of style and idiom, is one which reveals itself by unmistakable signs. It is true that there is a school of educationists who think that all natural tendencies should be repressed, and that the presence of a special faculty is a reason rather for repressing, or, as it is called, correcting it, than for developing it. This I do not believe. Observation of growing minds has taught me long since that more time is gained, and the best results are produced by training the mind in that direction to which nature points, and that the cultivation of one faculty is the best means of strengthening all the rest. But of this classical curriculum Greek is the most important part.

"Greek is not only more educative than Latin, but is far more suited to be learned by tender minds; Greek not only appeals to the mature intellect by its subtlety and refinement, but by a certain childishness and simplicity, to the intelligence of a boy or girl. It is difficult in Latin to find any classical author which is really suited for beginners. On the other hand a child will take quite naturally to the Odyssey. The way of telling the story suits it, and there is a charm in the narrative which sounds like a fairy tale. Therefore I say fearlessly that if classical education is to be maintained, and if one of the two classical languages has to be sacrificed, I would rather it were Latin than Greek."

"Also there is great danger of the standard of classical education being seriously lowered by the sacrifice of Greek. When I had an opportunity, some five-and-twenty years ago, of examining the education given by the French Government schools, I was horrified at the slow standard then attained in the Greek language- and I may say in the Latin also. Scholarship as we understand it was almost unknown in France and Italy, although it then held its own in Germany, which was indeed a model to other nations in this respect. In France, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, an agitation began against the study of Greek, similar to that which is now going on in England. The University of Paris was not strong enough to withstand the tide of popular opinion and surrendered Greek as a compulsory subject. The Jesuits- a very powerful and independent teaching body- were able to keep to it, and the consequence was that the education of the Jesuits took a very high position in France, and left the University far behind. Indeed this had much to do with the influence which the Jesuit teaching had over the whole of Europe. You will have gathered from what I have said that I am strongly of opinion* that Greek should continue to be an essential part of classical education as long at that education is preserved, and that to give it up would probably prove the deathblow of what is called scholarship in England and would seriously tend to lower the whole standard of the higher culture."

* that is how it is worded- not ‘of the opinion.’ I don’t know if this is just a typo in the volume, or how a scholar such as Dr. Browning would have phrased it.

Maybe I am just tired, but it seems to me that Browning thinks Greek is the better choice because he did better at Greek in school himself. And this statement, “the classical, the last is by far the best if it is applied to a mind suited to it” carries with it a qualifier that seems to me to make it true of just about anything. I would agree that education worth the name has a definite end in view. And certainly, as Mr. Gladstone said, now over 130 years ago, we want to distinguish between what is principal and what is subordinate.

Note that our friend Matt Colvin, a living classical scholar, informs me that: "The author exaggerates both the unanimity of judgements in classical studies, and their inexplicability. I have often suceeded in persuading other classical scholars of the rightness of my view, or been persuaded of the rightness of theirs, on the basis of shared, and explicable, criteria which I learned in my training as a classicist. The very existence of professional journals in which classics scholars argue with each other about emendations (and other things) presupposes shared criteria.

But, in the author’s favor, I can attest that it is VERY hard to make non-classicists see just how absolutely conclusive a particular point is, or how utterly wrong another is. Criteria like lectio difficilior are simple enough concepts, but their application requires a broad familiarity with ancient texts and the workings of the languages. To an audience who lack this familiarity, the reasonings of classicists must of necessity be opaque."

Next

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Greek in the Public Schools In England in 1891

"The question as to whether Greek should form a necessary part of the entrance examination to the University has been raised by an authority no less important than the Head Master of Harrow. The question was before the University of Cambridge some ten years ago. If it had been left to the residents the cause of Greek would probably have been lost. But the non-residents carried the day. The opposition to the study of the language evoked a considerable amount of enthusiasm in its favour, and it it is not generally remembered that the Hellenic Society owes its foundation to the crusade made against Greek, and the practice of acting Greek plays at the Universities and other places springs from the same wave of feeling. IN the discussion of the question two admissions may be made at once; first, that of the many schoolboy who learn Greek few ever get far enough to derive any real benefit from the study; and , secondly, that the amount of Greek required for passing the little-go at Cambridge (for it has been proposed to abolish the language for the pass degree) is very small and may be acquired by a moderate amount of labour in about six months."

From The Parents Review, Volume II, no. I, published in 1891 and edited by Charlotte Mason. This article is “The Place of Greek in Modern Education by Oscar Browning." 

To me, one of the very interesting things about Oscar Browning’s arguments is that his intention was not to refute any erroneous ideas about what classical education was- he was just stating what everybody knew about it in 1891.  He was the headmaster of a classical school as well as the graduated student of another, and I believe that in the years he wasn’t a headmaster, he had been a teacher in other classical schools. 

Dorothy Sayers would not write her new version into the record until something like fifty years later.

Some of the terms he uses will be familiar to homeschoolers, but some of them have change definitions since he wrote his article. Modern American homeschooling uses a term, classical education, to refer to a ‘stages of learning’ framework first introduced by Dorothy Sayers (author of the delightful Peter Wimsey books) in the beginning of the 20th century and popularized by Douglas Wilson towards the end of that century. In fact, for centuries before Dorothy Sayers came along, and in most circles after she finished mangling the term, ‘classics’ referred to Greek and Latin Literature. As for what was meant by a ‘classical education,’ well- the article introduces these ideas better than I can. Read closely and whenever you come across a term you’ve heard classical homeschoolers use, read even more closely and see how Browning’s definitions must differ:

"Also, a good deal of evidence may be adduced to show that those who have thus studied Greek under compulsion have expressed their gratitude for having been obliged to do so. It is more profitable to approach the question from a wider point of view; to trace the rise of Greek as a part of liberal education historically; to examine whether it satisfies modern requirements; and to examine whether, in the evolution of studies, it is likely to retain its position.

We may consider that Greek was very little studied in the middle ages. Dante probably knew nothing of it. Aristotle- “il primo dicolor che sanno,” the chief of those who know”- was read by the schoolmen in a Latin version of an Arabic translation of the Greek original. The study of Greek did not become general until after the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453. The second renaissance was deeply affected by it; but it had little or no influence on the first. The idea of the middle ages was based on the seven years’ course- the Trivium and Quadrivium- which was supposed to contain all that was necessary for human beings to know.

Gram loquitur, Dia ver docet, Rhe verba colorat,
Mus canit, ar numerat Geo ponderat As colit astra.

The seven liberal arts were grammar, dialectic or logic, rhetoric, music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. If the study of Greek might be held to be connected with the the three first, the preliminary or trivial studies, it certainly could have nothing to do with the four last, the higher exercises of the more mature mind.

The study of Greek inaugurated by the second Renaissance, and the more thorough study of Latin which accompanied it, caused great enthusiasm throughout the civilised world. The discoveries in history and antiquities, and the gradual elucidation of difficult passages in the classical authors, were only comparable to the scientific discoveries of the present day. A new reading or a new version spread like wildfire through Europe, and reverberated through the whole body of learned people. Hence the humanities, as they were called, not only fascinated by their intrinsic value, but appealed to that love of excitement and notoriety which will always deeply sway the human heart. Even in the Catholic Church there was a pagan revival which had no small share in bringing about the Reformation. Thus when the Reformation broke with the old learning, when the means and instruments of education, provided by a long series of pious benefactions, became inaccessabile to Protestants, and it was necessary to found a new training for the new faith, Europe found itself chained to the car of the classics.

The duty of organising secondary education for Protestants fell upon Melancthon, who, partly by natural temperament and partly by accident, gave more impulse to the ancient languages than to the other parts of the medieval course which he designed to resuscitate. By these influences the study of Greek assumed a larger importance, even in the more enlightened parts of Europe, than it deserved for itself, or than was contemplated for it."

There is a lovely depiction of the Seven Liberal Arts which you can see here- the text of the website is in French. The illustration was originally in the Hortus deliciarum of Herrad von Landsberg– a medieval manuscript written and illustrated by Herrad, a 12th century nun at Hohenburg Abbey in Alsace.

Charlotte Mason was inspired to a new understanding of the pedagogical place and meaning of the seven liberal arts by another picture in an experience she called “The Great Recognition.” Her biographer, Essex Cholmondeley, wrote that on a visit to Florence Italy, she “received a deep and living impression of the frescoes on the wall of the Spanish Chapel attached to the Church of Santa Maria Novella. In Parents and Children she devotes a chapter to them…”
The fresco, Triumph of St Thomas and Allegory of the Sciences, you can see here. You can read Miss Mason’s chapter on this great recognition here. She also wrote about it in another Parents’ Review article online here. It is the heart of her ideas about education and what it means.

Her biographer wrote,

“These frescoes… show the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the mind of men. Within His light are the Apostles and the prophets, and below, centrally enthroned, sits St. Thomas Aquinas. Above him float the figures of the seven virtues. In a row at the foot of the picture, beautiful in dignity and alertness, sit the fourteen ‘knowledges’ or sciences, accompanied by their greatest exponents.
Miss Mason follows Ruskin’s interpretation of the frescoes (footnote here – Mornings in Florence.) describing them as ‘a harmonious and ennobling scheme of education and philosophy.’ Then turning to the figures of the sciences her thought goes out to the many relationships and activities of human life in the past and in her own times. Above all she thinks of ‘the intellectual life, the development of which in children is the aim of our subjects and methods of instruction.’ Education, she sees, is at present divided into ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ and so is common thought which makes education secular, entirely limited to the uses of this visible world.

IN addition to developing a school program and a Parents’ Union, Miss Mason instituted a training college where young women could go to study her methods and learn to apply them in their own life’s work as governesses or teachers in schools. She called it The House of Education. Essex writes that

“Charlotte built this ‘great recognition’ deep into the foundations of the students’ life and training there. It formed the special teaching of Whitsunday afternoon. A reproduction of the frescoes had its place in a central position for all to live with. The students called it the ‘creed picture,’ coming slowly to understand how not only every increase in knowledge and power came by the Divine Spirit, but also the way of using the things and opportunities of daily life, the way to handle a microscope, the moment to choose for a word of praise or rebuke in school. Charlotte Mason showed that this recognition resolves the discords in each person’s life between claims of the intellect, of the aesthetic sense, and of religion: ‘There is space for free development in all directions and this free and joyous development, whether of intellect or heart, is recognized as a Godward movement. Various activities with unity of aim bring harmony and peace into our lives.'”

— from pages 48-52 of The Story of Charlotte Mason by Essex Cholmondeley c1960

It is fascinating to me how we bandy about words like ‘classical,’ ‘education,’ liberal arts,’ and more, tossing them lightly into the air, taking them for granted, when if we stop to open them up, they are like treasure boxes or Faberge Eggs, full of tiny gems, rich meaning, and pictures, ideas, and a history we never realized. 

Next

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Character is Conduct

As most of you are likely aware, Miss Mason started a teaching school, called The House of Education, where young ladies came to be trained in her methods.  There was a nearby practicing school with students from the area where the young ladies worked as teachers, putting into practice Mason's methods.After graduation they became governesses, teachers, wives, occasionally missionaries, always working to further the aims of Mason's educational methods.
  

In 1909 they had a conference with nearly 100 attendants- all of them had to be either graduates from the training school or current students.  Miss Bradley was one of the speakers, and her topic was 'Influence and Ideals,' with the main thrust being how to properly use one's influence and position to give students ideals and moral principles leading to correct behavior, while respecting the personhood of the students.  The above quote comes from that notes on her paper which appeared in the school journal, L'Umile Pianta.  


I've been thinking about that sentence for days- individual effort to make right action follow right thought.  This is such a simple concept, but so challenging to implement in our lives, let alone in our children's lives.   That's the character we want to exhibit, and hope to see in our students- thinking the right thoughts, and making the effort to have the right actions follow those right thoughts.  

Mason says it several times, the goal of a living education worth having is conduct and character. Other members of the P.N.E.U. said it, too, in one way or another. 

There are 9 references in volume six alone.  Here are just a couple of them:

"We have, too, quite a code of 'principles' affecting character and conduct, aesthetic development and so on,"

"The life of the mind is sustained upon ideas; there is no intellectual vitality in the mind to which ideas are not presented several times, say, every day. But 'surely, surely,' as 'Mrs. Proudie' would say, scientific experiments, natural beauty, nature study, rhythmic movements, sensory exercises, are all fertile in ideas? Quite commonly, they are so, as regards ideas of invention and discovery; and even in ideas of art; but for the moment it may be well to consider the ideas that influence life, that is, character and conduct; these, would seem, pass directly from mind to mind, and are neither helped nor hindered by educational outworks. "

"If we realise that the mind and knowledge are like two members of a ball and socket joint, two limbs of a pair of scissors, fitted to each other, necessary to each other and acting only in concert, we shall understand that our function as teachers is to supply children with the rations of knowledge which they require; and that the rest, character and conduct, efficiency and ability, and, that finest quality of the citizen, magnanimity, take care of themselves"

"Academic success and knowledge are not the same thing and many excellent schools fail to give their pupils delight in the latter for its own sake or to bring them in touch with the sort of knowledge that influences character and conduct. The slow, imperceptible, sinking-in of high ideals is the gain that a good school should yield its pupils."

"...character and conduct, intelligence and initiative, are the outcome of a humanistic education in which the knowledge of God is put first."

"What we desire is the still progress of growth that comes of root striking downwards and fruit urging upwards. And this progress in character and conduct is not attained through conditions of environment or influence but only through the growth of ideas, received with conscious intellectual effort."

Regarding using her methods in the 7-8 hrs a week available in the continuation, or night, schools for the working classes: "We can give to the people the thought of the best minds and we can secure on their part the conscious intellectual effort, the act of knowing, which bears fruit in capability, character and conduct."


"...the habits of the child produce the character of the man, because certain mental habitudes once set up, their nature is to go on for ever unless they should be displaced by other habits. Here is an end to the easy philosophy of, 'It doesn't matter,' 'Oh, he'll grow out of it,' 'He'll know better by-and-by,' 'He's so young, what can we expect?' and so on. Every day, every hour, the parents are either passively or actively forming those habits in their children upon which, more than upon anything else, future character and conduct depend." (Vol. 1, page 118)


"Can Spirit act upon Matter?––The functions of education may be roughly defined as twofold: (a) the formation of habits; (b) the presentation of ideas. The first depends far more largely than we recognise on physiological processes. The second is purely spiritual in origin, method, and result. Is it not possible that here we have the meeting point of the two philosophies which have divided mankind since men began to think about their thoughts and ways? Both are right; both are necessary; both have their full activity in the development of a human being at his best....
What is it but the impact of spirit upon matter which writes upon the face of flesh that record of character and conduct which we call countenance?" Volume 2

"...the parent's inactivity must be masterly; that is, the young people should read approval or disapproval very easily, and should be able to trace one or the other to general principles of character and conduct, though nothing be said or done or even looked in disparagement of the ally of the hour."

" That the discipline of the habits of the good life, both intellectual and moral, forms a good third of education, we all believe. The excess occurs when we imagine that certain qualities of character and conduct run out, a prepared product like carded wool, from this or that educational machine, mathematics or classics, science or athletics; that is, when the notion of the development of the so-called faculties takes the place of the more physiologically true notion of the formation of intellectual habits. The difference does not seem to be great; but two streams that rise within a foot of one another may water different countries and fall into different seas, and a broad divergence in practice often arises from what appears to be a small difference in conception, in matters educational"

Volume 3


From a 1922 Conference report delivered by Miss Mason and reprinted in In Memoriam:


From the Parents' Reviews:

[Socrates] ...originated the thought that Ethics and Politics not only deserve, but require, severe study and close attention, dealing as they do with the fundamental principles which should regulate the daily life of every individual, both as regards his own character and conduct, and also in respect to his private and his public relationships and duties.  (Maxwell Y. Maxwell, volume 12)

This book review, which I believe was probably written by Miss Mason:
The Springs of Character, by A. T. Schofield, M.D., author of The Unconscious Mind (Hodder & Stoughton, 3/6). Dr. Schofield's book will, we believe, accomplish the object for which it was written; it will give us pause, cause us to "think on these things." The author tells us that his object was threefold; first, "to emphasis in various ways the transcendent importance of character, second, to show what are its foundations and springs, and third, to see how it can best be cultivated and improved." The chapters deal with Character and the Mind, The Personality of Character, Character and the Body, Character and Ethics, Character and Heredity, Character and Habit, Character and Growth, Analysis of Character, The Qualities of Character, Character and the Will, Character and Conduct, Character and Conscience, Character and Christianity, Character and Destiny. These are all matters which come home to every man's business and bosom and appeal, especially to those whose work in life it is to modify, direct, retrieve, sustain, and, in every direct and indirect way, labour towards the achievement of character in weak and dependent beings, that is to say, to parents. The reader will find that Dr. Schofield's book does him, in almost every page, a twofold service--it stimulates him and instructs him. It shows him how great an achievement and possession is character: "Our minds cast shadows just like our bodies, and daily and hourly those shadows are falling upon others for good or evil. This one fact alone proclaims the overwhelming importance of character in social life. The reasons we feel one man's presence and not another's is, indeed, as simple and unerring as the law of gravity. A presence is felt in exact proportion to the strength of its character." "Oh! Job, how did you know Hercules was a God? Because I was content the moment my eyes fell on him--he conquered whether he stood or walked or sat." "'Men of character,' says Emerson, 'are the conscience of the society to which they belong, and to produce all this effect no word need be spoken, no deed done--the presence often suffices.'" "'In silent company with another,' says Maeterlinck, 'the character is often deeply formed. The truth cannot often be uttered in words, but it can be learnt in silence.'" This kind of writing is stimulating. We say to ourselves, "get character," and, again, before all things, "get character." Having stimulated us, Dr. Schofield proceeds to instruct us. Character, he tells us, is not to be attained by introspective methods, but by the pursuit of ideals. "The measure of a man is truly the measure of his vision, that is, of the ideal before his eye." Again,--"Loss of faith in ideals is destructive of character and stops its growth. Moreover an ideal not followed is soon lost." Again,--"We have little idea how character develops by the pressure of moral opinions and current thoughts. One single hint or new idea may influence an entire character." Again,--"Schopenhauer traces some bad characters to the effect of the single idea of regarding the world as 'not myself' and all good as centering in the unextended ego." We have not space to estimate severally chapters dealing with matters of such exceeding weight, but we hope we have said enough to direct the reader's attention to Dr. Schofield's valuable work, in which he will find, as we have said, such stimulation and such suggestion as should make him desire "character" before all things, and should enable him to set about the intelligent production of that which he desires."

(Dr. Schofield was on the executive committee of the Parents' Union and worked closely with the Union and supported its aims. He regularly contributed articles for publication and gave lectures to Parents' Union chapters and at conferences.)

How do we make ourselves do the things we know we ought, but we do not wish to do? 
Are we starting with the right idea?
Are we making any real effort?
 Are those efforts the right actions?
Look again, try again, and pay attention to your progress.

Paul struggled with the same question, so I am not sure we need to wallow overmuch in the luxury of guilt on the question.  HOwever, the knowledge that others better than we have tried and failed doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile to try.   The one who makes an attempt at the long jump and fails still goes further than the one who sits down and cries about how hard it all is.

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 New! $5.00- Education for All, a new CM journal, Buy Now!  and Feed Your Mind!  This issue contains several articles on nature study and science.

Table of Contents (numbers are page #s) 1. Cover (even our cover has living ideas! 2. Each Helps All (the proper spirit for C.M. Educators, found in a previously unplublished L'Umile Pianta) 3. lack of handcrafting experience hurting medical students 4. Our Children's Play- a PR article 7. Team Sports vs Free Play ~ Charlotte Mason 8. Raising Children with Grit, a PR article 12. Sample Cooking Lesson from a House of Education student 13. Imagination in Childhood, a newly republished PR article, available in easily readable format for the first time in a hundred years 17. Two Christmas Crafts 18. Three Quick Takes: Sensory Play, 'Things of Education,' Character Training in Home Life 19. The Principles Behind Handiwork, excerpted from a PR article 20. A Philosophy of Handicrafts, 21. Craft: Candle Decorating 22. The Value of 'I Don't Know' in Nature Study, Comstock 23. Sloyd, Training for Life, from an 1890 Teacher's Guild Presentation 24. Benefits of Nature Study, 25. Why Children Need Outside Play 27. Craft: Pre-basket weaving (make a frame) 28. Why We Draw, from a PR article by W. G. Collingwood, 28. Fish & Flowers in a Homeschool Room, from a PR article 29. Rainy Afternoon Activities, PR article 30. In Conclusion (application of a fantastic passage from vol. 6) Helpful and inspiring quotes sprinkled on every page