Ok, I admit I can’t tell you the history of eclectic homeschooling or where it really began. But those of us within the Charlotte Mason community can get really caught up in the “purity” of her method. People on all sides debate whether and/or how CM can be “combined” with another philosophy, whether educational, parenting, religious, whatever. (In full disclosure, I try to be a mediocre CM purist myself.)

But I’m not convinced that CM’s method was pure to begin with.

I used to think so. But then I read The Schools We Need… And Why We Don’t Have Them.

This post is more intermediate level, so I apologize to any CM newbies. The power of the ideas in this post is suddenly realizing how these ideas are in nearly constant tension in Ms. Mason’s work, and it takes time to get that larger feel for her work and bring to mind lots of examples as you read. (Not to say I’m an expert; I’m not. I’m definitely intermediate level myself.)

And now back to the book.

Honestly, I wasn’t a fan of the book overall. I was really glad when it was over. I really disagreed with the author on many philosophical points and felt he presented his “facts” as one-sided as he claims the other side is. Like how schools and teachers believe multiplication tables and straight rows of desks are harmful to children. No one told my teachers that! That’s all to say that I thought he brought some very interesting ideas to the table, then completely undermined himself as to why I should listen to his solutions.

(Sidenote: the most interesting ideas not relevant here were about why we need a nationwide standard basic curriculum – with freedom to teach above and beyond that, but to make sure the basics are covered at predictable and consistent times. I really never thought about how mobile our student population is – the statistics are shocking! but totally obvious once pointed out – and how unpredictable subject coverage is even within the same school, much less switching schools entirely. I missed and repeated several big things in my own education, and now I see why.)

A short disclaimer before starting. Most of the citations are coming from one section of the book, the one most dedicated to Romantic thought. I noted so many quotes in this book (in a non-permanent way) when I read it…and then foolishly returned it to the library. It was an interlibrary loan, and of course I didn’t get the same copy back. So unfortunately, much of this is from memory.

Two Worldviews in Conflict

But boy did he make me rethink Charlotte Mason. He never mentioned her at all, he probably doesn’t know who she is. The heart of his arguments frequently boils down to a conflict between Romanticism and the Enlightenment and how their ideals remain in conflict today. He is fighting for an emphasis on the Enlightenment ideals, and he believes the educational establishment is bogged down in useless and ineffective Romantic ideals and that those ideals are the root of the issues in the American educational community. (Sidenote: he is probably right that for every educational reform that’s tried and fails, people usually just shout that they didn’t do it right, and it would have worked if it’d been tried properly – I feel people make that argument about education and parenting all the time.)

In short, I think Ms. Mason lived at a time of intense debate whether English education would be Enlightenment-focused or Romantic-focused, and I think she came to the conclusion that both were wrong but both had excellent points. I think she synthesized the two, taking what she felt worked from each system to play up their strengths and downplay their weaknesses. In effect, she was an eclectic Enlightenment-Romantic educator.

The Enlightenment Philosophy

Of course I can’t find it now, but his view of an Enlightenment education is what is condescendingly called “drill and kill.” Fact collection, memorization, a standard curriculum, basically he seems to describe a Classical homeschooling philosophy (he’s working in a charter school system, so I’m translating it to what I know of the homeschool world on his behalf). He has a great point that Americans have developed the idea that all memorization is inherently soul-killing and to be avoided at all costs and only a measure of last resort. He stops short of saying memorization can be fun, but he seems to imply it. And even if it isn’t fun, he’s of the opinion it’s your duty to learn it anyway. You’ll be better off for it.

The Romantics Come In

Ms. Mason was born at the height of the Romantic period. She definitely loves the poetry of Wordsworth! The Romantics, in the author’s words, had a “quasi-religious faith…in everything ‘natural.’ … How could truly natural development go wrong so long as it was unthwarted? After all, natural instincts come from a divine source. It is only the separation from that divine source through the artificial impositions of human culture and society which can lead the child astray.” (74).

Many Romantics compared children to flowers and plants, like Friedrich Froebel, the father of Kindergarten (garden of children) and someone Ms. Mason spoke positively about. She felt that the implementation of his ideas had gone astray (sound familiar?): “Though every mother should be a Kindergartnerin, in the sense in which Froebel would employ the term, it does not follow that every nursery should be a regularly organised Kindergarten. Indeed, the machinery of the Kindergarten is no more than a device to ensure the carrying out of certain educational principles, and some of these it is the mother’s business to get at, and work out according to Froebel’s methods––or her own” (Vol. 1, p179) “But I wish that educationalists would give up the name Kindergarten. I cannot help thinking that it is somewhat of a strain to conscientous minds to draw the cover of Froeblian doctrine and practice over the broader and more living conceptions that are abroad to-day.” (Vol. 1, p197).

“It is by now a deeply rooted sentiment in American education to think that what is natural works automatically for the good. Everything done naturally has an inner necessity and rightness. Americans have tended to be optimistic that things left to their own devices will tend to work out in the end – which is to say that Romanticism is deep-dyed in our culture. [Wow, guilty as charged, personally.] In education, this optimistic cast of mind induces trust in the child’s natural development, and suspicion of harsh discipline, bookish hard work, and other forms of artificial stimulation and constraint.” (76). He then lists Pestalozzi, Herbart, and Froebel as leading educational European Romantics, all people Ms. Mason spoke of in depth. She was obviously highly influenced by the Romantic zeitgeist.

Most notably, the Romantics were obsessed with being outdoors. I wish I could find the quote in my mind! A very famous writer who said something like how schoolrooms are always a bad thing and everyone should just play in nature instead.

Likewise, we can see Ms. Mason’s idea of the “quiet growing time”: “From Romanticism, the American educational community inherited the faith that early childhood is a tie of innocence and naturalness, a time for being a child. ‘Shades of the prison house’ begin to close all too quickly around the young child. It is wrong to spoilt the one time of life whe children can develop in tine with the order of things. It is wrong to be parents who live out their own unfulfilled ambitions by rushing their children, creating unseasonable pressure, and ruining their lives. Self-evidently, premature book learning goes against nature” (79).

The author does not like Romantics. At all. “It is an educational view that can glide easily into disparagement of book learning and into anti-intellectualism.” (75). That certainly feels familiar in today’s day and age: obsession with “natural” products, the distrust to the point of panic over “unnatural” things, the predatory naturalism of MLMs, and fake news all feel very “Romantic” to me when he puts it this way. But are these ideas really so horrible in themselves? Must they result in these outcomes? I don’t believe these are such awful ideas, but maybe that’s just the awful Romanticism seeped down into my bones!

Opposing Views of Personhood

The Enlightenment perspective he presents is pessimistic about human nature. In fact, Thomas Jefferson, the Founding Father he says wrote the most on public education, felt that history must be the main subject of education so that you can learn how awful human nature is and thus “knowing it to defeat its views.” (75).

The Romantics looked at human nature in a way that is much more familiar to the CM community: “First, Romanticism believed that human nature is innately good, and should therefore be encouraged to take its natural course, unspoiled by the artificial impositions of social prejudice and convention. Second, Romanticism concluded that the child is neither a scaled-down, ignorant version of an adult nor a formless piece of clay in need of molding, rather, the child is a special being in its own right with unique, trustworthy – indeed holy – impulses that should be allowed to develop and run their course,” p74.

Interestingly, it’s the Enlightenment thinkers, those who “broke with sectarian religion and the idea of original sin” (73), are the ones that seem most in line with traditional Western views on human nature. Ms. Mason’s writings on human nature and the desire to be good and do one’s duty are some of the most debated I see among devote Christians interested in Ms. Mason’s philosophy, and they clearly derive a lot from the Romantic views of self.

This author, presenting his own view, hits quite close to what I think Ms. Mason believed: “History, including the recent history of American education, shows that human affairs are rarely brought right by letting them take their natural course. Human nature, to the extend that it can be known, should not be left to its own devices. We humans have contradictory impulses, and the choices we make about which ones to develop and make dominant should not be left to accident and chance. True enough, we cannot defeat human nature, but we can try to bring out the best and thwart the worst. The aim of civilization,  and by consequence of education, is less to follow nature than to guide it toward humane and worthy ends” (77).

Are They Really Mutually Exclusive?

I don’t think so. This author assumes you can be either Enlightened or Romantic, and that there’s a right and wrong answer to that question. In fact, “[i]n the annals of recorded thought, European Romanticism, with its (alas) powerful influence on American culture and education, has been a post-Enlightenment aberration, a mistake we need to correct” (77).

“Many parents wistfully regret that school should impose discipline and hard work on very young children. Many parents have internalized the either-or polarity between joyful, nonacademic, ‘developmentally appropriate’ education and joyless, unnatural academics. They identify school learning with cramped abstraction and artificiality and link ‘developmentally appropriate’ learning with concrete and creative play that engages all the senses and teaches as nature commands, at a slow but sure pace. That challenging subject matter can be combined with joyful and concrete activities which engage the senses is not imagined as a possibility. ‘There will be a time for all that later’ is a recurrent theme of parents” (79-80). He then goes on to cite how other countries have studies that show the benefit of “academically challenging early education,” most notably France and Japan. I taught in the French public schools. My middle school, high school, and community college students seemed no different than my American counterparts when I was in school. I certainly don’t think they were particularly better educated or knew more or had better moral fiber. And both the teachers and the students counted down the days to each school break every 6 weeks. They were far less likely to enjoy learning, in my personal experience, and the teachers were far less likely to enjoy teaching. In Japan and South Korea, we’ve all heard about the high child suicide rate due to academic pressures. I’m just saying, maybe they’re not all they’re cracked up to be when viewed from only one angle.

Overall, I think he’s wrong. I think Ms. Mason understood the strength and weaknesses of both approaches and found a third way. However, as an aspiring “CM purist” myself, I find it really helpful to understand this tension and I understand her Volumes better when I can see which philosophy she’s leaning toward at the time. Her works are a balancing act between these two approaches to the world, a downright moderate stance. Seeing when she sides with one school (or when she rejects them both) gives me a deeper understanding of her philosophy and the intent behind certain recommendations. It’s also really interesting!

At the end of the day, I think the author is guilty of the same thing he accuses modern American parents and educators: false dualities and purism at the expense of learning from other perspectives.