Self education: the child's work (vol 6, preface, introduction, chapter 1)

I am reading Charlotte Mason's volume 6 with an online group, and I want to record some of my pondering here.


"There is no education but self education." wrote Charlotte Mason.

What that means is that no child (and no person at all for that matter) can learn in the way that water is poured into a jug; passively. Children are not empty containers into which information is put inside them. They, the children, are the ones who have to do the work of learning by self effort.
All education is self education.


By her methods "teachers shall teach less, and scholars shall learn more".


 However education should a joy, a natural affair.
She says that all children are born with the desire for knowledge and the ability to self educate
(although she, as a teacher, does say that this can be 'schooled' out of a child).

Children are born with

- curiosity
- with the ability to apply attention to something
- with the power of mind to deal with the knowledge, that is with imagination, with reflection, with judgment
- with the ability to remember, and to communicate  the information.


and these things will allow them to self educate.
and that is true no matter whether we are talking about history, or morality, or science or even learning how to swim. The role of assimilating information, of allowing it to become part of you, rests on the learner themselves, and no one else.


That doesn't mean that a teacher is not needed. On the contrary, a teacher is vital. It is the teacher's job to present the child with the "intellectual meat" which the child will learn.


Two points:

1. "Mind appeals to mind" as Charlotte Mason says.  Ideas are passed from one person to another, and it is through the thoughts of others that we become educated. That is why we owe it to every child to put him in communication with the best minds that have lived, which is why it is so important to choose good books, the best books written by the best authors. Not insipid, dulled down, boring books, but "worthy books". Children shouldn't be intellectually belittled with a diet of silly books.
As I said in a previous post, knowledge nourishes a mind, just as food nourishes a body. So a chid requires a rich varied intellectual diet of good food.




2.  Literary style.

The mind is best nourished by ideas which are presented in a living way, and  in a literary way. Dry facts are difficult for the mind to assimilate. However, the mind is easily nourished by facts which are connected with the living ideas upon which they hang.


An example to show what is meant by a living context, would be an Aesop's Fable; a moral woven in to a tale.



"Children educated upon some such lines as these respond in a surprising way, developing capacity, character, countenance, initiative and a sense of responsibility. They are, in fact, even as children, good and thoughtful citizens."
- volume 6




Narration

So how does the child do this work of "self-education"?

Well, for Charlotte Mason, constant questioning, explanations, summaries, fill-in-the-blanks etc, are unnecessary and "wearisome" for the child, and actually a hindrance to learning because they come in between the child and the information.


It is through


* narration oral or written

* free time for pondering, ruminating, playing and indulging themselves intellectually

 that the child will process that information and learn it.


In narration the child's mind is doing all the work; they are going over the passage they just heard or read and are constantly asking themselves  "what happened?.....and then?....and then?...." and adding to it perhaps their own views and ideas. This process of mentally going over is what will make the information become internalised and learnt.

It is not  memorization, it is assimilation; it is becoming a part of the child.

As I have seen from my own experience, you don't know something till you try explaining it yourself, or till you try saying something in your own words!

In Charlotte Mason's schools they used to have exams at the end of every term. There was NEVER any home work (she actually banned all homework), and there was no revision either, yet the children would provide long rich and highly detailed answers to their examination questions, because, via the process of narration of living books, they had formed a solid memory of the information even months earlier.  (there are still many examples of her pupil's work available to look at).



"The mind can know nothing save what it can produce in the form of an answer to a question put to the mind by itself."

"The teacher who allows his scholars the freedom of the city of books is at liberty to be their guide, philosopher, and friend; and it no longer the mere instrument of forcible intellectual feeding."




and the free time is also vital. Children need time to think and ruminate and ponder, and to allow the information to sink in. This is one reason why Charlotte Mason was quite clear that formal lessons should only happen in the morning, and afternoons should be free. Particularly in the younger years (say 11yrs and under).


Ah, there is so much more I want to write, but this post has got excessively long as it is!

So just to say, we can't force a child to learn, we can just inspire them and spark their imagination and so give them rich food with which they can educate themselves.

 

what a lovely place to sit and ponder!