On Principles 16 & 17

Summer with Charlotte: The Will Issue

This is my sixth article in my “Summer with Charlotte” series. If you missed the first few, you can read On Education, On Principles 1, 2 & 20, On Principles 3 & 4, On Principles 5, 6, 7 & 8, and On Principles 9 & 10.

So I had to make a decision here to follow the principles in numerical order or to follow the order that the principles are laid out in A Philosophy of Education. I chose to follow the lay out. At first I couldn’t understand why Charlotte would move these principles ahead but I can see now that we must cover the ‘Way of Will’ and the ‘Way of Reason’ before we can dive into the delicious subject of Curriculum. She must have known she’d lose all the homeschoolers if she talked about curriculum first ;).

I had hoped to finish up this series during the summer (hence the name) but you can see it’s nearing the end of October and I still have three articles to go. Que sera, sera. It’s a good reminder, I suppose that I am not nearly as in control of my life as I like to think I am. Nevertheless, the content is good and I plan to complete what I’ve started. I hope you continue to be encouraged by this series.

Okay, here we go.

Principle 16 & 17: The Way of the Will

We may offer to children two guides to moral and intellectual self-management which we may call ‘the Way of the Will’ and ‘the Way of Reason.’

The Way of the Will: Children should be taught (a) to distinguish between ‘I want’ and ‘I will.’ (b) That the way to will effectively is to turn our thoughts away from that which we desire but do not will. (c) That the best way to turn our thoughts is to think of or do some quite different thing, entertaining or interesting. (d) That after a little rest in this way, the will returns to its work with new vigour. (This adjust of the will is familiar to us as diversion, whose office it is to ease us for a time from will effort that we may ‘will’ again with added power. The use of suggestion as an aid to the will is to be deprecated, as tending to stultify and stereotype character. It would seem that spontaneity is a condition of development., and that human nature needs the discipline of failure as well as of success.)

Reference: Volume 6, Chapter 8

“The great things of life, life itself, are not easy of definition,” Charlotte begins and true, we must ponder, ‘what is the will?’ As it concerns us here, her definition of its function is sufficient: “Its function is to choose, to decide, and there seems to be no doubt that the greater becomes the effort of decision the weaker grows the general will.”

Lest we make little robots out of the children, though, we must consider how to train this function of decision and for what purpose? To be automatic and unfeeling cannot be the answer so we see that nurturing of character through ideas is the way to train the will. Charlotte says that “the one achievement possible and necessary for every man is character;” and concludes that therefore, “our aim in education is less conduct than character; conduct may be arrived at, as we have seen, by indirect routes, but it is of value to the world only as it has its source in character.”

So it’s not what you do but who you are. It comes back to the motivation of the heart. Education is in the business of helping a man to “become,” after all. It’s about the cultivation of character — nurturing the personality and ordering the affections.

Charlotte says, “every assault upon the flesh and spirit of man is an attack however insidious upon his personality, his will;…we shall escape becoming a nation of imbeciles only because there will always be persons of good will amongst us who will resist the general trend.” I love how Charlotte gives it to us straight. No one accidentally becomes a decent human being. And just think these were the days long before Tik Tok and YouTube shorts - apparently humans have always been tempted to go with the “general trend” and it requires a strong will (note - a strong will is a good thing when used properly) to resist the pull of what we’d refer to largely as “culture.” This isn’t an entirely accurate label but it’ll do for now lest I go down a rabbit trail.

Now for the responsibility. Whose job is it to strengthen the wills of children? Charlotte tells us, “The office of parents and teachers is to turn out such persons of good will; that they should deliberately weaken the moral fire of their children by suggestion is a very grave offense and a thoughtful examination of the subject should act as a sufficient deterrent.” This echoes back to her thoughts on artificial rewards that we touched on in Principle 4: The Sacredness of Personality. This can be a soapbox issue for me so I’ll stay on topic and just encourage you to reread that article if you missed it.

Charlotte says, “the will has only one mode of action, its function is to ‘choose,’ and with every choice we make we grow in force of character.” In other words, it’s a muscle we need to work. “What we do with the will we describe as voluntary. What we do without the conscious action of will is involuntary,” she says. So we set up good habits to cover the involuntary choices that don't require the will and we help strengthen their will by allowing them the opportunity to make good choices when it is required. The question of “what shirt would you like to wear today?” to a three-year-old quickly turns to, “do you think this person is a positive influence for you?” in the teen years. How much practice does your child have making decisions?

The home is the perfect place to practice making decisions in a safe environment before the stakes get higher. And don’t be afraid to let your child fail; he chooses to go without a coat and the result is that he is cold. He chooses to spend his money on something frivolous and has no money left when a friend calls to hang out. It’s never too early to encourage our children to start working those muscles. Instruct, yes, but don’t hover. Use the language, “is that a good choice?” and when it’s not, call a spade a spade and say, “I’m so sorry you’re choosing to disobey/be rude/leave your room a mess…I’m so sorry you’re choosing to have to stay home now. I’m so sorry you’re choosing to miss out on movie night.” Connect for them their behavior with choice.

Also let them practice choosing by engaging their imagination and inspiring them through story - old fairy stories, myths, and legends, not to mention bible stories, are great for this. Not moralistic black and white, unrealistic twaddle, but true struggles of humanity. Let them see children, too, making hard choices. How we all cringe when Edmund ignores multiple opportunities to choose good and ends up in the White Witch’s castle. How we celebrate when sour Mary Lennox confronts Colin and her choice spurs on the rippling good that follows in The Secret Garden. How right it feels when Peter confesses to stealing the coal from the railway man and all is forgiven and made up in the end.

Our whole lives we (and our children) will be confronted with choices - suggestions, opinions, and ideas from other people, books, movies, etc. and when confronted with something new we must choose; there is always a choice. Agree with the idea or not? Watch the movie or not? Engage in discussion or nod and smile. Think for ourselves or blindly accept the opinions of others? Charlotte reminds us of the dismal truth that “our tendency is to accept this vicarious choice and follow the path of least resistance.” Some of this is good, of course, and I point back to habits here for the involuntary choices. No child needs to contemplate nightly the benefit of brushing his teeth. Let’s avoid decision fatigue and make that choice for him early on by instilling a habit.

But learn to choose he must or he will never learn to think for himself. He will always be waiting to be told what to do. Having shallow beliefs and opinions may seem harmless and even peaceful but it’s a horrific missed opportunity for growth. In the worst case, a man who cannot think for himself becomes what Charlotte aptly calls a “parasitic creature” and warns that they who “live upon the habits, principles and opinions of others may easily become criminal. They only wait the occasion of some popular outburst to be carried into such a fury of crime…”. Facebook mommy wars come to mind here although any political uprising falls into this category as well. Mob mentality happens when a weak-willed group of people are inspired by someone with persuasive ideas. Everyone loves a cause but not everyone can distinguish what is a worthy cause. Today’s causes — on social media, at least — seem to be governed almost entirely by feelings; what I feel, what I think, what I want.

But Charlotte warns us, “right thinking is by no means a matter of self-expression. Right thought flows upon the stimulus of an idea, and ideas are stored as we have seen in books and pictures and the lives of men and nations; these instruct the conscience and stimulate the will, and man or child ‘chooses.’” This is why, she continues, “…to fortify the will is one of the great purposes of education, and probably some study of the map of the City of Mansoul would afford us guidance: at a least, a bird’s eye view of the riches of the City should be spread before children.”

Volume 4, Ourselves, contains the answer to Charlotte’s own suggestion here. “Mansoul,” an idea she borrowed from John Bunyan, is presented to the child with all of its beauty and dangers. Charlotte wrote Ourselves specifically for children and adolescents (although as an adult I will say there is still much to be gained by reading it at any age). There are two books in this volume; Book I is great for kids after age 12 and Book II is intended for those in the mid-teen years. Charlotte goes on to paint a beautiful picture to inspire the will, taking her own advice of planting an idea for the sake of inspiring thought and action.

“They should themselves know of the wonderful capacities to enter upon the world as a great inheritance which exist in every human being. All its beauty and all its thought are open to everyone. Everyone may take service for the world’s use, everyone may climb those delectable mountains from whence he gets the vision of the City of God. He must know something of his body with its sense and its appetites: of his intellect, imagination and aesthetic sense: of his moral nature, ordered by love and justice. Realizing how much is possible to Mansoul and the perils that assail it, he should know that the duty of self-direction belongs to him; and that powers for this direction are lodged in him, as are intellect and imagination, hunger, and thirst. These governing powers are the conscience and the will. The whole ordering of education with its history, poetry, arithmetic, pictures, is based not on the assumption that conscience is incapable of ordering life without regular and progressive instruction. We need instruction also concerning the will. Persons commonly suppose that the action of the will is automatic, but no power of Mansoul acts by itself and of itself, and some little study of the ‘way of the will’ — which has the ordering of every other power — may help us to understand the functions of this Premier in the kingdom of Mansoul.

Charlotte encourages us that by the early teen years we should “put clearly before a child the possibility of a drifting, easy life led by appetite or desire in which will plays no part; and the other possibility of using the power and responsibility proper to him as a person and willing as he goes.”

We must guard against some fallacies, though, she says; “a strong will is not synonymous with ‘being good,’ nor with a determination to have your own way.” This line divides “between the impulsive, self-pleasing, self-seeking, and the persons who have an aim beyond and outside of themselves, even though it be an aim appalling as that of Milton’s Satan.” So the will can be used for good or bad and it’s helpful to think of the will as the power to reign. Charlotte says, “A king is not a king unless he reigns and a man is less than a man unless he wills.” The will can weaken and strengthen, rise and fall over time but the will grows slowly.

Remember that will is the only free agent of Mansoul and can do what he likes; realizing this we come again to the importance of ideas. Little children can be trained in obedience as a habit but “every gallant boy and girl has learned to choose to obey all who are set in authority. Such obedience is the essence of chivalry and chivalry is that temper of mind opposed to self-seeking.”

It all comes down to service. Charlotte remind us that “there are two services open to us all, the service of God, (including that of man) and the service of self.” We must inspire our children to choose the highest form of service. Charlotte says, “our appetites and desires are always at hand to spur us into the necessary exertions. But if we serve God and our neighbor, we have to be always on the watch to choose between the ideas that present themselves.” We must guard our thoughts and hearts and align them with what is true and good and the will helps us to filter and reject thoughts that will affect us for bad. I think of how much information is thrown at us daily and see the apathy of the culture as a response of not only weakness, but fatigue; there is simply too much to decide if we do not guard against ideas from getting into our minds in the first place.

We must wrestle with ideas and make important choices but to do so takes effort and can make us weary. It’s good to exercise the muscle of decision, of course, but what about when the fatigue makes us too weary? Charlotte says, “when the overstrained will asks for repose, it may not relax to yielding point but may and must seek recreation, diversion…” The answer is to “let us think of something else, no matter how trifling. A new tie, or our next new hat, a story book we are reading, a friend we hope to see, anything does so long as we do not suggest to ourselves the thoughts we ought to think on the subject in question. The will does not want the support of arguments but the recreation of rest, change, diversion. In a surprisingly short time it is able to return to the charge and to choose this day the path of duty, however dull or tiresome, difficult or dangerous.”

So how do we order the will? By ordering the affections. Inspiring with ideas. And always directing outward. So much energy is poured into self nowadays - self-awareness, self-knowledge, self-help, self-image, self-promotion, self-reverence, etc. but Charlotte saw where education was headed in the early 1900s and it’s clear that we’ve arrived. She cautioned against this study of self and affirmed that “all adequate education must be outward bound, and the mind which is concentrated upon self-emolument, even though it be the emolument of all the virtues, misses the higher and simpler secrets of life. Duty and service are the sufficient motives for the arduous training of the will that a child goes through with little consciousness.”

It brings to mind a C.S. Lewis quote that “humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.” We are born programmed to care for ourselves, love ourselves, think of ourselves. If you doubt me, spend five minutes with a toddler. The assumption is that we will do these things naturally and therefore the training lies in turning the will outward towards others. The hope is that we will do these things in a positive, healthy way but we all know people who see self in a negative, unhealthy light. The struggle of self-image can be real and I don’t mean to brush that aside here; the answer, whatever the problem, is the same though: our worth comes from above. We can be sure in our value by virtue of Imago Dei; because we are made in the image of a perfect Creator, we are intrinsically valuable. Notice though, the comfort still comes from beyond; it is not something we can find within ourselves if we only dig deep enough.

Charlotte ends, “Will, free will, must have an object outside of self;” and it is our honor and duty to inspire that end in our children but to train ourselves in the very thing we hope they will inhabit. After all, shouldn’t we endeavor to be the people we hope our children will be?

Join me next time as we cover principles 18-19. Be sure to subscribe to my free Substack so you’ll be notified of new articles. (pssst…coming soon…did you know you can become a paid subscriber and get cool bonus content as a thank you for your support?)

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