On Principles 9 & 10

Summer with Charlotte: The Mind Issue

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

Let’s jump in.

Principle 9 & 10: How We Make Use of Mind

“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 what it is able to digest and assimilate as the body does food-stuffs.

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

Reference: Volume 6, Chapter 7

Charlotte combines these two principles in one chapter and it’s pretty impressive that she felt so strongly against his approach that she calls out one particular educational guru of her day in her actual principles. So who was this guy?

Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841) is known today mainly as a founding figure of modern psychology and educational theory. Spoiler alert, Charlotte disagreed with a large part of what he had to say about education but if you look at the modern education system, his ideas are sadly much more present than hers. Here’s his Wiki page if you really want to know more about him.

But on with the principles.

Right out the gate we can see where the division lies: “Herbart’s psychology is extraordinarily gratifying and attractive to teachers who are, like other people, eager to magnify their office; and here is a scheme which shows how every child is a new creation as he comes forth from the hands of his teacher.” Charlotte has already built the argument that “children are born persons” and says that “we are limited to three educational instruments— the atmosphere of environment, the discipline of habit, and the presentation of living ideas.” The emphasis for learning should not be on the teacher, but the student, and Herbart’s recommendations are the complete opposite.

Charlotte goes on to describe an example of a Herbatian-inspired lessons, “A Robinson Crusoe Concentration Scheme,” a series of lessons given to children in Standard I in Elementary School.” She describes the lessons in a format that we would recognize as unit studies. Nine lessons in literature and language, ten object lessons on topics like “the sea” and “shell-fish.” Robinson Crusoe is the subject and every other subject must be coerced out of him.

A series of drawing lessons on a ship, an oar, and other related objects follows. It continues by way of making a model of the sea-shore, Robinson’s island, etc. Next reading lessons coming from passages from a child’s version of Robinson Crusoe, then writing lessons where children copied sentences about Robinson Crusoe off the blackboard, one example being: “Robinson spent his first night in a tree. In the morning he was hungry but he saw nothing round him but grass and trees without fruit. On the sea-shore he found some shell-fish which he ate.”

Charlotte unapologetically challenges this approach by saying, “Compare this with the voluminous output of children of six or seven working on the P.U.S. scheme upon any subject that they know; with indeed, the pages they will dictate after a single reading of a chapter of Robinson Crusoe, not a ‘child’s edition.’”

And the drudgery continues - arithmetic problems are centered around Robinson, then singing and recitation with lessons lasting forty-five minutes each. Clearly, this is a vast difference from Charlotte’s recommended short lessons.

“The whole thing must be highly amusing to the teacher,” she says, “as ingenious amplifications self-produced always are: that the children too were entertained, one does not doubt. The teacher was probably at her best…acting a part and the children were entertained as at a show, cinema or other; but the one thing we may be sure, an utter distaste, a loathing, on the part of the children ever after, not only for ‘Robinson Crusoe’ but for every one of the subjects lugged in to illustrate his adventures.”

We see here the focus is on the teacher; the efforts are made my the teacher and the role of the student is largely to be entertained. The term “edutainment” did not exist in Charlotte’s day but clearly the early sprouting of the practice did.

And what is the result of the poor teacher’s hard work and effort? That the student despises the very subject in the end and a “lifelong ennui is set up.” The result is that the children are cut short; they are capable of much more wholesome food but are subjected to ingest lollipops instead. Imagine for yourself whole days of lessons being devoted to one topic; I would be bored to tears and I’m guessing you would, too. Robinson Crusoe is just an example, another example was that of an apple. The solution, of course, is to provide students with living ideas found mainly in books of literary quality. Literary does not simply mean “written;” there is an art quality about the style writing; Charlotte refers to these as “living books” and we’ll talk more about them later in the series.

This effort on the teacher’s part is really the chewing and digesting that the student is supposed to be doing. Charlotte calls it the “puzzle-element” when children make their own connections instead of the teacher making the connections for them. It is much more amusing and even entertaining for the student to make them himself. And then, the knowledge is his, as well. We must not underestimate the importance of the discovery - this “puzzle-element” in education.

The result of the student working for his education is a well-rounded person who will be prepared to enter his adult life. Charlotte said, “…given a well-educated man with cultivated imagination, trained judgment, wide interests, and he is prepared to master the intricacies of any profession; while he knows at the same time how to make use of himself, of the powers with which nature and education have endowed him for his own happiness; the delightful employment of his leisure; for the increased happiness of his neighbors and the well-being of the community; that is, such a man is able, not only to earn his living, but to live.”

Oh, and isn’t that what we want for our children? Even in this Information Age when specialized training is pushed more and more don't we want our children to not simply earn a living but to truly live? Yet this is not a new problem. Charlotte encountered the same issue a hundred years ago and I feel we’ve not made much progress since then.

“But we are slow to learn because we have set up a little tin god of efficiency in that niche within our private pantheon which should be occupied by personality…we forget that it is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God shall man live,— whether it be spoken in the way of some truth of religion, poem, picture, scientific discovery, or literary expression; by these things men live and in all such is the life of the spirit. The spiritual life requires the food of ideas for its daily bread.”

Charlotte goes on to quote a “Mr. Fischer” who quotes a letter from John Stuart Mill that discusses patriotism as an “intelligent appreciation of all things noble in the romances, in the literature, and in the history of one’s own country” and he reminds us that “Young people should be taught to admire what is great while they are at school.” I add this note because it’s extremely relevant today and his charge that “before we teach them to be critical of what is bad, let us teach them to recognize and admire what is good” is an encouraging reminder.

Charlotte wraps up the chapter with these idealistic, hope-filled words: “Every man and woman will have received a liberal education; life will no longer discount the ideas and aims of the schoolroom, and, if according to the Platonic saying, ‘Knowledge is virtue,’ knowledge informed by religion, we shall see even in our own day how righteousness exalted a nation.”

I hope by now you are seeing the difference between a common education and a true, living, liberal education, so I ask the question, what would the result be in our own day if every man and woman had a liberal education? How would that impact our neighborhoods? Our cities? Our country? Even our world?

Let it start with me; let it start with you, one person at a time.

Join me next time as we cover principles 11-15. 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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