Principle #1.
Children are born persons.
“Who shall measure the range of a child’s thoughts? His continual questions about God, his speculations about ‘Jesus,’ are they no more than idle curiosity, or are they symptoms of a God-hunger with which we are all born, and is a child able to comprehend as much of the infinite and the unseen as are his self-complacent elders? Is he ‘cabined, cribbed, confined,’ in our ways and does the fairy tale afford a joyful escape to regions where all things are possible? We are told that children have no imagination, that they must needs see and touch, taste and handle, in order to know. While a child’s age is still counted by months, he devotes himself to learning the properties of things by touching, pulling, tearing, throwing, tasting, but as months pass into years a coup d’oeil (The literal meaning is “stroke of [the] eye”. It is mostly used (in English) in a military context, where the coup d’œil refers to the ability to discern at one glance the tactical advantages and disadvantages of the terrain.) suffices for all but new things of complicated structure. Life is a continual progress to a child. He does not go over old things in old ways; his joy is to go on.” Charlotte Mason, Volume 6
If you are like I was the first time I saw the statement “Children are born persons”, I thought “what in the world does she MEAN by that?” But with deeper reading and seeing this idea fleshed out a bit, I am gaining deeper understanding little by little. Children are born complete – immature, truly, but they have all they need from the start. WE certainly didn’t make them. They are born with imagination and curiosity. They have the ability to learn and grow and develop. They are whole image-bearers – they come WITH a complete soul, and of course, subject to sin.
I admit that as I learn more about this principle, I see that while I agree that our children are precious image-bearers of God, and their own little selves complete with a personality that our Divine Creator placed inside of them, I can speak to them more like a machine to output what I input or brush them aside when I am busy with The Tasks of the Day. We deal with machines, computers and gadgets often and it’s easy to expect ourselves and our children to be as efficient, as predictable as a kitchen timer. But humans aren’t machines and relationships aren’t efficient. Treating children as persons requires us to take the time to coach, remind, speak kindly, wait, savor, laugh, wonder and perhaps even offer a tender hug when we are running late. What we do is the result of what we actually believe. And I’m enjoying looking for ways I need to grow in this principle that I might be able to love my children well and educate them in a way that honors them as persons made by God and placed into our family. Mason is not the only educator who came across this truth, Kim Brennamen wrote in her book Large Family Logistics, “Remember to guide and correct them with an attitude of encouragement… While there are helpful strategies we can employ in order to have a more peaceful day with our children, the number one thing we must do is to deny self and cling to the cross.”
When Mason says “children are born persons” we are reminded that children are not just to be educated for their academic life and mind. A person is both spiritual AND physical. A person is whole and embodied. In our age of social media and iPhones, we can try to separate ourselves from our bodies. But this is a mistake. We cannot simply try to educate the academic life of a child and neglect their need to play, run, hop, fiddle and explore. It is through play that a child learns and lives a full life. In our day, children are either pacified with a screen to sit still and be mesmerized or overscheduled with organized sports and activities. But play involves free, unscheduled time in the child’s own home.
I think we are anxious that our children will miss something – miss an opportunity or a skill that will make them great or allow them to get ahead. But in our desire to help, we stifle them and make them too dependent on us for their entertainment. We can protect their play by how we schedule the day and by keeping outside activities in check. This will look different for each family, but it is important that we consider this aspect of childhood and its importance to our children’s growth as persons. When they direct their own play and have the freedom to lose themselves in their imagination, this builds a foundation for self-directed education and exploration as they mature and grow.
One of the marvelous things I love about children is they carry a sense of wonder about the common things of the world. Things that are common to man – the height or breadth of a huge tree, the glitter of the stars and the shapes they make in the skies, a bird landing nearby and “OH! I almost touched it!” are all a wonder and new to a child. My daughter was once out alone on a trail in the woods behind our home. She came running back to announce that a stag had leapt across the path she was on directly in front of her! It wasn’t just the excitement in her voice but the wonder and humility of the statement that was so striking. These are the ways we learn from them – to be like little children in their humility and wonder.
In this way, we see that the child’s mind, as Mason puts it “is an instrument of his education and his education does not produce his mind.” She goes on to explain that the brain is an instrument of the mind as a piano is an instrument of music. The piano is not music itself. Children use their minds to learn and grow. And, as a plant needs sun and water to grow and thrive the mind needs to come into contact with other minds through the medium of ideas.
Mason again, “We must either reverence or despise children; and while we regard them as incomplete and undeveloped beings, who will one day arrive at the completeness of man, rather than as weak and ignorant persons, whose ignorance we must inform and whose weakness we must support, but whose potentialities are as great as our own, we cannot do otherwise than despise children, however kindly or even tenderly we commit the offense.” (The Story of Charlotte Mason, p 223)
As mother-teachers, we don’t want to go around spinning our wheels. We want the work we do to be the right work and to walk forward with confidence. It is the job of Satan to obscure and muddle the waters of parents, but thanks be to God, He has given us the Holy Scriptures to guide us and know what we are about! Mason reminds us that, “The parent, the mother especially, who holds that her children’s rule of life must be “children obey your parents for it is right!” certainly secures obedience as she secures personal cleanliness, or proper habits at table, because she has a strong sense of the importance of these things. As her reward, she gains for her child the liberty of a free man, who is not under bondage to his own willfulness nor the victim of his own chance desires. The liberty of the person who can make himself do what he ought is the first of the rights that children claim as persons.” (The Story of Charlotte Mason, p 227) And it is this sort of liberty we want for ourselves and our children.
Up next, we will explore Principles 2 “children are born neither good nor bad but with possibilities for good and evil.”