“Such a doctrine as e.g. the Herbartian, that the mind is a receptacle, lays the stress of education (the preparation of knowledge in enticing morsels duly ordered) upon the teacher. Children taught on this principle are in danger of receiving much teaching with little knowledge; and the teacher’s axiom is, ‘what a child learns matters less than how he learns it.”
We arrive to principle #10 and immediately our eyes glaze over and we wonder what “Herbartian philosophy” has to do with us. But the ghosts of Herbart are alive and well. These ghosts today, present themselves as Unit Studies, test-driven school systems, and apathetic children. All are progeny of the Herbartian view of children, their ability to learn for themselves and the role of the teacher. Principle #10 point to the balance between the teacher’s guidance and the student’s self-directed engagement. Herbart gives us passive students. Mason requires wholly engaged learners.
What is the Herbartian Model of Education?
Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841) was a German philosopher. His ideas about education had a huge impact on teaching practices especially in America during Charlotte Mason’s lifetime. My understanding of Herbart is based on Mason’s words in her writings. I have not read Herbart myself. So, there’s that.
Herbart believed:
The mind is a receptacle for ideas and that the IDEAS act on the person and the person has no say in the matter
The teacher’s work is to prepare connections of ideas for the student.
The child’s mind is to be filled with ideas by the teacher.
Ideas themselves have a life of their own and the child is merely a recipient. Ideas can float in and out of the mind.
(Vol. 6 p. 255)
A Herbartian lesson looks like a unit study on steroids. The role of the teacher is to prepare the groups of ideas to help keep the ideas in the child’s mind. These connections may entertain the child, but as you will see, there is very little work for the child to do. He is dependent on the teacher.
Mason gives us a taste of this hyper linking of ideas for the student in the following lesson using the literary classic Robinson Crusoe.
Example of a Herbart Lesson using Robinson Crusoe
The students read Robinson Crusoe and as they do their school lessons revolve around it. The lessons include:
Literature and language
Object lessons i.e. the sea, a ship, a lifeboat etc.
Drawing lessons i.e. a boat, a ship, an oar
Reading lessons connected to the story
Writing lessons connected to the story
Math lessons connected to the story
Singing and recitation connected to the story
The example Mason uses incorporates this story and these lessons that support it for an entire school year. Which is precisely enough time to lead the child to be worn out by the book. The work of the teacher is extensive and again, the work of the learners is simply to receive the ideas. They are not being asked to make connections for themselves, which is essential to learning.
Mason’s Objections to Herbart
Children being taught using the Herbartian method, as many children across America are today, are not doing the work of self-education. They are merely being entertained, or worse, babysat by being fed ideas and the corresponding connections made by the teacher.
Mason was concerned that this way of approaching education did a few things:
The child is fully dependent on the teacher to learn and grow.
Children are merely entertained and are not being taught how to think and gain knowledge for themselves.
The teacher talks too much, and the children learn too little.
The child is robbed of the pleasure of making discoveries for himself.
Notice how much the students rely on the teacher in this method, which begs the question: What ought a teacher do to prepare a lesson? If my children draw a picture after reading a story, am I following a Herbartian method? Or, our composition lessons use the literature we read to teach the art of writing. Was this wrong?
The Role of the Teacher
Mason tells us, “The teacher's business is to indicate, stimulate, direct and constrain to the acquirement of knowledge, but by no means to be the fountainhead and source of all knowledge in his or her own person. The less parents and teachers talk-in and expound their rations of knowledge and thought to the children they are educating, the better for the children. Peptonised food for a healthy stomach does not tend to a vigorous digestion.
Children must be allowed to ruminate, must be left alone with their own thoughts. They will ask for help if they want it.” Volume 3 pg. 162
Mason gives us a picture of the teacher’s role to help to set the course of the work to be done. The teacher is to indicate, stimulate, direct, and constrain the work the child is to do. She sets up the boundaries for the child’s schoolwork so that he is being guided through his books and not left to himself to wade through the ocean of Great Ideas available. This includes giving assignments and setting the timetable or schedule for the day.
Assignments may include:
Reading assignments including the page numbers to be read or the amount of time to be spent in a specific book
Written narration assignments
Notebook work (drawing, painting, clay modeling etc)
Oral narration
Experiments
Other noble work of this sort is all within the bounds for a teacher using Mason’s method to assign
The student's work is done in harmony with the work of the teacher. Each plays their part.
A Word about the teacher “leaving the child alone”
Some, in Charlotte Mason circles, have taken this principle to mean that the teacher should do nothing, say nothing, and simply hand the book to the child and allow the author to do his work. Sure, the child will narrate, but even this must not be fussed with. But this is irresponsible and also doesn’t take the personhood of the teacher into account. Remember, the teacher and the student are acting on one another as the earth rotates around the sun. The sun is pulling the earth towards itself while the earth is pulling away into infinity. So it is with the child and the teacher.
The teacher has her own thoughts, interests, and wisdom that she brings to the lesson. She will show her students how to look for virtues and vices within the text. She will be fully engaged with the ideas herself so as to be able to offer sympathy and help her students learn how to engage themselves more fully. Mason agrees, she tells us, “We need not say one word about the necessity for living thought in the teacher; it is only so far as he is intellectually alive that he can be effective in the wonderful process which we glibly call 'education.'” Volume 2
pg. 279
Once again, we consider the role of the teacher. What should preparation look like if we are not to make all the connections in some inane way for the child? Should we just “open and go” with all of our lessons so that we can be as surprised by the treasures of the lesson as our students?
In a word, no.
“We must learn what we should teach” (Volume 5 pg. 130). “Our constant care must be to secure that they do look, and listen, touch, and smell; and the way to this is by sympathetic action on our part: what we look at they will look at; the odours we perceive, they, too, will get.”
Volume 2 pg. 192-3
Our students take our lead on how to engage with good, truth, and beautiful ideas. We are guides, philosophers, and friends. This means we need to have an idea of where we are headed, have an understanding of the chief aim for the education we are providing, and do so in a loving and sympathetic way that honors the child’s personhood and stretches them to grow, challenges them to be better than what they are, and encourages them along the path.
The Role of the Learner
Now that we see the role of the teacher in directing the work of the student, what part does the child play? How is he expected to engage in his education? We want our children’s minds to be fully alive and engaged in the work at hand, but how does this happen?
If the teacher is the sun, then the child is the earth. Each is pulling against the other. It is the movement of the earth’s rotation that keeps the balance in place. Both the sun and the earth are active. If the teacher is active and sets off the work for the student, then it is the duty of the student to offer his own activity to the work at hand. The child is being shown how to take from the gold around him by the structure set up by the teacher. This isn’t a leave it and forget it system. Our goal is to bring our children into relationships with God, mankind, creation, and ultimately himself. This only works if the child is free to meet with ideas within certain boundaries.
If you’ve taught a child to read, then you know that the child must do the work of saying the word sounds himself and then sounding out the words in order to finally “get it.” We can make the mistake of giving the child the letter sound when he is struggling to remember the sound, but it’s in the very act of remembering that the magic of learning to read occurs. He must do the work for himself. We can guide, encourage, and when he says the right sound, we can repeat it back to him, but if we want him to learn how to read, we must allow him to do the work if recalling the sound from his mind. It is the same with every other subject. The principle is simple.
But we need to apply it in every aspect of a child’s education, which is both hard and simple.
To learn, the child must:
Obey the teacher and carry out the assignments in word, deed, and attitude.
Pay attention to the lesson.
So, one aspect of education is to help the child learn how to rule himself as a benevolent king over a vast kingdom. He does this by learning to obey which is the act of physical restraint or compliance. He also learns the habit of attention which is obedience of the mind. Simple. But hard.
The work of learning happens with self-management. The character of the child is being cultivated with each chore, each reading lesson, every act of narration. The child is learning, growing, and developing into the man or woman they will become. Mason again:
“Further, though the emancipation of the children is gradual, they acquiring day by day more of the art and science of self-government, yet there comes a day when the parents' right to rule is over; there is nothing left for the parents but to abdicate gracefully, and leave their grown-up sons and daughters absolutely free agents, even though these still live at home; and though, in the eyes of their parents, they are not quite fit to be trusted with the ordering of themselves: if they fail in such self-ordering, whether as regards time, occupations, money, friends, most likely their parents are to blame for not having introduced them by degrees to the full liberty which is their right as men and women. Anyway, it is too late now to keep them in training; fit or unfit, they, must hold the rudder for themselves.” (Vol. 2, p. 17-18)
I always walk away sober from this quote. Mason reminds us how important it is that the child learn how to manage himself. This self-management happens in every aspect of the child’s day. Once we see that our work is to help our child learn how to rule himself well, then our work is simplified. We don’t have to make all the connections for him or come up with the perfect lesson plan. We can be prepared for the lesson and then we can trust that the ideas will work on the child as we show him how to engage with the Great Ideas - which all come from and find their answers in God Himself.
I will leave you with a quote about this principle that shows it working on a schoolboy.
"There is too much learning and too little work. The teacher ready to use the powers that his training and experience have given him works too hard while the boy's share in the struggle is too light. It is possible to make education too easy for children and to rob learning of the mental discipline which often wearies but in the end produces concentration and the capacity to work alone . . . He is rarely left to himself with the book in his hands, forced to concentrate all his mind on the dull words before him with no one at hand to explain or make the memory work easier by little tricks of repetition and association... "'Silent reading' is occasionally allowed in odd half-hours . . . it might well be a regular subject for reading aloud is but a poor gift compared with the practice of reading in private.”
And so, let the child read great books and give him work to do that will help him learn how to think. And be leery of curriculum and homeschool resources that “do the work for you.” The work is for the student to do and for us to understand how to help them do it.
We have one more aspect of ideas that feed children’s minds to look at next time. Then we begin start getting into the practical aspects of our 20 principles.
Reflection Questions:
What habits of obedience are working well in your home? List a few.
What is one area that obedience needs work?
What habit can you work on for yourself in order to help your child?
In what ways has your own habit of attention grown since you started homeschooling?
In what ways do you see your child cultivating the habit of attention?
What is one area where the habit of attention is weak? How does it manifest itself?
How can you use your creativity to help your family develop a stronger habit of attention in that area?
What is the role of the teacher?
What is the role of the learner?
How do these two roles complement one another?
20 Principles of a Liberating Education:
#2 The Good and Evil Nature of Children
#3 Parents are in Charge and Children Must Obey
#4 Limits to Our Authority as Parents and Educators
#5 Education is an Atmosphere, a Discipline, a Life| a primer
#9 Feeding the Hungry Mind
#10 From Bucket Heads to Bright Minds| The True Role of Teacher & Learner (You are here)
Bibliography for further reading:
A PNEU Manifesto by Charlotte Mason
In Vital Harmony by Karen Glass
Start Here, a Journey through Mason’s 20 Principles by Brandy Vencel
On Herbartian Unit Studies by Brandy Vencel
Philosophy of Education by Charlotte Mason
Parents and Children by Charlotte Mason
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