Education is a discipline: shopping with mother, and the end of the series

(All posts in this month's Education is a Discipline series)

Charlotte Mason defined "Education is a discipline":  "By Education is a discipline, is meant the discipline of habits formed definitely and thoughtfully, whether habits of mind or body."

Purposefully. Intentionally. The opposite of automatically, thoughtlessly--which sounds like a paradox if you're talking about habits, letting your feet take the path they have always walked on. But it's the formation of the habits themselves that needs to be definite and thoughtful. There's nothing wrong with a habit if it serves a purpose. I've used this CM quote before:  "Shall we live this aimless, drifting life, or shall we take upon us the responsibility of our lives, and will as we go?" (Ourselves Book II)  

And also this one:  "Before she goes 'shopping,' she must use her reason, and that rapidly, to lay down the principles on which she is to choose her dress,--it is to be pretty, becoming, suitable for the occasions on which it is to be worn, in harmony with what else is worn with it. Now, she goes to the shop; is able to describe definitely what she wants...judgment is prompt to decide upon the grounds already laid down by reason and what is more, the will steps in to make the decision final, not allowing so much as a twinge of after-regret for that 'sweet thing' which she did not buy." (Formation of Character)

These could be restated from the adult's point of view: Shall we allow our students/children to take upon themselves the responsibility of their lives, and will as they go?  Will we allow them to learn to use their reason, to choose, to know definitely what they want, to make decisions without regret?

So let's talk about shopping. A couple of days ago, Mr. Fixit and Lydia went to a thrift store which was having a half-price sale, so it was quite busy. In whatever other respects my girls' education may have failed, they are at least good clothes-choosers. Lydia came home with a lovely pair of two-tone pumps, which she actually needed to go with a dress, and she bought a couple of other things. She told me that in the change room next to her there was quite a lot of drama going on between a girl about her own age and a mother. The mother didn't like what the girl was choosing, the girl didn't like what the mother was suggesting. The mother kept bringing skinny jeans and trendy clothes, the girl wanted more casual sweaters. The mother said, "You're too fat to get into these anyway. You should lay off the Christmas cookies." (Lydia says the girl did not appear to be overweight.)

Obviously, none of us want to act like that, for quite a few reasons. But particularly in the teaching of Will, that mom gets an F.

Remember the House of Education student who got the comment from Miss Mason, "You have come here to learn to live?" You can interpret that in different ways, but in this context I think she meant living with purpose. Having a sense of who you are, what you're doing, and why you're doing it. 

What's the "real world," anyway, and who's to say who is or isn't living in it? Is education just what a teacher tells you to memorize, and information just what comes at you over whatever gadget you carry around? Do we have to rebel so hard, trying to get whatever knowledge is out there, that we frighten ourselves? Or do we allow the hard work of learning to turn us into computers wearing tennis shoes? -- Dewey's Treehouse, 2010

Teaching discipline does not mean making them scrub the latrine with a toothbrush.

It does not mean parents always telling our children what to wear.  It does not mean teachers laying down meaningless assignments (especially under the rationale that hard work builds character).

This is what I think it means: teaching I am, I can, I ought, I will.

And this is also what I think it means:

 14so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:13-15, ESV)

Education is a discipline: use the tools

"...this way delight is necessary for happiness. For it is caused by the appetite being at rest in the good attained ~~ St. Thomas Aquinas

I'm thinking about "enough."  Knowing when you have read enough, bought enough, eaten enough.  It takes discipline to start a task, and discipline to stop at the right time or the right amount. However, my bread machine does exactly those things when I push a button, and human beings aren't machines, so it's not simply a matter of having the right parameters programmed into us.

Or is it? If we are first shaped by our habits, we have accepted a certain amount of "programming," and that's probably a good thing. Maybe our kids are used to taking one or two cookies, no more, and the habit puts that particular limit on their cookie appetite. Habit is ten natures, as Charlotte Mason reminds us; adults "cursed" with a bad temper or procrastination might have been able to avoid the worst of those things simply by being trained out of those habits. And as the conversation goes in Formation of Character, that in no way diminishes the theology of sin and salvation, or our need for grace and the work of the Holy Spirit; it is simply making use of the natural laws of how we are made.  

That distinction is really important, because, as in CM's original conversation, some will see it still as "bypassing God."  There was a popular teaching in my area, back in the 1980's, that emphasized repentance in all things, and it taught a prayer that said, "I am not willing to ___, but make me willing, or make me willing to be willing." This may have been solid enough at its start, but it got misused, and I think some people got stalled on the "I am not willing" part--as in, well, the Lord hasn't made me willing on that one yet, so we can blame the Lord. In Charlotte Mason's thinking, this makes about as much sense as owning a vacuum cleaner but blaming the Lord for your dirty floor, or owning a toolbox and allowing the house to fall apart but saying that God just hasn't fixed it. That, in her view, was the real blasphemy, and she applied that thinking to people. If our understanding of human nature allows us to treat our children well, or to resolve conflict well, or to teach a class well, or to change a habit, then we should use those tools, within the bounds of respect for people's individuality etc., but without saying that any of those actions are usurping God's work.

As Mason had one of her characters say particularly, not to use those opportunities is, itself, a demonstration of ingratitude. I posted a real-life example of this last year:

"I was going to say, "stay tuned for Part Three" and leave it at that, but something funny (and suggestive, as CM would say) happened. We are having some tree work done this morning in the Treehouse yard. (Aftermath of the quite violent storms last month.) One of the tree guys said that he had planned to put a bolt into one of the trees, but he couldn't do it this morning, because his drill was broken. Mr. Fixit told him to hold on. He disappeared into the workshop and came back with his late grandpa's 1950's brace and bit. The tree guy was very impressed.  "Do you know how hard it is to find good equipment like this?" We just have to know how to use [the tools]. And provide sufficient amounts of material (mind-food) to make it worthwhile."

Are you a disciplinarian? Do you want to be one?

"By Education is a discipline, is meant the discipline of habits formed definitely and thoughtfully, whether habits of mind or body." ~~ Charlotte Mason

Are you a disciplinarian?

Do you want to be one?

Charlotte Mason says that if she were, hypothetically, asked about discipline-that-really-means-punishment, she would say that punishment has a necessary time and place. Like medicine. A necessary evil.  She says, "But punishment, like physic, is a casualty only of occasional occurrence at the worst, and punishment and physic alike are reduced to a minimum in proportion as we secure healthy conditions of body and mind."

Oh my, the connections that pop up here.

I'll start with our middle-school standby, Uncle Eric (Richard J. Maybury).  Uncle Eric preaches against big prisons full of lots of people being punished for lots of things. For one thing, they're expensive; they eat up taxpayers' money. In his view, prevention of crime would be much more advantageous than an overdeveloped penal system. Sick societies are expensive to run. So in a healthy society, yes, we would probably have jails, but they wouldn't have a lot of inmates.

Then there's Louisa May Alcott's novel Eight Cousins. It's a good story, but it's also a mouthpiece for Alcott's views on healthy lifestyle.  Rose is being cared for by a clutch of aunts, and most of them have particular agendas for her. One in particular, gloomy Aunt Myra, insists on seeing Rose as sickly, and would use any excuse to dose her with favourite medicines. In a rather troubling aside, it's hinted that Aunt Myra may have "dosed" her own daughter to death. Clearly this is a well-meaning woman who should be given a wide berth.

But into the story comes Uncle Alec, a doctor, who takes away Rose's morning coffee, as well as her corset and her silly dresses, and makes her go out and play and build up her constitution. "Healthy conditions of body and mind."  Aunt Myra's medicines are to be avoided at all costs; but even Uncle Alec's would be reserved for actual sickness. Later in the book, Rose does catch pleurisy, ironically, when Uncle Alec pushes his "healthfulness" envelope a little too far, and Aunt Myra gets her chance to gloat...but not to medicate.

What part does Discipline play in Uncle Alec's approach to health? What part does it play in Uncle Eric's just society? We think that Uncle Alec (or Alcott) and Uncle Eric (or Maybury) would, like Charlotte Mason, say something about method vs. system.

"We have a method of education, it is true [not a system], but method is no more than a way to an end, and is free, yielding, adaptive as Nature herself. Method has a few comprehensive laws according to which details shape themselves, as one naturally shapes one's behaviour to the acknowledged law that fire burns. (Ooh, Natural Law!) System, on the contrary, has an infinity of rules and instructions as to what you are to do and how you are to do it. (Political Law?) Method in education follows Nature humbly; stands aside and gives her fair play." ~~ Charlotte Mason, Parents and Children, chapter 16

"Not mere spurts of occasional punishment, but the incessant watchfulness and endeavour which go to the forming and preserving of the habits of the good life, is what we mean by discipline; and, from this point of view, never were there such disciplinarians as the parents who labour on the lines we would indicate. Every habit of courtesy, consideration, order, neatness, punctuality, truthfulness, is itself a schoolmaster, and orders life with the most unfailing diligence." ~~ C.M., same.

So yes, yes, yes, in those terms, we need to be the biggest disciplinarians that ever were!  But not in the style of Miss Norrie (Martha's old governess), but of Miss Crow instead. Like Miss Dunbar (in the tree there), in Belle Dorman Rugh's Crystal Mountain. (But not Mary Poppins, she's too tricky.) We are teaching "the good life." We are diligent to teach that spirit of the law, rather than satisfied only with the letter.

If you want to read a whole chapter of Charlotte Mason's thinking on discipline, the place to go is her Volume 2, Chapter 16.