If I've really learned my Charlotte Mason lessons...

1.  I will not forsake the earnest and devout study of the Bible, the one way of approach to the knowledge of God....It is probably that even our lame efforts at reading with understanding are more profitable than the best instruction.  (Ourselves Book II, page 82-84)

2.  I will pray to be delivered from prejudices and prepossessions, and wait upon God as the thirsty earth waits for rain.  (page 84)

3.  Through observation of nature I will "learn to distinguish between small matters and great, to see that we ourselves are not of very great importance, that the world is wide, that things are sweet, that people are sweet, too; that indeed, we are compassed about by an atmosphere of sweetness, airs of heaven coming from our God."  (page 98)

4.  I will give daily and hourly thanks and praise to the Maker and designer of the beauty, glory, and fitness above our heads and about our feet and surrounding us on every side.  (page 100)

5.  I will "carry on the patient investigation of some one order of natural objects....the attitude of mind we get in our own little bit of work helps us to the understanding of what is being done elsewhere, and we no longer conduct ourselves in this world of wonders like a gaping rustic at a fair." (page 101)

6.  I will "record what I myself have seen, correcting my records as I learn to be more accurate, and being very chary of conclusions."  (page 101)

7.  I will "approach Art with the modest intention to pay a debt that we owe in learning to appreciate.  So shall we escape the irritating ways of the connoisseur!" (page 103)

8.  I will "lay myself out for instruction, read, inquire, think, look about for a way of acting...[to] find the particular piece of brotherly work appointed for me to do." (page 105)

9. I must "get a wide care and knowledge concerning the needs of men."  (page 105)

10.I will "take stock, not of what is peculiar to us as individuals, but what is proper to each of us as human beings..."  (page 108)

11.  I will not "put this sort of knowledge away as too troublesome and as making me too responsible.  I have simply to know in the first place; I am not bound to be labouring all the time to feed imagination, exercise reason, instruct conscience, and the rest...We are so mercifully made that the ordering of ourselves becomes unconscious to those of us who take it as a duty; it is the casual people who land in bogs or are brought up against stone walls."  (page 108)

To do my duty (Charlotte Mason and Moral Training)

(Photo of Canadian Girl Guides ca. 1924 found here.) 

A very long time ago I belonged to the Girl Guides of Canada.  I was a Brownie,  then a Guide, then a Pathfinder.  In those days we did a lot of singing and marching (Charlotte Mason would have called it drill).

We also did a lot of vowing and promising.

The Brownies promised "to do my best, to do my duty to God, the Queen and my country, to help other people every day, especially those at home." Guides jacked it up to "help other people at all times and obey the Guide Law," which started "A Guide's honour is to be trusted."

A Brownie was expected to be "cheerful and obedient" and to "think of other people before herself."  Kind of the Proverbs 31 Lady of Browniedom. Which didn't mean that we weren't awfully silly at times, but still we were given an ideal. We tried to get along with each other, we folded the flag properly, we helped wash the dishes, and we didn't litter.

(Yeah, that's me in the knee socks.)

Duty, obedience, patriotism, respect for others' rights and property: right out of the Common Law, as Uncle Eric would say; or right out of Charlotte Mason's writings on topics like Duty and Moral Training.

"High Ideals.––It is time we set ourselves seriously to this work of moral education which is to be done, most of all, by presenting the children with high ideals. 'Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime,' and the study of the lives of great men and of the great moments in the lives of smaller men is most wonderfully inspiring to children, especially when they perceive the strenuousness of the childhood out of which a noble manhood has evolved itself. As one grows older no truth strikes one more than that 'the child is father to the man.' It is amazing how many people of one's own acquaintance have fulfilled the dreams of their childhood and early youth, and have had their days indeed bound each to each in natural piety." 

"Virtues in which Children should be Trained.––One more point: parents should take pains to have their own thoughts clear as to the manner of virtues they want their children to develop. Candour, fortitude, temperance, patience, meekness, courage, generosity, indeed the whole role of the virtues, would be stimulating subjects for thought and teaching, offering ample illustrations."

"We know what is required of us, and that the requirements are never arbitrary, but necessary in the nature of things, both for the moral government of the world and to gratify the unquenchable desire of every human soul to rise into a higher state of being." ~~ Charlotte Mason