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mama2many
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I'm more confused than ever..
I just read this
http://www.keepingitcatholic.org/cmasonmethod.html
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Betsy
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This topic and web site has been discussed before in the following thread. There is much wisdom to be gained in these lovely ladies responses.
I have used CM for over five years. I would never do anything that is contrary to the Church, and if I found something out to be later I would drop it. CM has stood the test of time with her education philosophy and I have yet to encounter any problems with her philosophy and the Faith.
However, I do have problems with the web site you you sited. It has miss represented much information and turned many people away from teaching methods that might be fit for their families, that are in NO WAY contrary to the faith.
I hope that many people chime in here with much more wisdom and eloquence than I have to offer.
One last thing, if you DH would like to talk to another man about this my DH would be willing to answer any questions about CM.
ETA: To dove tail off another of your posts, you can get curriculums that are CM based. They will not be as structured as say Seton, but it's DEFINITELY not writing your own curriculum!
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Mackfam
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"Be not afraid," dear Kristyn! This is a question that has come up in the past. It's good to address these ideas as you encounter them. Doing so often yields a base of understanding, knowledge and formation that helps to define and undergird, in a sense, an individual (parent) educator's approach.
The KIC (Keeping It Catholic) arguments attempt to find red flags with the philosophy of a Charlotte Mason education and throw the blanket of "NOT CATHOLIC (enough)" over it all. However, when critically reading Charlotte Mason, one comes away with an overall sense that is far from the KIC arguments. It is important to read Charlotte Mason herself (you can read all of her volumes here at Ambleside online) rather than relying on the quotes and (mis)information provided on the KIC site which removes quotes from the context in which they have been written.
In 2005, on the original CCM yahoo board group, Willa posted this explanation about Keeping It Catholic and I have always found it to be so helpful and balanced:
Willa wrote:
I've heard similar comments in the past, and in fact I think you might find some threads in the archives of CCM on this subject. I personally don't find the evidence I've heard very convincing. I don't have the book you mention, but I have read through most of Charlotte Mason's books at one time or another. Here are some thoughts:
Charlotte Mason's style is not always easily understood by those of us who live in this century and don't have a good sense of the context of her times. When faced with a popular philosophy which has had a heavy influence on the people of her time, her strategy is to depict the philosophy quite sympathetically, listing points of agreement and almost "making a case" for the opposing side, before going into detail about her points of difference. This dialectic technique was quite common in previous centuries -- cf Socrates and St Thomas Aquinas.
For example, in Parents and Education, she writes as she is summing up the impact Rousseau has had upon parents of her time: "Rousseau succeeded, as he deserved to succeed, in awaking many parents to the binding character, the vast range, the profound seriousness of parental obligations. He failed, and deserved to fail, as he offered his own crude conceits by way of an educational code." Her whole section on Rousseau is in this tone. You can find it at the Ambleside website, in the first section of Volume 2 of her works. Ambleside Online
There is nothing wrong with finding points of agreement even with someone in ideological opposition to oneself, as Charlotte Mason does throughout her books. In fact, it is an excellent strategy and discipline. That is basically what we ourselves are to do when we are sorting through Charlotte Mason's works, or the works of anyone in our imperfect world. I think that when people "rumble" about CM's "atheism", or "humanism", or "anti-Catholicism" they are often taking a few phrases of her books out of context, much as some fundamentalists take Catholic writings out of context to "prove" that we worship Mary or whatever. It would be better to start as CM does, by fairly pinpointing the *real* areas of difference (assuming there are any) rather than setting up a straw man to beat down.
Of course Charlotte Mason's books are not to be taken as gospel or the Magisterium, and of course she did not intend them that way. She meant them to be read thoughtfully and critically by fellow educators and intelligent, sincere parents of her time. I think it was CS Lewis who said that every century and era has its blind spots and over-emphases on certain ideas; for this reason it can be very beneficial to read the works of past ages, because we don't necessarily share the same blind spots and are more likely to be able to read discerningly and sort out universal truth from temporal confusion and error.
Rousseau is still with us, I believe -- we just aren't as conscious of his shadow nowadays as CM was back then. So I think that what she writes about him and about other educational philosophers of her time is valuable source material and can shed some light on some of the issues we deal with even a century or so later. However, it is important to read historical material in context and not "project" our own present struggles and conflicts onto it -- I think perhaps some of CM's critics do a little of this, or perhaps, hold her to an impossibly high standard of infallibility that few of us could achieve ourselves even informed by the mind of our Church.
I hope this helps a little. Again personally, I find a lot in CM's writings that is wise and practical, a little that seems sort of timebound and less applicable, and very little indeed that I would put a red flag next to, meaning that it is unequivocally harmful. I could see where some of her ideas, like "children are born neither good or evil" could be misunderstood and misapplied, and seem to ally her with secular humanism, but I take that to be in context of opposition to the Calvinist conception that children are born corrupt with no goodness, rather than weakened and compromised by original sin but free from actual personal sin.
Quote:
| cf CCC 405 "Although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil that is called concupiscence." |
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I hope this is a helpful start for you in discerning this question! 
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Jen Mackintosh
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LLMom
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Sometimes reading too much can cause a lot of stress. Ask me how I know! 
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CatholicMommy
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I was once quite drawn in by the concept behind "Keeping it Catholic" but when I contacted them regarding some questions I had - I received no response. Months later, I tried again. A year later, I tried again.
My questions related to Montessori - a training I was considering taking.
I wrote to the publisher of the book Keeping it Catholic - I heard nothing.
But I never found proof for any of the things they were saying (I was asking for source information so I could see for myself).
I took the primary level training; I contacted them again, then again.
Nothing.
I then went on to do the elementary training - AHA! I thought! I have 2 relatively atheistic, definitely anti-Catholic trainers! And the topics for the elementary age connect with what KIC discusses! I will *definitely* find the sources used by KIC!
NO!
I got nothing. None of what KIC has said about the Montessori method can be substantiated *by *ANY *source!
I can see some connections - so they've not made up things that don't exist - they've just... embellished... and twisted... and embellished some more - and outright changed words that don't mean the same thing....
And got their take on Montessori. And presented it to the world.
That's just wrong.
And I am going to presume they are doing the same thing with Charlotte Mason, though I try NOT to paint with a broad brush, so to speak.
I still want to keep my homeschool Catholic - but this site is misleading when they refuse to provide sources for their information. I don't trust ANYONE who can't back up their information with original sources, and sadly, that includes those with the best of intentions.
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margot helene
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Oh Krystin,
I hope you read my post on your other question . . . please go and read the Mater Amabilis curriculum and see for yourself. Jen also says to read CM's own work yourself, and you really should someday if you have time. However, I'd like you to notice on that little piece in the KIC website that not in one place does she substantiate her claims with quotes from the Mason texts. I recently had occasion to read 4 of the 6 volumes looking for the particular things "they" (on the KIC website) are talking about. Yes, Mason's early formation was from a philosopher who was a follower of Rousseau, and she does mention some other educational philosophers from her time, but this quote from the website is exceedingly misleading:
"The practice of her whole philosophy leads to the heresies of rationalism (the belief in the sufficiency of reason without faith), pantheism (the belief that God is somehow imminent in nature and not to be sought outside it), and naturalism (the denial of what is not evident to the senses)."
No where in the volumes does she ever espouse reason over or without faith. In fact, her premises are predicated on the thought that the primary relationship is with God and that all other relationships (including our relationships with nature, and literature, and painting, and other people) point to our relationship with God. What's anti-Catholic about that? (Oh - I'd be happy to quote text if you like  )
Because she values nature study does not mean that she thinks God is only in nature. Good heavens, what Catholic philosopher would not say that we see God's work in nature or that by studying nature we are drawn closer to God. We see God in nature, His order, the beauty of His handiwork. No where in her volumes does she place nature above God.
I have no idea where she gets that last one about only believing what is evident to the senses. Certainly even St. Thomas teaches that we must start with the senses. We are talking about children here--they must engage their senses. They move from concrete to abstract. Every education psychologist will say that (just like Aristotle)!!
One place where CM departs from most of these philosophers that this website claims she follows is in her views of authority. This is not a child-directed curriculum, as some mistakenly believe. It is child-driven however. The child does the work under the authority of the parent/teacher. This idea about authority is repeatedly presented by Mason and is direct departure from the training she received. The part that Willa quoted above about her tone with Rousseau is illustrative of Mason's treatment of all of those philosophers she supposedly espouses. It's quite obvious that the person who wrote the piece mentioned did not really read Mason's work.
I said recently to Michele that what is true about the way children learn is true no matter what religion you are. I think CM got it right . . . think about how you learn something and see if it's not just the way Mason describes. We experience things (by reading or seeing) and then we reflect and talk to ourselves about them. It's this internal conversation that Mason wants the children to articulate in their narrations - and it's a high order thinking skill. Writing what we're thinking helps us to think about more clearly and remember it better. This has been theorized and studied by many others since Mason's time. It's also the tool that Berquist uses in her "classical" method.
Oh - I'm going on too much. It's just that it's been on mind recently.
I suggest that you go to the beginning of Volume 6 (available online at the Ambleside site) and read her 20 precepts and that will give the whole overview of the method and the philosophy upon which it is based. I think you will have peace of mind with that.
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Mackfam
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margot helene wrote:
| No where in the volumes does she ever espouse reason over or without faith. In fact, her premises are predicated on the thought that the primary relationship is with God |
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True.
From Charlotte Mason:
Toward a Philosophy of Education, vol 6, p. 158 (emphasis mine) wrote:
| Of the three sorts of knowledge proper to a child, the knowledge of God, of man, and of the universe,––the knowledge of God ranks first in importance, is indispensable, and most happy-making. |
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MamaFence
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I have been reading this thread, and the others linked from past years' discussions. Then this morning I read the "Word Among Us" daily meditations on the readings for today's Mass. It was perfect for this discussion!
Here it is:
"What did you go out to the desert to see? (Luke 7:24)
With these words, Jesus confronted the religious leaders who had been speaking ill of John the Baptist. Evidently, his asceticism had turned them off. But these same leaders were grumbling that Jesus spent time eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners. It seems that nothing these two men of God did was good enough. One was super-spiritual, while the other seemed to be too wild.
These religious leaders set such stringent standards of what godliness was supposed to look like that they sternly condemned anything that fell outside of their narrow boundaries. They had their expectations set, leaving no room for the freedom of the Holy Spirit.
This passage can lead us to ask one very important question: How rigid am I? And we can answer that question by examining our spiritual lives: Am I enjoying the freedom that John and Jesus knew, the freedom to live as Jesus is leading me? The freedom to respond to his Spirit in line with my own personality and with the way I sense he is calling me to? Remember: Some are called to contemplation, others to exuberance. Some are called to pour out their lives for the poor, and others to work for change in society. Some have a special devotion to the rosary, and others to charismatic prayer. The only really important question is whether each person is loving Jesus, keeping his commands, and trying to build the kingdom of God.
Like Jesus and John, the saints exhibited distinct personality traits suited to their calling: Philip Neri was jovial and easily attracted followers to Christ, while Jerome, a brilliant but abrasive man, was better suited to the more isolated work of a scholar. Francis Xavier's passion and ambition carried him around the world as a missionary, while the cloistered Therese of Lisieux's childlike spirit enabled her to understand and communicate the Father's love. Teresa of Avila, strong-willed and witty, was a reformer and prolific writer, while Padre Pio used his listening and intuitive skills as a gifted confessor.
So let's try our best to love and serve God and others. Let's try to find out what God is calling us to do.
"Father, I rejoice in the freedom I have as your child. I trust you and will follow you wherever you lead!"
Isaiah 54:1-10; Psalm 30:2,4-6,11-13
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mama2many
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Can I ask.. I see the MA site and the curriculum description, but where to I buy the lesson plans?? Do they sell them? Do I need more coffee?
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Krystin
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CrunchyMom
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mama2many wrote:
Can I ask.. I see the MA site and the curriculum description, but where to I buy the lesson plans?? Do they sell them? Do I need more coffee?
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Michelle can explain a bit better, I'm sure, but there are no lesson plans laid out daily or weekly. However, knowing how much one wants to cover in a quarter or semester and making sure all the bases are covered in a curriculum's being comprehensive over all the years is really the "tricky" part, which is there.
There are a couple of Charlotte Mason style planners (you can search the archives here), both paper and electronic, which can help you know just how to divide up the reading and such. But, since CM's methods are so, um, fluid maybe? Not sure if that's a good word. Anyway, I'm not sure they would lend themselves to a lesson plan such as those laid out by Seton or CHC.
I mean, you read a chapter or have the child read depending on age, and then they narrate. When you pick out something like a math curriculum, a lesson plan is sort of overkill, imo. I mean, you just do them all in order, and you can calculate how many you need to try to do each week in order to finish in the time frame you wish.
The Tanglewood Planner was good for me even though now I see that it isn't rocket science  (take the number of lessons/chapters and divide by the number of weeks!). I know Jen has said good things about the planning resources at Simply Charlotte Mason, and some others have enjoyed using the electronic/web based planner they also offer access to.
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margot helene
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mama2many wrote:
Can I ask.. I see the MA site and the curriculum description, but where to I buy the lesson plans?? Do they sell them? Do I need more coffee?
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It's free! - I mean the curriculum is free. You have to prepare your own lesson plans. Does that put a crimp in your desire for it? I think Lindsay gives a good description of the planning involved and if you go to Jen Mack's blog, you can see how she does it - pretty comprehensive explanation.
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allegiance_mom
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I started to read volume 1 of CM about two years ago, and couldn't get past the first part. I disagreed with much that she said. I have since sold my copy of the book, but here is the one paragraph which I had the biggest issue with from a Catholic standpoint.
"A generation ago, a great teacher amongst us never wearied of reiterating that in the Divine plan "the family is the unit of the nation": not the individual, but the family. There is a great deal of teaching in the phrase, but this lies on the surface; the whole is greater than the part, the whole contains the part, owns the part, orders the part; and this being so, the
children are the property of the nation, to be brought up for the nation as is best for the nation, and not according to the whim of individual parents. The law is for the punishment of evil doers, for the praise of them that do well; so, practically, parents have very free play; but it is as well we should remember that the children are a national trust whose bringing up is the concern of all––even of those unmarried and childless persons whose part in the game is the rather dreary one of 'looking on.'" (from part 1 of vol 1, page 15-16)
Sorry, but that is socialism. And contrary to the Catholic principal of subsidiarity. This is where I stopped reading. That doesn't mean that her methods are no good. Not at all. But, Charlotte Mason was no Catholic, and we must be wise enough to examine all, and choose what is good for us, and discard what is not.
I don't agree with everything they say over at KIC either. But I cannot agree that CM never said anything contrary to faith.
For me, I decided it would be a waste of time to read CM further, but I do still use her methods, and Mater Amabilis has been an important resource for my planning.
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margot helene
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Oh - this is funny - I just typed out a huge response and then went to cut and paste it and lost it . . . hmmm . . . maybe I wasn't supposed to respond.
Your reaction to that paragraph, Allegience Mom, reminds me of the time I threw out the book The Religious Potential of the Child. I had read a line that said that if a child chose to say a Hail Mary in prayer time response to an activity, that perhaps he hadn't had an authentic experience with the materials. I discarded The Catechesis of the Good Shepherd at that time. I just couldn't imagine Montessori saying that! It took many years before I went back to it.
I think that despite what Mason says in that paragraph, she lays the responsibility and joy of education squarely on the shoulders of parents (whether they hired a governess or were involved themselves), and in agreement with the Catholic principle of subsidiarity wanted education to happen in the small unit of the family. She doesn't ever say that a child should be turned over to the state for education. She believed parents are the best educators and told them that time and again in the volumes. It wasn't until some years after writing the first volume, after the Education Act of 1891 and the changes in the availability of education in England, that she began seeing her method as a possibility for schools. (School Education, published 1904) Like many education philosophers of her time (and those of our time, as well) she was deeply concerned with the connection between citizenship and education. What is the end purpose of education? How can parents prepare children for participation in society? What is worth knowing? She spent a lot of time talking about it. But unlike her contemporaries, she saw the child's participation in God's kingdom primary to earthly citizenship.
I feel kind of silly trying to defend her after what seems to be such a blatant example in your post, but after intensely reading 4 of the 6 volumes the last 3 months, the question of her "orthodoxy" is much on my mind. Of course she wasn't Catholic; no more than the ancient Greeks were Catholic; but we can learn much from them--as they had some portion of the truth--nonetheless.
You are right to take what you like of it - I say again that I think she gets much right about the relationship between parents and children and learning.
<<even of those unmarried and childless persons whose part in the game is the rather dreary one of 'looking on.'">>
Is it possible she was talking about herself here? I just thought of that . . .
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Willa
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margot helene wrote:
<<even of those unmarried and childless persons whose part in the game is the rather dreary one of 'looking on.'">>
Is it possible she was talking about herself here? I just thought of that . . . |
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That's how I always read that part, too! Just to add a few things to what Margot said --
I don't think what CM says in that passage is explicitly contrary to faith, though I don't think it's phrased in a very Catholic way. I don't quite think it's Socialism, either, though I see how it could be read that way.
Divini Illius Magistri is good to read on this question. Just a few passages that seem to apply --
Pope Pius says that it is untenable to say that
Pope Pius XI wrote:
| the children belong to the State before they belong to the family, and that the State has an absolute right over their education. |
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This is a definition of Socialism, but CM does not seem to say that the State's rights are absolute, nor that they are prior to the family's (though I agree that phrase about children as State property is a tricky one).
She draws a "whole is greater than the parts" analogy to say that the family has a wider responsibility than to itself. In other words, the family is a part of the whole, the society in which it belongs.
This is basically what the Greeks said and what the Church has said (with suitable modifications) through history.
Pope Pius goes on to say in the encyclical, that though parental rights are primary, fundamental and not to be infringed upon --
Pope Pius XI wrote:
| It does not however follow from this that the parents' right to educate their children is absolute and despotic; for it is necessarily subordinated to the last end and to natural and divine law |
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So the parent's right is primary and not to be infringed on, but not absolute and final -- which seems to me to be CM's essential point.
Divini Illius Magistri goes on to clarify the relationship between the State, the family and the Church in considerable detail. Ideally, as Pope Pius says, all three's goals should be complementary and in harmony with each other. However, in a less than perfect world, this is not the case all the time, and the State has a tendency to infringe on parental rights too much.
CM was not speaking in this context, however. She wasn't even talking about mandatory public schooling or anything like that. I think perhaps sometimes in Victorian society, family life might have been in danger of becoming an end in itself, possibly, and that was the danger she was referring to?
Pope Pius XI says later in the encyclical that a family's rights are dependent on natural law, which is safeguarded by the state, and that a family is not a complete society in itself.
Pope Pius XI wrote:
(the parents') right to educate is not an absolute and despotic one, but dependent on the natural and divine law, and therefore subject alike to the authority and jurisdiction of the Church, and to the vigilance and administrative care of the State in view of the common good.
Besides, the family is not a perfect society, that is, it has not in itself all the means necessary for its full development. |
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This I think refers indirectly to Aristotle's Politics, which holds that individuals need a society to live in in order to reach full human perfection. My guess is that this is the same tradition that CM was evoking -- nowadays we live in such a different context, post-Communist-Revolution and totalitarian-state, that what was an incidental point in her book, treated in fairly casual language, looks more sinister to us in light of the monolith that States and Public Education have become.
When we nowadays read Charlotte Mason saying
Charlotte Mason wrote:
| the children are the property of the nation, to be brought up for the nation as is best for the nation, |
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it sounds troubling (and I'm glad the Church tends to use more careful language for this kind of issue) but Pope Pius XI carefully makes the point that when children are educated under the authority of the Church, it is a benefit to the State rightly conceived. So in that way, bringing up children in the best way for them and for the Church ultimately also means doing what is best for the State, so there is no necessary contradiction there. Ever since the catacombs, Church Fathers have been making the point that to raise a good Catholic is the same thing as to raise a good citizen.
Furthermore, he says that education does belong to the State in a way, considering that families do not possess the means by themselves for full human perfection.
Pope Pius XI wrote:
| 52. Now the education of youth is precisely one of those matters that belong both to the Church and to the State, "though in different ways," as explained above. Therefore, continues Leo XIII, between the two powers there must reign a well-ordered harmony.....Everything therefore in human affairs that is in any way sacred, or has reference to the salvation of souls and the worship of God, whether by its nature or by its end, is subject to the jurisdiction and discipline of the Church. Whatever else is comprised in the civil and political order, rightly comes under the authority of the State; for Christ commanded us to give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.[35] |
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To me, it seems like CM doesn't bring out the Church's role in the Church-State-family thing as much as a Catholic would, so perhaps this is part of the reason why her wording rings strangely to Catholics. However, there is no doubt that to Catholics, the State does have some real interests in the education of its children, and the family's rights though primary and inalienable, are not absolute or complete. So there is a bit of meeting ground there between her words and the thinking of a Catholic, I believe.
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If it is any consolation I have had discussions with people who claim that Mother Teresa wasn't saintly by quoting second-hand out-of-context comments and complaining that there was a photo taken of her praying in front of a statue of Buddah that causes "scandal". There is a segment that seems obsessed with tearing down everything and finding problems in everything that isn't a certain "brand" or "strain" of Catholicism. Best to go to the source yourself than get muddled by the muddledness of others.
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4Real Forums : Living Learning
Topic: More confusion
