Authority and Obedience in the Classroom: Reading Charlotte Mason’s Philosophy of Education

I recently talked with a frustrated teacher about the anti-authoritarian Tendenz of her math class. The smug look of the child says everything. “You can’t tell me what to do.” This child might accomplish the set of math problems assigned, at least externally. But on the inside, there is a refusal to submit to the teacher, the assignment, or even mathematics itself. “Who even cares? I don’t even plan to get a job in mathematics,” says the child under his breath to the amusement of a classmate. The spirit of revolution is in the air. Down with the king and his tyranny . . . and his mathematics, too. We shall rise up and be counted! If only we knew how.

Authority and obedience sound like harsh words in a postmodern world of tolerance and relativism. Most parents and teachers have a sense that children should be taught to obey, but there is so much cultural backlash against authority that we are enfeebled authorities ourselves. Our rules feel arbitrary, and the effort to enforce petty regulations doesn’t feel worth it. Won’t our efforts to teach obedience just backfire, resulting in the very rebellion we hoped to curtail in the first place?

But what if authority and obedience are a fundamental part of our very natures? I have been reading Charlotte Mason’s Toward a Philosophy of Education. She addresses these very topics in her fourth chapter entitled “Authority and Docility.” I think her ideas are worthy of consideration and might provide avenues for you to explore, whether you are a parent or a teacher.

Deputed Authority

To begin with, authority is never our own, it is conferred by a higher authority. Mason begins by locating ultimate authority in the divine Logos. Christ spoke with authority (Matt. 7:29). In the biblical tradition, the divine Logos created all the universe (Gen. 1:3; John 1:1-3) and has authority over all that he has created. This authority is then imparted by the creator to the natural order so that authority exists in a variety of relationships within the very structure of created reality. Natural laws govern the operations of planets. Just try disobeying gravity… the consequences could be fatal. We, too, have a form of authority that is deputed to us. Although we are created as equal to one another in the essence of our being, there are roles that we inhabit that carry the authority due to different kinds of offices. A police officer has an authority to enforce the laws of the land, not because she is a superior human being, but because the office carries an authority in its domain. The judge who maintains order in his courtroom does so because the office demands obedience. As soon as the person leaves that sphere of authority, he is as ordinary as you or me. I can disagree with his views on sports over the weekend grill without committing contempt of court.

Mason addresses our fallacious misgivings about authority.

“There is an idea abroad that authority makes for tyranny, and that obedience, voluntary or involuntary, is of the nature of slavishness.” (Philosophy of Education 40)

Even though tyrants wield a corrupt authority, it is actually an abuse of its essential nature as the means of establishing and protecting order. We hold with great esteem coaches who get the best out of their teams and win championships. Far from being tyrants, they formulate winning strategies, calling out orders that the players are enthusiastic to carry out. The players take pride in their accomplishments. The orderliness on the field of play is a result of authority and obedience. The good coach is not a tyrant. We might be able to think of examples where coaches used tyrannical methods to control a team, but I think we are quick to recognize this as an aberration. When we see the coach applying the means available to him to lead his team well, we applaud the authority and obedience on display. With these ideas in mind, we as parents and teachers can understand our own authority as something good and right without succumbing to the negative assumptions about the nature of our authority or about our the obedience children owe to those roles.

Willing Obedience

If authority and obedience are part of our essential nature, then how do we translate this into the classroom? One faulty strategy is the indirect method of governance. Children are offered freedom to do as they want, with the assumption that most people will have a sense of certain rules and procedures. They are indirectly compelled to follow the rules but never with an awareness that they are following rules at all. This method, though, robs children of the opportunity to learn a “dignified obedience.” Never is a sense of duty or nobility acquired. As soon as the child is held accountable, the child complains of the apparent loss of freedom. This is to completely misunderstand the nature of obedience and freedom.

Many of us make assumptions that to call a child to obedience is to burden them with a load too heavy for them. We shy away from being direct and clear in our instructions and expectations. Instead, we try to extend our silent wills, clenching our stomach muscles and hoping against hope that they’ll make the right choices that conform to unspoken standards. It is an understandable resistance to harshness on our parts. There’s a different view, though. The teacher can take on the mantle of authority, giving simple commands, expecting full adherence, and providing support to children who are learning how to be at peace with themselves while under authority.

Paul explores the seeming contradiction of obedience and freedom in Romans 8. Although Christ frees us from the law’s requirements by accomplishing the righteous requirements of the law on our behalf, we now live according to the law of the Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2). We are not redeemed to disobedience, but our obedience is now shifted to a new order of righteousness. This new order sets us free. Freedom and obedience are not dichotomous, but flow from each other. Consider the illustration of the airplane. It must obey the laws of physics, with the forces of gravity, lift, thrust and drag acting upon the aircraft.

A pilot must carefully operate a number of control systems in order to achieve flight. What we observe as the airplane’s freedom to fly across the sky is the result of the craft’s disciplined obedience. “The mind set on the Spirit is life and peace (Rom. 8:6).” The word “set” here (φρόνημα) communicates a resolute, determined or purposeful psychological faculty (Louw & Nida, Greek-English Lexicon, 325). There is a willing obedience to the Spirit that provides freedom to live in harmony with God’s righteousness.

I shared with my son an idea I heard from Jocko Willink, “Discipline equals freedom.” At first he vehemently disapproved this idea. He felt freedom was the absence of discipline. Interestingly, it was Rousseau who helped the light bulb turn on for him. I read him a simple quote from Emile book 2, “But children’s freedom is limited by their weakness.” In other words, he could be free to lift whatever he wanted, but if he hasn’t trained his muscles, he will be limited and therefore lack freedom. He could read whatever he wanted, but if he lacks the discipline to learn the English language well (or any foreign languages for that matter), he will lack the freedom to explore all the great literature out there. And, yes, the freedom to find your Legos in a timely manner is impaired if you lack the discipline to tidy and organize your Legos. My son learned a key lesson about willing obedience.

A Higher Order of Authority

The child’s willing obedience is not different than our own obedience. All too often we settle for the “because I told you so” rationale for obedience. However, we ourselves are under authority, and often have a higher authority to point to from which our authority as parent or teacher has been deputed. Mason writes,

“It is the part of the teacher to secure willing obedience, not so much to himself as to the laws of the school and the claims of the matter in hand.”

The child is called to attention not merely because I said so (although I did say so, and sometimes that will be enough), but because learning requires attention. I acquired the skill of attention because learning itself is a higher authority over me and my student. Now I call my students to have attention in obedience to the rules of learning. There is a higher authority than me. Mason states later,

“The higher the authority, the greater the distinction in obedience, and children are quick to discriminate between the mere will and pleasure of the arbitrary teacher or parent and the chastened authority of him who is himself under rule.”

Towards a Philosophy of Education, 41

There is no essential difference between me and my student. We are both under authority. We are both called into the kingdom of God and will carry out our own dominion in the world as image bearers. I like how Dallas Willard explores our deputed authority as the “range of our effective will.” He writes,

“In creating human beings God made them to rule, to reign, to have dominion in a limited sphere. Only so can they be persons…. Any being that has say over nothing at all is no person. We only have to imagine what that would be like to see that this is so. Such ‘persons’ would not even be able to command their own body or their own thoughts.”

Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, 21-22

Whether it be family, church, society or our relationship to God himself, we are all under authority, and we can and must appeal to that higher authority as the basis of obedience. In recognizing this higher authority, we can help our students to cultivate a sense of noble duty in whatever enterprise they pursue. Moreover, we can help our students gain “a fine sense of the freedom which comes of knowledge.”

The Responsibility of Learning

As teachers, we often sense that the responsibility of teaching falls squarely on our shoulders, but it is necessary to shift our thinking to the students’ responsibility to learn.

“All school work should be conducted in such a manner that children are aware of the responsibility of learning; it is their business to know that which has been taught.”

Toward a Philosophy of Education, 43

Too often we exercise ourselves with great effort to teach and reteach the lesson in an attempt to ensure that all students have learned the material. That, though, is to remove from them a responsibility that is rightfully theirs. Repeating the lesson, doing a complete review, or re-reading the exercise backfires because the child learns not to take responsibility for their learning. The teacher tacitly communicates that “I’ll see that you know it.” This concept is counter-intuitive as it seems our responsibility not only to know the materials ourselves as content experts but also to verify that our students know the material. However, we cannot make the knowledge appear in the students’ minds by any of our own effort. They must exercise their own brains to assimilate new knowledge.

Mason suggests teachers typically fall prey to any of three fallacies. First, we regard the student as inferior. Yes, the offices of teacher and student entail a necessary hierarchy of authority. However, we are both in essence human beings with inestimable capacity of mind. Our students have the ability to understand great ideas and they have the ability to acquire all the habits of discipline. Second, we doubt their ability to understand “a literary vocabulary.” Elsewhere Mason cautions against instructing children “like young pigeons with predigested food.” Lengthy explanation has the opposite effect we hoped for. It does not lead to deeper understanding, instead it can steal the effectiveness of high expression and clear commands. Third, we misunderstand the nature of attention. The label Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) is bandied about too liberally. Children have the power of attention. If you’ve ever watched a child engrossed before a screen, you can observe attention at work. It is not in deficit, it is just misdirected. Mason’s advice is to be sure to place before our students the best books by the best writers: “Our part is to regard attention, too, as an appetite and to feed it with the best we have in books and in all knowledge.” There is a good deal of student self interest in Mason’s vision of the attentive child. The student looks out for herself, desiring to be delighted and to find genuine helps for navigating her world. Effective teaching, then, comes down to finding the keys to unlock the student’s vantage of interest so that they can properly direct their attention.

Once we recognize these fallacies in our thinking and correct our faulty assumptions about our students abilities, we can genuinely help them to fully realize their potential as students. The nature of the student is to learn and to obey. They can find great pleasure and meaning in learning and in obedience.

The Walking Wounded

Mason concludes this chapter by recalling the wounded soldiers coming home from the Great War (she published this work in 1922, so this would have been a vivid image for her readers), who walked with a limp and wore various prosthetics. When education neglects due consideration of authority and removes from the student the burden of responsibility, the result is that “our young men and women go about more seriously maimed than these.” There is no spark of intellect, ideas, imagination or creativity, at least not stemming from the school room. Renewing our understanding of authority and obedience is necessary to realign ourselves and our students to something greater than us all: intellectual pursuit. Mason writes:

“They are devoid of intellectual interest, history and poetry are without charm for them, the scientific work of the day is only slightly interesting, their ‘job’ and the social amenities they can secure are all that their life has for them. The maimed existence in which a man goes on from day to day without either nourishing or using his intellect, is causing anxiety to those interested in education…”(45)

Towards a Philosophy of Education, 45

We likely have some of those walking wounded in our classroom. They have likely seen the future and all they can see is a lifeless job. If we can help them gain for themselves a fresh vision of their own intellectual flourishing that transcends themselves and their jobs, we can help them also acquire an interest in what we are learning in the classroom, and an interest in the nobility of dignified obedience.

I have been reading from Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education (Seven Treasures Publications, 2009) ISBN 978-1438298139. Mason’s writings are in the public domain and are available online at www.amblesideonline.org.