“’Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life’––is perhaps the most complete and adequate definition of education we possess. It is a great thing to have said it; and our wiser posterity may see in that ‘profound and exquisite remark’ the fruition of a lifetime of critical effort (Charlotte Mason, Parents and Children, p. 33).
In the quotation above, Charlotte Mason identifies what she believes are the three instruments of education at a teacher’s disposal: atmosphere, discipline, and life. In my first article in this series, I explored the instrument of atmosphere.
In Mason’s view, the sort of atmosphere a teacher builds is dependent primarily on her view of her students. If students are primarily future contributors to the economy, then the efficiency-driven model of a factory will do. The priority will be to standardize the content as much as possible and boil down the educational process to an assembly line of simple, repeatable acts and interchangeable parts. Likewise, if students are information processors at core, then the atmosphere of a computer lab will suffice. Pack as much information as possible into a lecture, or textbook, and call on students to analyze the data as if they were little Microsoft Excel humanoids.
But if students are persons, relational beings made in the image of God, that are endowed with 1) minds to contemplate and create 2) wills to choose the good (or evil) 3) physical bodies to steward and 4) souls to connect with God Himself, then the task of education, and the atmosphere of a classroom by implication, will look very different.
In today’s article, I will move on to the second instrument of Mason’s triad: “Education is a Discipline.” We will see that, like atmosphere, discipline, or training, is very much an instrument with the idea of students as persons in view. God created humans as persons hard-wired for growth. Either they grow or decline over time; there is no such thing as a static human being. It therefore falls to parents and teachers to consider how they will help children grow, especially through supporting them to develop good habits from a young age. These habits over time become the soil for a child’s moral life to spring up. This is the instrument of discipline.
Preparing Children for the World…But Which World?
Let us acknowledge it: life is difficult. People face a variety of challenges throughout life, whether they be financial, relational, professional, physical, or otherwise. This realization finds credence across philosophies and religions. The writer of Ecclesiastes observes that life is full of toil and ultimately meaningless (apart from God). The Buddha built a whole religion on four noble truths, the first being that “life is suffering.” There is no shortage of trials we will encounter as human beings. Our posture should therefore pivot from one of full avoidance of these trials, but rather an acceptance and preparation for how to overcome them.
In the classic dystopian novel Brave New World (First Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006), originally published by Harper and Brothers in 1932, author Aldous Huxley imagines a future world state in which the trials described above are all but eliminated. Through genetically engineering humans for specific castes, abolishing traditional moral norms, and mass producing happiness-producing drugs for daily consumption, the brave new world is one of ever-present, uninterrupted, happiness.
Interestingly, in this world, there seems to be no need for nobility, heroism, or discipline for that matter. It is a tailor-made civilization in which natural impulses are free to run their course with no fear of the consequences. Habits can continue to be helpful, but there are mechanisms already built into society to prevent real negative consequences from occurring. The startling result: “Anyone can be virtuous now” (238).
Of course, this is not our world, at least, not yet. The children we instruct, whether in our homes or classrooms, must be prepared to encounter challenges, friction points, trials, and opportunities to do what is right. This struggle is constituted both externally (in the circumstances they face) and internally (in mastering their own thoughts, desires, and choices).
Raising children to be disciplined, therefore, should be no afterthought in education. It is a primary responsibility for raising strong, thoughtful, noble, and virtuous men and women.
The Discipline of Habits
Charlotte Mason believed that the key to helping children build strong moral wills and productive intellectual lives is through instilling good habits. These habits are to be trained, not through the harsh ruling of a Victorian task-master, or the behavioral manipulation of rewards systems, but through relationship, accountability, and support. Maryellen St. Cyr, co-founder of Ambleside Schools International, writes, “The idea of education as a discipline encompasses the full realm of education, taking into account its varied relationships–intellectual, moral, physical, religious, and social, as well as the great potential of persons to move in directions of change and growth” (When Children Love to Learn, 89).
This growth can be developed from a young age through habit training. In modern education, the general thought is to “let kids be kids” and by that it is meant for teachers to permit the majority of children’s natural impulses to run free in the classroom. The heart behind this sentiment, of course, is a desire for the children to be happy. But Mason’s profound insight, which is replete with biblical truth, is that equipping students to develop control over these impulses is actually what will set them up well for a life of flourishing. As one proverb puts it, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6, ESV).
We can begin to see that through helping students develop good habits–attention, self-control, respects for others, kindness, and responsibility–we are preparing them for a life of growth. In Home Education, Charlotte Mason writes, “It is unchangeably true that the child who is not being consistently raised to a higher and a higher platform will sink to a lower and a lower. Wherefore, it is as much the parent’s duty to educate his child into moral strength and purpose and intellectual activity as it is to feed him and clothe him” (103).
As teachers work to train habits in the classroom, they must always keep the vision of building up persons in view. To differentiate between building up persons and mere external conformity, Maryellen St. Cyr makes this table of distinction:
What Neuroscientists Have to Say
As we have noted on Educational Renaissance on multiple occasions, such as here, the practice of habit training, which is what Charlotte Mason primarily means by the instrument of discipline, finds encouraging support in modern neuroscience. Each time we perform an act, we are rewiring our neural pathways and even creating new brain cells, processes called neuroplasticity and neurogenesis.
Mason, herself a lover of modern research, was tracking the earliest scientific discoveries of this phenomenon. She writes, “New brain tissue is being constantly formed at a startlingly rapid rate: one wonders at what age the child has no longer any part left of that brain with which he was born (Home Education, 115).
Later she goes on to conclude:
“What follows? Why, that the actual conformation of the child’s brain depends upon the habits which the parents permit or encourage; and that the habits of the child produce the character of the man…”
Charlotte Mason, Home Education, 118.
What a profound and even mysterious insight, this connection between moral philosophy and modern neuroscience. God, in His providence, truly created us as mind-body unities. Our brains affect our morals and our morals affect our brains. And while the non-religious materialist might use these scientific discoveries to make the case that even moral phenomenon has a natural explanation, I find the more compelling conclusion to be that this sort of moral-biological synthesis is exactly what we should expect of a universe fashioned by a wise Creator.
From Habits to Virtues
The Greek philosopher Aristotle is one of the earliest proponents of habit training. He draws a straight line from habits through virtue to happiness itself. But unlike in Brave New World, in which happiness is the maximization of pleasure, Aristotle tethers happiness to virtue. Happiness is an activity that is manifested over a whole life as humans align their lives with virtues laid down by reason (A History of Philosophy, Volume 1: From Greece to Rome by Frederick Coppleston, p. 334). However, unlike Cynic contemporaries in his day, Aristotle did not excise pleasure from the equation completely. He acknowledged that circumstances can and do play a role in one’s overall flourishing. But the pathway to happiness is ultimately through virtuous activity, not pleasure-seeking. To be truly happy, one must live a life of activity in accordance with virtue.
So how do humans become virtuous? Aristotle believed it was through practice, by cultivating good habits. People become virtuous by doing virtuous acts. A soldier becomes courageous, not through reading about it, though that will help, but through stepping foot in the arena. Likewise, a child becomes honest by practicing telling the truth.
Now, some may anticipate the objection of circular thinking. How can one do virtuous acts without being virtuous? But how can one be virtuous without doing virtuous acts?
Philosopher Frederick Coppleston offers this response on behalf of Aristotle: “We begin by doing acts which are objectively virtuous, without having a flex knowledge of the acts and a deliberate choice of the acts as good, a choice resulting from an habitual disposition…The accusation of a vicious circle is thus answered by the distinction between the acts which create the good disposition and the acts which flow from the good disposition once it has been created” (335).
In other words, virtue formation is a process. We train children to begin acting in certain ways, holding them to certain expectations, even before they fully understand the “why.” To be sure, we want to relationally come beside them and discuss how particular habits are for the good of themselves and others. But we also need to be patient, understanding that the process of moral development is a lifelong journey, even for adults, one in which moral knowledge and practice slowly grow more and more aligned.
Towards a Christian View of Virtue Formation
So far, I have been discussing the notions of happiness, virtues, and habits without much reference to our Christian faith. To begin making these connections, I find Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain’s comments in The Liberal Arts Tradition (Classical Academic Press, 2019) really helpful.
Clark and Jain augment a Christian, classical notion of Aristotle’s conception of virtue by connecting virtue to participation in Christ (137). Virtue is more than human effort accompanied by the goods that come of it. It is the path of following Christ and growing in Christlikeness. It encompasses increasing spiritual intimacy with Him through obedience and reliance on the Holy Spirit. Virtue for a Christian begins by being raised with Christ and becoming a new creation (Colossians 3). When this happens, the righteousness of Christ becomes ours, and we are empowered to begin down the path of sanctification, or personal holiness.
There is much, much more to unpack here theologically, but I will need to put this work off for another article. Suffice it to say that for Christians, habit training and virtual formation should be inextricably linked to our walk with Christ and growing in unity with Him.
Conclusion
C.S. Lewis once wrote, “For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue (The Abolition of Man, 77). By training students in habits, we are preparing students for the real world. This world is not one free of struggle, pain, and unrestricted passion, as fantasized in Brave New World. Rather it is a world of both comfort and struggle, joy and pain, self-restraint and pleasure.
The well-trained student can navigate both, but not by accident. Rather, it is through year after year of virtue formation through habit training. As the metal worker bends his material into proper shape, so we has humans, through practicing habits, can gradually build lives aligned with virtue. United with Christ, we acknowledge that this strength comes not from us, but from the Holy Spirit, as His power is made perfect in our weakness.
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