Set amidst the idyllic scenes of Prince Edward Island, one of Canada’s eastern most provinces, the story of Anne Shirley serves up excellent reading for Middle Schoolers. The first in a series of short novels written by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables tells the story of an orphan girl, Anne Shirley, who is adopted by the aging brother and sister, Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert. Through Anne, we are introduced to the community of the fictional town of Avonlea. Anne’s coming of age story is shaped by the people and countryside of this small community. And yet her arrival disrupts the quiet town through a series of mishaps and provocations that transform the people that come under the influence of the imaginative and verbose Anne.
Marilla is advised by Mrs. Lynde, the Cuthbert’s opinionated neighbor, to place Anne in the town school. There Anne meets many of the town’s children and comes under the tutelage of Mr. Phillips, a didactic teacher who emphasizes discipline and shows favoritism to his champion students. Mr. Phillips doesn’t last long, departing at the end of Anne’s first year at Avonlea school. Altogether, Mr. Phillips would not be missed. According to Marilla, “Mr. Phillips isn’t any good at all as a teacher” (Montgomery 118). After the farewell party in his honor, Mr. Phillips hardly receives a reference the remainder of the series, such was his lack of inspiration or connection with the students.
Replacing the forgettable Mr. Phillips is Miss Stacy, a figure who will play an important role in Anne’s life. Unable to return to school due to the broken ankle she suffered at the Phillips farewell party, Anne learns of Miss Stacy from her friends, and the reports she receives gives her anticipatory delight. She learns that “every other Friday afternoon she has recitations and everybody has to say a piece or take part in a dialogue.” For one so enamored with literature, poetry and imagination, this excites the spirit of Anne. She also hears that “the Friday afternoons they don’t have recitations Miss Stacy takes them all to the woods for a ‘field’ day and they study ferns and flowers and birds. And they have physical culture exercises every morning and evening” (189). In the 1985 movie created by Kevin Sullivan, we see several scenes of Miss Stacy giving an inspirational speech to her class, traipsing across the pastures of Prince Edward Island, drawing in their nature journals, and exercising outdoors.
Among the many programs Miss Stacy implemented – including a school drama and a story-writing club – the program that would have the most significant impact on the direction of Anne’s life is the after-school class for the older students to prepare them for the entrance exams to Queen’s Academy, a teacher’s college in Charlottetown. This program serves as a passing of the baton, inasmuch as Anne would eventually attend Queen’s and go on to become the teacher at Avonlea school. Miss Stacy’s impact on Anne led to a life that followed in her footsteps due to the inspiration and connection Miss Stacy formed with her students. Miss Shirley in her own right would embody many of the same principles that were exemplified by Miss Stacy.
Miss Shirley would go on to teach at her home school in Avonlea for two years, applying the same kind of principles she learned under Miss Stacy, although we are still able to witness the many mishaps that follow Anne in her new role in town. She departs Avonlea for further training at Redmond College and then takes a post at Summerside High School. Summerside is a town run by the Pringles, the social elites of the community. With a class full of Pringle siblings and cousins, Miss Shirley must use all of her imagination and connection to win the hearts of her students, who are set against her from the beginning for earning the post over another candidate, a Pringle relative.
Just one episode in her teaching career will go to show the influence Miss Stacy had on Anne Shirley and her teaching methods. Miss Shirley organized a drama club during her first year at Summerside, directing the play Mary, Queen of Scots. Through the drama club, Miss Shirley was able to spark the imagination of her students and created a connection with even some of the stubborn Pringle children.
For both Miss Stacy and Miss Shirley, there were a few key principles that guided their effectiveness in teaching. Here we’ll enumerate a few of these. As an aside, I have found it interesting, as I read these stories and watch the movies, how much the episodes surrounding the classroom remind me of Charlotte Mason’s pedagogy. Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author of the Anne series, is only a generation younger than Miss Mason. It is difficult to make a connection between the two, with Montgomery residing most of her life in Canada and Mason in England. However, there is a sense that they are or would be kindred spirits, believing in the full personhood of children and expressing sensible ideas of education. So, as I spell out some of these principles, we’ll see how consistent they are with a thoroughgoing philosophy of education as presented in Charlotte Mason’s works.
A Sympathetic Teacher
Creating a connection with students is one of the key principles to effectiveness in teaching. In his book, The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle illustrates repeatedly the essential qualities of highly successful groups. It all boils down to connection. He writes, “Group performance depends on behavior that communicates one powerful overarching idea: We are safe and connected” (Coyle 15). In Montgomerie’s Anne series, her main character is always seeking connection in the form of “kindred spirits,” people who have sympathy. When you break the word “sympathy” down, it means “having mutual (sym-) feelings (pathos).” This mutual feeling can be cultivated in a classroom by a teacher who is seeking opportunities to create an alliance with her students.
Connections and alliances can be formed in all sorts of ways. Both Miss Stacy and later Miss Shirley would use drama as a means of creating sympathy. To act in a play draws upon the sympathetic part of our natures, so it is only natural for students to be drawn together in the effort of putting on a play. Coaching a sports team, going on nature walks, or doing a handcraft together are all ways that being with your students cultivates the sense of togetherness, the safety and connection Coyle describes.
The sympathy we offer to our students is a means of empowering them to accomplish the work of learning. To learn anything takes effort, and we as human beings are averse to effortful work, unless we have a compelling vision of the value of the work to be done. This is where the sympathetic teacher provides the sense of togetherness and sets the tone for the work to be done. The teacher cannot do the work of learning, that is the responsibility of the child. But the teacher can make the conditions optimal for learning through her sympathetic presence. Charlotte Mason writes:
“The children, not the teachers, are the responsible persons; they do the work by self-effort. The teachers give sympathy and occasionally elucidate, sum up or enlarge, but the actual work is done by the scholars.”
Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education, p. 6.
Such a teacher is aware of the needs of her students and provides just the right direction to enable them to put in the effort of learning.
The Love of Reading
A constant theme in the Anne series is a love of great literature. There are wonderful episodes where Anne enacts a scene or delivers a rousing recitation from the great poets. Anne’s love of literature becomes a great temptation for her. In one scene, Miss Stacy catches Anne reading Ben Hur when she should have been reading her Canadian history text. She recounts the incident to Marilla:
“I had just got to the chariot race when school went in. I was simply wild to know how it turned out—although I felt sure Ben Hur must win, because it wouldn’t be poetical justice if he didn’t—so I spread the history open on my desk lid and then tucked Ben Hur between the desk and my knee. I just looked as if I were studying Canadian history, you know, while all the while I was reveling in Ben Hur. I was so interested in it that I never noticed Miss Stacy coming down the aisle until all at once I just looked up and there she was looking down at me, so reproachful-like. I can’t tell you how ashamed I felt, Marilla, especially when I heard Josie Pye giggling. Miss Stacy took Ben Hur away, but she never said a word then. She kept me in at recess and talked to me. She said I had done very wrong in two respects. First, I was wasting the time I ought to have put on my studies; and secondly, I was deceiving my teacher in trying to make it appear I was reading a history when it was a storybook instead. I had never realized until that moment, Marilla, that what I was doing was deceitful. I was shocked. I cried bitterly, and asked Miss Stacy to forgive me and I’d never do such a thing again; and I offered to do penance by never so much as looking at Ben Hur for a whole week, not even to see how the chariot race turned out. But Miss Stacy said she wouldn’t require that, and she forgave me freely.”
Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, 240-241.
It’s a delightful scene that exposes Anne’s fascination with literature, and Miss Stacy’s approach to discipline. In the midst of confession and forgiveness, we see how Miss Stacy comes alongside Anne to help order her affections. History must be read in its proper time, and literature must be read in its time. Care must be given to all forms of reading. Anne goes on to explain to Marilla the influence Miss Stacy has had on her preferences for reading:
“I never read any book now unless either Miss Stacy or Mrs. Allan thinks it is a proper book for a girl thirteen and three-quarters to read. Miss Stacy made me promise that. She found me reading a book one day called, The Lurid Mystery of the Haunted Hall. It was one Ruby Gillis had lent me, and, oh, Marilla, it was so fascinating and creepy. It just curdled the blood in my veins. But Miss Stacy said it was a very silly, unwholesome book, and she asked me not to read any more of it or any like it. I didn’t mind promising not to read any more like it, but it was agonizing to give back that book without knowing how it turned out. But my love for Miss Stacy stood the test and I did.”
Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, 241.
Cultivating a love of reading is not simply about getting a child to simply read books. It’s about helping them to be choosy about the quality of books they read as well as giving them the proper attention and care to expand their minds through a healthy appetite for books. Charlotte Mason describes the role a teacher plays in cultivating this love of reading:
“The child who has been taught to read with care and deliberation until he has mastered the words of a limited vocabulary, usually does the rest for himself. The attention of his teachers should be fixed on two points—that he acquires the habit of reading, and that he does not fall into slipshod habits of reading.”
Charlotte Mason, Home Education, p. 226.
The aim is for the child to gain independence by reading “for himself.” This means they have the autonomy to choose personal readers and has the ability to “read with care and deliberation.” Reading is such an essential skill for awakening the imagination. So many of the richest aspects of life require an active imagination, whether that be the experience of abstract concepts such as love or empathy, the expansion of our intellects through the consideration of alternative perspectives, or the appropriation of a flourishing relationship with God. The cultivation a love of reading, then, is one of the principles to effectiveness in teaching.
Instilling Willing Obedience
A final principle of effectiveness in teaching has to do with preparing a child to be at peace under authority. There is a difference between a child who has been made to obey, and a child who obeys willingly. This requires the teacher or parent to be at peace in their own authority. I have found that the roles that bear authority must be carried out with careful consideration never to erode that authority through being overly familiar or chummy on the one extreme or strict and rules-based on the other extreme. There are a warm and orderly disposition someone in authority must acquire that enables those under authority to willingly obey. At the same time, there is an ability to speak to those under authority that requires, guides and confirms proper obedience.
In the episode shared in length above, we see Miss Stacy correcting Anne by naming two wrongs she had done by reading Ben Hur when she should have been working on history. Miss Stacy identifies how this act was a waste of time as well as deceitful. In the 1985 film, we are shown the episode and hear the words from Miss Stacy. It’s a stunning moment where we see the conviction of what is good and right in the countenance and the words of Miss Stacy. But we also feel the warmth of her connection to Anne. Rather than being made to feel shame or forced to obey, Anne is brought to a place of willing obedience. This properly ordered relationship of authority – being in peace in authority and under authority – actually enhanced the depth of affection Anne had for Miss Stacy. Anne viewed her as a person who had her best interests at heart as well as a person who could guide her towards virtuous living.
Charlotte Mason expresses how important it is to “secure willing obedience” on the part of students. It is the pathway to their own happiness. She 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. If a boy have a passage to read, he obeys the call of that immediate duty, reads the passage with attention and is happy in doing so.”
Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education, p. 70.
Notice how there is a higher calling the teacher is pointing to. She mentions “the laws of the school,” which in some cases are clearly expressed in, say, a school-side set of rules, or classroom procedures. However, there are many more unwritten rules that are actually an outworking of natural law or divine law. In other words, we are not securing willing obedience to ourselves as individuals, but to a higher order that we are all duty bound to obey. I in my position of authority as a teacher am duty bound to call my students up to that higher calling, and to do so with the view of their abundant sense of duty and ultimate happiness.
There are three tenets to willing obedience that are easily expressed in what I call a mantra. Obedience is right away, all the way, and with a good attitude. Having this framework helps us to coach students of any age to accomplish the effort of learning by assessing these three tenets. For instance, take the child who has been assigned a homework set and given time to complete that in class. Calling that child to work on it right away is essential to cultivating willing obedience. Don’t wait until a later time, strike while the iron is hot! Has the child completed all of the homework set? Here we can point out how obedience is “all the way.” We are only satisfied with a job done all the way. It can happen that when assigning the homework set, we hear grumbling. Here we call for obedience with a good attitude. We are only satisfied with a job done cheerfully.
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