I was watching game two of the Toronto/Tampa Bay playoff series (my husband has been a lifelong Canadian hockey lover/player and Leafs fan) and couldn’t help but notice the moving digital ads placed along the boards during the game. Here’s a video to show you what I mean, it’s primed at the 2:23 minute mark, watch the boards around the ice:
Most people will get annoyed for a moment, then tune them out and move on with the game, but I kept seeing them interfere in an already attention demanding, fast paced game and thinking more and more about the “faculty” of attention that Charlotte Mason talked about. What do all these attention grabbing intrusions do to us? I know the why – revenue for the NHL. At the same time, why don’t we value the person and the attention more? Every inch of space seems to flash ads or pop ups or notifications or shorts or reels – anything to keep our attention.
This recent article says that attention is the new “gold” of the digital age and quotes Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft as follows:
We are moving from a world where computing power was scarce to a place where it now is almost limitless, and where the true scarce commodity is increasingly human attention.
You can read the rest of article here. It’s fascinating. We’re being trained continuously, to pay less attention.
As a multi-tasking mom, I know how much personal discipline and strength of will it takes to turn my attention towards its intended focus throughout the day. How much more will it take for our children in the economy of our digital age? It’s a sobering thought.
Charlotte Mason, over a hundred years ago, wrote:
“no talent, no genius, is worth much without the power of attention“
Think about that. While the level of distraction has certainly changed since she wrote that, the nature of people hasn’t. She developed an educational method knowing how significant attention would be to the future adults her teachers were educating and today, we can benefit from it too. This understanding of the significance of attention is intricately woven throughout her methods and while it’s not something we typically associate with, or prize about, a Charlotte Mason education, attention formed carefully and intentionally may be one of the most important aspects of it today.
How a Charlotte Mason education works with the attention
From the earliest ages of a child’s life, Charlotte Mason insisted children spend hours in nature on a regular, consistent basis. Nature is always changing – day, night, weather, seasons, light, color, sound, scent, touch – all senses are alive whether the child is consciously aware of it or not, stimulating their attention in a polyphonic way. The shades of variance range from massive down to the most subtle and minute and an entire human lifetime is not sufficient to exhaust all of its ends. Nature is often used in therapy to help people recover and stabilize because it restores and calms the fatigued mind while enlivening healthful attention. Charlotte Mason wrote that it trains the mind in “exact observation, impartial record, great and humble expectation, patience, reverence, and humility, the sense that any minute natural object enfolds immense secrets.” There is nothing better than regular time in God’s creation to help a young child learn to pay attention.
She included narration as one of the foundational methods of her educational philosophy requiring students to “tell back” what they hear or read or observe, whether a book, a piece of art, a nature walk, or a piece of music. Narration not only trains children to expect to know what is taken in, but to be able to reproduce it. It’s a whole other level of fixed attention that is required to do so. The thinking happens in the narrating causing even further attention because, as Charlotte Mason states, the child needs to make generalizations, classify, infer, make judgments, be able to visualize, discriminate, and assimilate or reject what is being narrated. Try it yourself sometime, it’s challenging. Now consider narrating regularly day after day, week after week, year after year. Imagine what it would do for the attention!
Another lesser talked about principle of a Charlotte Mason education is “Self-education,” but it’s one she was very particular about. She writes at length about giving children a foundation of good habits that involves them making good choices even if they are difficult (what she called “the will.”) She insisted children choose to pay attention. She wrote that attention is not a power, but “the ability to turn on every such power, to concentrate.” There’s no sense in wasting our effort to try to produce attention because it is in every child in full measure “in fact a very Niagara of force ready to be turned on in obedience to the child’s own authority and capable of infinite resistance to authority imposed from without.” If we would only believe it.
She knew that the will of the child had to participate in making their attention do its work. No amount of outside force could turn it on for them, as any weary, well-intended teacher, or parent can testify to. This teaching the child about their ability to pay attention and the choice they have and requiring it of them, not the teacher’s nagging and prodding, not stickers and prizes, not to show off to others, or to avoid shame, or to gain love, but because it is good and right to know and to attend, is uniquely Charlotte Mason. Many educators’ presuppositions unfortunately blind them to this “Niagara of force” and they conclude “I will see to it that you know!” Whose will is being strengthened then?
Charlotte Mason kept lessons within the age appropriate attention span of the child and gave context and vocabulary and the understanding that a reading would occur only once. She knew repeating something over and over set the expectation that no one had to pay attention the first time. She used well-written living books, not dry textbooks, that were worthy of attention.
Children from the earliest ages are seen, not as “mere sacs” to stuff full, but as persons. Rather than mindless memorization using gimmicks that train the attention to detach meaning from what is learned, Charlotte Mason’s children memorize what has meaning to them through natural methods. They learn to care about and to know what they read and memorize and make deep and thoughtful connections from the very earliest stages of learning.
In the previously linked article, the author writes:
Information is making us blind instead of enlightened. … Chaotic swiping, tapping, switching, scrolling, clicking, checking, liking, sharing have put us in the meaningless skim mode that pursues only one goal “just to keep up with”. So many things compete for our attention, that it has become a new commodity in the digital marketplace. So precious, scarce, and desired.”
Whether it’s politics, shoes, crafts, food, sports, what friends and family are up to, or the latest Charlotte Mason homeschooling help, they know what catches and keeps attention and they feed it to us in measured dopamine hits that keep us craving more. It takes an immense amount of discipline and strength of will to detach from it all. Avoiding screens altogether is becoming harder and harder considering that it’s where we go for valid reasons to find necessary information. And one rabbit hole leads to another and minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, passes us by. It’s designed that way.
But you and I are from a generation that didn’t grow up with handheld screens. According to Wikipedia, the first full internet service on mobile phones was introduced in Japan in 1999 and Facebook didn’t come around until 2004. We have memories of a time without phones which naturally creates more of an awareness about them. Children growing up today have never lived in a world without handheld phones. It is their normal.
Our Charlotte Mason homes full of God’s truth, human relationships, rich literature, regular time in nature, poetry, handicrafts, art, face to face discussion, the wonders of science, and so many more good things along with the knowledge of the will and habitual practice in self-education may not prevent them from ever getting trapped by screens, but having a foundation built on such meaningful life, they will have the knowledge of something infinitely more satisfying. No matter how enticing screens are, they will never find full satisfaction there, and they will have the strength of will to make the difficult and necessary choices to do what is right.
And how much more advantageous to our children will their ability to pay attention be throughout their lives in such an attention scarce environment? If it truly is the new “gold” there will be great advantages for them.
While I didn’t choose a Charlotte Mason education with any of this in mind, I am so thankful God led us to it and kept us here. Many think “Oh, her methods are old, too Victorian, they don’t keep up with everything today, they read old dusty books. We need something more modern.” blah, blah. Who knew! It was in fact that very old, dusty principled thing, grounded in truth, that became the very thing that would help our children develop the strength of will necessary to find their way in the new digital economy. What a beauty, eh? (As my Canadian husband would say.)
The thing about methods based on principles grounded in truth is that, come what may, they remain true. Oh, and by the way, in case you’re wondering, Toronto is leading 3-1 in the series as of this writing! Go Leafs!