In her volumes, Charlotte Mason quotes the following from Whichcote just before laying out her principles:
“The consequence of truth is great, therefore the judgment of it must not be negligent.”
She was applying this quote to the judgment of children as outlined in her principles – who they truly are, their personhood, and the resulting consequences of being negligent in our understanding of their true nature. If you’ve read her volumes, you know her thoughts on the matter. She cautioned against treating them like blank slates, for example, or as empty sacs to be filled.
Misunderstanding children and seeing them, not as they truly are, but as something other – an object to be manipulated, or a lump of clay to mold, has tragic consequences, which, many of us who have lived through such an education can attest to. The resulting apathy is all too common, a lack of care towards God, towards history and the important lessons learned by man, and a lack of relational interest in creation and the responsibilities of stewardship. The burden of such a person on society is inestimable.
In a Parent’s Review article, Mrs. H. Perrin quoted this:
“Steam and electricity are our servants, because we learned from them their nature, entered into it, and worked in sympathy with it – did not oppose it. The nature of the child can no more be altered by us. We must study, sympathize and conquer by obeying it.”
Now, this doesn’t mean to just let children go whatever way they will. Not at all. We understand the sin nature inherent in every human heart. Rather, it means there is an undeniable, unalterable nature uniquely designed by their Creator that we must work in sympathy with as we raise and educate our children. Denying this truth can result in the very opposite of our best intentions.
This past year we have seen a stark denial of this truth on such a mass scale, not only in children, but in grown men and women, the elderly, young adults – persons in every walk of life became mere biological bodies. Experts blinded by “specialisation” have seen only disease.
We are relational by nature, necessarily affected by the warmth of physical touch, hugs, and communicating in whole facial expressions. Connection affects our state of mind, our health and well being. We were never made to exist in isolation under constant chemical sterilization for months on end. We can’t help but wonder… “What is this ‘life’ we are preserving?”
Every fiber of our being has felt the inescapable consequences of this past year, and the reality that we are inextricably linked to our era, our share of man’s history.
2020 has passed, with all its carnage trailing in its wake, reminding us of the undeniable certainty of personhood.
“a jewel of such astonishing worth that, put the whole world in one scale and this jewel in the other, and the scale which holds the world flies up outbalanced.” ~Vol. 6, p.34