Status Updates From For the Children's Sake: Fo...

“Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.” (Pg. 116)

“If you think that the sick fear of not getting an A grade is a lofty means of motivating the child to excellence, I beg to differ. On the contrary, many children fall into a trap of failure, and they try less and less. Others worry more about the grade than about actually learning anything for its own value or for their personal need.”

“Surely our principle should be to allow the individual to find joy in using his own mind, in learning skills, and in enjoying what others have written (or painted, played, thought; what they did, where they live, etc.”

“Nor should he be enticed to do so because, “It makes me so happy if you do.” He should like and love those who are responsible for his child-life. But he isn’t just to do things to make somebody he cares about happy. One day you won’t be there to see! No, he must learn that he does it because it is right.”

….”this should not be obtained by methods which encroach on the personality of children. A child whose life is shaped by fear does not share the sweet joy of the lamb scampering in the shepherd’s pasture. Therefore, the child is not to be forced to “do his duty” (be it learning a times table or remembering to put muddy boots away) because if he doesn’t all hell will be let loose on him.”

“Charlotte Mason believed that the right habits should be established in childhood. If very small children are helped to do right in the course of their day, surely the habit of right-doing will help them later, when they face bigger and harder things. The first habit, of course, is obedience….”

“We often combine frustrating skill-learning techniques with sawdust books. Try instead this other, Christian approach. Expect high standards, but let them be appropriate to the individual who is progressing at his own rate of development. Make the lesson a short one, so that inattention does not become a habit. Follow the “skill lessons” with a varied diet of mind-food.”

“Our generation is prone to amuse itself with fragmentary information and resources. We flip on the TV for brief programs, and then we think we know about the subjects they dealt with. A few paragraphs in a magazine, and we think we’ve formed an opinion. What is happening so often is that we are merely forming a habit of amusing our interest and then forgetting the fragments. This is not education.”

“TV becomes a sedative, stilling active play, reading, talking, sharing. Planned activities crowd out personal growth and creativity. And the god of money, status, and personal ease and pleasure seeps in everywhere, like a noxious gas.”

“(Matt. 7:9–11). Children ask for bread. Do we give them white gummy glue covered with saturated fat? Do we feed their bodies on any careless prepacked junk that comes into view? Or do we provide them with honest good food? And what about their…”

“Some schools are like cesspools spiritually, mentally, and/or physically. Jesus said we were not to place a stumbling block in front of the child. Some schools are nothing but stumbling blocks. The end product is neither an educated person, nor one who has had a chance as a moral and free human being.”

“When a baby is picked up, spoken to, and loved, he is starting his education as God planned it. For all our lives we are human beings, in an active state of learning, responding, understanding. Education extends to all of life.”