Ep 02 | “Long Live the Queen!”: A Philosophical Defense of Classical Education
Deciding to homeschool is one thing but finding the right method is a whole other thing. When you first start looking at educational philosophies, it can seem like classical education is just one of many options out there. How can you tell if one is better than another? Can one be better than the other? If only there was an objective way to measure an educational option.
Might I suggest there is?
Footnotes for this episode
Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle
Politics, Aristotle
Metaphysics, Aristotle
Towards A Philosophy of Education, Charlotte Mason
School Education, Charlotte Mason
The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis
Consider the Cause (Webinar) | Afterthoughts: Brandy Vencel & Amanda Faus
LEAVE A REVIEW
Would you like to help other new-to-homeschooling moms wrap their hands around the ideals and principles of a classical Charlotte Mason education? Leaving a podcast rating and review can do just that.
JOIN THE MOTHER-TEACHERS IN COMMON HOUSE
Join the 430+ mother-teachers in Common House (It’s like a Patreon, but better.) where we think deeply and learn together through full courses, bonus minisodes, monthly Q+A video calls, resources, and more!
READ THE TRANSCRIPT
This episode of The Commonplace is brought to you by the members of Common House (It’s like a Patreon, but better.) Join over 400 women from around the world who are learning to cultivate virtue and wisdom by nourishing their homes with truth, goodness, and beauty. You can join one or all of the self-paced courses like Habits 101 or How to Start a Classical Mason Co-op, or work through the guides, use the templates, learn from the resources, and find mother-teachers local to you so you can take what you learn online offline. You’ll find the link in your episode notes or find us at commonhouse.mn.co.
____
Imagine with me: you’ve decided to homeschool and promptly open a fresh Google search page. “How to homeschool” you type in with a large smile and a little bit of nerves…twenty minutes and 418 tabs later, the smile is gone and the nerves are big. Who knew there were so many options for homeschooling?
Deciding to homeschool is one thing but finding the right method is a whole other thing. When you first start looking at educational philosophies, it can seem like classical education is just one of many options out there. How can you tell if one is better than another? Can one be better than the other?
If only there was an objective way to measure an educational option.
Might I suggest there is?
____
I’ve noticed this thing.
You could call it a modern “blind spot”, or, an area causing some unrecognized trouble. It happens in all times and in all places as lived ideas have consequences. Blind spots are just a thing for us persons. For example, while I shared so many lovely ideas from Plato last episode, he also believed children should be given to the state early in life as they belonged to the state. So, you know, blind spots.
But anyway, to ours: we’ve formed a habit of overemphasizing our personal consciences. The conscience is truly a great gift from God but, I think, it’s become a sort of king it was never intended to be.
A conscience is like an inner advisor on moral considerations or decisions. When it’s rightly calibrated by the Holy Scriptures and the life of the Church, it can be a really good one—faithful, true, holy.
But we can also have a poorly calibrated conscience that still feels faithful, true, and holy to us even if it contradicts objective reality.
And in a time where we talk of things like “my truth”, the inner advisor is emphasized, worshipped, and glorified; and the blind spot quietly sneaks into places you wouldn’t expect it.
Like how to decide on an educational philosophy.
Come with me back to the fall of 2016. I’m expecting my first child and feel the coming weight of home education. Yes, while pregnant. I type “how to homeschool” into Google and am met with 112,000,000 results in 0.76 seconds. It was rather silly of me to search so broadly. Trying again, I type “homeschooling educational philosophies” into Google and am met with 6,670,000 results 0.57 seconds. Better. I guess.
Somewhere in that 6,670,000 search results, I stumble across Dorothy Sayers and begin to get my bearings on the edge of the classical world. Little did I know, seven years later, I’d still be getting my bearings…just farther in.
Did you experience something similar?
I understand the frustration of weeding through so many options for education. It seems like we truly have a buffet from which to choose, and we can decide based on our personal preferences, convictions, ideals, and life circumstances. But is that so?
I think not and that’s what we’re going to dive into today.
You see, it’s our blindspot that makes this seem possible. If you’re a mother interested in classical education and listening to this podcast, I can probably guess that you are not caught up in the “my truth” conversations of the day. There are some blindspots most of us can see. But the sneaky place this moves in is when we say something along the lines of, “Well, the Bible doesn’t say I should educate my child this or that way, so it’s up to my personal conscience to decide.”
That’s one I hear a lot.
And it’s true, to a certain extent, that scripture does not say, “Thou must educate children in the classical tradition,” but God does give clear answers to the fundamental questions about education and we, caught up in the wave of kingly personal consciences, miss asking those right questions.
You can have personal opinions, preferences, and circumstances, but you must always—as our season commonplace quote from C.S. Lewis says—be conforming yourself to Reality as God defines it.
So, the question isn’t, “Is this in the Bible?” but, “Has God defined a philosophy of education?”
Do you remember last time when we left off with Aristotle? We were talking about the Greek idea of virtue, or excellence, and that the common calling on every person’s life is to aim to be good. How does one learn to be good? To love what he ought when he ought in the way he ought? Through education.
And to be educated is to change, is it not? We start as full persons, certainly, but as immature persons, as Mason says. We can’t stay the same; education does something to us, and our hope is it changes us from immature persons to mature persons. Not that it fills us with pieces of information that we can use in conversation or the workplace or on a date, but that we develop into those who aim towards truth, goodness, and beauty in all things and find pleasure in doing so.
This is what Mason means when she says that at the end of education, the question is not How much does the child know? but How much does he care? Has he changed? Does he love rightly?
Not all educational philosophies chart the same course from immaturity to maturity. Not all philosophies aim towards maturity. Not all philosophies see persons or objectivity or transcendence.
You know how I like to ask those three questions:
What is a person?
How are we formed?
To what end ought we aim?
Well, I kind of stole them from Aristotle. But like the classical way of stealing: learning, humbling, and passing on, so it’s totally okay.
Aristotle, as a philosopher, was interested in the causes of things: why a thing is or why it changes into something else. He found four categories to understand the cause of anything and they’re known as Aristotle’s Four Causes: the formal, the final, the efficient, and the material.
Each cause asks a certain question like What is a thing? What is the end goal? And, when understood in light of Christ, the Logos who holds all things together, we can take an ancient philosopher’s work and understand more of God’s design for what he’s made.
I know philosophy gets a bad rap these days and, honestly, modern philosophy deserves a bad rap. All that endless chatter back and forth as if nothing is certain drives me crazy too. But in the traditional sense, philosophy is about the love of wisdom. And, if that isn’t enough to pull you in, Mason said, “We must not turn a cold shoulder to philosophy. Education is no more than applied philosophy—our effort to train children according to the wisdom that is in us.” And, for the record, she means wisdom-wisdom, like she assumes we’ve been cultivating it too.
So, philosophy. We have two roots here. Philo, meaning love or experiential affection; and sophia, meaning wisdom or to see clearly. (To see clearly! Did that ring anyone’s Plato bell after last episode? If not, go listen again.)
In our house, we talk about Lady Wisdom quite a bit, as a personified, practical guide who calls us towards the good life, the path of virtue. She’s quite something. A queen, really.
And I think we should let the Queen lead the way instead of the a-little-bit-blind personal conscience kings.
So, the four causes, shall we? Let’s see if education has a design to it.
We begin with three questions and I think we can answer them together:
What is the object being acted upon? That would be a person.
What is the initial state of the person? That would be uneducated.
What is the resulting state after the causes have had their effect? That would be educated.
Easy enough. Now, what do we know about persons?
A person is born complete with what we need to learn. We are mind, body, and soul. We are material and immaterial in an indivisible way.
As classical mother-teachers, this sounds commonplace to you; I know. But you have to recognize that not all educational philosophies believe this about children. The modern world does not believe in an immaterial, transcendent nature of a person as God defines it. Many philosophies do believe you can divide a person, which is why education is about the mind or the rational part of a person, as if it can be acted upon independently of the rest of the person. This one question removes a significant number of philosophies from that buffet line.
Next question: what is educated? Like, what does it actually mean to be educated, to be mature?
I attended an excellent workshop last year—which I’ve linked for you in today’s episode notes—called Consider the Cause which really helped me organize and order my thoughts around the four causes. The women leading it connected the loveliest idea between education as the science of relations and the nature of God. We know, in Mason speak, that education is about forming relationships between God, man, and the universe. Forming relationships requires intimate knowledge about ideas and, wouldn’t you know it, when scripture talks about knowledge, it means entering into relationship. This makes sense because this is the nature of God. Just like a person is indivisible, God is indivisible. When we say things like God is love, God is just, God is kind, it’s all true but it’s not separated into many parts like our list would make it seem. God, who knows all things, is also love; it is his form, then, to know and love indivisibly. So education, following his nature, must know and love, in relationship, indivisibly.
Isn’t that just lovely?
Okay so, on to the first cause. The formal cause.
This asks what constitutes what a thing is or what is the form or pattern of the thing. It sounds a little weird, but basically, we note what God intended a thing to be. A butterfly’s formal cause is the shape of its wings, a long, thin body, and so on. This isn’t subject to anyone’s personal opinions. I can’t show you a picture of a cardinal and insist it’s a butterfly. We all know this. Education holds to a formal cause as well.
Mason explains the laws of education as natural laws, things as obvious as fire burning and water flowing. God has defined a pattern by which things happen which means we can study and understand that there is a design in how people learn.
Ephesians 6 is regularly introduced in conversations about whole-person education because St. Paul instructs parents to raise their children up in the paideia of the Lord. Paideia was a loaded term and we often miss the richness of this charge because we’re unfamiliar with the idea. It’s best understood as enculturation, which would imply, to the original hearers, raising them up in Christian culture that looks like a Christendom. It would require passing on Christian norms, imagination, actions, loyalty, and thought. It would be a whole life education for a whole person in God’s Reality as it truly is, would it not?
So, ask yourself, does the educational philosophy of your choice give the same answer for the formal cause that Ephesians does?
One fun little sidenote that is more like a footnote because it’s actually on topic: Mason did not call her educational philosophy a religious education (which today might be called a Christian school) because that implied the possibility of a secular education which was impossible. By nature of the formal—and the next one, the final cause—there can be no secular or empty-of-God education. There’s some food for thought.
Next comes the final cause which asks what something is for, or, as I ask, to what end ought we aim? Whatever your end is will shape the road you take to get there. Your practices and methods will be decided by the final cause.
Does God have anything to say about the chief end of man? Well, yes. To know, love, and enjoy God forever while here will require a certain character and way of living.
It will require virtue and it will require wisdom.
Does your educational philosophy define that as the final cause of education? Because if it doesn’t, you will not end up there. Sure, your children may find their way there by stumbling into the natural laws of education on their own as many of us who were educated in other philosophies have experienced, but, when choosing the why and the how for your children’s education, you want a final cause that matches what God says is the telos, or ultimate end, of a person.
Many philosophers have described this end as right loving. We’re pretty familiar with St. Augustine’s phrase ordo amoris which I usually say is loving the right things at the right time and in the right way. We love a thing for the thing itself, because it is lovely. This is a big shift from the modern perspective of utilitarian education. But an education that says the final cause is for utility destroys man’s ability to move well in God’s world.
Don’t take my word for it. It was Screwtape who let me in on that secret.
In the chilling letters from an experienced devil named Screwtape, we learn that one of the greatest threats to damnation is the man who truly enjoys anything for its own sake. The danger is in a man experiencing real pleasure in a real thing as God intended it to be. He rebukes the young Wormwood for allowing his patient to read a book he really enjoyed, to go for a walk out-of-doors alone, to take tea in a favorite spot. The danger is, of course, that the man may recover himself from the world of vanity, bustle, irony, and expensive tedium all masquerading as pleasure. And to recover oneself is part of conforming the soul to Reality…all nasty business for the devils. But, Screwtape writes, there is still hope if Wormwood can keep the new found piety in the imagination and the feelings. As long as the man does not meaningfully act on this real pleasure, it can do no real harm. A man who feels without acting is less able to act and, in the long run, the less able to feel.
Does your educational philosophy see the end of education as right loves embodied in right action? To know, love, and enjoy God in an embodied way of living?
But on to the efficient cause, which asks what is the thing that initiates the change, or, as I ask, how are we formed? Basically, what needs to happen to take your child to the final cause or the end?
We’ve acknowledged we have homes filled with very cute, very immature persons but they need to change and learn things and the question here is how do we make that happen? How is a mind fed? How is a body trained? How is a soul cultivated? Your answers to these questions must align with God’s answers to these questions. I know that’s becoming a refrain throughout this episode, but this is ultimately the point. There are clear answers to these causes in scripture and we want to submit our educational philosophies to that wisdom.
So, considering a person, what do we need to educate them? A good teacher and a responsible student. We need teachers who are prepared, who love the right things, who offer inspiring ideas, who understand narrative form. So this can refer to an actual mother-teacher but also to teachers like living books and living things.
We also need a responsible student. Education is self-education, which doesn’t mean child-directed. It means the child must choose to command his attention, to be prepared, to be teachable in an ever-increasing manner as the child grows in maturity.
Without these two things, the efficient cause will fail.
And as we’re talking about the source of change, it’s only right I mention that the education and formation of a child are primarily and ultimately the work of God. I love Mason’s 20th principle because it reminds us that the Holy Spirit is the primary instructor of our children in all things—whether repentance or arithmetic because both are the things of God. But our actions form our children in real, lasting ways, and, being under the authority of God, we’re duty-bound to submit to his ways.
And so we find ourselves at the fourth cause known as the material cause which asks that from which a thing is made or what things must you have to cause growth? This is every modern’s favorite cause and the one that gets an inordinate amount of attention on Instagram. But even still, yes, it matters what materials you use to educate a child. You’ll need books and notebooks and watercolors and maybe even those little colored pencils that look like twigs. You’ll need an orderly space with enough room and chairs for all to work. You’ll need the tools for the journey from immaturity to maturity.
This one is a little extra fun because there is quite a bit of overlap in the material causes in many educational philosophies. Wooden hand manipulatives, art prints, watercolor nature notebooks, and sand trays are not unique to a classical Mason educational philosophy. But when you hold them in harmony with the other three causes, your use of them has a why and a how. And that matters.
Every educational philosophy answers these four causes but not every one has good answers. Finding these answers is the way you measure the goodness of each option.
So, you see, dear listener, Lady Wisdom has a path through the overwhelm and offers something more steadfast than a preference or feeling. She’s a queen worth following in this question of how to educate a child because she always leads to God. The further up and in I travel into this classical Mason world, the more I find the natural world is sparkling with lived expressions of God’s word. There is law and order, just as there is beauty and harmony, in the cosmos. Learning to ask questions of form, meaning, and telos clears the muddled waters of options, letting design and pattern show the way as God intended.
This isn’t a system where you plug in each step and get, in the end, a guaranteed outcome if you follow an infinite number of rules, but it is a recognition that we live in a world governed by God’s ways and we can choose to humbly adhere to them or risk unnatural outcomes. Choosing an educational philosophy is an invitation to cooperate with the Divine in the lives of our children.
What does your educational philosophy say about that?
I’ll see you in two weeks.
Want (more of) the good stuff?
Join the mother-teachers in Common House (It’s like a Patreon, but better.) where we think deeply and learn together through full courses, bonus minisodes, monthly Q+A video calls, resources, and more!
