Children are Born Persons

A deep dive into Charlotte Mason's 1st Principle

I am beyond excited to be chatting about Charlotte Mason's first principle with you! This cornerstone of the Charlotte Mason method is so important for understanding the how and why of this exceptional educational philosophy in your home school. Of all the homeschooling methods, this is my favorite and today we will dive into why.

Today we are exploring the potential of a person - a child.

A child is born a person - created in God's own image. Filled with immense potential and possibility, given liberty to choose their life path, and the ability to choose freedom in Christ. They are born with gifts and attributes that are unique to their purpose in His kingdom! This great recognition of imago dei by Miss Mason is foundational to the entirety of her philosophy and methodology and is precisely why there is no such thing as secular Charlotte Mason.

What an incredible blessing it is to have God's children lent to us for a little while to be loved, shepherded, and educated.

Our job is not to fill them - they are not empty buckets waiting to be crammed full of teaching - but to train them in the way they should go. We are to cultivate what the Lord has already put there, nurturing and nourishing their minds and bodies with Truth, goodness, and beauty, pruning when necessary, and tending to them with wisdom, gentleness, and kindness. The Holy Spirit takes over and uses the knowledge we plant to help them develop wisdom, the habits we train to help develop their character, and the beauty we share to help them be awed by their Creator.

We are given many wise tips from Miss Mason for this herculean task through her 20 Principles and prolific writings. Understanding the magnitude and meaning of respect for children as persons is the first step to implementing this homeschooling method.

Charlotte Mason's First Principle

Of Charlotte Mason's 20 Principles, the first is the most well known and the most ill-used: Children are born persons.

This lofty ideal sounds lovely rolling off the tongue of mother's everywhere, but what does it really mean to be born a person and how did Charlotte Mason intend for this to be used?

This guiding principle is not to be considered without also holding to the other 19 Principles. This is not a free-for-all for "child led" learning, friend. I know, I know.

Taken by itself, it may seem that way - so many people tout this one principle and use it as an excuse for what amounts to unschooling "with lots of living books laying around" - but let's dive a little deeper and look at it in context.

Children are born persons

While there are many opinions when it comes to defining what makes a person a person - Charlotte Mason was referring to the entire personage - mind, body, and soul- that makes up each of us, no matter how humble our beginnings or how old we are, in her explanation of children as persons. She referred to the divine mystery of a person being beyond measurement.

How often do we try to measure our own children, and against what arbitrary "standards"?  Part of embracing the beauty of a Charlotte Mason education is that we get to leave behind the shackles of measurement we bore as students of the public education system. We need to embrace that freedom for ourselves and our children!

The mystery of a person is indeed divine, and the extraordinary fascination of history lies in this, that this divine mystery continually surprises us in unexpected places. Like Jacob, we cry, before the sympathy of the savage, the courtesy of the boor: “Behold. God is in this place and I knew it not.” We attempt to define a person, the most commonplace person we know, but he will not submit to bounds: some unexpected beauty of nature breaks out; we find he is not what we thought, and begin to suspect that every person exceeds our power of measurement. - Charlotte Mason, Children are Born Persons, The Parents’ Review, volume 22, June, 1911

Another point Miss Mason makes quite clear is that the child has a complete mind. There is no room for "tabula rasa" in the Charlotte Mason philosophy. Education does not "make" the mind - the ability to learn and process is already there, but we feed that mind with nourishing ideas just like we feed the body with nourishing food. And just like feeding the body a diet of junk food produces a weakened system and often ill health, feeding the mind intellectual junk food (twaddle) will have the same unfortunate outcome.

If we have not proved that a child is born a person with a mind as complete and as beautiful as his beautiful little body, we can at least show that he always has all the mind he requires for his occasions; that is, that his mind is the instrument of his education and that his education does not produce his mind. - Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education (Volume 6), page 36

 A child as a person includes the capacious nature of their hearts. They have an innate ability to love with all the fierceness and loyalty we imagine in the hearts of the bravest heroes. Where we grownups often struggle, they are so earnest and sincere in prayer and gentleness and forgiveness. They still have a sin nature, just like adults, but they have a conscience and a bit of humility, too, that is exclusive to childhood. Their innocence - perhaps lack of cynicism is more apropos - allows them the freedom to ask any question that comes of what they see or hear.

It is not only a child's intellect but his heart that comes to us thoroughly furnished. Can any of us love like a little child? Father and mother, sisters and brothers, neighbours and friends, "our" cat and "our" dog, the wretchedest old stump of a broken toy, all come in for his lavish tenderness. How generous and grateful he is, how kind and simple, how pitiful and how full of benevolence in the strict sense of goodwill, how loyal and humble, how fair and just! His conscience is on the alert. Is a tale true? Is a person good? —these are the important questions. His conscience chides him when he is naughty, and by degrees as he is trained, his will comes to his aid and he learns to order his life. He is taught to say his prayers, and we elders hardly realize how real his prayers are to a child. - Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education (Volume 6), page 43-44

Now knowing that Miss Mason built her philosophy of education on this cornerstone, we must ask ourselves  the following.

How do we respect the personhood and educate the child?

Miss Charlotte Mason can answer this much more eloquently than I.

Education, like faith, is the evidence of things not seen. We must begin with the notion that the business of the body is to grow; and it grows upon food, which food is composed of living cells, each a perfect life in itself. In like manner, though all analogies are misleading and inadequate, the only fit sustenance for the mind is ideas, and an idea too, like the single cell of cellular tissue, appears to go through the stages and functions of a life. We receive it with appetite and some stir of interest. It appears to feed in a curious way. We hear of a new patent cure for the mind or the body, of the new thought of some poet, the new notion of a school of painters; we take in, accept, the idea and for days after every book we read, every person we talk with brings food to the newly entertained notion. 'Not proven,' will be the verdict of the casual reader; but if he watch the behaviour of his own mind towards any of the ideas 'in the air,' he will find that some such process as I have described takes place; and this process must be considered carefully in the education of children. We may not take things casually as we have done. Our business is to give children the great ideas of life, of religion, history, science; but it is the ideas we must give, clothed upon with facts as they occur, and must leave the child to deal with these as he chooses. (Emphasis added is mine) - Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education (Volume 6), page 39-40

Ahhhh. There's the ticket! We offer them knowledge of "great ideas of life" through a wondrous feast of living literature, experiences, and wanderings in nature and then LET THEM BE with those ideas. The ideas will be built upon further as the child acquires more knowledge. It's a natural and beautiful cycle of making connections.

We are cultivating a garden of the mind for them to enjoy, to explore, and to delight in. We carefully select the very best seeds to plant and we tend the soil with nourishment and pruning. But we must practice the wise letting alone of them afterward and avoid what I call "preaching teaching".  They cannot enjoy watching Bee buzz around the zinnias or ponder the tiny wings that keep such a hefty thing afloat if we are standing over them pouring out fact after fact about bees, pollination, zinnias, colors, and care of plants.

We also do not let them "lead" us through their own design of a course of study - they have not the experience or wisdom to know all the great things the world has to offer. There is time enough during their free hours to explore the things that pique their curiosity.

If we neglect to train them in their habits, to expose them to things of beauty, to model for them a life of self-education and dedication - have we done them a service at all? Allowing delight directed learning to take place is not the same as basing your child's education upon whatever the child wants to learn. We do well when we step into our roll of cultivators with grace and confidence - serving our child and our Lord by teaching well and remembering that education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life.

The Greater Immensity of the Little Child

Miss Mason had a great fondness for poetry, and her phrase "the greater immensity of the little child" from her 1911 article on Children are Born Persons was borrowed from the 1804 Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood by William Wordsworth. It is a lovely piece altogether and we have included it here for your delight, pondering, and mother culture studies.

Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem

Apparelled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore;—

Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day.

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The Rainbow comes and goes,

And lovely is the Rose,

The Moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare,

Waters on a starry night

Are beautiful and fair;

The sunshine is a glorious birth;

But yet I know, where'er I go,

That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,

And while the young lambs bound

As to the tabor's sound,

To me alone there came a thought of grief:

A timely utterance gave that thought relief,

And I again am strong:

The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;

No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;

I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,

The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,

And all the earth is gay;

Land and sea

Give themselves up to jollity,

And with the heart of May

Doth every Beast keep holiday;—

Thou Child of Joy,

Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy.

Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call

Ye to each other make; I see

The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;

My heart is at your festival,

My head hath its coronal,

The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.

Oh evil day! if I were sullen

While Earth herself is adorning,

This sweet May-morning,

And the Children are culling

On every side,

In a thousand valleys far and wide,

Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,

And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm:—

I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!

—But there's a Tree, of many, one,

A single field which I have looked upon,

Both of them speak of something that is gone;

The Pansy at my feet

Doth the same tale repeat:

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?

Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Upon the growing Boy,

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,

He sees it in his joy;

The Youth, who daily farther from the east

Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,

And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the Man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;

Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,

And, even with something of a Mother's mind,

And no unworthy aim,

The homely Nurse doth all she can

To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,

Forget the glories he hath known,

And that imperial palace whence he came.

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,

A six years' Darling of a pigmy size!

See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,

Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,

With light upon him from his father's eyes!

See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,

Some fragment from his dream of human life,

Shaped by himself with newly-learn{e}d art

A wedding or a festival,

A mourning or a funeral;

And this hath now his heart,

And unto this he frames his song:

Then will he fit his tongue

To dialogues of business, love, or strife;

But it will not be long

Ere this be thrown aside,

And with new joy and pride

The little Actor cons another part;

Filling from time to time his "humorous stage"

With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,

That Life brings with her in her equipage;

As if his whole vocation

Were endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie

Thy Soul's immensity;

Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep

Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,

That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,

Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,—

Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!

On whom those truths do rest,

Which we are toiling all our lives to find,

In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;

Thou, over whom thy Immortality

Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave,

A Presence which is not to be put by;

Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might

Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,

Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke

The years to bring the inevitable yoke,

Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?

Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,

And custom lie upon thee with a weight,

Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

O joy! that in our embers

Is something that doth live,

That Nature yet remembers

What was so fugitive!

The thought of our past years in me doth breed

Perpetual benediction: not indeed

For that which is most worthy to be blest;

Delight and liberty, the simple creed

Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,

With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—

Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise

But for those obstinate questionings

Of sense and outward things,

Fallings from us, vanishings;

Blank misgivings of a Creature

Moving about in worlds not realised,

High instincts before which our mortal Nature

Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:

But for those first affections,

Those shadowy recollections,

Which, be they what they may

Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,

Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make

Our noisy years seem moments in the being

Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,

To perish never;

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,

Nor Man nor Boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,

Can utterly abolish or destroy!

Hence in a season of calm weather

Though inland far we be,

Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea

Which brought us hither,

Can in a moment travel thither,

And see the Children sport upon the shore,

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!

And let the young Lambs bound

As to the tabor's sound!

We in thought will join your throng,

Ye that pipe and ye that play,

Ye that through your hearts to-day

Feel the gladness of the May!

What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind;

In the primal sympathy

Which having been must ever be;

In the soothing thoughts that spring

Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death,

In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,

Forebode not any severing of our loves!

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

I only have relinquished one delight

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,

Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;

The innocent brightness of a new-born Day

Is lovely yet;

The Clouds that gather round the setting sun

Do take a sober colouring from an eye

That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;

Another race hath been, and other palms are won.

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.