Parents and children

by Charlotte M. Mason

Ideas may invest as an atmosphere, rather than strike as a weapon. “The idea may exist in a clear, distinct definite form, as that of a circle in the mind of a geometrician; or it may be a mere instinct, a vague appetency towards something, ... like the impulse which fills the young poet’s eyes with tears, he knows not why.” To excite this “appetency towards something”—towards things lovely, honest, and of good report, is the earliest and most important ministry of the educator. How shall these indefinite ideas which manifest themselves in appetency be imparted? They are not to be given of set purpose, nor taken at set times. They are held in that thought-environment which surrounds the child as an atmosphere, which he breathes as his breath of life; and this atmosphere in which the child inspires his unconscious ideas of right living emanates from his parents. Every look of gentleness and tone of reverence, every word of kindness and act of help, passes into the thought-environment, the very atmosphere which the child breathes; he does not think of these things, may never think of them, but all his life long they excite that “vague appetency towards something” out of which most of his actions spring. Oh! the wonderful and dreadful presence of the little child in the midst.

That he should take direction and inspiration from all the casual life about him, should make our poor words and ways the starting-point from which, and in the direction of which, he develops—this is a thought which makes the most of us hold our breath. There is no way of escape for parents; they must needs be as “inspirers” to their children, because about them hangs, as its atmosphere about a planet, the thought-environment of the child, from which he derives those enduring ideas which express themselves as a life-long “appetency” towards things sordid or things lovely, things earthly or divine.

Let us now hear Coleridge on the subject of those definite ideas which are not inhaled as air, but conveyed as meat to the mind:—[3]

“From the first, or initiative idea, as from a seed, successive ideas germinate.”

“Events and images, the lively and spirit-stirring machinery of the external world, are like light, and air, and moisture to the seed of the mind, which would else rot and perish.”

“The paths in which we may pursue a methodical course are manifold, and at the head of each stands its peculiar and guiding idea.”

“Those ideas are as regularly subordinate in dignity as the paths to which they point are various and eccentric in direction. The world has suffered much, in modern times, from a subversion of the natural and necessary order of Science ... from summoning reason and faith to the bar of that limited physical experience to which, by the true laws of method, they owe no obedience.”

“Progress follows the path of the idea from which it sets out; requiring, however, a constant wakefulness of mind to keep it within the due limits of its course. Hence the orbits of thought, so to speak, must differ among themselves as the initiative ideas differ.”

Have we not here the corollary to, and the explanation of, that law of unconscious cerebration which results in our “ways of thinking,” which shapes our character, rules our destiny? Thoughtful minds consider that the new light which biology is throwing upon the laws of mind is bringing to the front once more the Platonic doctrine, that “An idea is a distinguishable power, self-affirmed, and seen in its unity with the Eternal Essence.”

The whole subject is profound, but as practical as it is profound. We absolutely must disabuse our minds of the theory that the functions of education are, in the main, gymnastic. In the early years of the child’s life it makes, perhaps, little apparent difference whether his parents start with the notion that to educate is to fill a receptacle, inscribe a tablet, mould plastic matter, or nourish a life; but in the end we shall find that only those ideas which have fed his life are taken into the being of the child; all the rest is thrown away, or worse, is like sawdust in the system, an impediment and an injury to the vital processes.