The Natural Law Found Outside of Catholic Culture

Cay's Note:

Dear Readers, I apologize for the confusion.  First let me say the post I shared did not extend from any prosecution or flaming on the board which I moderate.  And it was not a personal confrontation either. It was a legitimate, honest concern written by a fellow Catholic who was searching for information on Charlotte Mason and Catholic Home Education and (rather than finding authentic help concerning her questions) came across "several websites that rail against a Catholic CM approach..."

The argument/debate she ran into is an old one...at least as old as all the 11 plus years I've been researching and using Charlotte Mason's work in my own schooling/home approach to raising my children...and I didn't mean to make anyone uncomfortable or defensive in bringing it up.

The reason I shared the concern of Catholicizing Charlotte Mason was because someone did respond to this question and gave a most thoroughly fair and just dispensation.  Though there are a few parts I might niggle over, on the whole I think it is a very insightful article that answers most (if not all) our concerns about bringing Charlotte Mason's Home-Educational Notes into our Catholic homes and using them.

I hope Catholic parents/educators find something they can use from this article, even if all they discover is comfort in the knowledge that a Charlotte Mason education is a good study of the Natural Law working outside of Catholic Culture.

The Answer to the Question:

Hi,

I just came across this email here that was before sent out to this list that I would like to reply to.

It states that some Catholic websites rail against the Charlotte Mason method of teaching because they say Charlotte Mason was a heretic.

(Charlotte Mason started the home school movement in England in the late 1800's.) Now, from an objective point of view they are correct she was a heretic in that she did not embrace the Catholic Faith or point of view.

Charlotte Mason was a high Anglican ...but the authors that accuse her of being a heretic as to tell Catholics to pay no attention to her writings, lose the whole point of a study of Ms. Mason from a Catholic perspective.

First of all just because someone is of a different religion or culture, doesn't mean we can't learn something from them.

What Catholics can gain from Charlotte Mason isn't WHAT (content) she taught but HOW she taught.

I took the view that if St. Thomas Aquinas could take the good from Aristotle's teaching (who was a pagan) and use it to further the Catholic Faith, then we could do the same with Charlotte Mason.

I read many books about the Charlotte Mason teaching method and am also a practicing Catholic. I also implemented her teaching method in my home school method (short lessons and using narration) along with some other teaching methods (like Montessori, Ignatian and Salesian).

But, as a Catholic I did not use her recommended book list (but instead chose Laura Berquist's Catholic one for a Classical Education), nor her bible choice (she used the King James...as a Catholic I would use the Douay Rheims).

These are the points I realized when looking at her teaching method:

1) Charlotte Mason loved children and UNDERSTOOD children.

THIS is what we could learn from Charlotte....how to TEACH children well using her KNOWLEDGE and understanding of them. (ie... for example Charlotte Mason knew children need to stay active and don't do well sitting still all day. She used nature study for the study of science that got children outside in the afternoons.)

You could say that Charlotte preferred children to get closest to the "real" thing.

Children could sit inside at a desk and read about flowers and worms, ants and stars or they could get outside and see them for real, draw them, observe them etc...

What is better? To read about God's creation or to go out and be in it?????

Live it and know it for real? What family can't learn from that?

How many of our city children grow up and reject God? Why do country folk seem to be closer to God? Could it be that those in the city don't experience GOD'S CREATION? Don't just take your children to the Latin Mass and CCD, but ALSO take them OUTSIDE. Tell them to look at the stars, to breathe the fresh air, to walk in the woods, to climb His mountains. How can you know God if you don't know his mind, experience his creation? What love swells up in your heart for God when you see the MAGNIFICANT and detailed works he has created? To see the Rocky Mountains, to climb them...how can one deny then that there is a God????

The main subjects Charlotte Mason broke down into short lessons to keep the child's attention and many of the subjects she made as hands-on as possible to also to keep their attention.

2) Charlotte Mason understood that textbooks were dry and boring but that whole books written by authors who loved their subject were memorable for children. What Catholic can't learn from that lesson in teaching their child?

She called them "living books". We can use for example in middle school the Catholic textbook Our Pioneers and Patriots to teach American history from a Catholic perspective. But, really it breaks history just down into memorizing facts.

Or we can give our child a "vivid" and very memorable education of history using whole books using Laura Berquist's or Our Lady of Victory's booklist where our student studies biographies, journals and documentaries and history comes "alive" to them.

See, Charlotte Mason had it down as to how Our Lord taught: using parables.

He used stories to make a lesson. What Catholic can't learn from that? Our Lord used stories to teach and they have been remembered for centuries.

Charlotte Mason picked up on that and applied that to her teaching school for governesses.

The biography about Kateri Tekakwitha is going to be remembered. A short paragraph listing a few facts about her life is not.

3) Catholics and Anglicans both used a Classical Education - the Trivuum to teach children. Charlotte Mason took the Trivuum and used many classical methods of teaching to transmit knowledge to the students: copywork, narration (telling back in your own words- also known as the Socratic method) and dictation.

The Catholic Ignatian method uses the same.

4) Charlotte Mason though wrote about her method in a way that parents could understand and that governesses (nannies) could understand. Her method was for the home audience.

So, in summary, what Catholics can gain from Charlotte Mason isn't WHAT (content) she taught but HOW she taught.

THAT is what Catholics can learn from Charlotte Mason.

Charlotte Mason was big on art appreciation for example. Like Maria Montessori, she used the great works of artists for students to study. She taught children to observe them and to teach children to learn to pay attention to detail.

What Catholic mom can't use that idea in teaching her children about the great works from Catholic artists? Take your child down to the local Shrine in your community and study the great Catholic art on the walls. Look at the symbolism, notice the details, have your child tell you the story that they "see". Have them identify the Saints in the pictures.

Sometimes as parent educators it doesn't hurt to learn to think "outside of the box."

St. Thomas took what was good from a pagan and applied Catholic principles and teachings to it.

We can do the same with the works of Charlotte Mason.

Her writings are of benefit not from a content point of view but from a teaching method point of view.

I try to explain this here on my Charlotte Mason page:

Charlotte Mason Full of Natural Virtue

If you read through my study notes on this page, you will see where I have made note in places where Charlotte Mason suggested a certain content that Catholics could replace it with something Catholic.

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A few years back I had another website with a disclaimer on it saying that my views weren't necessarily the views of the resources I had listed on my webpages. I had a website that gave links to explain what various teaching methods were not to promote them necessarily but to EDUCATE parents on what they were so they knew what they were when they heard or read about them in articles about home schooling.

I had suggested a book on that website for mothers to read called The Continuum Concept.

Now the author was an evolutionist. Am I an evolutionist? No.

Would I promote evolutionism? No.

But, what traditional Catholic is going to go down into the jungles and observe the native people like this woman had? She had observed something unique in a different culture and then wrote about it. She had observed THE MOTHER -INFANT BOND. What she came away with to share with the world was astounding. She saw infants who never cried! They were always happy. What was the secret? There were no strollers, no baby cribs.

I was accused by some of my fellow Catholics at the time as being a heretic/apostate because I had this book by an evolutionist on my website. They missed the whole point.

That evolutionist had observed something in a primitive culture that USED to be the NORM in civilized society!!!!! What was it? Carrying your baby! Breast- feeding your baby.

Gee! God's very own mother, Mary, carried her baby Jesus, SWADDLED him, and breast-fed Him!

This was something that had been done in every culture for centuries up until the late 1800's! -When the Victorian age brought out cribs to replace arms and nannies to replace mothers.

Somehow, out in the middle of the jungle an evolutionist had re-discovered in a pagan culture something NATURAL! Something GOD GIVEN!

We Catholics, can learn from that. Our children have all sorts of psychological and neurological problems because we deny them the breast and we deny them the arms of their mother as infants.

"The Mother who complains because a new child presses against her bosom seeking nourishment at her breast is foolish, ignorant of herself and unhappy."

(The Pope Speaks, The Teachings of the Pope Pius XII by Pantheon Books Inc., 333 Sixth Avenue, New York 14, New York, Copyright 1957, p. 48)

"Proper attitudes should be similarly be engendered toward the nursing of infants.

Children, especially the younger ones should not be forbidden to see mother breast-feeding the baby. Moderns are accustomed to all kinds of immodesty, yet are prudish in this beautiful act. A curious inversion of values indeed! A mother should be proud of her duty and function. It should never be considered disgusting or shameful."

(Parents, Children and the Fatcts of Life by Fr. Henry V Sattler., St. Anthony Guild Press, NJ Copyright 1959 p. 9)

Here an evolutionist taught us Catholics a lesson.

We could learn from her.

We can learn from Charlotte Mason too just like St. Thomas learned from Aristotle, the pagan.

See, the lesson is simple. God gave us THE NATURAL LAW. Even pagan's have the natural law written on their hearts. Sin, evil....can pervert that natural law. When we are baptized we enter in the world of the Divine Law- God's laws. When pagans die, they are judged on how they followed the natural law. When Catholics die, they are judged not only on how well they followed the natural law, but the Divine law as well.

Charlotte Mason understand the natural law as to how it applied to children.

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In answer to your question about teaching doctrine to the younger grades, here are the resources I recommend for 1st and 3rd grade- scroll down to their grades on this webpage:

Teaching and Keeping the Faith

In JMJ

Denise

THE CATHOLIC MOM

EXPERIENCED MUM