CHARLOTTE MASON'S 20 PRINCIPLES: PRINCIPLE 2: CHILDREN ARE NOT BORN GOOD OR BAD, BUT WITH POSSIBILITIES FOR GOOD AND FOR EVIL
Catholics and other Christians often struggle with Charlotte Mason's Second Principle, to reconcile it with the notion of original sin. As a Catholic, I think it's actually a pretty sound articulation of our doctrine of original sin. We're not Calvinists and don't believe in total depravity. We don't believe that you're either in the elect, OR if not, too bad, nothing you do can ever be redemptive.
Original sin does mean that we have the capacity for evil, and the weakness of the flesh that can tilt us that way. But as Thomas says, "grace builds on nature." Nature, including human nature, itself isn't evil, being created by God. We are capable of cooperating with His grace – or rejecting it. Thomas didn't view grace and nature as opposing dualities, but as something of an integrated whole. That's why grace "builds on" nature, rather than negating it, as if nature were grace's enemy.
Part of the "why" behind Charlotte Mason's principle is the Victorian notion that the children of the lower classes were incorrigibly depraved – that they couldn't be expected to rise to noble thoughts or actions. So really it's an extension of Principle 1: recognizing the intrinsic dignity of the human person, regardless of circumstance, and acknowledging that any person has the capacity for both good and evil (you're not automatically a person of good character just because you belong to the upper classes, either).
Of course, even in families, this same kind of determinism – you're either good or bad, period – can operate. As I noted in my thoughts on Principle 1, it's all too easy to slide into the assumption that a child is "lazy," for example, and that's the end of the story. Or "disobedient." It's also all too easy, on some semi-conscious level, to assign another child the role of "good child," which is in its way as destructive as labeling him "the bad child," or even "the difficult child." To be viewed as the "good" or "easy" or peacemaking child is also to have your humanity reduced to a set of behaviors, and to bear the terrible burden of having to be perfect, when of course you're not.
There may be a grandmother or other relative in the family who says things like, "Your daddy was a bad little boy . . . " as if a) that were true, and b) it automatically meant the current little boy, whom she is addressing, will also be a bad little boy. I hope I don't have to spell out that this isn't remotely a Catholic kind of thing to say or think. Catholics aren't moral determinists. My own hope is that as a Catholic, I think and practice parenting from a place of not assuming that any of my children (or any given child) is automatically "good" or "bad," but though fallen, still made in God's image and likeness. I hope that I understand my own task to be to nurture that image and likeness as I see it in my child, and to help that child seek God's mercy and grace when he falls.
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If God Himself takes into account our control over ourselves or a situation, and our intentions and motivations, seeing deeply into the human heart with love . . . then surely we should try to act toward our children as He acts toward us.
That does mean (I think) understanding WHY a child does something that looks disobedient or transgressive, not just THAT he does it. The WHY does matter. In practice, it means the difference between thinking our tantruming child is "bad" or difficult," and understanding tiredness, hunger, overwhelm, and immature self-regulation, none of which is the child's fault. It's the difference between extending grace and mercy, which God does to us all the time, and somehow thinking it's better for your child if you don't extend those things.
In my life as a Catholic, I've heard any number of homilies taking on the supposed duality of God's mercy and justice, again as if these were opposing realities: the God who's a nice guy vs. the God who's going to bust your head open, you intransigent sinner. Sometimes He's one way, sometimes He's the other way. But it has occurred to me to consider that actually, mercy and justice are very much the same thing, not opposites at all. To be just, for example, is not to blame someone for something that isn't their fault. We have an entire system for talking about culpability which turns on this facet of God's justice. Intention absolutely matters in our moral theology.
This is why I think it's imprudent to write off developmental psychology, as some parents seem to do, thinking that it's somehow worldly or modernist, and therefore not applicable to their Christian parenting. It's not just imprudent, but irrational, since often the same people will (quite rightly) call upon modernist developments in embryology to underwrite their (quite correct) pro-life convictions. Developmental psychology, as evidenced in the work of Jean Piaget and Erik Erikson, does much the same work on the level of the cognitive as embryology does in the area of the life of the unborn. It's a language designed to grant insight into how children think and learn and are, so that we can form realistic expectations for them, and understand why they do the things they do. As a young mother I found the Gesell Institute's series of books, for example, extremely helpful in shedding sympathetic light on my children's behavior at every age.
Why do we need to know these things? Well, in part, because in our moral theology, again, intention matters. It's absolutely unjust, and un-God-like, to blame and punish a child for something which he did not, and could not, fully intend. The more we can understand these things, the more we can behave with God's merciful justice, and just mercy, toward our children.
An obvious example is the child resisting schoolwork. It's easy to explain this resistance as laziness, a character flaw, and to define the child as a lazy person. But is this just?
Are you, an adult, "lazy" when you have more work to do than you can do in a given time period, and some of it doesn't get done?
Or work that you dislike and therefore avoid?
Or a job you quit, because its demands are unreasonable for you as a person, in the position in life in which you find yourself?
Or struggles with executive function which make concentration and follow-through insurmountably difficult without some kind of support and accommodation?
Yes, sloth is a thing, but it seems to me that that would be the last conclusion you'd arrive at, after eliminating everything else, and not the first.
UPDATE: it also occurs to me that of the deadly sins, sloth is a good example of how the consequences of the Fall work out in human nature. Gluttony, possibly, is another. That is to say: these generally aren't things we intend or choose, but something like black holes in our nature, vacuums which really beg to be filled with grace, but often are filled with other things, because we often misunderstand our hunger for grace. More and more I think it's difficult to separate things like like sloth or gluttony from the kinds of psychological struggles I've described above. Where does executive-function difficulty leave off and sloth begin? I'm not sure that that's even the right question, or a helpful distinction. More and more I think that rather than framing sloth as a fundamental character flaw, a.k.a. laziness, we do better to understand this kind of sin as a sort of burden, or even a cross, that it's often almost impossible to bear well, without the help of much grace.
In my own confessional life, for example, I have tended increasingly to frame my considerations of root-level sin in this way: not as the laundry list of wrongdoings and basic bad things about myself, but as targeted areas in which I particularly need God's helping and healing grace. That's what I say in confession, not "I was lazy on twelve occasions since my last confession."
Again, if at least part of the effect of original sin is brokenness, in the whole created order and in our own natures, then I think that that – again, more than the concept of vice as we generally envision it, though that is the word we use – is a more useful way to think about things like sloth.
There's also been a good bit of work done recently in psychology on the phenomenon of procrastination, pointing to procrastination not as a bad habit, but as the reaction of a person with poor emotional self-regulation trying to manage the feelings of anxiety and overwhelm which flood him when presented with certain tasks.
This seems directly relevant to the incident of the child resisting school lessons. Again: if you blame that child for something that is essentially not his fault, you are being unjust. That's why it's important to equip yourself with all the knowledge you can, so as to assess these situations fairly, and not to let your image of your child's personal character be shaped by them in unjust ways. AND it's important to equip yourself with all the knowledge you can, so as to help your child learn positive solutions for managing his emotions relating to those tasks, in order that he can learn not to be flooded and therefore avoidant, but to do what he needs to do when he needs to do it (a lifelong lesson, in my own experience, but it's far more helpful to start NOW on that journey, instead of having your child wait to be, say, fifty-six years old, with lazy and irresponsible stuck in his head as a default setting for his self-image, to learn these things about himself).
Also, and important:
The extent to which you can decide that another person, even your own child, has committed a sin seems really limited to me anyway. I have never said to one of my children, "You did X, and now you need to go to confession." The most I've said has been: "Well, IF you did X, and your motivations were Y, then yes, you would want to talk about that in confession." Certainly I have the right and the responsibility to help the child discern the extent to which he might be culpable in an incident. That's what an Examination of Conscience is for.
What I don't have the right to do is to assign culpability, and to judge the contents of my child's heart.
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Speaking of Examination of Conscience, because it does seem applicable here . . .
Principle 2 also chimes with things I remember reading when my children were small, about not saying, "Good girl," for example, when a child had done something well – as if doing something well was what made her a good girl. In fact, I have always tried to say, "Good job, good work, etc," instead.
On the one hand, I'm not into the idea that you have to micromanage your language to avoid "hurtfulness," or be anxious about that, like saying the wrong thing once is going to ruin your child's life. Don't be anxious!
On the other hand, I think it is useful to examine why we say (and think) the things we say and think, especially to and about our children. I very much dislike the idea of calling a child bad, or naughty, or disobedient, or whatever, as a defining characteristic. I especially dislike the idea of communicating that idea to the child. In college I used to babysit for a woman who would praise her (lovely, lively, bright) daughter by saying, "You were a very obedient little girl today," and for reasons I couldn't put my finger on at the time, this horrified me. I think now that it horrified me because it felt like a really reductive definition for a human being. To say, "you were a very obedient little girl," is substantially different from saying, "I really appreciate that you obeyed me today when I needed you to." One formulation sounds as though the child doesn't have free will – just is or isn't this particular thing (though that could change – you could be bad tomorrow!). The other recognizes that a whole person with free will has made the right choice, and affirms that. That's really what I mean when I speak of nurturing the child's image toward its intended God-likeness. I think that that is how God means to nurture all of us, toward our own wholeness in Him.
In hindsight, when my own children were preparing to receive this sacrament, I wish I had focused less on the idea of a laundry list of sins (which honestly is what so much of the preparation material focuses on, though of course it's useful to know what IS a sin and why it's a sin), and more on the idea of seeing places in your life where you need God's grace so that you can love Him more and be more like Him.
Instead of the laundry list, an examination of conscience might look like:
Instead of the laundry list, an examination of conscience might look like:
*Have I really loved God more than everything else in my life? (probably not, so you can just say, "I know that I have loved a lot of things more than God, and I want to love Him more." If there's one thing in particular that seems to consume your attention and crowd out thoughts about and conversation with God, then obviously you'd want to say that).
*Have I always wanted to do what Mom and Dad want me to do? (probably not, so you can just say, "I really want to WANT to do what they want me to do, and understand that it's for my own good." Again, if there's something in particular that Mom and Dad ask you to do that you find you really have a hard time doing – cleaning your room, remembering to take out the garbage – then you can specifically, in confession, ask God to help you with His grace in that area).
And so on. Even things like lying, which young children ARE likely to do . . . I think the idea is more like, "I want to be brave enough always to tell the truth, even if it gets me in trouble," than like, "I did this bad thing and it made me dirty and bad." It's good and necessary to say, "I told a lie," but in confession you CAN really ask for grace, in a specific way, to grow out of the default of lying.
That Ignatian examen can be a really good model, looking at places where we need to grow in virtue. I do also think the Ten Commandments and the Seven Deadly sins can be good that way, too, again not so much as a laundry list of "bad stuff I did, and ways that I'm bad," as a way of considering "where do I need to grow closer to God, and what can His grace especially help me with?" Because He is just waiting there to give it away!
That Ignatian examen can be a really good model, looking at places where we need to grow in virtue. I do also think the Ten Commandments and the Seven Deadly sins can be good that way, too, again not so much as a laundry list of "bad stuff I did, and ways that I'm bad," as a way of considering "where do I need to grow closer to God, and what can His grace especially help me with?" Because He is just waiting there to give it away!
Again, I think this is a very helpful frame for looking at our child's whole humanity. Essentially, we're reminding ourselves to view our child as God views him in that moment of reconciliation, and our goal is always the nurture him toward that reconciliation with God, and therefore with the best of himself.
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On the one hand, I'm not into the idea that you have to micromanage your language to avoid "hurtfulness," or be anxious about that, like saying the wrong thing once is going to ruin your child's life. Don't be anxious!
On the other hand, I think it is useful to examine why we say (and think) the things we say and think, especially to and about our children. I very much dislike the idea of calling a child bad, or naughty, or disobedient, or whatever, as a defining characteristic. I especially dislike the idea of communicating that idea to the child. In college I used to babysit for a woman who would praise her (lovely, lively, bright) daughter by saying, "You were a very obedient little girl today," and for reasons I couldn't put my finger on at the time, this horrified me. I think now that it horrified me because it felt like a really reductive definition for a human being. To say, "you were a very obedient little girl," is substantially different from saying, "I really appreciate that you obeyed me today when I needed you to." One formulation sounds as though the child doesn't have free will – just is or isn't this particular thing (though that could change – you could be bad tomorrow!). The other recognizes that a whole person with free will has made the right choice, and affirms that. That's really what I mean when I speak of nurturing the child's image toward its intended God-likeness. I think that that is how God means to nurture all of us, toward our own wholeness in Him.
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I'm fairly sure that I believed this on some deep level when we began homeschooling – that if we just did everything right, we'd be sealing our children into a better, less risky life, for life, particularly with regard to the faith, but really with regard to everything. All I can say at this point is that life, and people, are a lot more complicated than that.
Charlotte Mason is responding, again, to a particular kind of determinism (almost like a weird strain of Calvinism) that was prevalent in the Victorian era, that the children of the lower classes were naturally depraved, while the children of the upper classes were naturally noble by birth. But – again – I think there are contemporary variations of this determinism that can take root in our own minds, in terms of our expectations for our children, and our sense of our own control over outcomes: that we ourselves are the force that determines how our children "turn out," as a family product.
We began to move into Charlotte Mason homeschooling at the same time that we were moving into the Catholic Church, and I was suddenly confronted by all these uber-wholesome families with silent children who sat quietly at Mass, all dressed in a particular, super clean-modest-and-wholesome way. Perhaps naturally, I did think, "Heeyyyyy . . . that's more like what I want us to be!"
And – well, we just weren't. Ever. Mind you, my children are all good people. I'm proud of my young adults and teenagers and the lives they lead. They are, all of them, leading good, if inevitably sometimes complicated, lives. They all have a vision of what "a good life" means, and are doing their best, in a fallen world, as fallen people, to pursue that vision. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that I rejoice in them, because I didn't make them the way they are. I was just there at certain early stages of their becoming – a process, of course, which will continue as long as their earthly lives last. Mind you, they don't necessarily present as what I guess you might think of as typical Catholic homeschoolers or homeschool graduates. Each one of them does present as "an individual made by God, with his or her own story, not a product produced by me and my educational system."
So I guess that all this does relate to Principle 2 (as well as Principle 1) in the sense that I can't MAKE them be good, or quiet, or even Catholic. They have that God-given capacity in themselves, to respond positively to God's grace which is always on offer. But they also have the capacity to say no to that grace, and I have zero control over that. They are free people, with free will. To paraphrase one son's favorite snarky t-shirt: I can explain it to them, but I can't understand it for them.
This is an important part of the foundation of this whole education. I could educate them in a pious bubble, keeping out all other influences. Certainly we have done our best to form them well religiously, as the Church charges us to do, so that they know the doctrines and practices of their own faith – but really our aim has been to educate people who do have free will, who will have to make choices, and who will be faced over and over again with situations in which they have to discern for themselves what is actually true, and recognize falsehood when they encounter it. They won't be good or holy just because we shield them from every possible untrue idea or narrative. As my husband is fond of saying, "innocent" and "naive" are not the same thing.
So I think Principle 2 is its own principle at least in part because it extends and unpacks our idea of the "born persons" we're meant to be educating, in all their reality. They do, increasingly as they grow up, acquire powers of discernment, the development of which is a level of hunger their education is meant to feed.
And – well, we just weren't. Ever. Mind you, my children are all good people. I'm proud of my young adults and teenagers and the lives they lead. They are, all of them, leading good, if inevitably sometimes complicated, lives. They all have a vision of what "a good life" means, and are doing their best, in a fallen world, as fallen people, to pursue that vision. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that I rejoice in them, because I didn't make them the way they are. I was just there at certain early stages of their becoming – a process, of course, which will continue as long as their earthly lives last. Mind you, they don't necessarily present as what I guess you might think of as typical Catholic homeschoolers or homeschool graduates. Each one of them does present as "an individual made by God, with his or her own story, not a product produced by me and my educational system."
So I guess that all this does relate to Principle 2 (as well as Principle 1) in the sense that I can't MAKE them be good, or quiet, or even Catholic. They have that God-given capacity in themselves, to respond positively to God's grace which is always on offer. But they also have the capacity to say no to that grace, and I have zero control over that. They are free people, with free will. To paraphrase one son's favorite snarky t-shirt: I can explain it to them, but I can't understand it for them.
This is an important part of the foundation of this whole education. I could educate them in a pious bubble, keeping out all other influences. Certainly we have done our best to form them well religiously, as the Church charges us to do, so that they know the doctrines and practices of their own faith – but really our aim has been to educate people who do have free will, who will have to make choices, and who will be faced over and over again with situations in which they have to discern for themselves what is actually true, and recognize falsehood when they encounter it. They won't be good or holy just because we shield them from every possible untrue idea or narrative. As my husband is fond of saying, "innocent" and "naive" are not the same thing.
So I think Principle 2 is its own principle at least in part because it extends and unpacks our idea of the "born persons" we're meant to be educating, in all their reality. They do, increasingly as they grow up, acquire powers of discernment, the development of which is a level of hunger their education is meant to feed.