How Firm a Foundation: The Life and Works of CM

These are notes taken from a lecture given by Jennifer Spencer, titled How Firm a Foundation. The conference notebook describes this as "an introduction to the ideas behind Mason's methods. The main focus of the lecture is that techniques like narration and picture study are not the nucleus of the Mason model. The paradigm of education with which most of us grew up was rooted in classicism and industrialism, both of which are very humanistic and materialistic. If we simply add Mason's methods to those existing ideas, we fall way short of the mark..."

-----------------------------------------------

This was one of the highlights of the conference; there was a slide show presentation that went with it; these are just the notes I took. I think this lecture is a must for every teacher, especially a teacher in a CM school.

Educational problems are like a leaning tower - everyone has ideas about why it's leaning, but nobody knows how to fix it. If you don't address the problem at the foundation, you won't really fix it. In education, new books, computer programs, adding another new idea/tool without getting rid of bad ideas/tools don't address the foundational problem. Even in many "CM schools," CM's ideas are layered on top of traditional educational methods. This is how hybrids are born; by adding narration or picture study to a traditional program, the school identifies itself as a CM school, when it's really a hybrid.

Following a list of CM methods (narration, picture study, composer study, dictation, history as the hub, copywork, short lessons, hands-on math, classic literature, handicrafts, narrative books) can become like legalistic religion. Where's the relationship?? CM methods should be something that results from her foundational ideas, not something you apply to become a CM educator. It's like doing Christian works to become a Christian.

Here is a short history of education.

(Early?) classical education believed in the "tabula rasa" - the child's mind is a blank slate to be written on. Knowledge is the result of experience. There are three stages: grammar, dialectic, rhetoric. There is an emphasis onrote memorization of facts, and on a body of knowledge to be absorbed by the student. It's a bottom-up model (CM is a top-down model.) There is a dualism because the mind is seen as spiritual and the body is seen as secular matter, so mental pursuits are considered higher than physical pursuits. Pre-Indusrial Revolution, children learned from teachers and recitation. Churches often housed schools. Students often left school early to care for siblings or to go to work. Rich students went on to a university to learn how to use their leisure time responsibly. This kept class lines separated because only the rich had access to culture, while the poor were the workers. Hirsch's "What Your __ Grader Needs to Know" is based on classical ideals.

Then came the Industrial Revolution (1830-1900?). Entire families were often employed, which took children away from school. Books on management by authors like Frederick Taylor showed how to get more productivity from workers. Profit and efficiency were the buzzwords, and this attotude infiltrated even the schools. Dollar economy became the most important aspect of education. Could businesses train employees in schools with their own financing, instead of using school resources? To this day, businesses donate money to educational institutions to make students more useful to their businesses (CM said this was immoral!) The thought of the day was utilitarian: "Whatever helps industry helps the community." Even President Roosevelt supported vocational education/efficiency in foreign trade. People wanted to be productive like Germany and admired Germany's goal of loyalty to the company and to the state.

Charles W. Eliot and David Snedden led the way to American efficiency in the name of patriotism. Masses needed to learn to trust experts instead of themselves. Education needed to train students to respect authority and to be fit for their purpose (in the workplace). Teachers became public servants presenting the ideas of the controlling majority. Standardization was valued over individualization. Lessons were scheduled in rigid time-clock blocks of time. Children were sorted by IQ, social status and probable destiny. We still use many of these sorting techniques: SAT's, uniform textbooks, teacher certification, guidance counseling, mechanical discipline (behaviorism), strict schedules, isolated skills, qualifiable results and grades - all used to sort and diminish the individual personhood of each child.

Two groups opposed industrialization. Humanitarianism was against industrial slavery. They placed people above profit and felt that education should equalize opportunity. The NEA wanted to reform industry because they felt that "teaching is an art, not a science." But they were silenced when WWI demanded more goods and productivity. Then John Dewey took up their cause. He wanted a democratic ideal. Democracy should serve people. His ideas are based on relativism: man is the measure of importance, and a good life on earth is all we can hope for. Sensory experience builds knowledge. He didn't think of mind as spiritual and body as matter. To him, it was ALL matter. He felt that education should improve society, an idea which places society over the individual. Even religion, he felt, needed to evolve through slow social revolution, science and experimentation so that a new morality and new reality would become rooted. This resulted in child-centered teaching and "learning centers" based on inquiry/experience, "learning environments that foster learning," developmentally graded unit studies for thematic integration, democratic atmosphere in classrooms, co-operative learning, character-building lessons. Unfortunately, right/wrong isn't decided by majority vote. Character is internal and grows through ideas; it can't be applied from the outside. Dewey's style of education results in a foundation that shifts like sand. Morality under this atmosphere changes with the times.

CM is different. CM believed that children come to us as complete persons who have an innate desire for justice, and who were created for a special purpose. They already have a fully-developed soul and intellect. It's not our job to trim or prune them to make them conform to society's ideals. Skills are not equal to ideas. With CM, no information is presented without an informing idea. The teacher's job is to provide a rich feast of living ideas via books. The goal isn't cultural literacy, but critical literacy through reading, extracting ideas, weighing them with a constant measure or standard (the Bible), and forming their own judgment. CM is rooted in constructivism. Attentiveness revolves around making connections and expressing the child's own ideas, and partaking in the "grand conversation."

CM is built on --
- The child as a person
- The nature of knowledge as relational
- Ideas as the food for the mind.

CM does not need the bricks of trivium, grades, behaviorism, isolated skills,. But it's not enough to add the good aspects of CM over everything else. You have to also remove the bad in the same way that a gardener removes weeds before letting good plants take root.

The final question is -- should education be based on the changing demands of society/industry, or on the needs of the child?