Charlotte Mason Minimalism: Reconciling the 13th Principle with Real Life (Part 1, Philosophy)

Over the years I have jokingly referred to myself as a "Mason Minimalist" when describing my homeschooling style.  I admire and follow Charlotte Mason's 20 Principles, and employ many of her methods, but....

I'm kind of a minimalist.

I didn't start out that way; when Finn was in kindergarten I created an elaborate filing system for all his "subjects" (what was I thinking?!).  This system barely lasted a few weeks, if I recall correctly, in part because my sweet tornado Annie was a toddler.  

Over the years I've had to hone in, revamp, make lists, toss the lists out, re-prioritize, re-think, etc.  In the few months before my husband was diagnosed with cancer, I was, for the first time, following a Charlotte Mason curriculum fairly closely, using lesson plans (!)(that's so not me!).  It is a beautiful curriculum full of  good things, but along about late October of that school year I was just exhausted.  I simplified a little and continued on until our Christmas break, and on December 18th my husband got his diagnosis. Needless to say, the curriculum went out the window.

I was forced to re-think things.  I re-read Mason's principles--many times.  I thought about how to stay faithful to those principles even in the midst of illness or crisis.  I prayed. I journaled. I adapted.  My husband had surgery in January 2018 and returned to work after a month at home, and we finished out that school year with a fairly minimalist homeschooling routine, and I was looking forward to an easy summer of pool time and thinking when his cancer recurred--with a vengeance.  From May to December last year, we were dealing with surgery, radiation, chemo, living in another state for a couple of months, side effects, doctor's appointments, et cetera. I was an absolute minimalist during that time; in fact, when we lived in North Carolina, I did a bit of school here or there when I could (highly simplified), left my children to their own devices as much as possible, and felt gratitude to my best friend Allison for reading to the children, taking them to the library, and doing interesting things with them when all I could do was call the insurance company or try to help my husband manage his symptoms.

2018 was the year of cancer, but it was also the year that cemented in my mind the idea that minimalism is okay.

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When Charlotte Mason homeschoolers get together we throw around the word "feast" a lot.  It's a beautiful feast, this type of education: everything from history via living books to brush drawing, from hymns to modern languages, from picture study to natural history.  Any curriculum that tries to stay true to Mason's methods will invariably include all of these things, and many more, in a well-organized way.

But of course that must be balanced with reality.  We have to figure what is sustainable for our personalities and family situations.


{a simple supper a few nights ago, with zinnias from our neighbor}

The 13th Principle states that in devising a syllabus/course of study for a child, 3 points should be considered:

first, the child requires much knowledge; that is, sufficient "food" for the mind;
second, the knowledge should be full of variety to stimulate the mental appetite; and
third, the knowledge should be communicated in "well-chosen language" because we naturally gravitate to ideas conveyed in literary form.

The "feast" idea stems from the idea that a child needs a good variety of much knowledge.  It's the buffet.  Lots of choices.

In a school setting, this appears to look like short (often timed, so to be sure they are short) lessons on multiple subjects.  On paper it is beautiful and I have created perfectly beautiful "on paper" plans!  The issue is that in real life at home there are complications to the plans:

you need to attend a funeral (this is our reality this morning, actually) and help with the post-reception cleanup
the roofing company guy pulls up to measure your house for the new roof
the cat becomes sick to her stomach
your husband needs you to call the car dealership
your neighbor--sweetest person on earth-- needs to take her ill child for bloodwork and asks if you could watch two of  her other children while they are gone

Today is only Wednesday that's my *actual* week so far!


{real life: a geriatric dog and my husband's dresser in the living room because our bathroom is being tiled and we had to move the dresser out of the way....so it goes....}

I could set strict boundaries around our school time.  I could decline to attend the funeral of the dear family friend who looked after my mother so sweetly during a hard time in her life.  I could ignore the roofing guy (although the roof is such a huge investment that I don't think that would be wise). I could ignore the cat issue (yuck, I don't think I could do that).  I could decline to call the car dealership. I could decline to babysit. 

But I'm not sure that living a life that is quite that insulated from reality, or inflexible with real human needs, would be an appropriate education for my children.  I don't want them to think that our agenda is the most important one all the time.

It is healthy and good to keep boundaries in life.  During the day I almost never answer the phone unless it's my husband, a parent, or a doctor's office.  I try to schedule our appointments and outings in the afternoon, presumably after we have done most of our daily work.  And I try to keep to a strict rule, if at all possible: no more than one Extra Thing per day, so that we can have plenty of margin.


{from a recent field trip to a colonial-era home}

But the reality of our lives is that interruptions will happen.  And I agree with C.S. Lewis:

"The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's 'own,' or 'real' life.  The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one's real life--the life God is sending one day by day."

So that's the philosophical perspective I take when pondering the issue of how to structure our "school days."  Next time I'll write about the practical side of it; how I actually structure things so that we can enjoy a 'feast' without a checklist or stress. 

The Pressure of the Ordinary

Have you read The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis?  This short, pointed book is one of my favorites.  The premise is that a demon named Wormwood is trying to win the soul of a man, and Wormwood corresponds with the head demon, Screwtape, in order to get advice on how to worm his way into the man's heart and mind. 

At one point, Screwtape writes "...you don't realize how enslaved [humans] are to the pressure of the ordinary...."

Isn't this true?  Don't we have lofty ideals, but tend to get bogged down in the pressure of the ordinary?  Even the beautiful bits of ordinary can become mundane.  They can wear on your soul, drag you down, look dreary.  Am I enslaved  to the pressure of the ordinary?

 In this section of the book, Screwtape is discussing how important it is to distract humans: instead of allowing them to dive deeply into thought over an excellent book, lure them into the street to buy a newspaper.  The power of constant distraction cannot be overstated; it's hard to dive deeply into any subject, or achieve excellence in any part of life, in the face of constant distractions. I love that Lewis uses a newspaper to demonstrate this point (multiple articles on various topics); I am sure that in 2019, he'd use a smartphone app....

Likewise, the power of wasting time in nothing is an additional way to tap into and destroy a soul: 

"Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off."

Nothing seems to be the type of living that culminates in regret in middle age, or later in life.  Do you know anyone who wakes up and goes to sleep with their regrets?  It is a hard way to live.  Although I don't think it's possible to live a life with no regrets, it seems wise to do the best you can to try to live a life that you will not regret living. 

This nothing is not to be confused with enjoying life for the simple sake of enjoying it, which is, in fact, a healthy thing:

"The deepest likings and impulses of any man are the raw materials, the starting point, with which the Enemy [Polly's note: this is a demon talking, so the "Enemy" here is God!] has furnished him.  To get him away from those is therefore always a point gained...[county cricket or collecting stamps or drinking cocoa], I grant you, have nothing of virtue in them; but there is a sort of innocence and humility and self-forgetfulness about them which I distrust."

In our self-absorbed, internet-rich world, is there any activity that we or our children engage in that still contains the qualities of innocence, humility and self-forgetfulness?

What's our motivation behind what we do?  My son and I were recently discussing this. Is our motivation to look good or impress others?  There's not much humility or self-forgetfulness in that; that's all about pride and self-consciousness.  When we are motivated purely by what people think of us, we lose the beauty and purity of enjoying an activity simply for the sake of enjoying it.

What's our motivation behind what we post on social media?  Are we employing innocence, humility, and self-forgetfulness?  I hazard to say that nearly everyone who has ever engaged with social media has, at some point or another, forgotten these virtuous qualities and instead posted or commented with an unhealthy spirit of offensiveness, pride, and self-awareness.

The pressure of the ordinary and power of distraction combined with the frittering away of time over nothings, those half-aware, fleeting curiosities, are--Lewis argues--destroying our souls. And he wrote The Screwtape Letters nearly 80 years ago, before television and the Internet took over our modern lives and minds.

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A few years ago I had a sobering dream. I am (unfortunately, at times) prone to prophetic dreams, and this is one I've never forgotten.  I was on a nearby road at night, walking with my children. (Interestingly, it's a road that runs through the poshest neighborhood in our county, about a mile from our farm.)  I was distracted by my phone and was scrolling through its lit screen while we walked along.  Suddenly, I became aware of the sound of howling wolves, and I knew that they were getting closer. I realized they were after us, particularly after my children. I panicked; we were nowhere near safe shelter, and the only thing I held was a cell phone. My children were about to get eaten by wolves, and I somehow knew that it was my fault, because I'd been so deeply distracted by scrolling my phone that I was not aware of my surroundings earlier.

Then suddenly the phone turned into a shovel.  And I realized that I was going to kill the wolves with an instrument intended for digging. 

I woke up.

As soon as I woke up I knew exactly why I had a shovel, not a gun. The solution to the danger my children were in was to quit being so distracted and to dig deeper into life.

And so that is what I try to do.