The Wide Universe Beyond
A 7th grade student studies James McNeill Whistler’s Symphony in White, No. 1 at a recent trip to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
Dear Parents,
Like many of you I suspect, I spent a considerable amount of time investigating the various school options for my son before enrolling him in kindergarten. I looked at a handful of private schools and the local public school. Homeschooling was even on the table. My husband Ben and I wanted the very best for our son and through the whole process we prayed to the Lord and asked Him, “Where?”
I decided to fast before the tour of a local elementary school and earnestly hoped for a voice from heaven to speak. After walking out of the building, it wasn’t a resounding, “Yes, this is the place” or “No, not here,” but I did leave with two simple questions to consider:
What do you want your son to accomplish in his years of schooling?
And, what kind of atmosphere do you want him to do it in?
I imagine that these are questions you have also considered as a parent. What do you hope your children will get out of their many years of sitting in a classroom? Is it just to pass from one grade to the next, or do you desire something more? No doubt you are looking for something more, just as Ben and I were. The question of what exactly you want them to accomplish is worth further exploration.
A simple answer may be that you want your child to do well in school so they can get into a good college and get a good job. That goal can be measured by marks on tests, straight A’s on report cards, and a high paying job.
Even back in Charlotte Mason’s day, over 100 years ago, there were similar educational goals out there. A well-known educationalist said that there were only two things children want in the way of knowledge: “How to do the work by which they will earn their living and how to behave as citizens.”
But is education's only purpose to prepare children for jobs and means to pay their taxes? What of joy, the discovery of beauty, growth in self-awareness, development of character, service to others, the building of relationships?
Charlotte Mason saw education as so much more; she said that education was the science of relations. The full idea of “the science of relations” requires some commentary.
Does Mason mean that every lesson needs to fit into every other one in neat unit studies? No, she abhorred unit studies. Mason believed that there is a wide universe beyond the classroom that children have inherited. Our job as educators is to put them in touch with all of it — all that is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, and worthy. We are connecting them together — building relationships between children and all that is available to them.
At our recent staff meeting we read the answer together in Mason’s own words. Children, wrote Mason, “come into the world with many relations waiting to be established; relations with places far and near, with the wide universe, with the past of history, with the social economics of the present, with the earth they live on and all its delightful progeny of beast and bird, plant and tree; with the sweet human affinities they entered into at birth; with their own countries, and above all, with that most sublime of human relationships–their relation to God.”
An Ambleside education’s aim is to open up to the child a world of delight in countless relationships. It is due to them and their fullness of living depends on it. This education is so much more than passing from one grade to the next, getting into a good college, and landing a high salary career.
We want more than that for our students.
Joyfully,
Krise Nowak, M.Ed.
Head of School
P.S. You may have noticed that I didn’t address the second question in my decision-making process about school selection, “What kind of atmosphere do you want your child to spend his or her school days in?” That’s coming soon.