How is Ambleside’s educational philosophy different?

This week I am preparing for Saturday’s Open House, our first big admissions event of the season. As I think about introducing new parents to our school for the first time, I’m reminded that you, as parents in our current school community, often face the same questions that I do: What makes an Ambleside education distinctive? How are we any different from any other private Christian school?

How do YOU answer these questions? (I’d really actually love to hear! Shoot me a reply or catch me around school if you’d like to discuss.) Because it’s important that we all know the answer, whether we’re fielding these questions from new parents or not.

How is Ambleside School’s educational philosophy different from other schools in our area?

The answer, I believe, lies in how we view children. 

In her book A Philosophy of Education, Charlotte Mason expounds on the primary idea that children are born persons. She saw children as made in the image of God and as “persons of beauty and immensity,” capable of countless relationships with the world around them. 

Mason did not see children as fixed but indeed capable of growth and change. She saw them as persons with full capacity to do the work of education themselves and not in need of flashy shows to lure them into learning or prizes and punishments to do the work they were born to do. 

Honoring the child as a person is not the current or even the past zeitgeist when it comes to educational philosophy. Children have been seen and continue to be seen as less than, pawns, clay to be molded and sacks to fill.  

Enter Charlotte Mason. No, she declared, children are born persons and we must treat them so. 

This is the high view of children that we adopt here. Mason’s thoughts on what children need, what they bring, and what is due from us as educators and parents all resonate from that single idea.

So if children are born persons, what then do children need? Besides healthy food and plenty of rest and exercise, what else is there? 

Mason described another basic need. Just as we need food for survival, she said our minds need food as well. What was that mind food she exhorted? Ideas. Ideas presented in literary form that clothe facts acquired from the rich texts we put before them. Yes, many schools read good books as part of their educational philosophy, but what they are doing with those books is what matters.

Charlotte Mason used narration, her chief learning tool, to assimilate knowledge. You’ll notice that fill in the blanks, multiple choice questions, and book reports are absent from Ambleside’s educational philosophy and practice. Instead, individuals retell the ideas they’ve been presented with, both orally and in writing. They engage in thoughtful discussions. Seeing these children as persons, we seek to nourish our students wholly and completely, not just teach them how to regurgitate the main points of the story.

If children are born persons, what do they bring with them? Some philosophers thought that a child’s mind is an empty sack waiting to be filled. Others look at them as beings with faculties to be developed. Mason saw otherwise. 

Children, for one, have an understanding of authority. They know they will obey and do what is asked of them. Another is that the facilities of the mind are already present in the normal child; they can attend, imagine and recall what was heard, read or viewed with vivid detail and vitality. 

And as for a desire for knowledge, they could not possess more. Children are innately curious and desire without prompting or prodding to make numerous relationships with all that they encounter, most importantly with the Living God. 

Why is the sky blue? Why do the leaves change color in the fall? 

Even all the way back to biblical times the children desired to know as they asked, “What is this pile of stones for?” Mason’s view that children are born persons informs her full confidence in their ability to handle the myriad of mind food and work put before them. 

And finally, if children are born persons, what is due from us as parents and teachers? Because children need food for their minds, we must provide it. Rich, living texts written by the brightest minds throughout time are to be their diet. Beauty in the form of art, music, and poetry and prose should be offered as well. A living faith and close relationship with our Savior must also be passed through example and precept. 

Because a child comes ready with curiosity, power to attend, imagination, and discernment, we must provide worthy texts and work for them to engage in. No space brought down to a child’s level is needed. That too is an insult to their personhood.

What happens if we do not model education after the premise of personhood? Why is this of paramount importance? Mason felt that children educated in this way with this primary idea at its core are fully able to change the world. Let that sink in for a moment.  

It wasn’t just a school room that they could change, or a household or a town. No, not even just a nation, but the entire world. When we do not embrace the idea that children are born persons and capable of more than we could ever suppose, we belittle, stifle, and stunt them. We have a choice as to how we view children and that view has monumental consequences. 

We could see children exercising their natural desire to know into adulthood ... or we could see children working for wealth and power. Children consuming rich and varied texts, enriching their own life and the lives of others around them … or children subsisting on cheap tabloids and the latest blockbusters. Children pursuing with abandon a relationship with the living God … or children satisfied with the temporal world.

How could we not choose Charlotte Mason’s view?

For the children’s sake,

Krise Nowak

Head of School