The Most Important Recognition of Every Educator

As I write this, I'm actually just trying to figure out how to motivate the whole world to go read this one chapter that Charlotte Mason wrote. Here Charlotte Mason points us to one of the most amazing metaphors education and how God works through the minds of men. She then takes that metaphor and applies it directly to our hearts as parents and educators. Honestly, it won't take you long. I read it out loud to my husband while he stood in the kitchen. He was just as awed as I was.

Have I convinced you yet?

Here's a link. 

Here are some snippets:

"In the things of science, in the things of art, in the things of practical everyday life, his God doth instruct him and doth teach him, her God doth instruct her and doth teach her. Let this be the mother's key to the whole of the education of each boy and each girl; not of her children; the Divine Spirit does not work with nouns of multitude, but with each single child...

...His God doth instruct him and doth teach him. Let the mother visualize the thought as an illuminated scroll about her newborn child, and let her never contemplate any kind of instruction for her child except under the sense of the divine co-operation....

...Suppose we are willing to make this great recognition, to engage ourselves to accept and invite the daily, hourly, incessant co-operation of the divine Spirit, in, to put it definitely and plainly, the schoolroom work of our children, how must we shape our own conduct to make this co-operation active, or even possible? We are told that the Spirit is life; therefore, that which is dead, dry as dust, mere bare bones, can have no affinity with Him, can do no other than smother and deaden his vitalising influences. A first condition of this vitalising teaching is that all the thought we offer to our children shall be living thought; no mere dry summaries of facts will do; given the vitalising idea, children will readily hang the mere facts upon a peg capable of sustaining all that is needful to retain. We begin by believing in the children as spiritual beings of unmeasured powers - intellectual, moral, spiritual - capable of receiving and constantly enjoying intuitions from the intimate converse of the Divine Spirit."

This has me thinking about so many things. First and foremost is that recognition that this training and educating of my children is really not all on me. Incidentally, I read a section from Sarah Mackenzie's book Teaching From Rest just yesterday.

"We must drop the self-inflated view that we are the be-all and end-all of whether the education we offer our children is going to work out. We are too quick to feel both the successes and the failures of our job as homeschoolers. Our kids test well on the SAT and we pat ourselves on the back. They are miserable writers and we scourge ourselves for failing them. But He never demands that we produce prodigies or achieve what the world would recognize as excellence. Rather, he asks us to live excellently - that is to, live in simple, obedient faith and trust. He asks us to faithfully commit every day to Him and then to do that day's tasks well. He's in charge of the results....

....Because whether or not he becomes an excellent writer or a proficient mathematician is not your business to worry over. Your business is that single assignment today and loving him through it."

And here Sarah hints at what is required of me. It's the same lesson God's been trying to teach me over and over again the last few years. What's my part? To be faithful.

Come to think of it it's the same lesson God's been trying to teach His people from the beginning. 

Here are some of the best words on education ever written:

"Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children's children - how on the day that you stood before the LORD your God at Horeb, the Lord said to me, 'Gather the people to me, that I may let them hear my words, so that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children so." (Deuteronomy 4:9-10)

Watch yourselves carefully. Be diligent. Be faithful. The rest of he work is His.

"...that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end. Beware lest you say in your heart, 'My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.' You shall remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth..." (Deuteronomy 8:16-17)

I'm just here to be the gardener. I can cultivate the plants, but I can't make them grow. I can provide nutrients and healthy soil and I can water. God is the instructor. Not me. But I am responsible for providing a living, active, vitalising atmosphere of education. My children are their own persons with a God who loves them and will instruct and teach them.

Lord, please create a clean heart in me. Please do a work in my soul. Please make this home a place that breathes life, a place of peace and rest, a place of remembering. Teach us to fear You. Teach us true humility. It's all Yours.