{"id":87,"date":"2018-11-02T08:00:02","date_gmt":"2018-11-02T13:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/?p=87"},"modified":"2022-12-03T10:14:21","modified_gmt":"2022-12-03T16:14:21","slug":"the-role-of-ideas-in-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/2018\/11\/02\/the-role-of-ideas-in-education\/","title":{"rendered":"The Role of Ideas in Education"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ever the provocateur, Charlotte Mason, the late 19th<\/sup> century British educator, raised the question of the role of ideas in education. After mentioning the importance of ideas in both common life (\u201cI have an idea!\u201d) and the history of philosophy<\/a>, she castigates the educational establishment of her day for neglecting ideas:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is but one sphere in which the word idea never occurs, in which the conception of an idea is curiously absent, and that sphere is education! Look at any publisher\u2019s list of school books and you shall find that the books recommended are carefully dessicated, drained of the least suspicion of an idea, reduced to the driest statements of fact.\u201d (Towards a Philosophy of Education<\/em> 84)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"
Frederick Yates, “Charlotte Mason” (1902)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Charlotte Mason is critical both of the pedagogy and of the curriculum of her day for the curious lack of a conception so obviously crucial to education. It would be interesting to know whether she would be equally disappointed with the educational world of today, with its focus on technical rather than liberal learning<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Of course, we hear of \u2018concepts\u2019 and their \u2018attainment\u2019 quite a bit in educational circles these days. Perhaps she would be satisfied with this rough synonym? Or perhaps not, given how much she emphasized the formative influence of ideas upon a person\u2019s life. After all, she deals with the importance of ideas under the heading of Ruskin\u2019s phrase, \u201ceducation is a life,\u201d and certainly does not go into detail on methods for helping students attain discrete concepts in math, science or the humanities. For her, ideas are living entities of the mind encountered in \u201cmuch humane reading\u201d (88) and taken or discarded by children as they will (see 86-7). They are not concepts to be attained, but food for the soul to sustain the growing life of the mind.<\/p>\n

An article published in 2017 by four members of the Education Faculty at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, presents a unique comparison to Charlotte Mason\u2019s concept of an indiscriminate idea feast. The title of the article is \u201cUsing \u2018Big Ideas\u2019 to Enhance Teaching and Student Learning,\u201d and the premise is that \u201cthe significance of big ideas in classroom practice is underappreciated\u201d(Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice<\/em>, 23:5, 596). So far they agree with Charlotte Mason in critiquing the neglect of ideas. They even use the term \u2018generative\u2019 to describe the importance of these big ideas, which might parallel nicely with Mason\u2019s conception of ideas as living entities which are productive of trains of thought, even inspiring action.<\/p>\n

But as the article goes on it becomes clear that their conception of \u201cbig ideas\u201d contrasts sharply with Charlotte Mason\u2019s, looking far more like the standard goal of concept attainment. For instance, \u201cbig ideas\u201d must be expressed, according to our researchers, as a single sentence with a subject and a verb, and in a form that helps students avoid common misunderstandings (600-1). The teacher\u2019s role involves composing such a \u201cbig idea\u201d from the standard concepts or theories of their discipline, as a generalization that students can easily grasp. Newton\u2019s third law, \u201cTo every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,\u201d should be rephrased for students as, \u201cAlmost all reaction forces are due to some distortion (bending, squashing, stretching) of an object,\u201d in order to avoid the common confusion about there being only one object that the forces act and react on (600). Such a formulation of an idea is \u201cgenerative\u201d in that it will suggest to the teacher the structuring of learning experiences in order to help students attain and solidify this central concept.<\/p>\n

By contrast, Charlotte Mason doesn\u2019t seem to envision ideas as statements that teachers formulate for their students in order to guide their attainment of key concepts in a discipline. Instead, her primary focus is on a rich, literary curriculum that stimulates the student\u2019s own internal and spiritual development: \u201cwe must sustain a child\u2019s inner life with ideas as we sustain his body with food\u201d (Towards a Philosophy<\/em> 86). In fact, she contrasts this feeding on ideas, in which a child will probably \u201creject nine-tenths of the ideas we offer,\u201d with \u201cforcible feeding\u201d and \u201cpredigested food\u201d (87). She goes on to claim that<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of our presumptuous sins in this connection is that we venture to offer opinions to children (and to older persons) instead of ideas. We believe that an opinion expresses thought and therefore embodies an idea. Even if it did so once the very act of crystallization into opinion destroys any vitality it may have had\u2026.\u201d (87)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What perplexes the modern educator at this point is whether or not Mason would have considered a teacher\u2019s formulation of a concept into a sentence as the crystallization of an idea into an opinion. Is the teacher\u2019s distillation of a science textbook\u2019s most important point into a well-crafted statement the serving up of \u201cpredigested food\u201d and her own \u201copinion\u201d? Is it \u201cforcible feeding\u201d to carefully structure a set of lessons in a unit in order to maximize the student\u2019s comprehension of the foundational ideas of physics or any other subject?<\/p>\n

\"modern<\/p>\n

But perhaps we are pushing Mason\u2019s words too far. Perhaps she did not mean to exclude the possibility of an expert teacher carefully organizing and selecting curriculum and learning activities in this way. Maybe she was just concerned to ensure that her non-expert governesses and elementary teachers didn\u2019t pontificate their moral and political opinions at every break in the reading of a great book. That\u2019s certainly something we can all agree with. At the very least, it\u2019s clear that Mason\u2019s concern was chiefly\u00a0with choosing an idea-rich curriculum and giving students the space to catch the inspiring ideas themselves. What\u2019s not so clear is how her criticism of the \u201cdesiccated\u201d textbooks of the late 19th<\/sup> century would square with the textbooks of today, complete with questions after every chapter, vivid illustrations and diagrams of important ideas, and carefully structured sequences of concepts.<\/p>\n

In all likelihood, the phenomenon described in \u201cUsing \u2018Big Ideas\u2019\u201d was simply not a part of Mason\u2019s common experience or philosophy of education. For her ideas were not the core concepts to be attained by all students in the course of a given class, but included untestable and indefinite instincts as well.\u00a0On this she quotes the Romantic poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea may exist in a clear and definite form as that of a circle in that of the mind of a geometrician or it may be a mere instinct, a vague appetency towards something\u2026 like the impulse which fills a young poet\u2019s eyes with tears.\u201d (85)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We have to concede with Mason that the poet\u2019s tearful instinct, if it could fill the classroom, is certainly formative and therefore educational, even if untestable and harder to create. But our devotion to these types of experiences should probably not crowd out the legitimate means of helping students attain key concepts. This too is not only informative, but formative in shaping students\u2019 relationships to learning and the subjects they study. Deliberate practice<\/a> in attaining such concepts can help form a growth mindset<\/a>. In our educational renaissance<\/a> let\u2019s not neglect ideas, in either sense of the term.<\/p>\n

References:<\/h3>\n

Charlotte Mason. Towards a Philosophy of Education<\/em>. Wilder: 2008.<\/p>\n

Ian Mitchell, Stephen Keast, Debra Panizzon, and Julie Mitchell. “Using ‘Big Ideas’ to Enhance Teaching and Student Learning,” in Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice<\/em>, 2017, 23:5, pp. 596-610.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ever the provocateur, Charlotte Mason, the late 19th century British educator, raised the question of the role of ideas in education. After mentioning the importance of ideas in both common life (\u201cI have an idea!\u201d) and the history of philosophy, she castigates the educational establishment of her day for neglecting ideas: \u201cThere is but one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[294],"tags":[11,12,13,628,327,14],"class_list":["post-87","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-charlotte-mason","tag-charlotte-mason","tag-concepts","tag-ideas","tag-in-the-classroom","tag-modern-research","tag-philosophy"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Role of Ideas in Education •<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Today there's a lot of talk of ideas in education but that means many different things. 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It is a great thing to have said it; and our wiser posterity may see in that 'profound and exquisite remark' the fruition of a lifetime of critical effort (Charlotte Mason,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Charlotte Mason"","block_context":{"text":"Charlotte Mason","link":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/category\/charlotte-mason\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/educationalrenaissance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Ignite.jpg?fit=1200%2C750&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/educationalrenaissance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Ignite.jpg?fit=1200%2C750&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/educationalrenaissance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Ignite.jpg?fit=1200%2C750&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/educationalrenaissance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Ignite.jpg?fit=1200%2C750&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/educationalrenaissance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Ignite.jpg?fit=1200%2C750&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3822,"url":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/2023\/06\/10\/charlotte-mason-the-educational-philosopher\/","url_meta":{"origin":87,"position":1},"title":"Charlotte Mason, the Educational Philosopher","author":"Jason Barney","date":"June 10, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"In researching\u00a0Charlotte Mason\u2019s life for my book on her with Classical Academic Press (published 2023:\u00a0Charlotte Mason: A Liberal Education for all!), the latest in the\u00a0Giants in the History of Education series\u00a0(see my recorded\u00a0webinar with Classical Academic Press!) 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The experience is equivalent to being the recipient of some unexpected treasure. Ideas loosen our grip on holding a thin view of the world. They open our minds, especially through narration, to connections\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Charlotte Mason"","block_context":{"text":"Charlotte Mason","link":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/category\/charlotte-mason\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/educationalrenaissance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Mind.jpg?fit=724%2C483&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/educationalrenaissance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Mind.jpg?fit=724%2C483&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/educationalrenaissance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Mind.jpg?fit=724%2C483&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/educationalrenaissance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Mind.jpg?fit=724%2C483&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4513,"url":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/2025\/02\/01\/a-coherent-and-holistic-education-book-review-of-elaine-coopers-the-powerful-and-neglected-voice-of-charlotte-mason\/","url_meta":{"origin":87,"position":3},"title":"A Coherent and Holistic Education: Book Review of Elaine Cooper’s The Powerful and Neglected Voice of Charlotte Mason","author":"Patrick Egan","date":"February 1, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"In this series, I want to review and highlight the Charlotte Mason Centenary Series of monographs released in 2023. The 18 books in this series are brief and readable volumes that encapsulate a diverse range of topics related to the life, writings and philosophy of Charlotte Mason. My intention is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/category\/reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/educationalrenaissance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/image-1.png?fit=399%2C441&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3001,"url":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/2022\/05\/28\/what-is-a-learner-reading-charlotte-mason-through-aristotles-four-causes\/","url_meta":{"origin":87,"position":4},"title":"What is a Learner?: Reading Charlotte Mason through Aristotle\u2019s Four Causes","author":"Patrick Egan","date":"May 28, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"The goals and aims of our educational renewal movement center not on the quality of our curriculum or the quality of our teacher. Instead, the quality of learning is the true test of whether we are providing something of lasting value and worth. 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Here I intentionally draw upon Dwight D. Eisenhower\u2019s 1961 Farewell Address when he warned against the disastrous potential of the military-industrial complex. Looking back over\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Charlotte Mason"","block_context":{"text":"Charlotte Mason","link":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/category\/charlotte-mason\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/educationalrenaissance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/EXPLORING-EDUCATIONAL-ALTERNATIVES.png?fit=1200%2C960&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/educationalrenaissance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/EXPLORING-EDUCATIONAL-ALTERNATIVES.png?fit=1200%2C960&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/educationalrenaissance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/EXPLORING-EDUCATIONAL-ALTERNATIVES.png?fit=1200%2C960&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/educationalrenaissance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/EXPLORING-EDUCATIONAL-ALTERNATIVES.png?fit=1200%2C960&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/educationalrenaissance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/EXPLORING-EDUCATIONAL-ALTERNATIVES.png?fit=1200%2C960&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":411,"href":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions\/411"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}