The Charlotte Mason Homeschool “The Problem with Blobs”
Anne White, Ontario Homeschooling Since 1996
I
n all of Charlotte Mason’s six books on education, she never used the word “creativity.”“Artistic perception,” yes. “Poetic insight,” yes. Encouragement in literature, in art appreciation, in music, in writing verse, yes. Children in CM schools are described as not only reading Shakespeare’s plays together, but also staging them, producing costumes and scenery, and acting them out once a year. The Parents’ Review (the monthly magazine edited by Charlotte Mason) ran a series of art instruction columns around the turn of the last century, where students were encouraged to send in their completed assignments, but there is no mention of “creativity.” Why didn’t Charlotte Mason seem to have much to say about this favourite educational concept? What do we really mean by “creativity” in education? Is it one of those words like “socialization” that seems to mean less the more we use it? To answer the first question, “creativity” doesn’t seem to have become a commonly used term, at least in psychology and education, until the late 1920’s, soon after Charlotte Mason’s death. We are so used to educators extolling the virtues of creativity and imagination, that it’s hard to remember a time when too much “imagination” might get you kicked out of the classroom. Is it just a question of semantics, or did people view what we now call “creativity” differently a hundred years ago? Actually, Charlotte Mason was ahead of her time when it came to including subjects like art appreciation
18 | Homeschool Horizons ~ November 2011
and literature. Think of any typical children’s book describing lessons in a one-room schoolhouse; frills like art were uncommon. In Eleanor Estes’ The Moffats, set during World War I, the children in a small-town school have occasional visits from a drawing teacher. “It is true that sometimes the children grew tired of drawing leaves, pumpkins, and apples. However, Miss Partridge never thought of letting them draw anything else.” Charlotte Mason was also far ahead of many other educators of her own time, and perhaps ours also, with her insistence on “feeling for the natural object which is the very soul of the art.” She disapproved of teaching children to paint with “blobs,” which were similar to thumbprint art. Make a red thumbprint; draw spots, eyes and legs, and you have a ladybug. Cute, but does this really help children to see a ladybug, to draw a ladybug, or to appreciate an artist’s rendering of a ladybug? Should we encourage children to draw imaginary flowers with multiple petals sticking out like daisies? Or should we teach them to see the difference between a forget-me-not, with its five petals and white star surrounding a yellow centre that looks like embroidery, and a violet, which also has five petals, lacks the fancy centre, but has the fascinating characteristic of one petal pointing downwards? Do we save all that for science class, or take it as an example of the beauty and fine detail in Creation? Children taught to look carefully at natural objects, including animals, and to draw what they really see, will be less likely to settle for “blobs.” Please note