If education is not information, what is it? How do we as teachers feed the whole person's natural desire to know? Emily, Nicole, and Liz discuss the tools to implement in education, the motto Mason took for her teachers: "Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life," defining, discussing, and providing real life instances of these instruments put into practice.



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4. These principles are limited by the respect due to the personality of children, which must not be encroached upon whether by the direct use of fear or love, suggestion or influence, or by undue play upon any one natural desire. 5. Therefore, we are limited to three educational instruments--the atmosphere of environment, the discipline of habit, and the presentation of living ideas. The P.N.E.U. Motto is: "Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life." (Preface to the Home Education Series)

"The child breathes the atmosphere emanating from his parents; that of the ideas which rule their own lives." (Parents and Children, pg. 247)

"Parents and teachers should know how to make sensible use of a child's circumstances (atmosphere) to forward his sound education." (School Education, pg. 182)
"Attention is hardly even an operation of the mind, but is simply the act by which the whole mental force is applied to the subject in hand...For whatever the natural gifts of the child, it is only in so far as the habit of attention is cultivated in him that he is able to make use of them." (Home Education, pgs. 145-146)

"A single idea may be a possession so precious in itself, so fruitful, that the parent cannot fitly allow the child's selection of ideas to be a matter of chance; his lessons should furnish him with such ideas as shall make for his further education." (Home Education, pg. 174)

"In the early days of a child's life it makes little apparent difference whether we educate with a notion of filling a receptacle, inscribing a tablet, moulding plastic matter, or nourishing a life, but as a child grows we shall perceive that only those ideas which have fed his life, are taken into his being; all the rest is cast away or is, like sawdust in the system, an impediment and an injury." (Towards a Philosophy of Education, pgs. 108-109)

"A time-table, written out fairly, so that the child knows what he has to do and how long each lesson is to last." (Home Education, pg. 142)

"A Child gets through their morning lessons without any sign of weariness." (Home Education, pg. 142)

"It is only as we recognise our limitations that our work becomes effective: when we see definitely what we are to do, what we can do, and what we cannot do, we set to work with confidence and courage; we have an end in view, and we make our way intelligently towards that end, and a way to an end is method. It rests with parents not only to give their children birth into the life of intelligence and moral power, but to sustain the higher life which they have borne." (Parents and Children, pg. 33)

If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy.

Home Education, Part V: Lessons as Instruments of Education

Parents and Children, chapters IV, VII, and XXII

School Education, chapter XIV

Towards a Philosophy of Education, chapter VI