Knowledge (Part 1)

Video Transcript

Charlotte Mason answers the question, “What is knowledge?” by first stating what it is not.  It is not instruction. It is not information. It is not scholarship. It is not a well-stored memory. If knowledge is not instruction, then it cannot be something that a teacher imparts to a student. We have all been in classes in which the teacher did an awful lot of talking, but the students did not do an equal amount of learning. So the strongly teacher-led model does not produce knowledge. If knowledge is not information, then it is not a set of data points to fill a child’s mental bucket. So a set of standards or things that “every third-grader needs to know” does not answer. If knowledge is not scholarship, then it is not academic achievement. All of the hoops that students jump through to get good grades and score well on tests does not necessarily result in knowledge. As John Ruskin put it, “They cram to pass and not to know; they do pass and they don’t know.” Lastly, if knowledge is not a well-stored memory, then simply being able to remember facts, though it may help you win at Trivial Pursuit, will not result in true knowledge.

When knowledge is viewed as instruction, information, scholarship, or a well-stored memory, the implicit message to students is that it is something to possess, and when they possess more than others it gives them an edge--a type of power--over others. But true knowledge cannot be possessed, and this kind of power is an unworthy and unnecessary end. It assumes an economy of scarcity--one in which the more you have, the less there is that I can have. But Mason works from an economy of abundance--one in which there is plenty of space for us all to enter into as many rooms of knowledge as we like and stay there as long as we like. What is even better is that in these rooms, we are free to commune with others in shared experience, thus deepening our relationship with both the content and other people. Everyone is enriched.

Mason herself had a difficult time defining what knowledge is. In her sixth volume, she wrote that it is “undefined and probably undefinable; that it is a state out of which persons may pass and into which they may return, but never a store upon which they may draw.” She goes on to say that it “is passed like the light of the torch, from mind to mind.” When we come into contact with living thought, a new part of ourselves is awakened, and as a result, we become more of a person.

Reflection

Respond to the following in the comments or in your journal:

1) Why can't a teacher just impart knowledge to a student?

2) What do you think Charlotte Mason meant when she said, "Knowledge is a state out of which persons may pass and into which they may return, but never a store upon which they may draw"?

3) How has your conception of knowledge been challenged since encountering Mason's ideas? How has that changed your view of education?

In Mason's Own Words

Learn the avenues for knowledge-building that are open to us.

Read A Philosophy of Education ch.6 in its original text and/or in modern English.

Respond to the following in the comments or in your journal:

1) Explain education as an "atmosphere," "discipline," and "life" in your own words.

2) Describe any ways in which you felt challenged by this chapter.

3) What are you wondering?

Further Reading

Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin

Personal Knowledge by Michael Polanyi

Longing to Know by Esther Meek