Magnanimity
From Dr. Shannon Whiteside, Alveary Program Director
When we become Charlotte Mason educators, we take on a new vocabulary and use words such as twaddle, living books, and masterly inactivity. I want to talk about another word that was dear to the heart of Mason—magnanimity or magnanimous. Try to say that five times fast!
Magnanimous comes from the Latin words “magnus” (great) and “animus” (soul), describing someone who displays a noble and generous spirit. Mason defines magnanimous, “as a person of great mind, wide interests, incapable of occupying himself much about petty, personal matters” (Ourselves, p. 78). Her whole educational philosophy guides children toward the goal of becoming magnanimous citizens. She states, “Magnanimity is the perfect fruit of character, the outcome of a wide knowledge of men and affairs, past and present, upon which insight and imagination have been brought to bear. It is the finest result of education” (Two Educational Ideals, Parents’ Review, 1928).
In the previous quote, Mason mentions two important ideas that enable children to develop into magnanimous citizens. First, they need to have a wide or comprehensive curriculum where they are immersed in all areas of knowledge—Bible, History, Literature, Nature, Science, Music, Geography, and Art. Mason was not a fan of a narrow curriculum that only focused on a few subjects such as the Greek and Roman classics of her day or a STEM education of our day. The more relationships children build with various domains of knowledge, the more ideas they will be exposed to. This will allow them to have an outward focus on life instead of an inward focus fixated on feelings and personal satisfaction.
Second, children need to act on the knowledge presented in living books with insight and imagination. They are not to be given ready-made opinions or told what to think. Mason states, “Another liberty we must vindicate for children is freedom of thought. To teach them what to think is an easy role, easy for them and for us; and that is how we get stereotyped classes instead of individual persons, and how we and the children fail to perform the most important function of life –the function of right thinking” (Children are Born Persons, Parents’ Review, 1911).
As students go through the hard work of accepting or rejecting ideas and forming moral opinions over time, they should be left with a sense of humility and empathy towards people from the past and present as they come to realize the truth of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s well-known quote: “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.”
Magnanimity is not something that can be explicitly taught as opposed to learning how to play the piano. It is embedded in the nature of a Mason education that values noble ideas, respect of personhood, and an understanding that each person has possibilities for good and for evil. A person who embraces these ideas will be able to rise above pettiness and selfishness to display a greatness of soul that will be attractive to a lost world longing for meaning and hope.
Notes
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