Joseph's Literary Future, Part I

The following is a "thought" post. I should have known this would happen sometime, and so should you. Don't worry, this blog is still about Joseph. And will still include pictures. :)

Have you ever heard of Charlotte Mason? She was a Christian, British woman who lived from 1842-1923 and was aboslutely dedicated to truly educating students and to education itself.

Charlotte Mason wrote a series of discussions of education and I've been reading a selection of one today. In it, she discusses the book Pendennis, by William M. Thackeray (most famous for his book Vanity Fair). Arthur Pendennis is the hero, a young man raised to think himself far superior in ability and rank than he really is. This Arthur comes of age and begins to surround himself with men who are successful, based on shallow (read, worldly) standards, which encompasses money, good taste and snobby manners.

Why do young people often seem to fall for this? Even today? Charlotte says that "there is no art than that...about which boys are more anxious to have an air of knowingness" (CM Series p. 372). As children, they adore and worship their parents. "We elders are hardly aware of the ingenuousness of the young mind, of the ignorance and simplicity of youth; and, at the same time, we fail to realise the reverence in which young people hold us just for our experience' sake" (371).

But, "the young folk will have a knowledge of what they call 'life.' If we offer them our scraps of, perhaps, secondhand experience, they generalise and conclude that we are not really the worthy and perhaps rather saintly persons they had taken us for...Here we perceive the cause of the incomprehensible attractiveness of bad companions––they know life" (372).

How true that is! I remember feeling this very thing as a 13-year-old girl. Sitting in a classroom before the teacher arrived, I listened to other students talk and was enamored with this girl or that one because she knew so much more than I did. She had experienced more than I (be it going to the movies alone, wearing make-up, a dramatic fight with her best friend, or having a boyfriend), and she was my hero for that. It's interesting that what was impressive was actually silly, unimportant, and even harmful - things that don't matter if what matters is family, love and faithfulness. But they matter to the world: popularity, power, sex, influence, independence.