Day 58 Delight

"Baby at Play," Thomas Eakins, 1876

“Once the habit of reading his lesson-book with delight is set up in a child, his education is––not completed, but––ensured; he will go on for himself in spite of the obstructions which school too commonly throws in his way.”

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“The child, who has been allowed to think and not compelled to cram, hails the new study with delight when the due time for it arrives.”

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“Limitations of Teachers. ––We wish to place before the child open doors to many avenues of instruction and delight, in each one of which he should find quickening thoughts.”
 
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“The getting of knowledge and the getting of delight in knowledge are the ends of a child's education; and well has said one of our prophets (Thomas Carlyle), ‘that there should one man die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, this I call a tragedy.’”

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“Now it has been demonstrated very fully indeed that the delightfulness of knowledge is sufficient to carry a pupil joyfully and eagerly through his school life and that prizes and places, praise, blame and punishment, are unnecessary insofar as they are used to secure ardent interest and eager work. The love of knowledge is sufficient.”
   
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“Now, here is a most mischievous fallacy, an assertion that a child is to be brought up for the uses of society only and not for his own uses. Here we get the answer to the repeated question that suggested itself in a survey of our educational condition. We launch children upon too arid and confined a life. Now personal delight, joy in living, is a chief object of education; Socrates conceived that knowledge is for pleasure, in the sense, not that knowledge is one source, but is the source of pleasure.”

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“…knowledge is delightful because one likes it; and that no effort at self-education can do anything until one has found out this supreme delightfulness of knowledge.”
 

Examen: “Children delight in school for many reasons. Which of these is the only abiding motive? Keep a list of all the delights Mason mentions. Where was there delight today?

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Once the habit: Charlotte M. Mason, Home Education, 1:229.
The child, who: 1:264.
Limitations of Teachers: Charlotte M. Mason, School Education, 3:170.
The getting of knowledge: School, 3:342.
Now it has been: Charlotte M. Mason,  Towards a Philosophy of Education, 6:57.
Now, here is: 6:302.
...knowledge is delightful: 6:347.
Children delight in: School, 3:270.

​Day 58 Delight meditation/100 Days copyright Laurie Bestvater 2025

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