Day 6 Atmosphere

Carl Larsson, Christmas Morning, 1894

“…habits of gentleness, courtesy, kindness, candour, respect for other people, or––habits quite other than these, are inspired (i.e. inhaled) by the child as the very atmosphere of his home, the air he lives in and must grow by.”
 
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“… education is an atmosphere––that is, the child breathes the atmosphere emanating from his parents; that of the ideas which rule their own lives.”
 
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“It is not an environment that these (children) want, a set of artificial relations carefully constructed, but an atmosphere which nobody has been at pains to constitute. It is there, about the child, his natural element, precisely as the atmosphere of the earth is about us.”
 
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“School, perhaps, offers fewer opportunities for vitiating the atmosphere than does home life. But teaching may be so watered down and sweetened, teachers may be so suave and condescending, as to bring about a condition of intellectual feebleness and moral softness which it is not easy for a child to overcome. The bracing atmosphere of truth and sincerity should be perceived in every School; and here again the common pursuit of knowledge by teacher and class comes to our aid and creates a current of fresh air perceptible even to the chance visitor, who sees the glow of intellectual life and moral health on the faces of teachers and children alike.”

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“The fault has been in the atmosphere and not in the work; the teacher, perhaps, is overanxious that her children should do well, and her nervous excitation is catching.”
 
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“The mind lives by means of knowledge; stagnates, faints, perishes, deprived of this necessary atmosphere.”
 
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“The whole atmosphere of the house (House of Education) was so extraordinarily good - nothing ignoble seemed natural within its doors, and moreover the actual surroundings, the books, the pictures (reproductions of the old masters), the simple furniture and the wild flowers for decoration everywhere were a revelation in themselves in those days when the world either lived in a crowd of ancestral treasures or in the unutterable hideousness of the Victorian Age when prosperity had to be apparent.”
 
                                                   ~ Essex Cholmondley

Examen: What does my physical space speak to my learning community? Is there something more I can do in my classroom to encourage its occupants to be their best selves?

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 ...habits of gentleness:  Charlotte M. Mason, Home Education, 1:137.
 ...education is an atmosphere:  Charlotte M. Mason, Parents and Children, 2:247.
It is not an environment: Charlotte M. Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, 6:96.
 School, perhaps, offers: 6:97.
 The fault has been: 6:98.
The mind lives: 6:324.
The whole atmosphere: Cholmondley, The Story of Charlotte Mason, 74 Cholmondley suggests Mason’s reliance on “Simplicity” as informing the design of her classrooms and the House of Education (283).
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Day 6 Attention meditation/100 Days copyright Laurie Bestvater 2025

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