They hired someone to build a chicken coop and eagerly purchased some adorable little chicks. At first, taking care of them was all fun and games but as the year went by and the weather started to turn colder, their enthusiasm waned. That hard work ethic they were so desperately looking for didn’t materialize. The chickens had stopped laying eggs. It was easier to run to Costco to get the eggs, which they regularly did. The experiment was a failure.
What went wrong? Well, first of all, the husband grew up poor and in rural Michigan. If nobody got out of bed to chop the firewood for the stove or feed the chickens, there would be no warmth in the house or eggs for breakfast. However, with their recent chicken experiment, if nobody gathered the eggs and they went bad, they simply went to the grocery store. Second, it turned out the husband actually hated chicken chores and anytime he worked on the chickens with the children it was clear that it was not his favorite thing to do. It was his father who had a passion for taking care of animals, not him. In hindsight, they realized that the children could see that there was no real need for chickens and that they had fabricated a situation to teach them a lesson. In other words, it was fake!
The Nortons have since learned that contriving an atmosphere doesn’t work. Life’s natural circumstances are all that is needed to teach the lessons God wants us to learn. Also, the parents’ attitude towards circumstances impacts the atmosphere greatly. Charlotte Mason warns us about carefully constructed circumstances that are not natural and reassures us of what is truly needed:
“What if parents and teachers in their zeal misread the schedule of
their duties, magnified their office unduly and encroached upon the
personality of children? It is not an environment that these 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. It is thrown off, as it were, from persons and things, stirred
by events, sweetened by love, ventilated, kept in motion, by the
regulated action of common sense. We all know the natural conditions
under which a child should live; how he shares household ways with his
mother, romps with his father, is teased by his brothers and petted by
his sisters; is taught by his tumbles; learns self-denial by the baby’s
needs, the delightfulness of furniture by playing at battle and siege
with sofa and table; learns veneration for the old by the visits of his
great-grandmother; how to live with his equals by the chums he gathers
round him; learns intimacy with animals from his dog and cat; delight in
the fields where the buttercups grow and greater delight in the
blackberry hedges.” Vol. 6, p. 96
Teaching from Peace,
Nancy
Morgan says
Just want you to know you posted this years ago but I go back to it again and again! Such a needed reminder for me.
sageparnassus says
Thank you for sharing that with me, Morgan! I am glad you find it inspiring!
Warmly,
Nancy
Dana says
Rural life is so idealized right now. I love our life out here in the country, but it is over-romanticized. I'm not sure people have a clear idea what it means, it's just far enough from what they know that they can paint it in all kinds of beautiful faux-nostalgia.
Angela says
I have a feeling that the Nortons are not the only family to find this lesson out through experience! Right now the rural/pastoral life has a cultural appeal, and I know I have at times yearned for the atmospheric lessons that such a life could offer my kids. But, I find I would rather pay the butcher and baker than spend my days laboring at their tasks. Contentment in my own small bit of green grass is not a bad course to follow. 😉
sageparnassus says
You raise a good point, Angela – it does have such cultural appeal. We do need to be content with such things as we have.
Warmly,
Nancy
Amy Marie says
This is so good, Nancy. We often think we must "DO SOMETHING" versus just "BEING". I appreciate this reminder going into summer break. <3
sageparnassus says
Yes, Amy dear, I totally agree. We get that order mixed up often, don't we? I can't wait to see you this summer at the LER!
Warmly,
Nancy