That’s MY take on what I think Charlotte means when she says Children are Born Persons.

But how do we apply that to education?

Let’s look at some of Charlotte’s wise words from Chapter 2. She says that a child’s “mind is the instrument of his education” and that “his education does not produce his mind.” 

Charlotte is saying that a child is born ready to learn. He uses his MIND to fulfill his purpose here, NOT that his education is what fills his mind. He is not an empty vessel to be filled or clay to be molded. He has everything he needs from the moment he is born.

But still, we tend to under-estimate children. Oftentimes we don’t think they can do it! She says a teacher’s “error is rather want of confidence in children. He has not formed a just measure of a child’s mind and bores his scholars with much talk.”

But once we UNDERSTAND this Principle, we realize our own inadequacy to “teach” as we currently do – with a system, and not a method.

In a SYSTEM, we lecture, we spoon-feed, we cajole, we bribe with trinkets and rewards.

We turn learning into something that is done TO THEM. We tell the child that he has to follow the RULES and CONFORM to the system – a system that usually kills his NATURAL love of learning.

We forget that learning is NATURAL to a child and that learning for the sake of learning IS the reward.

A METHOD brings us back to the NATURAL way of learning.

And the FIRST step is the realization that children are due the respect of any other person.

Charlotte says:

“Place a teacher before a class of persons… and he will say, ‘What have I to offer them?’ His dull routine lessons crumble into the dust they are when he faces children as they are.”

I love that last part: “when he faces children as they are.”

Once you do that, then this realization alters our “whole outlook on education.”

If we understand this First Principle – suddenly we are once again in awe of the child and we are able to see in him “all the infinite possibilities” that he is born with.

We understand that we have been entrusted with the education of a soul, a nephesh, a life force.

And now we approach everything differently: