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If a person seeks to grasp the distinctive virtues of an Ambleside education, he or she would do well to begin by contemplating the above passage. Here, Charlotte Mason makes profound claims as to the nature of the world, the nature of a person, and the implied nature of education. Understand the counter-cultural implications of the above statement, and one begins to understand the beauty and necessity of an Ambleside education.

This Most Delightful World

The Bible’s creation story concludes “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” Indeed, God’s world is good and beautiful. While Adam’s fall was a damned disaster, introducing corruption, death, and a demonic power structure into God’s good world. Still, the disaster has always been mitigated by a common grace. Corruption, death, and demonic influence have never been the most essential nor most important thing about any aspect of creation. We remember that:

All things came into being through Him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in Him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

Even in our fallen world, where Satan is the “ruler of the power of the air,” the light of the Eternal Word continues to shine through His creation. And where the Word shines there is Goodness, Truth, and Beauty. Because He is the source of the birds of the air, they participate in His Goodness and Beauty. The same can be said of the flowers of the field whom God clothes more splendidly than any man ever dressed. There is in the created world an abundance of truth and beauty.

The heavens are telling the glory of God,
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.

To the undebauched eye, beauty is delightful. To know quartz and quasars, robins and rhododendrons, tyrannosauruses and tidewaters as beautiful things is to delight in our Father’s world. And there is more.

Though fallen from their full glory, the children of Adam remain bearers of the Imago Dei (Divine Image) and thus capable of their own good and beautiful works. To the extent that human works participate in the Good and Beautiful, they too are delightful. Wordsworth’s daffodils, Heidi’s compassion for grandmother, Elizabeth Bennet’s newfound humility, the Scarlett Pimpernels’ sagacity, Lord Nelson’s courage, Gerard Manley Hopkin’s dappled things, von Gogh’s stars, and Tchaikovsky’s cannons all evoke the “Beauty Sense” which is the power to delight in the Good. Such human creations participate in the Good and Beautiful and make the nurtured heart smile.

Made for Intimate Ties of Joy

Children are made for intimate, joyful association and knowledge. An infant’s first questions (though pre-verbal) are “To whom do I belong?” “Will she keep me safe?” and “Can we share joy together?” If the answer comes back you belong to me, I will keep you safe, and we share much joy together, the child grows a resilient core ordered to joyful connection. If the toddler discovers there is no one who offers him belonging, he is not safe in a bad and scary world, and there is no one with whom he can regularly share joy, he develops a fractured identity and apart from the grace of God may never fully recover.

If an infant has formed secure, joyful attachments with her parents and thus a fundamentally joyful identity, her baseline emotional state is joy. And as a toddler, she begins the great adventure of (1) exploring the world and (2) discovering what she can do. Buzzing bees, singing robins, dogs and cats, dirt and sand, building blocks and story books, they are all so delightful. And what joy to pour and to splash, to dance and to climb, to build and to color, to pretend and to sing. The relational joy first experienced with mother and father is extending into the world.

It is worth pointing out that we, humans, have two distinct motivational systems:

1. Joy – “It is good to be me here with these persons and/or things. I am motivated to build more joy for myself and for others.”
2. Angst – “I’m distressed. Cortisol levels are high. It’ is not good to be me here with these persons and/or things. I must manage this by any means available.”

At any given moment, each one of us is either running on joy, running on angst, or depressed (not running at all). As Christ followers, we are called to minimize the time we are running on angst and to maximize the time we are running on joy. (Note: Joy is not self-indulgence nor is it a devil-may-care attitude.) As Jesus said to His disciples on the night before he died, “Let not your hearts be troubled.” And ” I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”

As a child launches into the world, she requires an abundance of joyful encounters with good, true, and beautiful persons and things. She will undoubtedly experience angst. But if her parents have raised her well, she will have a joyful identity and know how to efficiently return from angst back to joy.

Still, evil is seductive and every child a sinner who will be tempted to abandon joy for pride, power, or pleasure. At times, children push down their little sisters, throw tantrums when failing to get their way, rebel against their duties, and defy their parents. But such things are the fruit of angst, not joy. Furthermore, as a rule, children of joy are far more likely to delight in their relationship with their Heavenly Father than are children of angst. Much of the art of good parenting is the building a reservoir of joyful memories and building a child’s capacity to easily and efficiently return from angst to joy.

At five, a joyful child is ready for school, and he has a distinct advantage. Human brains run best on joy. A joyful brain functions much better than the anxious, agitated, or depressed brain. Joy supports brain growth. Specifically, it contributes to the generation and reinforcement of new brain synapses. The prefrontal cortex, which is the executive and integrative center of brain-mind functions, operates much more efficiently when joyful. Research suggests that cognitive functions such as speed and memory are stronger under the influence of joy. Thus, if school administrators and teachers desire their students to “succeed” academically, they must be ambassadors of joy. And far more importantly, if they wish their students to mature into the men and women the Father intended, they must be ambassadors of joy.

Schools of Joy

Joyful Belonging

The dynamics of joyful belonging which are true of parents and their children are also true of teachers and their students. Ella’s classroom is a place of serenity and delight. Her teacher is a peaceful presence, untroubled by student weakness and quick to help. Authoritative with a smile, there is no doubt who is in charge but always with tender empathy and always ready service for the children’s well-being. Everyone is safe, everyone belongs, and everyone is glad to be together. The essential emotional-relational context is present for delight-filled learning.

In contrast, Johnny’s classroom is an anxious, sometimes angry, place. No one really wants to be there, not even Johnny’s teacher, and all perceive it in the air. Lacking emotional, relational security, students either go inward (withdrawing into quiet mental distraction) or act outward (provoking chaos for attention’s sake). While negative attention is a pathetic substitute for joyful belonging, for a child, anything is better than sitting quietly in anxious emptiness. The teacher alternates between avoidance (ignoring misbehavior) and aggression (seeking to control student behavior by overpowering). Certain that the problem is the class, the teacher fails to see that her students are behaving in a manner quite normal for children who lack secure belonging and find no joy in being together.

There is an atmosphere present in every home and every school. It is an emotional/ relational context, present and palpable. Everyone inhales it, exhales it, and lives accordingly. There is nothing more essential to establishing a healthy home or school than that the atmosphere be one of joyful belonging.

Two thousand years ago, the apostle Paul exhorted the church of Colossae to foster joyful belonging, commanding “Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.” Obedience to this command is an essential part of being an Ambleside teacher.

Every teacher fails, but failures can be forgiven, if owned. Children recognize a heart that is pursuing love and peace and will quickly embrace a repentant heart that is seeking to love and to grow, but children abhor self-righteousness and relational distance. Without a loving and peaceful heart, a teacher has no credibility and no capacity to positively form the hearts of her students. Love and peace, the foundations of joyful belonging, grant one the right to positively shape the heart of another.

Delightful Study

If joyful belonging is the essential air of a flourishing class (and home), delightful studies are the nourishment. The work of the classroom should be a source of joy. If it is not, something has gone terribly wrong. If a student does not delight in math or science, history or literature, something has gone terribly wrong.

To be clear, this is no advocacy for tantalizing students with sweet treats, silly games, costumes, or teacher antics. In truth, the presence of such things damages students’ delight in learning in the same way that an appetizer of chocolate cake and ice cream provides little nourishment and damages taste for a healthy supper.

We must offer every child vital relations with persons and things, with flora and fauna, with stars and microbes, with the wonder of number, with the best literature, with persons past and present, and all the work we give them must be “worthy work.” In so doing, as Charlotte Mason wrote, “Studies serve for delight.”

Joy Destroyers

Nothing strips a classroom of joy like dividing between the “gifted” and less than “gifted,” the beautiful and less than beautiful, the high achievers and the low achievers, the haves and the have nots, those of the included inner circle and those cast to the periphery. In such a class, belonging is conditional and therefore no one truly belongs. Performance anxiety is high as some race to the top. Melancholy is also high as many despair, unable to compete. Special awards that exalt the few over the many, grades and grade envy, all such things destroy joy and have no place at an Ambleside school.

It should be noted that nothing sucks the life out of a class like a teacher’s lecture in which she collects, arranges, and illustrates matter from various sources; offering knowledge in a too condensed and pre-prepared form; thereby robbing students of the opportunity to develop their own relationships with persons and things.

An Intimate Existence

The Christian doctrine of the Trinity is not just an esoteric, theological nicety, it is fundamental. Trinitarian doctrine maintains that the essential nature of existence is interpersonal intimacy, joyful relationship in love. No other theological system makes such a claim. As those created in the Imago Dei [God’s image], our fulfillment as persons is analogously predicated upon intimacy, joyful relationship in love, with a multitude of persons and things, and ultimately upon that highest intimacy which is a participation in the joy and love that is the inner life of the Trinity. Ambleside schools exist for the purpose of fostering such joyful intimacies from which flow true fruitfulness and fulness of living.

Bill St. Cyr

Founder, Director of Training

¹ Charlotte Mason, School Education, (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1989) 75.