The Right Measure

We want our children to do their best. We want them to know the satisfaction of forming a letter well, arriving at the right answer, making a faithful drawing, or completing a piece of handwork with care. A child should learn that the quality of his work matters.

But what is a child’s best?

Before we ask a child to do something well, we must know whether he has been taught how to do it, whether the work lies within his present powers, and how much he can undertake before attention and effort give way to weariness.

Charlotte Mason called for “perfect execution.” The phrase can sound severe until we look closely at the example she gives:

A Child should Execute Perfectly.—No work should be given to a child that he cannot execute perfectly, and then perfection should be required of him as a matter of course. For instance, he is set to do a copy of strokes, and is allowed to show a slateful at all sorts of slopes and all sorts of intervals; his moral sense is vitiated, his eye is injured. Set him six strokes to copy; let him, not bring a slateful, but six perfect strokes, at regular distances and at regular slopes. If he produces a faulty pair, get him to point out the fault, and persevere until he has produced his task; if he does not do it to-day, let him go on to-morrow and the next day, and when the six perfect strokes appear, let it be an occasion of triumph.
—Home Education, p. 160

The example begins with the person who assigns the work: “No work should be given to a child that he cannot execute perfectly.”

The child is not given a slateful of strokes and driven to complete them. He is given six. If he cannot make them well today, he may continue tomorrow and the next day. He is taught to recognize the fault himself, and when the six strokes are finally made well, the result is an occasion of triumph.

The task is small. The teaching is patient. Time is allowed for growth.

Before good work can be required, the mother must know what lies within the child’s present power. She must find the right measure.

Mason makes the same point when she speaks of handicrafts. Children should be taught “slowly and carefully what they are to do.” Slipshod work should not be allowed, “and therefore, the children’s work should be kept well within their compass.”

That therefore matters. Because we ask for careful work, we must be careful about what we ask.

This requires more of us than assigning the next lesson or insisting that every page be completed. A curriculum cannot entirely answer the question. Neither can the child’s age, grade, or the accomplishments of another child. The mother must know the child before her.

She must also know how to teach the work.

I learned this through nature journaling. I loved nature study and believed in the value of keeping a journal. My desire was ahead of my knowledge. I did not always know how much help to give, what could reasonably be expected at a particular age, or how to let the journal become my daughter’s own record rather than an imitation of the finished page in my imagination.

“Do your best” offers little help to a child who does not know how to begin.

Sometimes the mother must learn the skill herself. She may need to work beside the child, seek instruction, or begin with something much simpler than the lovely finished work that inspired her. A child cannot execute well what he has not been taught to do. Nor can he give powers that have not yet developed.

A mother once told me about her four-year-old son. He loved books and loved listening while she read aloud. She wanted him to read for himself, so she stopped reading to him until he began reading independently.

She meant to move him forward. Instead, she took away the pleasure that might have carried him there. Before long, the boy hated reading.

Another child may read at four. That does not make four the measure.

We meet the same difficulty when the curriculum becomes the measure. Four workbook pages are assigned, so four pages must be finished. By the second page, the child’s handwriting has deteriorated. He makes mistakes in work he understood yesterday. He drops his pencil, looks out the window, and asks for a drink.

The mother sees carelessness and presses harder. The child resists. Soon the lesson becomes a contest neither of them knows how to end.

Perhaps the child needs to persevere. Children need the experience of remaining with a difficult task and bringing it to completion. Yet perhaps two carefully completed pages were the proper measure of that day’s work.

The workbook cannot make that judgment. The mother must.

Three questions may help us find the measure.

Has my child been taught how to do what I am asking?

Poor work may reveal incomplete teaching. Does the child know how to hold and use the tool? Has the new skill been demonstrated slowly? Has he practiced its separate parts? Does he know what good work looks like and how to move toward it?

The mother need not begin as an expert. She may learn beside her child. But she cannot require skill merely by describing the desired result. Love teaches slowly and carefully.

Is the work within my child’s present compass?

We discover this by watching the child at work. Can he attend to the whole passage, or is half enough for now? Can she form an entire line of letters carefully, or does her hand tire after three? Can the child draw and write about an observation, or would it be better for him to draw while his mother writes down his words?

Completion alone does not prove that the measure was right. Fear, pressure, or a great desire to please may carry a faithful child beyond a reasonable demand. My daughter usually did what I asked. Her compliance did not make my expectation wise.

What has this work come to mean—to my child and to me?

Has the nature-journal page remained an act of seeing and remembering, or has it become a test of artistic ability? Is reading still an encounter with stories, or has it become proof that the child is on schedule? Is the workbook serving the lesson, or has finishing the workbook become the lesson?

We see another child reading fluently, writing beautifully, or filling a nature journal with lovely pages. We look again at our child’s work and feel the difference as a judgment upon us.

Our hopes for our children are good. Yet a child should not be made responsible for proving that we chose the right curriculum or that we are succeeding as mothers.

Finding the right measure requires us to watch, listen, teach, and sometimes change our plans. On one day, love may ask the child to remain with six difficult strokes. On another, love may recognize that three are enough.

The measure will change as the child grows. Patient teaching enlarges his compass. Small successes give him courage for greater efforts. He learns that errors can be corrected, difficulty can be borne, and careful work brings its own pleasure.

This is the triumph Charlotte Mason describes. The child has made the six strokes. They are his own work, accomplished through attention and perseverance. His mother has neither accepted carelessness nor asked for more than he could give.

She has found the right measure