Proper Use of Authority -CM

At the last Mom’s Night Out get together I went to there was a conversation about children doing as they are told (schoolwork) without the rebellion. There were four homeschooling mothers there that night and I, unfortunately, probably spoke the most. Just the week before in the CM’s group I go to –well, I have missed more than I’ve gone- they covered chapter 4 of CM’s Volume 6: Authority and Docility. I thought of CM after I got home.

Tonight I started reading more of CM and decided to go back to the chapter on authority. I’ve read it a few times but it holds more each time I read it. I also wanted to see what other AOers had to say about this chapter.

On page 69, CM says:

There is an idea abroad that authority makes for tyranny, and that obedience, voluntary or involuntary, is of the nature of slavishness; but authority is, on the contrary, the condition without which liberty does not exist and, except it be abused, is entirely congenial to those on whom it is exercised: we are so made that we like to be ordered even if the ordering be only that of circumstances. Servants take pride in the orders they receive; that our badge of honour is an ‘Order’ is a significant use of words. It is still true that ‘Order is heaven’s first law’ and order is the outcome of order.

Leslie Laurio says it this way (Modern English Paraphrase):

Some people say that authority leads to tyranny, and that compliance, whether willing or forced, is kin to slavery. But that isn't so. Without authority, there can be no freedom. Unless authority is abused, it exists in happy harmony to those placed under it. We're made so that, by nature, we like to be under some kind of order, even if it's circumstances that order our lives. Servants take pride in the orders they receive. Our badge of honor is called an 'order.' It's true that 'order is heaven's first law' [Alexander Pope] and order is the result of authority.

I agree with Kay, who says:

We're all under authority, and the child must witness this in order to keep going with what is a natural docility. Authority is a part of life and is what keeps order. A scheduled appointment is an authority. I like that CM brought up things like this because it focuses not on people, but principles, or rules of society. It seems that children know this naturally, but only come to unknow it when they do not witness it around them. (from Vol. 6 Discussion: Bk 1 Ch 4 Authority & Docility)

Authority is from God- we all have a place in that order. CM also makes a very good point when she stated that

Every king and commander, every mother, elder sister,  school prefect, every foreman of works and captain of games, finds that within himself which secures faithful obedience, not for the sake of his merits but because authority is proper to his office. (emphasis mine)

It’s not because “I said so” but because of the ‘office’ that a parent holds –whether homeschooling or not –that demands the obedience. Just as the boss at a place of employment or a police officer is afforded obedience; we may not like the boss or the police officer but we do what they say. One of the reasons I felt that in regards to schoolwork being done without rebellion is that both of my kids know what is expected of them. They have a say, to a certain extent, in what is assigned. It is what they ought to do. It is their job as children still at home. I am not a dictator who rules with an iron fist, however. There are times when leniency is required or a change is necessary.

One suggestion to help stymie the rebellion was to give choices for the schoolwork or the school day, the order of the subjects. I do not have an objection to this to an extent. My kids have the option of doing the majority of their subjects in the order that pleases them. But they don’t have the option of choosing not to do something simply because they do not feel like doing it that day. My argument was that in reality we have some things that we do not have a choice and therefore we must just do. Everyone did not agree with me.

In the end, I said I felt that the rebellious attitude toward schoolwork was a heart issue.  I will state that at the start I was unaware that the homeschooling mother who was having some troubles has more going on in her life, and her children’s lives, than just the humdrum, every day stuff. After finding out that information, I was in favor of lessening schoolwork or even postponing it for awhile. But in normal circumstances, butting heads with the authority placed in a parent is a matter of rebellion.

CM also said

It is the part of the teacher to secure willing obedience, not so much to himself as to the laws of the school and the claims of the matter in hand. If a boy have a passage to read, he obeys the call of that immediate duty, reads the passage with attention and is happy in doing so. We all know with what a sense of added importance we say, “I must be at Mrs. Jones’s by eleven.”…The life that does not obey such conditions has got out of its orbit and is not of use to society. It is necessary that we should all follow an ordered course, and children, even infant children, must begin in the way in which they will have to go on.

As the chapter goes on, it goes more into the attention the students will give to their studies when they are under authority (not the parent or the teacher but of themselves when they realize the larger authority ‘picture’). But the authority starts with parents first in the child’s eyes. It grows from there- they realize (if they are taught to recognize the “supreme Authority to Whom we are subject”) that God is their ultimate authority. When they follow that, the rest falls into place.

A final quote from CM on authority:

Two conditions are necessary to secure all proper docility and obedience and, given these two, there is seldom a conflict of wills between teacher and pupils. The conditions are, –the teacher…may not be arbitrary but must act so evidently as one under authority…that the children, quick to discern, see that he too must do the things he ought…The other condition is that children should have a fine sense of the freedom which comes of knowledge which they are allowed to appropriate as they choose…

The first condition lay with the parent/teacher; the second is a heart issue for the student. One thing with homeschooling that cannot completely be understood in a public/private school is that the parent know their children; they know how to not “aggravate” their kids, more so than a teacher who only sees their students for a few hours a day during the week. As a teacher and parent, it is not within my authority to be ‘arbitrary’. And that reminds me, if we think as CM thought that children are born persons, this becomes much easier.

And although I know what arbitrary means but wanted an actual definition, here is dictionary.com’s entry:

ar·bi·trar·y  [ahr-bi-trer-ee]  adjective, noun, plural ar·bi·trar·ies.
adjective
1.
subject to individual will or judgment without restriction; contingent solely upon one's discretion: an arbitrary decision.
2.
decided by a judge or arbiter rather than by a law or statute.
3.
having unlimited power; uncontrolled or unrestricted by law; despotic; tyrannical: an arbitrary government.
4.
capricious; unreasonable; unsupported: an arbitrary demand for payment.