Homeschooling Principles in Corporate Learning, Part 2

Overcoming Resistance: Setting a Feast

“The question is not – how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education – but, how much does he care?”[i] — Charlotte Mason

In the first article on overcoming resistance in corporate learning, I wrote about telling or revealing a compelling story to create context, understanding, and empathy. Stories are the perfect accompaniment to a corporate learning program, but more often than not, we need to include more than stories in our learning programs. That leads us to our second strategy from homeschooling!

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STRATEGY 2: Set a feast.

British education reformer and innovator in the homeschooling space Charlotte Mason uses the metaphor of a feast to illustrate the process of educating a child and the roles of the student and teacher.

Preparing a Feast

Let’s start with the context: Charlotte Mason was writing in the early 1900s. Think about the effort it took the average middle-class person to create a simple meal in the early 1900s, much less a feast, without refrigerators, ovens, or microwaves (gasp!) The teacher in Charlotte Mason’s philosophy prepares an educational feast with care and attention. It is a time-intensive labor of love, organized with the child's needs in mind. The teacher is not creating learning activities for any 11- or 12-year-old child but their specific child in mind. They use everything they know about their child to create the learning activities, such as the child’s strengths and weaknesses and what fosters joy, connection, and curiosity.

According to Charlotte Mason, the ideas, experiences, and stories in the educational feast are:

• Plentiful and curated—Abundance is balanced by careful curation.

• Rich and digestible—Depth is balanced by attention to accessibility.

• Traditional and relevant—Time-tested elements are evaluated for relevance today.

The experience isn’t solely about quantity. It’s about quality. Each “dish” nourishes the child’s head and heart with adventure and intrigue.

Consuming the Feast

Think about the process of consuming a feast. In most cases, a spread is laid on the table, and you pick and choose the elements that are most appealing to you. Your feast may occur in courses with multiple options laid out for each course. Ultimately, the person consuming the feast chooses what they want to eat from the options available, how much, and how fast. Charlotte Mason puts it this way:

“Each small guest assimilates what he can…according to his needs and powers.”[i]

Charlotte Mason scholar Leah Bohen describes the feast as a “’help yourself’ offering of goodness and beauty.”[ii] This isn’t a force feeding. The teacher doesn’t fill a child’s plate and then stands over them until they have eaten it all. A child can pick and choose between offerings according to where they are in their learning journey. In that journey, we don’t start from the same place (“powers”), and we don’t all have the same destination in mind (“needs”). The child is responsible for choosing between teacher-curated options to find what best facilitates the next stage of their journey.

Feasting in Corporate Learning

So, what should the corporate trainer do with this metaphor? There are key takeaways for the role of both the corporate trainer and learner in this metaphor.

Corporate trainer as expert

As a corporate trainer, you are responsible for deeply understanding your audience. You should be able to articulate your audience’s demographics, strengths, weaknesses, preferences, and abilities. You should be sensitive to disabilities, cultural differences, language of origin, and differences in educational background. This level of expertise comes from constantly asking questions and listening deeply. Do a yearly or twice-yearly listening tour of your organization. Be sure to engage different people and different groups during each tour so that you aren’t hearing the same stories over and over. Ask for feedback on your learning activities and actually read it. Show your audience how their feedback, needs, and preferences are represented in new learning opportunities.

Corporate trainer as creator, curator, and editor

This is the part of the job that we tend to be most comfortable with. We love content! We spend hours scouring resources and finding the gems. We love putting the pieces together and creating a narrative that is rich, deep, and inspiring. In our excitement to share everything we know with our employees, we often forget that we are also editors. Remember, a feast includes options, but too many options are overwhelming. Part of our role is to curb our excitement (and the excitement of others) to ensure that what we put before our learners is relevant, timely, and consumable.

Corporate trainer as host

Let’s be honest here. We tend to treat our learners more like naughty children who must eat their vegetables and clean their plates before asking to be excused from the table. We make learning mandatory. We harass, cajole, and demand until they complete it. If we think of learning more like a feast, then we realize our role is that of a host who invites people to join the feast and creates a delightful atmosphere where people want to be.

The learner is a partner in their learning journey, and they have responsibilities too.

Learner as expert

The learner is an expert in their own personal learning needs. The corporate trainer understands the group, but the learner knows their learning journey and what they need to be successful. The learner is responsible for deeply reflecting on their own learning journey and evaluating their strengths and weaknesses. With this knowledge, they partner with the corporate learning team to accurately communicate their learning needs, provide feedback on learning opportunities, and share their voice during listening tours.

Learner as active consumer

The learner is responsible for owning their learning journey. Instead of passively receiving the materials in front of them, the learner must actively engage in making time for learning, choosing content from the selection, carefully and consciously engaging the chosen content, and practicing new skills. They are also responsible for asking for support, as it relates to their learning journey.

I have specifically avoided talking about post-learning reflection, or “digestion,” because it is a larger subject that deserves its own space. Charlotte Mason talks extensively about how to reflect to best connect new learning to what you already know and create the conditions for behavior change. In the next post, we will consider how her ideas can give life back to reflection in corporate learning.

Explore with curiosity and compassion:

• How does the idea of an educational feast land for you?

• How can you add learner choice into your programs?

• What recommendations do you have for others creating a corporate learning feast?

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[i] Mason, C. (2012). The Original Home Schooling Series (p. 25390). Start Publishing LLC. [ii] Arment, A. (2021). The call of the Wild + Free: Reclaiming the wonder in your child's education (p. 171). HarperOne.

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