In today’s podcast we are taking a close look at Charlotte Mason Bible lessons for high school students. Which portions of the scripture did Miss Mason reserve for our oldest students? How are they equipped to continue reading the Bible on their own after the full feast of Bible lessons from their whole education? And where do they go from here? Listen as we discuss!
Listen Now:
Charlotte Mason, Volume 6 (Amazon) (Living Book Press – use code DELECTABLE for 10% off!)
ADE Vol 6, Chapt 10 Reading List
Scripture Journals (ESV and CSB options) on Amazon or here
The One Volume Bible Commentary JR Dummelow*
The Saviour of the World by Charlotte Mason (Amazon for Vol 1-3 or Riverbend Press for all 5 volumes)
The Gospel History of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by C.C. James
Episode 128: Form 1 Bible Immersion Lesson
*For OOP (out of print) or hard to find texts, try BookFinder.com
Emily
Welcome to A Delectable Education, the podcast that spreads the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method. I’m Emily Kiser and I’m here with…
Liz
…Liz Cottrill…
Nicole
…and Nicole Williams.
Emily
As we continue exploring a Charlotte Mason curriculum, we have made it to Forms 5 and 6, which is Grades 10 through 12, and their Bible lessons. So, Nicole, will you remind us what portions of the Bible these students study in their last years of high school?
Nicole
Yeah, things change a little bit now. Their Bible lessons expand again. By this point, students have moved through nearly the entire Bible narrative, and now they’re ready to engage with more challenging books and kind of finish off some of the things that they haven’t got to yet.
So in these upper years, students no longer follow a chronological storyline. Instead, the focus shifts to the prophetic and the poetic books. So they’ll read Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, along with the minor prophets like Hosea, Amos, and Zechariah. And they complete the entire book of Psalms over the course of three years. So there’s some mashing up going on here. And the final term adds in the book of Job, even.
And then just note there that I feel like this demands more of the child. Again, we’re looking at a child who has had all this foundation and is ready to deal with some of these deeper books. In the New Testament, the student reads from the epistles and the revelations. Paul’s letters to the early church, the pastoral letters and the general epistles from Peter, James, John, and Jude, and then Revelation, and that completes the entire New Testament. They will have read all of it at that point. These texts help students explore not only the doctrine, but the theology and the Christian living. I really think it pulls in all of that, how faith is worked out in community and suffering in the face of cultural pressures. So really a greater maturity is required to read these books.
Alongside their New Testament readings, students continue the Saviour of the World, which we’ve talked about in previous episodes. These again are Charlotte Mason’s retelling in verse of individual episodes in the synoptic gospels that are read alongside a harmonized account of the Gospels. And one thing I didn’t note in the last episode is that all the students who would be in any level to be reading this Saviour of the World would all be in the same place. So as they rotate through, as new children come up into this, they’re going to be at the same place as their older brothers and sisters, or the older kids in the class. So…
Emily
Yeah, it is robust, isn’t it?
Nicole
It is. It’s beautiful when you think about what they will have accomplished and just really the deliberateness of it. You know, how many people do we know that have never finished reading the Bible? And with this scope and sequence, there are just four books that aren’t included. One is 1&2 Chronicles, but that really dovetails with 1&2 Kings. So they have covered that and…I think I did write it down somewhere.
Emily
Did they leave out Daniel?
Nicole
No, Daniel’s read. I think Leviticus. And Song of Solomon.
Emily
Leviticus is covered slightly in the tiny bit, but it is in there a little bit. Okay.
Well, not a lot changes as far as the frequency of their lessons. They still do four Bible lessons a week at this level, but they do get longer. So they’re 30 minutes instead of 15 or 20 as the younger kids. So they have a bit more time to deal with these meaty books. Again, it’s the same format for Old Testament to New Testament, and we alternate Old Testament, New Testament, Old Testament, New Testament throughout the week. And they still have Bible as the first lesson of the day, just like all the other forms. So that format is going to stick with them after 12 years. Like “this is the first lesson that we do”.
And then again, just as in form three and four where they had a lot more other theological books assigned, church history or whatever they may be, those were viewed or intended to be read as Sunday reading. Because you’ll notice there’s no Sunday reading portion on their programs. It’s just all that extra stuff.
Which, Sunday reading, I don’t think I even said last time, but that was just special reading that was set aside for Sundays to, you know, when everyone kept the Sabbath or whatever you would have specific occupations to do on that day of the week that you didn’t do other days.
Okay, so looking at the individual lessons, just as in forms three and four, these can mostly be independently done by the students themselves. Students will use the same methods as the lower forms, the reverent, expressive reading, even if it’s to themselves. They’re going to recall the last lesson at the very beginning to form the links in the chains, you know, bring forward what they’ve done before. And then they’re going to narrate in the words of scripture.
But the addition is that they use a one volume Bible commentary, which I think it’s still in print. There’s hundreds of copies available used. It’s just been in print for a really long time. And I’ll show you that in a minute. But before beginning a book of the Bible, they would read the introduction from the commentary. So if they were going to study Isaiah, they would read the introductory essay article in the commentary on Isaiah before they began reading Isaiah. And then after reading the passage for the day, they would narrate and then they would read the corresponding notes for those verses or those chapters, whatever they read from scripture, they’re going to read the commentary after they’ve read and narrated from scripture. And that is similar to in forms three and four as well.
So this is for the Old Testament, the New Testament, and then basically it is for Saviour of the World, except instead of a commentary, that’s where they would read the poem. So they’re going to start the day by recalling the last lesson. They’re going to read from the gospel history, that harmonized account of all of the gospels, the passage that will be covered in the poem or poem set to be read that day, and they would narrate the Bible from the gospel history. And then they would read the poem. And then you would probably have subsequent narration and discussion as well.
In addition to the introductory articles, there are some in the beginning of the commentary, there’s some just general Bible context articles and those were assigned as well in turn over those three years. So they would read a significant portion of this Bible commentary.
So the lesson objectives for forms five and six, Charlotte Mason said, “thus they leave school with a fairly enlightened knowledge of the books of the Bible”. And I think we’ve seen that with this scope and sequence from not just forms five and six, but all along. And she said it was aided by biblical scholarship, having the commentary again, like we talked in form three and four to introduce those ideas or to have the commentary to work through some of those troubling or seemingly contradictory parts of the Bible. And Charlotte Mason believed that would give him such a confidence in the authority of scripture.
She also said that “they would have an increased reverence for and delight in the ways of God with men”. So they will have read much of what we have recorded for the ways God has personally interacted with humankind.
And then thirdly, “that the person of our Lord as revealed in his words and works becomes real and dear to them.” So they know God and they know specifically their savior.
And lastly, she says, and all of this is just one extended quote. I just thought I’d pull out like four separate objectives here. But lastly, she says, “loyalty to a divine master is likely to become the guiding principle of their lives”. So that’s our aim in all of these Bible lessons.
As far as teacher prep goes for lessons, again, just as I said before, even though our students are becoming more independent and they’re really wrestling with these texts themselves in their lesson time, I think Charlotte Mason would tell us we need to have an understanding sympathy with our students. And we can do that by preparing to discuss with them, especially at this age and as they deal with some of these…yeah, there’s a lot of sorrow and hard things in the books that they’re going to be encountering. I’m thinking of the prophets, but I’m also thinking of Paul and his letters and what people in these early churches we’re going through that is going to be things that they’re probably going to come up against. And so this is a rich environment to have conversations with our children before they leave our home, you know, about these very real things.
But again, Charlotte Mason advised us to avoid preaching at our children. She said that there was a danger in provoking them to form a counter opinion, and if we were to do that, if we were to come down too heavy handed about this is what this means or no, that’s wrong and I think this, or even just to apply it to their lives ourselves bluntly, that we are actually putting them in a greater danger to doing opposite of what we would like to see them do with their life. Instead, Charlotte Mason encouraged us to let scripture point the moral out to them directly. So we’re again, not the showman of the universe here, just like in other subjects. We are letting the text, the biblical authors and God himself, interact and speak directly to them through the books that they read.
As far as resources, again, I love using scripture journals and this is the one for Psalms and I just brought it you can see. They still make scripture journals with just one book in it when it’s a huge thing. Some of the epistles are teeny tiny and they put three or four of them all together. So those are still an option. And what a nice library that they will have, especially if they do take notes, like to have lots of space as they rustle through these texts.
And then this is the Bible commentary that Charlotte Mason assigned. It’s by J.R. Dummelow. He’s the editor. It’s a one volume Bible commentary. If you’ve been reading along with us in Chapter 10, you read an extended quote that the author or the editor himself writes about it. And Charlotte Mason says we can’t add on to it, and just how parents are maybe skeptical about using a resource that’s not from their specific denomination or tradition. Just know this is one commentary on the entire Bible. It does not have time to get into partisan denominational quibbles. This is very general and I think that is the benefit to using one. And again, you used this a lot.
Liz
It’s very succinct. It’s just the main ideas in each book of the Bible. It doesn’t have time to go into a lot of side trails.
Emily
Yes. Charlotte Mason said it was a very practical value, in that it just covers the principal difficulties of the passage that the child is going to encounter and hopefully will have questions about. But it doesn’t take one or other of the extremes that she says, no, this is where she’s quoting what Dummelow says, that his aim, which was “to find the spiritual value and authority of the Bible have been enhanced rather than diminished” in the discussions.
Okay, so that’s that. And then just like in Form 3, Saviour of the World, again, this is the edition from River Bend Press, but there are some paperback editions. It’s also available online if you prefer to read online. So there are six finished volumes, and so they read one a year for all six of the years that they’re in Forms 3 to 6. And just like you said, whoever is reading Saviour of the World is reading the same volume together. And then the Gospel History of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ by C.C. James is the harmonization that Charlotte Mason used as the inspiration for the poems in Saviour of the World.
And then we have created a few resources. The first is the Bible rotation. So we have everything that they cover by term for forms five and six, and then also the sections of Saviour of the World that they would cover in a term. So that is a free resource that we will link in the show notes. And then I will just mention briefly our schedule cards. We have these for all of the forms so you know how long and how frequently, many times a week to do each lesson.
Liz
And if you have children that are of different ages, sometimes moms are concerned how they can do all these separate Bible lessons. So again, just to remind you that these students of this age are independently reading all of this and it’s wonderful if you can keep up with them and be reading that yourself in case they do want to discuss something and the Savior of the World lesson could be done with Children in the last six years of school so they would still at least have that one New Testament day together. And just as I said with forms three and four, when you have younger children sometimes because the older students have a longer day, at this point in high school they have four hours of lessons, so perhaps they would start before the younger children begin their day so you might have two sessions of bible but some of you have many sessions of math lessons every day too. Right?
I find so many questions, various concerns come up about the Bible lessons. But I think we’re going to get to that next week. And I think as far as the upper grades, you guys have pretty much answered everything right?
Emily
Can you think of anything else somebody would want to know? Why don’t they read the Song of Songs?
Nicole
Hahahaha.
Yeah, I don’t know. I think it’s…probably just pretty, I mean, I just find it very exciting to watch your older kids grapple with the Bible in such a robust way when we know that it can be hard even for adults to do that and the habits that we’re setting with them through this are just hopefully going to serve them for a lifetime. They will know how to work with the Bible, how to use a commentary, how to use articles.
Liz
It occurs to me too that they find, you know, there’s whole sections of the Bible that are neglected in being read by most adults. And when they have had to read them for school, they’re not going to be as intimidated about entering back into Hosea or Micah or other prophets.
Emily
Maybe they’ll even be curious about it.
Liz
It’s just like every other subject we’re planting seeds for their future knowledge quests that they go on. There was something you said earlier too about them having a confidence and I find this across the board with my home school graduates who’ve done Charlotte Mason, just a general confidence. But if you are faced with questions about the Bible and the validity of it and that you have truly read all of it, you’re not thinking, did I omit? Did I not read that part? Is that in there somewhere? And I don’t know what’s in there. But no, they know what’s in there. And they’ve taken it slowly over these years. They do know what’s in the Bible.
Emily
That is such a good point. Yes, I think I have heard many people who talk about college students going off and losing their faith because somebody challenges something that they were taught, opposite of what they were taught and says, but this is what the Bible says, or it’s in there. I just saw one in a TV show the other day, just all these things. And I’m like, you’re just missing the whole point, right? And having that bigger picture in context. Yeah, it does lend such a confidence.
Liz
Yeah. And Charlotte Mason said they are going to have more doubts and questions if they have not read it than if they have.
Emily
So we hope that you can see how robust and thorough their Bible education really is.
Thank you for joining the conversation today. You can find links to all of the resources that we’ve mentioned today in the show notes, including a demonstration lesson that the three of us did with a Saviour of the World scholar. And you can hear how a whole lesson plays out with the commentary as well in that episode.
So we invite you to read along with us this whole season. The reading schedule link is also in the show notes. So next time we will conclude our series on Bible lessons as we continue to spread the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method.