Today’s podcast episode is part of our occasional series, Voices from the Conference. We use these episodes to highlight one of the speakers or ideas that came out of last year’s conference. Today Cathy McKay will be sharing her plenary talk “Distinguished Difficulties” with us.  Enjoy!

Listen Now:

Distinguished Difficulties plenary handout

ADE on YouTube

Emily
Welcome to A Delectable Education, the podcast that spreads the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method. I’m Emily Kiser and today’s episode is part of our occasional series, Voices from the Conference.  As you probably know by now, we at A Delectable Education host a virtual conference in February of each year, hopefully bringing some inspiration and encouragement to what is notoriously a dark stretch in the homeschooling year…at least for those of us in the northern hemisphere.

A few years ago, a worldwide pandemic forced us to move to the online format, and we discovered some benefits we wouldn’t have otherwise.  Not only are Charlotte Mason educators from all over the world able to join us due to the virtual platform, so many have personally written to share how they wouldn’t ever be able to get away for a conference or retreat except online.  

We are so grateful to be able to pour into the broader Charlotte Mason community in this way, however, we know that many are still not able to participate, and even those that do always long for something more and that brings us to the Voices of the Conference series. We use these episodes to highlight one of the speakers or ideas that came out of last year’s conference.  We hope you enjoy this little taste of conference and getting to know one of the speakers.  We would love to have you join us at the next ADE conference in February.

Today Cathy McKay will be sharing her plenary talk “Distinguished Difficulties” with us.  Enjoy!

Cathy
Well, hello, I’m Cathy McKay. Welcome to my library. My library’s in my backyard and my backyard is in Australia.

I share this with my husband Steve. We’ve been married 23 years and we are so glad to have our six children, five sons and a daughter. The eldest is 20 and the youngest is seven. We’ve been homeschooling for about 14 years now and it’s been the last eight years that we have been growing into the Charlotte Mason Method, incredibly helped by her. And Charlotte Mason’s help to us only continues as our children grow out of homeschooling into their independence and young adult life. It really is an education for all of life. 

I’m also so grateful for the work of Emily, Liz, and Nicole over the years through their podcast and this conference to help us grow in our understanding of the philosophy and method and how to do it. I’ve been part of this conference in one way or another for the last few years since it began and I am very grateful. It is such a privilege to share this time speaking about these ideas with you now. 

Before we start talking about distinguishing between our difficulties, let’s look at the conference blessing together. These are the words that God gave the priest Aaron to speak his name and his blessing over the people of Israel, and through the Lord Jesus, we get to enter into that blessing also.

The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. 

And together we say amen. 

Well, I love long-term gardening, perennial landscape planting, the kind of gardening where you frame a view, where you have a three dimensional space that you are working toward with different levels of plant growth, contrasting foliage and textures, harmonious tones. It’s not a produce garden that needs turning over every few months, but something where the planting takes years to grow into itself. But the beginning of this kind of gardening is really demoralizing. 

You start with rather miserable plants that are awkwardly spaced because they need to be spread out so they’ve got room to grow, and it can take several years before they fill that space. So it doesn’t always look good when you’re beginning. And some plants need to be established when they’re dormant – deciduous trees or roses. And so you go to a whole lot of work to prepare a garden bed and then you plant a leafless stick in the ground. You’re tempted to add in some high interest, high impact things of immediate visual impact. But those things tend to be a waste of money in that long term perennial sort of garden. And they undermine the vision that you are holding for the long term. 

A friend comes to visit ’cause they know how hard you’ve been working, but there’s not much to see. There’s a lot of mulch, a lot of empty space and some leafless arboreal skeletons. It can take a few years before it looks any good. But in these early stages, the biggest risk comes when those bare dormant leafless trees capture the imagination of sword fighting children. And I have a family of boys who make swords and all their friends come over. There might be 40 of them at a time and they’ve all got swords. Children mistake dormancy for deadness and they go to war. It happens every time I plant a tree and every winter thereafter. It’s amazing that any of them survive. 

It’s only as we begin to understand more about the nature of a deciduous tree that we can understand where there is hidden vitality, where there is freshness just about to break through with the next season’s growth, life in what looks modest. It requires understanding, imagination, patience and humility. And I wonder if we tend to encounter our work as mothers and educators in the same way. We’re easily discouraged by smallness, the spaces not yet grown into, the dormancy. We want the fresh and living way, but we’re prefer that it look and feel like a well-established mature garden. When we don’t understand the nature of growth, we can misdiagnose our difficulties. 

There are some very strong maternal desires that we have – the desire for reassurance and confidence, the desire for simplicity, and the desire for things to feel better. We are doing a hard job and we want to be enjoying ourselves more, and we want to feel like what we are doing is legitimate. We also want our kids to be enjoying themselves more, not always for their own sakes, but sometimes because that’s when they’re easier to be with. They’re more enjoyable to homeschool when they are enjoying what they’re doing. I know of plenty of moms like me, when we want things to feel better, when we want to tune out from the difficulty. When we’ve hit a hard moment in a morning lesson, we pick up our phone, we go and do the easiest thing we can think of, which is we start to scroll, often hiding in the bathroom with a block of chocolate. Then we see the families whose lives look like lives we want, people who seem to be having a much better time than we are. We see pictures of how we wish we felt.

The family that spends all day in deep leather couches with floor to ceiling bookshelves and a dog that doesn’t stink, or the homesteading family carefully shaping sourdough on bespoke kitchen benches with a litter of puppies next to the antique stove and wearing hand sewn linen frocks. Or we see the adventurous world schooling family, the family who have no home, the wilderness wanderers. They’re tanned, they’re toned, they’re together all the time without the burden and paraphernalia of a stationary life. 

Over the top of these gorgeous images are words. Words about feeling a certain way about kids falling in love with learning, falling in love with books, falling in love with reading words about how childhood needs to be a time of wonder or play, imagination, wildness, freedom, words about interest led learning about education being fueled by children’s curiosity. Words telling us that children need to be released from exertion so that they can be free to pursue their passions. Words about how mothers will be so much happier and at ease if we just give in and give up the things that are difficult, the dead things like philosophy and method and narration and schedules and effort. These gorgeous cliches plant doubt with one hand and offer false hope with the other. They cause us to interpret our difficult feelings as a sign that we’re doing it wrong, that we are ruining our kids and wasting ourselves, that the effort is unnecessary or worse, harmful. At that moment we’re tempted to drop the books, the lessons, the schedules, the expectations, the ideals and the principles. Insta-educational philosophy tells us that discomfort is not part of the Fresh and Living way. 

When we are struggling, it is so easy to find someone in our pocket waiting to tell us what we want to hear. That things will get better if we just quit the stuff we don’t like. That things will be better if we give into our feelings and give into our children’s feelings. We put our trust in a mum whose influence comes not from her sound principles, not from decades of experience, but from her excellent taste in wallpaper, from her on point branding, from her beautiful palette, from her teaching what our itching ears want to hear. This longing we have to feel a certain way about our life and this expectation that we ought to feel a certain way, that we need to keep changing things up until we get the feeling we want, these undermine our ability to be thankful about what is happening in our families. They also steer us off the path to finding the real solid mature joy. 

Cliches tempt us to think that a living joyful education is only happening when we have certain feelings, that it can be gained apart from difficulty, that happiness can be gained by distilling just the beautiful parts of life by honing in on the enjoyable. But Charlotte Mason says happiness comes of effort, service wide interests, and least of enjoyment. And when people put enjoyment even of beautiful things in the first place, and indeed in place of all else, they miss the very thing they seek and become in feeble in body and fretful and discontented in temper. From Charlotte Mason’s perspective, the cliched advice to reduce our lives to only the beautiful and enjoyable parts, the parts we and our children are excited about, is bad advice. It’s a failure to recognize the nature of things. If we do that, we’ll miss the very thing we are longing for when we’re hiding in the bathroom with chocolate and Instagram.

Today we are going to look at some of the cheap easy comforts on offer to us. We are going to think about how to distinguish between the different kinds of difficulties that we face. And then we’re going to look briefly at some better ways of finding refreshment. 

So why do we love cliched educational maxims? Well, we latch onto cliches because they meet our desire for simplicity. They are easy, succinct ideas, not well thought out principles, and they usually do say something true. They appeal to something we care about. We want our kids to enjoy good things, to love learning, to have a childhood of wonder or play, imagination, wildness, on freedom. We want them to be interested and invested, setting forth the tendrils of their mind in many directions. So when we see someone offer one of these things in easy words, we are attracted to that. We look for easy words, giving us an easy way to something we want, and a cliche will usually take one good thing, one of the things we want, and make it the whole.

The cliches we are barraged with, even when they quote bits of Charlotte Mason, end up running in contradiction to what she says. The cliches distort our sense of proportion. Ms. Mason writes often of how when we lose proportion, we are susceptible to all sorts of trouble physically, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, and psychologically. If we build our lives only around what comes naturally to us and our children, we grow flaccid. If we only go for the things which look impressive now, we’ll miss the bigger, slower going trees.

Let’s talk about falling in love because the most common cliche that we take as a given is that our children need to fall in love with learning, fall in love with reading, fall in love with books. And in an education that is based on living books it sounds like a good thing, doesn’t it? It’s hard to argue with the goodness of children having an appetite for reading. There is something about the child’s desire to read that might show some awakening, some appreciation for things unseen. It can be a sign of a growing in a life. It’s good that our children always have some avenue of wholesome enjoyment and self-contained, independent, inexpensive occupation open to them. These are good gifts to welcome. But is it also perhaps that we love the idea of our children falling in love with things because it sounds simple and effortless. After all, we’re desperate to have a life that gets the good results but feels easier along the way. Something that looks alive and thriving right now. 

Is it because our children are easier to manage and they’re easier to homeschool when they aren’t resistant? Is it partly about what is pleasant and convenient to us? Is it partly about our sense of security and accomplishment? After all, our skeptical friends and family can notice and applaud when a child shows an enthusiasm for books. We want some sign that this risky, costly, difficult choice to home educate is working. We are in a hurry to taste fruit. We want the ease and assurance of having our children besotted with the things we require of them. 

And yet this cliche is the most common source of anxiety that I find among my friends and amongst the moms who come to my library. We take on this idea, this benchmark, that our children need to fall in love with what they’re doing – with reading, with learning, with books – that anything less than infatuation is a sign of deadness. We go to war with the leafless tree. 

Now the books we’re giving them and the things we are doing might well be dead, but they might not be. It’s possible that we are offering living books and a living method, but that the child’s relationship with that knowledge is still dormant or yet to even germinate. The key is for us to understand more, to understand more of the Charlotte Mason method and to understand more about our children, and then we can tell the difference between dormancy and deadness. 

Several worried moms I’ve spoken to are concerned that usually their mid middle grade sons are too busy playing outside or making things in the shed to wanna come in and read for leisure. But these moms, once we start talking or acknowledge that the sons do enjoy stories they read aloud together as a family, they are reading good books as part of their morning lessons. And so this cliche, this thing this, this aspiration for a certain feeling is undermining good homeschooling mothers’ confidence in what they’re doing. They’re not seeing the richness of what is actually happening for their children because they, they think that something more intoxicating is meant to be on the horizon. The cliches keep causing moms to undervalue the goodness. It undermines their confidence when all that’s missing is a feeling. 

CS Lewis in Letters to an American Lady writes this. Now it might cause us to blush a little, but I think he makes an excellent point for context. Jack is writing to this woman when she’s going through a time when she seems to feel that God is not near her. Louis writes: “The act which engenders a child ought to be and usually is attended by pleasure, but it is not the pleasure that produces the child. Where there is pleasure, there may be sterility where there is no pleasure there, the act may be fertile. And in the spiritual marriage of God and the soul, it is the same. It is the actual presence, not the sensation of the presence of the Holy Ghost, which begets Christ in us. The sense of the presence is a super added gift for which we give thanks when it comes.” 

Might we say that it’s not the sense of being in love with reading that matters most, but the reading itself? Isn’t it enough that our children actually read and read a great variety of worthy books steadily over time, than that they feel a certain way about their reading from the start? Children can form a meaningful relationship with a field of knowledge without being immediately and constantly infatuated with the books by which they gain entry into that field. Children can be nourished by words, by ideas, by beauty and stories, even if they don’t have a compulsive relationship with books. Pleasure doesn’t have to accompany every moment for there to be life-giving work going on.

Do we long for our children to fall in love with other basic human functions to fall in love with eating, to fall in love with sleeping, to fall in love with breathing? No. We make good provision for these things regardless of how our children feel about them. The same needs to go for books. The intellectual food that comes to us through books is a human necessity. We are spiritual creatures with an intellect that needs varied nourishment. How we feel about that food doesn’t change our need for it. Our responsibility as parents is not to conjure up a passion for reading, but that we ensure our children do read. Our job is to provide a voluminous and varied feast. Our children’s feelings about the feast will be as varied as the dishes on the table. 

Well, Charlotte Mason is optimistic that we’ll nourish children will come to have a delight in reading and a living relationship with the knowledge that comes through living books, but that delight isn’t a necessary starting point. She comments on John Ruskin’s education in this way” “As for books, we are told how Ruskin grew up on the Waverly novels on Pope’s Homer’s Iliad, many of Shakespeare’s plays and much else that is delightful. But he does not give us an instance of the sort of thing we are looking for – the sudden, keen, insatiate delight in a book, which means kinship until he’s introduced to Byron.” She points out the sudden keen insatiate delight in a book. But note that Ruskin had a rich literary diet before that insatiate delight was quickened. Pleasure in reading is lovely, but there can be seasons of fertility apart from pleasure. It is a pleasure that children are trained up to sometimes gradually over time. It is what we are educating towards, and it is something which is quickened when we are not expecting it. It sprouts up much like happiness and friendship. It sprouts up when we are not watching, from soil of wide literary nourishment from sound habits and vital atmosphere.

When we prioritize how our children feel about reading rather than the reading itself, then we are vulnerable to shortsighted advice. Many folk encourage us to choose only the books which kids like and have a present enthusiasm for. They discourage us from exerting ourselves and from giving books that will require the children to exert themselves. They also promote a false confidence that if a child does have an infatuated reading behavior, if they sit and read for 16 hours a day that they’re doing well. The quiet danger of cheap cliches is that when our children are exceeding in one good thing, reading a lot or having a funnel sort of deep interest, we take false confidence and prematurely relax our provisions. I’ve been there myself. Long before I met Charlotte Mason, I felt like my work was done when my 7-year-old would sit and read all day and, unbeknownst to me, sometimes all night, I assumed that a child with a voracious reading appetite would grow to be a voracious reading adult and that there was nothing left for me to do but to leave that child undisturbed on the couch. Now what I didn’t realize is that my child wasn’t practicing the habit of reading. They were practicing the habit of doing whatever they felt like doing. 

The cliches encourage us into the ease of just giving into what comes naturally giving into compulsive behavior. Disproportionate appetites doing one good thing at the exclusion of other good things. Disordered loves. In Ms. Mason’s volume Ourselves she helps young people and and their parents see the devastation that happens when a person allows one appetite to rule the whole kingdom. 

So what happens when our children don’t feel like reading anymore? What happens when just doing what they feel like doing is applied to another activity 10 or 20 years down the track? It’s reasonable to expect that our children who aren’t besotted with reading, who don’t start out with this great bookish enthusiasm, but children who have the steady habit of reading every day as part of their morning lessons and their family culture, that they will develop a consistent habit of reading and of pleasure in meaningful reading over time. Ms. Mason helps us place not too much emphasis and weight on the child’s feelings in their early life about reading. We’re not meant to overinterpret their immature years. You can’t see the glory of 50 summers in a sapling. 

Well, we have a range of difficulties as homeschool moms, and it is those difficulties that usually make us vulnerable to the shortsighted, simplistic cliched advice. So let’s spend some time distinguishing between the difficulties. Time and again, Charlotte Mason reminds us that true enjoyment, the sort of thing we are working towards in our education, can’t be gained apart from effort, both the child’s effort and the parent or the teacher’s effort. Our work is to put our children in touch with a whole wide world full of things. Things they haven’t yet come to be interested in, things they don’t yet know about, things they’re not yet enthusiastic about, things that are fresh and living, but perhaps still dormant to them. Contrary to most cliches, Charlotte says “this living education cannot be left to chance or to the child’s own immature powers.” If we are to fulfill our God-given responsibility towards our children, we cannot just follow the easy path of our child’s lead or the limiting path of our own maternal taste. 

It is difficult to introduce new things to someone who isn’t yet interested in them. It’s difficult to make these provisions. It’s a wonder required of us and it often does not at all feel practicable. Both understanding the work and doing it are an effort. This is a difficult thing, but it is a difficulty and exertion that leads to ease and joy. These difficult efforts nourish the expansion of the child into the fullest expression of their personhood. This effort expands their capacity to enjoy, to enjoy both God and his world. Charlotte says, “in proportion to the range of living relationships we put in his way, will he have wide and vital interests, fullness of joy in living? In proportion as he’s made aware of the laws which rule every relationship will his life be dutiful and serviceable? As he learns that no relation with persons or with things animate or inanimate can be maintained without strenuous effort will he learn the laws of work and the joys of work?” 

This fullness of joy is not the kind of cheap happiness which is bought by cutting out difficulty or by just going with the superficial immediate interests of ourselves and our children. This full kind of joy comes from understanding that all pleasures are connected to some kind of strenuous effort. We are working for joy. The full joy we’re educating up to isn’t a passive consumerist life of just doing what we feel like doing, but a life that expands and spreads vitality, giving goodness, service, and joy to others. It’s a life that is serviceable because the child has grown to have a sense of doing the right thing at the right time, not just whatever they feel like doing. Enjoyment that comes by cutting out effort is cheap, temporary, shortsighted, selfish, and foolish. Distilling life just into the easy, enjoyable parts reduces life and it reduces personhood.  This necessary good life giving kind of difficulty is meant to be a feature of our everyday life.

It is the everyday work of overcoming inertia. Anything, even things we enjoy sometimes feel unappealing when we’re at the starting line. If we try to get rid of everyday effort and discomfort, we will be yoked, our children will be yoked, to an inert life. In home education, Ms. Mason says “there shouldn’t be a single day which passes without some kind of strenuous effort by the child.” That is how children grow strong. Both we and our children learn to overcome by overcoming. Pleasure is the fruit of that kind of difficulty. It is an effort which grows into enjoyment. It’s an experience of weakness which develops a power. It feels like death, but there is life breaking through. 

When we’re facing a hard run in our families or one of those mornings where you wanna quit on a lesson and hide in the bathroom in Instagram and chocolate, then perhaps it’s worth asking whether it’s hard because the children are actually in the long process of learning to overcome. Is it hard because we are faithfully training attention? Is it the difficulty of facing weak wills, our own weak will and our children’s weak wills, and strengthening our own will and helping them strengthen theirs? Is our difficulty the effort of helping our children learn the freedom of not being a slave to their feelings, the effort of helping them develop the muscle memory, the lived experience of choosing to do the thing they don’t feel like doing, and then finding the surprising pleasure that happens on the other side? The effort of helping them become rightly ordered, proportionate people, wise people. It is hard. Is our difficulty the effort of training up to the power of enjoying more, the sort of enjoyment we’re longing for. In the moments when we want to take our shortcuts through the cliches? 

We need to see past our feelings in those hard moments. Like healthy natural childbirth, there is a kind of pain and labor that means things are progressing. If we can learn to see past our feelings, we’re better positioned to help our children do the same. When we can overcome our desire just to give up in the middle of a maths lesson, then we help our children see what it looks like to persevere. A hard morning is not necessarily a failing homeschool. It might be the family which is doing exactly the thing it was designed to do. So don’t misdiagnose that kind of difficulty. Don’t mistake dormancy for deadness.

But there is another kind of difficulty. It might be that we’re having a hard time because we are cramping our children. When we haven’t learned to exercise mastery in activity, we make things harder for ourselves and our kids. When we haven’t understood our children, when we’ve not understood the nature of the work or the principles by which we’re meant to fulfill our responsibilities, when we haven’t understood what each subject looks like from the acorn to the oak tree, sometimes things are difficult because we’re overtaxing our children and overtaxing ourselves. While the child is meant to experience some sort of exertion every day, we are not meant to allow any one part of the child’s person to be overexerted. 

Sometimes things are difficult because in order to make it simpler for ourself, we’ve adopted resources or practices that are wooden and that lack vitality. We’ve signed up to something that meets one of our maternal needs for assurance or confidence or simplicity, but it doesn’t meet the actual needs of the child. And where there’s a lack of life, where there’s a lack of living ideas or living method, things will be harder than they need to be. It will not be the productive kind of difficulty. Sometimes our children, as Liz and Emily and Nicole have said, sometimes our children are rightly pushing back against a dead method. 

Another reason we might feel like our work is unbearably hard is perhaps because we’ve not spent time understanding our own landscape. In The Secret World of Weather, Tristan Gully talks about how weather forecasts are given for a really large region, making true observations about what the weather system’s expected to do overall. The problem is we don’t experience the weather 200 feet in the ground, several hundred miles at a time. We are on the ground, we are in a particular spot. And the same weather system can feel very different depending on the physical geography around you. So the way that the weather interacts with one patch of earth will be different from what the same weather pattern does just a few minutes away. And in some ways I wonder if our bewilderment and difficulty with some of Ms. Mason’s principles and method happen because we don’t spend enough time understanding our own landscape, the physical geography of our own lives. The principles are true, but we might need to mitigate and allow for some features in our backyard, which absorb more radiant heat or funnel wind differently than in our friend’s yard 10 minutes away. Again, the solution is not to give up. It’s not to go for cutting corners and simplicity, but to understand more. 

And understanding takes time. It’s a process. We need to be patient. It is normal to have to take time to figure it out. While we need support and we need to help each other learn and understand more, no one else can do the figuring out for us. We need to be willing to engage in that kind of difficulty so that we can get rid of the unnecessary kinds of strain.

The final kind of difficulties that we need to distinguish – other hard things that we cannot change. While there might be some earthworks we can do in our own landscape, while there are some things we can understand and improve in and increase our capacity for, there will be some provisions, some very hard things which the Lord God has ordained for us. The limited resources that God has allocated to our family, the trials we must persevere in, the tensions we have to live with, the things that we cannot fix. Some of these things make perfect execution of a Charlotte Mason method impossible, and we all have them. These are the things which thwart and frustrate our hopes, our ambitions, our plans. These things that we would never have chosen for ourselves are places where God’s gracious, wise, loving, abundant, holy, verdant provisions are proven in our weakness. These difficulties make it very obvious that any fruitful outcome in our family isn’t because of our cleverness and competence. It is all the Lord’s triumph. Every difficulty of any kind is a gift. It’s a reminder in a moment of time to lean hard on the living God because he is the only hero in his story. Our homeschool exists to display the glory of God and he’s supremely displayed when he enables the work we do get done, and when he covers over and provides in the absence of things that we can do.

Well, if we’re going to receive difficulty, instead of trying to run away to cheap comfortable cliches, how do we refresh so that we can persevere? How do we refresh in a way that sustains the work rather than undermining it? Perhaps the first step is to stop trying to get away from the hard things to adjust our expectations about what life is meant to be like. Life is harder, homeschooling, mothering is harder when we think it shouldn’t be. Things are more miserable and frustrating when we are trying to eliminate effort and get rid of difficulty, when we’re besotted with falling in love with everything. Don’t believe the lies that difficulty is damaging. We believe in a sovereign God who uses all things to achieve his glorious purposes. And every difficulty comes to us from his hands and he’s met with his provision. 

The principles that make a Charlotte Mason education vital for our children need to be applied to us also. Short and varied episodes in our days. Instead of escape, we just need some change. We need variety to refresh. We need an increasingly connected life, an increasing connectedness with beauty, with story, with ideas, with art, with skills, with knowledge.

We need to have things to see and do and think about apart from our feelings. The more nourished we are, the more power we have to redirect our thoughts, to change our demeanor in our difficulties. Charlotte gives us an example of a person in the throes of discouragement.

She says, “the sameness of his duties, the weariness of doing the same thing over and over fills him with disgust and despondency and he relaxes his efforts. But not if he be a man under the power of his own will, because he simply does not allow himself in idle discontent. It is always within his power to give himself something pleasant, something outside himself to think of. And he does so, and given what we call a happy frame of mind, no work is laborious.”

We’ll have a meetup to talk about some of the concrete things we can plan to do so that the everyday expected difficulties when they hit, we know what to do with them. So sign up for the meetup if you wanna talk about how we can practically do some of these things. 

Perseverance is done one moment at a time. Lewis says that every moment of suffering, the exact present never really is intolerable. It’s when we import meaning from the past and the future that it becomes unwieldy. So we need to learn how not to spiral, but how just to take one moment and use one moment of difficulty as a chance to depend and rely on the Lord. And of course, all the diversions in the world are useless if we don’t do the thing that really matters. To cry out the living God, to meet us with his strength and his provision in our difficulty, instead of trying to run away from it. It’s proximity to him that gives us peace. 

Notice our conference blessing. It’s all about what God is doing. It’s he who blesses and keeps. It’s his face shining in favor, favor not secured by what we do or don’t do as a homeschooling mom, but favor, secured, guaranteed by the work of the Lord Jesus in our place. It is he who is gracious. It’s he who is giving us his goodness undeserved. It is his countenance we need, fellowship and union with him, which is provided, secured by the Lord Jesus and applied by his spirit in proximity to him. He gives us peace. And this blessing comes right in the middle of the difficulties. The Instagram, chocolate in the bathroom difficulties. Instead of running away, we get to run to him.

God bless you and keep you.

 Today’s podcast episode is part of our occasional series, Voices from the Conference. We will be sharing with you Morgan Conner’s talk from this past year’s ADE @ Home Virtual Conference on reading Charlotte Mason’s volumes.  Enjoy!

Listen Now:

Charlotte Mason volumes reading schedule

ADE on YouTube

Emily
Welcome to A Delectable Education, the podcast that spreads the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method. I’m Emily Kiser and today’s episode is part of our occasional series, Voices from the Conference.  As you probably know by now, we at A Delectable Education host a conference in February of each year, hopefully bringing some inspiration and encouragement to what is notoriously a dark stretch in the homeschooling year…at least for those of us in the northern hemisphere.

A few years ago, a worldwide pandemic forced us to move to the online format, and we discovered some benefits we wouldn’t have otherwise.  Not only are Charlotte Mason educators from all over the world able to join us due to the virtual platform, so many have personally written to share how they wouldn’t ever be able to get away for a conference or a retreat except online.  

We are so grateful to be able to pour into the broader Charlotte Mason community in this way, however, we know that many are still not able to participate, and even those that do often long for something more and that brings us to the Voices of the Conference series. We use these episodes to highlight one of the speakers or ideas that came out of last year’s conference.  We hope you enjoy this little taste of conference and getting to know one of the speakers.  We hope you join us at the next ADE conference in February.

Today we will be sharing with you Morgan Conner’s talk from last year on reading Charlotte Mason’s volumes.  Enjoy.

Morgan
Hello there. Thank you for joining me today. Before we begin, let us pray. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen. 

For those who don’t know me, my name is Morgan Connor. I have five girls, ages 11 to 19.

I am a former speech pathologist and have had the joy of homeschooling my girls for 13 years now. We have been a Charlotte Mason family for the last eight of those 13 years. 

At the beginning of our homeschool journey, I looked into all the different philosophies. I remember reading about Charlotte Mason, but I just couldn’t figure out how to put it all together, how to implement it in our home. Between my oldest’s kindergarten and fourth grade year, we tried, I think, four different curriculums. Nothing seemed to fit, nothing flowed well, nothing looked how I imagined our school and life would look like. 

We were having a particularly bad year in 2016, and I was really, really close to throwing in the towel. I really was thinking about enrolling them in public school, but I decided to give it one more year and to give it my very best. And I began to ponder if I could do, if I just have to do this for one more year, what would I want to do? What if I always wanted to try and have not been brave enough to try? And it was Charlotte Mason. 

So I decided that I was going to give Charlotte Mason my all, and I began to scour the web for information to put together a plan. And I came across a new podcast called a Delectable Education. And, um, it changed my life. I listened to all the episodes that they had available at the time and began to slowly change things in our home, but the biggest thing that helped me in my homeschool journey and my Charlotte Mason journey was that ADE always pointed back

to Charlotte Mason’s own words. It wasn’t their opinion. It was, what did Charlotte Mason say about this? And I began to be inspired to look at Charlotte Mason’s words myself, and I began to read Volume one. 

I was so inspired that I began to research topics for myself. I’ll talk a little bit more about this later, but, the first big research project that I did was about the volumes. And, since then I’ve spoken about many other topics, written about many other things. But reading Charlotte Mason’s volumes has always been, and I think will forever be something that I feel very passionately about.

Before we get into details about the volumes, I want to start with a short overview about how the Charlotte Mason Method came to be. So, Charlotte Mason was born in 1842 in England. From a very young age, she knew she wanted to be a teacher, and her dream came true at age 19, and she taught at a, church school for several years. Later she became an instructor at a teacher training school. And then in 1880, she wrote her first geography book, and I’m sure many of you have that on your shelves at home right now. 

She went on to write more, of course, but in 1885, her church asked for her help to raise money. She gave a series of lectures that were called Ladies Lectures, and those lectures were later published as Home Education. 

It’s important to note that during this time, the educational system in England was

undergoing large changes. It was a very hot topic at the time. What she proposed in her lectures was so radically different from the current system in England, and also from what was being replaced. What she was proposing was something very new, and she was charting a new course with her philosophy, and the reaction to it was incredible. Several of her friends

and colleagues were so excited, they wanted her to form an organization so they could promote her teachings. 

So in 1887, just two years later, they developed the Parents’ National Education Union or the PNEU. A few years later, they began publishing a monthly magazine called The Parents’ Review. And then the Parents’ Union School was established around the same time. 

So the families would join the PNEU, they would begin to get the magazine, and then they would also sign up for the PUS, the parents’ union school, and they would be sent programs and timetables every term for them to follow. And so it was almost like a school at home. They were part of a larger school system, but they were doing this in their homeschool rooms.

And this continued for many years, but in 1914, the first public school adopted Ms. Mason’s principles, and it was a huge success. It’s called the Drighlington Experiment. Then after that, more and more schools began to get on board, and it was estimated that by the time of her death, there were 175 elementary schools using her programs, which is incredible. An entire educational movement that is still alive and well today began with a series of lectures

by a 43-year-old teacher. I think that’s incredible. 

As I said earlier, listening to the A DE podcast helped me find my way with the Charlotte Mason method, but it was reading her volumes myself that truly transformed our school days. I feel very strongly that reading the volumes is the secret to success with the Charlotte Mason Method, and you are probably wondering, well, how? I’m glad you asked. 

First of all, they’re inspiring. They inspire me, and I know they will inspire you. When you’re in the midst of homeschooling, it can sometimes seem very rote and routine. You’re in the thick of things, and we lose sight of why we’re even doing this. Why am I going to this trouble? Especially with a Charlotte Mason education because there’s a lot to it. It is a lot to ask of a mother. Charlotte Mason knew that it’s a lot. And so we may get discouraged along the way.

And, you know, in the homeschool world, Charlotte Mason is its own unique creature. And so even if you have other homeschoolers in your area, they may not understand the Charlotte Mason method. And so being able to go to her volumes and read her words and be reminded of why we chose this path is so needed. So I know that for me, there have been many times when I have been discouraged and the volumes have been such a balm to my weary soul, and I know they will be to yours also.

Not only do the volumes inspire me, but they give me practical help in educating and parenting my children. I don’t think there’s a better parenting book out there than volume two. It’s wonderful. And volumes one, three, and six all give us the details on the subjects in the feast. Volume six has the synopsis in there that gives us all sorts of wonderful details about her 20 principles. 

And I find it interesting that when Charlotte Mason’s method was being introduced

to public schools, the PNEU sent Ms. Steinthals right to help the teachers. She told Ms. Mason that a lifeless dual class was making progress due to their teacher drinking in your books and principals. The volumes were what made a difference to that classroom, to that teacher, and I know that they will do the same for you. 

Another reason why I think that the volumes are the secret to success is because they keep me balanced. I love that she provided us both principals and practices, but sometimes I don’t get the balance right. And this is not a new problem. Ms. Wicks wrote that, “in fact, some people who have seized this or that part of her teaching, not knowing whose it was

and have let it run away with them, have lost the balance and sameness, which marks Ms. Mason’s teaching all through.” I need the volumes to remind me of the overarching principle behind my day to today when I have fallen into just checking boxes, and we are all guilty of that. 

I also need a kick in the pants when I am failing to spread the feast adequately, and I’m just letting my kids be, you know, born persons letting them do their own thing. So it is so important to have that balance. Ms. Wicks went on to say, “it is such a temptation to us ordinary folks to emphasize some part at the expense of the rest and soul turn of strength into a weakness. There is only one way to avoid this danger that is constantly to read and reread Ms. Mason’s books constantly to remind ourselves for first principles.” Amen. 

Reading the volumes helps me because it allows me to think for myself. It’s just such a blessing that we have the resources today, like the ADE podcast and others, blogs, magazines. But at the end of the day, I am the one that’s responsible for my girls’ education. I am the one that is at that table having to decide what to do next, what to do when it’s not working out. I can’t just call someone and troubleshoot right in the moment. We can’t always ask for help. And I think sometimes we don’t need to. We have help readily available. 

This was a problem in Ms. Mason’s Day as well. Ms. Parish recalls the following story. “One of Ms. Mason’s principles is that method rather than system, should be our way to our end. Accordingly, there was a great elasticity about the conduct of the college. Perhaps this principle was specially evident during criticism. Lessons on Thursday morning is when Ms. Mason would criticize a student for doing what was apparently precisely the thing another student had been criticized for not doing the previous Thursday, thus reducing us to despair for what were we to do. And when we asked for the precise recipe, we were told to mix it with brains.” 

Essex Chumley wrote an entire article about this called Recipe versus Thought. Many like those students wanted a recipe to follow when they had questions, but Chumley reminded them

that Ms. Mason left no recipes behind her. She said, “it is a very much harder task to recollect and apply a principle than to follow a precept. Hence all the recipe activity in the world. But we are all born persons. And the power to think is there in each of us, if we will, but use it to be a member. A living part of an living organism implies and entails the duty of careful thought. Members of the PNEU are fortunate in possessing Ms. Mason’s book by which to attempt the answering of their own questions and by which to test their answers here can be found a clear exposition of those laws of mind, those central truths upon which all PNEU method must be

based. Here, again, can be found sage advice. It is the part of every member to seek and find in his own mind the best means of applying those principles, that advice to new occasions and to particular instances.” 

We may not be a part of an official PNEU, but I think these words are just as true for us today. We have her books and we can attempt to answer those questions ourselves.

Another reason I love the volumes is because they keep me from getting distracted from what’s most important. I’m not on social media anymore much, but I remember those days when a new shiny product would come out. Everyone was promoting it and singing its praises, and you were sure that it was going to be the solution to all your homeschool problems. And it’s so tempting to click Buy Now. But when I’m reading those volumes, I am reminded of what I truly need in my homeschool, what truly matters, and it helps me to keep my focus so much better. 

Ms. Mason also lets her faith shine through all of her volumes. She reminds me of what’s most important. She constantly points us back to our Heavenly Father and reminds us of

what our ultimate goal in education should be: the knowledge of God. It’s not our children’s achievements. It’s not how much knowledge they have. She makes sure, when we are reading her words, she makes sure to keep our focus where it should be.

I want to read this quote from a mother, from In Memoriam. “Others will write of Ms. Mason’s work from the point of view of the trained teacher. But how much greater is the debt of the mother, who without any training at all, could teach her children through the method that Ms. Mason has worked out. It was she who made the impossible possible, who showed us term by term what books to use and how to use them, who taught us to take the children straight to the fountain head and let them learn from the books themselves. It was she who realized what home education might become, who changed the whole atmosphere of the homeschool room, who inspired us for our work, and gave us the power to carry it out. A pioneer who blazed the trail that many of us followed with keen enjoyment and grateful hearts.” 

What a blessing that we still have Ms. Mason with us inspiring and teaching us, showing us how to do the impossible. Why wouldn’t we want to grab a hold of these resources that we have right at our fingertips and utilize them to the best of our ability? 

Now that I have convinced you of the importance of reading the volumes yourself, you may wonder where to begin. There are six of them, after all. I mentioned earlier that my first big Charlotte Mason research project was about the volumes. I published two articles on Charlotte Mason Poetry. The first was called The Truth About Volume Six, and the second was called the Reception of Volume Six. And the purpose of those articles was to answer the question, what order should I read the volumes? 

I wrote them seven years ago now, I believe when I was fairly new to Charlotte Mason. Since I have published those, I have grown in my understanding of Charlotte Mason. But my answer to the question remains the same: begin with Volume One and read through each in order, no matter the age of the child.

Why? I’m glad you asked. First, Volume one lays the foundation for everything else. Elsie Kitchings said that home education contains an essence all that Ms. Mason developed in her further writings and activities. She went on to explain that in part one, we get the child’s estate, a belief in which led to what has been called the Children’s Magna Carta, the Parents’ Union School. This belief also runs through every detail of the work set up in the programs. She says Part Two takes up out of door life. And this has led to the awakening of the world to the Bliss of Nature Study, a subject now learned in most schools. Part five deals with lessons worked out later and more fully in school education. Part six deals with the moral and spiritual powers of a child. This was worked out later in detail in Ourselves, while in parents and children, we get moral training from the parent’s point of view. So everything that comes later and the volumes and all of her writings and all of her work, it all has the foundation built on Home Education. 

The second reason you should start it with volume one is because the philosophy unfolds as you read through each volume. Elsie Kitching again wrote about this in 1952: “It is an intellectual

and spiritual adventure to be able to give a year or two to the consecutive reading of the Home Education Series in order to get some idea of the wholeness of Charlotte Mason’s thought to find that the gradual amplification of it passes from volume to volume and is a spur to reading.”

An advertisement for the PNEU Reading course stated, “The method of these volumes is a progressive amplification of the principles set forth. It is therefore desirable that the book should be studied in numerical order.” 

Now, for example, I’ll give a example of this. In volume one, Ms. Mason opens parents up to  the idea that they are the most influential teacher their child will have. Volume Two, which is called Parents and Children, expands upon this idea throughout the entire volume. She makes a wonderful case for parents being involved in their children’s education and not just their education, their spiritual education, intellectual, spiritual, physical, all of it. Volume three, the very first few chapters are all about authority in the school and in the home. Volume four equips Parents by means of a book for children that affirms these teachings. Volume five provides us with practical examples. And then Volume six pulls it all together with tying it in with the synopsis or the 20 principles and more. So there is a thread of thought that goes throughout and it unfolds as you read them. 

And the third reason that you should begin with Volume one and go in numerical order is that each volume assumes that you have the knowledge contained in the previous books, even her last volume, Towards a Philosophy of Education. She explains this herself in in the introduction to volume six. She says, “This theory has already been set forth in volumes published at intervals during the last 35 years. So I shall indicate here only a few salient points, which seem to me to differ from a general theory and practice.” 

The few salient points of the volumes is evidence is evident when we think about natural history in volume one. Ms. Mason provides 50 pages of the out of door life, and then she discusses Natural history as a school subject in about seven pages. In volume three, she only devotes two

and a half pages to, to this topic. And in volume six, it’s covered in four and a half pages.

Volumes three and six do not attempt to restate all that have been covered in Volume one. Readers were assumed to have the knowledge, and volumes three and six simply act as a summary and add on more relevant information or clarify some things. 

So now that we’ve discussed what order to read them in, I wanna go briefly through each volume one by one and give you a little insight into what to expect from each one.

I’ve already talked about the importance of home education volume one that is the foundation of her other works, but what can you expect in the pages of Home Education? Well, she begins the book by making a case for why children deserve a better method of education, and how the gospels show us a better way to educate and treat children. She’s also rallying mothers to their duty. It’s very inspiring in the beginning. Um, she makes you want to do better. And I think it’s important to note that this was Victorian England, and so she’s making some radical statements here, but ones that were based and are based in the truth of God’s word. 

Volume One and volumes three and six are the books that the PNEU recommended to parents and teachers so they could understand Ms. Mason’s method of teaching no matter the age. So on the programs that were sent to parents who signed up for the Parents Union School,

there was a note on there that said, for method of teaching “see volumes one, three, and six,” depending on when they were published. The ones that were published early would only say volume one, later they’d say one and three, and then after her death, they would say one, three, and six. So it has a lot of practical help on how to teach the subjects. 

Like I mentioned before, we get the most comprehensive treatment of the topics of habit training and out of door life; there’s 72 pages on habits and like I said, 50 pages on Out of Door Life

and no other volume covers them so extensively. We also get a very important introduction to Mansoul, which plays a very important role in volume four in Ourselves. And she introduces us to this idea of the will, and it’s just very foundational for all that comes next for the volumes. 

Let’s move on to volume two, Parents and Children. It contains what I think is my favorite chapter in all of Ms. Mason’s writings, chapter 25, called The Great Recognition Required of Parents. I think I quote it in my writing more than any other thing in her volumes. It’s just that good. I mean anytime I have a problem, I’m discouraged, I go read that chapter and I’m reminded of why God has called me to this vocation. 

On first glance, you might think that Volume two is less practical than Volume one

because there aren’t any details about how to teach subjects. But it is just as helpful and so inspiring. As I said before, I think this is maybe the best parenting book out there. It never fails to bring up in me to raise up my spirits, to rally me, wake me up to my duty that God has given me towards my children. And it, it inspires me to do my best. It’s just wonderful.

This volume is comprised of Parents Review articles that had been published earlier for the magazine and that she curated and put together herself in 1896. She says that she published it to give an example or a suggestion here and there as to how such and such a habit may be formed, such and such a formative idea may be implanted in fostered. 

During my research on Ms. Mason’s volumes, I came across this interesting quote that shows how important this volume is to the whole of the philosophy. This goes back to that idea of balance. “It is found that even where teachers have read only Home Education and School Education, this idea that teachers only need the programs to succeed still persists. And therefore it has been urged that Parents and Children should be read as well as offering a more detailed study of the principles behind the practice than the other two volumes, and so making the theory in these two more evident.” So, a very important piece of work. 

Volume three. Mason published her third volume School Education in 1904. Like volume two, it was comprised primarily of articles from the Parents’ Review. There are also some conference papers included in there. She went back and handpicked the best, her best writings from the previous seven years and arranged them in just the right order. 

School Education is full of big ideas. She talks about masterly inactivity, the science of relations, and the three educational tools. She also discusses authority and docility in the beginning, and it’s wonderful chapters there. And then she saved the last few chapters for the actual implementing of her method, which I think is amusing that, you know, same as in Home Education, the lessons part is at the end, and that’s the same in School Education, the lessons come at the end. You would think that would be the lead, but, but she had a very good reason for this. She says, “I have left the consideration of a curriculum, which is practically the subject of this volume, to the final chapters because a curriculum is not an independent product, but is linked to much else by chains of cause and consequence.”

Volume four, Ourselves, like the others, began in the Parents’ Review in 1901 and was published in 1905. Ms. Mason recognized that children needed some moral training and couldn’t find a suitable book. So she wrote one herself. It was later published as two books: book one

for those under 16, book two for those over 16. On the programs, it was studied as part of citizenship beginning in form three. She says in the preface, “the point of view taken in this volume is that all beautiful and noble possibilities are present in everyone, but that each person is subject to assault and hindrance in various ways of which we should be aware in order that he may watch and pray.” 

This is the volume where she brings back that topic from Volume one of Mansoul. And she takes students on a journey through this amazing country and helps them discover both, like she said, the beauty and the hindrances to be found therein. And then in book two, she utilizes examples from their literature and Bible readings to expand on these joys and pitfalls in Mansoul. 

Every time I read this volume, I am just so surprised by how well she seems to understand human nature. She was given a remarkable insight, that this Victorian woman can relate so well to a 21st century woman in rural Arkansas. It’s just amazing to me. But it goes to show that such feelings are common to all, to our children, to us, a hundred years ago, 200 years ago. It’s a really fantastic resource for our children and for our own selves too. 

Now, in 1906, Ms. Mason reorganized the volumes and called them the Home Education Series. So one through five are part of the Home Education series. When she was editing volumes one

and two, she removed large portions of those and placed them in a new volume, Volume five, called Some Studies in the formation of Character. 

Now, I’ve been out of the public school system for a long time, but I know that character training

was a huge push then. And I have seen character training books for homeschoolers too. So I think it’s still quite popular. But Ms. Mason has a distinct take on character training as stated in the preface of volume five. “I should like to urge that this incidental play of education and circumstances upon personality is our only legitimate course. We may not make character our conscious objective. Provide a child with what he needs in the way of instruction, opportunity and wholesome occupation and his character will take care of itself. All we can do further is to help a child to get rid of some hindrance, a bad temper, for example, likely to spoil his life.” 

She goes on to remind us indirectly of principles four and five, that we are limited by the respect due to the personality of children. So then how do we form their character if we’re so limited?

Well, that’s what the volume is all about. In part one she discusses, or she has multiple fictional scenarios, but they’re true to life, with suggestions of what to do with temper tantrums or lying, those sorts of things, and sometimes what not to do for it. In part four, she utilizes literary characters and works to demonstrate the formation of character and how it relates to her philosophy. 

And I also just wanna say real quick, I just recently reread part three of this book. Now that I have read them all I skip around a lot. I had forgotten how helpful that section is. And so even when you’ve read the volumes before you, that’s why you just read them and reread them because you find help in there that you didn’t notice the first time. You know, my children are older now and it just hit me different than it did the first time I read it, I guess. 

So now we get to volume six. Almost 20 years passed between the publication of volume five and six, and Volume one and six span over 35 years of time. So much happened between those time periods, but when she finished volume six her writings from the beginning to the end were so consistent. And as Elsie Kitchings said, there said, there is a thread of thought that you can trace through all of them. And it’s remarkable how consistent. 

She finished an essay towards a philosophy of Education in October of 1921, but it wasn’t published until two years after her death. So it was published in 1925. The Parents’ review stated that the last volume is a final summary of theory and practice. It consists of two books.

Book one contains an expanded version of her synopsis. So she took those 20 principles,

the synopsis that she wrote. She first wrote those in 1904, but she took those and expanded on them and did more explanation. And it’s, it’s really an incredible resource when you’re studying the 20 principles to just read through her writing on that. he knew it was gonna be a great resource and it was, or it is, I should say. Book two contained several important papers that she wrote between 1912 and about 1919. And during this time, her method was beginning

to spread into the public schools. And so a lot of these articles were written about this topic.

And so they are really, I think she wanted them in the volumes because they were so important to the overall movement, to the overall goals of the PNEU. It is truly a tremendous capstone on her life. 

And so you’re convinced that you need to read them. You know, that you’re supposed to read them from one through six, you know a little bit about what’s in store for you as you read through them, but maybe you already tried once and you’re a little intimidated because of the writing style or the things that are contained in it. I ust wanna tell you a little story ’cause I can relate.

I can distinctly remember the first time I read Jane Austen. I was so excited. I had just begun the Charlotte Mason journey. So many people were talking about Jane Austen in these circles. And I had never read her before. I hadn’t even watched the movies. And so I was excited. And for the first 50 pages or so, I was completely lost. I didn’t understand anything that was happening.

I didn’t understand like, okay, what is an entail? How am I supposed to, it doesn’t explain that. How am I supposed to know what that is and why is it such a big deal? The culture of early 1800 England, I didn’t understand why a lady couldn’t introduce herself to her own neighbor. That, you know, that was completely foreign to me. And also just the manner of writing. You know, Jane Austen writes completely different than a modern author. And I almost gave up

’cause I felt like I was wasting so much time looking these things up, trying to figure out what an entail was, I was like, this is too much work. This is too much trouble. It’s not enjoyable.

But at some point my brain shifted and started to become accustomed to her style of writing. And it was somewhere around 50 pages or so into it. And I stopped having to look up so many words. Maybe I had already looked up all the ones that were gonna be in the story, I don’t know, but I did. I was like, huh, I haven’t had to look up a word in a while. And I was actually able to understand and enjoy the story.

I’ve reread it so many times. Pride and Prejudice is probably my favorite book. Persuasion, sometimes it’s my favorite. And then sometimes it’s Pride and Prejudice. They’re really tied, honestly. And Jane Austen is my favorite author, but at first I didn’t even wanna finish reading her books.

I have found that something similar happens when reading Charlotte Mason. Just like Jane Austen, she has a unique style of writing and that sometimes it’s confusing. I know that sometimes I’ll read a paragraph and I think that she’s stating something as fact, and then at the end of the paragraph, she refutes it. She’s like, and of course we know that that is not true.

And I’m like, oh, yes, yes, we knew that. I knew that when I was reading it that. But it just takes a little bit to get accustomed to her style. But once you do, it will begin to make more sense.

And, just like in Jane Austen, there are culture references that we just don’t get. She refers to Punch, that’s the one that I always think of. Punch was a popular magazine in her time. Everyone would’ve known what that was, but that’s not common knowledge for us. She mentions educationalists and philosophers and she doesn’t really explain who they are or what they believe. She seems to assume that we will all know who Russeau is. But I have found over time that most of the time when she mentions these folks, she is describing their beliefs.

So she may not have say “Russeau believes…” but she gives us lots of clues

that tell us what he believes. So you don’t have to be an educational history major to be able

to understand her writings. 

I tried to find that where she, um, made a reference to Shakespeare character, but she doesn’t say that it’s Shakespeare. And I’d never read Shakespeare other than Romeo and Juliet the first time I read through the volumes. And so I didn’t understand what, I didn’t even know

what she was referring to, I had no context for understanding it. And then now I see that she was just casually referencing a literary character, and she does that a lot. Same with biblical references. She just has casual references to them because they were so familiar to her and probably to her readers. We’re used to now people telling us specifically this is a Bible quote,

or this is a reference to this Bible story, and that that’s just not how she writes. So you won’t always catch or understand all of her references. 

So, okay, I’ve just given you all these reasons why it can be a little bit difficult. So how, how do we deal? How do we make heads or tails of her writing? I think you can go about it two different ways. I’ve done both, so I’m not telling you one way or the other. I’m just saying choose one and maybe do it different for different volumes. I don’t know. 

But one way I have done it, read her volumes when they’re brand new to me, was to read relatively fast and just know that some, or most of it, is just gonna go over your head. Only look up the stuff that you truly have to know because it, like, you know, the whole chapter doesn’t make sense. Unless you know what this word means, don’t stress because you don’t know who Waverly is. You know, that is not the point. So you go into it knowing that you’re not gonna get everything and it’s okay. I did that the for pretty much the first time I read volumes two through six. That’s how I approached it. I just read through them real quick and let it go over my head and just took in what I could. And there is nothing wrong with that.

Another way that you can do it is to read slow. Look up as many words and references as you can. Write notes in the margins, you know, keep the dictionary, keep your phone handy with the dictionary in Google. There are annotated versions of the volumes that I’ve seen. But I think sometimes it’s good for you to dig for the answers instead of having it right there next to you. But there’s no shame in an annotated version, I don’t think. And then with each read through you’ll understand more and more. 

And, and so just like with Jane Austen, let’s see, so I’ve been eight years in, so it’s probably been eight years since I read Jane Austen. I’ve since read some nonfiction about Victorian England. Even though her novels didn’t take place during the Victorian era; they were before that. But I have gained even more knowledge of why things were the way they were. I understand the way that they dressed, what they’re referring to. And so as you grow and learn, your knowledge builds and, and just adds up to where you’ll read through the volumes one day and be amazed at all that you understand. So don’t get discouraged. 

Now as I’m reading, this is my personal method of study, even if I’m reading fast, I do this, I just may not do as much of it. I highlight anything of interest and sometimes we’ll scribble little notes in the margins, particularly things that I know that I would want to look at again another time. So sometimes it’s just an exclamation point or a heart so that I know that I particularly loved that section. So I highlight in my volumes. I make a note on a separate piece of paper

of things I don’t understand or want to look up. And I use the dictionary or Google if I can’t understand by the context alone. 

And then it’s not uncommon for me to have to read a paragraph once or twice or three times to be able to understand what she wrote. So occasionally I will make a, a chart or a graph or an outline. I did this for volume four. I do it every time I read it pretty much, because Mansoul is made up of houses and there’s lords and so it’s very similar to system of government. So I make made a chart that showed what all those different hearts and houses and lords were. And that way I can refer to it as I’m reading.

You may notice that there are study questions in the back. These were created as part of a course that they offered the Mother’s Education Course. It was written that they were created as a help to study and to indicate points which the author considered significant. So I used them the first time I read Home Education. And I haven’t really used them since. I didn’t personally find them exceptionally helpful. But that may be different for you. You may find them fantastic.

And I know lots of people have utilized them and loved them. So that is an option. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to study. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong. You can go super detailed, you can go super broad, anything in between, and you’re gonna get a blessing from it. 

So the first time I read volumes five and six, I read ’em as fast as I could. I was working on a project and I needed to have read them. And so I didn’t highlight anything. I didn’t do any, I just read ’em. But when I’m reading along with my reading group, I go really slow because we’re reading a very small amount in a month. And so I go through it and I look up things and so you can do both at the same time. I’m frequently reading two different volumes, one with my reading group and one on my own. And like I said, a lot of times I skip around, especially when I’m doing research for a project or writing project, I’ll read sections of volumes. 

And I just wanna say I highly recommend reading the volumes along with a group, just even if it’s just one other person. It’s so helpful to discuss what you read with another person. Because I can remember lots of times in our group where one of us would have a question and the other because of their unique experience and knowledge would be able to answer that question, or one would interpret it one way and one the other. And then we would have a discussion over, oh, you know what? I think you’re right. I think that’s what that means.

And there’s been a few times where I have disagreed with Charlotte Mason on something, but then when we discussed it in a group, I was able to come to a different conclusion because of the input that the others had. So it’s just a huge help to be able to talk it out with at least one other person. And it does not have to be a huge, formal, big deal. We just meet casually and share what we’ve highlighted and discuss it and talk about questions we’ve had and that’s it.

And we go home. But I always leave understanding the volumes better than when I got there. 

Now let’s talk about how much you should read at a time. I do have a schedule for each volume to share with you. You can use it with your reading group or on your own. If you want to read the volumes through in a little over a year, you can change what I have scheduled as monthly reading assignments to weekly reading assignments. And then if you do it that way, it’ll take you 57 weeks to get through all of the volumes. Emily Kiser once said that 50 pages per day will take you through all six volumes in six weeks, less than three pages a day it’ll take you two years. And then any amount in between allows you to read them in a good time. So whether it takes you six weeks or two years or four years with your reading group, just read them. And you could really just decide that you’re gonna read for 10 minutes a day that, you know, during

the first 10 minutes of nap time or the first 10 minutes after your kid’s bedtime, or the first 10 minutes when you wake up, or the first 10 minutes after your cup of coffee that you’re just gonna read. And you’ll be amazed at how much ground you can cover and how much you’ll learn just by doing that. 

And before I leave you guys, I just wanna say a quick note about buying the volumes.

I personally own some of the pinks and some…they’re called the Pinks, the original ones that were republished by the Andreolas I think in the eighties. So I have four of those and then I have two of the floral soft covers from Living Book press. Those that I personally own, I bought them the first year that I was doing Charlotte Mason homeschooling. I have seen the Simply Charlotte Mason study edition. And they’re beautiful. They’ve got a large font, they have wide margin, they really are good for studying. I can see how that would be. ANd I have glanced over the annotated version from CM Plenary. I saw them at a conference once and, and just flipped through ’em real quickly. And they seem like a good buy if you want that annotation. And I also have gifted the hardcover additions of ourselves from River Bend Press. I’ve gifted them to my girls and my nieces and they’re beautiful. River Bend Press, their hardcovers are just gorgeous.

So all that to say, just choose the one that fits your budget that you think is the prettiest. I wouldn’t order the ones from Amazon that are like the facsimiles. I’ve heard people talk about those not being good quality, but you can read the reviews on those and figure that out for yourself. But if money is the issue, because I mean, when is it not ever an issue for us homeschoolers, right? They are available for free at Charlotte Mason Poetry

and they’re done very well on there. So even if you can’t afford to buy them and read a hard cover, you can still read them for free. So don’t let anything stand in your way of digging into this amazing resource. I promise you will not regret it. 

I just wanna thank you all for your time and attention today. I appreciate you joining me as I talk about this topic that I love so much. I hope you learned something new. I hope you’re inspired to pick up the volumes yourself. You won’t regret it, I promise you. Thank you.

How can I get my kids to read these types of books if they’ve not been Charlotte Mason educated from the beginning? Where can I combine my children to make our schedule better? How do I know that they are getting anything out of their reading? In today’s podcast we are addressing these questions and more as we wrap up our literature series.

Listen Now:

Charlotte Mason, Volume 6 (Amazon) (Living Book Press – use code DELECTABLE for 10% off!)

ADE Vol 6, Chapt 10 Reading List

ADE on YouTube

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
Today we are concluding our series on literature in the Charlotte Mason curriculum. We are sure you still have some lingering questions about how to implement these lessons with your family. So we’re going to be addressing some of those most common ones in this episode. Nicole, could you please start us off by discussing how we might be able to combine different children in our homeschools?

Nicole
Yeah. Well the easiest one, just the most practical one, is Shakespeare because it’s done over many terms. At least Forms 2 and 3 were always reading the same play and sometimes the upper grades were reading the same play as them as well. So we can really combine there pretty good. 

We could read shared poetry anthologies together, maybe around the breakfast table or dinner table or something like that.  I would just only warn that that shouldn’t be like just mom reading aloud all the time. Maybe we share, you know, who’s reading that. 

There is some natural overlap with mythology and history. Form 2a and Form 3, that’s fifth grade through eighth grade, should all be reading from Bullfinch’s Age of Fable at the same pace. And then Forms 3 and 4, so seventh through ninth grade, should all be reading in the same chapter range of English Literature for Boys and Girls. So there’s some natural overlap. 

And then you mentioned something to me recently that when we do a lesson that’s an introduction to a new author that our students haven’t read before, that might be something that we could do that lesson with all the kids together. 

Emily
Yeah, because a lot of times when they’re reading in a historical time period, we see her assign the same author’s work across multiple forms. They wouldn’t be reading necessarily the same book, but they might have the same author.

Nicole
So that might be a nice lesson together. The thing to keep in mind is that there’s a lot of places we cannot combine with this and and we just like when we look at that whole big spreadsheet that I made, I guess you can’t look at it, but of all these books…they’re all different, but all these books are mostly being read independently. 

Emily
So true. 

Nicole
At least in the you know upper form to and on they’re they’re really reading these books.

And they’re not necessarily reading the same book as another student because the caliber of the work is getting progressively harder and they need to be working through that as they get older. We can’t be holding students back or pulling students along when it’s not appropriate. So, you know, there’s just, there’s not a lot of other places that we can combine in this area. 

Liz
But don’t forget they’re in the same history cycle so the literature is of the same time period and that is a unifying thing. 

Emily
Yeah, there should be lots of discussion and shared anecdotes or things that they’re reading in the home I think between children even if they’re different books. 

Well, another common question we get is where do I put my older child that’s new to Charlotte Mason into this program of literature? Because, as you’ve been saying Nicole, from the beginning, if we are keeping up with the program, they’re not going to be able to keep up with the next level because it is such a step up. But there was a note on every single program that the children, normal children, I will say the neurotypical children, were to do the whole program appropriate for their age. So however old they were, that’s the program they got. 

Nicole
Yep. 

Emily
And they were to read all of it. 

Nicole
And it was interesting that that little note that’s at the end of the program, was highlighted next to literature. She was making that point. 

Emily
Literally, especially about this subject. That is what she’s talking about. I do think that we may need to adjust some for difficulty if a student has not been reading along, right? But I think we need to keep in mind the breadth and the variety of the types of literature they need to be reading and really start stretching them up and see if we can get there sooner. So type of book, we might assign fewer things than they did if they’re not used to reading that, but we still want to be assigning classic, challenging books for whatever level they’re at. 

And obviously, we do need to adjust for learning disabilities, but please do not underestimate what your children are capable of. I mean, I think of your son who, still to this day, as an adult, severely dyslexic, can read some, but not very well, or easily. It’s hard for him. But he is motivated to read hard books. And he read a ton of hard books on audio. 

Nicole
Right. 

Emily
As he was totally keeping up with the program appropriate for him. Via audio. 

Nicole
Right. He’s one of the most well-read people that I know because of that. 

Emily
I do think that it is essential though to read literature from the time period of history that’s being studied. That is one of the main objectives of the subject, both for history and literature because the literature is describing, it’s descriptive, it’s illustrative, as Charlotte Mason said, of the time period that they’re being studied. So again, don’t worry about what they’ve missed. If you’re in a later time period but you’re like but they haven’t had all of this stuff, it doesn’t matter. They need to be reading in the time period that they’re in in history. 

And really, they should develop the habit of reading, and they’re learning that their books are their teachers and we’re hoping in setting them up to continue reading for the rest of their lives. And I do think that a great part of this piece that we’re spreading is really educating their tastes. This is what Charlotte Mason meant when she said they’re developing the habit of reading, right? That’s what they needed to do is she’s educating their taste in what constitutes worthwhile books to read in their free time. That’s why she assigned holiday and evening reading.

Liz
She’s basically setting them up to go out and continue at that same level. 

Emily
Yes. And just think about the variety of genres that she introduces them to and the types of…it was a sad thing for Charlotte Mason when a person had very few interests. And we can think about that even within a subject like our literature for only reading the same kind of fiction. Look at, even her literature is not all fiction. We need to be exposing our children to that.

And yes, we’re all going to have favorites. I enjoy certain books I read in a day. And others it takes me months to plow through, but it is all worthwhile. And that’s what we’re setting our children up for.

Were you going to say something else?

Liz
I was just going to reiterate how much care we have to take in choosing the best that’s available in the time period they’re studying in history. She absolutely knew those two things were linked together. So if you’re in the 1800s, you need to maybe do a little research or look in some literature anthologies and find out who were the authors who were speaking in that century. They have to go together, and you have to discover the best in both history and literature. 

And choose a variety of poets, novels, plays, and essays. And we have so many essayists, it’s a big deal in our day and age, but there were, from Francis Bacon on, I think he was the one who basically invented the essay. 

Emily
Or perfected it for sure.

Liz
He actually kind of formalized it at the time. And actually, even though the language is more difficult, his are a lot shorter than the ones that are written today. 

Choose a variety is what I’m trying to say. And don’t just look for books that you think would appeal to your child, that they would naturally like, because Emily said this is where we’re training them for their taste. We don’t know what we like until we taste it. And you know, just take works that are representative of the time period or were written about that time period. 

Nicole
Right. 

Emily
Yeah. That’s a lot of Sir Walter Scott. That’s why he was so popular because he was writing about all kinds of things in other centuries. 

Liz
But even, you know, Sir [Arthur] Conan Doyle that wrote Sherlock Holmes, he wrote The White Company which took place in the Middle Ages. But stick to the classics, the best things that have always been worth reading throughout the centuries. Just know that there’s no book list you’re going to find that’s going to make this easy for you. Charlotte Mason did not have a book list. She did not offer one because she did not have one. 

And I think as far as poetry goes, because most of us didn’t grow up with a wealth of poetry in our lives, I don’t think, did you? Even my own daughter here is admitting this. Poetry anthologies can guide you because those are usually made up of the best of the poets of the time period.

And if you are inexperienced with poetry, don’t stay away from it just because you’re afraid. You’re going to be teaching your children a lot about just bravely wading into it. It is meant to be read aloud, just as music is meant to be sung, and there’s no one right way to read it. You can still use punctuation marks to give you some guidance about where to breathe or pause for a second. 

It’s not about understanding the poetry. It’s about listening to its rhythm and its wordplay and feeling the words cause the feelings that they cause in you and the pictures that they bring to your mind that are being painted by that poet. 

Did you guys have any other things before we close here? 

Emily
Yeah, I have a whole section. But before I do that, I wanted to say that I think it was around the time that we were figuring out the history rotation, so early, early on, I noticed that it was literature that was kind of the stretching agent in the curriculum. That every new skill that children were asked to do and perfect, it started in literature. And we see that from the first with Form 1B as they are starting to narrate, right? As you said, tales that are not their own.

And then as they start doing narrations, written narrations, that’s what we’re doing. And it’s the first independent reading is, oh now there’s a subject that you have to read something outside of class. Later, we see a few other things like that. But it started in literature. And the caliber of literature starts coming about. It’s the first subject where there’s delayed narration. It just seems like this is the part of the curriculum that is really growing us, it’s educating us. 

Liz
Yeah. Go ahead. 

Emily
As far as assessing progress for our students in literature, I mean this may seem really daunting because literature is such a subjective subject, what they take out of it, but I would encourage you to go back and listen to each form levels lesson objectives and just ask yourself, is my child developing a living interest in this? Do I hear things coming out in his opinions that he’s picked up from the books that are his teachers. Has he been able to tell about the books that he has been reading? Maybe he’s telling something, but next term he’s telling more. We should be seeing a growth in their narration ability. Do the things that they say about their books show that they’re really interacting with the characters and ideas that these books are presenting? 

And do their exam questions on their literature, does it show relevance to the topic? Are they just throwing a name in there because they have to mention it? Or does it really have to do with the topic at hand? Because a lot of times she would be pulling together a current event with their literature. And do we see that connection happening? Are they including specific details from their reading? Do they make connections between other subjects in their literature? So if they are making progress in any of these areas, even if it’s small, and it might be hard to see on a week to week basis. And really, we need those term by term or year by year exams to see. You can really be assured that they’re doing the work of their education. 

Liz
Overall, just don’t lose sight of the fact that literature is a delight, but it is an ever increasingly steep mountain to climb. But it’s just like math or science or anything else. So we are their guide and their companion in this journey for them to increase the amount and the depth gradually over the 12 years. There are no sudden leaps for children from simple novels to reading Sir Walter Scott or from Pilgrim’s Progress to reading A Greek Tragedy. It takes years, but we do have to pursue it. 

And I just loved what Emily just shared about literature being, I think of it as the trailblazer. This is what is setting the course and the caliber for all the subjects in every way. So anyway, I just encourage you to consider the fact that in our day and age, 30% of those who can read can only read at a third grade level. So it is going to take work for us to read as much as our children ought to be reading by the end of their lives and to continue to encourage them because it is kind of an upstream battle in this day and age.

Emily
That is it for our series on literature. You can find links to the resources that we’ve mentioned in this series in the show notes. We are going to be taking a Christmas break in a few weeks, but we’ll be sharing with you two excellent sessions from presenters at last year’s ADE at Home Conference. 

First, Morgan Connor shares the benefits and joys of reading Charlotte Mason’s volumes for yourself and offers practical ideas for making this happen. And then Cathy McKay will be presenting her talk, Distinguished Difficulties, which is about persevering through the difficulties that life throws at us. 

We’ll be back in the new year, continuing to spread the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method while looking at a Charlotte Mason curriculum.

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Today, we are talking about the highest level of Charlotte Mason Literature lessons in high school. How do they differ from earlier levels? What sorts of books are assigned? Stay tuned to today’s podcast episode to learn more.

Listen Now:

Charlotte Mason, Volume 6 (Amazon) (Living Book Press – use code DELECTABLE for 10% off!)

ADE Vol 6, Chapt 10 Reading List

ADE Shakespeare Planner

ADE on YouTube

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
And sometimes I laugh when I hear people say that Charlotte Mason is light. We’re not strenuous enough. 

Nicole
Yeah. 

Emily
After spending years poring over her curriculum programs, I marvel at the caliber and variety of books that a Charlotte Mason student would read in their high school years, really even before that, but especially their high school years. These are often more difficult and far more diverse than what I read in college. 

This is especially true, I think, in literature. So Nicole, would you share with us what students in Forms 5 and 6, which is grades 10 through 12 or ages 15 to 18, what would they be reading for literature? 

Emily
They actually read a few fewer books at this point, but they had such greater weight, the books like…

Emily
Physically, they were far heavier. 

Nicole
Right, right, right. I meant that exactly. Five to eight titles per term, though. There was at least one drama assigned every term, sometimes two, because she pulled in some of the Greek tragedies or other contemporary plays from the time period that they were studying. 

Sir Walter Scott usually dropped just one of those per year and then other books like Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities, George Eliot’s Silas Marner, Gaskell’s North and South, things like that were pulled in, so they were reading those as well. There are essays read in every term now. And some of those examples are like Ruskin’s Sesame and Lilies, something on Carlisle, the Addison Papers. They were just a very important part of these upper high school students’ education. 

They were also reading a poetry anthology. But beyond just the anthology, well, with the anthology, they had like Oxford book of English verse, Walter de la Mare’s Come Hither. But there was also, I don’t have it written down here, I guess, but there was like an anthology of modern verse, which I thought was interesting because while they were keeping up with their historical time period, they also were reading modern books. 

Emily
It is like 1800s through, so it was even a little, like the generation before.

Nicole
Okay.

They also read like an epic or world classic once a year at this stage. Milton’s Paradise Lost, Dante. In translation, of course. Chaucer. Previously, they would have maybe read a little bit of Chaucer, just little parts of it. Now they’re reading much more of it. And Coleridge, just some really heavy things that they’re reading, thought-provoking things. 

Charlotte Mason described this stage. She said, their reading for Forms 5 and 6 is more comprehensive and more difficult. But young people who have been brought up on this sort of work may be trusted to have a good knowledge of, actually she uses a French word there. I don’t know what it means. A good knowledge of the best that is being produced in their own days. And she said these readings will lead to much reading round and about in later days equipping the students to exercise the imaginative judgment every citizen means. 

They’re still using a commonplace book and doing a lot of narration to self at this point for sure.  She said, these young students have the powers of perfect recollection and just application because they have read with attention and concentration and have in every case reproduced what they’ve read in narration or the gist of some portion of it in writing. 

Also by this stage, she says they’re practicing the art of weighing and discussing great ideas and becoming the statesmen in the best sense. So we’re thinking like novels and stuff. This is just fun, but there are things in these books, weighty issues that are being considered and grappled with. 

And I would just go back to something she said when she was talking in form about the Form 2 students. She said, we spread an abundant and delicate feast and each small guest assimilates what he can. And I would say that even at the summit, steady growth and not exhausted mastery remains the goal. 

Liz
That’s a good point. 

Emily
When she said latter days, she’s talking about the rest of their lives. 

Nicole
Yeah. 

Emily
Well, as we’re setting up readers for the rest of their lives, in their weekly lessons they did two a week for 30 minutes. And they don’t have Reading, it’s just all under Literature at this point. So those were both to be used maybe at the child’s discretion, maybe you would make some suggestions of which they would be reading. 

But probably they’re going to have their lessons for their Greek drama, maybe a little more challenging essays, but maybe not. Maybe that’s still part of the lighter portion. Their literary biography that they included as well. And again, they still have holiday and evening reading that’s listed but that has been provided for, so the lighter portions of the program, the novels, the poetry, and the drama or play. 

They do have Reading lessons because you know what I found there? The Speaking Voice. Yeah. It doesn’t have their books that they’re practicing reading. They actually have a reading lesson. 

Nicole
Right. 

Emily
That is vocal exercises to get their reading up. So all of the books have moved off onto the literature portion that we saw in earlier forms, but they actually were still to be improving their reading. And I think that’s a question because people wonder where to do that in recitation because they don’t have recitation lessons anymore. So that’s actually under there. 

As far as the individual lessons go, we use the same general format as all the other ones, but the students are almost always going to be reading to themselves in these lessons. So they were recalling the last lesson, they might, maybe occasionally you would want to do an oral lesson to introduce a new author or a theme that is prevalent in the terms reading. Maybe you’re reading about a significant historical event that really greatly influenced the literature that they’re reading. You might do something like that. That might excite their interest, you know, in that book or that essay, but probably not every single lesson are they going to have that. 

They’re going to read to themselves, and then they’re going to narrate. And there were notes that they were to read one day and two days later write the narration. So we see even their narration is being stretched at this level to be able to recall something that they read two days prior. They also might write essays and verse on their literature books. So it’s not just straight narration, not just a telling back.

I think discussion at this point is still very important though. Students of the fifth and sixth forms who had read a great deal are learning to make their own criticisms and comparisons that are not dictated by their teacher or by a textbook that’s giving them those ready-made opinions. They can recognize an author’s style and some of its distinguishing qualities, Ms. Agnes Drury said. So all of those things, that was a whole quote from Ms. Drury. 

So on their exams, I think this shows the breadth of what was assigned. There were many choices, but they were being asked to make much more analysis and personal opinion was asked for directly in their exam answers. This is not simply a reporting of what the book contained, but how they’re interacting with it. Their literature and exam and their composition exam both covered the literature of the day as well as some other things in composition. And so that again allows for students who haven’t maybe finished all of it, even though they were expected to read all of what was assigned before the next term. 

Their objectives for their literature lessons were to have a better sense of how people lived and thought in different times and places, to increase their interest in knowledge for its own sake, right? This is what sets them up for the rest of their life.

Charlotte Mason said, this course of reading, which will be seen, is suggestive and will lead to much reading round about it in later days, as you said, Nicole. So this really is setting them up to continue their education throughout the rest of their life.

In short, she said, literature has become a living power in the minds of these young people. So it really develops them as persons and their opinions and judgments. 

So as far as teacher prep, hopefully your job will be a little more or far more enjoyable because I hope you’re reading this stuff. If this is the type of work that she’s expecting adults to read, you know. That’s what we should be reading too. So you can if you read along with your students. So I would say help them come up with a schedule for the term or how they’re going to tackle all of these things, which ones they’re going to read during their literature lesson. Make sure they have habits of reading daily. And again, we have just a few more years with them under our roof probably. So hopefully these habits that we have been instilling are created for life. 

And again, yeah, just to read along with them, maybe not with them specifically, but at the same time, like a little family book club. So you can have an understanding sympathy with them and discuss. 

Liz
And I think the point that you’re making here is that reading was supposed to be an integral part of their life. It was not an optional activity. Like, well, I just don’t like to read. She would not have countenanced that whatsoever. 

Emily
Right. She talks about an educated person as a reading person. Right.

Liz
Yeah, I’m just saying if you’re not reading you’re not thinking. 

Emily
Yes So I don’t have a lot of resources to share today for Form 5 and 6. We do have some notes of lessons. They’re going to be listed under Class 4; that is not the same thing as Form 4. It’s the same thing as 5 and 6. They changed how they called Forms, even in her life. And so I just show you our Shakespeare planner because there are denoted in here which plays you reserved only for these higher forms of his work. But again, that’s not all the drama that they’re reading.

Liz
And these are busy years, the high school years. And I think it’s interesting. Nicole was reading before we started here today, a quote of Charlotte Mason, where she said, we’re basically bringing them up to the level where most adults read. And so I would challenge you to look at what she expected an adult to be reading. 

Emily
And the quantity that they were reading in the same period of time. Do you read this many books in three months? 

Nicole
Yeah. 

Liz
Well, I do, but.

Emily
I was asking the listeners.

Liz
So I’m just saying it is possible to do if that is a value in your life, but you know as I said in the last episode about Form 4 that these are busy years, and it’s just really important when we are still the overseeing teacher to not let them just kind of skimp on all of this reading. It’s not okay for them to get through one or two novels a year. They do have to be reading a lot of this poetry and plays and the Greek dramas and all of the rest, the essays and learning how to plow through the things that they wouldn’t normally pick up because we’re developing the taste that they should have for the rest of their life. 

And I would just say, you know, audio books are readily available in all the classics. So if they have to listen to some of them while they’re driving to their extracurricular events, that would be better than not getting through them at all. But help them to navigate the balancing of school and work. This is still the priority. Their social life is super important, but they have to learn how to do what they’re expected to do before they pursue a lot of outside things. So help them choose between all those extras. Not at the expense of their school assignments.

Emily
As we close each series, we like to devote an episode to practical concerns and questions about that subject. So we hope you’ll join us next time as we continue to spread the feast of the Charlotte Mason Method and conclude our series on Literature.