It is not an exaggeration to say that understanding the ideas in this Charlotte Mason podcast is the most important piece of knowledge you can gain as a teacher and parent. Liz, Emily, and Nicole focus on Miss Mason’s use of method rather than system in education. It is a way of seeing the child, his education, and discipleship that brings life rather than fixed results.
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Home Education (Volume 1), pp. 6-10
“In the first place, we have no system of education. We hold that great things, such as nature, life, education, are ‘cabined, cribbed, confined,’ in proportion as they are systematised. We have a method of education, it is true, but method is no more than a way to an end, and is free, yielding, adaptive as Nature herself. Method has a few comprehensive laws according to which details shape themselves, as one naturally shapes one’s behaviour to the acknowledged law that fire burns. System, on the contrary, has an infinity of rules and instructions as to what you are to do and how you are to do it. Method in education follows Nature humbly; stands aside and gives her fair play.” (2/168)
“At any rate, it is not too much to say that a parent who does not follow reasonably a method of education, fully thought out, fails––now, more than ever before––to fulfil the claims his children have upon him.” (1/8)
“[T]herefore, the knowledge of God is the principal knowledge, and the chief end of education.” (Preface to the Home Education Series)
““We labour to produce a human being at his best physically, mentally, morally, and spiritually, with the enthusiasms of religion, of the good life, of nature, knowledge, art, and manual work; and we do not labour in the dark. Our aim in Education is to give a Full Life. ‘Thou hast set my feet in a large room;’ should be the glad cry of every intelligent soul.” (3/170)
“[T]he preparation of the child to take his place in the world at his best.” (1/9)
“The parent who sees his way––that is, the exact force of method––to educate his child, will make use of every circumstance of the child’s life almost without intention on his own part, so easy and spontaneous is a method of education based upon Natural Law.” (1/8)
“Though system is highly useful as an instrument of education, a ‘system of education’ is mischievous, as producing only mechanical action instead of the vital growth and movement of a living being.” (1/9-10)
“As the true educationalist works from within outwards…” (2/102)
“A person is not built up from without but from within, that is, he is living, and all external educational appliances and activities which are intended to mould his character are decorative and not vital…no external application is capable of nourishing life or promoting growth; …life is sustained on that which is taken in by the organism, not by that which is applied from without.” (6/23-24)
“System leads Nature: assists, supplements, rushes in to undertake those very tasks which Nature has made her own since the world was. Does Nature endow every young thing, child or kitten, with a wonderful capacity for inventive play? Nay, but, says System, I can help here; I will invent games for the child and help his plays, and make more use of this power of his than unaided Nature knows how. So Dame System teaches the child to play, and he enjoys it; but, alas, there is no play in him, no initiative, when he is left to himself; and so on, all along the lines. System is fussy and zealous and produces enormous results––in the teacher!” (2/168-9)
“There is always the danger that a method, a bona fide method, should degenerate into a mere system…but what a miserable wooden system does it become in the hands of ignorant practitioners!” (1/9)
“[T]he fact is, that a few broad essential principles cover the whole field, and these once fully laid hold of, it is as easy and natural to act upon them as it is to act upon our knowledge of such facts as that fire burns and water flows.” (1/10)
“Four Tests which should be applied to Children’s Lessons.––We see, then, that the children’s lessons should provide material for their mental growth, should exercise the several powers of their minds, should furnish them with fruitful ideas, and should afford them knowledge, really valuable for its own sake, accurate, and interesting, of the kind that the child may recall as a man with profit and pleasure.” (1/177)
“System––the observing of rules until the habit of doing certain things, of behaving in certain ways, is confirmed, and, therefore, the art is acquired––is so successful in achieving precise results, that it is no wonder there should be endless attempts to straiten the whole field of education to the limits of a system.” (1/9)
“But the educator has to deal with a self-acting, self-developing being, and his business is to guide, and assist in, the production of the latent good in that being, the dissipation of the latent evil, the preparation of the child to take his place in the world at his best, with every capacity for good that is in him developed into a power.’ (1/9)
“It is worth while to point out the differing characters of a system and a method, because parents let themselves be run away with often enough by some plausible ‘system,’ the object of which is to produce development in one direction…” (1/10)
“A parent may be willing to undergo any definite labours for his child’s sake; but to be always catering for his behoof, always contriving that circumstances shall play upon him for his good, is the part of a god and not of a man!” (1/10)
“It is only as we recognise our limitations that our work becomes effective: when we see definitely what we are to do, what we can do, and what we cannot do, we set to work with confidence and courage; we have an end in view, and we make our way intelligently towards that end, and a way to an end is method. It rests with parents not only to give their children birth into the life of intelligence and moral power, but to sustain the higher life which they have borne.” (2/33)
