Charlotte Mason has given us a method of education. What does this imply? Was it based on  tradition? science? natural or divine law? And, what in all practical use, do these questions have to do with the day-in and day-out teaching of our children. How much do we consider the evidence of modern research and measurement in determining our curriculum or our teaching techniques? Join the rousing discussion between our friend, Art Middlekauff, and Emily, Nicole, and Liz as we wrestle with the true goal of education and the push and pull of modern convictions.

Listen Now:

An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Education (Volume 6), pp. 9-17

“Method implies two things––a way to an end, and a step by step progress in that way. Further, the following of a method implies an idea, a mental image, of the end or object to be arrived at.” (1/8)

“[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 them as it is to act upon our knowledge of such facts as that fire burns and water flows. My endeavour in this and the following chapters will be to put these few fundamental principles before you in their practical bearing.” (1/10)

“I began under the guidance of these Anglo-Indian children to take the measure of a person and soon to suspect that children are more than we, their elders, except that their ignorance is illimitable.” (6/10)

“A book may be long or short, old or new, easy or hard, written by a great man or a lesser man, and yet be the living book which finds its way to the mind of a young reader. The expert is not the person to choose; the children themselves are the experts in this case. A single page will elicit a verdict; but the unhappy thing is, this verdict is not betrayed; it is acted upon in the opening or closing of the door of the mind.” (3/228)

“We become aware of an altogether unnatural and irreligious classification into things sacred and things secular…” (3/129)

“We do not merely give a religious education, because that would seem to imply the possibility of some other education, a secular education, for example. But we hold that all education is divine, that every good gift of knowledge and insight comes from above, that the Lord the Holy Spirit is the supreme educator of mankind, and that the culmination of all education (which may, at the same time, be reached by a little child) is that personal knowledge of and intimacy with God in which our being finds its fullest perfection.” (3/95)

“We do not sufficiently rejoice in the wealth that the infinite nature of our God brings to each of us.” (2/273)

“We allow no separation to grow up between the intellectual and ‘spiritual’ life of children, but teach them that the Divine Spirit has constant access to their spirits, and is their continual Helper in all the interests, duties, and joys of life.” (“Principle 20”)

“We do not mean that spiritual virtues may be exhibited by the teacher, and encouraged in the child in the course of a grammar lesson; this is no doubt true, and is to be remembered; but perhaps the immediate point is that the teaching of grammar by its guiding ideas and simple principles, the true, direct, and humble teaching of grammar; without pedantry and without verbiage, is, we may venture to believe, accompanied by the illuminating power of the Holy Spirit, of whom is all knowledge.” (2/274)

“Code of Education in the Gospels.––It may surprise parents who have not given much attention to the subject to discover also a code of education in the Gospels, expressly laid down by Christ. It is summed up in three commandments, and all three have a negative character, as if the chief thing required of grown-up people is that they should do no sort of injury to the children: Take heed that ye OFFEND not––DESPISE not––HINDER not––one of these little ones.” (1/12)

Principles of Mental Physiology, William Carpenter (online here)

Charlotte Mason: Hidden Heritage and Educational Tradition, Margaret Coombs

(Contains Affiliate Links)

Charlotte Mason Poetry (Notes of Lessons)

Charlotte Mason Poetry Podcast

Episode 13: The Saviour of the World

Episode 105: Saviour of the World Immersion Lesson

CMP Blog Post on “Educare” vs. “Educere”

Charlotte Mason had children feasting on books, which means we teachers have questions about them. This month’s Q&A podcast episode addresses questions about children who are sensitive to certain books, how to find great living books, and, when they come home, how to
organize those books.

Listen Now:

“The Feelings should be Objective, not Subjective––Nor is this the only charge that ‘the feelings’ have to sustain. So long as the feelings remain objective, they are, like the bloom to the peach, the last perfection of a beautiful character; but when they become subjective, when every feeling concerns itself with the ego, we have, as in the case of sensations, morbid conditions set up; the person begins by being ‘over sensitive,’ hysteria supervenes, perhaps melancholia, an utterly spoilt life.” (2/195)

“What are commonly called sensitive feelings––that is, susceptibility for oneself and about oneself, readiness to perceive neglect or slight, condemnation or approbation––through belonging to a fine and delicate character, are in themselves of less worthy order, and require very careful direction lest morbid conditions should be set up.” (2/202)

Maestro Classics (Use “PODCAST” to save 17% off of sale price)

Vision For Children (Teacher Training Video)

Carolyn’s Blog for Living Books Library

used.addall.com

bookfinder.com

booksalefinder.com

Episode 7: How to Recognize “Living Books”

Tour of Living Books Library

Valerie’s Living Library (And especially her post on organizing a home library)

IKEA Basket

Listen Now:

{Michele, as Dolores Umbridge with her children} {Michele’s Family in their historic Cafe}

“If mothers could learn to do for themselves what they do for their children when these are overdone, we should have happier households. Let the mother go out to play! If she would only have courage to let everything go when life becomes too tense, and just take a day, or half a day, out in the fields, or with a favourite book, or in a picture gallery looking long and well at just two or three pictures, or in bed, without the children, life would go on far more happily for both children and parents. The mother would be able to hold herself in ‘wise passiveness,’ and would not fret her children by continual interference, even of hand or eye––she would let them be.” (3/33-34)

For the Children’s Sake, Macaulay

A Charlotte Mason Companion, Andreola

Charlotte Mason’s Home Education Series

Ourselves, Charlotte Mason

(Contains Affiliate Links)

Scheduling Cards from ADE

Teacher Training Videos from ADE

Mindful Miss Mason

In the curriculum feast Charlotte Mason spreads for children is the subject of physical geography. This podcast episode will define how physical geography fits into the curriculum and the way it was developed throughout the forms.

Listen Now:

Home Education (Volume 1), Part II, Chapter IX

“Small Things may teach Great…Pictorial Geography.––But the mother, who knows better, will find a hundred opportunities to teach geography by the way: a duck-pond is a lake or an inland sea; any brooklet will serve to illustrate the great rivers of the world; a hillock grows into a mountain––an Alpine system; a hazel-copse suggests the mighty forests of the Amazon; a reedy swamp, the rice-fields of China; a meadow, the boundless prairies of the West; the pretty purple flowers of the common mallow is a text whereon to hang the cotton fields of the Southern States: indeed, the whole field of pictorial geography––maps may wait until by-and-by––may be covered in this way.” (1/72)

“The knowledge to be acquired must be gained by the experiences and discoveries of the children themselves. … the children during their daily outings should observe for themselves the action of wind, frost, and rain, the alteration caused to the landscape by a flood. Let a child once see for himself the action of ice on the rocks, how the windings of a stream are due to the peculiarities of the land, that the formation of a lake is similar to that of a roadside puddle, and there will be no more difficulty in learning or remembering the scientific terms which at the outset seemed hard. Moreover, instead of being dependent on their book for diagrams, the children will be able to draw these from their own observations, thus assuring full comprehension of the subject studied.” (Heath, C.N. The Uses of Books in Geography. PR 14)

Elementary Geography (Ambleside Geography Book I), Charlotte Mason (Online here)

Madam How and Lady Why, Kingsley

Outdoor Geography, Hatch

Physical Geography, Geikie (online here)

Physiography, Huxley

Last Child in the Woods, Louv

(Contains Affiliate Links)

Physical Geography in the Early Years through Form I

Geography Overview PDF

“Nature Study”, C. Cooper, Parents’ Review, Volume 20, pp.  337-348

Scouting Parents’ Review Pamphlet

Episode 131: Scouting

Listen Now:

“Education should be by Things and by Books.” (3/231)

“Supply them with books of calibre to give the intellect something to grapple with.” (5/257)

“Thus, a boy’s head may be so full of his stamp collection or of the next cricket match that there is no room in it for bigger things. The stamps and the cricket are all right, but it is not all right by any means to miss the opportunities of great interests that come to us and pass unnoticed, while we think only of these small matters. Not only so: boys and girls may be so full of marks and places, prizes and scholarships, that they never see that their studies are meant to unlock the door for them into this or that region of intellectual joy and interest. School and college over, their books are shut for ever. When they become men and women, they still live among narrow interests, with hardly an outlook upon the wide world, past or present. This is to be the slaves of knowledge and not its joyful masters. Let it be said of us as it was of the late Bishop of London, ‘His was the rare gift of mastering knowledge as his splendid servant, not being himself mastered by it as its weary slave.'” (4/I/44)

The Shallows, Nicholas Carr

Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv

The Tech-Wise Family, Andy Crouch

(Contains Affiliate Links)

NEA Studies: Reading at Risk & To Read or Not To Read

“Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr

Philip Yancey’s article for the Washington Post

Story Warren Blog

New Article in the NY Times on Digital Influences