Spreading the feast of the Charlotte Mason method of education through weekly podcasts. Join us for short discussions that provide information, examples, and encouragement to the homeschool parents putting CM's ideas into practice in their homes.
This season, as we explore finding balance in the Charlotte Mason Method, we are interviewing people who have been able to find balance in their various contexts. This episode is an interview with Helen Swaveley, a seasoned home-educating parent, as she offers her perspective on how the Charlotte Mason’s method gives balance to our students in high school and beyond.
This Charlotte Mason podcast episode is a re-aired, re-visit to a common question we receive: bringing children into the Mason method from previous school experiences. What are the approaches that help children of various ages transition, what are realistic expectations, and how do we help them adjust to a different way of doing lessons?
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“The success of such a school demands rare qualities in the teacher––high culture, some knowledge of psychology and of the art of education; intense sympathy with the children, much tact, much common sense, much common information, much ‘joyousness of nature,’ and much governing power…” (Vol. 1, p. 178)
“Our aim in Education is to give a Full Life.––We begin to see what we want. Children make large demands upon us. We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests. Thou hast set my feet in a large room; should be the glad cry of every intelligent soul. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking––the strain would be too great––but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest. We cannot give the children these interests; we prefer that they should never say they have learned botany or conchology, geology or astronomy. The question is not,––how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education––but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?” (Vol. 3, p. 170-171)
A perennial question those interested in the Charlotte Mason Method want to find out is how children raised in the method fare as they move on from homeschooling. At the 2024 ADE at HOME {Virtual} Conference Jono Kiser talked with three former CM students about their adjustment and experience. We bring you the audio from this interview as part of our occasional Voices of the Conference series.
The Charlotte Mason Method is an all-encompassing method of education for all of life, and therefore, there are many ways we can fall out of balance as we apply it in our homes and schools. Today, we are discussing the pitfalls of imbalance we face as relates to our students doing the work of their education. We discuss finding the balance between challenging our students but not pushing them, how the wide curriculum meets them where they are at without pigeonholing them, and how we teachers must practice Masterly Inactivity to allow them to do the work of their own education.
Listen Now:
“A Code of Education in the Gospels, expressly laid down by Christ. It is summed up in three commandments … Take heed that ye OFFEND not––DESPISE not––HINDER not––one of these little ones.” (1/12)
“Therefore we do not feel it is lawful in the early days of a child’s life to select certain subjects for his education to the exclusion of others; … but we endeavour that he shall have relations of pleasure and intimacy established with as many as possible of the interests proper to him; not learning a slight or incomplete smattering about this or that subject, but plunging into vital knowledge, with a great field before him which in all his life he will not be able to explore.” (3/223)
“Our deadly error is to suppose that we are his showman to the universe; and, not only so, but that there is no community at all between child and universe unless such as we choose to set up.” (3/188)
This season, as we explore finding balance in the Charlotte Mason Method, we are interviewing people who have been able to find balance in their various contexts. This episode is an interview with Michelle Riesgraf to learn how she balances her very full life as CM homeschooling mom and wife with all her other duties with her family serving inner-city kids on a working farm. While she shares specific challenges of her farming life, Michelle offers wisdom for us all in parenting, educating (and choosing co-ops), and living as the born persons we all are.
