Can you make a child care about their education? Or about anything, let alone the many things that Charlotte Mason commended? We tackle these questions in this episode of the podcast, exploring the reasons for a seeming indifference in our students as well as how we can come alongside them and help them grow in their love for knowledge.
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“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 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 ? I know you may bring a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink. What I complain of is that we do not bring our horse to the water. We give him miserable little text-books, mere compendiums of facts, which he is to learn off and say and produce at an examination; or we give him various knowledge in the form of warm diluents, prepared by his teacher with perhaps some grains of living thought to the gallon. And all the time we have books, books teeming with ideas fresh from the minds of thinkers upon every subject to which we can wish to introduce children.” (3/171-172)
“I know you may bring a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink. What I complain of is that we do not bring our horse to the water. We give him miserable little text-books, mere compendiums of facts, which he is to learn off and say and produce at an examination; or we give him various knowledge in the form of warm diluents, prepared by his teacher with perhaps some grains of living thought to the gallon. And all the time we have books, books teeming with ideas fresh from the minds of thinkers upon every subject to which we can wish to introduce children. The fact is, we undervalue children.” (3/172)
“In conclusion, the parent must educate himself up to the level of the child, or if he cannot do this, he must never discourage. Children with their natural irresponsibleness and ignorance of what is in them, will take up various subjects with more or less vigor, only to drop them perhaps, before finally lighting upon the one thing of absorbing interest. Be patient with these vagaries and the litter they make if they are wholesome and healthy; above all do not scoff at this inconsequence, and if their particular hobbies are not according to your especial taste remember that— “There are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit.” (PR 22 p. 792)
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