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 Sarah Potter who made a big change in her homeschool after graduating the first of her six children and enrolling her remaining students in a not-so-local hybrid CM Cottage School. Sarah shares the factors that led her to make this decision, the hard parts as well as the wonderful benefits her family has experienced being a part of Living Education Academy.
Often when we encounter a difficulty in our Charlotte Mason education, the problem lies not in the books and materials, but rather in a mismatch between our expectations and the reality we see before us. In this episode of the podcast, we explore the unbalanced expectations we consciously and unconsciously embrace that are at odds with the outcomes Charlotte Mason expected. In returning to the principles of our educational method, we can find balance, and thereby, peace.
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“If we realise that the mind and knowledge are like two members of a ball and socket joint, two limbs of a pair of scissors, fitted to each other, necessary to each other and acting only in concert, we shall understand that our function as teachers is to supply children with the rations of knowledge which they require; and that the rest, character and conduct, efficiency and ability…take care of themselves.” (6/241)
“We need not ask what the girl or boy likes. She very often likes the twaddle of goody-goody storybooks, he like condiments, highly-spices tales of adventure. We are all capable of liking mental food of a poor quality.” (3/168)
“It is a wide progamme founded on the educational rights of man; wide, but we may not say it is impossible nor may we pick and choose and educate him in this direction but not that…Our part it seems to me is to give a child a vital hold upon as many as possible of those relationships proper to him.” (6/157)
“Therefore, if the business of teaching be to furnish the child with ideas, any teaching which does not leave him possessed of a new mental image has, by so far, missed its mark. It is not too much to say that a morning in which a child receives no new idea is a morning wasted, however closely the little student has been kept at his books.” (1/173)”If it is the best a child can do and shows interest and effort, then it is satisfactory or ‘good'” (Exam Pamphlet)
Charlotte Mason viewed all educational possibilities as fitting into one or the other of two schools of philosophy: Materialism and Idealism. Instead, she offers a “middle way,” a new path that draws on the strengths of both schools. The portion of Parents and Children where she discusses these ideas is dense. In this episode of the podcast, Jessica Becker guides us through what Miss Mason had to say, and, more importantly, why it is essential for parents and teachers to find balance between these two educational extremes.
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Parents and Children (Volume 2), Charlotte Mason, chapters 11-13
“Probably the chief source of weakness in our attempt to formulate a science of education is that we do not perceive that education is the outcome of philosophy. We deal with the issue and ignore the source. Hence our efforts lack continuity and definite aim. We are content to pick up a suggestion here, a practical hint there, without even troubling ourselves to consider what is that scheme of life of which such hints and suggestions are the output.” (2/118)
“Method implies two things-a way to an end, and step-by-step progress in that way.” (1/8)
“We need not aspire to a complete and exhaustive code of educational laws. This will· come to us duly when humanity bas, so to speak, fulfilled itself. Meantime, we have enough to go on with if we would believe it. What we have to do is to gather together and order our resources ; to put the first thing foremost and all things in sequence, and to see that education is neither more nor less than the practical application of our philosophy. Hence, if our educational thought is to be sound and effectual we must look to the philosophy which underlies it, and must be in a condition to trace every counsel of perfection for the bringing-up of children to one or other of the two schools of philosophy of which it must needs be the outcome.” (2/119-120)
“Is our system of education to be the issue of naturalism or of idealism, or is there indeed a media via?” (2/120)
“The truth is, we are in the throes of an educational revolution ; we are emerging from chaos rather than about to plunge into it; we are beginning to recognise that education is the applied science of life, and that we really have existing material in the philosophy of the ages and the science of the day to formulate an educational code whereby we may order the lives of our children and regulate our own.” (2/119)
“The functions of education may be roughly defined as twofold : (a) the formation of habits; (b) the presentation of ideas. The first depends far more largely than we recognise on physiological processes. The second is purely spiritual in origin, method, and result. Is it not possible that here we have the meeting-point of the two philosophies which have divided mankind since men began to think about their thoughts and ways? Both are right ; both are necessary; both have their full activity in the development of a human being at his best.” (2/125)
“For a habit is set up by following out an initial idea with a long sequence of corresponding acts. You tell a child that the Great Duke slept in so narrow a bed that he could not turn over, because, said he, ‘ When you want to turn over it’s time to get up.’ The boy does not wish to get up in the morning, but he does wish to be like the hero of Waterloo. You stimulate him to act upon this idea day after day for a month or so, until the habit is formed, and it is just as easy as not to get up in good time.” (2/125)
“You may bring your horse to the water, but you can’t make him drink; and you may present ideas of the fittest to the mind of the child; but you do not know in the least which he will take, and which he will reject.” (2/127)
“Our part is to see that his educational plat is constantly replenished with fit and inspiring ideas, and then we must needs leave it to the child’s own appetite to take which he will have, and as much as he requires.” (2/127)
“We shall not be content that they learn geography, history, Latin, what not,-we shall ask what salient ideas are presented in each such study, and how will these ideas affect the intellectual and moral development of the child.” (2/127)
“We shall probably differ from him in many matters of detail, but we shall most likely be inclined to agree with his conclusion that, not some subject of mere utility, but moral and social science conveyed by means of history, literature, or otherwise, is the one subject which we are not at liberty to leave out from the curriculum of’ a being breathing thoughtful breath.'” (2/127-28)
“Two things are necessary. First, we must introduce into the study of each science the philosophic spirit and method, general views, the search for the most general principles and conclusions. We must then reduce the different sciences to unity by a sound training in philosophy, which will be as obligatory to students in science as to students in literature. . . • Scientific truths, said Descartes, are battles won ; describe to the young the principal and most heroic of these battles; you will thus interest them in the results of science, and you will develop in them a scientific spirit by means of the enthusiasm for the conquest of truth; you will make them see the power of the reasoning which has led to discoveries in the past, and which will do so again in the future. How interesting arithmetic and geometry might be if we gave a short history of their principal theorems; if the child were mentally present at the labours of a Pythagoras, a Plato, a Euclid, or in modern times of a Viete, a Descartes, a Pascal, or a Leibnitz. Great theories, instead of being lifeless and anonymous abstractions, would become human, living truths, each with its own history, like a statue by Michael Angelo, or like a painting by Raphael.” (2/128)
Charlotte Mason firmly believed that novels are our greatest teachers, hence why she included them as a major serving in the feast that nourishes our children’s education. This episode was recorded live at the ADE At Home conference, February 7, 2025, with Nicole, Emily, and Liz leading a discussion with attendees who had read the book and come to what they gleaned from Miss Gaskell’s groundbreaking and somewhat controversial novel, Ruth. If you have read the book, you will enjoy listening to what we all gleaned from this story, and if you have not, you will be inspired to read it.
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 Angie Cole, a home-educating mom from Arizona, who has cultivated unique learning communities for herself and her four children. We understand the need for balance in determining how to incorporate social time and group learning while homeschooling and protecting morning lesson time. Angie has a lot of wisdom and experience to share with us!
