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.
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February is the tough month to get through as a homeschooler. To give us all a little boost of enthusiasm, inspiration, and energy, the ladies of A Delectable Education are hosting an online Charlotte Mason conference. Perhaps you have never been able to attend a conference for any of a dozen reasons. Here is your opportunity, especially if you are curious about a Charlotte Mason way of teaching.
February 20, 2021, from 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (EST), we will be presenting many different subjects, including some that are often neglected, followed by an evening 90 minute Q&A session with Liz Cottrill, Emily Kiser, and Nicole Williams from 6:30-8:00 pm (EST). Watch live lessons being demonstrated and listen to talks on schooling and family relationships from our 10 guest speakers, in addition to ourselves. Enjoy the convenience and comfort of staying at home. Registration begins today, January 15. Cost is $50 (if you are a member of our Patreon Community, see your account for a discount code).
Sessions are between 20 and 45 minutes and will be available to you until April 12 so that you may return to some and take in those you could not participate in on the day of the original event.
Of supreme importance to homeschool and other educators is knowing who Charlotte Mason called “The Supreme Educator of all mankind”–the Holy Spirit. This podcast episode discusses the implications of her capstone point in the synopsis, the role of the Holy Spirit in education.
Listen Now:
Home Education (Volume 1), pp. 142-144 Parents and Children (Volume 2), pp. 22-23 School Education (Volume 3), 95-96, 117-118, 125, 146, 153-155
[20] 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.
“…but the great recognition, [is] that God the Holy Spirit is Himself, personally, the Imparter of knowledge, the Instructor of youth, the Inspirer of genius…” (2/271)
“In the things of science, in the things of art, in the things of practical everyday life, his God doth instruct him and doth teach him, her God doth instruct her and doth teacher her. Let this be the mother’s key to the whole of the education of each boy and each girl; not of her children; the divine Spirit does not work with nouns of multitude, but with each single child. Because He is infinite, the whole world is not too great a school for this indefatigable Teacher, and because He is infinite, He is able to give the whole of his infinite attention for the whole time to each one of his multitudinous pupils. We do not sufficiently rejoice in the wealth that the infinite nature of our God brings to each of us.” (2/273)
“This great recognition resolves that discord in our lives of which most of us are, more or less, aware. … Is it not a fact that the spiritual life is exigeant, demands our sole interest and concentrated energies? Yet the claims of intellect––mind, of the æsthetic sense––taste, press upon us urgently. We must think, we must know, we must rejoice in and create the beautiful. And if all the burning thoughts that stir in the minds of men, all the beautiful conceptions they give birth to, are things apart from God, then we too must have a separate life, a life apart from God, a division of ourselves into secular and religious––discord and unrest. We believe that this is the fertile source of the unfaith of the day, especially in young and ardent minds. The claims of intellect are urgent; the intellectual life is a necessity not to be foregone at any hazard. … But once the intimate relation, the relation of Teacher and taught in all things of the mind and spirit, be fully recognised, our feet are set in a large room; there is space for free development in all directions, and this free and joyous development, whether of intellect or heart, is recognised as a Godward movement. (2/274-75)
“Such a recognition of the work of the Holy Spirit as the Educator of mankind, in things intellectual as well as in things moral and spiritual, gives us … a sense of harmony in our efforts and of acceptance of all that we are.” (2/276)
“This idea of all education springing from and resting upon our relation to Almighty God is one which we have ever laboured to enforce. We take a very distinct stand upon this point. 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)
“How to fortify the children against the doubts of which the air is full, is an anxious question. Three courses are open: to teach as we of an older generation have been taught, and to let them bide their time and their chance; to attempt to deal with the doubts and difficulties which have turned up, or are likely to turn up; or, to give children such hold upon vital truth, and at the same time such an outlook upon current thought, that they shall be landed on the safe side of the controversies of their day, open to truth, in however new a light presented, and safeguarded against mortal error.” (2/41)
“The Mind of the Child is ‘Good Ground.’––Their keen sensitiveness to spiritual influences is not due to ignorance on the part of the children. It is we, not they, who are in error. The whole tendency of modern biological thought is to confirm the teaching of the Bible: the ideas which quicken come from above; the mind of the little child is an open field, surely ‘good ground,’ where, morning by morning, the sower goes forth to sow, and the seed is the Word. All our teaching of children should be given reverently, with the humble sense that we are invited in this matter to co-operate with the Holy Spirit; but it should be given dutifully and diligently, with the awful sense that our co-operation would appear to be made a condition of the Divine action; that the Saviour of the world pleads with us to ‘suffer the little children to come unto Me,’ as if we had the power to hinder, as we know that we have.” (2/48)
“The problem before the educator is to give the child control over his own nature … In looking for a solution of this problem, I do not undervalue the Divine grace––far otherwise; but we do not always make enough of the fact that Divine grace is exerted on the lines of enlightened human effort; that the parent, for instance, who takes the trouble to understand what he is about in educating his child, deserves, and assuredly gets, support from above; and that Rebecca, let us say, had no right to bring up her son to be “thou worm, Jacob,” in the trust that Divine grace would, speaking reverently, pull him through. Being a pious man, the son of pious parents, he was pulled through, but his days, he complains at the end, were ‘few and evil.'” (1/104)
This Christmas Day episode is a discussion of Bible reading, a subject found in Charlotte Mason’s programs, but was for the child’s personal Bible reading. Emily, Liz, and Nicole discuss why this is an important habit for our children and how we can encourage our children in their own Bible reading.
Listen Now:
“We neglect the knowledge which cannot come without labor; that we forsake the earnest and devout study of the Bible, the one way of approach to the knowledge of God.
“…the Christianity of the Bible offers infinite scope for development in the beauty of holiness and in the knowledge of our illimitable God….Hence, our business is before all things, to make ourselves acquainted with the text…It is better that we should, in the first place, try our own efforts at interpretation;…orderly study with the occasional use of a sound commentary, is to be recommended…The error that underlies these aids to private devotion…is that their tendency is to magnify ourselves and our occasions, while they create little or no desire for the best knowledge. It is probable that even our lame efforts at reading with understanding are more profitable than the best instruction. Wait upon God as the dry earth waits upon water…But as the friend listens to the voice, pours over the written word of his friend, so the lover of God searches the Bible for the fuller knowledge he craves.” (4/1/82-84)
“Knowledge of God is of the firstborn affinities…to be got at most directly through the Bible. The learner knows only by the independent act of knowing which he performs for himself.” (6/254)
“The habit of hearing, and later, of reading the Bible, is one to establish at an early age.” (3/142)
“But while pressing the importance of habits of prayer and devotional reading, it should be remembered that children are little formalists by nature, and that they should not be encouraged in long readings or long prayers with a notion of any merit in such exercises.” (3/143)
“The habit of regularity in children’s devotions is very important.” (3/142)
For every homeschool teacher, Charlotte Mason’s wisdom on the child’s personality is invaluable. This next installment of the synopsis, points 16-19, covers these two aspects, aspects the teacher has an obligation to understand and instruct their children in.
Listen Now:
Home Education (Volume 1), Part V, Chapter I
Ourselves (Volume 4), Book I, Chapter VI; Book II, Part II
An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Education (Volume 6), Chapters VIII & IX
[16] There are two guides to moral and intellectual self management to offer to children, which we may call ‘the way of the will’ and ‘the way of the reason.’
[17] The way of the will : Children should be taught, (a) to distinguish between ‘I want’ and ‘I will.’ (b) That the way to will effectively is to tum our thoughts from that which we desire but do not will. (c) That the best way to turn our thoughts is to think of or do some quite different thing, entertaining or interesting. (d) That after a little rest in this way, the will returns to its work with new vigour. (This adjunct of the will is familiar to us as diversion, whose office it is to ease us for a time from will effort, that we may ‘ will ‘ again with added power. The use of suggestion as an aid to the will is to be deprecated, as tending to stultify and stereotype character. It would seem that spontaneity is a condition of development, and that human nature needs the discipline of failure as well as of success.)
[18] The way of reason: We teach children, too, not to ‘lean (too confidently) to their own understanding’; because the function of reason is to give logical demonstration (a) of mathematical truth, (b) of an initial idea, accepted by the will. In the former case, reason is, practically, an infallible guide, but in the latter, it is not always a safe one; for, whether that idea be right or wrong, reason will confirm it by irrefragable proofs.
[19] Therefore, children should be taught, as they become mature enough to understand such teaching, that the chief responsibility which rests on them as persons is the acceptance or rejection of ideas. To help them in this choice we give them principles of conduct, and a wide range of the knowledge fitted to them. These principles should save children from some of the loose thinking and heedless action which cause most of us to live at a lower level than we need.
“…the business of reason is rather to prove for us what we think is right, than to bring us to conclusions which are right in themselves.” (4/64)
“…what the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies. The mind doesn’t direct the will. The mind is actually captive to what the will wants, and the will itself, in turn, is captive to what the heart wants.” (Dr. Ashley Null)
“Logic gives us the very formula of reason, and that which is logically proved is not necessarily right.” (6/144)
“It is madness to let children face a debatable world with only, say, a mathematical preparation. If our business were to train their power of reasoning, such a training would no doubt be of service; but the power is there already, and only wants material to work upon.” (6/147)
“Every mother knows how intensely reasonable a child is and how difficult it is to answer his quite logical and foolishly wrong conclusions. So we need not be deterred from dealing with serious matters with these young neophytes, but only as the occasion occurs; we may not run the risk of boring them with the great questions of life while it is our business to send them forth assured.” (6/150-151)
“Children should know that such things are before them also; that whenever they want to do wrong capital reasons for doing the wrong thing will occur to them. But, happily, when they want to do right no less cogent reasons for right doing will appear.” (6/142)
We are now accepting appointments for the 2021 Calendar year! We would be happy to help you make an individual curriculum plan for your family, troubleshoot some of your daily struggles, or walk you through how to apply Miss Mason’s method in your homeschool.
Our calendar typically fills up quickly through spring/summer, so we encourage you schedule your appointment as soon as possible.
Please visit our Consulting page to reserve your consultation today!
