The range of subjects related to a Charlotte Mason education is immense. Nicole, Emily, and Liz each focus on one topic or aspect of her education in this episode:  museums, examination rubrics, and what is meant by a “thinking curriculum.” Enjoy three summaries of these widely varied topics.

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Home Education (Volume 1), pp. 199-222

“This slight study of the British Museum we find very valuable; whether the children have or have not the opportunity of visiting the Museum itself, they have the hope of doing so, and, besides, their minds are awakened to the treasures of local museums.” (6/176)

“Many boys and girls take pleasure in going to school, not for the sake of what they learn there, but for the sake of the marks which give them places above certain of their classmates. They should understand that marks and places and the power to pass examinations is all they get. As Mr Ruskin once said, ‘They cram to pass and not to know; they do pass; and they don’t know.’ Knowledge as an abiding joy, comes only to those who love her for her own sake, and not to those who use her to get on in school or in life.” (4/I/79)

“…but education is of the spirit and is not to be taken in by the eye or effected by the hand ; mind appeals to mind and thought begets thought and that is how we become educated. For this reason we owe it to every child to put him in communication with great minds that he may get at great thoughts…” (6/12)

“‘The mind can know nothing save what it can produce in the form of an answer to a question put to the mind by itself.'” (6/16)

“Only to initiate; no more is permitted to them; but from this initiation will result the habits of thought and feeling which govern the man–his character, that is to say.” (1/109)

“People are naturally divided into those who read and think and those who do not read or think ; and the business of schools is to see that all their scholars shall belong to the former class; it is worth while to remember that thinking is inseparable from reading which is concerned with the content of a passage and not merely with the printed matter.” (6/31)

“This is the sort of thing that the children should go through, more or less, in every lesson-a tracing of effect from cause, or of cause from effect; a comparing of things to find out wherein they are alike, and wherein they differ; a conclusion as to causes or consequences from certain premisses.” (1/151)

“Let us take it to ourselves that great character comes out of great thoughts, and that great thought must be initiated by great thinkers; then we shall have a definite aim in education. Thinking and not doing is the source of character.” (6/278)

British Museum Book for Children, Epps

The British Museum for Children, Epps–article (Part 2 is here)

A Rough Plan for the Teaching of History–article (Part 2 is here)

Exam Planner

Exam Pamphlet

This episode discusses what Charlotte Mason advised for the early years, before formal school lessons, in the areas of reading and writing. Emily, Liz, and Nicole share from her writings, the Parents’ Review, and their own life experience about when the appropriate time is to begin these skills, how not to push, but how to encourage a young child to prepare them and make the most of their natural interest.

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Home Education (Volume 1), pp. 199-222

“…a mother’s first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet growing time, a full six years of passive, receptive life, the waking part of it spent for the most part out in the fresh air. And this, not for the gain in bodily health alone–body and soul, heart and mind, are nourished with food convenient for them when the children are let alone, let to live without friction and without stimulus amongst happy influences which incline them to be good.” (1/43)

“When should he begin? Whenever his box of letters begins to interest him. The baby of two will often be able to name half a dozen letters; and there is nothing against it so long as the finding and naming of letters is a game to him. But he must not be urged, required to show off, teased to find letters when his heart is set on other play.” (1/202)

“He loves to play at finding his letter,–‘Shew me the letter that stands for baby, etc.,’ and he does so with a look of real pride and pleasure on his face.
“This, of course, should be entirely in the nature of a game; and he should never be teased, or made to find his letters for the sake of showing off, especially when his heart is set on other things. Neither is there any need to hurry him at this stage; if he learn one form at a time, so that he can pick out all the D’s say, big and little, in a page of large print, his progress will at any rate be sure, and the ideas lasting. In naming his letters, let him use simply the sounds of the letters, thus D’ for duck, d-oll, d-og, etc.
“But he should not only be able to recognise letters when he sees them, but must picture them for himself. Give him a tray of sand, in which, with his own finger, he can make the forms of the letters–an amusement which will afford him the greatest delight, for nothing pleases a child more than the feeling of power which he has when he can do something quite by himself. In this way too, not only will his power of observation be cultivated, but he will get his first ideas of making lines and curves.” (Armitage, “First Reading Lessons,” Parents’ Review 12, p. 494)

“And now let us take our child of five and a half or six when he should first enter the home schoolroom and begin his real lessons…Can he read and write? Not always. I do not advocate definite instruction other than what has been sketched out before the child is six. Before that age, many children will have ‘taught themselves to read,’ i.e., picked it up almost without our knowing how. Other children, with the ground well-prepared, will learn reading very quickly, stimulated by the desire to read for themselves the many books they have learnt to love. Writing has possibly gone hand in hand with drawing, and in all probability dexterity has been reached in this also.” (Henrietta Franklin, “The Home Training of Children”, Parents’ Review 19)

The Trouble with Boys, Peg Tyre

Proust and the Squid, Maryanne Wolf

Better Late Than Early, Raymond Moore

Endangered Minds, Jane Healy

Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv

Episode 46: Reading

Episode 79: The Early Years

Episode 182: Visualization

Wooden Letters

First Reading Lessons, Miss Armitage

The Home Training of Children, Mrs. Franklin

This installment of “Charlotte Mason in Our Home” is an interview with Ryan Morgan, mother of five, wife of a frequently deployed husband, who has educated with Charlotte Mason’s method through thick and thin and has not found her method wanting. Ryan’s story is inspirational and praiseworthy. Whether you are just beginning, or a veteran, listen and be encouraged that this education is truly life-giving.

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The Girls’ Guide to Home Skills, Martha Greene

Laying Down the Rails

Homeschool Legal Defense Association

Charlotte Mason understood a fundamental skill persons have in learning:  visualization. Emily, Liz, and Nicole focus this week’s discussion on how Ms. Mason utilized this ability in children to maximize learning across the curriculum.

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“‘Idea, the image or picture formed by the mind of anything external, whether sensible or spiritual.’––so, the dictionary; 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.” (1/173)

“Of course, that which they visualize, clearly, they know; it is a life possession.” (1/292)

“With younger children narration of a whole or part of the lesson is the best means to adopt, because it is not only a training in accurate and coherent thought, and an exercise in correctness of expression, but also the very fact of narrating causes the children to make a vivid mental picture of what they describe.” (Notes on Criticism Lessons, L’Umile Pianta, 1906)

“He will not be satisfied with the result, but he will find that in the act of narrating every power of his mind comes into play, that points and bearings which he had not observed are brought out; that the whole is visualised and brought into relief in an extraordinary way; in fact, that particular scene or argument has become part of his personal experience; he knows, he has assimilated, what he has read.” (Charlotte Mason, A Liberal Education: Theory, PR 27/655)

“So exceedingly delightful is this faculty of taking mental photographs, exact images, of the ‘beauties of Nature’ we go about the world for the refreshment of seeing, that it is worth while to exercise children in another way towards this end, bearing in mind, however, that they see the near and the minute, but can only be made with an effort to look at the wide and the distant.” (1/48)

“You want the child to remember? Then secure his whole attention, the fixed gaze of his mind, as it were, upon the fact to be remembered then he will have it: by a sort of photographic (!) process, that fact or idea is ‘taken’ by his brain, and when he is an old man, perhaps the memory of it will flash across him.” (1/156-157)

“But let the imaginations of children be stored with the pictures, their minds nourished upon the words [of Scripture].” (1/249)

“Accustom him from the first to shut his eyes and spell the word he has made. This is important…accustom him to see the letters in the word and he will do so without effort…but the child must learn to know them at sight; he must recognise ‘which,’ precisely as he recognises ‘B,’ because he has seen it before, been made to look at it with interest, so that the pattern of the word is stamped on his retentive brain.” (1/203-204)

“…it is a rare thing for any part of any lesson to flash upon them with the vivdness which leaves a mental picture behind. 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…An idea is more than an image or a picture; it is, so to speak, a spiritual germ, endowed with vital force–with power, that is, to grow, and to produce after its kind.” (1/173)

“This power of visualization is much encouraged in the P.U.S…the child who has been thoroughly taught to ‘look’ will be the man or woman who will derive the most pleasure out of life later on.” (Evans, PR 22, p. 483)

“This is what we wish to do for children in teaching them to draw–to cause the eye to rest, not unconsciously, but consciously, on some object of beauty which will leave in their minds an image of delight for all their lives to come.” (1/313)