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.
Charlotte Mason was convinced that children–all children–are born persons and advocated for “a liberal education for all.” This interview is with Nicolle Hutchinson who founded and administrates Gillingham Charter School in Pottsville, PA. Once Mrs. Hutchinson, a public school teacher, discovered Charlotte Mason, she knew there was a way to make public education life-giving. In this interview, she shares about her journey to Charlotte Mason’s method, her growing dream to bring her principles and practices to publicly educated children, and the formation and continuation of her charter school.
This month’s Charlotte Mason Q&A episode addresses common challenges most families face: how much should the child’s preferences contribute to book selection, how can we most effectively combine various age and ability levels, and that precarious balance of the day-to-day routine–specifically, how do the ADE ladies personally budget and manage their daily schedules.
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“In home schoolrooms where there are children in A as well as in B, both Forms may work together, doing the work of A or B as they are able, but more work must be expected from IA.” (N.B. 1 on the Form 1 Programmes)
“This habit should be begun early; so soon as the child can read at all, he should read for himself, and to himself, history, legends, fairy tales, and other suitable matter.” (1/227)
Charlotte Mason’s method works in all kinds of homes and with every kind of child. This podcast interview with Jenny Schreiner demonstrates this perfectly. If you have ever felt overwhelmed, just imagine seven children under 11, special needs children, adopted children, being new to and trying to implement Charlotte Mason. Listen be refreshed and encouraged by Jenny’s vulnerable and valuable lessons in her role as mother and teacher.
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[Jenny’s Family]
“If mothers could learn to do for themselves what they do for their children when these are overdone, we should have happier households. Let the mother go out to play! If she would only have courage to let everything go when life becomes too tense, and just take a day, or half a day, out in the fields, or with a favourite book, or in a picture gallery looking long and well at just two or three pictures, or in bed, without the children, life would go on far more happily for both children and parents. The mother would be able to hold herself in ‘wise passiveness,’ and would not fret her children by continual interference, even of hand or eye––she would let them be.” (3/33-34)
“We ought to do so much for our children, and are able to do so much for them, that we begin to think everything rests with us and that we should never intermit for a moment our conscious action on the young minds and hearts about us. Our endeavours become fussy and restless. We are too much with our children, ‘late and soon.’ We try to dominate them too much, even when we fail to govern, and we are unable to perceive that wise and purposeful letting alone is the best part of education. But this form of error arises from a defect of our qualities. We may take heart. We have the qualities, and all that is wanted is adjustment; to this we must give our time and attention.” (3/27-28)
Charlotte Mason grounded her educational method on definite principles and practices–and the subject of mathematics is no exception. Today’s guest, Emily Al-Khatib is a math teacher herself and shares her perspective on the beauty and truth of using Miss Mason’s methods in this part of the feast.
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“Arithmetic is valuable as a means of training children in habits of strict accuracy, but the ingenuity which makes this exact science tend to foster slipshod habits of mind, a disregard of truth and common honesty, is worthy of admiration! The copying, prompting, telling, helping over difficulties, working with an eye to the answer which he knows, that are allowed in the arithmetic lesson, under an inferior teacher, are enough to vitiate any child; and quite as bad as these is the habit of allowing that a sum is nearly right, two figures wrong, and so on, and letting the child work it over again. Pronounce a sum wrong, or right––it cannot be something between the two. That which is wrong must remain wrong: the child must not be let run away with the notion that wrong can be mended into right. The future is before him: he may get the next sum right, and the wise teacher will make it her business to see that he does, and that he starts with new hope. But the wrong sum must just be let alone.” (1/260-261)
“Mathematics depend upon the teacher rather than upon the text-book and few subjects are worse taught; chiefly because teachers have seldom time to give the inspiring ideas, what Coleridge calls, the ‘Captain’ ideas, which should quicken imagination.” (6/233)
“Therefore his progress must be carefully graduated; but there is no subject in which the teacher has a more delightful consciousness of drawing out from day to day new power in the child. Do not offer him a crutch: it is in his own power he must go. Give him short sums, in words rather than in figures, and excite him in the enthusiasm which produces concentrated attention and rapid work. Let his arithmetic lesson be to the child a daily exercise in clear thinking and rapid, careful execution, and his mental growth will be as obvious as the sprouting of seedlings in the spring.” (1/261)
“I have said much of history and science, but mathematics, a mountainous land which pays the climber, makes its appeal to mind, and good teachers know that they may not drown their teaching in verbiage.” (6/51)
“The practical value of arithmetic to persons in every class of life goes without remark. But the use of the study in practical life is the least of its uses. The chief value of arithmetic, like that of the higher mathematics, lies in the training it affords the reasoning powers, and in the habits of insight, readiness, accuracy, intellectual truthfulness it engenders.” (1/254)
“Never are the operations of Reason more delightful and more perfect than in mathematics. Here men do not begin to reason with a notion which causes them to lean to this side or to that. By degrees, absolute truth unfolds itself. We are so made that truth, absolute and certain truth, is a perfect joy to us; and that is the joy that mathematics afford.” (4/62-63)
Charlotte Mason sent her programmes out to thousands, but what would she say about families striking out on their own to determine their own course? It is an era of independent-minded homeschoolers; is it possible to come close to her standards for the feast and the right living books to offer? This episode explores the pros and cons of designing your own program, whether it is possible, when it is and is not wise. This episode is full of advice, encouragement, admonitions, and warnings for those who want to try, are hesitant, are too confident or too unsure of themselves to “do-it-yourself.”
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“Perhaps we should apologise for ourselves as purveyors not precisely of books but of lists of books. Every headmaster or mistress is able to draw up such lists, but think of the labour of keeping some 170 books in circulation with a number of changes every term! Here is our excuse for offering our services to much-occupied teachers. There has been talk from time to time about interfering with the liberty of teachers to choose their own books, but one might as well contend for everyman’s liberty to make his own boots! It is one of those questions of the division of labour which belong to our civilisation; and if the question of liberty be raised at all, why should we not go further and let the children choose their books? But we know very well that the liberty we worship is an elusive goddess and that we do not find it convenient to do all those things we are at liberty to do.” (6/272)
“The ‘100 Best Books for the Schoolroom’ may be put down on a list but not by me. I venture to propose one or two principles in the matter of school-books, and shall leave the far more difficult part, the application of those principles, to the reader.” (3/177)
“Sometimes, parents have the mistaken notion that the greater the number of subjects the heavier the work; though, in reality, the contrary is the case, unless the hours of study are increased. Sometimes, outside lessons in languages, music, etc., interfere; some times, health will not allow of more than an hour or two of work in the day. The children in the practising school do all the work set, and their work compares satisfactorily with the rest, though the classes have the disadvantage of changing teachers every week.” (3/286-7)
“[P]eople are slow to understand that there is no part of a child’s work at school which some philosophic principle does not underlie.” (1/240)
“The right books exist, old and new, in countless numbers, but very great care is necessary in the choice, as well as much experience of the rather whimsical tastes and distastes of children.” (3/242)
“We may not Choose or Reject Subjects.––You will see at a glance, with this Captain Idea of establishing relationships as a guide, the unwisdom of choosing or rejecting this or that subject, as being more or less useful or necessary in view of a child’s future.” (3/162-3)
“The reader will say with truth,––”I knew all this before and have always acted more or less on these principles”; and I can only point to the unusual results we obtain through adhering not ‘more or less,’ but strictly to the principles and practices I have indicated.” (6/19)
