This Charlotte Mason podcast episode focuses on listener questions regarding bringing children into the Mason method from other previous school experiences. What are the approaches that help children of various ages transition, what are realistic expectations, and how do we help them adjust to a different way of doing lessons?

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“The success of such a school demands rare qualities in the teacher––high culture, some knowledge of psychology and of the art of education; intense sympathy with the children, much tact, much common sense, much common information, much ‘joyousness of nature,’ and much governing power…” (Vol. 1, p. 178)

“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 initiate an immense number of interests. Thou 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?” (Vol. 3, p. 170-171)

I Buy a School, Marion Berry

(Contains affiliate links)

Term examinations in Charlotte Mason’s schools were mandatory. This podcast explores the purpose of examinations, what was covered, and how we evaluate our child’s performance.

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“The children write with perfect understanding as far as they go and there is rarely a ‘howler’ in hundreds of sets of papers. They have an enviable power of getting at the gist of a book or subject. Sometimes they are asked to write verses about a personage or an event; the result is not remarkable by way of poetry, but sums up a good deal of thoughtful reading in a delightful way…” (Vol. 6, p. 242)

“During the examinations, which last a week, the children cover say from twenty to sixty sheets of Cambridge paper, according to age and class; but if ten times as many questions were set on the work studied most likely they would cover ten times as much paper.” (Vol. 6, p. 241)

“The terminal examinations are of great importance. They are not merely and chiefly tests of knowledge but records which are likely to be permanent.” (Vol. 6, p. 272)

If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent’s Review articles that would be helpful for this episode’s topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy.

School Education, Appendix II

Sample PNEU Examinations from Programme 93

Sample PNEU Examinations from Programme 95 (click each link to see full Programme and Examination for each Form)

This Q&A episode of the Charlotte Mason podcast addresses such varied topics as introducing the Book of Centuries, dawdling and disinterested beginners, preschoolers participation, and transitioning students to independent reading.

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“In the first place, never let the child dawdle over copybook or sum, sit dreaming with his book before him. When a child grows stupid over a lesson, it is time to put it away. Let him do another lesson as unlike the last as possible, and then go back with freshened wits to his unfinished task.” (Vol. 1, p. 141)

“That the claims of the schoolroom should not be allowed to encroach on the child’s right to long hours daily for exercise and investigation.” (Vol. 1, p. 177)

“Form IIB has a considerable programme of reading, that is, not the mere mechanical exercise of reading but the reading of certain books. Therefore it is necessary that two years should be spent in Form IA and that in the second of these two years the children should read a good deal of the set work for themselves.” (Vol. 6, pp. 181-182)

“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.” (Vol. 1, p. 227)

Made in the … Books by Christine Price

History of Everyday Things, Quennell

Colonial Craftsmen, Tunis (and all his other books)

A Museum of Early American Tools by Eric Sloane (and many of his other books)

What People Wore, Gorsline

(Contains affiliate links)

Charlotte Mason’s feast spreads to include the subject of architecture. A Delectable Education podcast this week is an interview with Sandra Zuidema who has discovered the joy of exploring the ideas in architecture, its history, people, structures and culture and shares ways she has introduced this to her children.

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“But any sketch of the history teaching in Forms V and VI in a given period depends upon a notice of the ‘literature’ set; for plays, novels, essays, ‘lives,’ poems, are all pressed into service and where it is possible, the architecture, painting, etc., which the period produced.” (Vol. 6, pp. 177-178)

“We do what is possible to introduce children to Architecture; and we practise clay-modelling and the various artistic handicrafts, but there is nothing unusual in our work in these directions.” (Vol. 6, p. 217)

“I shall touch later upon the burning question of a curriculum which shall furnish children, not with dry bones of fact, but with fact clothed upon with the living flesh, breathed into by the vital spirit of quickening ideas.” (Vol. 3, p. 124)

If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent’s Review articles that would be helpful for this episode’s topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy.

An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Education (Volume 6), Book I, Chapter 10, Section II: Art

Filippo’s Dome, Rockwell

Story of Architecture, Waterhouse

Child’s History of Art, Hiller

Architecture Shown to the Children, Wynne

Concise History of Western Architecture, Jordan

(Contains affiliate links)

In a Large Room Retreat

Golden Hours of Delight Retreat

Charlotte Mason Institute

The Duomo, Florence

Chartres Cathedral

Flying Buttresses

Rose Windows

Amiens Cathedral

Hagia Sophia, Istanbul

This podcast addresses listener questions about implementing a Charlotte Mason education. How do we teach multiple children at different levels, keep up with all the books being read, teach the subject of recitation, get our children to talk about what they’re learning?

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“When a child is reading, he should not be teased with questions as to the meaning of what he has read, the signification of this word or that; what is annoying to older people is equally annoying to children. Besides, it is not of the least consequence that they should be able to give the meaning of every word they read. A knowledge of meanings, that is, an ample and correct vocabulary, is only arrived at in one way––by the habit of reading. A child unconsciously gets the meaning of a new word from the context, if not the first time he meets with it, then the second or the third: but he is on the look-out, and will find out for himself the sense of any expression he does not understand. Direct questions on the subject-matter of what a child has read are always a mistake. Let him narrate what he has read, or some part of it. He enjoys this sort of consecutive reproduction, but abominates every question in the nature of a riddle. If there must be riddles, let it be his to ask and the teacher’s to direct him the answer. Questions that lead to a side issue or to a personal view are allowable because these interest children––’What would you have done in his place?'” (Vol. 1, pp. 228-229)

“Long ago, I was in the habit of hearing this axiom quoted by a philosophical old friend: “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.” I have failed to trace the saying to its source, but a conviction of its importance has been growing upon me during the last forty years. It tacitly prohibits questioning from without; (this does not, of course, affect the Socratic use of questioning for purposes of moral conviction); and it is necessary to intellectual certainty, to the act of knowing. For example, to secure a conversation or an incident, we ‘go over it in our minds’; that is, the mind puts itself through the process of self-questioning which I have indicated. This is what happens in the narrating of a passage read: each new consecutive incident or statement arrives because the mind asks itself,––”What next?” For this reason it is important that only one reading should be allowed; efforts to memorise weaken the power of attention, the proper activity of the mind; if it is desirable to ask questions in order to emphasize certain points, these should be asked after and not before, or during, the act of narration.” (Vol. 6, p. 17)

“A small English boy of nine living in Japan, remarked, “Isn’t it fun, Mother, learning all these things? Everything seems to fit into something else.” The boy had not found out the whole secret; everything fitted into something within himself.” (vol. 6, pp. 156-157)

If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent’s Review articles that would be helpful for this episode’s topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy.

Home Education, Part V, Chapter VIII

Recitation: The Children’s Art, Arthur Burrell

In A Large Room Retreat

TruthQuest History