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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Charlotte Mason’s Method can seem confusing and difficult to implement, especially if we view it as a list of do’s and don’ts. But when we learn to see it as a unified whole, it is revealed as a truly simple and cohesive method of education.
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“Time is insufficient for teachers as well as for scholars. How then find room for a new subject ? Where place it ? What would give way for it ? The answer is easy. The art of reading can only benefit education where it adds nothing, eliminates nothing, supersedes nothing, but by assimilation is our aid to all things. It is not a tax but an aid to memory ; it does not fatigue, but relieves and supports the mind. It is to education what the gastric juice is to the nutritive process : it causes and facilitates digestion ; it is not in itself a new factor, but a component part of all the other factors.” (Short Treatise on Reading Aloud. PR 17, p 129)
“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. I suppose the difficulties are of the sort that Lister had to contend with ; every surgeon knew that his instruments and appurtenances should be kept clean, but the saving of millions of lives has resulted from the adoption of the great surgeon’s antiseptic treatment; that is from the substitution of exact principles scrupulously applied for the rather casual ‘ more or less ‘ methods of earlier days.” (6/19)
“Therefore we do not feel it is lawful in the early days of a child’s life to select certain subjects for his education to the exclusion of others; … but we endeavour that he shall have relations of pleasure and intimacy established with as many as possible of the interests proper to him; not learning a slight or incomplete smattering about this or that subject, but plunging into vital knowledge, with a great field before him which in all his life he will not be able to explore.” (3/223)
“As we have already urged, there is but one right way, that is, children must do the work for themselves.” (6/99)
“The children, not the teachers, are the responsible persons ; they do the work by self-effort.” (6/241)
“‘The mother is qualified,’ says Pestalozzi, ‘and qualified by the Creator Himself, to become the principal agent in the development of her child ; . . . and what is demanded of her is a thinking love. • • • God has given to thy child all the faculties of our nature, but the grand point remains undecided-how shall this heart, this head, these hands, be employed? to whose service shall they be dedicated? A question the answer to which involves a futurity of happiness or misery to a life so dear to thee. Maternal love is the first agent in education.'” (1/2)
“What we cannot do with Miss Mason’s Ideal is to reduce it to lowest terms, and just in so far as we try to, so far we misrepresent it, and misunderstand it. But some of the secret undoubtedly lies in the Programmes of Work; the longer we work from those wonderful programmes the more we realise how well balanced they are; how satisfying to the hungry mind; how the subjects dovetail; how difficult it is to teach history only in history time, how it will ‘flow over’ into geography, literature, or even into such unexpected channels as arithmetic or botany.” (In Memoriam, p. 151)
“Method implies two things — a way to an end, and step-by-step progress in that way. Further, the following of a method implies an idea, a mental image, of the end or object to be arrived at.” (1/8)
“It would seem a far cry from Undine to a’ liberal education ‘ but there is a point of contact between the two ; a soul awoke within a water-sprite at the touch of love; so, I have to tell of the awakening of a ‘ general soul ‘ at the touch of knowledge. Eight years ago the ‘ soul ‘ of a class of children in a mining village school awoke simultaneously at this magic touch and has remained awake. We know that religion can awaken souls, that love makes a new man, that the call of a vocation may do it, and in the age of the Renaissance , men’s souls, the general soul, awoke to knowledge : but this appeal rarely reaches the modern soul ; and, notwithstanding the pleasantness attending lessons and marks in all our schools, I believe the ardour for knowledge in the children of this mining village is a phenomenon that indicates new possibilities. Already many thousands of the children of the Empire had experienced this intellectual conversion, but they were the children of educated persons. To find that the children of a mining population were equally responsive seemed to open a new hope for the world. It may be that the souls of all children are waiting for the call of knowledge to awaken them to delightful living.” (6/Preface)
“It is such a temptation to us ordinary folks to emphasize some part at the expense of the rest and so turn a. strength into a weakness. There is only one way to avoid this danger. That is constantly to read and re-read Miss Mason’s books, constantly to remind ourselves of her first principles — for from now onwards Miss Mason’s work is in our hands; we dare not leave un-made and effort to keep the truth.” (Wix, p. 153)
“Questions there will always be, but if we continually keep in touch with Miss Mason’s thought by constant reading of all her books, we shall have a sheaf of principles at command by which we can test the value of this or that criticism, this or that book.” (Franklin. PR 36 p. 419)
This season, we are interviewing experienced Charlotte Mason moms, inviting them to tell us how they’ve come to “Trust the Method.” In today’s episode, Bethany Glosser, mom of six children, teenagers to preschoolers, shares her experiences both successes and “failures” and has important words to bring us about our ultimate hope for our children.
Charlotte Mason encouraged us to use a time-table to ensure lessons were kept short and varied. Today on the podcast we’re talking about this essential tool, why Miss Mason called it the first principle of a well-managed schoolroom, and how we can make one to fit our family today.
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“Time-Table; Definite Work in a Given Time. — I shall have opportunities to enter into some of these points later; meantime, let us look in at a home schoolroom managed on sound principles. In the first place, there is a time-table, written out fairly, so that the child knows what he has to do and how long each lesson is to last. This idea of definite work to be finished in a given time is valuable to the child, not only as training him in habits of order, but in diligence; he learns that one time is not ‘as good as another;’ that there is no right time left for what is not done in its own time; and this knowledge alone does a great deal to secure the child’s attention to his work.” (1/142)
“In the first place, there is a time-table, written out fairly, so that the child knows what he has to do and how long each lesson is to last. This idea of definite work to be finished in a given time is valuable to the child, not only as training him in habits of order, but in diligence; he learns that one time is not ‘as good as another’; that there is no right time left for what is not done in its own time; and this knowledge alone does a great deal to secure the child’s attention to his work.” (1/142)
“It is impossible to overstate the importance of this habit of attention. It is, …, ‘within the reach of everyone, and should be made the primary object of all mental discipline’; for whatever the natural gifts of the child, it is only so far as the habit of attention is cultivated in him that he is able to make use of them.” (1/146)
“Miss Kitching’s introduction to the discussion of this subject involved the following points: “1. That the P.U.S. time-table is intended to serve simply as a guide to the teacher in making her own, for it stands to reason that no two schoolrooms are identical as regards the work done, or the time allotted it. “2. That in making her own time-table the teacher must be careful that no two lessons requiring the same mental effort follow one another in close proximity. “3. That it is better to leave the term’s work unfinished, than to rush the pupils through for sake finishing the work set. “The general outcome of the discussion was to the effect that some modification of the programme and time-table is absolutely necessary, each teacher using her own discretion in the matter. Somebody very wisely remarked that Miss Mason intends the programme to fit the child, and not as some wildly imagine, the child to fit the programme.” (L’Umile Pianta, May 1915, pp. 58-59)
“It is evident that the young lady at home has so much in hand, without taking social claims into consideration, that she can have no time for dawdling, and, indeed will have to make a time-table for herself and map out her day carefully to get as much into it as she wishes.” (5/261)
The theme of this season of A Delectable Education: Charlotte Mason Podcast is “Trust the Method.” But what does that mean? Are we just supposed to blindly follow a dead woman’s advice from the 19th Century? Emily, Liz, and Nicole discuss these questions and more to help set the stage for the year to come, starting with “Why are you choosing to educate your children in the first place?”
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“The object of this organisation is not merely to raise the standard of work in the schoolroom. Our chief wish is that pupils should find knowledge delightful in itself and for its own sake, without thought of marks, places, prizes, or other rewards; and that they should develop an intelligent curiosity about the past and present. Children respond and take to their lessons with keen pleasure if they have even tolerably good teaching; and the want of marks, companionship, or other stimulus is not felt in those home schoolrooms where the interest of knowledge is allowed free play.” (“A Liberal Education for All” Pamphlet, 1928, p. 31)
“Those who do not regard education as a vital whole but as a sort of conglomerate of good idea, good plans, traditions and experiences, do well to adopt and adapt any good idea they come across. But our conception of education is of a vital whole, harmonious, living and effective. Therefore, every plan rises out of a principle, and each such principle is a part of a living educational philosophy, and does not very well bear to be broken off and used by itself.” (“A Liberal Education for All,” p. 33)
“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. I suppose the difficulties are of the sort that Lister had to contend with; every surgeon knew that his instruments and appurtenances should be kept clean, but the saving of millions of lives has resulted from the adoption of the great surgeon’s antiseptic treatment; that is from the substitution of exact principles scrupulously applied for the rather casual ‘more or less’ methods of earlier days.” (6/19)
“In the matter of education, we are hovering round the truth: that education is not merely a preparation for life, but the work of the lifetime is boldly announced. And, given thus much insight, is it conceivable that the education in question is no more than the cramming of a few text-books? Like religion, education is nothing or it is everything––a consuming fire in the bones. How is it that we do not see, through the hurry of eating and drinking, getting and having, that our prime business here is to raise up a generation better than ourselves?” (5/145-46)
She trusted that parents and teachers do not have to, “develop the person; he is there already, with, possibly, every power that will serve him in his passage through life.” (3/75)
“Like all the great ventures of life, this that I propose to you is a venture of faith, faith in the saving power of knowledge and in the assimilative power of children. Its efficacy depends upon the fact that it is in the nature of things, in the nature of knowledge and in the nature of children. Bring the two together in ways that are sanctioned by the laws of mind and, to use a figure, a chemical change takes place and a new product appears, a person of character and intelligence, an admirable citizen whose own life is too full and rich for him to be an uneasy member of society.” (A Liberal Education for All, No. I. Theory, by Charlotte Mason, https://charlottemasonpoetry.org/a-liberal-education-for-all/)
