This episode is an interview with Jessica in southeast Asia as part of our Charlotte Mason in Our Homes series. Living and teaching with this method in another culture presents special challenges, but also provides exceptional benefits and blessings. The setting is different, but this mother’s joys and hardships are common to us all.
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This Charlotte Mason podcast is an immensely realistic and practical guide for the teacher. Liz, Emily, and Nicole share what Charlotte Mason’s principles for lesson preparation and planning are, then discuss how to make it happen. What should we as teachers be spending our time on behind the scenes, before the lessons? What is actually required of us to make lessons successful and what is not? These and other daily tasks for smoothing the school days are unpacked in this conversation.
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“In the first place, we have no system of education. We hold that great things, such as nature, life, education, are ‘cabined, cribbed, confined,’ in proportion as they are systematised. We have a method of education, it is true, but method is no more than a way to an end, and is free, yielding, adaptive as Nature herself. Method has a few comprehensive laws according to which details shape themselves, as one naturally shapes one’s behaviour to the acknowledged law that fire burns. System, on the contrary, has an infinity of rules and instructions as to what you are to do and how you are to do it. Method in education follows Nature humbly; stands aside and gives her fair play.” (2/168)
“Before the reading for the day begins, the teacher should talk a little (and get the children to talk) about the last lesson, with a few words about what is to be read, in order that the children may be animated by expectation, and, especially of forestalling the narrative. Then, she may read two or three pages, enough to include an episode; after that, let her call upon the children to narrate–in turns, if there be several of them…It is not wise to tease them with corrections…The book should always be deeply interesting, and when the narration is over, there should be a little talk in which moral points are brought out, pictures shown to illustrate the lesson, or diagrams drawn on the blackboard.” (1/232-233)
“The teacher’s part in this regard is to see and feel for himself, and then to rouse his pupils by an appreciative look or word, but to beware how he deadens the impression by a flood of talk.” (3/179)
“The teacher’s part is, in the first place, to see what is to be done, to look over the work of the day in advance and see what mental discipline, as well as what vital knowledge, this and that lesson afford; and then to set such questions and such tasks as shall give full scope to his pupils’ mental activity.” (3/180-181)
“The teacher who allows his scholars the freedom of the city of books is at liberty to be their guide, philosopher and friend ; and is no longer the mere instrument of forcible intellectual feeding.” (6/32)
“Perhaps the chief function of a teacher is to distinguish information from knowledge in the acquisitions of his pupils. Because knowledge is power, the child who has got knowledge will certainly show power in dealing with it. He will recast, condense, illustrate, or narrate with vividness and with freedom in the arrangement of his words. The child who has got only information will write and speak in the stereotyped phrases of his text-book, or will mangle in his notes the words of his teacher.” (3.225)
“Our part is to remove obstructions and to give stimulus and guidance to the child who is trying to get into touch with the universe of things and thoughts which belongs to him. Our deadly error is to suppose that we are his showman to the universe; and, not only so, but that there is no community at all between child and universe unless such as we choose to set up.” (3/188)
“Teaching must not be Obtrusive.-Half the teaching one hears and sees is more or less obtrusive. The oral lesson and the lecture, with their accompanying notes, give very little scope for the establishment of relations with great minds and various minds. The child who learns his science from a text-book, though he go to Nature for illustrations, and he who gets his information from object-lessons, has no chance of forming relations with things as they are, because his kindly obtrusive teacher makes him believe that to know about things is the same thing as knowing them personally; though every child knows that to know about Prince Edward is by no means the same thing as knowing the boy-prince. We study in many ways the art of standing aside.” (3/66)
“Let the pupil write for himself half a dozen questions which cover the passage studied; he need not write the answers if he be taught that the mind can know nothing but what it can produce in the form of an answer to a question put by the mind to itself.” (3/181)
Notes of Conference Lessons, here and here
Episode 33: Scheduling a CM Education
Lesson Planning in a Living Education Teacher Training Video
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)
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
Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv
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