Charlotte Mason Summaries

Summary of Towards A Philosophy of Education

Volume 6 of the Charlotte Mason Series
Book I

Chapter 1––Self-Education pg. 23

The best education isn't applied from without by giving lessons that don't penetrate into a
child's character. The mind is living, and real education happens within the person. People are
living, changing beings and no amount of soakings or wrappings on the outside will nourish
them––they need to ingest food on the inside.

Children's minds are illustrated more accurately by human bodies than by plants that can be
tweaked and pulled by a gardener and have no personality of their own. Bodies need air,
water, rest, and food. So does the spirit/mind. Lessons may attempt to shape the mind with
exercises, but they have no real effect on the mind because that's not the kind of food the
mind needs.

So then, what kind of diet does the mind need? The answer is more complicated than a list of
rules, so Charlotte simply offers some considerations to help us answer the question
ourselves.

The mind needs ideas, and it needs them as regularly as the body needs meals. Schools offer
some ideas in science and art lessons, but no ideas that inspire character. The kinds of ideas
that affect character pass from mind to mind––by word of mouth, family traditions, words of
wisdom. Dry lesson books have none of these ideas. Hands-on lessons offer experiences, but
not the kind of thoughts that the mind relishes. Names, dates and facts may be memorized but
they aren't what minds spend time reflecting on and going over.

Real education is spiritual, it feeds the inner soul. If the mind takes hold of an idea, it will
attach facts to it, where facts alone will simply be forgotten. Because each person's spirit is
individual and mysterious, we don't know which ideas will strike any one individual with
inspiration; that part is done inside a person by himself as his mind works out the idea. Thus,
real education is self-education. Since we don't know which ideas will "take," we offer lots
for the mind to choose from. Yet none of us are such wise teachers that we can offer so many
ideas ourselves. But we know where to get them––from books!

Yet, even with the abundance of books available, schools offer children what wouldn't even
sustain the mentally ill mind. Charlotte knew what children need––a combination of old and
new ideas which are detailed in her other books. Teachers as well as students benefit from
Charlotte's ideas. There is life and interest in learning, although test results may not reflect
any major change.
Charlotte's ideas are not some brilliant new invention; they have always been around. But
seeing the truth of them will cast a light on what education should be, and that light will
inspire teachers to find their own ways of application. That is why Charlotte didn't give a list
of rules. What she offered was more like light. Her method is so simple, yet sounds too good
to be true: "It fits all ages, even the seven ages of man! It satisfies brilliant children and
discovers intelligence in the dull. It secures attention, interest, concentration, without effort
on the part of teacher or taught." The results are children who are more articulate, are too
occupied with learning to fall into base sin, have enough variety of interests that they can
share common interests with their parents, love books and learning, and are careful about
getting work right the first time without needing the prodding of rewards and grades.

After Charlotte's first book was published (Vol 1, Home Education), parents asked for help
implementing what she wrote about, so she developed a correspondence school with a
curriculum designed so that children could partially educate themselves rather than relying on
their teacher or governess. The school motto was "I am, I can, I ought, I will," and there were
20 Principles, beginning with "Children are born persons." The results of these
correspondence schools astonished even Charlotte herself! Children showed great ability to
focus, love of learning, sharp thinking, delight in great books, and knowledge of many
subjects. They could narrate back a passage read once, even months later. This is real
education, and won't cease when a child graduates, but will be continued for life. With a
broad, varied curriculum, right judgment will also be learned.

Children in the earliest grades should hear wonderful literature and narrate before they learn
to decode phonics and write because their interest in books will make them want to know
how to read and write. Although formal lessons don't start until age six, children start their
education from the time they narrate great books and hear well-written language and big
words in context.

All children have different abilities, but, no matter how brilliant or dull, each child improves
by becoming a person who reads and thinks. But children educated this way don't just hide in
books, they can relate to ideas in science and technical principles, make useful things from
wood, cloth and other real materials, and enjoy nature's wonders; they are busy and aren't just
gloating over their own intellectual progress.

Parents desiring this for their children need to learn the philosophy and reasons behind the
method; just following a CM booklist won't be the same. A student could still rush through
such a booklist to get a good grade without internalizing any of it. Parents must learn the
theory behind Charlotte's methods, but learning the theory isn't so difficult; it can be summed
up in only 20 Principles. Her method is very effective––who wouldn't love a method of
schooling where the student is motivated enough to educate himself rather than needing to be
force-fed his lessons?

Chapter 2––Children are Born Persons pg. 33

Principle 1. Children are born persons––they are not blank slates or embryonic oysters who
have the potential of becoming persons. They already are persons.

As we age, we cease to be amazed by daily miracles such as the sun rising, or flowers, and
we no longer marvel at great truths. Our babies are cared for dutifully with food and love, but
we don't stop to realize that this tiny creature is already a complete little person, rather than a
blob like an oyster. If we don't see the baby as a person but rather as an oyster, our job seems
to be one of turning the baby into a respectable person by using imposed methods.

But each baby is a miracle, a unique individual who comes complete with personality and
tendencies. The feats that all babies do in the first two years of life––making sense of the
world, learning to walk and talk, learning the concepts of cold, hot, hard, soft––are truly
miraculous. And all babies learn to do these things, whether adults take pains to teach them or
not, because each baby comes with a mind pre-wired to learn these things. "His education
does not produce his mind;" his mind was already there and primed to learn.

Children's questions about God show that they are born with a spiritual appetite; we don't
have to create that in them. Children love fairy tales, perhaps because such tales bring them
back to a world they're already familiar with in their mind's eye. Imagination is already there,
and children can fancy all kinds of things. Children already have a sense of right and wrong,
evidenced by the guilt that even a baby shows when he knows he has been naughty.

But this volume is concerned with school children, not babies. That babies already have
curiosity, imagination, conscience and are wired to learn, should show teachers that
curriculums don't make their minds. The mind is already there. And teachers' lessons don't
form a person from a blank slate; the child was already a person before ever entering the
classroom.

The physical brain, as long as it has nourishment and rest, does not tire. The mind is spiritual,
so it doesn't suffer physical weariness. This gives great possibilities, and we must be careful
not to overlook the spiritual mind in planning a method for educating. Physical things like
play, appropriate environment, bodily agility, hands-on experience are good, but don't affect
[the spiritual part of] the mind because the mind is not physical, it is spiritual. The mind
needs the ideas of other minds to feed it. Ideas are not of the material world and can't be
measured, but they urge a child to find out more––and this is what motivates a child to want
to learn. We've all experienced how we hear something that sparks our interest, and suddenly
we notice it everywhere because now our mind is receptive to it. This kind of learning, being
more of the spirit and less of the physical world, is difficult to assess and grade. It is
immeasurable, invisible, intangible ideas that we need to give to children as their education,
and we must let children deal with those ideas as they see fit.

When children hear the Bible read to them, their minds react and experience it in their own
way. Scripture feeds their mind. All of the subjects they learn about––geography, history,
etc.––need to be reacted on and experienced as well, or they are lost on children. But schools
tend to bore children with lectures, graphs and illustrations that pale in comparison to the
pictures their mind conjures up if the book is well-written with vivid descriptions. Such
books as Lang's Tales Of Troy and Greece or Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream
provide rich material for a child's mind to work on. Children need this kind of lively material
often and they need various kinds of it. All we need to do is provide it; the child's mind will
do the rest.

This does not benefit the child only in his school years. Adults who have a store of ideas will
have lots to think about outside of their job and will continue to enjoy learning history,
science, geography, literature, after work hours.
Children should have plenty of great works of art and beautiful scenes from the outdoors in
their memories to form a mental gallery. The mind expands, and the more it takes in, the
larger it gets.

Children also have hearts full of love. They love everyone, even the family dog and their
broken toys. They understand justice and fairness before we ever teach them.

Children are so amazing, and already capable of so much. What does a humble teacher have
to offer? Dull lessons are a waste of the child's time. In the same way that war made even
average men rise to the occasion and act heroic, all children have the capacity to excel under
the right conditions. Charlotte's experience seeing tens of thousands of exam essays
convinced her that all children are more capable than we've given them credit for. The
children she knew of could write well and, since their education respected their intelligence,
they felt valued and were thus happy and well-behaved. Their teachers didn't need to resort to
rewards, discipline measures, and crowd management. Even children in slums were
enthusiastic about subjects like Shakespeare when teachers knew what they were capable of
and didn't dumb down lessons for them. Charlotte concluded that the evidence she saw in her
students proved that her methods are effective.

Chapter 3––The Good and Evil Nature of a Child pg. 46

Principle 2. Although children are born with a sin nature, they are neither all bad, nor all
good. Children from all walks of life and backgrounds may make choices for good or evil.

1. Well-being of Body––Children are neither so bad that they need all harshness, nor so
angelic that they can be trusted to raise themselves in a pure state. They are miniature
versions of ourselves––capable of both good and bad actions. When education is a tool of
religion, we can train children so that we make the most of their good tendencies and lessen
the bad ones. Religion is more than just saving souls; it can provide room to broaden minds in
a Christian context and teach all kinds of things. It is exciting to think how the world might
be affected if all children everywhere received such a broad education!

Babies are born in a perfectly healthy state––they don't develop disease until later. Perhaps
their minds are also in such a state; bad habits have not set in yet, and we can have full
opportunity to develop the good habits before any bad ones get fixed. For every bad
tendency, the potential to develop the opposite good tendency is there and only needs
training.

Many mothers have a way of getting their children to rise to good behavior, possibly because
they know their children well and are less apt to underestimate them. They know what they
are capable of, and they demand more from them as a result. In every child the tendencies for
greed and selfishness are there as surely as hunger and thirst, and parents must not let them
get a foothold in the child's character. Children's senses must be cultivated to sharpness
without making the children picky about likes and dislikes. We must also allow children to
exercise their muscles in healthy, relaxed play, and not cause stress to a child that could later
contribute to a nervous breakdown.

It is tempting for a good teacher to solicit the love of students to use as a motivating factor––
to want the children to work hard to please the teacher they adore. But that is a misuse of
power. By encouraging the students to worship the teacher, the habit of seeking and
following those with a stronger personality is set and may lead to them blindly following less
noble leaders later.

2. Well-being of Mind––We tend to think that, though we must behave properly, what we
think is our own choice and can't hurt anyone. But the mind is as prone to developing good or
bad intellectual habits as the physical body, and teachers must be sure that every child's
intellect is quickened with lively books and subjects, not dull text books and lectures. Every
child finds real science and history fascinating––learning about the smallest particles, or stars,
or events that happened long ago. Children never fail to pick up on the moral in a story; we
don't need to spell it out for them. They may hear a king described as 'feeble and violent,' and
will remember that and, without any moralizing being imposed upon them, will learn the
lesson.

Even math is satisfying when students can feel success over a challenging problem, but too
much lecturing will dampen interest. Literature comes naturally to children if good books are
used. Hard words don't need to be explained, and children may find the interruption
annoying. They can usually pick up the meaning from context, and will sometimes even use
the word correctly in their narration! When we assume children won't be able to understand
Sir Walter Scott or Shakespeare, we are under-rating them. Even challenged and learning
disabled children are capable of more than we give them credit for.

Using marks, grades and rewards may motivate children to do well in school, but it builds
bad intellectual habits. It makes children value the reward more than the knowledge. Boring
lectures and repetitive reviews to make sure children 'get it' teach children to tune out.
Specialized study at the expense of other more varied subjects makes children unbalanced.
No one should be encouraged to bury themselves in any one topic so deeply that he can no
longer enjoy art and poetry. People can enjoy and do many things, as Leonardo Da Vinci and
other well-rounded men did.

Testing comprehension with questions is as illogical as giving the third degree about every
ounce of food the child ate. Students may become proficient at answering questions, but that
only qualifies them for Trivial Pursuit and Jeopardy––it doesn't encourage them to reflect on
what they read and let moral lessons go deep into their person.

Imagination can be used to store beautiful thoughts and pictures, or evil, ugly things,
depending on what the mind is exposed to. Shocking pictures, thrilling movies, cheap novels
may put questionable things into the mind that stay there for life.

Reason is valued by the ignorant, but it's important to teach children that reason isn't
infallible––reason can find all kinds of 'logic' to justify suspicion, doubt and contempt.
Reason gone astray causes workers to go on strike over petty issues.

The beauty sense should make us thirst for lovely words, pictures and nature scenes. But
learning to admire the wrong things in childhood or only the things we're used to can destroy
the beauty sense and make us critics who can't recognize beauty or appreciate much of
anything.

3. Intellectual Appetite––We all have natural desires that motivate us to grow, but any one
of these desires, if allowed to get out of balance, can damage our character. We all want
approval, involvement, first place, companionship, and knowledge. When schools use
children's desire to be in first place to motivate students, the competition tempts students to
attain first place with aggression or cheating. Prizes encourage greed. Rewarding those who
excel with teacher's acceptance may make students over-achieve and put undue stress upon
them. All of these secondary motivations replace the true curiosity and love of learning which
should have been the child's companion for life. The desire to know is all a child needs to
motivate him to learn.

4. Misdirected Affections––All children have a moral sense; they all understand justice. It is
unnecessary for teachers to lecture about the moral point in a story and play on the child's
feelings of guilt or praise; that causes children to act properly merely to please the teacher,
not because it's the right thing to do. Morals can't be force-fed into a child, children naturally
pick and choose individually from the examples they come in contact with. Our job is to
provide plenty of books in all subjects with good examples so that children can choose
whatever suits them. One child may be inspired by Plato, another by Peter Pan. We can't
know in advance, so we offer both. Teachers are limited humans, and don't always display
the best example, but excellent books can introduce children to the most noble heroes.

All children understand justice and fairness, especially as it concerns their rights, before we
ever teach it to them. But they must be taught to understand their duty and the rights of
others, which are as important as their own. Children have a duty to others, to think the best
of them and to speak truth (justice in word) to everyone. Integrity (justice in action) must be
displayed by working honestly without shirking. Opinions must be thoughtfully researched
for them to be just. And, since the principles we live by control our actions, they must be
considered carefully rather than absorbed from the culture. That should make us as educators
all the more careful about which ideas our children are exposed to through books.

We may think that children who haven't been exposed to the best won't be able to handle it
when it is offered to them, but the opposite is true. Deprived children are all the more starved
for quality and, in Charlotte's experience, handled Waverley, Coriolanus, Rembrandt,
Botticelli and poetry very well. That these children so readily took to these works testifies to
the quality of the classics.

5. The Well-Being of the Soul––All of us crave a connection with God. How can we help
children to commune with God? Not with tedious, repetitive lectures, but by introducing
them to the Bible and devout writers and letting them come face to face with the material
themselves.

Our goal in education is not to encourage self-expression. We finite beings are so limited, and
emphasizing self-expression only encourages introverted focus on the self and sensory
impulses––greed and lust. Our goal is larger than that––we want to make children useful to
the world.

Chapter 4––Authority and Docility pg. 68

Principle 3. The concepts of authority and obedience are true for all people whether they
accept it or not. Submission to authority is necessary for any society or group or family to
run smoothly.

Charlotte opens by saying that authority and submission (docility) are a natural and needed
part of life. The invention of the telephone showed the world that radio/electric waves in the
air that we didn't even know existed could be made useful. The war showed the world
bravery that had never been seen before in men, although surely the impulse had been there
all along. And now, in the world of education, something is being discovered that isn't really
new, it had been there all along, but was never noticed. That discovery is the principle of
authority.

We are all willing to accept a learned man's authority on topics within his expertise, or the
authority vested in a police officer. The willingness to submit to authority––to kings, parents,
teachers, foremen, etc.––seems to be built into man, and it's a good thing, because society
couldn't function without the order that results from it. Even anarchy isn't really lack of
authority so much as transferring authority to oneself, and men too proud to submit to
authority will willingly submit to fate.

Authority is sometimes accused of tyranny and slavery, but that is only true when authority is
abused.

The concept of authority/submission is as natural and certain as the orbits of planets, and
teachers must make sure their students stay in an orderly orbit of docility rather than
rebellion. The current trend is to set limits without the student perceiving them as restrictions,
so children feel as if they have liberty to do as they please, and are content enough to go
along with that. This seems to work because, from all outward observations, the children are
happy and behaving. But children who are never faced with the choice to submit or not, will
never learn the joy of choosing to give their willing obedience.

Children with no limits who really are allowed to do anything and everything they want never
learn to obey willingly.

So how do parents and teachers secure willing (not coerced) obedience? First, parents must
allow children to suffer natural consequences so they learn that there are some rules (like
gravity) that everyone is under. Setting lots of rules to prevent a child from experiencing the
law of gravity (like never letting him climb trees or curbs) will make him chafe under what
he perceives as arbitrary rule. But understanding first-hand that gravity means you can fall
and get hurt will help him see that your rules are for his protection.

Children who understand that parents and teachers rule because they must obey a higher
authority over themselves will not feel inferior, but children who suspect that others boss
them around for their own pleasure or power will never willingly submit. But if submission is
given willingly and cheerfully, then the child feels free, and, since happiness is a state of
mind rather than circumstances, the child will be both obedient and happy in his perceived
freedom. The thought of rebelling won't be there.

In the classroom, this same principle applies to the habit of attention. If lessons are short and
interesting, children will be too intent to be distracted. So attention is expected by the teacher
rather than forced.

Charlotte reminds teachers that lessons must not be limited to mental exercises any more than
academics should be brushed aside for physical education. Children need the balance and
variety of a generous curriculum if they are to enjoy the world with all of its diverse interests.
Parents and teachers must make children understand that they (the parents and teachers) are
under (not in) authority––the teacher or parent isn't the head, but only acting under a higher
authority. They must submit to the higher authority just as the children must submit to parent
or teacher. No one is his own boss; everyone has someone they must obey. Ultimately, that
Someone is God.

Children should understand that they obey parents because they choose to. Not everyone can
be in charge. This prepares children to submit to a small body of government officials elected
by the people. Teachers can give children the experience of being in charge themselves by
rotating a list of class offices.

Children should understand that they have a duty to learn their lessons, and to learn them the
first time. Teachers must enforce this by never repeating a lesson. They must never take it
upon themselves to make sure children learn; that's the children's responsibility. The teacher's
job is to provide the lessons; it is the child's job to assimilate them.

Teachers should not underestimate children. Children don't need teachers to drill them again
and again, and explain every little thing; their minds are capable and they can learn without
that. They don't need books dumbed down for them. They don't need the teacher to entertain
them in order to pay attention; focused concentration isn't difficult or straining, it just needs
to become a habit. The teacher merely needs to provide the best books and the children will
do the rest because their insatiable curiosity wants to know everything!

The current trend to replace education with vocational training is wrong. Children are short-
changed if all they learn are marketable job skills. A generous curriculum and wide education
enhances the whole person and builds noble character, and an enhanced person will be
happier and a better employee no matter what kind of job he has.

Focused attention isn't a tool or teaching tip that teachers can pull out when they please;
attention is the very foundation of education. A child must use his own authority to tell
himself to pay attention. A person who can do this will be an asset to any employer.

A child made familiar with works of art and music will educate himself when presented with
art and music, but a child dragged through a museum listening to lectures that are supposed to
get information into him will learn to tune out. If all children receive a cultural education,
then both rich and poor will have a common interest and this may help equalize them and tear
down class barriers.

Children who graduate from school and then have no interest in much besides weekend
football games on TV are as maimed as wounded WW1 soldiers. Their education has failed
them and they are deprived of the joy that culture might have added to their lives.

Chapter 5––The Sacredness of Personality pg. 80

Principle 4: These principles are limited by the respect due to the personality of children,
which must not be encroached upon whether by the direct use of fear or love, suggestion or
influence, or by undue play upon any one natural desire.

What we need today isn't so much an improvement in education as a better understanding of

children. If we could see that children are people just like us, we would automatically change
the way we educate. We would not be so quick to damage any part of the person out of our
own perceived notion of superiority and right to do what we want with our young charges in
an attempt to keep them dependent on us. Our rules for children tend to be "don't do this,"
and "don't do that," but God places children above adults and even says we should have faith
like theirs.

Teachers don't beat their students into subjection anymore like Dickens characters, but they
often do something just as harmful––they use their students' love and desire to please to
entice and motivate them at the expense of the children's very personalities! Children should
be learning for the love of knowledge, not to win the praise of the teacher. Some teachers are
very good at finding out what makes a child motivated and they play upon this to urge the
child on, but that can backfire––once the child realizes what's happening, he may despise that
trait that was used by the teacher. Education must train the child's character, but if he is
waylaid instead, trying to please a beloved teacher, he doesn't investigate his character and
desire change for himself. By encouraging worship of a favorite teacher, children aren't free
to develop their own personalities, they're too busy trying to impress. And the tendency to
idolize stronger personalities makes the child easy prey for bad leaders looking for followers.

Teachers who feed a child's healthy desire for praise may encourage him to be a slave to the
vanity of the approval of others, and the child may not care whether these others are worth
emulating. Trying to impress the wrong people sometimes causes people to do wrong in order
to be noticed.

Teachers who play on a child's natural desire to be the best may win accolades that make the
school look good, but students get so wrapped up in competitive drive that love of learning is
pushed aside. Attainment of rewards––scholarships, for example––have the same effect.

Schools would do better to make more efficient use of time by assigning books and
narrations, which teach both reading comprehension and public speaking in one lesson, rather
than lists of questions and tests. That would impart knowledge rather than encouraging
cramming to pass tests. Rewards could then be downplayed to their proper place and children
could once again learn for the sake of learning.

Those who love power should beware that it doesn't become an intoxicating obsession to lead
at any cost, because ambition may make men incite others just to be their leader. Teachers
should not abuse a student's desire to lead and make it a motivating factor in schoolwork.
Instead, students should be taught to master their own character and master knowledge rather
than people.

The desire to be accepted by our peers may make girls cliquish, or boys delinquents. But if
students can learn a little about everything, they'll be able to fit in with everyone. And if they
love learning, they will seek others who do, too, rather than seeking silly, idle friends.

Abusing any of these natural desires puts them out of balance, and using them to make a child
learn destroys the child's natural curiosity to know real things, and makes him merely curious
about trivial things and gossip, and then he will only attempt the challenge of real knowledge
if there are rewards; it becomes a vicious cycle. Students don't read unless a test is coming
up, so they have shallow thoughts instead of reflecting on noble character. They content
themselves with unfulfilling jobs instead of seeking greatness. They require the teacher to
entertain them to hold their attention.
Teachers who used CM's method of reading great books and then just narrating found that
students loved literature and became articulate thinkers. But teachers still use tests and
grades, so students find lessons boring and teachers have to go over the material over and
over to force it into students' minds.

Some may fear that the kind of education I'm advocating for everyone might cause a social
upheaval, but it won't, no more than equal opportunity. Those who see life in terms of
survival of the fittest have this fear because education and equal rights makes the less
advantaged more fit. And this might be true if education is obtained with prizes and rewards–
–the student then advances in society for more reward and at the expense of others. But the
student truly educated for love of knowledge will also have gotten some character and will
not desire to supplant everyone else.

Chapter 6––Three Instruments of Education pg. 94

Principle 5. The only means a teacher may use to educate children are the child's natural
environment, the training of good habits and exposure to living ideas and concepts. This is
what CM's motto "Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life" means.

If we can't use suggestion, affection or influence to motivate children to learn, what can we
use? Three things––atmosphere, discipline and life. That may sound limiting, but those three
things are more vast than we suppose!

1. Education is an Atmosphere

Principle 6. "Education is an atmosphere" doesn't mean that we should create an artificial

environment for children, but that we use the opportunities in the environment he already
lives in to educate him. Children learn from real things in the real world.

Some say that environmental factors––color of a room, background sounds, childproof

rooms, pleasant people––affect the child's mind and education, and that everything that is part
of a child's world should be controlled for the best results.

But children are not hothouse plants; they get bored with an artificial environment. Plants
shielded from the weather are destroyed in the first storm because they aren't used to it. And
children shielded from the real world don't grow. They need relationships with real people to
learn about moods, humor, sacrifice and love. There is no other way of learning about people
than by living, working and playing with family and friends. They need to see parents under
stress, although parents must still maintain authority and control, and parents should never
allow their burdens to be shouldered by their children.

In school, teachers must not dilute and sweeten lessons so that they are insincere and soft.
Children need to hear the truth and they need lessons to be a challenge. If students are
pressured, it may not be lessons that are too hard, but competition for top ranking may be
causing stress.

Children need the reality of truth and life, but that doesn't mean they should be let loose to be
influenced by anyone and anything. They need some control over who they spend time with
and what comes into their lives; parents must find a healthy balance.
2. Education is a Discipline

Principle 7. "Education is a discipline" means that we train a child to have good habits and
self-control.

Children don't need to be persuaded or coerced into learning if their lessons are selected
properly. Although they will still have to exert effort to learn, they will enjoy the process.
Learning to focus and pay full attention comes naturally to children and, if it is expected of
them, will become a habit and will enable them to retain knowledge from just one reading.
Concise articulation, obedience, sorting fact from sentiment, neatness will all help make self-
education easier. Education should teach children to live moral, useful lives that are enhanced
with cultural interests and alive with Christian spirit.

The mind and body should both be trained in good habits because they affect each other and
can work together to bring right action. For instance, smiling can help dispel a black mood,
or, conversely, focusing on pleasant memories can bring a smile to the face. Although
children shouldn't be harshly abused to turn them into machines for the convenience of adults
as they were in the days of child labor, we should not be afraid to discipline children and
teach them good habits, because good habits will make their own lives better. If they do the
right, orderly thing by habit, they will be spared deliberating over what to do next, and the
resulting lack of disorder and bad choices will make their lives smoother.

In the beginning, learning a habit takes some effort and may be resisted. Generally, the most
lasting habits are those we want and instill in ourselves, so it's best to find ways of inspiring
our children to make good habits on their own, rather than trying by force to make them
conform just because we want it. Children may respond to the idea of chivalric victory in
conquering their own bad impulses. Parents must never imagine that children are doing them
a favor by learning a good habit; the habit is for the child's good, and it does the child a
disservice to let him get away with lapses.

Parents need not fear that habits of religious routines will make God seem mechanical; God
can touch our children as they go through routines of daily prayer, regular worship and
weekly service.

Carefully trained habits will seem confining as children get older unless their minds are kept
full with great books. Children taught only outward habits will either become narrow-minded
and afraid of change, or will rebel and flit from one trend to another. Habits that were forced
on a child as an outer behavior will be shed by children as soon as they can get away with it.
For habits to last, they must be internalized as a result of the child being inspired to keep the
habits for himself.

3. Education is a Life

The life of any being needs regular food to survive. The mind is alive and will starve if it only
feeds on weekend football and gossip magazines. The mind needs real ideas––knowledge and
inspiration––to really live and grow.

What is an idea? An idea is living thing of the mind. It's hard to describe tangibly, but we've
all felt an idea's effect when we've been inspired to take action, impressed to do something.
Text books don't kindle interest in us to get up and do, or make a change because they've
been reduced so much that no real ideas are left in them. For instance, reading that
"Columbus discovered America in 1492," leaves us cold, but reading of Columbus's struggles
to make his dream of a new discovery happen, makes us want to make our own discoveries.

Where do ideas come from? They come from God. Even the practical idea to farm land came
from God, as noted in Isaiah 28. An idea may strike us like a light bulb suddenly coming on,
or it may create a vague sense of longing. The best ideas make children yearn for the noble
and good. Ugly words and attitudes from us, such as an unkind comment about a neighbor or
a display of temper at a careless salesclerk, will plant bad ideas in our children's minds.

Sometimes an idea so motivates us that it's like a beacon light at the end of a tunnel and we
set everything else aside to pursue it. Great inventions have come from men pursuing an idea
this way––ideas have a power all their own that can drive men.

We rarely have original ideas; most of our thoughts are either ideas we got somewhere else,
or improvements on another idea. For that reason, self-expression is rarely original, or even
all ours. It's just a rehash of what we've heard or seen elsewhere. Children asked to write a
composition will usually repeat something they know because they don't have a collection of
original creations in themselves yet.

Schools try to force information into children, but, for all the effort of teachers, only those
original ideas that the child stumbles across will be retained. The rest is just words to be
disregarded and forgotten.

Ideas are living and have power because they are spiritual, coming from God. But they travel
from person to person packaged in oral speech, writings, pictures or music.

Children may only keep ten percent of the ideas that pass their way, so we need to present
lots and lots of good ideas for them to choose from, and then let them decide for themselves
which ideas suit them. We don't tell a child what to think of an idea––one child may see a
book character's flaws as a lesson on what to avoid, another may think those flaws are
something to copy. We must give children the freedom to decide what to think.

Crystallizing ideas into polished opinions devitalizes the idea. Church dogma, math proofs,
historical abstracts do not inspire. Knowledge about people––devoted saints, struggling
inventors, battle heroes––does. Ideas must be clothed in an interesting story about a person to
be received by the child's mind. And this is why children need living books, and lots of them,
in various subjects.

Chapter 7––How We Make Use of Mind pg. 112

Principle 9. The child's mind is not a blank slate, or a bucket to be filled. It is a living thing
and needs knowledge to grow. As the stomach was designed to digest food, the mind is
designed to digest knowledge and needs no special training or exercises to make it ready to
learn.

Principle 10. Herbart's philosophy that the mind is like an empty stage waiting for bits of
information to be inserted puts too much responsibility on the teacher to prepare detailed
lessons that the children, for all the teacher's effort, don't learn from anyway.
Herbart may use the term "soul," but his idea of the "soul" isn't a living thing that gives a
person his essence and intuition. It's more like an impersonal box that ideas and thoughts
come into. His soul isn't alive and has no power to do anything––it can't arrange or choose
the ideas; the ideas come and go as they please. So a person is no more than whichever ideas
happen to be residing in his mind, and it's only by chance that certain ideas got in first and
crowded out opposing ideas. Those ideas that get in join with other similar ideas and clump
themselves together in what Herbart called "apperception masses." The biggest apperception
mass wins control of the person's thoughts and actions.

Psychology isn't an exact science––it deals with intangible thoughts and unprovable theories.
All it can do is try to make generalizations by studying behaviours of lots of people.
Educational philosophy is the same way. How do you measure real intellectual growth?

Herbart's theory appeals to teachers because it seems to give them power: if they can choose
which ideas get to the child's mind first and present them in the order they want them to
clump together in the child's mind, the resulting person will be something of their own
creation. Subjects are correlated so that they relate with each other (just like modern unit
studies), and Charlotte makes a joke about ideas being more capable than we are if they know
how to jump and cling together by type!

Her example is a series of lessons based on Robinson Crusoe (and I think the version used is
an abridged edition divided to neatly fit each lesson): object lessons about the sea, fish, boats;
math is contrived to solve problems such as how to build Crusoe's goat pen; even singing
uses songs specially made up to fit the book. Children find this very entertaining, but they
don't usually remember much about the book because they didn't exert any effort in
extracting anything. The teacher did all the work. And after squeezing every drop of life from
the book to use as a lesson, what child will ever want to read Robinson Crusoe again?
Charlotte's own students were able to talk more eloquently about Robinson Crusoe after
reading the original version and doing nothing more than narrating.

Another unit study had 100 lessons based on apples, including a craft making a paper ladder
to climb up the tree, but (another joke from Charlotte) not one lesson included eating the poor
apple!

Children need more varied topics; this kind of limited topic bores them after a while. There
are too many interesting things in the world to reduce lessons to apples, or Robinson Crusoe.

The mind is much more complex than Herbart gave it credit for. The mind is a living thing
and needs sustenance––and what it feeds on are ideas. As children prefer candy to vegetables,
they may prefer entertaining twaddle to real ideas, but "feeble and tedious" lessons and
books, even though children may like them, are no better for their minds than candy is for
their bodies. Yet schools attempt to slip in moral lessons and intellectual training with
entertaining yet diluted lectures and texts.

Children need books written in high literary quality. When their own mind has done the work
of sorting, prioritizing, sequencing and articulating knowledge from a well-written book, then
they will really be learning. It isn't the job of the ideas to arrange themselves into masses, it's
up to the student to extract knowledge for himself.
Creating contrived unit studies is fun for teachers, and the resulting projects can look very
impressive, but the Herbart method assumes that only teachers are qualified to dispense
knowledge. Real knowledge and, more importantly, character growth, aren't passed on this
way. Students aren't brought to a higher level of intellectual excellence and may end up with
no more to show for their schooling than vocational training, a job, and no moral principles.
Students need to be taught to do the work of learning for themselves rather than have teachers
jump through hoops to make knowledge fun. It isn't the person who has observed entertaining
presentations who succeeds, but the person who has learned the mental discipline of
concentrating and is familiar with hard work.

Schools teach skills without teaching how to think, often spending years teaching the
foundations of phonics and arithmetic that can be learned in a couple of months, and that kind
of repetition wearies students. So students learn the mechanics of de-coding text, but don't
always learn how to really read. They learn how to produce neat handwriting, but they don't
learn what to write about. This kind of training befits a nation of clerks, not great thinkers.

Schools have students for a long time––what a great opportunity to train them to be noble and
good! But schools drop the ball and the result is that, while school should have trained youth
to self-educate into adulthood, students graduate and go on to be less thinking as adults than
they were when they first came to school. They only keep whatever learning applies to their
job, and the rest of the person "curls up and sleeps forever."

A better education, one that enables students to continue to be interested in learning, and that
trains them to be decent and responsible, benefits everyone. The well-educated graduate has
many interests that will add variety and life to his leisure time. The employer gets a higher
caliber of employees working for him who can quickly learn the specific skills needed for a
specialized job, and society gains citizens who are creative thinkers motivated to do their
duty in serving the community. Volunteers provide sacrificial services that a community can't
buy.

It is found that employers would rather have an intelligent, responsible employee that they
can train, over an employee who may be trained in a vocational school with the
corresponding skills, but who has little else in character. Denmark and Scandinavia gave
students a broad cultural education instead of training them to specific tasks and had good
results with its population as employees. Germany, on the other hand, focused on utilitarian
training and vocational skills, and its population became "morally bankrupt." (Charlotte didn't
live to see WWII and Hitler; it's reasonable to assume that she would have blamed WWII on
Germany's poor educational philosophy.)

Reading classics in dead languages (Virgil, Sophocles) isn't necessary; reading noble works
by English writers (Milton, Shakespeare, Bacon) works just as well if character and culture
are the goals of education. If students have learned to pay full attention so that they get it the
first time, a lot can be covered in 400 school hours a year. Narration also prepares students
for public speaking, which is a skill everyone should have.

Charlotte, once again expressing her humor, imagines a factory training future employees in a
public school with unit studies on soap: "its manufacture, ingredients, the Soap Trade, Soap
Transport, the Uses of Soap, how to make out a Soap invoice, the Sorts of Soap, and so on ad
infinitum." And all the factories could get in the fun, providing contrived lessons on all kinds
of practical resources and technical aspects. It will keep school children entertained and busy
for years––but prepare them for nothing but labor.

Instead, schools should recognize that students are more than robots to be trained for
employment. They are living beings infused with God's spirit, and hungry for truth and
beauty. Enriching youth with noble ideals is like fertilizing the country's soil, and citizens
who can think for themselves and who have been inspired to patriotism with the heroic tales
of their people will do as much good for their country as rich, fertile soil does for crops.
Students must be allowed to admire what is good before learning to criticize what is bad, so
they should hear great deeds of their countrymen before hearing of the faults of their country.
There is plenty of time to learn of evil; let them savor goodness as long as possible––as the
song says, let their "illusions last until they shatter."

Adult education programs could offer classes in physical training and handicrafts (and, by
handicrafts, Charlotte didn't mean busy work with construction paper, but learning practical
skills to make useful, real things that an individual could take personal pride in doing well).
These things could be offered as after-work activities which people would gladly sign up for
because they would be fun. They could even offer light competitions. Besides making things,
these clubs could teach nursing, acting, gymnastics, etc.

Or, if schools become more effective at teaching character and adding zest to children's lives,
maybe parents would be glad to let the schools have them for another year to make up for
time lost in fun activities. A well-educated population with wide interests will be a blessing to
any society because 'knowledge is virtue,' and virtue makes everyone better.

Chapter 8––The Way Of The Will pg. 128

Principle 16. Children have two guides to help them in their moral and intellectual growth––
"the way of the will," and "the way of reason."

Principle 17. Children must learn the difference between "I want" and "I will." They must
learn to distract their thoughts when tempted to do what they may want but know is not right,
and think of something else, or do something else, interesting enough to occupy their mind.
After a short diversion, their mind will be refreshed and able to will with renewed strength.

The will is hard to define, and many people are such creatures of habit and crowd followers
that they may never determine to will themselves to do anything. The will is the part of us
that chooses to do one thing or another, and the more difficult a decision is to make, the
weaker the will is and the easier it is to let public opinion sway us, or the more likely we are
to fall back on the way we've always done things––habits. But what we will shapes our
character, and education should train the character, not the outward behaviour.

Temptations may seem physical, but what is really being tested is our inner will, and it is
those few who have strength of will who don't succumb to cultural trends and even encourage
everyone else to set a higher standard. Teachers must set a goal of turning out such students
who can make a difference in their society. Those who don't will with a purpose are being
dragged along by their culture without even realizing it. We're either making thoughtful
decisions in our lives, or letting society choose for us and following blindly by choosing the
path of least resistance. One result of this can be mob rule and riot, with a crowd committing
acts they would never choose individually.
Teachers should provide plenty of noble, inspiring thoughts for students to choose from,
since the thoughts that we act on come from somewhere else and rarely originate from our
own creative originality (has anyone ever truly come up with an original thought on their
own?) We all store up thoughts and ideas that we come across, and we tend to act on
suggestion and let others influence us. Strengthening the will can help children to stand
strong for what's right, even when faced with opinions and ideas that are wrong. Reading
Charlotte Mason's book "Ourselves" (volume 4 of her series) can help illustrate the concept
of choice in thought to students, and their duty to choose what's right by using the conscience
and the will. The books children read in school instruct their consciences, illustrating good
and bad character by example. But how do we teach students to use their will?

We should explain to early teens how easy it is to drift along with the current of society
unless they actively choose to think and decide to do right for themselves. By 'the will,' we
don't mean stubborn resolve ('willfulness') to have one's own way, like a toddler having a
tantrum because his mother won't give in to him. Such a person isn't choosing, but is allowing
his passions to choose for him because his will isn't strong enough to choose what's right.
Once they understand that, students may begin to divide people they read about as willful and
selfish, or ruled by their will to choose what fits their purpose. Even well-intentioned
characters can be impulsive and weak-willed. And some people can have strength of will and
make remarkable sacrifices for selfish, evil ends. Thus, it is important to set a purpose on
something worthy outside of oneself if the will is to be used to make good, noble choices.

Even someone with a strong resolve can have weak moments when his will is vulnerable.
Temptation also undermines our will. The best way to train the will is to use the will to make
wise choices in small matters; only then can one become accustomed to doing what he
doesn't feel like, but knows is right––choosing, rather than letting culture dictate what to
wear, read and think.

Every small decision has a larger principle behind it that should govern us––every decision is
motivated by a desire to please God and help others, or to make our own lives more
comfortable and pleasurable. What we buy, whether we chase fads or bargains, how we
spend our leisure time and money, will either be selfless or selfish.

Any time we choose or reject an idea, the conscience and reason have a part, but the will has
final say, and the will has been influenced by previous decisions and opinions we have
adopted. We tend to think that, so long as we behave properly, we can think whatever we
want––but, in fact, what we choose to think will influence who we are. We must choose
carefully even the opinions we hold.

A bad idea may gain the approval of our reason if everyone else approves it, and may even
gain the approval of our conscience if we can justify it in our own mind. Then it becomes
difficult for the will to resist, but when the will is weak, it can be rested by doing and
thinking of something totally different, and then returning to the decision refreshed much
later.

Although decisions are made spontaneously, it takes a lifetime to train the will to choose
what's right instead of what's convenient. Teachers should emphasize that our decisions
should please God, rather than emphasizing the inner self by focusing on self-discipline and
self-control. It isn't the self that matters in decisions, but something outside of self––God
Himself. Even personal virtue for the growth of the individual should be less of a goal than
duty and service to God and others.

Chapter 9––The Way of the Reason pg. 139

Principle 18. Children must learn not to lean too heavily on their own reasoning. Reasoning
is good for logically demonstrating mathematical truth, but unreliable when judging ideas
because our reasoning will justify all kinds of erroneous ideas if we really want to believe
them.

Principle 19. Knowing that reason is not to be trusted as the final authority in forming
opinions, children must learn that their greatest responsibility is choosing which ideas to
accept or reject. Good habits of behavior and lots of knowledge will provide the discipline
and experience to help them do this.

Sometimes, watching our own reason unfold in us to prove or disprove a point startles even
ourselves. Every argument has two sides that can be "proved" with evidence. Macbeth
reasoned his way to a tragic end––the result of allowing the notion of self-glory.

Reason doesn't always lead to tragedy––it propelled Madame Curie and Florence Nightingale
to acts of heroism. Everything invented or made started with an idea that was supported by
reason.

Children need to know that they, like Adam and Eve, or Cain, can be misled to sin by their
own reason. Reason is a servant to be used, but should never be trusted to rule the mind. Just
because something can be reasoned doesn't make it right. And popular opinion doesn't make a
notion right.

When we allow ourselves to dwell on a thought, that's when reason comes in to make it
sound logical, so we must never allow ourselves to linger on thoughts and ideas that we know
are wrong. No one ever commits a crime without first justifying it in his mind with logic.
And reason can be used to make a case that Bacon wrote the plays we attribute to
Shakespeare, or even to "prove" that a Dr. Johnson wrote the Bible! Knowing the limits of
our own reason can save us from some errors in thinking.

We must learn how to find fallacies in views that are wrong when they become popular with
the public. Charlotte gives a demonstration of how to do this using the ten maxims of Marx's
Communist Manifesto. Just one point she uses is his attempt to equalize people and control
classes––she says that controlling classes in society is like trying to control the ocean's
waves. And, while she agrees with Marx's proposal to educate all children, she sees this more
as an attempt to teach children Marxist dogma and make them violent revolutionaries.
Charlotte sees the Communist Manifesto as an excellent topic for teacher/student discussion
to practice finding fallacies. Reason, like anything else, needs material to learn with.

It isn't necessary to dissect and expose every wrong idea that students come across in society–
–there are too many to keep up with! But learning a few principles by going over such things
as Marx will show students what to look for so they can detect fallacy for themselves.

When we teach students that a miracle is no less amazing because it's common (such as sap
rising in a tree, or the birth of babies, or the sun rising every morning), we protect them from
critics who "prove" that miracles don't exist. Teaching them what true Christianity is will
prevent their faith from being shaken by every wave of new doctrine that comes around (I've
heard that Christians who are knowledgeable inside and out about their religion will spot
heresy right away, much as a bank teller is trained to spot counterfeit money by doing
nothing more than handling real money.)

Students who understand that God's purpose isn't to make us happy, won't rush off to the next
prophet who promises personal fulfillment. Knowing that religion isn't for our ease and
comfort will prevent us from falling into sin by seeking the wrong things that end in idolatry
and self-worship.

In the past, teaching a little catechism was enough to protect children from doubt. But today
children have to deal with science seeking to cast doubt on Scripture itself. Charlotte says that
the solution here is to explain the importance of faith because Scripture can't be proved with
scientific evidence.

Children enjoy arguing the smallest point just to be able to use their reasoning powers, yet
they don't enjoy using their logic on math and grammar. So maybe the best thing is to give
them literary material to practice reasoning with, and take the pressure off them in grammar
and math, although they must not totally neglect those subjects. Let them analyze the fine
points of arguments and save the parsing of sentences for later. They should understand that
laws in math are not variable and are absolute, not subject to argument. Yet students who
don't love math shouldn't be forced to spend too much time with it when there are so many
other things they might be learning. Not every student is a born mathematician and not all
students should be expected to perform as if they were. (I suspect from Charlotte's view on
this that she wasn't great at math!)

Chapter 10––The Curriculum pg. 154

Principle 12. "Education is the science of relations" means that children have minds capable
of making their own connections with knowledge and experiences, so we make sure the child
learns about nature, science and art, knows how to make things, reads many living books and
that they are physically fit.

Principle 13. In devising a curriculum, we provide a vast amount of ideas to ensure that the
mind has enough brain food, knowledge about a variety of things to prevent boredom, and
subjects are taught with high-quality literary language since that is what a child's attention
responds to best.

Principle 14. Since one doesn't really "own" knowledge until he can express it, children are
required to narrate, or tell back (or write down), what they have read or heard.

Principle 15. Children must narrate after one reading or hearing. Children naturally have
good focus of attention, but allowing a second reading makes them lazy and weakens their
ability to pay attention the first time. Teachers summarizing and asking comprehension
questions are other ways of giving children a second chance and making the need to focus the
first time less urgent. By getting it the first time, less time is wasted on repeated readings, and
more time is available during school hours for more knowledge. A child educated this way
learns more than children using other methods, and this is true for all children regardless of
their IQ or background.
Though schools may pride themselves on their wisdom in choice of curriculum, the truth is,
that choice is actually abdicated to those who make the exams because schools feel pressured
to "teach the test." The inefficiency of this is apparent when younger children who have spent
less time in the school system (but have had a CM education) have broader interests and more
thinking ability than older children who have more years of education, but a narrow focus on
a few college prep courses. With proper planning, students can be as proficient in many
subjects as in Latin and math. The average student will benefit by broadening his field of
topics, and the gifted student will have more scope to sharpen his mind.

If we have no clear idea about the reason we educate, then we tend to limit learning to what
will look impressive and guarantee a good job. But if we keep in mind the goal of helping
each student grow in all areas, we will want to offer education from a much broader
perspective and teach all kinds of things, even when they won't translate directly to the
workforce. Children want to know about all kinds of things––what people used to do and
think, what God is like, how to do things, ways to be useful. We have no right to decide
which subjects have priority, we must let children find out about all of them. We needn't feel
that too many subjects will overwhelm a student––if we keep lessons short, he won't be
spending any more time on schoolwork, and the variety will be refreshing.

Note: "Forms" discussed in the following chapters were similar to our "grades," and were
divided up roughly, but not exactly, as follows:
Form I––age 6-9 (grades 1-3)
Form II––age 9-12/13 (grades 4-6)
Form III and IV––age 13/14-15 (grades 7-8)
Form V and VI––age 16-18 (high school)

Section I: The Knowledge Of God pg. 158

Of the 3 things children should know about––God, man and the universe––God is the most
important and has potential for the child's happiness. Mothers know their children better than
any teacher could, and know better than to talk down to them, as religious curriculum lessons
tend to do. Mothers can model their love for God naturally and bring Him up while viewing
nature. They have more opportunities to do this in the course of the day than teachers, who
have lessons to move along.

Children shouldn't begin the kind of education that requires conscious mental effort until they
are six, even though they may be capable of it. There are too many things from nature that are
more important for them to learn, and those things aren't learned from lessons, but by casual
familiarity from being outside.

Children who immediately tell someone, even a sibling, about what they've heard will
remember it better (the concept of narration is that the mind retains what it articulates), so
mothers should encourage their children to tell someone about religious things they learn.

The best, most well-written literature on the subject of religion is the Bible itself. No Bible
story book can match it. Children as young as six should listen to stories directly from the
Bible and then tell them back. Goethe learned Hebrew from studying passages from the Old
Testament at age ten, and, although he never became an orthodox Christian, that experience
instilled a love in him for the Bible that gave him comfort all his life. Ideally, Old Testament
stories should be familiar first to lay a foundation for the New Testament.
Goethe enjoyed posing challenging questions about God to his Hebrew teacher, but his
teacher wouldn't respond to the goad. He would smile, and recommend that Goethe read a
commentary to answer his questions. Charlotte thought this was a wise idea and
recommended Canon Paterson Smyth as a good commentator for ages 6-12. His materials
had the students reading Old Testament stories, bringing in prophets as they correlate to the
kings being read. The Paterson Smyth text was read as an opener, there was discussion, then
the Bible text was read, and the students narrated. Last, the teacher brought up the point of
the lesson––something about God, or a moral quality in a reverent manner rather than an
attempt to force practical application.

Students aged 12-15 would read H. Costley-White's Old Testament expunged of

inappropriate content, yet still in the King James English. Psalms and Proverbs were brought
in as they correlated to the story being read, and notes and illuminating comments were added
in this version. Questions were included that are difficult to answer, but gave the students
food for thought. This prepared them for later questions and difficulties that might cause
doubt and lapses of faith.

Students ages 15-18 used Dummelow's One Volume Bible Commentary with introductory
information about each book and notes throughout the text. Thus, students who graduated
from Miss Mason's schools had a thorough knowledge of the Old Testament.

What about the New Testament? The same methods and commentaries were used, and the
Scripture itself provided doctrinal lessons. Drilling topical moral lessons into children can be
counterproductive, as it tends to bore them and may incite them to take the opposite opinion.
It is best to let the Bible itself be the teacher.

In a culture where critical analysis of Scripture has wearied people of religion, a fresh look at
Jesus from a study of His life may be a good thing, perhaps something in the form of an epic
poem. Charlotte herself wrote such a work; there were six volumes, which are being put
online. These were used in her schools. Charlotte suggested using commentaries, a catechism,
prayer book and church history as supplementary reading on Sundays, which might be a way
for each family to teach their children the doctrines of their own church.

Section II: The Knowledge Of Man pg. 169

History––Through history, children learn about the worthiest minds of the ages. Many events
happening today are similar to things that have happened to people before––treaties, for
instance. Something totally new is untested, but having a precedent can help us see how a
thing might work out. People with no sense of history think in terms of their own generation,
as if it were the only one that mattered, and won't value things of the past like great art and
buildings. But we need to know how average people like us responded to great events, and
know that we, too, may find ourselves in a position of having to respond to events in our own
time. Patriotism depends on today's children knowing about brave deeds done before and
taking pride in them.

But how can such a vast topic as history with so many countries, people and events be done
justice in the short time students are in school? Trying to cram it all in leaves no more than
vague impressions of history, nothing of substance.
Charlotte's idea is to skip the boring lectures, use a well-written account read just once, and
have students narrate it. This gets children into the habit of absorbing it the first time, which
means no time is spent repeating and reviewing. That leaves extra time to get in more
reading. If the text is interesting enough, getting students to pay attention will not be a
problem.

At age six, teachers read "not stories from English History, but a definite quantity of
consecutive reading, say, forty pages in a term, from a well-written, well-considered, large
volume which is also well-illustrated," a paragraph or passage at a time, and the children
narrated it back. "The teacher's own really difficult part is to keep up sympathetic interest by
look and occasional word, by remarks upon a passage that has been narrated, by occasionally
shewing pictures, and so on."

At this age, understanding every word is not important so long as the child is beginning to
understand that knowledge comes from books and he can get it for himself (he doesn't need a
workbook or comprehension questions to dictate what he should have learned from the
reading.) If the child can tell it back, then he and we can be assured that he really knows it. It
is likely that people in the past had to rely on accurate narrating to relay events to one another
since newspapers were not readily available. When we tell something, it becomes a part of
our permanent experience that we won't forget even years later (which is why review isn't
needed at the end of the year.) This only works if we let the child do the work of deciding
what to say. If we ask questions, make pictures, explain the lesson we think he should have
gotten, then it's us doing the mental work.

Charlotte's students aged 7-9 read An Island Story, slowly at first, but more as they get closer
to age 9 so that they finished the book in two years. Biographies of selected people in the
book were used to supplement, so that children really got to know a few heroes.

Children aged 9-14 used a more difficult book of English history, reading about 50 pages per
term (there were three 12-week terms in a school year.) To make children aware of the world
and their country's small place in it, the recent history of other countries was also studied. Her
students learned about neighboring France, reading about what was happening there at the
same time as the period of English history being studied so that students understand that
things were going on in other parts of the world while their own country was making history.
Ancient history was studied by using a book about the museum (The British Museum), which
talked about things in the museum and the history it was from. Besides learning about history
from real things, this would give them a greater appreciation for their museum. Students kept
a Book of Centuries (timeline in a book). Her older students (age 13) were also reading a
book about India's history.

Students aged 14 continued the Book of Centuries and the museum book, and used a stiffer
book of English history.

High school aged students were reading Green's Shorter History of the English People,
Macaulay's Essays on Frederick the Great and the Austrian Succession, on Pitt and Clive, an
American history of Western Europe, a history of France written by a French author but
translated into English, and a book survey of ancient history. They used a history chart like
the one described in the Parents' Review article Teaching Chronology.
The school went progressively through the entire world's history chronologically; if a student
joined the class at age 12, he would just jump in where the class was and catch up on the next
rotation. It appears that there were two rotations of history, one done in the younger years and
one done in the older years (maybe once in the first six years of school, then repeated in the
last six years?) so that, by the time a student graduated, he had a thorough familiarity with the
pageant of world history in his mind. In the high school years, literature, architecture, art,
poems were matched to the period of history being studied as much as possible.

It is not good to begin and end history with the study of one's own country. It encourages
insular, arrogant thinking. When power is increasingly in the hands of the masses (as it is in a
democracy), then it is necessary that the masses be familiar with history. That's why it's so
important to make sure that all social classes receive a good education. Uneducated masses
tend to result in unrest and may result in revolution. Education isn't just the means to a good
job for the individual, but is for the protection of the nation.

Literature––In Charlotte's schools, literature was matched to the historical period studied,
except in Form I (ages 6-9). Form I read fairy tales, Aesop's fables, Parables of Nature,
Pilgrim's Progress, and Lang's Tales of Troy and Greece. They also used heroic tales such as
The Iliad. The difficult names weren't a hindrance––in fact, children love the beauty of the
long, unusual names. Classics such as Kingsley's Water Babies, Alice in Wonderland, and
Kipling's Just So Stories are great for this age. Children started reading their own books at the
end of this period (in what seems to be the equivalent of third grade).

Form II (which sounds like fourth, fifth and sixth grades) was a leap in difficulty in the
calibre of books. Bulfinch's Age of Fable, Goldsmith's poems, and Stevenson's Kidnapped
were some of the books used. Students read some of their own books, but harder books like
Shakespeare, Scott's Rob Roy, and Gulliver's Travels were read aloud to students. By the end
of that period, students were reading almost all of their own books. With such a variety of
really great books, there was something for everyone––gifted children extracted more, but
even slower children got something from it.

Forms III and IV (grades 8-9) read a History of English Literature, Shakespeare, and Scott's
Waverley novels. Form III might read Goldsmith's or Burns' poems. Form IV might read
Milton's L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Lycidas, Pope's Rape of the Lock, or Gray's poems. The
purpose of their reading was not to memorize dates, but to give "a sense of the spaciousness"
for the historical period. Then their minds might be filled with pleasant things to think of in
dreary days and they would have examples on which to learn how to form wise opinions
which would help them in assessing the current affairs of their own society.

Forms V and VI (high school) also read literature that mostly corresponded to the historical
period. So, depending on the history, they might read Pope's Essay on Man, Carlyle's Essay
on Burns, Frankfort Moore's Jessamy Bride, Goldsmith's Citizen of the World (edited),
Thackeray's The Virginians, the contemporary poets from an anthology, Boswell, The Battle
of the Books, Macaulay's Essays on Goldsmith, Johnson, Pitt; the contemporary poets from
The Oxford Book of Verse, and She Stoops to Conquer. They read about the same amount as
any other high schooler, but, because the books were more interesting and because they had
learned to pay attention and narrate, they retained more of it.

Morals and Economics––Citizenship was related to the historical period, just like literature.
In the earliest years, children formed conclusions about morals for themselves from their
stories. But in form II, citizenship became an actual scheduled subject and was learned by
allowing stories such as Plutarch's Lives, Mrs. Beesley's Stories from the History of Rome or
Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome to inspire children to be good citizens. After reading and
narrating, the teacher would ask questions like, "In what ways did Pericles make Athens
beautiful? How did he persuade the people to help him?" to help plant the notion into
children's minds that making your environment beautiful is a good thing, without any lectures
or nagging. Or, "How did Pericles manage the people in time of war lest they should force
him to act against his own judgment?" helped children understand the difficult situations that
politicians were sometimes under. Then she might have asked about their own leaders so that
they would see how they also could be good citizens in their own time and place.

Should children only learn about the lives of excellent and worthy people? No, because they
also need bad examples so they know what not to do. Children (born with minds fully
capable of making judgments and able to figure things out!) have no problem discerning
which of the actions of story characters are evil; they don't need us to shield that from them
or even to explain and moralize it for them. Also, characters who are all good are not realistic
and bore children; they need people like themselves who are capable of both good and bad
and don't always make the right choices. They do extract the lessons from that in their own
minds.

Even so, they should be protected from the truly base things of life. Even the newspaper is a
little too harsh and realistic for them.

What about books that might be very useful, but have something in them not fit for children?
Can we believe that, "to the pure, all things are pure"? Can we teach them to handle such
things by teaching them the importance of keeping their minds pure with a book such as
CM's Ourselves (Volume 4 of her series)? It's best if we can use expurgated versions of some
books. If that isn't possible, such books can be read aloud so the teacher can clean up and edit
as she goes. Even "processes of nature" (presumably dealing with reproduction) in plants and
animals should be discussed in such a way that they don't plant impure thoughts into a child's
mind. But the best safeguard against such trouble is to avoid an empty mind. Give the child
plenty of really interesting and useful to think about and do, and he won't have idle time to let
his thoughts linger on impure thoughts.

It's not enough to tell children to be good. They need to know in what specific things to be
watchful, and that every area is a chance for them to choose to do right or wrong. Ourselves
was Charlotte's attempt at writing a book to help children with that. But the most influential
thing they will have is the stories they read and find examples in.

Composition––In Form I (grades 1-3), composition isn't really a subject but is done orally
(through narrations?) Although some teachers put a lot of focus on composition exercises that
teach formation of sentences, those don't help and may discourage the desire to write––in the
same way that drills to practice chewing technique might decrease enjoyment of eating.

Composition is the art of expressing oneself, and even toddlers do this very naturally––
they're always telling about things that interest them, although we may not understand their
gibberish. By age 6, children can tell about things pretty well, and if an adult wrote down
their narrations of stories they've heard, there would be an impressive collection with more
details than grown-ups would remember.
Young children (age six) should narrate a paragraph at a time because they need time to
remember and compose their mind to the task. Children 7 and 8 can narrate a chapter at a
time. No corrections or interruptions are allowed.

Children don't need instruction about beginning sentences with a capital letter and ending
with punctuation; they will pick up these kinds of details from their reading. They should
read books, and the author should be left to communicate to the child without our
interference––we don't need to explain and describe words or phrases unless the child asks us
to.

Form II (grades 4-6) students were reading more books on a wider variety of subjects, so
their essays were more colorful as they narrated favorite parts of their schoolbooks. They
wrote or told about literature, Shakespeare, history, scripture, poetry. Composition was thus a
natural part of every other subject rather than a separate unrelated lesson. Everyone likes to
tell what they know, so it was no struggle to get students to write their narrations. Children
are creative enough to write engagingly about their books, but are willing to let the teacher do
their thinking for them if she relies on a contrived curriculum to come up with writing
exercises.

Forms III and IV (grades 7-8) wrote short essays or short poems about their reading. This was
still narration, but in a more specific form. Students never had to write about something that a
book hadn't warmed their interest for.

More formal lessons about how to write were given to high-school aged students, but not too
much. This was done by suggesting one or two improvements in a student's written work. By
this time, most students who have had a CM education will have formed their own style
naturally. And since they've had real material to write about, they won't have learned to fill a
paper with just empty words that sound impressive, but they will be actually saying
something. Some of their assignments might be writing a letter to the editor of the newspaper
about a current event, creating dialogs for characters from a term's literature, poems and
essays about current events, or a patriotic play.

Besides learning to put their thoughts on paper, writing like this helps students understand
how authors write, which can make them better readers. And being able to articulate on real
subjects will make them better citizens who are more useful to their community.

Samples of writing from CM's students are included in the chapter.

Languages––English is spoken in phrases and sentences, not separate words, so children

should start grammar by learning the main parts of sentences––what we're talking about
(subject clause) and what we say about it (verb clause). All the student needs to know to
begin with is that a sentence must have both parts to make sense. Without those two parts, it's
just a meaningless string of words. The abstract concept of grammar escapes children. No
matter how talented the teacher is, their minds can't grasp it. When the child becomes
comfortable with that concept, he can learn that the thing talked about is called the "subject."

By fourth grade, CM's students were picking up grammar concepts from their French lessons.
They would give simple narrations in French of a paragraph the teacher had read to them. She
would help the children translate it so they understood it. Being required to narrate in French
is more effective at helping children learn a language than memorizing phrases. They also
learned French songs and fables. This continued so that, by high school, they could read and
narrate French literature. A native French speaker would also read aloud to older students as
many as 9 pages without interruption, and the students would narrate in French. Using
Charlotte's method of narration, students were fluent in French after less than three hours of
lessons per week––quite a feat!

Art––Ideas abound about how to teach children to draw. Teaching mechanics isn't effective
because art is of the spirit. Appreciation of art is not learned by knowing the technical aspect
of reproducing what the eye sees, but by reverencing well-made pictures. Therefore, CM's
students would study six prints per term, one at a time. They would hear a little about the
artist's life and what set his pictures apart, but the focus of art lessons was taking in every
detail of the picture itself. Then the picture was turned over so the students couldn't see it, and
they narrated it by telling about details of the picture from memory. Students typically
remembered enough to keep the discussion going for a half hour. In this way, the picture
became etched in the children's minds forever as a permanent legacy.

After a few years of this, children would be familiar with enough paintings to look forward to
a trip to the museum to find a painting they knew. This is the best way to help children enjoy
a visit to an art gallery. Seeing common details in art opens our eyes to the beauty that's right
in front of us, but that we often don't even notice.

Children were not made to endure lectures about "schools of art" and style until much later,
possibly as late as high school. The children were allowed to let the artist speak directly to
them by simply viewing the painting.

High school aged students might be required to roughly duplicate from memory a painting in
watercolors as best they could. But this was done for the purpose of narrating, not to teach
skill by copying. Copying paintings might lessen the student's reverence for the art.

Drawing was taught by gifted artists, and children drew in nature notebooks and would
illustrate readings, but more for narration and field study than for artistic skill. Students were
taught a bit about architecture, and worked with clay and handicrafts.

Music appreciation was a later addition to Charlotte's curriculum after she heard of a mother
playing classics at home and realized that listening to music would add joy to her students'
lives.

Section III: The Knowledge Of The Universe pg. 218

Science––Huxley (perhaps Thomas Huxley, 1825-1895, whose lectures and essays as well as
lectures on Science and Education are online) thought that science should focus on common
things. Charlotte felt that even science should be taught from literary sources––meaning
interesting books with an emphasis on words and descriptions rather than pictures and
diagrams.

The principles of general science are simple, yet profound and can be taught largely with
literary books. The detailed, technical aspects that require graphs and diagrams can be
learned later if the student has a desire to go on to specialized science, but for most students,
the basics are sufficient.
Charlotte said there weren't a lot of suitable texts, but there were enough to use for school.
She liked The Sciences with its "explanations of common items and experiments by an
American" (Edward Holden was the American.), Life and Her Children by Arabella Buckley,
Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley, and The Changing Year as a supplement to
students' own observations.

Form III students (7th grade) could make rough sketches of ditches, hedges, shorelines with
the kinds of plants native to that environment. They knew technical names for plant parts
(stamen, calyx, pistil) and how plants were fertilized. They knew constellations. This
knowledge was obtained first-hand, by being outdoors, not by memorizing lists in books.
Learning about nature with plant lists and bird lists was an ongoing study that students never
stopped, with other fields of science added every term.

Page 220 begins a list of questions that Form IV (grades 9/10) were expected to answer,
which will give an idea how much they were learning. There are questions covering
physiology, geography, geology, biology, botany, astronomy because it was felt that
everyone should have knowledge of how the world works. In fact, that was more important
than preparing for college courses and tests because only the top students went on to college,
but every student needed to know something about the universe he lived in. Charlotte liked
Some Wonders of Matter by Bishop Mercer, and Ethics Of the Dust by John Ruskin (a book
about crystals?) as high school texts. Nature notebooks that began in earlier years were
continued because students enjoyed recording what they saw.

Geography––Geography has suffered from our desire to teach only what we deem "useful."
We have replaced the wonder and beauty of the earth's surfaces with lists of exports and
cities to memorize. Children aren't yet obsessed with profit, and don't care about those dry
facts––they'd rather imagine themselves on the mountains, or seeing the unusual sights of a
place.

In Form II (grades 4-6) children should be familiar with the map of their country––where its
rivers, regions and interesting cities are. They should learn interesting things about places
they see on a map––enough to imagine the heat of the coal mines, or battles that took place in
its seas. These are things they have read about in their history and literature books.

In Form III (grades 7-8), students branched out––Charlotte's students studied maps of Europe
and the countries around England. They began with the country's seas and shores and worked
their way inland, learning about the diversity of the land and its people. After such study,
they knew such facts as: "three rivers which flow into the Baltic" and "What lands form the
southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean?"

Information about places was presented with interesting literature that took students on a
virtual tour, pointing out various interesting features of the place told with colorful,
descriptive language. By this kind of reading and correlating mapwork, students were able to
figure out what was exported and which were the main cities. There was no need to
memorize lists. Charlotte did not like to use pictures; she wanted children to picture places in
their own imagination from literary sources.

Older students studied other continents. A study of Africa would include Egypt, the Nile
River, The Sahara desert, The Barbary States, South Africa, Cape Colony. They also
followed the currents events of the place they were studying by reading from newspapers.
Some geography books used in her schools: Seeley's Expansion of England, The Peoples and
Problems of India, Geikie's Elementary Lessons in Physical Geography, Mort's Practical
Geography, and Kipling's Letters of Travel.

Mathematics––If the brain needs to have its faculties developed, then focusing on math as a
tool to train the ability to reason makes sense. But we know that children are born with all the
capability they need; their minds are complete and don't need our exercises to make them
ready. They will develop according to God's design whether we interfere or not. But math has
another function––there is a beauty in its absolute truth. 2 plus 2 will always equal four; it's a
truth that is not relative. And some amount of hard work, as math can offer, is good for the
mind.

But a curriculum that makes math its top priority at the exclusion of other subjects will be
unbalanced and encourage rigid exactness in problem solving rather than creativity. Schools
tend to focus on math because its exactness makes it easy to test. But too much math may
make students focus on the small problem in front of them and miss the bigger picture; they
aren't encouraged to look "outside the box." Some educators make a case for math as being
part of every other facet of life, such as theory of war––but that is misleading. Understanding
math does not equal understanding of war theory, or history, or any other subject. It's
sometimes used to measure things, but is not really related to other subjects beyond that, and
does not make all students broader and more intelligent all around.

Charlotte makes the case that mathematics is worthy to be studied for its own sake. All
students should learn about all subjects if they are to be well-educated, unless the student is a
born math genius who lives and breathes math. But the average student should not be held
back by a difficulty with math. It does students a disservice to value only those worthy who
are good at math, and it causes colleges to overlook students who are gifted in other areas.

The key to inspiring students in math is to have a gifted teacher like Euclid who can instill
great ideas. Every student should learn math, but math shouldn't take up too much of a
student's efforts when there are so many other subjects he needs to know about. The ability to
focus attention serves students well in learning math.

Physical Development and Handicrafts––Charlotte didn't think it was necessary to write

about physical education and handicrafts because her schools were doing what was common
then to all schools.

Summary of Towards A Philosophy of Education

Volume 6 of the Charlotte Mason Series
Book II: Theory Applied

Chapter 1––A Liberal Education In Elementary Schools pg. 235

An education that teaches about varied subjects is every child's right and enhances their lives
with virtue that lasts beyond their school years. Such an education must include the
humanities––learning about people––their ideas, their history, their literature, their artifacts,
and their values. Charlotte's PNEU schools were successful at teaching humanities even to
children from illiterate homes, while not neglecting other subjects.

Many schools spend time trying to develop a child's mind rather than feed it––training his
reason and judgment and ability to think. Children already have those abilities and just need
the food of ideas to let them do their work. It is like trying to get the digestive system into
shape by exercising the esophagus, the tongue, the swallowing ability, when all that's needed
is food. All of the demonstrating, lecturing, summarizing that teachers do kills the student's
desire to know things beyond weekend games.

The mind naturally wants to find out about things because that's how it grows. Teachers don't
need to dissect knowledge into fun, easy portions to get students to learn. They only need to
be the guide, introducing students to the material and discussing it with the students, who
have minds as fit as the teacher's.

Teachers do a disservice to children if they regard them as raw material to be shaped into
people. Children are already people and just need information and experience to meet their
potential. Children have an amazing capacity to feel deep sadness, abandoned love, and
confidence. Their learning isn't limited to what they see and hear from the teacher; their
minds are always working, always thinking, even when the teacher has finished her lesson. It
is what goes on in the mysterious thoughts of a child that constitutes his learning, not the
teacher's contrived efforts. Ideas from books are all that's needed to give the busy mind
something to work on.

What kind of knowledge does the growing mind need? Knowledge of God, of man
(humanities) and of the world (science). All of these can be taught from books that men have
written––beautiful poetic books. Humanities can encompass anything written in the form of
literature where the author's mind appeals to the reader's mind. It isn't until the child works on
it, reflects on it, thinks about it, that he learns, and no amount of lecturing can do that for him.
Narration requires the child's mind to work on the information by forcing him to remember it,
sort it and articulate it.

Children's minds need knowledge, teachers don't need to manipulate students into receiving
it. If teachers just present the knowledge, the other things they strive to develop, like
character, will take care of themselves. How does this happen? When teachers recognize
what they are capable of, children rise to the occasion and put forth the effort to learn.
Teachers sometimes clarify and help, but it's the student who does the work needed to learn.

1000-2000 pages were read per term, but only once––there was no time for re-reading, so the
student had to pay attention the first time. Students were tested with narration, either oral or
written. Students typically did well on these exams and were able to articulate and spell well.
Exams were 20-60 pages of written narrations, which included 'substantives:' proper names,
places and dates the child had remembered from the term's reading. Students narrated with
ease, even when asked to do so in poetic form!

Regular class time during the term was spent mostly simply reading and narrating. In
elementary years, the teacher would read a couple of paragraphs and some children would
narrate. Since students were expected to extract knowledge, the teacher would read slowly
and clearly. Reading aloud was sometimes the only option because there was only one copy
of the more expensive books available. It might take 3 years to get through one entire book
with slow, careful reading. This made careful listening very important. No notes were taken
and there was no homework.

Children both from privileged homes and poor families did well with this method. This made
Charlotte optimistic that education of this kind might bring the poor up to a better social class
by giving them the mind power to help themselves. Perhaps education might finally bring
equality to all people. At any rate, Charlotte felt that Jesus' command to "feed My lambs"
included education as a child's birthright.

Lists of rules and dates do not feed children's minds; children instinctively know what they
need and they will reject anything that won't grow their minds. Many educational models are
the type that children reject; they don't recognize what children are capable of when allowed
to let their curiosity lead them to really learn. Children already have "power of attention,
avidity for knowledge, clearness of thought, nice discrimination in books," and don't need
teachers to secure their attention. They just need literary books like Pilgrims Progress.
Children as a whole tend to be unable to narrate from the wrong book, yet their personal
tastes are not a reliable guide because they are as likely to enjoy twaddle as they do junk
food.

It is tragic when the very place where a person should discover the joy of learning that should
delight him all his life––school––becomes a drudgery because the wrong methods are used.
Instead, Charlotte's method could benefit students from all walks of life and with varying
degrees of intelligence.

Chapter 2––A Liberal Education In Secondary Schools pg. 250

Even in Charlotte's day, public education was criticized and people thought that money in the
form of higher salaries for teachers would fix it. But it isn't money that's needed; teachers
have been effective with very little money. The problem is that teachers are forced to teach
what students don't care about (dry facts, dead languages, higher math), and games and tricks
have to be used to make learning palatable. Yet devoted teachers haven't given up, they still
see the value of education.

Students have things they want to know, but teaching it with dull lectures turns them off to
learning.

The human mind is mysterious and hard to pin down, yet real education won't happen unless
teachers reach the students' inner minds. Every student should learn about God, with the
Bible as his curriculum. Every student should learn about men from history, language and art.
And students should learn about the world around them from nature study and the order of
mathematics.

One method says that if a student's mind is opened with one thing, like math or science, he
will go on to get more knowledge, so schools should pick one subject and stick to that. Gifted
students who excel at that one thing will do well, but most students will suffer.
Charlotte's method benefited all children, not just the gifted ones. She harnessed the ability to
focus attention that all children have so that students didn't need to be bribed to learn with
prizes and grades. The mind has amazing capabilities that may surprise us all if students can
only get into the habit of applying their attention. Children want to know and don't need
rewards, or games that make learning fun––when given ideas presented in literary form,
children will learn to satisfy their curiosity. Many subjects can be covered in a curriculum
without confusing the child, but the information must be presented in interesting literary
form, or else the mind won't take it. Even a hands-on subject like nature study is enhanced by
reading good books.

It's typical in most schools for students to read their lessons for an hour and not remember a
bit of it. Teachers get them to take notes and memorize lists, but it doesn't help. Students'
minds refuse to be forced to learn, and their inner mind goes on holiday during school. But if
they have an engaging text to read, their attention will be there with no effort. And if the
student is made to sort it and articulate it, he will remember it. Adults tend to sort and recite
to themselves when they want to remember something; narration forces the student to go
through this process.

Youths can remember what they read if their minds have been trained to expect only one
chance to read so that they give it their full attention the first time. When teachers lecture and
go over and repeat material, they unwittingly train children to tune out because they know it
doesn't matter if they don't get it all this time, it will all be reviewed later. But if a student
pays attention the first time and then narrates it, exam results show that, months later, even
with no review, they still remember.

Try it yourself––read something, then when you're trying to get to sleep that night, go over it
in your mind and see what you remember. Although you may be frustrated at what you
forgot, the parts you do remember and go over will be in your memory forever. In the same
way, what students assimilate and reproduce by articulating will be fixed in their memory
forever. Meanwhile, the student is receiving ideas that his reason and imagination will feed
on in ways we can't know.

In Charlotte's day (and ours), the physical brain rather than the spiritual being of the person
was the focus of education. The object is to get information in as efficiently as possible. But
the inner workings of students are mysteries to us; we can't insert specific information to get
a desired result because we have no idea how each student's mind will respond to the
information. Teachers should not use their influence to dictate what the child must extract by
lecturing and asking leading questions. Instead, we should give lots of stories with literary
quality and let the students' minds work it out for themselves, and each student will take
something different from it, resulting in varied narrations. The key is that students must
expect to be held accountable for what they read by narrating. As simple as it sounds,
narrating after one reading is the magic that makes it work.

Most of us have a pet topic that we can talk at length about, but we can't talk intelligently
outside of that area. By going through whole books one time and narrating, students can be
knowledgeable about many subjects and be able to talk intelligently at length about lots of
things, knowing more than vague impressions. Charlotte lists specific names and places that
her students used in their term exams to illustrate this.
Suppose a teacher is convinced that students already have all the faculties they need to deal
with information, that students don't need teachers' lectures to tell them what to learn, that
they don't need text books and contrived lessons, that rote memorization isn't really learning,
that lots of varied subjects give a broader base of education, that even average students can
learn from books if only one reading is allowed and narration is required––what about
character?

If students are taking less time to learn the basics because of the improved efficiency that
attention affords, then more time is left for peripherals like art, music, and character-building
classic literature––and, if all students are doing this across the country and learning about the
same art, music and literature, it becomes real cultural literacy and shared experience that can
bond citizens and give a foundation from which to share ideas. "How persuasively shall we
speak to those who know, and therefore do not present the dead front of opposition––the
natural resource of ignorance!" Citizens will be inspired by the same examples of heroism,
patriotism and kindness from the same books, will have cried over the same sacrifices, loved
the same characters. (To accomplish this, classics must be available in English! Reading in
original languages can be reserved for elite schools.)

Charlotte mentions Joan and Peter, a Story of an Education, by H. G. Wells as an illustration

of the pitfalls against making academic success the goal of education rather than knowledge
which inspires character and high ideals.

By letting the classics speak for themselves and letting each student gain what his own mind
needs to, teachers can leave students alone to learn themselves––no more spending all their
time with the gifted students at the expense of the average ones. The books provide the
lessons, and no games are needed to keep classes interesting.

Children who come home excitedly chatting about the stories they have read will narrate to
(and therefore educate) their parents and household servants, and family conversations will
become more meaningful. This is what is to be gained from a generous, magnanimous
education.

Charlotte's PNEU schools chose curriculum wisely because they knew that even the youngest
children could appreciate and narrate from great literature that was read to them––even if
they hadn't yet learned to read and write, or came from impoverished backgrounds with no
prior schooling. Teachers who have a vision for education as a means to truly enhance
people, rather as a way to get them a job, should remember that it's never too early or too late
to introduce classic literature.

Students learn to speak and write well from reading well-written books and narrating, not
from grammar and comprehension worksheets. Narrating in front of the class will help
students get used to public speaking. Charlotte's students did oral narrations from age six to
eighteen.

Schools desiring the kind of success of PNEU schools must understand a few principles and
stick to them––admitting that narration or nature study is a good idea and tacking it onto
another curriculum won't yield the same results because Charlotte's educational model is
more than a few methods, it's an entire philosophy. Even using her booklist won't yield her
results unless her principles are followed. Teachers must let go of the notion that students
need great books deciphered by a teacher to know what to learn from them; students are quite
capable of dealing directly with the author by reading the real book for themselves. Teachers
are not the disseminators of knowledge––books are.

Children need books at home because they must get into the habit of reading, not just during
school lessons, but in their leisure, and they must have access to their school books because
they need to learn to extract information from books themselves. Good readers become good
spellers because they see words spelled correctly in their books, and having books (not
textbooks, but real books) at home gives more opportunity to read.

Teachers should have some freedom in choosing school books. Children need guidance
because they don't always choose what's best, they often choose what's easiest. Books should
be chosen in all the subjects children should know about, with details as follows:

Knowing God should be the goal of any religious curriculum. In Charlotte's schools, the
teacher explained customs of the times and perhaps showed a map of the area covered before
reading the passage for the lesson––and the text was always the Bible itself. The Old
Testament was included because the New Testament should be understood in the context of
the Old Testament.

History gives us a proper understanding of our own place in the grand scheme of things, and
gives us examples of heroism that inspire patriotism and help us avoid "the intolerable
individualism of modern education." Historical information from Biblical times can help
students understand scripture in its cultural relevance.

The home country's history (for Charlotte's students, that was England) was studied with the
best book at hand, and literary essays supplemented when that was lacking. Literature could
be correlated to the historical period studied to help learn more of the culture and politics of
the time period. Every historical era has some literary genius whose work should be used,
such as Dante, Milton or Shakespeare.

Composition isn't a separate subject but is learned by reading and narrating. Civics is
intertwined with history and literature.

Science was also taught with literary books. Teachers in Charlotte's day were disillusioned
with science textbooks, so they were trying a method of letting students make their own
discoveries. But Charlotte didn't think the baby needed to be thrown out with the bathwater––
it is true that textbooks are dull, but good books should be used along with drawing from
nature observation.

Art, music appreciation and foreign language were taught as discussed in previous chapters.

Charlotte's curriculum related subjects to each other to some extent, but she wasn't obsessed
with getting every detail to relate to everything else. Since people will learn what they want
to know, her curriculum taught things that were interesting for their own sake. She did not
'teach the test,' but taught to satisfy students' curiosity.

Secondary schools influence students for life, and the students coming from our schools will
soon be running the country. Adopting Charlotte Mason's method in all schools will enhance
and broaden each student and enlarge his mind, which will be beneficial for the nation as a
whole.
People who only know the confines of their own existence and current society are self-
focused and create narrow cultures driven by the latest events, but exposure to classics from
other ages makes a society more outward-focused, because they see themselves as part of a
broad pageant of history rather than as existing in a bubble. This encourages them to think
great thoughts, which build character better than any character curriculum designed to tell
students what they should do because thinking, rather than outward behavior, results in real
inner character. Getting students to think great thoughts should be the goal of education.

Chapter 3––The Scope of Continuation Schools pg. 279

After Napoleon, people learned that wrong thinking and ignorance leads to war. So Prussia
educated students in philosophy. Western Europe (Germany) also began an intellectual
revolution, but that evolved into a technical utilitarian education, which helped the country's
productivity, but did nothing to make the people moral. Charlotte mentions a "Dr
Kirsehensteiner" who wanted students to be taught to be of service to their country (does she
mean German education reformer Georg Kerschensteiner, who, according to this, "wanted to
educate working-class children with manual work because he believed that a more abstract
approach to learning would not fulfill the socially relevant virtues of behaviour and
performance"?). In the US, Dewey pushed for similar humanist education, and Charlotte
remarks that immorality was rampant in these countries.

A utilitarian education is focused on giving the youth skills to get ahead in the world and be
of practical use to his society, but does nothing to enlarge the mind. Only wide reading can
do that. Adults hunger for more out of life and clamor for adult education classes. How useful
it would be to train students to educate themselves so that they can continue their education
by reading even after graduation. A truly good education should do no less than help students
understand God, mankind and society, and themselves.

Germany excelled at trivialities like making shutters and springs, but in major matters like
war, it was the broader-educated British who had character, and though German goods were
cheaper, people desired English things because the quality was better.

Denmark began higher education for adults after the Napoleonic wars. Rather than attempt to
teach people to be productive, their schools emphasized life, admiration for the beautiful and
good, and Christianity. Students in those schools were industrious, but were also readers and
thinkers who could discuss important topics. They had things to talk about in the evenings
around the fire with their families.

People whose minds are full of great thoughts from art, music and literature won't be as
susceptible to thoughts of discontent when radicals try to stir up trouble with issues such as
labor unrest. The example of Denmark is to be imitated more than that of Germany. Good
character and right thinking come from an education in humanities that emphasizes knowing
God. Denmark's schools were for adults, but youth are more difficult to teach.

Schools have students for 8 hours a day. Having them do what they do in their off hours and
what they'll be doing for the rest of their lives––working at a trade––seems like a waste of
that time. Why should schools pay to train employees? School hours should be spent
developing the mind, and that doesn't mean pouring our own opinions into to them and telling
them what to think to make them model citizens in our own image. It doesn't mean pouring in
a pre-planned package of information that awards the recipient the title of 'educated' as if the
child was a bucket to be filled. It doesn't mean making the child an expert in one subject so
his mind might learn how to learn other subjects, as if the child were a machine that needed
to be primed the first time in order to be made useful for its task.

The mind is much more than a bucket or a machine, it is a living thing that needs ideas to
nourish it. Given its proper diet, it grows in mysterious ways of its own and thinks, and
reasons, and learns simply because that's what God designed it to do. Students need
knowledge of God from scripture, knowledge of mankind from history, art and geography,
and knowledge of the world from nature observation and understanding of physical laws like
gravity and physics.

Training the senses does not feed the mind, and lectures are tuned out. Students only learn
what they assimilate themselves by reflecting on ideas within the recesses of their own
private minds––which is why Charlotte says, "there is no education but self-education."

Even average minds grow when fed great ideas. Charlotte's ideas seem so simple and so
obvious that it's easy to think, "I do a little narration and a bit of nature study, so my student
must be getting a CM education." But we forget that everyone has a curiosity that craves
knowledge, and everyone has the natural ability to focus their attention and Charlotte's
methods can be trusted to work when followed fully.

Knowledge presented in a literary form (interesting story or text) is naturally and easily
assimilated, and should be made available on all the subjects that people wonder about. Each
person should get this literary presentation first-hand, not related by a third party. Even young
underprivileged children can listen with interest to real books and tell them back, and this
exercise of telling back stamps the material into their memory while forcing them to digest,
understand, sort and recreate it in order to narrate––and this results in "the act of knowing" so
that they 'own' the knowledge.

Charlotte's exam results from her PUS homeschool students showed that even disadvantaged
children could do as well as anyone else if forced to own knowledge through required
narrations garnered from literary materials. A list of specific names, events and places from
real exams by students who were not the most gifted is given on page 294, showing that
students were remembering many details from the term's books. This kind of education in the
humanities is not only effective but affordable, too––no more expensive than the cost of some
classic books. And such an education that provides love of learning, knowledge of so many
things, dutiful service and wise thinking really is more utilitarian to the nation than the so-
called 'utilitarian education!' Citizens will share more of a bond if all students are reading the
same classics and can share common experience with the same books.

Utilitarian education breeds ignorance, but an education in the humanities is the cure.

Chapter 4––The Basis of National Strength pg. 300

I––Knowledge

The common man, though often heroic when it comes to labor unrest, lacks imagination and
reflection because of a lack in his education, and tends to have a mob mentality where
everyone has the same interests (such as watching football, or watching the same TV shows)
rather than individual diversity.
Teachers are as dedicated as ever, so why is education failing the average man? Because
current educational methods undervalue children and undervalue knowledge, relying on
rewards to bribe children to learn facts that don't nourish the mind any more than candy
nourishes the body. Or students are trained only in those skills they'll need in their jobs rather
than educated in things that delight the inner spirit and satisfy curiosity and wonder––
knowledge purely for the sake of knowledge that enlarges the mind and results in character.
A person taught to love knowledge will find many things to delight the mind and will have
something extra to enhance life, and maybe a mental escape from the humdrum life of a
menial job.

What is knowledge? It is more than memorized facts and information. It is ideas, it is that
spark of life that passes from one mind to another, inspiring reflection and resulting in some
outward behavior or action. A really great idea might inspire a person to strive for excellence,
or pursue a worthy goal, or to be a better person. This kind of life-giving spark of ideas is
found mostly in books written by great thinkers who had noble thoughts to pass on.

Students need original books about a wide variety of topics, and lots of them. The books must
be challenging enough to require some effort in order to stimulate the mind to receive
nourishment, in the same way that the smell of food stimulates the body and prepares it to
digest food. Books that are too easy will be skimmed too briefly on the surface to be
internalized.

Books that are made easier for students by diluting and explaining aren't acknowledging the
abilities of children. If narration is required after only one reading, students will focus and
make sure to get it the first time; they don't need comprehension questions and lectures to tell
them what they were supposed to get from their reading. Charlotte's students were reading
from Pilgrim's Progress, Shakespeare, and Plutarch's Lives.

Charlotte felt that every child older than 12 should seem more educated than same-age peers
and should love books. Students who use lots of books and narration are more enthusiastic
and sympathetic than students who get less books and more lectures. Napoleon is a worthy
example of this––he was not a typical scholar, but read widely––and he conquered the world!
Queen Louisa of Prussia made the education of her people a priority, and the result was the
German Empire. A "noble view of education" exalts a nation, and Germany's later
abandonment of humanities resulted in disaster. A great nation must instill character in their
youth by allowing it to mature slowly under the influence of wide reading.

II––Letters, Knowledge and Virtue

A mother wrote to Charlotte with an anecdote about her daughters. They had been raised on
great classic books and decided to take up Latin instead of math and geography. Because they
had developed the ability to focus their attention and were used to classics, they had the
mental discipline to learn more Latin in 6 months than their mother had learned in 6 years.
With good habits of attention, more learning can take less time.

Many think classics such as Scripture and Greek literature take too much time in a
curriculum, but they don't have to. And, really, no school can afford to deprive students of
great literature and knowledge of the ancient cultures. Such knowledge helps students
understand that previous peoples had wise, noble ideas and that current society is just one
small part of a vast world that spans time and space. It keeps people humble rather than
arrogant about their own culture.

It is a mistake to train all students to be intellectual scholars; not all are gifted in that area.
But every student should receive training in virtue from reading classics. Those destined for
scholarships will want to read classics in the original languages, but what about average
students? Scholars go over the same material again and again, but with proper focus, students
can get it the first time so that what top scholars need to pass an exam can be learned by less
gifted students in much less time than one might think.

Charlotte suggested that a test might be devised that would "safeguard Letters, ancient and
modern, without putting too high a premium upon scholarship." All students would receive a
basic education in the humanities that included enough classics to open a field of interest that
would remain for a lifetime. Literature for school would be read for enjoyment, not analyzed
to death. Books would be assigned to be read in school and out of school, during vacations
and weekends, with oral or written narration required. A country needs to have all of its
citizens well-educated, not just a handful of elite scholars.

III––Knowledge, Reason, and Rebellion

For all of England's interest and research in education, Charlotte's generation was turning out
students who were irresponsible. People who had been educated in the school system were
not models of integrity because of ignorance in their belief that reason is infallible and can
replace knowledge.

Man makes up his own mind which course of action to take, but he needs knowledge to
choose correctly, because any course of action may be justified in a man's mind if he looks
for it. It's human nature to logically justify our own actions.

In past generations, simple people had only to observe what everyone else was doing and
follow local discussion and sermons to know what was right and wrong for him and his
family. But labor unions in Charlotte's day––and media in ours––makes individual men's
opinions carry more momentum, so we each have to consider our opinions carefully. Are we
simply being carried along by popular opinion, or have we thought out what we believe?

If great thoughts are expressed and passed on to future generations through words, then
words must have great power, and it is a tragedy that many students don't understand their
power well enough to want to articulate well. Letters and words are the vehicle of education.
Words are even the usual vehicle of the gospel message.

The wonder of science and the humanity of the men who made science history may move us,
but emphasizing hands-on science at the expense of reading is a mistake. Science for its own
sake fascinates, but doesn't make us better people in and of itself. Reading about the trials of
scientists from literary sources is great, but finding well-written books isn't easy.

The problems facing society are partly from a lack of inspiration and vision in people––too
often, money is the motivation for pursuing a career, and looking forward to weekends is the
highest anticipation. The kind of labor unrest that leads to tyrannical unions and socialism
may stem from the shallowness and short-sightedness that utilitarian education promotes, and
often, spiritual concerns are neglected when these become the causes that men work for.
It is everyone's duty to understand the concerns in their community, because, even though all
the concerns may not directly affect us, we all have opinions that could influence others––we
might get others on a higher plane and thinking of what's right and best for everyone. If
changes must be made, we might help those changes so that things are fair for everyone (and
possibly avert the kind of mob rule that turned the French Revolution into a nightmare!) It is
important for all citizens to have knowledge with which to sift and weigh public opinion.

IV––New and Old Conceptions of Knowledge

Knowledge is mysterious and indefinable; it isn't the same thing as information that can be
deposited into a mind and then stored as a reference. The mind hungers to really know and
understand things, and only what the mind actively works on will be stored in the memory.
The rest just vanishes away and is forgotten. Those who have been educated merely to store
facts may tend to apply reasoning to statistics and not use wise judgment in drawing
conclusions.

In past ages, men assumed that even secular knowledge––literature, math, science, etc., were
divinely inspired, even when that knowledge came to us via secular minds. Everything was
tied together––the cardinal virtues of temperance, virtue, prudence and justice relied on
evangelical virtues and intellect, and vice versa. God plants ideas into the ears of men who
will hear, regardless of their religion, at the time when He deems society ready for the idea.
All knowledge is therefore sacred. And the mind feeds on all kinds of knowledge. We can't
pick and choose which fields to know about and which to throw out, we need them all. And
we dare not choose to limit the fields of knowledge we expose children to. Children need to
know secular things just as much as they need to know scripture; if the mind is deprived of
knowledge, it weakens just as our bodies would if they were deprived of an entire food group.

The kind of learning that happens in many schools is not the same as the knowledge that
makes more of a person by enlarging his mind and imparting wisdom and integrity. The
world needs more of such persons rather than students who only learn dates and facts by rote
memory.

One educational theory in Charlotte's day said that it didn't matter what a child learned as
much as how he learned it––if the child could become an expert in math, his brain would be
primed to pick up other knowledge in other fields, and he would have learned how to go
through the process of learning. But that makes no more sense than saying that what a child
eats doesn't matter as much as how he eats it––you might as well feed him sawdust, Charlotte
says, so that his body will understand how to process raw material and he can go on to eat
whatever he wants.

Rousseau said that children get all the knowledge they need first-hand, through their senses
and experiences. But that discounts all the knowledge of past generations that has been
passed down to us in books.

Another educational trend in Charlotte's day was making learning fun with dances, plays and
activities. That may make school enjoyable, but doesn't do much to pass on the knowledge of
great minds found in books.
What students need is wisdom and understanding, the ability to recognize erroneous opinions,
prejudices and shallow ideals. Students need to understand 'the science of relations'––how
things relate to everything else.

V––Education and the Fullness of Life

What is the aim of life? To be free to make choices and express oneself––even at the expense
of the rights and comfort of others? Life is much more than that, and Charlotte's schools were
helping students to realize their potential and live full lives by teaching them to find joy in
knowledge, nature, literature and art. Every career person should have an interest apart from
their job that affords pleasure and personal growth.

Charlotte's schools also encouraged physical activity––swimming, dancing, hockey––that

might add enjoyment and fitness to a person his whole life. Crafts were taught so that
students might enjoy years of being able to create truly useful things and carry on trades that
were becoming lost arts. The goal is for people to live satisfying lives that help others rather
than being a burden to others. Charlotte's schools exposed students to a vast number of
fascinating fields of interest so that each might find the ones that would add fulfillment to his
own life and make him less reliant on others.

Schools tend to expose students to too few topics; a person whose mind has been opened to
whole worlds of ideas won't have years enough to find out about all he wants to know; such a
person will never be bored or grow stagnant.

Books provide the best way to introduce ideas to students, and a mind opened by great books
will continue to feed itself, even after graduation. Whatever job a person ends up with, his
mind will meditate on characters in his books so that he will continue being a thinker and
using his imagination even out of school. Even farmers and factory workers should get to
know and be inspired by the likes of Robin Hood and Socrates. A literary education isn't just
for a few elite scholars, but should be for the common man to satisfy his mind's hunger for
something more than a weekly paycheck. Depriving ordinary men of such knowledge makes
them baser and more apt to be discontent and cause problems.

VI––Knowledge in Literary Form

A varied education should be available to all classes of students. At the beginning, knowledge
must be conveyed through interesting books; only later, when interest is secured, will
students be so captivated by a subject that they can appreciate the drier facts. A varied
education that truly enhances the whole person isn't accomplished by accident or through a
haphazard collection of educational theories jumbled together. An idea of one's goals and a
structured plan for getting there are necessary.

Students should be saved from a life of trivial events and scurrying from one activity to the
next seeking stimulation. So many people are anxious, bored, depressed. Knowledge is the
answer. Foremost is the knowledge of God that comes from committed seeking of God and
thorough, systematic reading of the Bible with the goal of knowing.

The trend to discard fairy tales is not effective; regardless of how experts say that children
need to learn from things and not tales, children seem to defy the experts and they still love
fairy tales. In fact, they seem to need and crave them. Children apparently need more than
things and experiences, they need words and literature. They do need to handle things, but
they should also have the best, most literary books in every subject. All the scientific graphs
and images in the world can't open a child's mind like a story or literary description. They
should read entire books and poems rather than edited portions, although omissions for the
sake of morality should be made. And they should narrate to test comprehension.

John Bull was calling for a utilitarian, materialistic education to teach students only their
future trade or future responsibilities, but Charlotte urged educationalists to demand more
from education. Since morality and goodness is passed on through literary means and a
nation's strength rests on the integrity of its people, no nation can afford to dismiss the use of
literature in schools.

Supplementary––Too Wide a Mesh pg. 343

Throughout history, education has been available only to a few elite. The majority of the
population were deprived of knowing anything beyond a few basic skills, and never had the
opportunity to have their character deepened with classic literature.

Yet, advantaged students may spend twelve years in school and never learn to love books and
be truly educated. They may make use of their own natural abilities such as leadership and
good-naturedness, but never develop the deep-rooted integrity that is role-modeled in books.
Higher schools tend to focus on helping the top students pass exams while neglecting the
average students who show no promise of making a name in the world.

Charlotte mentions two young men who discovered they had learned very little in their elite
education. They devised booklists and encouraged each other to get through the list, and to
develop their faculties by memorizing the most trivial bits of information. It is encouraging to
see that their desire to know wasn't killed by their schooling, but they needed a better
approach. They were trying so hard to get information into their minds, but missed the whole
point, which is learning out of a simple curiosity and desire to know. School had failed them–
–when it should have instilled a thirst for knowledge by creating an appetite with offerings of
ideas, school had instead attempted to teach how to learn but never offered the fascinating
material that would have secured their desire to find out more.

Rather than teach students to pass a test, or assume that students can't understand rich
material, schools should simply supply interesting books in various subjects and let the
students fill up on real knowledge, the kind that will make them want more and instill the
idea that learning is something to continue all their lives.