AN INTRODUCTION TO CHARLOTTE MASON: 

As a mother of four wonderful children, three of whom do not fit the common educational approaches in typical schools, the needs in our home inspired a far reaching search to discover what could be done to help their education in the most simple, natural ways.  The answers, once found, were pure and clear.  Poetically enough, the most powerful answers were also the most gentle and respectful answers one might have imagined.  They have virtually all come from one source, Charlotte Mason.

Charlotte Mason was a ground breaking English educator in the late 18th and early 19th century.  Miss Mason herself began as a teacher, but was not satisfied with the results even passionate teachers, like herself, achieved in school settings.  Her initial efforts in education fell short of her firm belief in children’s abilities.  Still, her faith in children remained undaunted.  Her determination to find better ways to help children learn and even love to learn merely increased.  In order to discover how to achieve her goals, she quit her work as a teacher, and, supported financially by her friends, she studied educational theory deeply.  She read many well respected authors of her day.  She watched children closely in light of the varying theories presented to her.  After much study, she began to advocate for educational reform.  She wrote books, gave lectures, and affected changes all around her.  She opened a school in Ambleside, in England, which trained teachers and governesses.  She also operated a school for local children in which the governess and teaching students practiced their future trade.  This gave her many hours of additional insight into the application of her developing philosophy of education.  Her work was applied to the education of rich and poor students alike.  The results proved for all time that poor children do have all of the qualities necessary to aspire to the same educational levels as rich children of her day typically received.  Children across the spectrum thrilled to the lovely yet powerful education she offered to them.

Her work has inspired great changes in educational thought.  Her foundational theory of education and the philosophies undergirding the methods she employed are timeless.  What’s more, now that recent enthusiasts of Charlotte Mason’s philosophy have found and republished her six volume series on education (which can be found online:  http://amblesideonline.org/CM/toc.html ), many today are finding that when Miss Mason’s philosophies and methods are embraced in full, and not drawn from a little bit here and a little bit there, the profound power of her philosophy and methods work together to produce more than the mere parts of a child’s education could ever dream of developing. 

How can that be?  Miss Mason was more than an educator, for she cared about more than the education of students.  To get a glimpse into her heart, one can simply look at her measure of education.  What is that measure?  Well, it is not how much the student has learned.  Instead, it is how many things the student has learned to care about.  Indeed, it takes more than compassion to care about many things, it takes great understanding as well.

One might ask, what are the primary tools to bring this about?  The most powerful force in helping a young child would also prove to be the most natural force:  the child’s mother.  After that, the child’s own ability to attend and his own desire and will to learn needs to be gently called upon and developed.  Charlotte Mason respected all children’s ability and desire to learn.  Her first concern in each academic discipline was to help every child develop the ability to attend – as he was able.  Later, he was to learn to apply that attention with an eager will to his work.

In order to develop the child’s innate ability of attention, Miss Mason first accompanied the child to the world in which he was meant to grow up, nature itself.  In nature’s own playground and workplace, children can breathe deeply, play heartily, bask in the sunshine, delight in the wonder of tree and flower, feel the breeze, ponder clouds and sky, observe a spectacular parade of intriguing creatures behaving in many interesting ways, nurture plants and animals and much more.  The child’s own living mind, body, eyes, ears, and heart are given the opportunity to merge together with earth’s life itself.  Each encounter with sunlight, earth, water, and life all around him naturally help him to fine tune his muscles, vision, hearing, sensory and motor skills, helps his heart and vascular system, his nervous system, and, well, all of his systems work together more effectively.  At times during the changing seasons, occasional and well placed comments and questions about objects of interest and beloved places in nature help the children to begin to attend more carefully and to think critically and carefully – and begin to learn to express to others how the miracle of the life around him is busy affecting his own life, heart and mind.   Through all of this lovely activity, his attention and cognition increases.  Later, this developing attention, cognition, and the increasing ability to express ideas are brought to bear upon reading, writing, literature, history and all that is traditionally called ‘education’.

Beyond the mother, the child, and nature, Miss Mason pointed parents and educators to something she called living books.  She was absolutely convinced that even young children have a deep sense of appreciation for beauty and goodness which prepares even the child’s heart to thrill to wonderful literature, art, and music.  That is, this will naturally occur unless a child’s taste for beauty and goodness have inadvertently been dulled by too much exposure to something she called twaddle.

Then just what are living books?  In the terms of Miss Mason’s own day, “A living book, that is, a book in which principles are expounded that go to the foundations, is an active influence, let loose amid a world of forces, and it will control and guide them to true and noble issues.”  Rev. Henry W. Bell, ”Parents Review” Vol IV in 1893/4.  Such books are either written by those who simply love the power of lovely and/or noble ideas in literary form (think of Aesop, Grimm, Milne, Kipling, Grahame, Robert Louis Stevenson, McCloskey, and more for young children), or by individuals who are experts in their fields because they have a great passion for their work (Holling C. Holling for children’s geography, Thornton Burgess for children’s nature studies, Marilyn Burns and Stuart Murphy among others for math, and so much more).  When such experts are also adept at writing, their written work resounds in the heart of most readers.  In this way, even children learn to care about the object of the author’s passion as well.

Living books are written by authors who have a love for their subject matter, and who bring the subject to life for the heart of the child, often at foundational levels.   In so doing, the child’s attention is fostered by literature itself, much of which, as great literature does, exposes the child to natural and spiritual truths, those not necessarily always being religious, but the type of truths upon which great character is built, developing the whole person.  Through the wonder of excellent literature, the child’s heart and soul respond to facts and especially to ideas as they are presented ’in a literary context’, upon a broad spectrum of knowledge.  This actively engages the child’s mind about increasingly more knowledge of life, and not merely dry facts, as ideas, and not facts alone, are able to feed the mind and soul of man.

Then, what of twaddle?  At least one definition of twaddle includes the word ‘drool’.  Twaddle might or might not inspire a moment of interest, but it is not truly worth revisiting or remembering.

Some parents unwittingly celebrate anything that brings a child to ‘read’ without realizing that reading should also produce more than practice in reading.  Reading should also present wonderful ideas to the mind of the child, which is that which feeds the soul.  If the effort of reading does not provide ideas to feed the child’s need to grow, one cannot be surprised that the child does not have a great hunger for more reading.  If a child merely reads for entertainment, well, it is easy enough to find other forms of entertainment more palatable to the young child’s immediate desires.  His desire and hunger for entertainment will usually take him elsewhere once picture books have been left behind for any length of time.

Miss Mason felt that this type of lower quality literature did not have the proper respect of the child’s intellect and desire to learn. Charlotte Mason also felt that good habit formation was 10 educations. Part of the responsibility of the parent’s responsibility, in the mind of Miss Mason, is to help the child develop his natural hunger for noble and truthful ideas in literary form so that he is comfortable with, familiar with, and actually hungers for what he can receive from good literature.  A literary habit necessarily helps the child to develop both the habit of learning and the habit of strengthening his character.  Thus, exposing children to lesser literature, or twaddle, is not the aim of the parent or educator, but is actually contrary to such aims.

In a world which has lost its way educationally speaking, Charlotte Mason’s message stands as a beacon of hope.  Her philosophies, though at times ignored or taken only in pieces, have endured the test of time, have proven viable over a century after their inception, and most importantly, have power to build up the lives of families with the typical child, the gifted child, and the child lost amid the world of education.

So a first question from the interested reader might be, “Where to begin?”  Firstly, make time to honestly assess your initial resolve to love, honor and support your child.  It is easy to slip here or there, as the responsibilities seem to be too numerous at times.  Secondly, take the children outdoors, and do so as often as possible.  Thirdly, search out excellent literature and enjoy it together with your children (in small doses to begin with, book gluttony is not the ideal…….).  Fourthly, for many mothers who wish to learn more about Charlotte Mason’s philosophy of education, it has proven helpful to begin by learning something of what Miss Mason had to say about motherhood, habit formation (beginning with but not exclusively the habit of attention), what Miss Mason called the way of the will, how to employ nature’s promise to help our children develop academically, and the basic premise of her theory of education.

THE MOTHER:

“The mother is qualified,” says Pestalozzi, “and qualified by the Creator Himself, to become the principal agent in the development of her child; … and what is demanded of her is––a thinking love … God has given to the child of the faculties of our nature, but the grand point remains undecided––how shall this heart, this head, these hands be employed? to whose service shall they be dedicated? A question the answer to which involves a futurity of happiness or misery to a life so dear to thee. Maternal love is the first agent in education.”  Today’s educators often embrace this truth, but at least as often, some educators do not.  Therefore, parents need to recognize the power and joy of their birthing-right and prepare themselves for the responsibilities which accompany it. 

“That the mother may know what she is about, ….. she should have something more than a hearsay acquaintance with the theory of education, and with those conditions of the child’s nature upon which such theory rests.”  Miss Mason studied not only the great thinkers of her day, but learned much by studying the children themselves.  “Nothing is trivial that concerns a child; his foolish-seeming words and ways are pregnant with meaning for the wise. It is in the infinitely little we must study in the infinitely great; and the vast possibilities, and the right direction of education, are indicated in the open book of the little child’s thoughts.”   From her studies of both children and great thinkers of her age and the ages before her, she learned much.  There must be a philosophy and a method which is based upon the nature of the child, and not a mere system of achieving calculable results.  She felt that because children are not mere machines, the nature of the child should be built up, not merely the child’s ability to work with skills and facts. 

“But the educator has to deal with a self-acting, self-developing being, and his business is to guide, and assist in, the production of the latent good in that being, the dissipation of the latent evil, the preparation of the child to take his place in the world at his best, with every capacity for good that is in him developed into a power.

“Though system is highly useful as an instrument of education, a ‘system of education’ is mischievous, as producing only mechanical action instead of the vital growth and movement of a living being.”

The difference between a method, which might employ a system at times, and a mere system can be easily grasped by the interested reader.  Once grasped, Miss Mason’s methods, based on her philosophy, become easy to apply.  “A few broad essential principles cover the whole field, and these once fully laid hold of, it is as easy and natural to act upon them as it is to act upon our knowledge of such facts as that fire burns and water flows.”  It will take a little time to search out those principles, but they are well within the reach of the student of Charlotte Mason’s philosophy and method.

Mothering a child?  What is a child?  Is it really important to understand what it means to allow Johnny to come forward as a child?  Aren’t we hoping to leave the children behind in order to produce responsible and creative men and women who can stand in a sometimes chaotic world?

The very nature of life answers this itself.  Admittedly, harsh challenges are let loose upon all forms of life, and this does help to harden prior growth.  However, it is the nurturing influences in all life’s experiences which produce the growth which can then afford to face the hardening process of various difficulties.  Also, too much hardship too soon has the ability to impede the very essence of any given life force.  Thus, it is the nurturing of life which brings about growth, and restrained pressures which prepare the strength required for one to live an artful life in all mediums in which one may find one’s self.

What nurtures a child’s mind and heart?  A child’s attention, tenderly brought to bear on rich and varied ideas, is that effective force which brings the growth of his reason, mind and soul.  Therefore, the sights and ideas provided as his proper food should be chosen with care.

What brings about the hardening necessary for any man to withstand the forces of this world?  The development of that man’s will while he is yet a child.  The will, that force of character which empowers him to stand for that which he believes he must stand for and to do that which he ought to do, should be guarded in such a way that the pressures of life and even of learning which are brought to bear in his very own special life, provide opportunity for strengthening the character of the child without destroying the foundation upon which his character is built.  And the foundation? - that is the hope we all sense.  A hope of the charge every life is given:  to live fully and rightly, and to set in motion the changes each of us is uniquely fashioned to produce.

This is no small task.  But the process is based upon a few natural principles.  Is it really possible?   It can be done, and it should always begin at home.  The power of parents is no small thing.  [The direction of the father, though virtually imperative, is not the matter at hand.]  The power of the mother, though gently applied, is inscrutable.

“Now, that work which is of most importance to society is the bringing up and instruction of the children––in the school, certainly, but far more in the home, because it is more than anything else the home influences brought to bear upon the child that determine the character … of the future man or woman. It is a great thing to be a parent: there is no promotion, no dignity, to compare with it. …….. But then, entrusted with such a charge, they are not  free to say, ‘I may do as I will with mine own.’   This is why we hear so frequently of great men who have had good mothers––that is, mothers who brought up their children themselves, and did not make over their gravest duty to indifferent persons.”