Charlotte Mason Basics
by June Butchee
If you have been homeschooling for any length of time, you have probably heard the terms, "living books" and "twaddle". They are very common terms, but where did they originate?
At the turn of the twentieth century, there lived a British educator who devoted fifty years of her life to teaching children and those who taught children. Her name was Charlotte Mason. She authored a six volume idea-packed series of books that contained the summary of her life's work. "Twaddle" is Miss Mason's term for 'dumbed down' literature.
Well, you may say, what is so different about her ideas?
Miss Mason believed that "children are born persons", with the "powers of mind" that allow him to "deal with all knowledge" presented to him. "So we train him upon physical exercises, nature lore, handicrafts, science and art, and upon many living books, for we know that our business is not to teach him all about anything, but to help him to make valid as many as may be of--'those first-born affinities that fit our new existence to existing things.'"
What this means is that we as parents need to supply the ample information that our children crave. But, we need to supply the right kind of information. Miss Mason believed that children should only be exposed to the very best of everything. This includes art, music, and nature as well as the best literature available. She said "...thought expressed in the forms of art, is, not a luxury, a tit-bit, to be given to children now and then, but their very bread of life which they must have in abundant portions and at regular periods. This and more is implied in the phrase, 'The mind feeds on ideas and therefore children should have a generous curriculum.' "
Miss Mason spells her principles out for us in her books. She gives very specific instructions as to how to implement them with our children. In the following paragraphs, you will find extensive quotes giving us plenty of guidance in educating our children using her common sense, but unique approach.
"In devising a syllabus for a normal child, of whatever social class, three points must be considered:
(a) He requires much knowledge, for the mind needs sufficient food as much as does the body.
(b) The knowledge should be various, for sameness in mental diet does not create appetite. (i.e., curiosity)
(c) Knowledge should be communicated in well-chosen language, because his attention responds naturally to what is conveyed in literary form."
"The question resolves itself into--What manner of book will find its way with upheaving effect into the mind of an intelligent boy or girl? We need not ask what the girl or boy likes. She very often likes the twaddle of goody-goody story books, he likes condiments, highly-spiced tales of adventure. We are all capable of liking mental food of a poor quality and a titillating nature; and possibly such food is good for us when our minds are in need of an elbow-chair; but our spiritual life is sustained on other stuff, whether we be boys or girls, men or women. "
"We allow no separation to grow up between the intellectual and spiritual life of children, but teach them that the Divine Spirit has constant access to their spirits, and is their continual Helper in all the interests, duties and joys of life."
"I believe that spiritual life, using spiritual in the sense I have indicated, is sustained upon only one manner of diet--the diet of ideas--the living progeny of living minds. Now, if we send to any publisher for his catalogue of school books, we find that it is accepted as the nature of a school-book that it be drained dry of living thought. It may bear the name of a thinker, but then it is the abridgement of an abridgement, and all that is left for the unhappy scholar is the dry bones of his subject denuded of soft flesh and living colour, of the stir of life and power of moving. Nothing is left but what Oliver Wendell Holmes calls the 'mere brute fact.'
It cannot be too often said that information is not education. You may answer an examination question about the position of the Seychelles and the Comoro Islands without having been anywise nourished by the fact of these island groups existing in such and such latitudes and longitudes; but if you follow Bullen in The Cruise of the Cachelot, the names excite that little mental stir which indicates the reception of real knowledge."
"Our aim in Education is to give a Full Life--We begin to see what we want. Children make large demands upon us. We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests. 'Thou hast set my feet in a large room,' should be the glad cry of every intelligent soul. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking--the strain would be too great--but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest. We cannot give the children these interests; we prefer that they should never say they have learned botany or conchology, geology or astronomy. The question is not,--how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education--but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him? I know you may bring a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink. What I complain of is that we do not bring our horse to the water. We give him miserable little text-books, mere compendiums of facts, which he is to learn off and say and produce at an examination; or we give him various knowledge in the form of warm diluents, prepared by his teacher with perhaps some grains of living thought to the gallon. And all the time we have books, books teeming with ideas fresh from the minds of thinkers upon every subject to which we can wish to introduce children........"
"Children must be nurtured on the Best-- For the children? They must grow up upon the best. There must never be a period in their lives when they are allowed to read or listen to twaddle or reading-made-easy. There is never a time when they are unequal to worthy thoughts, well put; inspiring tales, well told..."
"Teaching must be Fresh and Living.--With this thought of a child to begin with, we shall perceive that whatever is stale and flat and dull to us must needs be stale and flat and dull to him, also that there is no subject which has not a fresh and living way of approach. Are we teaching geography? The child discovers with the explorer, journeys with the traveller, receives impressions new and vivid from some other mind which is immediately receiving these impressions; not after they have been made stale and dull by a process of filtering through many intermediate minds, and have found at last their way into a little text-book. Is he learning history? his concern is not with strings of names and of dates, nor with nice little reading-made-easy stories, brought down, as we mistakenly say, to the level of his comprehension; we recognise that his power of comprehension is at least equal to our own, and that it is only his ignorance of the attendant circumstances we have to deal with as luminously as we can."
"Books must be Living--We recognise that history for him is, to live in the lives of those strong personalities which at any given time impress themselves most upon their age and country........ We take the child to the living sources of history--a child of seven is fully able to comprehend Plutarch, in Plutarch's own words (translated), without any diluting and with little explanation. Give him living thought in this kind, and you make possible the co-operation of the living Teacher. The child's progress is by leaps and bounds, and you wonder why.....
"Children must have the Best Books--One more thing is of vital importance; children must have books, living books; the best are not too good for them; anything less than the best is not good enough; and if it is needful to exercise economy, let go everything that belongs to soft and luxurious living before letting go the duty of supplying the books, and the frequent changes of books , which are necessary for the constant stimulation of the child's intellectual life."
" ...The choicer the plant, the gardener tells us, the greater the pains must he take with the rearing of it:....."
Okay, you may be saying, so far this sounds good, but what does Miss Mason mean by "living books" and creating connections or relationships?
Here's an example: If I mentioned Lucy and the Candy Factory or Barney Fife you would probably know what I was referring to because you have seen these TV shows several times. What if I mentioned Sidney Carton, or Shylock, would you know that these are characters in classic literature? You would if you had read Tale of Two Cities or The Merchant of Venice. You would have personal knowledge of these two stories. Then when you heard Barney say "The quality of mercy is not strained, it falleth from heaven like a gentle rain" you would make a connection and remember that was part of Portia's speech in the Merchant of Venice. Miss Mason said "The gain of reading some of the most beautiful literature while we are young is that we shall then have beautiful thoughts and images to carry with us through life"
"Our Work, to give vitalising Ideas--Knowing that the brain is the physical seat of habit and that conduct and character, alike, are the outcome of the habits we allow; knowing, too , that an inspiring idea initiates a new habit of thought, and hence, a new habit of life; we perceive that the great work of education is to inspire children with vitalising ideas as to every relation of life, every department of knowledge, every subject of thought; and to give deliberate care to the formation of those habits of the good life which are the outcome of vitalising ideas. In this great work we seek and assuredly find the co-operation of the Divine Spirit, whom we recognise, in a sense rather new to modern thought, as the supreme Educator of mankind in things that have been called secular, fully as much as in those that have been called sacred."
This is just a minute sampling of the wisdom contained in Miss Mason's six volume Original Home Schooling Series. Miss Mason's words are just as relevant today as when she first wrote them. Her recommendations remind me of Philippians 4:8 "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things." (NIV)
So, just take Charlotte's advice and pull out some of those classic books that you have always wanted to read and share them with your children!