Because the Charlotte Mason method is a philosophy of education, we want to help you become familiar with the why behind what we do. One of the ways you can acquaint yourself with the thought process is to understand her main principles, which she summarizes into 20 points in the preface of her Home Education Volume 6: Towards a Philosophy of Education.
We are reproducing it here, word for word, and took the liberty to categorize them, just to get you started on the right track. But we highly encourage you to sign up for our free e-book, where we discuss some of these in more detail, as well as their possible application in our children’s schooling.
On the child’s nature
1. Children are born persons.
2. They are not born either good or bad, but with possibilities for good and for evil.
3. The principles of authority on the one hand, and of obedience on the other, are natural, necessary, and fundamental; but—
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.
On our tools for educating children
5. Therefore, we are limited to three educational instruments—the atmosphere of environment, the discipline of habit, and the presentation of living ideas. The PNEU Motto is “Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.”
6. Education is an atmosphere: We do not mean that a child should be isolated in what may be called a ‘child-environment’ especially adapted.
7. Education is a discipline: We mean the discipline of habits, formed definitely and thoughtfully, whether habits of mind or body. (Physiologists tell us of the adaptation of brain structures to habitual lines of thought, i.e. to our habits.)
8. Education is a life: This refers to the need of intellectual and moral as well as of physical sustenance. The mind feeds on ideas, and therefore children should have a generous curriculum.
On how the child’s mind works
9. We hold that the child’s mind is no mere sac to hold ideas; but is rather, if the figure may be allowed, a spiritual organism, with an appetite for all knowledge. This is its proper diet, with which it is prepared to deal; and which it can digest and assimilate as the body does food.
10. Such a doctrine that the mind is a receptacle lays the stress of education (the preparation of knowledge in enticing morsels duly ordered) upon the teacher. Children taught on this principle are in danger of receiving much teaching with little knowledge; and the teacher’s axiom is, ‘what a child learns matters less than how he learns it.’
11. But we, believing that the normal child has powers of mind which fit him to deal with all knowledge proper to him, give him a full and generous curriculum; taking care only that all knowledge offered him is vital, that is, that facts are not presented without their informing ideas. Out of this conception comes our principle that—
On educating children
12.“Education is the Science of Relations”: that a child has natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts: so we train him upon physical exercises, natural 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.”
13.In devising a syllabus for a normal child, of whatever social class, three points must be considered:
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- He requires much knowledge, for the mind needs sufficient food as much as does the body.
- The knowledge should be various, for sameness in mental diet does not create appetite (i.e. curiosity)
- Knowledge should be communicated in well-chosen language, because his attention responds naturally to what is conveyed in literary form.
On how children learn
14. As knowledge is not assimilated until it is reproduced, children should ‘tell back’ after a single reading or hearing; or should write on some part of what they have read.
15. A single reading is insisted on, because children have naturally great power of attention; but this force is dissipated by the re-reading of passages, and also, by questioning, summarising, and the like. Acting upon these and some other points in the behaviour of mind we find that the educability of children is enormously greater than has hitherto been supposed, and is but little dependent on such circumstances as heredity and environment. Nor is the accuracy of this statement limited to clever children or to children of the educated classes: thousands of children in Elementary Schools respond freely to this method, which is based on the behaviour of mind.
On children’s moral life
16. There are two guides to moral and intellectual self-management to offer to children, which we may call ‘the way of the will’ and ‘the way of reason.’
17. The way of the will: Children should be taught, (a) to distinguish between ‘I want’ and ‘I will.’ (b) That the way to will effectively is to turn our thoughts from that which we desire but do not will. (c) That the best way to turn our thoughts is to think of or do some quite different thing, entertaining or interesting. (d) That after a little rest in this way, the will returns to its work with new vigour. (This adjunct of the will is familiar to us as diversion, whose office it is to ease us for a time from will effort, that we may ‘will’ again with added power…)
18. The way of reason: We teach children, too, not to ‘lean (too confidently) to their own understanding’; because the function of reason is to give logical demonstration (a) of mathemathical truth, (b) of an initial idea, accepted by the will. In the former case, reason is, practically, an infallible guide, but in the latter, it is not always a safe one; for, whether that idea be right or wrong, reason will confirm it by irrefragable proofs.
19. Therefore, children should be taught, as they become mature enough to understand such teaching, that the chief responsibility which rests on them as persons is the acceptance or rejection of ideas. To help them in this choice we give them principles of conduct, and a wide range of the knowledge fitted to them. These principles should save children from some of the loose thinking and heedless action which cause most of us to live at a lower level than we need.
20. 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.
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