How to Charlotte Mason - A Guide to a Living Education

At 50 she began her own teachers training college, aptly known as the House of the Holy Spirit, due to her profound and totally reliant walk with God in all she did.

There are some fundamental principles associated with A Charlotte Mason Education. Let's take a brief look at each in her own words:

Lives lived for God: “My duty towards God is to believe in Him, to fear Him and love Him with all my heart, with all my soul and all my strength; to worship Him, to give Him thanks, to put my whole trust in Him, to call upon Him, to honour His holy name and His word, and to serve Him truly all the days of my life.” 

Principle of habit: “Let children alone-...the education of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to let her children alone, not teasing them with perpetual commands and directions - a running fire of Do and Don’t; but letting them go their own way and grow, having first secured that they will go the right way and grow to fruitful purpose."

Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life: "A child is a person in whom all possibilities are present - present now at this very moment - not to be educed after many years and efforts manifold on the part of the educator"

Outdoor life: “ In this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social, perhaps a mothers first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet and growing time, a full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it for the most part spent out in the fresh air.”

“I venture to suggest what not is practicable in any household, but what's seems to me absolutely best for children...a journey of twenty minutes and a luncheon in a basket will make a day in the country possible to most town dwellers: and if one day why not many and even every suitable day?” 

Principle of narration: “ But one who tries this method on himself will find that in the act of narrating every power of his mind comes into play.”

Living books: “…children have no natural appetite for twaddle, and a special literature for children is probably far less necessary than the booksellers would have us suppose…What they want is to be brought into touch with living thought of the best, their intellectual life feeds upon it without meddling on our part.”

Education is a science of relations: “ We have two chief concerns – first, to put in the way of forming these relations by presenting the right idea at the right time, and by forming the right habit upon the right idea, and secondly by not getting in the way and so preventing the establishment of the very relations we seek to form.”

Mother’s growth: "If mothers could learn to do for themselves what they do for their children when these are overdone, we should have happier households. Let the mother go out to play! If she would have the courage to let everything go when life becomes too tense, and just take a day, or half a day, out in the fields, or with a favourite book, or in a picture gallery looking long and well at just two or three pictures, or in bed, without the children, life would go on far more happily for both children and parents. The mother would then be able to hold herself in "wise passiveness’ and would not fret her children by continual interference even of hand or eye - she would let them be."

Ideas for the mind: "Ideas are held in that thought-environment which surrounds the child as an atmosphere, which he breathes as his breath of life...."

Each of these principles will be expanded on in future articles. Often the underlying principles of a living education are missed in favor of narration, nature study, art and music appreciation and more school type subjects. It is rather these things that make for easy days for mom and child.

About the Author

Submitted by Wendy Young from www.homeschool-curriculum-for-life.com who is the mom to 4 blessings aged from 12 - 5 years. She has been married for 17 years and her desire is to serve God in her marriage, parenting and home.

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