Do you live in the Pacific Northwest and long for a community of like-minded homeschooling educators? Are you looking for focused time to learn from experienced teachers? Charlotte Mason NW hosts weekend retreats in Oregon and Washington annually, as well as intimate day-long symposiums introducing parents to the Charlotte Mason method of education.  

 

Who was Charlotte Mason and what makes her style of education so different? 

 

You might have run across terms like “living books” and “the riches.” What do those mean? 

 

Charlotte Mason wrote books, magazine articles and gave speeches, so you could spend years learning the answers to these questions. Here’s a fifteen minute answer; join us at conferences, in our e-magazine Sound Harbor, and regional symposiums to learn more. 

 

Charlotte Mason founded her “House of Education” in Ambleside, the heart of the English Lake District, in 1892. Her early childhood is obscure by she was probably orphaned in her teens and then spent time teaching and writing. But it was her book Home Education, published in 1886, that sparked off the most interest. She emphasized the influence of the home and gave parents the motivation and tools to provide their children with a wide and even exciting education. Soon a parents’ organization was formed, called the Parents National Education Union and a magazine, The Parents Review, was being published. By the 1920s, there were local schools using Charlotte Mason’s PNEU programmes, and booklists, schedules, and curriculums were being sent to parents and governesses. This type of home education was used by parents without access to local Ambleside schools and governesses - homeschooling before homeschooling was a thing! 

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After 40 years of speaking and writing, Mason coalesced her thoughts into 20 Principles. 

1. Children are born persons. It helps to think about what children aren’t: they aren’t buckets to be poured into, clay to be molded, or sponges to soak up information. Those things are part of them, but they are their own person, made in the image of God. When  Charlotte was writing, this was a radical idea. While we celebrate uniqueness now, we still think there is a body of work a child needs to know in order to be considered “well educated.” Charlotte pushed back on this and urged us to see our child as their own person, not an encyclopedia who knows the same things as their peers. 

2. They are not born either good or bad, but with possibilities for good and for evil. This principle is best  understood in the context of her time. There was a belief that a child couldn’t rise above his station, so if your father was a thief, you would be a thief. If your father was poor and uneducated, you would be poor and uneducated. Mason vehemently disagreed. A child born in poor ignorance had as much right to an education as a well-born child and a “liberal education” is the natural birthright of every child. 

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.
   
   These principles (3 and 4) are focused on a parent’s task, and a modern translation might be helpful: authority and obedience are both natural and necessary, but how parents and teachers exercise that authority is limited. Parents ought to teach their kids what their kids ought to do, simply because it is the right thing to do, not because they have been manipulated through grades or competition. 
    

5. Therefore, we are limited to three educational instruments--the atmosphere of environment, the discipline of habit, and the presentation of living ideas. The P.N.E.U. Motto is: "Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life."

6. When we say that "education is an atmosphere," we do not mean that a child should be isolated in what may be called a 'child-environment' especially adapted and prepared, but that we should take into account the educational value of his natural home atmosphere, both as regards persons and things, and should let him live freely among his proper conditions. It stultifies a child to bring down his world to the child's level.

7. By "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. In saying that "education is a life," the need of intellectual and moral as well as of physical sustenance is implied. The mind feeds on ideas, and therefore children should have a generous curriculum.
   
   Principles 5-8 are intertwined so we will use Charlotte Mason’s “science of relations” to bring them all together. Atmosphere is the atmosphere or vibe of your home, one that doesn’t cater to children but recognized that children can learn real things in the real world. Discipline is the discipline of habits, because much of her method is meant to teach the children to have good habits and self-control. The “life” Mason writes about is living ideas - meaning, teaching your kids a wide feast of subjects by using short lessons. You can get to alot of subjects, if you’re only spending 10-30 minutes on each one. History, art, music, poetry, literature - these aren’t extras. Education is more than reading, writing and ‘rithmetic. She also advocated for “living books,” not textbooks. She called textbooks “a meal of sawdust,” and wanted children to learn from books generally written by one author who was an expert and an enthusiast about a subject, books full of ideas and emotion - not just bullet points of facts. 
    

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 foodstuffs.

10. Such a doctrine as e.g. the Herbartian, 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. 
    
    Here’s another instance of a group of principles best understood as a whole. First, modern education is based on the Herbartian doctrine which says that the responsibility of learning is upon the shoulders of the teacher. If a child doesn’t take in the ideas, the teacher has failed to property orchestrate the necessary connections for the student to absorb the ideas. Mason believed the learner is responsible for his own learning and the teacher is merely the guide. The teacher’s responsibility is to provide living books and allows the child to make their own connections. A “wide and generous curriculum” uses those living books to teach living ideas. Living books use what Charlotte Mason called a “literary style,” a narrative or conversational tone. Living books touch your emotions and fire your imaginations, and they’re not twaddle. Twaddle is dumbed-down language, often presented in short, choppy sentences. Most importantly, a living book will contain living ideas, not just dry facts. 
     

12. "Education is the Science of Relations"; that is, that a child has natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts: 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."
    
    The science of relations is Charlotte Mason’s term for connections made by a child. When a child takes a new fact or idea and connects it to something they already know - that is the science of relations. If we give students knowledge in a variety of areas (math, science, history, literature, myths, art, nature, handicrafts, religion) we give them the chance to make many connections. The wider the feast that’s spread, the more chance for connections. 
     

13. 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.
    
    This goes back again to short lessons and many subjects. Read a book for 15 minutes every day and you’ll be surprised at how many books you get through! But without workbooks and multiple choice worksheets, how do we know that our children have learned anything? 
     

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.
    
    Charlotte Mason explains best in her book Towards a Philosophy of Education, “As we have already urged, there is but one right way, that is, children must do the work for themselves. They must read the given pages and tell what they have read. They must perform, that is, what we may call the act of knowing.” So narration equals the act of knowing. Narration allows children to develop their science of relations. There are many ways to narrate, but the simplest is just saying, “tell me what you heard, beginning to end.” Using narration will help your children acquire knowledge through the science of relations.
     

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 the 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. The use of suggestion as an aid to the will is to be deprecated, as tending to stultify and stereotype character, It would seem that spontaneity is a condition of development, and that human nature needs the discipline of failure as well as of success.)
    
    We can help children understand that there are two different guides people often use to help us choose between right and wrong ideas (intellectual) and choices (moral). The first guide is the way of the will, where we compare ‘wanting’ to willpower. Sometimes we want to do what is right and sometimes we don’t want to. We can’t always will ourselves to make the right choice, so we can train ourselves and our children to switch the train of our thoughts onto another track to give our tired will a rest from fighting temptation. 
     

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 mathematical 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.
    
    A simple way to understand this is to say, along with Solomon, “Lean not on your own understanding.” Reason is very helpful with objective subjects, but we cannot use “reasonableness” as an infallible judge of ideas as right or wrong. A perfectly reasonable idea or action may be wrong if the original idea it grew out of is faulty. 
     

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.”
    
    The deepest and most significant responsibility we bear as people is the acceptance or rejection of ideas as true or false. The world is full of lies but also full of beautiful truths. We have the privilege to guide them in knowing the truth - but thankfully, we have a Helper, because - 
     

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.
    
    We are not left to make these decisions and judgments for ourselves, but we have a Divine Helper who teaches our students, who has constant and continual access to our children’s souls and minds in ways we do not have. The student is a whole person whose true education is being directed by God Himself, Who allows us to play a small role in the instruction for these precious souls He has brought before us.

 

If this resonates with you, join us! Charlotte Mason Northwest hosts annual retreats in the PNW - Oregon and Washington, as well as regional one-day symposiums. So far, we have hosted one-day gatherings in Eastern Washington, Central Washington and the Seattle area. Our website is a great way to connect; local nature groups, co-ops, and mother’s reading groups are meeting all over the PNW. Click here to find a list of many local groups in Oregon, Washington and Idaho.