Some Thoughts on Education (OR Why a Charlotte Mason Education is Beautiful)

The main reason I started blogging again was on the encouragement from a couple of friends. These friends are fellow homeschooling moms and for some reason they love hearing about what I'm planning to use to educate my children. One day one of them said, "Lynette, you should just start a blog, then I could just go there and see everything."

Ahem. I already had a blog. I just wasn't utilizing it very well.

So my intention going forward is to gradually offer posts which will provide just that - an overview of what we're using.

But first things first. It's important before we get that far for you to understand where I'm coming from. If you start seeing the book lists and ideas of how we pursue education in this home, you might be a bit overwhelmed and confused if you don't understand how we're using these tools.

It would be so very convenient if I could somehow write a concise post of why we've chosen to homeschool our children and why we've chosen the educational philosophy we have, but there are so many facets to it all that I don't think it's quite possible to do it justice. This post will probably raise more questions than it will answer. But so be it. Hopefully, as I continue this blogging journey more things will continue to become clearer.

Over the last 6 years (I can mark it by how old my daughter is), I've had a complete paradigm shift in how I see education. I've been incredibly blessed by a number of talks from Andrew Kern - the founder and president of the Circe Institute. He defines education as "the cultivation of wisdom and virtue by nourishing the soul on truth, goodness, and beauty." He also goes on to say: "It should be distinguished from training (for a career), which is of eternal value but is not the same thing as education." If you'd like to see a deeper fleshing out of that definition, you can find that here.

He didn't create that definition - components of that have been around for a couple thousand years. But he says it well and it encapsulates what I mean when I say that we're pursuing classical education in our home.

Within that context, about a hundred years ago there lived a woman named Charlotte Mason. She was a British educator who was really passionate about seeing children receive a true education. She lived in a time when classical education had been stripped of most of its truth, goodness, and beauty and progressive educators were coming along with their pragmatic visions.

Charlotte Mason believed that children were persons who deserved better. She started a number of schools which followed her educational philosophy and was especially interested in reaching the poor with a "living" education.

A Charlotte Mason education is focused on giving children real books which are written in a literary style. They're not just books which tell stories. They're books which tell stories well. There is a high value for nature study, literature, poetry, art, and music as part of the heart and soul of giving children's minds beautiful ideas to feed on. She believed that children should be given a feast of living ideas to grow with. History and Science are taught with the best books available - written by writers who know how to use language well and are passionate about their subject matter.

I remember when I first encountered Charlotte Mason - long before I had a very good picture of how it all worked - I read that children in Charlotte Mason schools weren't limited by their reading or arithmetic abilities. Children who were learning how to read would spend a little time each day working on that skill - and then they would have someone read to them so they could still take in all of the wonderful literature and ideas which are out there waiting to be explored.

After listening to a reading, children narrate back what they've heard. Children in the younger years do this all orally. Their education doesn't have to wait for their fine motor skills to develop and their love of learning to die. They get to engage with living ideas right from the very beginning.

This was held in such contrast to the education I had seen and experienced. Children who struggle with reading in today's schools are held at greater and greater disadvantages as they miss out on so much simply because they're taking longer to develop those skills. That picture of a child still being given a joyful, living education was absolutely beautiful to me.

If you'd like to read a little more about Charlotte Mason and what this education looks like, here is a great starting point.