Charlotte Mason was a British educator. She lived at the turn of the twentieth century. She believed that children should be respected as people and taught the motto:
“I am. I can. I ought. I will.”
She also believed that children were natural born learners and that the desire to learn need only be facilitated. This is expressed in another motto:
“Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.”
Here is a little breakdown of that philosophy:
Atmosphere: The surroundings/home environment. CM believed that how parents lived accounted for 1/3 of a child’s education. Similar to the thought “more is caught than taught”.
Discipline: This is essentially meant as good habits and character. CM details fifty specific habits in her writings which fall into five categories: mental, physical, moral, decency and propriety, and religious. She also provides advice for how to create habits: mainly focusing on one at a time, immediately addressing any lapse in it, motivating them by teaching about inspiring people with that habit, etc. The matter of discipline is considered another 1/3 of education. Though it also goes far beyond “schooling”; providing a parenting/life philosophy.
Life: This represents academics. However, CM was a proponent of exposing children to ideas rather than listed facts. So this method relies on what is called “living books” rather than textbooks.
Here are a few other common elements of the Charlotte Mason method:
• lots of reading together
• narration (students tell what they gleaned from the reading rather than testing)
• copious time outside in nature
• handwriting and spelling lessons usually come from living texts rather than lists of words
• teaching composers and artists
If you wish to learn more about this method I would first and foremost suggest reading the works of Charlotte Mason herself. There are many! And learning directly from a primary source is always a good practice. But I would also recommend “For the Children’s Sake” by Susan Shaeffer Macaulay.
Emmy Goulet 