Reflection

Respond to the following in the comments or in your journal:

1) What subjects do you feel confident in teaching? In what subjects do you lack confidence?

2) On a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the highest, how would you rate your current understanding of Mason's methods?

3) What are you wondering after watching the first video?

In Mason's Own Words

Read Home Education Part 5, Section 1, "Lessons as Instruments of Education" in its original text and/or in modern English.

"Method of Lesson.––In every case the reading should be consecutive from a well-chosen book.

1) Before the reading for the day begins, the teacher should talk a little (and get the children to talk) about the last lesson, with a few words about what is to be read, in order that the children may be animated by expectation; but she should beware of explanation and, especially, of forestalling the narrative.

2) Then, she may read two or three pages, enough to include an episode;

3) After that, let her call upon the children to narrate,––in turns, if there be several of them. They not only narrate with spirit and accuracy, but succeed in catching the style of their author. It is not wise to tease them with corrections; they may begin with an endless chain of 'ands,' but they soon leave this off, and their narrations become good enough in style and composition to be put in a 'print book'! This sort of narration lesson should not occupy more than a quarter of an hour.

4) The book should always be deeply interesting, and when the narration is over, there should be a little talk in which moral points are brought out, pictures shown to illustrate the lesson, or diagrams drawn on the blackboard.

As soon as children are able to read with ease and fluency, they read their own lesson, either aloud or silently, with a view to narration; but where it is necessary to make omissions, as in the Old Testament narratives and Plutarch's Lives, for example, it is better that the teacher should always read the lesson which is to be narrated" (Home Education, p. 233).

“The teachers give sympathy and occasionally elucidate, sum up or enlarge, but the actual work is done by the scholars" (Philosophy of Education, p. 6).

“If the business of teaching is to furnish the child with ideas, any teaching which does not leave him possessed of a new mental image has, by so far, missed the mark” (Home Education, p.173).

"The reader will say with truth, — 'I knew all this before and have always acted more or less on these principles;' and I can only point to the unusual results we obtain through adhering not 'more or less' but strictly to the principles and practices I have indicated. I suppose the difficulties are of the sort that Lister had to contend with; every surgeon knew that his instruments and appurtenances should be kept clean, but the saving of millions of lives has resulted from the adoption of the great surgeon’s antiseptic treatment; that is from the substitution of exact principles scrupulously applied for the rather casual ‘more or less’ methods of earlier days" (Philosophy of Education, p. 19).

"Children make large demands upon us. We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests. 'Thou hast set my feet in a large room' should be the glad cry of every intelligent soul. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking––the strain would be too great––but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest. We cannot give the children these interests; we prefer that they should never say they have learned botany or conchology, geology or astronomy.

The question is not,––how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education––but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him? I know you may bring a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink. What I complain of is that we do not bring our horse to the water. We give him miserable little text-books, mere compendiums of facts, which he is to learn off and say and produce at an examination; or we give him various knowledge in the form of warm diluents, prepared by his teacher with perhaps some grains of living thought to the gallon. And all the time we have books, books teeming with ideas fresh from the minds of thinkers upon every subject to which we can wish to introduce children" (School Education, pp. 170-171).‍

Further Reading

When Children Love to Learn: A Practical Application of Charlotte Mason's Philosophy for Today edited by Elaine Cooper

In Vital Harmony: Charlotte Mason and the Natural Laws of Education by Karen Glass

The Living Page: Keeping Notebooks with Charlotte Mason by Laurie Bestvater

Alveary Overview Booklet