Charlotte Mason Philosophy on Video

These 21 videos do a great job of setting forth Charlotte Mason's educational philosophy.

Our Experiment in Writing Instruction

Here is the very simple approach to writing we have developed for our eleven year old son along with the latest sample of his writing.

Assumptions: 

1) Writing is a skill that is developed through practice.

2) One crucial component of practice is imitation.  

3) Much reading of well written books along with oral narrations provide the foundation of writing.

4) Learning to write should not be a burden or produce anxiety in the child.

Application:

Do each item below once per week (we do one per day):

1) Copy work: copy a well written sentence in beautiful cursive

2) Dictation: write a well written sentence as dictated from Mom

3) Imitate a well written sentence (we are using this excellent sentence imitation book)

4) Imitate a well written sentence (we are using this excellent sentence imitation book)

5) Write a narration from one of the week’s readings

Here is the most recent assignment and the unedited first draft:

The assignment was to "Narrate the battle of Grendel and Beowulf (try to capture the mood)."

When night came, King Rothgar and his men went to their sleeping quarters, while Beowulf and his men waited for Grendel.  Soon all the men were asleep exept for Beowulf.  Then at the stroke of midnight Grendel came stalking into the hall, he tore one man to pieces and ate him then reached out for another to take back to his home in the marshes.  But the man he reached for was Beowulf and as the evil hand came toward him he jumped out of the bed and grabbed it.  Beowulf was as strong as ten men and at once Grendel knew he would not live another day.  But still he struggled and pulled so hard that his arm came off in Beowulf’s hand giving Grendel a mortal wound.  Then Rothgar rewarded Beowulf richly and he hung the arm of Grendel above the door to the hall.

How to destroy the desire for knowledge

(a) Too many oral lessons, which offer knowledge in a diluted form, and do not leave the child free to deal with it.
(b) Lectures, for which the teacher collects, arranges, and illustrates matter from various sources; these often offer knowledge in too condensed and ready prepared a form.
(c) Text-books compressed and recompressed from the big book of the big man.
(d) The use of emulation and ambition as incentives to learning in place of the adequate desire for, and delight in, knowledge.
(Charlotte Mason, Vol 3 pg 214)

J. Henri Fabre, Books, and the Spirit of Inquiry

J. Henri Fabre, the French entomologist, tells of the beginning of his love of insects as a nineteen year old teacher:

The magnificent Bee herself, with her dark-violet wings and black-velvet raiment, her rustic edifices on the sun-blistered pebbles amid the thyme, her honey, providing a diversion from the severities of the compass and the square, all made a great impression on my mind; and I wanted to know more than I had learnt from the schoolboys, which was just how to rob the cells of their honey with a straw. As it happened, my bookseller had a gorgeous work on insects for sale. It was called "Histoire naturelle des animaux articules", and boasted a multitude of most attractive illustrations; but the price of it, the price of it! No matter: was not my splendid income supposed to cover everything, food for the mind as well as food for the body? Anything extra that I gave to the one I could save upon the other; a method of balancing painfully familiar to those who look to science for their livelihood. The purchase was effected. That day my professional emoluments were severely strained: I devoted a month's salary to the acquisition of the book. I had to resort to miracles of economy for some time to come before making up the enormous deficit.

The book was devoured; there is no other word for it. In it, I learnt the name of my black Bee; I read for the first time various details of the habits of insects; I found, surrounded in my eyes with a sort of halo, the revered names of Reaumur, Huber, and Leon Dufour ; and, while I turned over the pages for the hundredth time, a voice within me seemed to whisper:

'You also shall be of their company!'

To educate without fostering a love of learning is not enough

"Practically all schools are doing wonders. The schoolmaster is abroad in the land and we are educating 'our masters' with immense zeal and self-devotion. What we have reason to deplore is that after some eight or twelve years' brilliant teaching in school, the cinema show and the football field, polo or golf, satisfy the needs of our former pupils to whatever class they belong. We are filled with compassion when we detect the lifeless hand or leg, the artificial nose or jaw, that many a man has brought home as a consequence of the War. But many of our young men and women go about more seriously maimed than these. They are devoid of intellectual interests, history and poetry are without charm for them, the scientific work of the day is only slightly interesting, their 'job' and the social amenities they can secure are all that their life has for them. The maimed existence in which a man goes on from day to day without either nourishing or using his intellect, is causing anxiety to those interested in education, who know that after religion it is our chief concern, it is, indeed, the necessary handmaid of religion." from Towards A Philosophy of Education, Volume 6 of the Charlotte Mason Series