Education is a Life.
When I first read these words I imagined a life full of real experiences – visiting the zoo, watching seeds sprout and grow, singing together, etc.
Charlotte Mason meant something totally different!
Charlotte Mason’s concept of Education is a Life concerns the care and feeding of our minds. As we feed our bodies, we must also feed our minds. Charlotte wrote that the proper food for minds is ideas. Ideas supply energy. They nourish and feed our minds, just as wholesome food nourishes our bodies.
Now, ideas cannot be force-fed into anybody, least of all children. Certain thoughts will grab and animate them and others will be tossed aside. Charlotte recommended providing a great variety of ideas to children, from which they would be able to pick and choose. This is why she called for providing “much and varied humane reading, as well as human thought expressed in the forms of art.” (vol 6 pg 111)
This is such a relief and breath of fresh air to me. It expresses some of my deepest feelings about life and living it as a human, created in the image of God, rather than an animate being evolved from a rock…or even a fish. I crave art and beauty of all sorts. It feeds my soul. Our society seems to say that these things are worthless, unnecessary and maybe even stuck-up.
Some homeschoolers believe that children really only need the 3Rs and anything more is gravy. Well, Charlotte disagreed. She wrote that this so-called gravy “is not a luxury, a tit-bit, to be given to children now and then, but their very bread of life, which they must have in abundant portions and at regular periods.” (vol 6 pg 111)
Without the daily mind food of ideas, both I and my children will wilt and suffer under the load of daily academic drill and effort. Ideas lift us up from the mundane slog, providing vision and focus which will keep us well-nourished and encouraged to go on.
4 comments:
I'm really happy that you submitted this to the CM blog carnival. We just visited the Museum of Natural History where, according to them, the only thing that differentiates us from other primates is our technological prowess :(
Thank you for providing such a well-written and concise overview of Education as a Life.
Lots of gravy at our house....no mean is complete without it, educational meal anyway.
Enjoyed reading your thoughts.
Wonderfully put! It really is interesting to see that she meant the life of ideas which chiefly comes from the written word. That's certainly easier to accomplish than running around to museums and such! Although she definitely saw the place for museums also. Hmmm. Anyway, I love books, and I'm so glad to have many who can recommend good literature for my children. Thank you!
I like the "care and feeding of our minds" concept. I've been pondering the importance of ideas lately. I just wrote a post about living books and included CM quotes about the great ideas we can get from great thinkers through living books. The ideas presented in the books I read to my children are sometimes over their heads, but they give their minds something to grow on.
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