A Delectable Education Charlotte Mason Podcast

This week's Charlotte Mason podcast episode is another Q&A session with Liz, Nicole, and Emily, notably: is it okay to start a Mason education midyear? are the special studies books too simple and deameaning to our child's intelligence? and what about a passage in Mason's writings that contradicts ideas she shares in other places?

This Charlotte Mason education podcast episode explores our responsibilities in teaching. If we have agreed to take on homeschooling as our work, what are the attitudes and practices that will make us good at our job?

Charlotte Mason encouraged a practice called "Masterly Inactivity." Emily, Liz, and Nicole discuss what this is, why it is important, and how in the world a mother actually manages to balance law and freedom in her home.

Charlotte Mason wrote vastly on the subject of opinions, and this podcast will address some of her salient points. Do opinions matter? Does each person need to form their own? What do we do to help our children make sensible opinions? These questions and more will be discussed.

This Q&A podcast episodes focuses on Charlotte Mason's counsel for exams with many students, combining many students in one book, and what to accomplish during school breaks.

The Savior of the World, Charlotte Mason's seven-volume poetic rendering of the Gospels, was part of the Bible lesson in her curriculum for forms III-VI. Liz, Emily, and Nicole become the students as their guest teacher, Art Middlekauff, leads an immersion class to demonstrate how the Savior of the World was incorporated in a lesson.

This week's episode of A Delectable Education podcast reviews what Charlotte Mason had to say about Sunday school. Since many listeners write to ask about the application of Mason's method in their church programs, we tackled the why, what and how of implementing a living education for children outside our home.

Charlotte Mason included a category named "Sunday Reading" on her programmes and this week's podcast discusses the purpose for this set-apart reading. In addition, there are plenty of suggestions for what to read, so listen for great titles and ideas for including them, as well as check out the lists in the show notes.

This week's podcast explores why Charlotte Mason's "feast" would be indigestible without one key ingredient: the child's imagination. Jason Fiedler, pastor and homeschool dad, is interviewed on the topic of cultivating imagination and why it is the power of mind that makes the difference in our children's education. For the Children's Sake, Susan Schaeffer Macaulay The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis (*Affiliate Links) The Imagination in Childhood, Charlotte Mason (Parents' Review no. 27) Imagination as a Powerful Factor in a Well-Balanced Mind, E.A. Parish (Parents' Review, no. 25) Charlotte Mason Institute Eastern Conference The Living Education Retreat The Idyll Challenge Jason Fiedler's CMI Blog

This A Delectable Education podcast Q&A episode addresses how Charlotte Mason viewed the history of other countries, whether her feast in high school was "only for girls," and some specifics about written narration. "And now the boy will probably leave the home schoolroom for the Preparatory School, either day or boarding, and, as I am dealing with the early training of children, I will not follow the time-tables of the home schoolroom through Classes III. (eleven to fourteen or fifteen) and IV. (fourteen to sixteen or seventeen). Must the entrance to the Preparatory School mean the abandonment of many of these subjects, and the teaching on quite other lines? I do not believe that this is in any way necessary. I have not been dealing with any special system nor advocating any special fad. I have tried to lay down certain more or less accepted educational principles, and have tried to show how these should be carried out from infancy up to the home schoolroom, and thence up to the Preparatory School. These principles are briefly the furnishing of the mind with living ideas on which to grow and develop, instead of trusting to the memory to assimilate only a daily pabulum of facts; the offering of opportunity to the mind to exercise itself in various directions, the formation of good habits which will go towards the building up of character, and the belief in the intrinsic interest to furnish the necessary stimulus for learning." ("Liberal Education" PR Article) "Many Preparatory Schoolmasters are shortening the hours of work, and are including in their curriculum nature lore, handicrafts, art teaching, and better methods of language teaching. Some only are making use of the books recommended in the programmes of the Parents' Union School and enrolling themselves on the P.N.E.U School Register. [For particulars of the Parents' Union School apply to Miss Mason, House of Education, Ambleside.] That the reform is not more rapid, is, I believe, due to the fact that such methods of teaching are not calculated to inspire confidence in the parents, who may not have had the opportunity of studying educational problems. More showy and more direct results are often demanded, and hence the true educationalist is hampered." ("Liberal Education" PR Article) "We cannot, moreover, hope for satisfactory results in the four years, which the boys usually spend at their Preparatory School, unless the ground has been well prepared, and not in a slovenly, amateurish manner. Just as the best teachers are required in the bottom of the school, so parents must prepare themselves for the training of character, the formation of habits, and the inspiration of ideas, and must be willing to seek out and to pay adequately nurses and governesses who are trained to cope with the real needs of the children. We have almost forgotten the days when through ignorance of the laws of health the children's bodies were under-nourished and otherwise neglected. We may hope that the days are also rapidly passing away when "lessons at home with a governess" means mind and soul starvation. With reform in the foundation, we may hope for some reform and progress all the way up the educational ladder." ("Home Training" PNEU Pamphlet) "We are astonished to read of the great irrigation works accomplished by the people of Mexico before Cortes introduced them to our eastern world. We are surprised to find that the literature and art of ancient China are things to be taken seriously. It is worth while to consider why this sort of naive surprise awakes in us when we hear of a nation that has not come under the influence of western civilization competing with us on our own lines. The reason is, perhaps, that we regard a person as a product." ("Children are Born Persons," PNEU Pamphlet) "Let him know what other nations were doing while we at home were doing thus and thus. If he come to think...that the people of some other land were, at one time, at any rate, better than we, why, so much the better for him." (Vol. 1, p. 281) "Our knowledge of history should give us something more than impressions and opinions." (Vol. 6, p. 171) "We introduce children as early as possible to the contemporary history of other countries as the study of English history alone is apt to lead to a certain insular and arrogant habit of mind." (Vol. 6, p. 175) An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Education (Volume 6), Book II, Chapter 2 A Liberal Education in Secondary Schools, Parents' Review Article The Home Training of Children, Parents' Review Article Episode 80: Charlotte Mason through High School Episode 48: Writing: Copywork, Dictation, and Written Narration Subjects by Form