The Value of a Child

I have the privilege and pleasure of participating in Nancy Kelly's Living Education Lessons. I cannot tell you how much the first two classes blessed me, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the sessions more than I can say. The next one is tonight, in fact! I missed the CMI conference last summer because of our move, and will miss it this year, too, because I waited too long and it's sold out. I needed something to renew my spirit, and these classes with Nancy are just the ticket. Do check them out and see if it's something that might interest you. You won't be disappointed. Her blog, Sage Parnassus, is also a wonderful resource.

The first two weeks we discussed Miss Mason's first principle of education: "Children are born persons." Upon first glance, it seems like an obvious statement in some ways. The longer I've had to ponder it, though, the more I find there is to consider.

It's not simply that children are human, or that they are people. Person almost needs to have a capital "P," because personhood, I believe, is talking about a child's soul, the very thing that makes them who they are in the eyes of God.

This first principle is what first touched my heart and drew me to Charlotte Mason. When I was growing up, personhood was not something that was ever discussed, much less seen as important. Certainly no one had heard of Charlotte Mason. The parenting style was punitive, with little or no regard to circumstances or the heart of a child. When I learned from Miss Mason, and the lovely people God's brought into my life along this journey, how to see my children as Persons, my heart and parenting were forever changed for the better. I'm so grateful!

I made a new connection on Personhood as I was reading our first assignment. Nancy has asked us to keep commonplace entries of our readings, of course, and sometimes I feel as though I should just copy the entire book out by hand. There seems to be more underlined than not! The quote I chose was this one:

If we have not proved that a child is born a person with a mind as complete and as beautiful as his little body, we can at least show that he always has all the mind he requires for his occasions; that is, that his mind is the instrument of his education, but his education does not produce his mind. --Vol. 6, p. 36 

When I read that initially, I felt a huge sense of relief. I was assured that the education I'm giving my girls is not what is making their minds. They already have all the mind they need. It was a breath of reassurance I needed.

Then, though, I looked back over the reading as I prepared to read the next week's assignment, and I came across this quote:

...the beautiful infant frame is but the setting of a jewel of such astonishing worth, that, put the whole world in one scale and this jewel in the other, and the scale which holds the world flies up outbalanced.
--Vol. 6, p. 34

Can you see that vision with me? Can you imagine the soul of a child as a precious jewel whose value outweighs that of the earth itself? That image has captured my imagination, and is again reworking the way I see my children. I know as mothers, as parents, we all see our children as precious. I have no doubt of that. I am beginning to see that they are worth still more than I knew, and they are so incredibly beautiful.

When I put those two quotes together, I found an expansion on the idea that children are not blank slates or empty buckets to be filled. No matter what book we assign our children to read, each one will receive it differently. I am continually amazed by the connections my children make in their reading, and it's never the same thing from any of them. We can no more turn a child into a doctor or a lawyer than we could turn them into a squash. They are who they are made to be by the Creator, and He is forming them according to His purposes.

Of course, I still want them to experience truth, beauty and goodness through the books they read, and my goal is still to provide them with the feast of ideas Miss Mason talks about spreading before students, but in the end, the ideas help them find out more about who they already are, rather than making them into something I want.

Consider This by Karen Glass

This post contains affiliate links.

My homeschooling journey started 10 years ago, when I could not bear to send my oldest child away for a full day of kindergarten. I was blessed to be introduced to homeschooling by a fellow ballet mom, who told me about The Well-Trained Mind. From there, I found my way to the WTM forums, where I made some wonderful homeschooling friends. Those wonderful ladies (and a few gentlemen) helped me learn how to teach my children, as well as what I could reasonably expect from them (note - NOT that they would be independently working at the age of 5). They also helped me become a better parent, and I will be forever grateful for that.

However, as I tried implementing neo-classical homeschooling, something wasn't quite right. There was a lot that was excellent - the living books, of course, and more, but something was missing. I was tremendously blessed to be introduced to Charlotte Mason by some local moms, who had a small family co-op we were able to attend, and it changed our lives for the better. I have been trying to learn more about Charlotte Mason's principles ever since, and while I still feel like a newbie in some respects, I can't imagine educating myself or my children in any other way. As Charlotte Mason herself said, "Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life."

One thing I've learned is that Charlotte Mason was, in fact, a classical educator. She did some things quite differently than many classical educators do these days, but her methods and principles are firmly founded in the classical tradition. It's hard for me to explain that to other people, though. I am SO EXCITED to be able to share with you Karen Glass' new book, Consider This: Charlotte Mason and the Classical Tradition. I have been waiting and waiting for this book to be released, and it's finally here! I ordered my copy today, and the best part? Through the Amazon Match program, if you purchase a paperback copy you can get the Kindle version FREE, so I can start reading today! I cannot express to you how happy this makes me. Also, through October 31, 2014, you can download Karen's study guide for the book for FREE.

Karen Glass is a member of the Ambleside Online Advisory, and has taught her children, ages 10 to 24, using Charlotte Mason's principles from the beginning. I first read the article she wrote for Susan Wise Bauer's website, The Well-Trained Mind, and appreciated her wisdom. She has been researching CM for 20 years, and I can't wait to read what she has to say in her book. Karen's book is more than enough on its own, but the introduction was written by David Hicks, author of Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education, a wonderful book on classical education and one that the Ambleside Online Advisory used in putting together their wonderful curriculum.

Here's the book trailer video. Enjoy, and then head over and order your copy of Consider This!

Learning to Create a Charlotte Mason Schedule

When I attended the Charlotte Mason Institute conference a couple of weeks ago, I attended a session on scheduling. Throughout our homeschool experience, we have always felt "behind." The best-laid lesson plans would go out the window within a few weeks of the school year when we got to a point that catching up was just not realistic, and I could *not* figure out what we were doing wrong. I was pretty sure if we just worked harder it would all be FINE. However, as I'm entering my 10th year of homeschooling, it's time to face facts: what we have been doing wasn't working. Lest we continue down the road to insanity, it's time to make some changes.

Nicole Williams, who blogs at Sabbath Mood Homeschool, gave what was, for me, a life-changing presentation on how to set a schedule for our homeschool that fits within Charlotte Mason's principles of short lessons and living books. Now, I'm pretty good with living books. The problem is there are so many excellent books, it can be hard to keep the list to a reasonable number. Also, the expectations of what "school" should look like in our society today are vastly different than what Charlotte Mason advocated, and it's all too easy to slide into doing "just one more thing" or feeling like children should be making more progress in math simply because they are not keeping up with the schedule someone else has dictated for their age or grade level.

Here is what I learned: It is more important to keep lessons short, within the timeframe set by Miss Mason, than it is to finish every book.

What does this mean for my family?

Firstly, it means letting go of the expectations I have in my mind for what we should be able to accomplish. That's a hard one for me, but as I look back over the years of our homeschooling, it's probably what's caused the most stress for me. In fact, I can say that it impeded progress in many areas because there were too MANY things to do and I didn't know how to cut back - or even that I could, and needed to, for the sake of my learners.

Secondly, it means taking a careful look at the schedules used in a CM school, and seeing how those can be adapted to our homeschool. In Nicole's conference session, she talked about a couple of things that were significant to me. She noted that CM schools were in session for 6 days per week, because at that time, parents worked 6 days per week. In our society, Monday-Friday is the norm, and she encouraged us to keep to that - although she mentioned that a 4-day schedule would NOT be enough. She cautioned us against trying to fit the Saturday time slots into a Monday-Friday schedule, too, because that would make the days too long. You can see examples of PNEU schedules on Ambleside Online here.

Thirdly, it means that we will be more intentional about our Masterly Inactivity time in the afternoons. Nicole pointed out to us that there are no slots on the time tables for picture study, composer study, or nature study, just to name a few, but we know those things were just as important as the rest of the subjects.

I'll be sharing more about our scheduling process as I go.

Resources: 

• Nicole's Planning Series, and scheduling cards
• Read Christy Hissong's guest post on Afterthoughts on Scheduling for Peace
• Ambleside Online has PNEU programmes you can see for an idea of what students studied in Mason schools
• If you're REALLY excited about all this and want to do even more research, check out the Charlotte Mason Digital Collection, hosted by Redeemer University!