Charlotte Mason’s Home Education 6-volume series has roughly 2,000 combined pages. It is not, by any measure, a light reading. But it is incredibly impressive (at least to me) that someone could think through so thoroughly her philosophy of principles-based education. And I think until/unless someone else is willing to do something different, we are in a position to listen and learn, first, and then (if there is room) critique and improve, second.

Now, while the number of densely packed pages is staggering, I found the volumes very repetitious–though told in different angles. In fact, Mason herself expounds in Volume 3 that this repetitious style of writing is intentional on her part. This is because she sees herself fighting a tidal wave of philosophies that run counter to the self-evident educational philosophy she imbibes, and therefore is trying to hit her core concepts so thoroughly and from so many different angles that they would find roots in her readers.

Thus, it’s not too hard to distill in a nut-shell her main tenets. In fact, at the beginning of each volume she has a preface to the entire series that does just that. Opening that preface up, Miss Mason lists 18 principles that undergird her educational philosophy. I’m distilling that further into 7 points:

  1. Children are born with the ability to choose good or evil, and are by nature predisposed to learn.
  2. Education depends on the atmosphere children live in, the habits they’re trained in, and the ideas they are fed.
  3. Education happens when children naturally relate, “with a vast number of things and thoughts,” (p. XIII, Vol. 1): physical exercise, nature, handicrafts, science, art, and many living books are ways this happens.
  4. The 2 secrets to moral and intellectual self-management are (1) the way of the will, (2) the way of the reason.
  5. The way of the will is largely trained through redirecting thoughts of “I want” to other, better things, so that “I will” gets ground over “I want”.
  6. The way of the reason is largely only as good as, “the acceptance or rejection of initial ideas,” (p. XIV, Vol. 1). Because you can develop great reasons for false conclusions if you don’t have a good starting place.
  7. There should be no divide between “secular” and “spiritual”. If an idea is good, it comes from God. And if a pursuit is noble, God must help us achieve it.

In all, I think the Charlotte Mason philosophy is ambitious but does deliver positive results for raising kids competently and with a Christian worldview (I’ve seen it help our kids in retaining, comprehending, and evaluating ideas). To make it work, I believe you’d need a very dedicated parent to teach them (and/or an educator if you are applying outside the home). Arguably it would be something akin to being a first year teacher (no easy task–I know from limited experience), but over multiple years of your child’s life if you’re homeschooling, because each year is somewhat new.

Adding to your efforts is the fact that Mason wrote more than 100 years ago, and thus you’ll have to modernize some of the examples and your own application of it (as well as overlook the occasional false scientific deductions she makes that have been disproved years later–though I found these fairly rare). But (A) Mason dealt more with principles than application, so those carry over throughout generations, and (B) You have organizations that have prepared modern-day curriculum with her examples (the “purest” Charlotte Mason curriculum I’m aware of is AmblesideOnline, but a good deal other “Charlotte Mason-based” curriculum exist as well–though it’s obviously easier to claim you’re based on her curriculum, and harder to actually be based on her curriculum: so beware).

Lastly, I caution against her lower view of parts of Scripture (namely parts of the Old Testament that she sees as non-historical). See “Charlotte Mason on the Authority of Scripture” by Art Middlekauff. And if I may offer one other critique, I also didn’t like her under-emphasis of the depravity of human nature that is found in every child. What I mean is that Scripture teaches things like Prov. 22:15: “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, and the rod of correction shall drive it away.” Or Rom. 5:19: “by the one man’s [Adam’s] disobedience the many were made sinners.” And I wished Mason would have acknowledged this more, and (even better) worked out how such a truth impacts the way we educate children.

But as I said at the beginning, Charlotte Mason left us with a phenomenal treasure trove in writing such a weighty educational philosophy, so I’d rather urge all of us to listen first. Along these lines, it’s no wonder that many (including our family) continue reading and following many of her principles with positive results more than 100 years later.

Brian Holda