Charlotte Mason
Some homeschooling friends of mine are inspired by the work of Charlotte Mason who developed her own homeschooling method (amongst many other things) in England in late 19th century/early 20th. I ordered a couple of books and settled in a comfy chair and started browsing. Having just completed two years of traditional Montessori training, I couldn’t help but make parallels between the two methods whilst I was reading and indeed there are many similarities. Dr Maria Montessori was born 28 years after Charlotte Mason in Italy.
In my head I couldn’t stop comparing. Both methods are child centered, stress independent learning, have many similar teacher strategies such as the 3 period lesson and invoke the love of learning. They are gentle approaches, that do not grade or utilize a punishment/reward system. They both invite the children to reiterate the learning through narration/drawing or activity. They include nature studies. In the Montessori method, grace and courtesy lessons are given to help shape children’s behavior. Charlotte Mason focusses on good work habits and manners. They have been devised through observing children and discovering most effective teaching methods.
I thought it would be interesting to see if there was anything in her books which I could use. I am particularly interested in her “living books” idea. Living books have been written by passionate people who have lived an experience and are sharing it with you. They have an emotional content and are “alive” in the sense that they can be kept alive in the children’s mind and touch their imaginations. I am motivated to go to the library and find books that bring the curriculum areas alive.
I liked her section on sensory stimulation where she invites children to use their senses to explore. Imagine a little box of directives such as: On a sunny day, when the grass has been freshly mowed, run outside and grab a bunch of cut grass and smell it. I want to make a little box of sensory activities.
Anyway…when I have read more thoroughly about Charlotte Mason I might write a paper on this…just for fun!
June 29th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Enjoyed hearing your thoughts comparing the two…
A major thing about the kids reading the living books (or hearing them read aloud to them, books on a higher level than they can read when little), is that they are ‘allowed’ to take away from the books what they will not told by the HS parent what they should have gleaned from the book.
Also CM uses narration as the way to summarize info and help polish communication skills (oral narration first, written at about grade 4). Whatever they say is okay, not looking for certain tidbits to be parroted back.
A contrast with classical and Well Trained Mind is that they are more into fact memorization in elementary years and care for rote memorization not emotional connection. In TWTM they say to read X book and child should narrate back facts X, Y, Z then work on memorizing names, dates etc in history.
CM hated parroting back of facts and wanted each child to take away different things from a book based on their unique nature. For example when reading about something in history maybe one child retains all about the fashion of the day and the other’s memory was all about the weapons of war from that time period. It is “all good”.