Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Nuggets from School Education by Charlotte Mason

I'm only about halfway through, but these quotes are the best of the book thus far:

"The question is not, - how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education - but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?

And if this is true, then we should not "give him miserable little textbooks, mere compendiums of facts, which he is to learn off and say and produce at an examination,"

When the opposite is available: "And all the time we have books, books teeming with ideas fresh from the minds of thinkers upon every subject which we can wish to introduce children."

Therefore: "knowing, too, that an inspiring idea initiates a new habit of thought, and hence, a new habit of life; we perceive that the great work of education is to inspire children with vitalizing ideas as to every relation of life, every department of knowledge, every subject of thought; and to give deliberate care to the formation of those habits of the good life which are the outcome of vitalizing ideas. In this great work we seek and assuredly find the cooperation of the Divine Spirit, whom we recognize, in a sense rather new to modern though, as the supreme Educator of mankind in things that have been called secular, fully as much as in those that have been called sacred."


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