Charlotte Mason, Home Education
Home Education is the first in Charlotte Mason’s six-volume series on pedagogy, drawn from six lectures on raising and educating children up to age nine. Perfect for parents and teachers alike, this volume introduces foundational ideas like “children are born persons” and “education is the science of relations.”
Mason explores the formation of habits—such as attention, obedience, and truthfulness—and explains how narration can be used to teach academic subjects. She concludes with reflections on the Will, Conscience, and the Divine Life in the child.
Karen Glass, Consider This
In Consider This: Charlotte Mason and the Classical Tradition, Karen Glass connects Mason’s pedagogy to classical Christian education. The educators of ancient Greece and Rome gave the world a vision of what education should be. The medieval and Renaissance teachers valued their insights and lofty goals.
Christian educators such as Augustine, Erasmus, Milton, and Comenius drew from the teaching of Plato, Aristotle, and Quintilian those truths which they found universal and potent. Charlotte Mason developed her own philosophy of education from the riches of the past, not accidentally but purposefully. She and the other founding members of the Parents’ National Educational Union in England were inspired by the classical educators of history and set out to achieve their vision in modern education. They succeeded—and thanks to Charlotte Mason’s clear development of methods
Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education
A Philosophy of Education (also known as Towards a Philosophy of Education) is Charlotte Mason’s final book in her six-volume series of books on pedagogy. This volume gives the best overview of her philosophy, and includes the final version of her 20 Principles.
This book fills in a gap in her first book by devoting considerable attention to the education of older children, yet provides a valuable overview for younger children as well. Part I develops and discusses her 20 principles; Part II di
Karen Glass, Know and Tell
Narration, the art of telling, has been used as a pedagogical tool since ancient times. Over one hundred years ago, Charlotte Mason methodized narration and implemented it in scores of schools in Great Britain.
Over the past few decades, educators in the US, mostly in home schools, have followed her guidelines with outstanding results. Know and Tell: The Art of Narration discusses the theory behind the use of narration and then walks through the process from beginning to end, to show how simply “telling” is the foundation for higher-level thinking and writing.
In this book, you will find sample narrations and many resources to help you use narration with your students in any setting. If you’ve been wanting to try narration, but haven’t felt confident enough to rely on an unfamiliar method, this book will give you the tools that you need to make the process easier.
Karen Glass, In Vital Harmony
Charlotte Mason looked at the world and saw that it was governed by universal laws, such as the law of gravity. Then she wondered, “What if there were similar laws that governed the way people learn?” If we knew what those laws were, we’d be able to pursue education along the most promising lines. She devoted her life to finding the key principles of education and then developing methods to make the most of them. The result is a comprehensive picture of living and learning that breathes life into education at every level—from babyhood to the adult years. It’s not a rote system, but a flexible set of ideas that keep education in focus. These principles are for everyone concerned wit
Elaine Cooper, ed., When Children Love to Learn
Teachers and parents can either encourage this natural inquisitiveness or squelch it. There is joy in the classroom when children learn-not to take a test, not to get a grade, not to compete with each other, and not to please their parents or their teachers-but because they want to know about the world around them!
Both Christian educators and parents will find proven help in creating a positive learning atmosphere through methods pioneered by Charlotte Mason that show how to develop a child’s natural love of learning. The professional educators, administrators, and Mason supporters contributing to this volume give useful applications that work in a variety of educational settings, from Christian schools to homeschools.
A practical follow-up to Crossway’s For the Children’s Sake, this book follows a tradition of giving serious thought to what education is, so that children will be learning for life and for everlasting life.
