Charlotte Mason Quotes - Page 2

I think we owe it to children to let them dig their knowledge, of whatever subject, for themselves out of the "fit" book; and this for two reasons: What a child digs for is his own possession; what is poured into his ear, like the idle song of a pleasant singer, floats out as lightly as it came in, and is rarely assimilated. I do not mean to say that the lecture and the oral lesson are without their uses; but these uses are, to give impulse and to order knowledge; and not to convey knowledge.

Let them get at the books themselves, and do not let them be flooded with diluted talk from the lips of their teacher. The less the parents 'talk-in' and expound their rations of knowledge and thought to the children they are educating, the better for the children...Children must be allowed to ruminate, must be left alone with their own thoughts.

Every common miracle which the child sees with his own eyes makes of him for the moment another Newton.

Do not let the endless succession of small things crowd great ideals out of sight and out of mind.

Every person exceeds our power of measurement.

A child is a person in whom all possibilities are present - present now at this very moment - not to be educed after many years and efforts manifold on the part of the educator

Let children alone... the education of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to let her children alone, not teasing them with perpetual commands and directions - a running fire of Do and Don’t ; but letting them go their own way and grow, having first secured that they will go the right way and grow to fruitful purpose.

Every walk should offer some knotty problem for the children to think out-"Why does that leaf float on the water, and this pebble sink?" and so on.

So much for the right books; the right use of them is another matter. The children must enjoy the book. The ideas it holds must each make that sudden, delightful impact upon their minds, must cause that intellectual stir, which mark the inception of an idea.

Education is a matter of the spirit. No wiser word has been said on the subject, and yet we persist in applying education from without. No one knoweth the things of the man except the spirit of man which is in him; therefore, there is no education but self-education, and as soon as a young child begins his education, he does so as a student. Our business is to give him mind stuff. Both quantity and quality are essential.

We attempt to define a person, the most commonplace person we know, but he will not submit to bounds; some unexpected beauty of nature breaks out; we find he is not what we thought, and begin to suspect that every person exceeds our power of measurement.

The children's lessons should provide material for their mental growth, should exercise the several powers of their minds, should furnish them with fruitful ideas, and should afford them knowledge, really valuable for its own sake, accurate, and interesting, of the kind that the child may recall as a man with profit and pleasure.

The teacher who allows his scholars the freedom of the city of books is at liberty to be their guide, philosopher and friend; and is no longer the mere instrument of forcible intellectual feeding.

The most common and the monstrous defect in the education of the day is that children fail to acquire the habit of reading.

We have never been so rich in books. But there has never been a generation when there is so much twaddle in print for children.

There is no education but self-education.

Authority is just and faithful in all matters of promise-keeping; it is also considerate, and that is why a good mother is the best home-ruler.

Profound thought is conveyed in language of very great simplicity and purity.

We talk of lost ideals, but perhaps they are not lost, only changed; when our ideal for ourselves and for our children becomes limited to prosperity and comfort, we get these, very likely, for ourselves and for them, but we get no more.

Children should Transcribe favourite Passages. A certain sense of possession and delight may be added to this exercise if children are allowed to choose for transcription their favourite verse in one poem and another.

Therefore, teaching, talk and tale, however lucid or fascinating, effect nothing until self-activity be set up; that is, self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child's nature.

For the mind is capable of dealing with only one kind of food; it lives, grows and is nourished upon ideas only; mere information is to it as a meal of sawdust to the body; there are no organs for the assimilation of the one more than of the other.

Education is the science of relations

Let the parent ask "Why?" and the child produce the answer, if he can. After he has turned the matter over in his mind, there is no harm in telling him - and he will remember it - the reason why.

The peculiar value of geography lies in its fitness to nourish the mind with ideas and furnish the imagination with pictures.