Charlotte Mason's 20 Principles

... are true for everyone, if they accept it or not.

Submission to authority is essential for any society, group, or family to function properly.

Authority is not a license to abuse children nor to use as an instrument of fear, love, suggestion or influence to make them learn.

1. The child's natural environment
2. The training of good habits
3. The exposure to living ideas and concepts.

This is what Charlotte Mason means when she writes: "Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life."

By "atmosphere", it doesn't mean that a child should be put in an artificial environment specially adapted for children.

Children learn from real things in their natural environment. We patronise a child when we try to reduce his world to an assumed child's level.

"Education is a discipline" means training children to have good habits and self-control. 

This means that education should apply to the intellectual, moral and physical parts.

The mind feeds on diverse ideas, so the child's curriculum should be varied and generous.

Rather, it is a living thing that needs knowledge in order to grow. 

Like the stomach was designed to digest food, so the mind is designed to digest knowledge, fit for the mind.

Herbart's philosophy that the mind is an empty container waiting to be filled lays the stress of education on the teacher.

Children taught on this principle are in danger of receiving much teaching while not gaining enough knowledge.

We believe the normal child is able to digest real knowledge.

A rich curriculum exposes children to living ideas and concepts. Give him a full and generous curriculum but be careful not to present facts without their informing ideas. 

Children are capable of making their own connections with a vast number of things and experiences.

We should ensure the child learns about nature, handicrafts, science and art, reads many living books and is physically active.

In devising a curriculum for a normal child, we have to consider three points.

1. He requires knowledge, for the mind needs sufficient food.
2. The knowledge should be about a variety of things to prevent a monotonous mental diet.
3. Knowledge should be communicated with high-quality literary language since this is what a child's attention responds to naturally.

Since a person doesn't really "own" knowledge until he can express it, children should 'tell back' or write down what they have read or heard after a single reading or hearing.

Children have a naturally great power of attention. However, allowing a second reading makes them lazy and weakens their ability to pay attention. When teachers summarise and ask comprehension questions, they are giving children a second chance. By getting it the first time, less time is wasted on repeated reading. 

This statement is not limited to clever children. All children respond freely to this method, which is based on the behaviour of mind.

Children have two guides to direct their moral and intellectual management:

1. The way of the will
2. The way of reason

Children should be taught:

• to distinguish between 'I want' and 'I will';
• to turn their thoughts from that which they desire but do not will.

The best way to turn our thoughts is to direct them to something else interesting. After a short diversion, the mind will work with renewed strength.

Children must learn not to lean too confidently on their own reasoning.

• Reason is an infallible guide when it demonstrates a mathematical truth. 
• However, it is a fallible guide to ideas. We will justify all kinds of wrong ideas if we really want to believe them.

Children should be taught - when they become mature enough - that reason is not to be trusted as the final authority in forming opinions. Their chief responsibility is to choose which ideas to accept or reject.

To help them in this choice, we give them

• principles of conduct
• and a wide range of knowledge

These principles should save them from loose thinking and careless action.

We don't allow separation to grow up between the intellectual and 'spiritual' life of children. Children don't go back and forth when they focus on God and then their school subjects. 

We teach them that the Divine Spirit has access to their spirits and is their Constant Helper in all their interests, duties, subjects, and joys of life.