Charlotte Mason, born in 1842, found herself alone at seventeen after the deaths, a year apart, of her parents. That year she enrolled in a school to learn how to be a teacher and taught for ten years during which time she began to design her own ideas on what teaching should really be all about. She was not sure that children were being educated in a way that truly helped them learn. It also bothered her that lower class children were only taught a trade, while the upper class were instead taught literature and the fine arts. She felt this was wrong and that all children should be able to learn no matter how much money their families had.
After another five years of teaching she began to develop the program that would make her methods famous. She looked to home education as an answer that was being missed by many. She began the PEU, Parents Educations Union, having newsletter type publications available to help educate parents on what was best for their children. In 1891 she began a school, the House of Education, that was formed to train governesses and anyone else who planned to work with children.
Charlotte Mason believed that if you could only keep their interest a child would learn so much better. Due to this way of thinking she believed that textbooks were useless. They were too dry. Instead she advocated the use of what she termed living books. These were publications that were written on a subject by someone who truly had a passion for the subject. She believed them to be able to engage a child’s interest where a textbook would not.
There are certain principles that Charlotte thought were important when teaching. Narration was a good learning tool. A child should be able to explain what they had read by talking about it. She believed that there were certain habits that a child should learn. They needed to be able to be kind, tell the truth, be even-tempered, respectful, on time, gentle and clean. These were important qualities that she felt could easily be learned by children in the right environment.
The length of time a lesson was taught was very important in her program. Teach too long and you lose the child’s interest. Teach too short and you will not catch it. Charlotte Mason believed that lessons should not exceed fifteen minutes for a elementary aged child. In this way they learned enough in day about a subject and were able to learn about many different subjects in one day.
Her curriculum also included math, bible studies, history, nature, poetry, grammar, art appreciation, geography and the study of a second language. She felt it was important to put less emphasis on the fine arts and more of what there is out there to learn. Many homeschooling parents have adapted her lessons. She believed that only those who were close to the child, parents, governesses, care givers, could properly educate them, which was why she wrote, and published, several volumes on the best ways to educate children. These have been tailored to homeschoolers who believe that Charlotte had the right ideas about how to best educate their children.
