Beginning a Charlotte Mason Education (Or How to Begin Your Journey Into Delightful Living) by Gladys Schaefer

Inquiries

Angel, a beautiful young mom, very pregnant with their second child, caught me after class to ask me about homeschooling.  I started gushing about Charlotte Mason. Their first child, a five year old, is one of the delights of our church. His joy in life and his easy ability to make friends with any age always puts a smile on my face.

The Wonderful Aiden

Another Sunday brought me similar inquires from Jodi, a mom of three lively preschoolers, and my own daughter, Samantha, the mother of our beautiful grandchildren and I are in a long standing discussion of the pros and cons of homeschooling vs. public schooling vs. private schooling.  We do agree on following, as closely as possible, the educational philosophy of Charlotte Mason.

 

 My Granddaughter Zoe

This article is an attempt to provide a reference point for those searching for information on this educational journey and to a path that leads to a wonderful way of life.

Directions

“It may be that the souls of all children are waiting for the call of knowledge to awaken them to delightful living.”  This quote from the preface of the last published book of Mason, “Towards a Philosophy of Education,” summarizes, I believe, the passion behind her never ending fight to offer children the best and brightest of educations.  It is the touchstone of the new vision of Childlight USA.

Children are born persons is a CM distinctive.

1925 Edition of “Towards A Philosophy of Education”

This is the first point in the twenty-item summary of her teachings, now printed in each of her six-volume works, that she originally titled, “A Short Synopsis of the Educational Philosophy Advanced in This Volume.”    Today, an Internet search of “Charlotte Mason’s Twenty Principles” will lead to the original language and to modern paraphrases.  This is an excellent place to begin. Think of it as the starting line at a Marathon Race.

After reading a summary of Mason’s writings, I would advise the following journeys

1. Attend a conference or retreat, if possible.

• The Childlight USA Conference is scheduled for June 6-9, 2012 and promises to be a continued source of information and inspiration.  http://www.childlightusa.org/conferences_2012.php
• Nancy Kelly leads her  “Seventh Annual Living Education Retreat” at Shalom Hill Farm in Windom, MN in August of this year.  It is sold out for this fall, but be sure to look into it for next year.  http://sageparnassus.blogspot.com/2012/03/2012-living-education-retreat.html
• Search the Internet again looking for meetings in or near your hometown.

2. Books to read:

Mason’s Six-Volume Set:

Home Education

Parents and Children

School Education

Ourselves

Formation of Character

Towards a Philosophy of Education

Susan Schaeffer Macaulay’s For the Children’s Sake:

This is the book that introduced me to Mason, and to say it changed my life is an understatement. I share this book on an ongoing basis when anyone asks me for educational help.  I recently purchased it as an audio book and listened to it again. It had been seventeen years since I had originally read it.  It is still fresh and true.

3. Charlotte Mason Schools

If you are lucky enough to live near a CM school, you are lucky enough.  These bastions of knowledge offer shared wisdom and structured application of Mason’s directives.

4. Charlotte Mason Cooperatives

These also offer opportunities to practice the wisdom outlined in her books. Many times this is simply a group of parents who band together once or twice a week to share living books, nature study and other ingredients imperative in an authentic CM education.

I have lead a group of high school students this year in a Friday group called “The Gathering” and we have studied Shakespeare, Poetry, Current Events, and have taken numerous field trips exploring our Alabama heritage. We usually met in coffee shops around Birmingham.

 Current Events at The Gathering

5. Reading Groups

If all this reading and planning sounds overwhelming, start or join a once-a-month reading group, with dessert and coffee, to work through one of the volumes.   The joy of shared discovery and friendships adds depth and value to the journey.

Do you have other resources that have helped you?  Please share them on the comments section.

Blessings and Peace,

© 2012 Gladys Schaefer, Childlight USA Board Member

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The Gypsy’s Garden by Hannah Schaefer Ezell

Hello sweet friends! I hope that this thought finds you each well and happy as we come to the ending of another school year and the beginning of a new free-learning period that is summertime.

As I look back over this school year, I have to say that I am considerably more learned than I was at this time last year, though I didn’t take a single class in anything. Not in the traditional style anyway. I consider this past year as a year of transition — but looking over my life, I have to ask … which year, exactly, wasn’t a year of transition? This is where my thoughts take flight.

If each and every one of us were to give a year by year, maybe even month by month story of our lives, I am almost positive that not a single one of them passed without some life changing event or another happening, shaping us, making us colder to some things, warmer to others, and leaving us in some moment quietly pondering what exactly was supposed to happen next. We require transition to grow and it is one of those beautiful truths that I was taught as a young girl, that sometimes it doesn’t take a book or a classroom — or really any equipment at all to learn and to transition into the next phase. A student of life, my mother has called me, and herself, and all of you reading this now. A student of life.

This month the empty apartment next door was filled with two beautiful girls, a mother and a daughter, each full of laughter, loving, and giving. Tonight they came over to spend a little time on the porch with me just to get to know me and open their arms. We walked back and forth between our apartments, I ran to find a book for the daughter and ended up staying over with them for a bit. We talked about her succulent plants, and about how my green thumb is actually pathetically black — a known murderer to the plant world, no matter how good my intentions are. The mother stood up and said “wait here” and she ran onto her porch and came back with two cuttings from two of her favorite plants. “These plants are for those of us who have to move around a lot” she said, “nothing you do to them will kill them, as long as you put them in either dirt or water, and in a few weeks they will bloom for you… flowers as big as your hand.”

I brought the plants home and I’ve stuck them in water in a vase, I am very anxious and excited to see what they have in store for me. But it was their endurance that captivated my mind. “Gypsy Flowers” I thought to myself, flowers that move, are cut and shared and move again. The transitional plants. People always used to tell me to “bloom where I was planted” which is a beautiful sentiment which I completely agree with. But there are those of us whom God doesn’t seem to plant right away. The gyspy souls, missionaries, military families, the wanderers — we who transition. So I have to change that charge to “bloom where you are sent, and then bloom when you are sent again.” These strong, durable plants and the rootless cuttings of them that I was given tonight are born to live by whatever means God gives to them. All plants require soil, water, air, and sunlight… we all learned that as children… still by some miracle, these plants I have in my vase will fare beautifully as long as they have air and one of the other three normal requirements.

Sometimes, it doesn’t feel like you’re given all of the requirements to be your best you. Your family is far, the kids are slow to school and quick to play, the laundry (ever daunting) is — well — still really daunting, buried treasure seems to be a thing of the past, and the recession doesn’t seem to be getting any less recession-y, maybe your better half wont get home tonight, maybe not ever. I honestly don’t think anyone feels as if they have all four tools of healthy growth, at least not all at once. But its just another transition, and we are all — at some point — Gypsy flowers, given water and air and able, by some miracle, to bloom. Big blooms, as big as my hand. Something to watch and to be oo-ed and ah-ed over, because by some design of God, we are beautiful and able to fulfill our purpose even in a time of transition.

I believe, too, that the transition doesn’t last forever, even if we can point to transition moments in every year. When my sweet husband and I are out of the Marine Corps and we’ve nestled wherever it is that we will land, I will plant these cuttings in soil, where there is sun and shade and water to go with the cool breezes they need and I will cut limbs off for my friends and for strangers to remind them that though while they are whole enough in the time of change, and that there will be a time of growing rest… where they will be allowed roots at last.

God has been faithful, He will be again.

© Hannah Schaefer Ezell 2012

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