Charlotte Mason Quotes

Overpressure.--A great deal has been said lately about the danger of overpressure, of requiring too much mental work from a child of tender years. The danger exists; but lies, not in giving the child too much, but in giving him the wrong thing to do, the sort of work for which the present state of his mental development does not fit him.
(Vol 1,Part II-- Out-Of-Door Life For The Children, p.66-67)

But give the child work that Nature intended for him, and the quantity he can get through with ease is practically unlimited. Whoever saw a child tired of seeing, of examining in his own way, unfamiliar things? This is the sort of mental nourishment for which he has an unbounded appetite, because it is that food of the mind on which, for the present, he is meant to grow.
(Vol 1, Part II--Out-Of-Door Life For The Children, p.67)

A Child learns from 'Things.'--We older people, partly because of our maturer intellect, partly because of our defective education, get most of our knowledge through the medium of words. We set the child to learn in the same way, and find him dull and slow. Why? Because it is only with a few words in common use that he associates a definite meaning; all the rest are no more to him than the vocables of a foreign tongue. But set him face to face with a thing, and he is twenty times as quick as you are in knowledge about it; knowledge of things flies to the mind of a child as steel filings to magnet.
(Vol 1, Part II--Out-Of-Door Life For The Children, p.67)

In this way: give your a child a single valuable idea, and you have done more for his education than if you had laid upon his mind the burden of bushels of information.
(Vol 1, Part V Lessons As Instruments Of Education, p.174)

Mothers seldom talk down to their children; they are too intimate with the little people, and have, therefore, too much respect for them: but professional teachers, whether the writers of books or the givers of lessons are too apt to present a single grain of pure knowledge in a whole gallon of talk, imposing upon the child the labour of discerning the grain and of extracting it from the worthless flood.
(Vol 1, Part V Lessons As Instruments Of Education, p.175)

On the whole, the children who grow up amongst their elders and are not provided with what are called children's books at all, fare the better on what they are able to glean for themselves from the literature of grown-up people.
(Vol 1, Part V Lessons As Instruments Of Education, p.175)

We see, then, that 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.
(Vol 1, Part V Lessons As Instruments Of Education, p.177)

The child, though under supervision, should be left much to himself--both that he may go to work in his own way on the ideas that he receives, and also that he may be the more open to natural influences.
(Vol 1, Part V Lessons As Instruments Of Education, p.178)

His lessons should be joyous
(Vol 1, Part V Lessons As Instruments Of Education, p.178)

Teachers mediate too much. --Everything is directed, expected, suggested. No other personality out of book, picture, or song, no, not even that of Nature herself, can get at the children without the mediation of the teacher. No room is left for spontaneity or personal initiation on their part.
(Vol 1, Part V Lessons As Instruments Of Education, p.188)

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The children should have the joy of living in far lands, in other persons, in other times--a delightful double existence; and this joy they will find, for the most part, in their story books.
(Vol. 1 Part IV--Some Habits Of Mind - Some Moral Habits, p.153)

The most common and the monstrous defect in the education of the day is that children fail to acquire the habit of reading.
(Vol. 1 Part VIII--Reading for Older Children, p.227)

This habit should be begun early; so soon as the child can read at all, he should read for himself, and to himself, history, legends, fairy tales, and other suitable matter. He should be trained from the first to think that one reading of any lesson is enough to enable him to narrate what he has read, and will thus get the habit of slow, careful reading, intelligent even when it is silent, because he reads with an eye to the full meaning of every clause.
(Vol. 1 Part VIII--Reading for Older Children, p.227)

Reading to Children--It is a delight to older people to read aloud to children, but this should be only an occasional treat and indulgence, allowed before bedtime, for example. We must remember the natural inertness of a child's mind; give him the habit of being read to, and he will steadily shirk the labour of reading for himself; indeed, we all like to be spoon-fed with our intellectual meat, or we should read and think more for ourselves and be less eager to run after lectures.
(Vol. 1 Part VIII--Reading for Older Children, p.228)

A child has not begun his education until he has acquired the habit of reading to himself, with interest and pleasure, books fully on a level with his intelligence.
(Vol. 1 Part VIII--Reading for Older Children, p.229)

Their lesson-books should offer matter for their reading, whether aloud or to themselves; therefore they should be written with literary power.
(Vol. 1 Part VIII--Reading for Older Children, p.229)

Therefore, the selection of their first lesson-books is a matter of grave importance, because it rests with these to give children the idea that knowledge is supremely attractive and that reading is delightful. Once the habit of reading his lesson-book with delight is set up in a child, his education is--not completed, but--ensured; he will go on for himself in spite of the obstructions which school too commonly throws in his way.
(Vol. 1 Part VIII--Reading for Older Children, p.229)

The power of reading with perfect attention will not be gained by the child who is allowed to moon over his lessons. For this reason, reading lessons must be short; ten minutes or a quarter of an hour of fixed attention is enough for children of the ages we have in view, and a lesson of this length will enable a child to cover two or three pages of his book. The same rule as to the length of a lesson applies to children whose lessons are read to them because they are not yet able to read for themselves.
(Vol. 1 Part VIII--Reading for Older Children, p.230)

The points to be borne in mind are, that he should have no book which is not a child's classic; and that, given the right book, it must not be diluted with talk or broken up with questions, but given to the boy in fit proportions as wholesome meat for his mind, in the full trust that a child's mind is able to deal with its proper food.
(Vol. 1 Part IX.--The Art of Narrating, p.232)

Let him, on the contrary, linger pleasantly over the history of a single man, a short period, until he thinks the thoughts of that man, is at home in the ways of that period. Though he is reading and thinking of the lifetime of a single man, he is really getting intimately acquainted with the history of a whole nation for a whole age.
(Vol. 1 Part XVIII.--History, p.280)

Let a child have the meat he requires in his history readings, and in the literature which naturally gathers round this history, and imagination will bestir itself without any help of ours; the child will live out in detail a thousand scenes of which he only gets the merest hint.
(Vol. 1 Part XVIII.--History, p.295)

For example, 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.
(Vol. 3 Chapter 16 How to Use School-Books, p.177)

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.
(Vol. 3 Chapter 16 How to Use School-Books, p.178)

We reject epitomes, compilations, and their like, and put into children's hands books which, long or short, are living.
(Vol. 3 Chapter 20 Suggestions Toward a Curriculum, p.226)

Direct questions on the subject-matter of what a child has read are always a mistake. Let him narrate what he has read, or some part of it. He enjoys this sort of consecutive reproduction, but abominates every question in the nature of a riddle.
(Vol. 1 Part VIII--Reading for Older Children, p.228)

I have already spoken of the importance of a single reading. If a child is not able to narrate what he has read once, let him not get the notion that he may, or that he must, read it again.
(Vol. 1 Part VIII--Reading for Older Children, p.229-30)

Narrating is an art, like poetry-making or painting, because it is there, in every child's mind, waiting to be discovered, and is not the result of any process of disciplinary education. A creative fiat calls it forth. 'Let him narrate'; and the child narrates, fluently, copiously, in ordered sequence, with fit and graphic details, with a just choice of words, without verbosity or tautology, so soon as he can speak with ease.
(Vol. 1 Part IX.--The Art of Narrating, p.231)

The simplest way of dealing with a paragraph or a chapter is to require the child to narrate its contents after a single attentive reading,--one reading, however slow, should be made a condition; for we are all too apt to make sure we shall have another opportunity of finding out 'what 'tis all about.'
(Vol. 3 Chapter 16 How to Use School-Books, p.179)

As knowledge is not assimilated until it is reproduced, children should "tell back" after a single reading or hearing: or should write on some part of what they have read.
(Vol. 6, Chapter 10 The Curriculum, p. 155)

All children have it in them to recite; it is an imprisoned gift waiting to be delivered.
(Vol. 1 Part VII--Recitation, p. 223)

The child is led to find the just expression of thought for himself; never is the poor teacher allowed to set a pattern--'say this as I say it.' The ideas are kept well within the child's range, and the expression is his own.
(Vol. 1 Part VII--Recitation, p.223-4)

I hope that my readers will train their children in the art of recitation; in the coming days, more even than in our own will it behove every educated man and woman to be able to speak effectively in public; and, in learning to recite you learn to speak.
(Vol. 1 Part VII--Recitation, p.224)

Recitation and committing to memory are not necessarily the same thing, and it is well to store a child's memory with a good deal of poetry, learnt without labour.
(Vol. 1 Part VII--Recitation, p.224)

Let the child lie fallow till he is six, and then, in this matter of memorising, as in others, attempt only a little, and let the poems the child learns be simple and within the range of his own thought and imagination. At the same time, when there is so much noble poetry within a child's compass, the pity of it, that he should be allowed to learn twaddle!
(Vol. 1 Part VII--Recitation, p.226)

The child must express what he feels to be the author's meaning; and this sort of intelligent reading comes only of the habit of reading with understanding.
(Vol. 1 Part VIII--Reading for Older Children, p.227-8)