Top Ten Quotes

I'm working through the book When Children Love to Learn, which is an application of Charlotte Mason's teaching style for today, written by multiple authors. The school I am teaching at mixes a Classical education approach with Charlotte Mason's style. So far I'm really enjoying seeing how Charlotte Mason's approach embodies lots of things I've come to believe implicitly about education throughout the course of my own learning. 

Here's the Bibliographic information for the whole book: 

Cooper, Elaine (General Editor). When Children Love to Learn: A Practical Application of Charlotte Mason's Philosophy for Today. Wheaton: Crossway, 2004.

And the chapter I've read...

"The Value of Charlotte Mason's Work for Today" by Susan Shaeffer Macaulay.19-51.

And now, here are my favorite top ten quotes from the preface and first chapter of When Children Love to Learn.

1. "We offer no technique, but rather the simple proposition that children are best educated through careful relationships on the part of the adults--the parents and teachers--who are themselves in a lifelong process of learning and subject to the same duties and freedoms within a Christian worldview." (13 Preface)

2. "Like a tree with sound roots in rich, watered soil, here is an educational theory and practice that has a clear, strong infrastructure and that allows for individuality, creativity, cultural differences, technological advance, and historical development." (25)

3. "God's Word had the central place, not namby-pamby sentimental or moralistic talks or booklets." (29)

4. "One of the beauties of a curriculum based on 'living books' is that nothing is twaddle. Living books have literary power; they have 'soul'. The writers have put their hearts into these books. As vital though touches our minds, our ideas are vitalized, and out of our ideas comes our conduct of life. These must be books that children enjoy. The ideas they hold must make that sudden, delightful impact upon children's minds, must cause that intellectual stir that marks the beginning of an idea. These books induce in children thoughts about the world, nature, people, music, art, and the God who created it all." (33)

5. "Together teacher and child are under a higher authority. The child should not be asked to be good to please a parent or teacher. Children and the adults both must choose to obey God. Both are learning how to be better people, and both children and adults are interested and learning from books, nature, art, music. Ideas are discussed. Thought is important. Children have amazing ideas! They grow in proper self-esteem as they are listened to and allowed to be themselves." (34-35)

6. "People today are making a colossal pedagogical error. They are rather like an uneducated person who thinks that if one spoon of medicine will do good, then ten are even better! Many children are being given far too many hours of instruction per day--sometimes in schools, sometimes in home schools. No on can do everything that would be worthwhile." (37)

7. "If we want our children to stay hungry for knowledge, remain interested and questioning, enjoy the wonder of discovery, then we must leave them some clutter-free hours for friendship, the great out-of-doors, the rich world of imagination, and the satisfaction of the skilled use of art supplies, music, dance, wood, and clay." (38)

8. "Beauty strikes into a child's awareness. It is a mistake to reduce all the vocabulary and expressions to a simplified childish level. No, children love the sounds, even the mystery of unfamiliar language (and yet faintly familiar too). They are stilled by the atmosphere of worship and prayer. Slowly as time passes, the words gain meaning, come into focus. A child asks, 'What does seraphim mean?' and the answer enlarges their language and their vision of reality." (45)

9. "Memorizing is another way children can possess knowledge and beauty. They respond to the cadences, the words, the thoughts." (46)

10. "In a school like this, the children belonged to a sort of family. They were continually in relationship with each other and the teachers. This is wonderful, simple, and yet precious. The relationships endured--there was real caring and the atmosphere of a community that lives, plays, enjoys, and learns together." (48)

A brief take away for me from all this is the incarnational and parental nature of both teaching and learning. The teacher should live and act as a model who enfleshes the realities not only of knowledge and wisdom, but also of discipline, love, respect and relationship. The student learns from the teacher's life, as well as their interaction with and response to the material that is taught. Learning is a birthing process of engendering character and understanding. Living books, moreover, are books that have life invested in them so that, in their reading, this life is passed into the reader to be enfleshed and engendered through the reader's own personality.