Look on education as something between the child's soul and God. Modern Education tends to look on it as something between the child's brain and the standardized test.
Charlotte MasonThe peculiar value of geography lies in its fitness to nourish the mind with ideas and furnish the imagination with pictures.
Charlotte MasonOur aim in education is to give a full life. We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking - the strain would be too great - but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest.
Charlotte MasonTherefore, teaching, talk and tale, however lucid or fascinating, effect nothing until self-activity be set up; that is, self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child's nature.
Charlotte MasonWe attempt to define a person, the most commonplace person we know, but he will not submit to bounds; some unexpected beauty of nature breaks out; we find he is not what we thought, and begin to suspect that every person exceeds our power of measurement.
Charlotte MasonLet children alone... the education of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to let her children alone, not teasing them with perpetual commands and directions - a running fire of Do and Donโt ; but letting them go their own way and grow, having first secured that they will go the right way and grow to fruitful purpose.
Charlotte Mason