If you desire to use living books in your children's education, but are not confident of your ability to discern which books are "living" and which are not, this episode contains the practical information you need. Criteria for determining if a book is living are described carefully, examples read, along with ways to identify and eliminate twaddle from your bookshelves. Listen Now: If you are seeing this message, please make sure you are using the most current version of your web browser: Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Chrome

"[T]he boy who has not formed the habit of getting nourishment out of his books in school-days does not, afterwards, see the good of reading. He has not acquired, in an intellectual sense, the art of reading, so he cannot be said to have lost it; and he goes through life an imperfect person, with the best and most delightful of his powers latent or maimed." (The Formation of Character, pg. 291) "I am speaking now of his lesson-books, which are all too apt to be written in a style of insufferable twaddle, probably because they are written by persons who have never chanced to meet a child." (Home Education, pg. 229) "This sort of weak literature for the children, both in any story and lesson books, is the result of a reactionary process. Not so long ago the current impression was that the children had little understanding, but prodigious memory for facts; dates, numbers, rules, catechisms of knowledge, much information in small parcels, was supposed to be the fitting material for a child's education. We have changed all that, and put into the children's hands lesson-books with pretty pictures and easy talk, almost as good as story-books; but we do not see that, after all, we are but giving the same little pills of knowledge in the form of a weak and copious diluent. Teachers, and even parents, who are careful enough about their children's diet, are so reckless as to the sort of mental aliment offered to them, that I am exceedingly anxious to secure consideration for this question, of the lessons and literature proper for the little people." (Home Education, pgs. 176-77) "[H]ungry souls clamouring for meat, and we choke them off, not by shutting up schools and colleges, but by offering matter which no living soul can digest. The complaints made by teachers and children of the monotony of the work in our schools is full of pathos and all credit to those teachers who cheer the weary path by entertaining devices. But mind does not live and grow upon entertainment; it requires its solid meals." (Towards a Philosophy of Education, pg. 90) "They must grow up upon the best. There must never be a period in their lives when they are allowed to read or listen to twaddle or reading-made-easy. There is never a time when they are unequal to worthy thoughts, well put; inspiring tales, well told." (Parents and Children, pg. 263) "A book may be long or short, old or new, easy or hard, written by a great man or a lesser man, and yet be the living book which finds its way to the mind of a young reader. The expert is not the person to choose; the children themselves are the experts in this case. A single page will elicit a verdict; but the unhappy thing is, this verdict is not betrayed; it is acted upon in the opening or closing of the door of the mind." (School Education, pgs. 228-229) "The 'hundred best books for the schoolroom' may be put down on a list, but not by me. I venture to propose one or two principles in the matter of school-books, and shall leave the far more difficult part, the application of those principles, to the reader. (School Education, pg. 177) "So much for the right books; the right use of them is another matter. The children must enjoy the book." (School Education, pg. 178) "As for literature--to introduce children to literature is to install them in a very rich and glorious kingdom, to bring a continual holiday to their doors, to lay before them a feast exquisitely served. But they must learn to know literature by being familiar with it from the very first. A child's intercourse must always be with good books, the best that we can find." (Towards a Philosophy of Education, pg. 51)

If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy. Home Education, Part V, Chapter VIII School Education, Chapters XVI and XXI

Geronimo, Catherine Welch (our "not living" example) The Story of Geronimo, Jim Kjelgaard Pinocchio, Carlo Collodi Little Britches, Ralph Moody Plutarch's Lives Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, Jean Lee Latham Principia, Isaac Newton Of Other Worlds, C.S. Lewis Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver (Contains affiliate links)

The blog post that Emily wrote explaining her "L-I-V-I-N-G" anagram for determining living books: L-I-V-I-N-G Books

Living books are the heart of a Mason education. Education is a life, and living books are the food the mind requires for its nourishment. Liz, Emily, and Nicole share excerpts from some living books to demonstrate the power of living ideas. They discuss some reasons why living books are the richer road to engaging a child's imagination, inspire and feed their thirst for knowledge, and why textbooks do not. Listen Now: If you are seeing this message, please make sure you are using the most current version of your web browser: Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Chrome

"A corollary of the principle that education is the science of relations, is, that no education seems to be worth the name which has not made children at home in the world of books, and so related them, mind to mind, with thinkers who have dealt with knowledge. We reject epitomes, compilations, and their like, and put into children's hands books which, long or short, are living." (School Education, p. 226) "In literature, we have definite ends in view, both for our own children and for the world through them. We wish the children to grow up to find joy and refreshment in the taste, the flavour of a book. We do not mean by a book any printed matter in a binding, but a work possessing certain literary qualities able to bring that sensible delight to the reader which belongs to a literary word fitly spoken. It is a sad fact that we are losing our joy in literary form. We are in such haste to be instructed by facts or titillated by theories, that we have no leisure to linger over the mere putting of a thought. But this is our error, for words are mighty both to delight and to inspire. If we were not as blind as bats, we should long ago have discovered a truth very fully indicated in the Bible––that that which is once said with perfect fitness can never be said again, and becomes ever thereafter a living power in the world. But in literature, as in art, we require more than mere form. Great ideas are brooding over the chaos of our thought; and it is he who shall say the thing we are all dumbly thinking, who shall be to us as a teacher sent from God." (Parents and Children, pgs. 262-63) "Again, we have made a rather strange discovery, that the mind refuses to know anything except what reaches it in more or less literary form. It is not surprising that this should be true of children and persons accustomed to a literary atmosphere but that it should be so of ignorant children of the slums points to a curious fact in the behaviour of mind. Persons can 'get up' the driest of pulverised text-books and enough mathematics for some public examination; but these attainments do not appear to touch the region of the mind." (Towards a Philosophy of Education, pg. 256) "Once more, we know that there is a storehouse of thought wherein we may find all the great ideas that have moved the world. We are above all things anxious to give the child the key to this storehouse. The education of the day, it is said, does not produce reading people. We are determined that the children shall love books, therefore we do not interpose ourselves between the book and the child. We read him his Tanglewood Tales, and when he is a little older his Plutarch, not trying to break up or water down, but leaving the child's mind to deal with the matter as it can." (Parents and Children, pg. 232)

If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy. School Education, Chapters XV and XVI Towards a Philosophy of Education, Book I, Chapter VII

The Silent Storm, Marion Marsh Brown and Ruth Crone To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee Rocks, Rivers, and the Changing Earth, Herman and Nina Schneider A Tree for Peter, Kate Seredy The White Stag, Kate Seredy All About the Planet Earth, Patricia Lauber (Contains affiliate links)

One thing leads to another, it is said, but the powerful interrelation of knowledge and experience Mason identified is the process we must recognize and capitalize on in teaching. She called it the "science of relations" and this episode is an animated discussion that not only defines what Mason meant, but is packed with descriptions of how these three women have observed the process at work in their children's lives. This truly is the exciting aspect of teaching, observed in themselves and their children. Listen Now: If you are seeing this message, please make sure you are using the most current version of your web browser: Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Chrome

(11) But we, believing that the normal child has powers of mind which fit him to deal with all knowledge proper to him, give him a full and generous curriculum; taking care only that all knowledge offered him is vital, that is, that facts are not presented without their informing ideas. Out of this conception comes our principle that,--(12) "Education is the Science of Relations": that is, that a child has natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts; so we train him upon physical exercises, nature lore, handicrafts, science and art, and upon many living books, for we know that our business is not to teach him all about anything. "Those first-born affinities that fit our new existence to existing things." (Preface to the Home Education Series) "The mind can know nothing but what it can produce in the form of an answer to a question put by the mind itself." (Parents and Children, pg. 218) "A small English boy of nine living in Japan, remarked, 'Isn't it fun, Mother, learning all these things? Everything seems to fit into something else.' The boy had not found out the whole secret; everything fitted into something within himself." (Towards a Philosophy of Education, pgs. 156-57) "Much of what we have learned and experienced in childhood, and later, we cannot reproduce, and yet it has formed the groundwork of after knowledge; later notions and opinions have grown out of what we once learned and knew. That is our sunk capital, of which we enjoy the interest though we are unable to realise." (Home Education, pg. 154) "At the same time, the child's capacity for knowledge is very limited; his mind is, in this respect at least, but a little phial with a narrow neck; and, therefore, it behooves the parent or teacher to pour in only of the best." (Home Education, pg. 175) "You will see at a glance, with this Captain Idea of establishing relationships as a guide, the unwisdom of choosing or rejecting this or that subject, as being more or less useful or necessary in view of a child's future. We decide, for example, that Tommy, who is eight, need not waste his time over the Latin Grammar. We intend him for commercial or scientific pursuits,––what good will it be to him? But we do not know how much we are shutting out from Tommy's range of thought besides the Latin Grammar. He has to translate, for example,––'Pueri formosos equos vident.' He is a ruminant animal, and has been told something about that strong Roman people whose speech is now brought before him. How their boys catch hold of him! How he gloats over their horses! The Latin Grammar is not mere words to Tommy, or rather Tommy knows, as we have forgotten, that the epithet 'mere' is the very last to apply to words. Of course it is only now and then that a notion catches the small boy, but when it does catch, it works wonders, and does more for his education than years of grind. Let us try, however imperfectly, to make education a science of relationships––in other words, try in one subject or another to let the children work upon living ideas. In this field small efforts are honoured with great rewards, and we perceive that the education we are giving exceeds all that we intended or imagined." (School Education, pgs. 162-63) "Children can be most fitly educated on things and books." (School Education, pg. 214)

If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy. School Education, chapters VII, XVII, and XVIII Towards a Philosophy, Introduction and chapter I

Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, Jean Lee Latham America Moves Forward, Gerald Johnson Rip van Winkle, Washington Irving Benjamin West and His Cat Grimalkin, Marguerite Henry The Romance of Chemistry, Keith Irwin Madame How and Lady Why, Charles Kingsley The Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv (Contains affiliate links)

If education is not information, what is it? How do we as teachers feed the whole person's natural desire to know? Emily, Nicole, and Liz discuss the tools to implement in education, the motto Mason took for her teachers: "Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life," defining, discussing, and providing real life instances of these instruments put into practice. Listen Now: If you are seeing this message, please make sure you are using the most current version of your web browser: Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Chrome

4. These principles are limited by the respect due to the personality of children, which must not be encroached upon whether by the direct use of fear or love, suggestion or influence, or by undue play upon any one natural desire. 5. Therefore, we are limited to three educational instruments--the atmosphere of environment, the discipline of habit, and the presentation of living ideas. The P.N.E.U. Motto is: "Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life." (Preface to the Home Education Series) "The child breathes the atmosphere emanating from his parents; that of the ideas which rule their own lives." (Parents and Children, pg. 247) "Parents and teachers should know how to make sensible use of a child's circumstances (atmosphere) to forward his sound education." (School Education, pg. 182) "Attention is hardly even an operation of the mind, but is simply the act by which the whole mental force is applied to the subject in hand...For whatever the natural gifts of the child, it is only in so far as the habit of attention is cultivated in him that he is able to make use of them." (Home Education, pgs. 145-146) "A single idea may be a possession so precious in itself, so fruitful, that the parent cannot fitly allow the child's selection of ideas to be a matter of chance; his lessons should furnish him with such ideas as shall make for his further education." (Home Education, pg. 174) "In the early days of a child's life it makes little apparent difference whether we educate with a notion of filling a receptacle, inscribing a tablet, moulding plastic matter, or nourishing a life, but as a child grows we shall perceive that only those ideas which have fed his life, are taken into his being; all the rest is cast away or is, like sawdust in the system, an impediment and an injury." (Towards a Philosophy of Education, pgs. 108-109) "A time-table, written out fairly, so that the child knows what he has to do and how long each lesson is to last." (Home Education, pg. 142) "A Child gets through their morning lessons without any sign of weariness." (Home Education, pg. 142) "It is only as we recognise our limitations that our work becomes effective: when we see definitely what we are to do, what we can do, and what we cannot do, we set to work with confidence and courage; we have an end in view, and we make our way intelligently towards that end, and a way to an end is method. It rests with parents not only to give their children birth into the life of intelligence and moral power, but to sustain the higher life which they have borne." (Parents and Children, pg. 33)

If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy. Home Education, Part V: Lessons as Instruments of Education Parents and Children, chapters IV, VII, and XXII School Education, chapter XIV Towards a Philosophy of Education, chapter VI

Charlotte Mason has a unique view of the student and the way in which he learns. This episode focuses on the role of the teacher and how his responsibilities and approach to teaching likewise take on a different perspective in her method. Nicole, Emily and Liz begin with a comparison of traditional teaching qualifications versus Mason's requirements for teachers, concluding with the life-changing help every teacher has at her disposal. Listen Now: If you are seeing this message, please make sure you are using the most current version of your web browser: Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Chrome

"We may not despise them, or hinder them ('suffer the little children'), or offend them by our brutish clumsiness of action and want of serious thought; while the one positive precept afforded to us is 'feed' (which should be rendered 'pasture') 'my lambs,' place them in the midst of abundant food." (Towards a Philosophy of Education, pg. 81) "[Y]ou may bring a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink. What I complain of is that we do not bring our horse to the water. We give him miserable little text-books, mere compendiums of facts, which he is to learn off and say and produce at an examination; or we give him various knowledge in the form of warm diluents, prepared by his teacher with perhaps some grains of living thought to the gallon. And all the time we have books, books teeming with ideas fresh from the minds of thinkers upon every subject to which we can wish to introduce children." (School Education, pg. 171) "[T]he great recognition, that God the Holy Spirit is Himself, personally, the Imparter of knowledge, the Instructor of youth, the Inspirer of genius, is a conception so far lost to us that we should think it distinctly irreverent to conceive of the divine teaching as co-operating with ours in a child's arithmetic lesson, for example. But the Florentine mind of the Middle Ages went further than this: it believed, not only that the seven Liberal Arts were fully under the direct outpouring of the Holy Ghost, but that every fruitful idea, every original conception, whether in Euclid, or grammar, or music, was a direct inspiration from the Holy Spirit, without any thought at all as to whether the person so inspired named himself by the name of God, or recognised whence his inspiration came." (Parents and Children, pg. 270-71) "Let this be the mother's key to the whole of the education of each boy and each girl; not of her children; the Divine Spirit does not work with nouns of multitude, but with each single child. Because He is infinite, the whole world is not too great a school for this indefatigable Teacher, and because He is infinite, He is able to give the whole of his infinite attention for the whole time to each one of his multitudinous pupils. We do not sufficiently rejoice in the wealth that the infinite nature of our God brings to each of us." (Parents and Children, pg. 273) "[W]e perceive that the great work of education is to inspire children with vitalising ideas as to every relation of life, every department of knowledge, every subject of thought; and to give deliberate care to the formation of those habits of the good life which are the outcome of vitalising ideas. In this great work we seek and assuredly find the cooperation of the Divine Spirit, whom we recognise, in a sense rather new to modern thought, as the supreme Educator of mankind in things that have been called secular, fully as much as in those that have been called sacred." (Towards a Philosophy of Education, pg. 173)

If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy. Parents and Children (Volume 2), Chapter 25 School Education (Volume 3), Chapters 1-3 Towards a Philosophy of Education (Volume 6), Chapters 5 and 10, section 2

Mornings in Florence, John Ruskin (Contains affiliate links)

The Descent of the Holy Spirit Fresco here and here

Charlotte Mason's first principle of education is that "Children are born persons." This sounds simple, but Emily, Nicole, and Liz examine the complexity of this view and why it is unique in existing educational models and practices. They each share personal and practical examples of the difference such a concept makes for a child being educated in Mason's method. Listen Now: If you are seeing this message, please make sure you are using the most current version of your web browser: Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Chrome

"In a word, we are very tenacious of the dignity and individuality of our children. We recognise steady, regular growth with no transition stage...put the first thing foremost, do not take too much upon ourselves, but leave time and scope for the workings of Nature and of a higher Power than Nature herself." (Parents and Children, pg. 232) "The question is not,--how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education--but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?" (School Education, pgs. 170-71)

If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy. Home Education (Volume 1), Part I, Chapters 1-7 School Education (Volume 3), Chapters 4 and 8 Towards a Philosophy of Education (Volume 6), Chapters 2 and 5

Emily Kiser of Living Books Library describes the purpose for this podcast series. Each of the three members of this discussion group introduces herself and explains how she became a homeschooling mother. Since the goal of this series is to explore the ideas of Charlotte Mason, each mother also shares how she became interested in Mason's educational method. Finally, a discussion of why schooling with a philosophical outlook is crucial ensues. Listen Now: If you are seeing this message, please make sure you are using the most current version of your web browser: Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Chrome

"But knowledge is delectable." (Towards a Philosophy of Education, pg. 89) "We spread an abundant and delicate feast...all sit down to the same feast and each one gets according to his needs and powers." (Towards a Philosophy of Education, pg. 183) "There are four means of destroying the desire for knowledge:–– (a) Too many oral lessons, which offer knowledge in a diluted form, and do not leave the child free to deal with it. (b) Lectures, for which the teacher collects, arranges, and illustrates matter from various sources; these often offer knowledge in too condensed and ready prepared a form. (c) Text-books compressed and recompressed from the big book of the big man. (d) The use of emulation and ambition as incentives to learning in place of the adequate desire for,and delight in, knowledge." (School Education, pg. 214) "The reader will say with truth,--'I knew all this before and have always acted more or less on these principles' and I can only point to the unusual results we obtain through adhering not 'more or less' but strictly to the principles and practices I have indicated." (Towards a Philosophy of Education, pg. 19)

If you would like to study along with us, here are some passages from The Home Education Series and other Parent's Review articles that would be helpful for this episode's topic. You may also read the series online here, or get the free Kindle version from Fisher Academy. The Preface to the Home Education Series, found at the beginning of each volume An Educational Manifesto, (PR Article)

For the Children's Sake, Susan Schaeffer Macaulay (Contains affiliate links)

www.sabbath-mood-homeschool.com Nicole Williams' blog where you can find ideas for teaching living science as well as information on how to schedule your Charlotte Mason lessons www.livingbookslibrary.com The blog and website for Living Books Library--lots of living book recommendations, hints on developing a reading culture in your home as well as audio versions of Charlotte Mason's Home Education Series and living books for sale Picture Study Portfolios A complete resource for Picture Study written by Emily Kiser--instructions on how to teach picture study, an artist biography, eight full-page laminated art prints, and notes on each painting