Mothers tend to busy themselves quite a bit about how to nourish their child’s physical needs. Food, sleep, activity, outdoor time…but how do we nourish their intellectual needs? 

Books. Glorious books.

We must put children in communication with those great minds, so they can grapple with  great thoughts. These great thoughts aren’t out of their reach–the child gets what they need from their books, so long as they are put in front of “worthy books, many worthy books.” 

For not all things are created equal.

Books Mentioned: Home Education | A Philosophy of Education (*affiliate links) 

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COMMONPLACE:

“Why in the world should we not give children, while they are at school, the sort of books they can live upon, books alive with thought and feeling, and delight in knowledge, instead of the miserable cram-books upon which they are starved?” (Formation of Character, pg. 291)

“The mind, like the body, digests its proper foods, and it must have the labor of digestion, or it ceases to function.” (Philosophy of Education, pg. 26)

“Now imagination, does not descend full-grown to take possession of an empty house like every other power of the mind, it is the merest germ of a power to begin with, and it grows by what it gets, and childhood, the age of faith, is the time for its nourishing. The children should have the joys of living in far away 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.” (Home Education, pg. 153)

“We forget that it is written, Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God shall Man live,–whether it be spoken in the way of some truth of religion, poem, picture, scientific discovery, or literary expression, by these things men live and in all such is the life of the spirit.” (A Philosophy of Education, pg. 125)

“[We ought to] take it upon ourselves that great character comes out of great thoughts and great thoughts must be initiated by great ‘thinkers’, then we shall have a definite aim in education. Thinking, and not doing is the source of great character.” (A Philosophy of Education, pg. 278)

“And so at last they got on the move. Lucy went first, biting her lip and trying not to say all the things she thought of saying to Susan. But she forgot them when she fixed her eyes on Aslan.” (Prince Caspian, pg. 158)

“Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2)

Education is a life. That life is sustained on ideas. Ideas are of spiritual origin, and God has made us so that we get them chiefly as we convey them to one another, whether by word of mouth, written page, Scripture word, musical symphony; but we must sustain a child’s innerlife with ideas as we sustain his body with food. (Parents and Children, pg. 39)