Charlotte Marie Mason

“ The baby, more than a huge oyster--Poets on infancy--Accomplishments of a child of two--Education does not produce mind--The range of a child’s thoughts--Reason and imagination present in the infant--Will and wilfulness. ”

“ We must all make efforts--But a new point of view, necessary--Children must work for themselves--Must perform the act of knowing--Attention, the hall-mark of an educated person--Other good habits attending upon due self-education--Spirit, acts upon matter--Habit is to life what rails are to transport cars--Habit is inevitable--Genesis of habit--Habits of the ordered life--Habits of the religious life--De Quincey on going to church--Danger of thinking in a groove--Fads. ”

“ Mind, not a chartered libertine--Has good and evil tendencies--Intellectual evil--Intellect enthroned in every child--A child’s vivifying imagination--Explanations unnecessary--Children sense the meaning of a passage--Incuria--Going over same ground--Dangers of specialisation--Of the questionnaire--Capacity v. aptness--Imagination, good and evil--Reason deified by the unlearned--Fallacious reasoning--A liberal education necessary--The beauty sense. ”

“ Life is not self-existing--Body pines upon food substitutes--Mind cannot live upon information--What is an idea?--A live thing of the mind--Potency of an idea--Coleridge on ideas--Platonic doctrine of ideas--Functions of education not chiefly gymnastic--Dangers attendant upon “original composition”--Ideas, of spiritual origin--The child, an eclectic--Resists forcible feeding--We must take the risk of the indirect literary form--Ideas must be presented with much literary padding--No one capable of making extracts--Opinions v. ”

“ Chapter 5 - The Sacredness of Personality An adequate conception of children necessary--All action comes from the ideas held--The child’s estate higher than ours--Methods of undermining personality--Fear--Love--“Suggestion”--Influence--Methods of stultifying intellectual and moral growth--The desires--Of approbation--Of emulation--Of ambition--Of society--The natural desire of knowledge--Definite progress, a condition of education--Doctrine of equal opportunities for all, dangerous--But a liberal education the possibility for all. ”

“ Oral, from six to seven--Dangers of teaching composition--The art of “telling”--Power of composition innate--Oral and written from nine to twelve--Integral part of education in every subject--From twelve to fifteen--An inevitable consequence of free and exact use of books--Verse--Scansion--Rhythm--Accent--Subject must be one of keen interest--From fifteen to eighteen, some definite teaching--Suggestions or corrections--Education bears on the issues and interests of everyday life. ”

“ The Knowledge of the Universe (a) Science: Huxley--“Common information”--Books should be literary in character--French approach to science--Principles underlying science meet for literary treatment--Details of application too technical for school work--Universal principles must be linked with common incidents--Verbiage that darkens counsel--Out-of-door work--Natural history, botany, astronomy, physiology, hygiene, general science--A due combination of field work with literary comments--Fatal divorce between science and the “humanities”--Nature Note Books--Science not a utilitarian subject. ”

“ Chapter 10 - The Curriculum Standard in Secondary Schools set by public examinations--Elementary Schools less limited with regard to subjects--A complete curriculum in the nature of things--Education still at sea--Children have inherent claims--Law of supply and demand--Human nature a composite whole--The educational rights of man--We may not pick and choose--Shelley offers a key--Mistakes v. howlers--Knowledge should be consecutive, intelligent, complete--Hours of work, not number of subjects, bring fatigue--Short hours--No preparation. ”

“ English--Grammar--Begin with sentence--Difficulty of abstract knowledge--French--Narration from the beginning--Italian--German--Latin.
(f) Art: Art is of the spirit--Reverent knowledge of pictures themselves--Method--No talk of schools of painting or style--Picture tells its own tale--Drawing--Original illustrations--Figures--Objects--Colour--Field studies--Architecture--Clay-modelling--Artistic handicrafts--Musical Appreciation. ”