Continuing our review of the Charlotte Mason philosophy/methods, Susan Wise Bauer notes that, “Writing continues to be a weak area in the larger home school community; we need more, not less, explicit teaching in this area.”
Classical and Charlotte Mason are at odds here, as Charlotte Mason advocates minimal grammar and writing instruction (suggesting that children can learn by absorbing good literature), as well as waiting until the children are older to begin; while Classical advocates like Bauer want more, and earlier, writing instruction from the parents. I agree with Bauer here contra Charlotte Mason.
A few other suggestions that Bauer says are compatible with both Classical and Charlotte Mason: “choosing quality reading material, reading adult level books to children, making narration rather than testing the central method of evaluating learning…”). These ideas seem good and wise.
Another interesting point by Bauer on the two methods: “My problems with the method only have to do with the degree to which it might be interpreted as “unschooling”; for example, Levison writes that it isn’t necessary to tie subjects together, because “we have total confidence that the child will make the connections unassisted.” Some children undoubtedly will, but classical education’s emphasis on the difference between grammar-stage and logic-stage learning recognizes that making connections between subjects (and events) is a critical skill that should be taught; parents often have to lead the way in showing their budding critical thinkers HOW to make those important logical connections…”
Again, I agree with the Classical approach here.
Bauer again, contrasting “Charlotte and Dorothy:” “The shorter lessons allow for the student to cover from 15-21 different subjects per week, even in elementary school; the sample ‘Charlotte Mason’ schedules in the back of More Charlotte Mason Education have third graders doing Old Testament, New Testament, Writing, Printing, Drawing, Reading, French, Picture Talk, Natural History, Handicrafts, Math, Music, Dancing, and Geography each week. This seems rather frantic to me. I would encourage parents of young children to concentrate instead on the core skills of reading, writing, grammar, and mathematics, drawing in history and science once the child is reading fairly well. Other subjects should be done as you have time – but don’t neglect those core skills.”
This is an important point, and I will deal with it more extensively in a future post.
Bauer on the difference between the methods during the Grammar stage: “I wonder whether the ‘clash’ that many people seem to find between Charlotte Mason methods and classical education has to do with a misunderstanding of what classical education is. Yes, classical educators do concentrate on the absorption of facts in grades 1-4. But we never suggest treating children as ‘memory machines.’ Memory work is one part of classical education for the grammar stage; absorption is also achieved through reading, narration, experimentation, projects, drawing, and many other methods which Andreola [another Charlotte Mason advocate] describes with approval. And Andreola herself writes in a later chapter, ‘Certainly we should drill children on the simple facts they need to memorize – arithmetic facts, important dates in history, Bible verses, scientific terminology. Short daily drills will not dampen the children’s school day.’ Classical education would merely expand this to include important speeches and poetry (also recommended by Mason herself), and define ‘short’ as 15-20 minutes daily. Why is this so incompatible with Charlotte Mason methods? In any case, classical educators don’t try to establish a “true intellectual life’ using memorization alone; the ‘intellectual life’ is developed over twelve years of education that includes work in logic and rhetoric as well.”
We’ll get into this more when we talk about Classical education in a future post.
More: “Spelling. Andreola describes a method of spelling that uses lists of constantly misspelled words and refers to rules only when they are needed to explain the spelling of these ‘trouble words.’ This is certainly a valid way of customizing spelling to an individual child’s need, but there is also great value in a ‘workbook’ type spelling program that also covers dictionary skills, syllabification, alphabetizing, and the other skills that we may sometimes forget to teach.”
This gets back to the Charlotte Mason weakness of assuming children will just pick up these things without the formal aspect of teaching.
These are just a few examples from specific academic subjects, to give you a sense of the issues. So in summary: I do not know how seriously modern Charlotte Mason educators take their founder’s humanistic philosophy of children. Maybe it’s not an issue. I know at least one family whose theology is perfectly sound on that point, yet they use the Charlotte Mason methods. No doubt this is perfectly fine and workable, but we should be aware of the cracks in Mason’s first principles, and watch for problems they may cause in methodology (such as the application that “children are wise and can learn on their own”). My family uses the Classical method (with some modifications; more on that later), but again, we do make use of some of the overlap methods that Charlotte Mason folks would also use: living books over textbooks, narration, and so on. If you are interested in the Charlotte Mason philosophy and method, my recommendation would be to read the series of articles on this website (from which many of the quotes in this post have been drawn) that compares and contrasts Charlotte and Dorothy, pointing out strengths and weaknesses in each.
