While I was homeschooling my daughters, I was convicted that my homeschooling should not be just schooling at home! I took a year off from formal teaching and researched different ways, methods, and philosophies. When I found Charlotte Mason’s philosophy I knew I had found what I was looking for! I read through some of her actual writing, I attended some conferences, and I found a group online that provided lists of books to use. The following school year I implemented short lessons, no grades, reading living books, some artist and composer studies, and a tiny bit of nature study (done in a way that I just assumed from reading what others said Miss Mason taught)! My daughters were already much involved in a variety of handcrafts so that did not change. I was on the way, or so I thought!
Things seemed to be going well, but after a few years I realized that I was not seeing the results that Charlotte Mason’s philosophy was to produce. I went to more seminars, read more books about her philosophy, and researched more online, but I was too busy with homeschooling 4 daughters and all the other things going on in my life to actually slow down and take the time to read her actual words.
At one point I thought about teaching at a Charlotte Mason school, but found that many of the schools seemed farther from her philosophy than I found myself! After I was finished with my homeschooling career, I read a book that changed my perspective and drove me to really read Miss Mason’s words. I have come to understand that some of my trouble with implementing her philosophy was that I still had the “public school system” target deeply ingrained in my mind even though I would have told you that was not what I was working toward in educating my children. Among other topics, I had not truly understood the purpose and the methods of nature study — I had taken others’ word for what and how to do nature study and it did not work well for me or my daughters so, therefore, I abandoned it all together! Narrating had become an afterthought and was not truly implemented as Miss Mason had done. And the list goes on….
I now have a desire and passion to try to help others to understand the philosophy Charlotte Mason developed through her research and experience. I truly believe that the best way to understand the philosophy is to read, reread, and reread again her own words to the point of those words overtaking the ideas we may have on education or the way in which we were educated.