Charlotte Mason Quotes

Charlotte Maria Shaw Mason was an English educator and reformer in England at the turn of the twentieth century. She proposed to base the education of children upon a wide and liberal curriculum.

Birth: January 01, 1842 - Death: January 16, 1923

We all have need to be trained to see, and to have our eyes opened before we can take in the joy that is meant for us in this beautiful life.

We are all meant to be naturalists, each in his own degree, and it is inexcusable to live in a world so full of the marvels of plant and animal life and to care for none of these things.

Topic(s): World , Care , Animal

Of the three sorts of knowledge proper to a child, the knowledge of God, of man, and of the universe,–the knowledge of God ranks first in importance, is indispensable, and most happy-making.

Topic(s): Men , Firsts , Children

Education is a life; that life is sustained on ideas; ideas are of spiritual origin, and that we get them chiefly as we convey them to one another. The duty of parents is to sustain a child’s inner life with ideas as they sustain his body with food.

Topic(s): Children , Ideas , Body

Authority is just and faithful in all matters of promise-keeping; it is also considerate, and that is why a good mother is the best home-ruler.

Topic(s): Matter , Home , Mother

So much for the right books; the right use of them is another matter. The children must enjoy the book. The ideas it holds must each make that sudden, delightful impact upon their minds, must cause that intellectual stir, which mark the inception of an idea.

Topic(s): Mind , Children , Book

The problem before the educator is to give the child control over his own nature, to enable him to hold himself in hand as much in regard to the traits we call good, as to those we call evil:.

Topic(s): Giving , Children , Problem

Let children alone… the education of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to let her children alone, not teasing them with perpetual commands and directions – a running fire of Do and Don’t ; but letting them go their own way and grow, having first secured that they will go the right way and grow to fruitful purpose.

Topic(s): Way , Firsts , Children

Give your child a single valuable idea, and you have done more for his education than if you had laid upon his mind the burden of bushels of information.

Topic(s): Ifs , Giving , Mind

A child is a person in whom all possibilities are present – present now at this very moment – not to be educed after many years and efforts manifold on the part of the educator