The 20th Living Education Retreat has come and gone. It was a joyful experience celebrating God’s grace and goodness through relationships, Charlotte Mason’s philosophy of education, and the beauty of His creation at Lake Koronis. If you did attend, I know you’ll appreciate being able to re-listen to the powerful main sessions. And if you didn’t attend, this will be a real treat and balm to your soul to have these available. You can find the following talks on the LER Resource page over at Charlotte Mason Poetry.
Sacred and Sane: Breadth and Balance in a Charlotte Mason Education
by Nancy Kelly
The main marks of a living education are breadth and balance – Charlotte Mason’s
ideal. She wanted to give each person a chance of expanding in all directions. Di
Miss Mason emphasize knowledge over character? How much emphasis should we
place on narration? Is my school out of balance? Let’s look closely at what
constitutes this “breadth and balance” and see where today’s schools and curricula
are hitting – or missing – the mark.
Fire in the Bones: Keeping Faith with Natural Law in Changing Times
by Sheila Carroll
“Like religion, education is nothing or it is everything—a consuming fire in the bones.”
~Charlotte Mason, Formation of Character, pg. 145
There are moments when a teaching parent senses that something essential has
slipped away—learning hasn’t failed; the inner fire has dimmed. The only antidote is
a return to first principles—those enduring truths that govern learning. Charlotte
Mason understood this and wrote often about natural law—those immutable realities
rooted in how human beings are created to learn and be formed. She warned that
“we cannot do what we like and expect that things will turn out well.” (Home
Education). This talk looks again at those natural laws and how fidelity to them
matters even more in changing times.
Wandering in Wealth: Walking from Worry to Wonder
by Heather Suemnicht
Sometimes, our earnest efforts to educate our children according to Charlotte
Mason’s philosophy seem to lead only to detours or dead ends—whether because
we struggle to grasp her approach fully or because life disrupts our carefully laid
plans. Instead of following a sure path, we feel like we are meandering through an
overgrown wilderness, unsure where it will lead. Yet when the mist lifts, we may see
that we really weren’t lost—we were wandering in wealth all along.
Outside-In or Inside-Out: Education and the Child Who is a Person
by Art Middlekauff
“A person is not built up from without but from within,” writes Charlotte Mason; “that
is, he is living, and all external educational appliances and activities which are
intended to mould his character are decorative and not vital.” With these words
Mason challenges the instinctive and traditional desire to see education as primarily
an outside-in activity. What are the implications of Mason’s insistence that “life is
sustained on that which is taken in by the organism, not by that which is applied
from without”? Let’s find out!
Your thoughts?