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Why CM?
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I know I like CM and her principles, but what makes everyone else who likes her ideas choose her instead of say Classical ed or something else?
I like that her ideas encompass all of raising children and not just education. Her ideas seem very common sense. For the most part I feel a rightness to them.
I was always drawn to Charlotte Mason’s ideas, but the final deciding factor for me was that her description of a child, her description of the learning process, just agreed better with reality, in my eyes. I spent a lot of time thinking about how each basic “approach” viewed a child. Textbooks treat each child as a receptacle of little factiods. Classical education, in the modern “trivium as stages of development” sense, treated each child as a little memorizing machine, later to turn into a little logic machine, etc. Charlotte’s description of a child as a whole person, intelligent already, capable of so much, but needing habits trained and needing the knowledge of living ideas, —THAT was my child(ren). That is what I saw in my children’s eyes as we got up each morning and went through each day. I remember reading a passage in vol. 1 early on in my investigation, and thinking “That fits my son EXACTLY!!” It was an “aha!” moment for me.
So, then, if she understood best what a child is, then it seemed to me that her ideas of how to educate that child should also fit best. And so it has proven in my family.
For us, it was not a matter of researching methods. Lol, it never occurred to me that I needed to. We started homeschooling with the conviction to keep our children at home, and a vision for our family and so we just started going along. When I did look up long enough to start thinking about different methods, I realized that we had fallen into a quasi-cm method all on our own. That made statements like, ‘natural learning’ ring so true to me because that is exactly how it happened with us: naturally.
I can relate to what Cindy posted. We also just “naturally” fell into a CMish style on our own.
I think that if you strip away all that we associate with education (rows of desks with kids raising hands to be called on, a teacher standing in front of the class doing all the talking, most learning coming from textbooks, etc.) then you naturally end up with a style similar to CM. At least that is what happened with us.
I’m new here but have to jump in this conversation because it’s so dear to me. I’ve been using the CM approach with my children (in 5th and 1st grades) since I discovered CM teachings several years ago when my oldest child was a toddler.
What appeals to me about CM is that she was interested in the whole child, not just in academics. CM supports raising well-rounded and healthy children, and that goal appeals to me much more than racing toward academic goals. I like that CM’s approach is not showy, and that the relationships within the family take priority over academics. I know with the CM approach that good habits are considered important and worthy of our time to develop, and I appreciate that.
I was probably sold on CM when reading her ideas about how a mother should interact with a young child during a nature walk: don’t prattle on and on to the child, but let the child make discoveries on his/her own. In fact, it was CM’s encouragement to postpone academic “bookwork” until the child is older that sustained me when it seemed like all the little three-year olds in my neighborhood were marched off for pre-school to learn to sit in Circle Time and to color shapes on worksheets. I would walk past the schools with my kids on our way to the park and spend hours outdoors with them. I felt I was taking was the right approach to “early childhood education,” and I was grateful for CM’s advice about the early years when it seemed everyone around me doubted my decisions to keep the kids out of pre-school. And now that my children are past that pre-school age, I have absolutely no regrets on how we spent their early years.
As my children have grown into more academic studies, I see how the narration technique works so well. It’s a brilliant way to learn. And, I’m a book lover and I am crazy about reading living books with my children. Such a joy! I love the high standards I learned from CM when determining what materials we will use in our studies.
The CM approach is respectful of the child, supports the role of mother, is gentle, and it is also rigorous and demands serious responsibility from both the children and the parents. I see the CM approach as congruent to the way I want to raise my children, and not just as a teaching method for schoolwork.
By the way, I’m Esby. I think I found a great group of homeschoolers here! Thanks for letting me join.
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