Consider This: Charlotte Mason and the Classical Tradition

by Karen Glass

In Charlotte Mason’s methods, the teacher is not the source of knowledge, doling it out to pupils in predigested form. The children are reading their living books and taking in knowledge for themselves. But the teacher must be the guide—the one who has gone before and laid out the program because he knows, as the children cannot, the best plan for proceeding. A trail guide knows when the path is easy and when it is steeper and requires a rest, how much ground can be covered in the time allotted, and where the smoothest ways and finest views are to be found. A teacher, in the role of guide, leads his pupils through the books, allowing them time to assimilate each lesson, and making sure that each lesson is assimilated by requiring narration and lending a sympathetic ear to the pupil’s efforts. In the role of philosopher, the teacher will help the students order the knowledge they are taking in. We cannot give children our own opinions or understanding of relationships, but we can help them to make their own connections by way of a judicious word, by providing a map or timeline, and by arranging readings so that books of science, history, and literature correlate. A teacher should have his own synthetic understanding of the world in order to develop synthetic thinking in the children he teaches. What he wants of his teacher is moral and mental discipline, sympathy and direction; and it is better, on the whole, that the training of the pupil should be undertaken by one wise t...