Consider This: Charlotte Mason and the Classical Tradition

by Karen Glass

Her emphatic conclusion about a child is that “his mind is the instrument of his education and that his education does not produce his mind.” (Philosophy of Education, p. 36) Charlotte Mason uses the word mind in a way that is distinct from the word brain. A careful reader of her writings must understand the difference between the two in order to fully comprehend all that she says. Mind is the non-material, living essence of a person, while brain, of course, is the material, physical brain. When Charlotte Mason asserts that children are persons, she means that they have both brain and mind. Anyone who has watched a one-year-old child examine a problem—a desired object out of reach, for example—and create a solution (usually involving standing on something unsafe) has seen how much intelligence and even logical thinking we are endowed with from the start.