Consider This: Charlotte Mason and the Classical Tradition

by Karen Glass

Having determined, then, that books and literature—often understood as “letters” in previous generations—will be the foundation of our educational methods, the next step is to select the books. Here, the wide field of knowledge opens before us, and Charlotte Mason, following Matthew Arnold again, divides it into three categories. If then, the manners and the destinies of men are shaped by knowledge, it may be well to inquire further into the nature of that evasive entity. Matthew Arnold helps us by offering a threefold classification which appeals to common sense—knowledge of God, knowledge of men, and knowledge of the natural world; or, as we should say, Divinity, the Humanities, and Science. But I think we may go further and say that Letters, if not (as I said before) the main content of knowledge, constitute anyway the container—the wrought salver, the exquisite vase, even the alabaster box to the hold the ointment. (Philosophy of Education, p. 315-16) In other words, there is no area of knowledge which we should neglect in our attempt to lay a generous feast before our pupils, and there is no area of knowledge in which books—well-written, living books—cannot be the “exquisite” container by which that knowledge is conveyed. It is not the purpose of this book to propose a fully-realized curriculum (that has been done elsewhere*);