For the past few months I have weekly produced a graphic, with a lot of help from my husband and son, to post each Monday, which include a quote from Charlotte Mason. This weekend as I was preparing the graphic that you see below, I was scrolling through tons of pictures of my son to find a relevant one as background for the quote. So many pictures, and I could only choose one. This picture journey through time, though very tiring, encouraged me greatly in the fact that through all the times of feeling I was failing and not living up to some ideal of mothering and teaching my son, my son had been in contact with many parts of the world around him as Charlotte describes. However imperfect each day or week was, viewing it from this end, it was perfect in many ways.
Because I could not include every picture, you lucky readers are going to get a bit of that journey through time that I took yesterday. And then I will end with more of the context of the quote from the graphic.
A Captain Idea for us,––Education is the Science of Relations.––A child should be brought up to have relations of force with earth and water, should run and ride, swim and skate, lift and carry; should know texture, and work in material; should know by name, and where and how they live at any rate, the things of the earth about him, its birds and beasts and creeping things, its herbs and trees; should be in touch with the literature, art and thought of the past and the present ….He must have a living relationship with the present, its historic movement, its science, literature, art, social needs and aspirations. In fact, he must have a wide outlook, intimate relations all round; and force, virtue, must pass out of him, whether of hand, will, or sympathy, wherever he touches. This is no impossible programme. Indeed it can be pretty well filled in by the time an intelligent boy or girl has reached the age of thirteen or fourteen; for it depends, not upon how much is learned, but upon how things are learned.
