Kay Pelham

In May of 2021 my son graduated from high school, after being “home”schooled from birth. Home is in quotes as an homage to the many activities and communities he was a part of outside of our home throughout his schooling years. Having had four years now to reflect on that experience, and continuing to stay involved in the world of education and to witness other families that are “still in the trenches”, I realize that my own homeschooling tenure had frustrations and fears aplenty, yet there was something always there that kept me on course and out of the mental ward.

First, let’s talk about those frustrations and fears. I will list only a few, which I’m pretty sure most every parent, homeschooling or not, can relate to. (I would like to note here that I found most schooling frustrations and fears were parenting frustration and fears.) After I share these, I will give you just a sampling of the wisdom that encouraged and strengthened me, and helped me grow in the resilience I needed to get back up and finish each task to the end.

Although I was a bit older than the average first-time mom, I was plagued with all the worries of what family and friends would think of how and what I was doing. It was also hard not to compare myself, my child, my home to other moms and their picture-perfect children and homes, mostly seen on social media.

Speaking of home life, throughout my son’s first 18 years our living situations were not always ideal. Probably our most stellar was the year we lived on 20 acres with bluffs and canyons across the road to explore. That’s the year he was 8.5 to 9.5. What followed that, though, was about 7 months moving from place to place on the other side of the country, staying in some fine homes, but still nomads. Then on our return, our son spent his final school years in a tiny city apartment. Not ideal for casual nature study, nor for a boy who had previously preferred to be outside, especially digging.

You might notice I’ve been saying “my son”, and yes, that’s it. My son is an only child. (You can hear me talk to Cindy Rollins about homeschooling an Only Child here.) Some people, overwhelmed with their large family, might say, Lucky You! But hopefully you can also acknowledge the difficulty, awkwardness at times, of schooling an Only. It could be, well, lonely for the only. I’d see friends talking about their children play-acting stories they read in school, singing folk songs and hymns together as family, and see those beautiful pictures of the family together at a table busy at school work, and over here ― just me and my son. (You can listen to the podcast with Cindy to find out more about that, and ways we adjusted to meet his “special needs”.)

Perhaps there was extra pressure on my son, extra anxiety for me, with him being my “only hope”, my only chance to get it right. I did spend a lot of time worrying about his future. You know that thing that happens as soon as your head hits the pillow ― all your failures of the day, looming brighter somehow in the darkness, weigh on you and have you tossing and turning. Is it enough? Am I giving him enough to give him a strong beginning as he launches out into the world? What didn’t we get done that day? I’m sorry I was so frustrated or whatever my bad behavior throughout the day was. Did I even feed him enough?

My son was a brilliant kid from birth. For real. He was very active, very inquisitive. Lots of energy and lots to say from the time he could put a sentence together before he was two years old. He was also not always compliant, and we went through a period of reminding him to not be contrary ― so much so that when he was about four years old, he volunteered to say the prayer before the meal at a large family gathering. In his prayer he said, “And God, please help me not to be contrary”, after which the cousins, all older, turned to their parents and said, “What’s contrary mean?” I tell you all this to say that “doing school” with my son wasn’t always sunshine and roses, with the boy saying, “Oh, mumsy let me narrate beautifully what you just read to me.” “Oh, yes, I see this and that in that painting.” “Look! I have finished filling out all these addition problems in 15 minutes with joy in my heart.” Nope. There was a lot of “Why are we doing this?” “I don’t know what I just read.” “Pardon me, I fell asleep.” There was a lot of me feeling tolerated by him with what I was trying to give him.

These were the doubts and stresses and nigglings I felt throughout, and I realize now that it’s remarkable that I didn’t crash and burn under the pressure of it all. But that brings me to the point of this post!

What Charlotte Said

I’m going to now tell you some things that Charlotte Mason said. But I want you to know this did not all come solely from me reading her words; it came from daily online interaction with my fellow Mason homeschoolers, especially the Advisory and users of AmblesideOnline, and Cindy Rollins. These women remain my most trusted friends to this day.

Diet for the body is abundantly considered, but no one pauses to say, “I wonder does the mind need food, too, and regular meals, and what is its proper diet?”

I have asked myself this question and have laboured for fifty years to find the answer, and am anxious to impart what I think I know, but the answer cannot be given in the form of ‘Do’ this and that, but rather as an invitation to ‘Consider’ this and that; action follows when we have thought duly.

Charlotte Mason, Philosophy of Education, p. 24

Charlotte Mason (1842-1923) was a British educator who spent her entire adult life observing and considering what we are as humans and how we attain knowledge. By the time she is writing her sixth volume, Towards A Philosophy of Education, she has been at this for fifty years, as she says in the quote above. It was published the year of her death. She was 81. She was no 20- or 30-year-old ‘influencer’ looking for an audience. (Her first volume, Home Education, based on a series of lectures, was published when Mason was 44.)

My friends and colleagues of the AmblesideOnline Advisory and Cindy Rollins have carried Charlotte’s work into the 21st century. They continue to ‘Consider’ this and that, and even in their own retirement as homeschool moms, they are full-time studying the philosophy and counseling others in its use. The AmblesideOnline curriculum, put together with much research and continual refining, will be celebrating its 25th anniversary next year. Cindy Rollins has so many projects training young mothers and keeping the older ones encouraged that I’d take up the rest of the space here to list them and tell you about them. These women have been my constant companions and words of wisdom in my ears for two decades. All due to the work of Charlotte Mason a century ago.

1. Children are born persons. ~Charlotte Mason

Do you know what a relief it was to me to know that I didn’t have to make him learn? I just needed to provide the proper diet.

With the help of her colleagues in the Parents’ National Educational Union (PNEU), Mason developed a list of 20 Principles, the first of which you see above. What exactly did they mean by this, and how did this help me in my daily life with my son? Notice the word born. Whatever this is, they come this way. They come with a mind capable of learning and working on whatever is put before them. From birth. In Principle 9 we are told that “the child’s mind is no mere sac to hold ideas; but is rather…a spiritual organism, with an appetite for all knowledge. This is its proper diet, with which it is prepared to deal; and which it can digest and assimilate as the body does foodstuffs.” Do you know what a relief it was to me to know that I didn’t have to make him learn? I just needed to provide the proper diet. And that’s where the work of the AO Advisory comes in. Those women laboured for thousands of hours, reading books, keeping some and tossing others. They gathered the best of music and art for those studies. They built a website that organized all of this by school years, provided discussion forums for help, and loaded that website with hundreds of other articles and lists. As Lynn Bruce said at AO’s 2016 gathering in Texas, “We did this so you wouldn’t have to.” Those moments when my son didn’t seem to be responding, I could have peace because I understood that my student’s mind would be at work. His mind was feeding on the banquet of books and music and art and poetry that the AO Advisory had provided for us. And I can tell you that four years after his graduation I am seeing the fruit of that mind-work. He may not remember specific books and stories, but the thoughts of those writers’ minds did their work in his ― in spite of his seeming resistance at times.

6. When we say that “education is an atmosphere,” we do not mean that a child should be isolated in what may be called a ‘child-environment’ especially adapted and prepared, but that we should take into account the educational value of his natural home atmosphere, both as regards persons and things, and should let him live freely among his proper conditions. It stultifies a child to bring down his world to the child’s level.

Talk about a relief here! Remember that tiny city apartment I mentioned? It’s not about having a picture-perfect home nor schoolroom. It’s not about having all the extra posters and plastic, bright-coloured ‘learning’ paraphernalia. In fact, we are told that it stultifies a child to bring down his world to the (so called) ‘child’s level‘. There are plenty of stories from my fellow CM educators, even the AO Advisory, about less-than-ideal living situations. Read Cindy’s book Mere Motherhood to see a lot about that. But what did they all have in common in their natural home environment? They had what Charlotte called a “bracing atmosphere of truth and sincerity“. You can read more about atmosphere in my post here.

10. Such a doctrine as e.g. the Herbartian, that the mind is a receptacle, lays the stress of education (the preparation of knowledge in enticing morsels duly ordered) upon the teacher. Children taught on this principle are in danger of receiving much teaching with little knowledge; and the teacher’s axiom is,’ what a child learns matters less than how he learns it.”

11. But we, believing that the normal child has powers of mind which fit him to deal with all knowledge proper to him, give him a full and generous curriculum; taking care only that all knowledge offered him is vital, that is, that facts are not presented without their informing ideas. Out of this conception comes our principle that,––

12. “Education is the Science of Relations”…

Hear me and Cindy and our friends shout it out — No Unit Studies! Those little packaged studies can be awfully attractive, especially if you think you are responsible because the student isn’t capable and can’t be trusted to make all the necessary connections. And don’t little dioramas or whatever that often come with these studies really impress Grandma. How else can we prove we’re doing school? I am grateful for the time and money that was saved because I kept being reminded that my son was born with a mind, as any normal person is, that constantly is at work making connections across all the ‘subjects’ — even ones from a month ago, a semester ago, a year or more ago. Giving him a full and generous curriculum (Thank you, again, AO!) was all that I needed to do. The ‘magic’ I experienced over the years as the ‘subjects’ might vary in historical time period or place, but connections were made by my student, gave witness to this wisdom from Mason. And if it is lasting knowledge that we’re going for, why would I choose any other way than letting his own God-given mind make the connections?

As an afterthought to that last paragraph: For an hysterical look at a Robinson Crusoe unit study, see what Mason said here. That woman was a scream!

14. As knowledge is not assimilated until it is reproduced, children should ‘tell back’ after a single reading or hearing: or should write on some part of what they have read.

Narration! What a saver of paper, time, and money! No workbooks. No reading comprehension quizzes. It is enough. Will he notice all the things I noticed or think he should notice? It doesn’t matter. He will take what he will take. What strikes him, not me. He is his own person, after all, with his own capable, very hard working mind. And when the day comes for writing ‘original’ composition, he will have something to say. He was not bogged down by learning structure before he had substance. It’s a saver in the day’s schedule, too, to not have a ‘writing lesson’ for my young student. Read, narrate. Look, narrate. Listen, narrate. It is enough. For more on narration, see AO Advisory Karen Glass’s Know and Tell. (I realize more could be said here about the awkwardness and uncertainty in the beginning days/years of narrating. Those two-word narrations, or even three ‘I don’t know’, can sure get on a mom’s nerves. I plan to write more on this later, including the connection between narration and caring, but do check out Karen’s book and her blog and other places that she writes about this.)

Let us try, however imperfectly, to make education a science of relationships––in other words, try in one subject or another to let the children work upon living ideas. In this field small efforts are honoured with great rewards, and we perceive that the education we are giving exceeds all that we intended or imagined.
~School Education, p. 163

The question is not,―how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education―but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?
~School Education, p. 170, 171

This many years after the end of our school days, the worries and frustrations have faded a bit, and it’s hard to remember why I fretted about this or that. But I do want to remember. I want to remember what it felt like because I know so many of you are still raising and teaching your children and dealing with being overwhelmed with doubts and fears, and I want you to know that you are ‘normal’, and not crazy or weaker than others. I want you to know that you can trust the words of Mason, a very seasoned thinker about and worker with children. She saw them in their home settings, as well as in school. You can trust the counsel of those that have kept her work alive and continued in their own research. AO Advisory members Karen Glass and Anne White have authored several books. You can find them on podcasts, speaking about the areas that they have mastered. Two of the Advisory members, Lynn Bruce and Wendi Capehart, have passed away, but their thoughts and counsel remain available in essays and discussions that you can find on the AO website and Forum. Karen and Anne, as well as Donna-Jean Breckenridge and Leslie Laurio, are available on the AO Forum. The words of all of these women are available in their memoir Six Voices, One Story.

And I hope you can trust me. I have truly been there, done that, and come out not just surviving, but thriving twenty years later. (My son is currently 22. It was when he was two that I found Wendi Capehart, Charlotte Mason, and AmblesideOnline.)

However imperfectly (see quote above) has become associated with Donna-Jean since 2019 when it was the title of her address at AO Camp Meeting in Tennessee. She has spoken about this idea on podcasts and online talks. She also has counseled and comforted with the words It is enough. Having successfully educated her own 4 children, she now homeschools 2 granddaughters for her widowed daughter, and Donna-Jean is no spring chicken. But she is a very beautiful one. She is one of the most faithful women I know, who has endured so much loss ― since 2020, her husband, son-in-law, mother, father, and her dearest friends, Wendi and Lynn. She knows that through all the hardships (many preceded this string of deaths) and through all the far-from-perfect hours, days, weeks, and years, the result is an education that exceeds all that we intended or imagined.

…the result is an education that exceeds all that we intended or imagined.

How much does he care? How full is the life he has before him? (See quote above.) To be honest I never cared for, nor was impressed by, all the memorizing and chanting of lists, or other presentations of the so-called classical educators. (We memorized beautiful things like poetry, songs, and Scripture.) And two decades down the road, having evidence of what Mason said was the outcome of such a focus, I know we made right choices. My son didn’t have a Virtue-focused curriculum, and yet he is a virtuous young man. He is humble and not driven to impress you with what he knows. He truly loves his Math for the beautiful thing that it is. He truly cares about many things. I told you about resistance in some of our school days, but there was also much very good conversation — about the reading, even! And those conversations continue now four years out of school. Yes, a Charlotte Mason education is about Knowing (“Science of Relations”), Knowing and Telling (narration), but ultimately it is not about how much he knows, but about how much he cares. That is the essential thing that kept me sane, kept me from losing course when I feared that people would think less of us because we weren’t doing that, or meeting their expectations — or even my own.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.