Charlotte Mason Quotes

Self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child's nature.

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?

The most common and the monstrous defect in the education of the day is that children fail to acquire the habit of reading.

If mothers could learn to do for themselves what they do for their children when these are overdone, we should have happier households. Let the mother go out to play!

Thought breeds thought; children familiar with great thoughts take as naturally to thinking for themselves as the well-nourished body takes to growing; and we must bear in mind that growth, physical, intellectual, moral, spiritual, is the sole end of education.

Do not let the endless succession of small things crowd great ideals out of sight and out of mind.

...my object is to show that the chief function of the child--his business in the world during the first six or seven years of his life--is to find out all he can, about whatever comes under his notice, by means of his five senses...

There is no education but self-education.

Authority is just and faithful in all matters of promise-keeping; it is also considerate, and that is why a good mother is the best home-ruler.

...like Ariel released from his tree prison, a beautiful human being leaps out of many a human prison at the touch of sympathy .

This idea of all education springing from and resting upon our relation to Almighty God-we do not merely give a religious education because that would seem to imply the possibility of some other education, a secular education, for example. But we hold that all education is divine, that every good gift of knowledge and insight comes from above, that the Lord the Holy Spirit is the supreme educator of mankind, and that the culmination of all education (which may at the same time be reached by a little child) is that personal knowledge of and intimacy with God in which our being finds its fullest perfection.

Having found the book which has a message for us, let us not be guilty of the folly of saying we have read it. We might as well say we have breakfasted, as if breakfasting on one day should last us for every day! The book that helps us deserves many readings, for assimilation comes by slow degrees.

Let children alone... the education of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to let her children alone, not teasing them with perpetual commands and directions - a running fire of Do and Don’t ; but letting them go their own way and grow, having first secured that they will go the right way and grow to fruitful purpose.

A child gets moral notions from the fairy-tales he delights in, as do his elders from tale and verse.

The formation of habits is education, and education is the formation of habits.

...the more we do for a child the less he will do for himself. If we give him watered-down material, many explanations, much questioning, if we over-moralize, depend on the work book to work the mind, what thinking is left for the child to do?

The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days; while she who lets their habits take care of themselves has a weary life of endless friction with the children.

On Saturday mornings during deliveries, I'd practice picking out new words in Jane Eyre, sounding out the ones that needed sounding out—and I'm not lying, there were plenty. "'A new servitude! There is something in that,' I soliloquized." I mean, who talks like that? Do you know how long it takes to sound out a word like soliloquized? And even after you do, you have no idea what the stupid word means except that it probably just means "said," which is what stupid Charlotte Brontë should have said in the first place. When I delivered Mrs. Mason's groceries, she saw that I had Jane Eyre stuck under my arm. "Oh," she said, "that was my favorite novel in school." "It was?" I soliloquized.

And perhaps it is not too beautiful a thing to believe in this redeemed world, that, as the babe turns to his mother though he has no power to say her name, as the flowers turn to the sun, so the hearts of the children turn to their Saviour and God with unconscious delight and trust. Nursery

Never be within doors when you can rightly be without.

And all the time we have books, books teeming with ideas fresh from the minds of thinkers upon every subject to which we can wish to introduce children.

Who can take the measure of a child? The Genie of the Arabian tale is nothing to him. He, too, may be let out of his bottle and fill the world. But woe to us if we keep him corked up.

The child brings with him into the world, not character, but disposition. He has tendencies which may need only to be strengthened, or, again, to be diverted or even repressed. His character — the efflorescence of the man wherein the fruit of his life is a-preparing — is original disposition, modified, directed, expanded by education; by circumstances; later, by self-control and self-culture; above all, by the supreme agency of the Holy Ghost, even where that agency is little suspected, and as little solicited.

We do not list “humility” among our school subjects or put it on a transcript, but that is actually the little secret of classical education. The things that make it truly classical, truly worthwhile to pursue, aren’t school subjects at all, but principles that add depth and cohesion to everything we study in all areas of the curriculum. ❧ ❧ ❧

Just because a book is considered “children’s literature”, doesn’t mean it’s childish. Many of my favorite books are written for children! A good story is a good story, and you will find that you enjoy many well-written books just as much (if not more) than your children.

The great educator Charlotte Mason says that when we put children in direct contact with great ideas and get out of the way, "Teachers shall teach less and scholars shall learn more." Any homeschooling parent who has observed her own children for any length of time will know this to be true. Real learning happens when our children wrestle directly with great ideas- not as a result of our repackaging those great ideas, but when they interact with the ideas themselves.

our power to conduct our relations with other people depends upon our power of conducting our relations with ourselves. Every

She bit me. She worried me like a tigress, when Rochester got the knife from her...She sucked the blood: she said she'd drain my heart." Richard mason

That parents should make over the religious education of their children to a Sunday School is, no doubt, as indefensible as if they sent them for their meals to a table maintained by the public bounty.

Therefore, the selection of their first lesson-books is a matter of grave importance, because it rests with these to give children the idea that knowledge is supremely attractive and that reading is delightful. Once

One more thing is of vital importance; children must have books, living books; the best are not too good for them; anything less than the best is not good enough; and if it is needful to exercise economy, let go everything that belongs to soft and luxurious living before letting go the duty of supplying the books, and the frequent changes of books, which are necessary for the constant stimulation of the child's intellectual life.

To bring the human race, family by family, child by child, out of the savage and inhuman desolation where He is not, into the light and warmth and comfort of the presence of God, is, no doubt, the chief thing we have to do in the world.

No parent/home/child/teacher/school has an all-round 100 percent wholeness. We all have limitations and problems. But I must never think it is all or nothing. Perhaps I'd like to live in the country, but I don't. Well, maybe I can get the family to a park two times a week, and out to the country once every two weeks. Maybe I have to send my child to a not-so-good school. Well, maybe we can read one or two good books together aloud. If you can't give them everything, give them something.

None of us can be proof against the influences that proceed from the persons he associates with. Wherefore, in books and men, let us look out for the best society, that which yields a bracing and wholesome influence. We all know the person for whose company we are the better, though the talk is only about fishing or embroidery.

Charlotte Mason considered herself not only a patron to black writers and artists, but also a guardian of black folklore. She believed it her duty to protect it from those whites who, having “no more interesting things to investigate among themselves,” were grabbing “in every direction material that by right belongs entirely to another race.

The more of a person we succeed in making a child, the better will he both fulfil his own life and serve society.

We probably read Shakespeare in the first place for his stories, afterwards for his characters. . . . To become intimate with Shakespeare in this way is a great enrichment of mind and instruction of conscience. Then, by degrees, as we go on reading this world-teacher, lines of insight and beauty take possession of us, and unconsciously mould our judgments of men and things and of the great issues of life.

Our aim in education is to give a full life. We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking - the strain would be too great - but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest. ~ Charlotte Mason

Knowledge is information touched with emotion: feeling must be stirred, imagination must picture, reason must consider, nay, conscience must pronounce on the information we offer before it becomes mind-stuff.

Modern education has been plagued by utilitarianism for a very long time, and both teachers and students have come to think that schools should teach only what will be useful in the pursuit of a career. At the same time, we deplore the poor academic performance of our students in comparison with students of other countries.

Regarding children’s literature, look for interesting content and well-constructed sentences clothed in literary language. The imagination should be warmed and the book should hold the interest of the child.  Life’s too short to spend time with books that bore us.

It is time we reverted to the teaching of Socrates. ‘Know thyself,’ exhorted the wise man, in season and out of season; and it will be well with us when we understand that to acquaint a child with himself––what he is as a human being––is a great part of education.

The person of winning personality attracts his pupils who will do anything for his sake and are fond and eager in all their ways, docile to the point where personality is submerged, and they live on the smiles, perish on the averted looks, of the adored teacher. Parents look on with a smile and think that all is well; but Bob or Mary is losing that growing time which should make a self-dependent, self-ordered person, and is day by day becoming a parasite who can go only as he is carried, the easy prey of fanatic or demagogue.

The habit of grown-ups reading living books and retaining the power to digest them will be lost if we refuse to give a little time for Mother Culture. A wise mother, an admired mother and wife, when asked how, with her weak physical health and many demands on her time, she managed to read so much said, "Besides my Bible, I always keep three books going that are just for me - a stiff book, a moderately easy book, and a novel or one of poetry. I always take up the one I feel fit for. That is the secret: always have something 'going' to grow by.

Educational trends and fads tend to drive the practices of teachers and schools, making education seem like a frantic pursuit to keep up with something new. If we change our focus from what is new to what is universally true, we invite a more peaceful approach into our educational

Children should know that such things are before them also; that whenever they want to do wrong capital reasons for doing the wrong thing will occur to them. But, happily, when they want to do right no less cogent reasons for right doing will appear. After abundant practice in reasoning and tracing out the reasons of others, whether in fact or fiction, children may readily be brought to the conclusions that reasonable and right are not synonymous terms; that reason is their servant, not their ruler,—one of those servants which help Mansoul in the governance of his kingdom.

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?” ~ Charlotte Mason

Charlotte Mason considered herself not only a patron to black writers and artists but also a guardian of black folklore. She believed it her duty to protect it from those whites who, having “no more interesting things to investigate among themselves,” were grabbing “in every direction material that by right belongs entirely to another race.

It is well that we should choose our authors with judgment, as we choose our friends, and then wait upon them respectfully to hear what they have to say to us.

Yet she was no bureaucrat; her practice was as various and elastic as her principles were constant; there was the method and even the letter, but above all the spirit.

Diluted Knowledge.--But, poor children, they are too often badly used by their best friends in the matter of the knowledge

Education was intended to result in right action.

A morning in which a child receives no new ideas is a morning wasted.

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control— These three alone lead life to sovereign power.” Tennyson.

Charlotte Mason says, this “idea of definite work to be finished in a given time is valuable to the child, not only as training him in habits of order, but in diligence; he learns that one time is not 'as good as another'; that there is no right time left for what is not done in its own time; and this knowledge alone does a great deal to secure the child's attention to his work.

Letters sometimes required thinking over and Miss Mason would say,—“I will give you the answer to that tomorrow”; and tomorrow the answer would be ready without any reminder, and the letter would be answered in detail and without any further reference to its pages. She constantly said,—“Always remember that persons matter more than things. Don’t say anything that will leave a sting.

It is worth while to point out the differing characters of a system and a method, because parents let themselves be run away with often enough by some plausible ‘system,’ the object of which is to produce development in one direction—of the muscles, of the memory, of the reasoning faculty—were a complete all-round education. This easy satisfaction arises from the sluggishness of human nature, to which any definite scheme is more agreeable than the constant watchfulness, the unforeseen action, called for when the whole of a child’s existence is to be used as the means of his education.

To dream of liberty, in the sense of every man his own sole governor, is as futile as to dream of a world in which apples do not necessarily drop from the tree, but may fly off at a tangent in any direction.

That the forming of habits is a great part of education; (b)​that body, mind, soul, and spirit, equally, live upon food, and perish of famine; all four require daily bread; all thrive as they work, and degenerate in idleness.

The books are hard. But the more she asked, the more the children gave. And, though they never saw her, there were thousands who loved her, because she understood them and knew what they wanted. She had treated them as persons. She had respected them.

Miss Mason’s life was one long struggle against mechanism. She distrusted organisation and standardisation. For this reason, she would have no truck with government departments or municipal control. Again, she set little store by the results of public examinations.

with a child on his first offence, and a grieved look is enough to convict the little transgressor; but let him go on until a habit of wrong-doing is formed, and the cure is a slow one; then the mother has no chance until she has formed in him a contrary habit of well-doing.

There is nothing we can know about language or literature or art or music or physics or chemistry or engineering that does not have its source in God’s own law and truth for the universe. All knowledge is connected because it springs from a single source, and that source is God.

Load your bookshelves with the best literature you can find. Hang beautiful, thought-provoking art work around your house. Watch history and science documentaries as well as good movies and television programs. Listen to beautiful music (which, of course, is open to interpretation).

Having found the book which has a message for us, let us not be guilty of the folly of saying we 'have read' it. We might as well say we have breakfasted, as if breakfasting on one day should last us for every day! The book that helps us deserves many readings, for assimilation comes by slow degrees.

Now, I've another errand for you,' said my untiring master; "you must away to my room again. What a mercy you are shod with velvet, Jane!--a clod-hopping messenger would never do at this juncture. You must open the middle drawer of my toilet-table and take out a little phial and a little glass you will find there,--quick!" I flew thither and back, bringing the desired vessels. "That's well! Now, doctor, I shall take the liberty of administering a dose myself, on my own responsibility. I got this cordial at Rome, of an Italian charlatan--a fellow you would have kicked, Carter. It is not a thing to be used indiscriminately, but it is good upon occasion: as now, for instance. Jane, a little water." He held out the tiny glass, and I half filled it from the water-bottle on the washstand. "That will do;--now wet the lip of the phial." I did so; he measured twelve drops of a crimson liquid, and presented it to Mason. "Drink, Richard: it will give you the heart you lack, for an hour or so." "But will it hurt me?--is it inflammatory?" "Drink! drink! drink!" Mr. Mason obeyed, because it was evidently useless to resist. He was dressed now: he still looked pale, but he was no longer gory and sullied. Mr. Rochester let him sit three minutes after he had swallowed the liquid; he then took his arm-- "Now I am sure you can get on your feet," he said--"try." The patient rose. "Carter, take him under the other shoulder. Be of good cheer, Richard; step out--that's it!" "I do feel better," remarked Mr. Mason. "I am sure you do.

Give your child a world full of heroes and myths, big thoughts to think about and things to fall in love with, ideas to ponder and inspire them. That is the best education possible – one in which they see learning as a life-long pursuit and not something that must be done within the “schooling hours” each day.

Let each of the Appetites, so necessary to our bodies, be our servant and not our master, and remember, above all things, that sin and slavery to any Appetite begin in our thoughts. It is our thoughts that we must rule, and the way to rule them is very simple. We just have to think of something else when an evil thought comes, something really interesting and nice, with a prayer in our hearts to God to help us to do so.

So we read books just because they make us happy or because they’re fun, because they will make us sound smart, because they’ll get us into college or a good job ahead of the others? Or should we use them as a practical guide to recognizing dragons? No, they show us that we have a purpose; that we can be useful in the world, and that is our pleasure. Education gives us minds more awake, and a life that is more than just passing time.

She must ask herself seriously, Why must the children learn at all? What should they learn? And, How should they learn it? If she take the trouble to fiind a definite and thoughtful answer to each of these three queries, she will be in a position to direct her children’s studies; and will, at the same time, be surprised to find that three-fourths of the time and labour ordinarily spent by the child at his lessons is lost time and wasted energy.

Who is the learner and what is his or her relationship to knowledge and learning? Is he or she basically good or evil (or both)? Passive or active in learning? Capable of choice, or has life already been determined somehow? Motivated internally or externally? An unmarked slate or having unrealized potential? These questions are answered every day in every classroom, daycare center, or basketball court—answered by the way children are viewed and treated by adults.

While When Children Love to Learn affirms the value of good and great achievements in a wide variety of fields, this book soundly rejects the view that a child’s ultimate worth lies in either intelligence, material circumstances, what he or she might become through grooming or talent, or anything else except in this remarkable fact—that he or she has been made in the image of a personal and infinite God and is especially confirmed by Jesus: “. . . of such is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19:14).

We have looked at three things that will never appear on a transcript, and yet are vital to the classical tradition of education. First, the primary purpose of education is wisdom and virtue, and every part of the program should serve to teach learners how to think and act rightly. Second, humility is vital to the pursuit of virtue because it keeps us teachable. Third, our approach to knowledge should be relational, synthetic, so that we develop a foundational understanding of the unity of knowledge and our own place in the universe.

Oral teaching was to a great extent ruled out; a large number of books on many subjects were set for reading in morning school-hours; so much work was set that there was only time for a single reading; all reading was tested by a narration of the whole or a given passage, whether orally or in writing. Children working on these lines know months after that which they have read and are remarkable for their power of concentration (attention); they have little trouble with spelling or composition and become well-informed, intelligent persons.

Its “object” was the physical education, the moral training, the mental discipline and instruction, and the spiritual growth, of the child. Its constitution, parents of whatever class, and others interested in education. Its plan of work included arrangements for business meetings, lectures, field excursions, schoolroom and cottage lectures, cottage field excursions, the dissemination of literature, occasional lectures by well-known educationists, an examination scheme, a magazine for the UNION, a training college, and lectures on education under the headings of the ‘Objects.

Sun, moon and stars, by day and night, At God’s commandment give us light; And when we wake, and while we sleep, Their watch, like guardian angels, keep. The bright blue sky above our head, The soft green earth on which we tread, The ocean rolling round the land, Were made by God’s almighty hand. Sweet flowers that hill and dale adorn, Fair fruit trees, fields of grass and corn, The clouds that rise, the showers that fall, The winds that blow - God sent them all. The beasts that graze with downward eye, The birds that perch, and sing, and fly, The fishes swimming in the sea, God’s creatures are as well as we. But us He formed for better things, As servants of the King of kings, With lifted hands and open face, And thankful heart to seek His grace. Montgomery.

Thou hast set my feet in a large room; should be the glad cry of every intelligent soul. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking—the strain would be too great—but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest. We cannot give the children these interests; we prefer that they should never say they have learned botany or conchology, geology or astronomy. 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, pp. 170–71)

I am’—we have the power of knowing ourselves. “I ought’—we have within us a moral judge, to whom we feel ourselves subject, and who points out and requires of us our duty. ‘I can’—we are conscious of power to do that which we perceive we ought to do. ‘I will’—we determine to exercise that power with a volition which is in itself a step in the execution of that which we will. Here is a beautiful and perfect chain, and the wonder is that, so exquisitely constituted as he is for right-doing, error should be even possible to man. But of the sorrowful mysteries of sin and temptation it is not my place to speak here; you will see that it is because of the possibilities of ruin and loss which lie about every human life that I am pressing upon parents the duty of saving their children by the means put into their hands. Perhaps it is not too much to say, that ninety-nine out of a hundred lost lives lie at the door of parents who took no pains to deliver them from sloth, from sensual appetites, from willfulness, no pains to fortify them with the habits of a good life.

Ourselves,’ a Vast Country not yet Explored.––When we think of our bodies and of the wonderful powers they possess, we say, under our breath, “Great and marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty.” Now, let us consider that still more wonderful Self which we cannot see and touch as we can our bodies, but which thinks and loves and prays to God; which is happy or sad, good or not good. This inner self is, as we have said, like a vast country much of which is not yet explored, or like a great house, built as a maze, in which you cannot find your way about. People usually talk of ‘Ourselves’ as made up of Body, Mind, Heart, and Soul; and we will do the same, because it is a convenient way to describe us. It is more convenient to say, ‘The sun rises at six and sets at nine,’ than to say, ‘As the earth turns round daily before the sun, that part of the earth on which we live first gets within sight of the sun about six o’clock in the morning in March.’ ‘The sun rises and sets’ is a better way of describing this, not only because it is easier to say, but because it is what we all appear to see and to know. In the same way, everybody appears to know about his own heart and soul and mind; though, perhaps, the truth is that there is no division into parts, but that the whole of each of us has many different powers and does many different things at different times.

The Sailor-boy’s Gossip You say, dear mamma, it is good to be talking With those who will kindly endeavour to teach. And I think I have learnt something while I was walking Along with the sailor-boy down on the beach. He told me of lands where he soon will be going, Where humming-birds scarcely are bigger than bees, Where the mace and the nutmeg together are growing, And cinnamon formeth the bark of some trees. He told me that islands far out in the ocean Are mountains of coral that insects have made, And I freely confess I had hardly a notion That insects could world in the way that he said. He spoke of wide deserts where the sand-clouds are flying. No shade for the brow, and no grass for the feet; Where camels and travelers often lie dying, Gasping for water and scorching with heat. He told me of places away in the East, Where topaz, and ruby, and sapphires are found: Where you never are safe from the snake and the beast, For the serpent and tiger and jackal abound. I thought our own Thames was a very great stream, With its waters so fresh and its currents so strong; But how tiny our largest of rivers must seem To those he had sailed on, three thousand miles long. He speaks, dear mamma, of so many strange places, With people who neither have cities nor kings. Who wear skins on their shoulders, paint on their faces, And live on the spoils which their hunting-field brings. Oh! I long, dear mamma, to learn more of these stories, From books that are written to please and to teach, And I wish I could see half the curious glories The sailor-boy told me of down on the beach. Eliza Cook.

It is doubtful that a teacher who does not understand and appreciate the principles that underlie the methods will be able to make the most of the methods in practice.

springs from their own imaginations.

Conscience would seem to have but a single office––to convince us of sin––that is, of transgression. The older divines used to speak much of an approving conscience; but this approval would appear to be no more than silence; for self-approbation, as we have seen, is, in itself, an offence. Then, when conscience says nothing we are all right? you ask. By no means, for the verdict of conscience depends upon what we know and what we habitually allow.

Faith Is Required to Act upon an Idea. Miss Mason rejected the receptacle view of the mind and embraced the analogy that the mind is a living, spiritual entity that is hungry and must be fed in order to grow and thrive. Mere data will not satisfy that hunger.

We neglect mind. We need not consider brain; a duly nourished and duly exercised mind takes care of its physical organ provided that organ also receives its proper material nourishment. But our fault, our exceeding great fault, is that we keep our own minds and the minds of our children shamefully underfed. The mind is a spiritual octopus, reaching out limbs in every direction to draw in enormous rations of that which under the action of the mind itself becomes knowledge. Nothing can stale its infinite variety; the heavens and the earth, the past, the present, and future, things great and things minute, nations and men, the universe, all are within the scope of the human intelligence.

nothing intellectually true can be unspiritual. Miss Mason believed in the sacredness as well as the unity of all knowledge: All knowledge, dealt out to us in such portions as we are ready for, is sacred; knowledge is, perhaps, a beautiful whole, a great unity, embracing God and man and the universe, but having many parts which are not comparable with one another in the sense of less or more, because all are necessary and each has its functions. (Philosophy of Education, p. 324)

This idea of all education springing from and resting upon our relation to Almighty God is one which we have ever laboured to enforce. We take a very distinct stand upon this point. We do not merely give a religious education, because that would seem to imply the possibility of some other education, a secular education, for example. But we hold that all education is divine, that every good gift of knowledge and insight comes from above, that the Lord the Holy Spirit is the supreme educator of mankind, and that the culmination of all education (which may, at the same time, be reached by a little child) is that personal knowledge of and intimacy with God in which our being finds its fullest perfection. (School Education, p. 95)

Miss Mason referred to this as the “Great Recognition” that educators are called upon to make—that all knowledge is unified and arises from a common source. This is the ultimate relationship that “binds all things to all other things.” Because all knowledge comes from God, we cannot say that some things we learn are sacred and other things are secular, or apart from God. We must be careful not to allow those distinctions to be made.

It is summed up in three commandments, and all three have a negative character, as if the chief thing required of grown-up people is that they should do no sort of injury to the children: Take heed that ye OFFEND not—DESPISE not—HINDER not—one of these little ones. (Home Education, p. 12) The negative character of those statements is echoed by this principle that urges us to allow no separation. If education is the science of relations, and if all things are bound to all other things, then we should not hinder a child’s thinking by allowing an element of separation to be introduced into his education. We must not allow a child to believe that intellectual pursuits are one thing and spiritual pursuits are of another kind altogether.

In order to remain whole as persons, we must appreciate the wholeness of knowledge. Our nature craves after unity. The travail of thought, which is going on to-day and has gone on as long as we have any record of men’s thoughts, has been with a view to establishing some principle for the unification of life. Here we have the scheme of a magnificent unity. We are apt to think that piety is one thing, that our intellectual and artistic yearnings are quite another matter, and that our moral virtues are pretty much matters of inheritance and environment, and have not much to do with our conscious religion. Hence, there come discords into our lives, discords especially trying to young and ardent souls who want to be good and religious, but who cannot escape from the overpowering drawings of art and intellect and mere physical enjoyment; they have been taught to consider that these things are, for the most part, alien to the religious life, and that they must choose one or the other; they do choose, and the choice does not always fall upon those things which, in our unscriptural and unphilosophical narrowness, we call the things of God. (School Education, pp. 154–55)

Because the Spirit is the source of all kinds of knowledge, no pursuit of knowledge—even electronics or car repair or cooking—is wholly apart from Him. This particular relationship is possible because we are persons, and we have both a spiritual aspect that is reached by ideas and a physical aspect that works and acts and creates in the world.

As we learn to care about various things—things of the natural world or personal virtues such as honesty—our feelings will motivate us to act because of what we know. In this way, knowledge becomes virtue in a person’s life.

Analysis encourages us to break things down, and while there is a role for it with mature thinkers, it does not foster relationships. Miss Mason wrote: We have analysed until the mind turns in weariness from the broken fragments. (Philosophy of Education, p. 166)

Books are for loving as well as for learning.

Because a person is a spiritual being, he needs a relationship with the Spirit who is also the Creator—this forms the most vital aspect of education.

When you’re crying and begging me to stop, Ms. Van Kempt, remember that you wanted this. Here’s the proof.”And then he takes my fingers into his mouth. Wraps his tongue around them. Licks the evidence of my humiliation off. This is how I die. This is how Charlotte Van Kempt leaves the earth. Here in Mason Hill’s closet.

Attention is no more than this - the power of giving your mind to what you are about

Children should be saved the Effort of Decision.—That the effort of decision is the most exhausting effort of life,

T. S. Eliot poetic warning: “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

If the ideas are there, the facts come along naturally; but denuded facts just curl up and die. We have a hard time learning them without context, or at least remembering them for longer than the term test.