Not that long ago, people thought that CM education meant that you would have regular ‘tea time’ events with tea, classical music and poetry readings. Don’t laugh! People misunderstood this to be an integral part of Charlotte Mason Education.
Nowadays, people know that tea parties are nice but they are not ‘CM’. But there are other myths that are hanging around. And I want to play myth-buster on a couple of those ideas.
MYTH 1: You have read Charlotte Mason and are ready to do Charlotte Mason if you read a book by one of the very excellent authors who have written books on how they applied Charlotte Mason’s ideas in their families.
TRUTH: If you read a book by one of those very excellent authors, you probably have a good understanding of how CM can be applied in a modern homeschooling situation. But you haven’t read Charlotte Mason.
MYTH 2: You need to read Charlotte Mason’s six volumes on education, entitled, ‘The Original Homeschool Series’.
TRUTH: You really do need to read Charlotte Mason’s own words to understand what she was suggesting. But in the volumes there are hundreds of pages of information that you won’t need or use because you don’t have a child of that age, because you are not in early twentieth century England, and because some of the information is so unfamiliar to us today that it wouldn’t be much use of make much sense to you.
This is where Charlotte Mason Made Easy comes in. The course gives you bite-sized pieces of relevant parts of the books to read, in context and with explanations. So you do actually read Charlotte Mason’s own work and learn what she actually said on a subject, then you can apply your knowledge and information in your own family.
MYTH 3: Science and technology are not covered very well. Charlotte Mason didn’t have to deal with all the technology we have today, and she didn’t cover science very well.
TRUTH: Charlotte Mason covered the teaching of science quite thoroughly. Her approach to and understanding of this subject are timeless, and on the Charlotte Mason Made Easy course you will discover that science is not complicated or scary after all.
MYTH 4: There is too great an emphasis on literature and the arts.
TRUTH: Charlotte Mason covered a very wide curriculum, including history, geography, grammar, languages, music, science, physical education and faith education. She showed how teaching is not scary; it’s fun and rewarding.
MYTH 5: Charlotte Mason is irrelevant to modern homeschooling, because it was designed for life a hundred years ago. Charlotte Mason wasn’t living in a time of computers, cars, cell phones and the Internet. She was living in England, not North America or New Zealand or Australia or wherever it is that you live. So how can you apply her pre-technology, English, school-style education to twenty-first century homeschoolers around the world?
TRUTH: Charlotte Mason’s ideas work just as well today as they did a hundred years ago. Technology is different but people are the same. We may have different things to deal with, but Charlotte Mason’s ideas are timeless and relevant to us today. On the Charlotte Mason Made Easy course you will just learn how to apply the ideas to suit our modern lifestyle.
MYTH 6: Charlotte Mason only applies to bookish children.
TRUTH: Charlotte Mason advocated the children spend a lot of time being very active.
MYTH 7: With Charlotte Mason you have to read to your children all the time.
TRUTH: Charlotte Mason advocated good books but she wanted children to read and analyse books themselves. You can learn more about this in the Charlotte Mason Made Easy course.