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Who Was Charlotte Mason?
Charlotte Mason (1842-1923) was a pioneering British educator whose timeless ideas have profoundly influenced modern homeschooling and educational philosophy.
Even today, at the height of the 21st century, her work and legacy continue to inspire parents and educators around the world.
In this post, we explore some of her most inspiring quotes, which capture the essence of her educational philosophy and offer valuable insights for today’s educational journey (homeschooling or not).
Read more: The Most Inspiring Quotes About Homeschooling And Learning.
Charlotte Mason by Frederic Yates, 1902.
The Best Charlotte Mason Quotes
“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, School Education
“With all the pressure to give our children a good education and adequate socialization, it’s good to remember that a mother’s first duty should be to provide a secure, quiet early childhood. For the first six years, children should have low-key schedules so they can just be and grow, and they should spend most of their waking hours outside enjoying the fresh air.”
― Charlotte Mason, Home Education
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“Self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child’s nature.”
― Charlotte Mason
“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.”
― Charlotte Mason, The Original Home Schooling Series
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“…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…”
― Charlotte Mason
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Read more: Homeschooling in the Early Years: What to Focus On.
“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.”
― Charlotte Mason, The Original Home School Series
“The most common and the monstrous defect in the education of the day is that children fail to acquire the habit of reading.”
― Charlotte Mason
“Give your child a single valuable idea, and you have done more for his education than if you had laid upon his mind the burden of bushels of information.”
― Charlotte Mason, Home Education
“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.”
― Charlotte Mason
“Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.”
― Charlotte Mason, School Education
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“As for literature – to introduce children to literature is to install them in a very rich and glorious kingdom, to bring a continual holiday to their doors, to lay before them a feast exquisitely served. But they must learn to know literature by being familiar with it from the very first. A child’s intercourse must always be with good books, the best that we can find.”
― Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education
“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.”
― Charlotte Mason, Ourselves
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“Wise and purposeful letting alone is the best part of education.”
― Charlotte Mason, School Education
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“Education is a life; that life is sustained on ideas; ideas are of spiritual origin, and that we get them chiefly as we convey them to one another. The duty of parents is to sustain a child’s inner life with ideas as they sustain his body with food.”
― Charlotte Mason, The Original Home School Series
“A child gets moral notions from the fairy-tales he delights in, as do his elders from tale and verse.”
― Charlotte Mason, Ourselves
“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.”
― Charlotte Mason
“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, School Education
“Never be within doors when you can rightly be without.”
― Charlotte Mason, The Outdoor Life of Children: The Importance of Nature Study and Outdoor Activities
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“Our power to conduct our relations with other people depends upon our power of conducting our relations with ourselves.”
― Charlotte Mason, Original Homeschooling Series
“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.”
― Charlotte Mason
“The formation of habits is education, and education is the formation of habits.”
― Charlotte Mason, Home Education
“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.”
― Charlotte Mason
“Attention is no more than this – the power of giving your mind to what you are about”
― Charlotte Mason, Home Education
“It is far easier to govern from a height, as it were, than from the intimacy of close personal contact. But you cannot be quite frank and easy with beings who are obviously of a higher and of another order than yourself; at least, you cannot when you are a little boy…But it is much to a child to know that he may question, may talk of the thing that perplexes him, and that there is comprehension for his perplexities.”
― Charlotte Mason
“An observant child should be put in the way of things worth observing.”
― Charlotte Mason, Home Education
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“She must ask herself seriously, Why must the children learn at all? What should they learn? And, How should they learn it? If she takes the trouble to find 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.”
― Charlotte Mason, Home Education
Read more: The Best Maria Montessori Quotes.
