Scaling Back

To make a long story really short - at our last local CM meeting, we discussed pressuring kids to read and keep up with math before they're really ready, and the later problems that can cause, and the fact that some people (including The Trivium/The Bluedorns) feel like math shouldn't be started until age 10. So I re-assessed what I'm doing with Miss M (just turned 8 years old, doing AO Year 1), and I decided to cut down on her math.

We're doing Math-U-See, and since we do a CM co-op Fridays, we have a four-day week of "lessons." I've been trying to squeeze a lesson per week into four days (and a week of a scheduled Bible reading). I decided to just stop doing that. It might take us closer to two years to finish the math-U-See book, but that's okay. In fact, I think Steven Demme says he planned for each book to take a couple of years. So now we can do the concept presentation one day (which, for us, means watching the video together), and then start on work sheets the next day, and go ahead and and take a day or two to do the word problems from the teacher's manual 9which I had been skipping!) Yesterday, I let her play with measuring cups to learn how many pints are in a quart. I feel more relaxed, and I think that's appropriate for her, where she is. She has in no way reached a developmental point where fighting over "getting school done" would be a good idea.

The Bible thing is taking some getting used to. The Bible we're using has the readings all laid out and labeled "Monday" "Tuesday," etc., and it's unsettling to see the "Wednesday" label on Monday's reading. (But I suppose I can learn to be flexible!)

Jo's Boys

I just finished reading Little Women, Good Wives, Little Men and Jo's Boys, and I was struck with how much Louisa May Alcott echoed Charlotte Mason's ideas. I think that Charlotte Mason probably didn't manufacture her ideas out of her own head, but these were ideas that were out and about in the minds of many thinkers at the time, and Charlotte Mason organized them into her own school/curriculum in the same way that Jo March Bhaer used them in her Plumfield school for boys.

Jo's Boys has a chapter that deviates from the boys at the school to focus on the girls who were there, and there's no missing the similarity with Charlotte Mason's own section just for girls. So, with no commentary, I'm going to present, side by side, sections of both books so you can compare for yourself.

The books:

Jo's Boys, by Louisa May Alcott, Chapter 17. Among the Maids

Volume 5: Formation Of Character by Charlotte Mason, 2. Concerning The Young Maidens At Home (I used my own paraphrased version for the comparison.)

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
Although this story is about Jo's boys, her girls cannot be neglected, because they held a high place in this little republic, and especial care was taken to fit them to play their parts worthily in the great republic which offered them wider opportunities and more serious duties.

CM:
It's not enough for them to learn to cook a little, sew a little, and do laundry. Every one of the girls should receive some definite, thorough training in some art or profession that will enable her to earn her own living doing something useful for the world, and something interesting and enjoyable to herself, as all skilled work of the mind or hands is. I think that parents owe this to their daughters as much as they do to their sons. There is valuable training available in many fields of work suitable for women, and at about the same cost as it takes to support a girl at home.

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
To many the social influence was the better part of the training they received; for education is not confined to books, and the finest characters often graduate from no college, but make experience their master, and life their book. Others cared only for the mental culture, and were in danger of over-studying, under the delusion which pervades New England that learning must be had at all costs, forgetting that health and real wisdom are better. A third class of ambitious girls hardly knew what they wanted, but were hungry for whatever could fit them to face the world and earn a living...

CM: [One kind of girl] imagines the great things she could do for some idealistic cause, but she's careless about details of kindness, things she says, and routine chores... a little friendly help and advice might save her from a lot of blundering and regret.
There's another kind of girl who has no interests beyond cute clothes. These girls ... view the world as a place for them to have and get, but never, unless forced, as a place to do, to endure, or to share. ... what can be done for the average graduate whose education is supposedly 'finished,' yet who's still rough and uninformed?

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
At Plumfield all found something to help them; for the growing institution had not yet made its rules as fixed as the laws of the Medes and Persians, and believed so heartily in the right of all sexes, colours, creeds, and ranks to education, that there was room for everyone who knocked... the Faculty was composed of cheerful, hopeful men and women who had seen greater reforms spring from smaller roots, and after stormy seasons blossom beautifully, to add prosperity and honour to the nation. So they worked on steadily and bided their time, full of increasing faith in their attempt as year after year their numbers grew, their plans succeeded, and the sense of usefulness in this most vital of all professions blessed them with its sweet rewards.

CM:
School hasn't completed the girl's education, it's only provided a beginning. Now the girl is home to learn how to make the most of herself, and how to succeed in life. How to make the best life is the issue she faces.... A woman who has herself under control, thinks for herself, reserves her judgments, thinks before she speaks or acts, is a woman who will succeed in life. Her success is measured in how generous her heart is, how broad her mind is, and how large her soul is.

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
They were busy women, yet on Saturdays they tried to meet in one of the three sewing-rooms; for even classic Parnassus had its nook where Mrs Amy often sat among her servants, teaching them to make and mend, thereby giving them a respect for economy, since the rich lady did not scorn to darn her hose, and sew on buttons. In these household retreats, with books and work, and their daughters by them, they read and sewed and talked in the sweet privacy that domestic women love, and can make so helpful by a wise mixture of cooks and chemistry, table linen and theology, prosaic duties and good poetry.

CM:
Every woman should understand and know how to do every task related to cooking, cleaning, mending or making in the home. A regular instruction time learning to do these things under her mother's guiding eye would be a good way to spend an hour or two every morning. One valuable and extremely useful project is a household book where the young girl writes down exactly how to do specific things, like how to strip a floor, or how to make an omelet. She should write down the exact steps she took herself to do it, or as she observed while watching someone else do it, noting any special circumstances specific to her own house. This kind of reference will be invaluable later because it contains personal experiences, and it will help her to speak authoritatively to her cook or servant who might say, 'I never heard of anyone doing it like that before, ma'am.' Planning meals, setting a proper table, every detail about managing a household for a week or a month, should all be taught and noted in her book.

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
...Mrs Amy contributed taste, and decided the great question of colours and complexions; for few women, even the most learned, are without that desire to look well which makes many a plain face comely, as well as many a pretty one ugly for want of skill and knowledge of the fitness of things. She also took her turn to provide books for the readings, and as art was her forte she gave them selections from Ruskin, Hamerton, and Mrs Jameson, who is never old. Bess read these aloud as her contribution, and Josie took her turn at the romances, poetry, and plays her uncles recommended. Mrs Jo gave little lectures on health, religion, politics, and the various questions in which all should be interested, with copious extracts from Miss Cobbe's Duties of Women, Miss Brackett's Education of American Girls, Mrs Duffy's No obtund in Education, Mrs Woolson's Dress Reform, and many of the other excellent books wise women write for their sisters, now that they are waking up and asking: 'What shall we do?'

CM:
Her academic education has hardly gotten started in school, and it needs to progress. She needs to develop her own independent habits of intellectual effort. She should have one or two hours every morning for nothing but solid reading. English literature is still mostly unknown her, so she'll need some of that. She has a lot of history to read--ancient, medieval and modern--and that will relate better when she compares it to her own current history. She probably learned to read some French and German in school, and now is a good time to introduce her to some French and German literature. She'll probably only find time for the best of the novels, the ones that have become classics, except for those occasions when she has a cold or earache or has a spare half hour after dinner. It's very helpful to have a 'commonplace book' or reading journal at hand while reading so that she can jot down any notable thoughts about the author, or her own impression of the book, or a portion of it.
...Give them sincere intellectual work to think about. Let them feel how necessary it is to brace up every faculty of their minds to understand the width and depth of the truths they're called to believe in.

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
It was curious to see the prejudices melt away as ignorance was enlightened, indifference change to interest, and intelligent minds set thinking, while quick wits and lively tongues added spice to the discussions which inevitably followed. So the feet that wore the neatly mended hose carried wiser heads than before, the pretty gowns covered hearts warmed with higher purposes, and the hands that dropped the thimbles for pens, lexicons, and celestial globes, were better fitted for life's work, whether to rock cradles, tend the sick, or help on the great work of the world...

CM:
Young ladies should receive some general training and special preparation to help them form fair, just opinions. For starters, a girl should be encouraged to use her common sense to weigh issues that come up...
Young women should also know something about the principles of political economy. ... Any girl who studies it with some thought and effort will be able to form sensible opinions about some of the current issues that are used these days, not just as matters of opinion, but as reasons to justify one social class's superiority over another. It would be good for England if educated women had fair and just ideas about these kinds of issues, not just so they can have something interesting and valuable to say to their husbands and brothers, but so that they can present a different perspective to the men in their lives, and influence them to see a different side of the issue.

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Jo's Boys:
It was good for these girls to hear of the evening-schools supported and taught by women whom they knew and honoured; of Miss Cobbe's eloquent protest winning the protection of the law for abused wives; Mrs Butler saving the lost; Mrs Taylor, who devoted one room in her historic house to a library for the servants; Lord Shaftesbury, busy with his new tenement-houses in the slums of London; of prison reforms; and all the brave work being done in God's name by the rich and great for the humble and the poor. It impressed them more than many quiet home lectures would have done, and roused an ambition to help when their time should come, well knowing that even in glorious America there is still plenty to be done before she is what she should be--truly just, and free, and great.

CM:
..Women have so many rights these days that they can no longer justifiably claim the kind of immunities that secluded harem wives can. We aren't free to say, 'Oh, these things are beyond me; I let the men worry about those kinds of issues.' It's possible that God's Providence has brought women to the forefront in this age so that they'll be ready to act as mediators in these days when there's a dangerous risk of alienation and enmity between social classes. Some thinking people are convinced that we're in the early stages of a revolution. Whether this revolution can happen peacefully without the bloodshed and horrors of other recent revolutions may depend, more than they realize, on the women of England.

. ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

Uncanny, isn't it? One would almost wonder if they were the same person! Jo's Boys was published in 1886, which is about the same year Charlotte Mason was delivering her "Lectures to Ladies" that ended up as her first book.

Children are Born Persons, Revisited

As my kids are getting older, and my friends' kids are getting older, Charlotte Mason's "Children are born persons" is meaning something more to me. Or maybe it's just hitting home more.

For years, I've heard that if you "train up your child in the way he should go, when he's old he will not depart from it," and various interpretations of that -- if you train them to be good, they'll always be good, if you teach them right, they might stray, but they'll always come back.

At a recent gathering of moms, one of the moms said that "raise up your children in the way they should go" means that we guide them in the unique direction/career God has planned for them -- as if we could be presumptuous enough to know what God has planned for them. I'm not sure I'd even want to arrange a marriage for my child, much less their entire life.

I think of all the things I've attempted to do with/for my kids, like instilling values, presenting opinions, and nurturing tastes for reading and music -- when they grow up, they choose for themselves, and it might be very different than what I wanted, or even from what I thought from observation was "the way they should go." One of my little boys used to build things. Friends would even comment that he was very good at building things and would someday be an engineer. But, nope, as he's gotten older, I see his interests going somewhere else, and his brother being the one to show an interest in building things as a possible career, and I'm glad I didn't lock the wrong child into that path.

The first time "Children are born persons" really hit home for me was when my oldest son was in maybe fifth grade and showing some talent in his school lessons. I remembered reading about a child back in history who was extremely gifted, and spoke multiple languages. No doubt his parents threw everything they had into his gift and harbored hopes of what was in store for this child. And then he died at age nine of some childhood disease. I don't know what kind of childhood he had -- whether he had been allowed to play, daydream, enjoy nature, and seek out his own interests, or whether he had been pressured to make the most of his time by studying for hours on end because of what he would be someday. But his "someday" never came. In the end, what mattered for him wasn't the hopes for his future, but his childhood. It was all he had. It occurred to me at the time that each child is a born person and may only have a few years to live their life, and withholding any life from them in the hopes of their useful, prosperous future may rob them of what life they have. That was the first time I thought I understood what CM meant.

Now, watching the kids around me -- my own as well as my friends' children -- becoming adults, it's hitting me again. These children we thought we were raising are complete people, very different from us, very much their own people, and they always were. I look around at my adult friends and their opinions and ways of life, and wonder if they're even an inkling like what their parents thought they were raising them to be. The children we've collectively raised represent our contribution of a few full-grown adults thrown into the general population with their own opinions and ways of life, and, in many cases, they are very different as adults than what we saw in them as children. They have gifts we totally missed, or interests it never occurred to us to introduce them to in their childhood, or information gleaned from sources we never heard of.

Sometimes I think that the best we can do as parents is to watch them grow up into adult people, and hope we don't do anything to damage them along the way. I don't say that to sound helpless or despairing, but raising a child is more awe-inspiring and bigger than I thought, and I as a parent have less influence and control than I imagined. We attempt to set their feet in a large, broad room, without really considering the large, broad room we're in ourselves as their parents.

Another take on public school

According to this article, Finnish students have the highest test scores in the world while spending fewer hours in school than the students of any other nation. Children learn by playing until age 7; their parents read to them at home; education does not center on competition, either between students or between schools; and primary and secondary schools are combined, so one teacher stays with her students all the way through. Sounds like some Charlotte Mason principles in action, to me...

BBC News - Why do Finland's schools get the best results?

Maybe there are some good ideas buried in those textbooks, after all.

I was doing homework for my (summer school) speech class today, reading from a textbook about how to improve one's listening skills. The writing for the most part is efficient, scientific, and dry as dust. As I read, however, I realized that some of the ideas sounded familiar:

There are four major techniques [for remembering information]. The first is organization. Find a pattern, structure, order, plan, format, or framework.

Of course, I said to myself, because the mind feeds upon ideas. If you understand the overall structure of a thing, every detail of it will make more sense and you will be able to remember the whole more easily, because you will know how each piece fits within the whole. CM knew that: she didn't hold with the classical method, which taught facts first and ideas later; she started with ideas, and let the facts follow them. I thought to myself, "Ha! A CM reference!" and kept reading. The next sentence:

The second is association. Make the things you want to remember relate to each other or to categories you already understand. Group them, if possible.

Well, certainly, I said. Education is the science of relations, after all.

The third technique is vizualization. Picturing what you want to remember creates a strong, vivid memory of it.

This sounded quite prosaic and scientific until I got about halfway through and realized that all it means is use your imagination. I began to get curious. Were there any more good ideas beneath all that scientific language? I read on:

The fourth is repetition. When you repeat ideas, you burn them into your memory.

At this point I threw up my hands and laughed--or at least, I would have if I had been the sort of chap who does such things. An old truism, and one that sounds suspiciously like habit formation, to boot. I suppose I must reassess my position on textbooks a little. I still hold that they are mostly dead and require Miracle Max or a reader trained in CPR to breathe any life into them. After today, however, I must admit that they at least know where to go to find good ideas. Even if they do it unintentionally.

A Job Well Done . . .

I'm sometimes struck with how much great minds think alike. Often I find parallels between C.S. Lewis and Charlotte Mason. And today I heard Mister Rogers say something that I've read before in Charlotte Mason's writings.

Before I share the quote, let me set the scene. Cornflake S. Pecially in the Land of Make-Believe is over-worked and is starting to make errors in his production. After getting back to Mister Roger's Place, Mister Rogers talked a little about that. Here's the quote:

"No matter what you do, you can feel so much better about it if you do it well.
~ Mister Rogers

And this is from pg 168 of Ourselves:

"We're all paid workers in some sense, and none of us are excused from the obligation of integrity in the work we do. School children and young college students are paid in two ways: the cost of their schooling, and the trust of their parents and teachers. There's another 'employer' they're working for, too. This employer might seem lenient at the time, but he'll harass the poor worker with a heavy penalty of guilt later. That employer is--yourself. Every person owes integrity to himself as much as to others. When we don't produce thorough, timely work done well, it's we ourselves who suffer the most in the end."
~ Charlotte Mason (modern paraphrase version)

Etext Online: In Memoriam

I'm excited about this! This is a book written to give tribute to the memory of Charlotte Mason just after she died in 1923. It only took a week to get online, thanks to all the typing volunteers!

This calls for a party!!



Read In Memoriam here.

(Smilies from here and here)

CM on the Brain?

This week I was making a green smoothie in the blender - I wanted it to be blended really well, so I let it run for a couple of minutes. And as I was letting it run, I was watching the mixture going around and around through the side of the container . . . I could see little dark specks kind of collecting together on the side in a few places, it must have been apple peel, and I started thinking of like attracting like, coagulating together like . . . apperception masses?

I think maybe I've been reading too much of Charlotte Mason's criticism of Herbart and his "apperception mass" theory.

I Went To a Conference

I've been trying to catch up on stuff this week that got a little backed up because I was at the CM Childlight conference this past weekend in Boiling Springs, NC. That's why my blog has been so neglected.

I hadn't originally planned on going because I'm not ready to leave Miss Moana yet - not only is she still nursing, but I just can't bear the thought of being away from her. And a spirited toddler at a conference that isn't set up to accomodate children doesn't sound very appealing. Besides, our van transmission is skittish. We really need a new van, but we can't afford one yet and this one will get us around town; it just gives us trouble when we try to take it up long hills, and we live in a hilly area where every way out of town means going uphill. So we do okay near home, but we don't take it out of town anymore.

But I was persuaded to go when a ride was found for me with Camille B., who was driving and lives only a few miles away from me. I hadn't met her before, but we had emailed when she moved to the area a few months ago.

The drive there wasn't too bad - Miss Moana did tolerably well and only cried a little bit. Camille was dropping her children off at their grandparent's an hour from the conference. Miss Moana sat beside Camille's 3 year old, which provided her with some entertainment. (The drive home wasn't so great, she screamed for a solid hour!)

I was in an apartment with Jeannette T. and MamaLion, who I've known for years from different CM lists, and Joanna P., who talked about the current situation in Zimbabwe, where she plans to go as a missionary with her family.

I planned to stick to my raw food diet, which I've been faithful about for 3 weeks, so instead of paying for a meal ticket, I brought a blender and some apples, bananas, lettuce and celery to make green smoothies, and avocados, grapes, sunflower seeds, raisoins and Lara bars. For Miss Moana, I also had Luna bars, healthy cookies and fig bars, raisins and pineapple juice. At one point, I showed her all her options and asked her, "What would you like to eat?" and she said, "Chik'n nuggets." LOL! But, besides that, the food situation went well. I had grapes for breakfast, made two huge smoothies for the day, and snacked in the evenings. I felt great during the whole weekend, no blood sugar fluctuations or weakness - and no tiredness, even though I had just gotten off caffeine that week. So I was pleased with that.

The conference itself went exactly as I expected: I didn't get to hear a thing! LOL! I sat down in the back to hear Ranald Macauley the first night, but Miss Moana started getting restless 15 minutes into it, so I had to take her outside, where she had a great time climbing up and down the stairs in front of the building and playing with another toddler she met there named Kieren. And the rest of the weekend went pretty much like that. I was either walking/carrying her to and from the duck pond and the apartments, or letting her run in the empty clubhouse hangout room downstairs, or chasing her around sidewalks, or trying to keep her reasonably subdued in the lobby area during the lectures. The facility is a college, not a church, so there were no cry rooms or speakers set up in the hall for parents who have to remove loud children. If you have a child and need to leave, you're just out of luck. Miss Moana's favorite thing to do was go up and down stairs. She actually mastered that skill while I was there - the first evening, I was holding her hand and staying right with her, but by Saturday, she was handling them on her own.

I met lots of nice AO moms, some who I'd met at last year's conference or at the AO conference in Dallas, and some were new. It's always nice to see some of the people who are enjoying the curriculum. I was given a gift certificate to the bookstore vendor by some anonymous kind person, and I had no trouble finding things to use it on! My boys loved the books I brought home. I answered a few questions during the weekend, but it seemed like the most helpful thing was for people to hear is that I, as a member of the advisory, don't always manage to "do AO" perfectly. So, for the record: with a toddler and children in three different Years, I do the best I can. Miss Moana tends to be disruptive during read-alouds, so often I'm trying to read louder than she's playing. Narrations are hit or miss - I don't remember to chase each of the boys after every reading every day, but I try to catch them when I can. We haven't done more than a couple nature notebook entries all year, art study has been nothing more than using the term's art as my computer wallpaper and mentioning the name of the artist when I remember to, and composer study has been even less organized. I'm really good at focusing on the areas where we're having success and hoping for the best where we're less regular. If I have a key for success. maybe that's it - focus on the things you're doing well at and let that confidence help you make progress in the other areas.

I was asked to introduce Bobby Scott, the headmaster of the Perimeter Schools based in Atlanta before his plenary lecture. I was very worried about how I was going to manage that with Miss Moana, I explained to her beforehand that I was going to go up on the stage and talk for a few minutes, and that I'd take her with me, but she wasn't allowed to say ANYTHING! And she did fine. I didn't do so well. I'm in awe of all the people there who got got up and talked and seemed perfectly natural and capable up there. My lungs froze, and although I got out all the words I had written down, I couldn't breathe! I don't think I want to do that again.

I don't have much to say about the plenary lectures or breakout sessions because I didn't get to hear them, but I plan to get the tapes and I know they'll be good. Last year's were great, and many of the speakers were there last year.

I'm already thinking about next year, when the focus of the conference will be "assessment," which means EXAMS! If I go, I won't be bringing Miss Moana.

Mystery Solved

Charlotte Mason wasn't able to pinpoint an exact definition of an idea:

"The nature, functions, and behaviour of ideas, and how ideas have power in their impact upon the cerebral hemisphere to make some sort of sensible impression––all this is matter as to which we are able only to make 'guesses at truth.' But this need not dismay us, for such other ultimate facts as sleep and life and death are equally unexplained." (Vol 3 pg 69)

But Miss M knows exactly what an idea is. When she asked for one this afternoon, she was pointing very emphatically at her brother's burrito. So there you have it. Charlotte Mason didn't know, but Miss M does: an idea is a bean and soy cheese burrito.

* * * *

[I think I actually figured out where that connection came from. Yesterday, after showing off her knowledge of the word idea, one of her brothers made a quesadilla. If you say them both together, quesadilla and idea, they do sound the same. And a burrito looks very much like a quesadilla.]

The Life of the Mind is Sustained Upon Ideas

"I'd like some ideas, Mommy."

"Mommy, I want some ideas."

Miss M has been saying this all day. I have no idea where she got it from. I wonder what she has in mind when she thinks of 'ideas'? Does she think they're cookies??


Or maybe she's truly a child after Charlotte Mason's own heart, earnestly yearning for that true, pure food that's as important for the nourishment of young souls and minds as food is for the physical body. (Or maybe she's heard me quote CM too many times? LOL!)

~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ .

"The life of the mind is sustained upon ideas; there is no intellectual vitality in the mind to which ideas are not presented several times, say, every day.... Every child gets many of these ideas by word of mouth, by way of family traditions, proverbial philosophy,––in fact, by what we might call a kind of oral literature. But, when we compare the mind with the body, we perceive that three 'square' meals a day are generally necessary to health, and that a casual diet of ideas is poor and meagre.... I should like to emphasize quantity, which is as important for the mind as the body; both require their square meals." [Charlotte Mason, Towards a Philosophy of Education, Vol 6 of her Home Education series, pg 25]

CM Sights (Sites?)

Thanks to The Common Room for pointing these out. The Bookworm took a field trip to Ambleside and posted these pictures of Scale How (Charlotte Mason's training school for teachers) and CM's grave.

I did a search and found more Scale How pix here.

And pictures of The Lake District (which includes Ambleside, England) here.

Imagine

I'm watching my sons play with their Lego, and it got me thinking. Imagine if Charlotte Mason were here today and could see the toys available today. Plastic, lots of colors, such variety! In her day, children had fewer toys and mostly wood, I think. I wonder if she'd be distressed at the number of toys my children have? Which toys would she recommend for children?

Imagine if she could see the kinds of things children are into today - the twaddly books, Disney movies, video games, Saturday morning cartoons, educational software. I imagine she'd be horrified.

Imagine Charlotte Mason alive today, seeing the state education has come to, and the re-discovery of her methods.

Imagine Charlotte Mason alive today - and blogging! LOL!

Montessori and Charlotte Mason

This came up on another message board, so I read a couple of articles about the Montessori method and tried my hand at comparing MM and CM.

I've taken quotes from two Montessori articles (the quotes are highlighted in green) and commented on them. I hope those who have a firmer grasp of Montessori will correct me.
http://www.eaglespeak.org/curric/approach/mont
http://www.jmjpublishing.com/montessori_basics.htm

First of all, it looks like the goals of both MM and CM are the same:

"education, rather than being the rote transfer information, must seek to serve the whole child, and to nurture the human potential of each individual."

"The long-term aim of a Montessori education is to develop productive, culturally literate, life long learners who display a sense of responsibility for self and the global community. Through working in cooperation with the child's nature, it is believed that a sense of wonder and desire to learn can be maintained throughout an individual's lifetime."

CM agreed that the whole child - body, mind and spirit - needed to be included in his education. If education was handled correctly, a child should grow and develop to his full potential and enjoy continuing his education for his entire life.

"Her educational foundations have been tested and have survived because her ultimate goal was to preserve the dignity of the child. How can a child not thrive and learn in a prepared environment that emphasizes respect and integrity? A respect and integrity not only of the materials, but more importantly of the child, and of those with whom he interacts."

CM also placed respect for the child very high. She felt that education, twaddly books and insipid lectures, under-estimated the ability of children.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

"The basic philosophy of Montessori is to 'follow the child.' "

This is similar, yet very, very different. Both present learning opportunities and allow the child to take from it what appeals at the time. But my impression is that MM leans a little towards unschooling, or at least towards child-led schooling - you lay out the materials and the child chooses which of the materials he feels like learning from that day. You provide the opportunity, but the child doesn't have to take it unless he wants to. Or the child may take some and leave the rest. CM is similar, you provide lots of material (in books) and the child assimilates what he needs and discards the rest, he won't latch on to it in his mind, so it won't be in his narrations. The difference is, with CM, each child will be learning from the same materials, they won't be by-passing some books altogether in favor of another book. But each will get something different, a different twist, on the book, his own individual slant. I'm seeing some similarity to unschooling in MM, but I don't know if I'm getting that correct or not.

"In the Montessori environment the materials are designed to be self-correcting. ... it allows the child to learn in an atmosphere of success and positive reinforcement. The child corrects his own errors and works towards the mastery of concepts through repeated manipulations of the materials. His motivation is not for external reward, but for internal fulfillment."

CM also wanted learning to be its own reward. But the self-correcting aspect doesn't sound like anything CM mentioned. Her goal was for children to to educate themselves by learning to extract information from books themselves. So there's an element of independence in both MM and CM. But there, the similarity ends.

MM seems to rely heavily on environment:

"The basics of the Montessori principles can be illustrated with a triangle, where you have the child; you have the directress, or the teacher; and you have the environment which includes the materials. The teacher takes the role of directress, it's one who directs the child to learning. She is responsible for the preparation of the environment. The prepared environment is one that invites the child to grow. It's an attractive environment that will lead the child to a spontaneous exploration and discovery, or self-learning."

It seems like Montessori creates an artificial environment, even to using child-sized props, and Charlotte Mason thought it was better for the child to learn things in his own real environment with real things in the real world. Charlotte Mason didn't go out of her way to specially prepare an optimum environment for children to learn.

"The interrelated, hands-on, sequential Montessori materials provide concrete learning on which the child can build abstract understanding. They are designed to be self-correcting and teach one skill/concept at a time which encourages development of the individual's self-confidence and problem-solving abilities."

CM differs in that it doesn't really set apart specific skills for special focus so the child can develop mastery. CM is more of an all-over-at-the-same-time experience, the child would master skills as they came up in his daily routine - he'd learn to tie shoes because his shoes need to get tied every morning, but there's no special time or anything set aside during school to specifically encourage that. With MM, I get the sense that the child is encouraged to focus on a task to master it. CM also relies heavily on focusing attention, but the focus is more in the mind, attending to assimilation of information, especially from words. MM sounds much more hands-on. The articles talk about color-coding with phonics cards and household tasks, and, in geography, putting together map cut-outs. CM is more about reading about different places and getting a sense of what the people are like in that country, and then the child would be interested enough to go find the country on a map in a book.

What I'm seeing is that MM is more sensory, learning by doing. CM has that element, especially in handicrafts, but learning is primarily the assimilation of ideas (thoughts and concepts), which are processed in the child's mind from books, art, music and his natural environment. The senses seem to have a larger role in a Montessori education than in a CM education.