She says:

"The idea that vivifies teaching. . . is that 'Education is a Science of Relations;' by which phrase we mean that children come into the world with a natural [appetite] for, and affinity with, all the material of knowledge; for interest in the heroic past and in the age of myths; for a desire to know about everything that moves and lives; about strange places and strange peoples; for a wish to handle material and to make; a desire to run and ride and row and do whatever the law of gravitation permits.

Therefore. . . we endeavor that he shall have relations of pleasure and intimacy established with as many possible of the interests proper to him; not learning a slight or incomplete smattering about this or that subject, but plunging into vital knowledge, with a great field before him which in all his life he will not be able to explore.

In this conception we get that 'touch of emotion' which vivifies knowledge, for it is probably that we feel only as we are brought into our proper vital relations." Charlotte Mason

This is the principle of saturation in a topic. She talks about being educated by our intimacies. When our oldest daughter was two years old, I put her on the back of a pony at a farm yard. I never knew then what God would do in her heart. Today almost 10 years later she is a self educated young girl on horses.

She believes her calling in life will be with horses. Her relationship with her love for horses grows and expands all the time. It now brings her an income from this website too – take a look at her horse story book reviews

My son at the age of 4 went to an air show with his dad. Today (8 years later) he spends hours paging through plane books, researching about planes and loves the Wright Brothers and Louis Bleroit. He is a sponge when with my cousins who are pilots as he soaks up knowledge and becomes intimate with his interests.

Most schooling programs are based on a spiral method of acquiring facts. This means each year the student gets a little more information on a topic. Charlotte Mason believed in a deep flood of information limiting the children to a few good books a year but in a variety of topics. We know this as a liberal curriculum.

What we need to do is find opportunities to introduce new ideas and thoughts and subject matter to our children and then give them the space to discover and research – grow in intimacy with their subject.

A little Shakespeare...?

In February 2006 I took my older daughter to watch Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” at a local outdoor theatre. She had a good time and laughed a bit, but I did not think much was planted in her. Shakespeare is one of my passions and I wanted to share it with her. This week when she was ill she asked if I had any story tapes for her to listen too. I had a new one called Shakespeare For Children by Jim Weiss narrating “Midsummer Nights Dream” and “The Taming of the Shrew”.

Subsequently she has read through all the Shakespeare stories for Children by Leon Garfield This is the beginning of a growing relationship with a topic and lifelong knowledge.

Plant the seeds for relationship with knowledge, do not settle for a counterfeit education for your children. Help them to make as many relations with ideas as possible.

Another way to look at these relations which are formed in our children and in a rich liberal Charlotte Mason type curriculum, is the ability that we have to expose our children to so much knowledge but we need to step back and allow their heart motivations shine through. A friend of mine explains this so beautifully on her website where she discusses emerging heart motivations in her children.

“Education is the science of relations" means that children have minds capable of making their own connections with knowledge and experiences, so we make sure the child learns about nature, science and art, knows how to make things, reads many living books and that they are physically fit.” Charlotte Mason

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