Welcome to A TRUE GOOD BEAUTIFUL LIFE podcast!
Here we will discuss all things Charlotte Mason in light of the ideas of the TRUE, the GOOD, and the BEAUTIFUL! I am your host, Jennifer Milligan, and throughout this series I will share with you how to find and cultivate various elements of TRUTH, GOODNESS and BEAUTY in our homes and classrooms through conversations with homeschooling parents and classroom teachers; interviews with experts, entrepreneurs, and artists; discussions regarding the great books, great minds, and great resources; fun travel and field trip summaries; and practices and creative experiences that embody the TRUE, the GOOD, and the BEAUTIFUL life. Over 100 years ago, British educator, Charlotte Mason, declared that, "Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life," and so today, I hope you will join me on this adventure in education.
ON THIS EPISODE
Charlotte Mason explains that knowledge can be divided into three main topics: the Knowledge of God, the Knowledge of Man, and the Knowledge of the Universe. This week in our first segment on the TRUE, I share with you some of the elements that make up learning about God (ie. Bible studies, devotionals, prayer, catechisms, songs) as well as some of my favorite resources.
A wonderful way to learn is to be guided by mentors. This episode spotlights Andrew Hageman, Brick Lane Community Church's pastor-in-training and Junior High Youth Group Leader. In our segment on the GOOD, we discuss the joy of teaching young people and how he goes about teaching his High School Bible class at Aleithia Learning Community
In the final segment on the BEAUTIFUL, I share my family's trip to the St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, Louisiana, and how the art and architecture there allowed for wonderful connections with my daughter and her studies as well as simply just being an amazing place to see.
Here are some links to some of my favorite resources:
COMMONPLACE QUOTES
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. - Charlotte Mason, Volume 3: School Education, p. 95 (disclaimer: this is the official quote from CM's book but I cannot recall where I got the one I quoted in the podcast! Sorry about that!)
"Education is the Science of Relations"; that is, that a child has natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts: so we train him upon physical exercises, nature lore, handicrafts, science and art, and upon many living books. . . - Charlotte Mason, Volume 6: A Philosophy of Education, p. xxx
The knowledge of God is the principal knowledge, and no teaching of the Bible which does not further that knowledge is of religious value. Therefore the children read, or if they are too young to read for themselves the teacher reads to them, a passage of varying length covering an incident or some definite teaching. If there are remarks to be made about local geography or local custom, the teacher makes them before the passage has been read, emphasizing briefly but reverently any spiritual or moral truth; the children narrate what has been read after the reading; they do this with curious accuracy and yet with some originality, conveying the spiritual teaching which the teacher has indicated. - Charlotte Mason, Volume 6: A Philosophy of Education, p. 272
the Bible is not a single book, but a classic literature of wonderful beauty and interest; that, apart from its Divine sanctions and religious teaching, from all that we understand by 'Revelation,' the Bible, as a mere instrument of education, is, at the very least, as valuable as the classics of Greece or Rome. Here is poetry, the rhythm of which soothes even the jaded brain past taking pleasure in any other. Here is history, based on such broad, clear lines, such dealing of slow and sure and even-handed justice to the nations, such stories of national sins and national repentences, that the student reali[z]es, as from no other history, the solidarity of the race, the brotherhood, and, if we may call it so, the individuality of the nations. Here is philosophy which of all the philosophies which have been propounded, is alone adequate to the interpretation of human life. We say not a word here of that which is the raison d'être of the Bible, its teaching of religion, its revelation of God to man; but to urge only one point more, all the literatures of the world put together utterly fail to give us a system of ethics, in precept and example, motive and sanction, complete as that to which we have been born as our common inheritance in the Bible. - Charlotte Mason, Volume 2: Parents & Children, p. 104
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. - 2 Timothy 3:16-17 ESV Bible
. . . give a 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, Volume 1: Home Education, p. 174
APPLICATION
