If I can give you a captain idea for this season, for all that’s to come, it would come from my dear St. Jack, or, as you might know him, C.S. Lewis. He once wrote, “For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality.”

This is classical education.

And it’s on the other side of the wardrobe. Let’s go.

You didn’t think I’d end the season without saying goodbye, did you?

From January to December, we’ve spent the entire year getting our pedagogy in place, learning our educational philosophy, and preparing to be mother-teachers. It’s been a joy to do this and I hope you feel yourself getting your bearings in the classical Mason world as we learn together.

Before I close us out this season, I have one more surprise. Today, the excellent Karen Glass joins me on the podcast to bring it all together: motherhood, philosophy, and education as one harmonizing whole. It was a dream to talk with her and I hope you enjoy our conversation!

For many of us, education is a thing outside of the sacred. We certainly know God made the world and the things in it, but school is something that’s done…over there. It’s just reading, writing, and arithmetic. If we want a Christian education, we need to add a Bible class and maybe a catechism. But what if I told you education is Christian if it’s true, harmonious, and whole? It’s time for Mason’s twentieth principle and for me to tell you why I’m always talking about truth, goodness, and beauty.

Did you think we were finally finishing Mason’s twenty principles?

Not. Just. Yet. My. Friend.

While thinking through some angles on educational philosophy and pedagogy I can’t speak to, I knew there was another important one besides the older, wiser mom (Catch Bethany in last week’s interview!): the dad.

The good news is that I do know a classical Charlotte Mason homeschooling dad. Today’s guest is Trae Bailey, a classical educator married to his high-school sweetheart and father to four young children. He kindly joined me to talk about how dads can support the homeschool and the home at-large since every home is one of education.

We've spent the whole year getting our pedagogy in place by studying Mason's 20 principles. But sometimes, we need some help bringing all that philosophy down to the practical level, down to our commonplace homes.

Thankfully, today's guest is here to help. Bethany Douglass, a wife, mother of four, and writer at Cloistered Away, joins me to offer practical homeschooling encouragement on setting rhythms, cultivating atmosphere, important practices for moms, and how to pursue truth, goodness, and beauty through it all!

Never in my reading life have I found a chapter in a book that mentions such a range of characters. In Chapter IX of Volume Six, Mason manages to pull Florence Nightingale, Euclid, Pythagoras, Satan, William Shakespeare and Karl Marx together in her exploration of the Way of Reason.

What point does she make? Reason is a yes man who will try to confirm any idea accepted by the Will.

Which is how we get Florence, Shakespeare, Marx, and your children all thinking their own thoughts right.

The world may call a defiant, difficult, and disobedient child “strong-willed”, but we know that’s not so.

A strong-willed child can command themselves to choose what’s right even if it’s not what they want. Sounds pretty magical, right? But also, maybe a little difficult.

How does a mother-teacher help a child train their will? Let’s talk about it.

It’s classic Mason to give such a tidy explanation for such a huge idea. What are the two guides in the moral and intellectual self-management of a child? Oh, just little things called ‘the way of the will’ and ‘the way of the reason’.

Those of us formally schooling are kicking off the new year right around now, so I thought it was the perfect time to share a BONUS episode as a bit of beginning of the year fun.

I’m joined today by two dear friends, Amanda Faus and Brooke Johnson, to discuss how to form a classical Charlotte Mason co-op. I asked them all of my burning questions: how to build a co-op vision, how to share the group’s philosophy with enquiring moms, what to do for mother’s education, and more!

It’s narration week! I mean, really, what’s more Mason than talking about narration?

(Actually, a lot of things. You have to talk about all the things.)

But let’s get to it! What is narration? Why does it happen after a single reading? What if you have a lot of students narrating at once? How do you narrate a piece of music? Is it the same thing as a discussion?

…what if the kid’s narration was…subpar?

We’re going to talk about all of it and more! Let’s go!

You’d think with all our knowledge about Mason’s principles it’d be easy to pick a curriculum. But the options seem endless and while they all claim to be some type of classical Mason curriculum, they’re all doing it a little bit differently.

What’s a mom to do?

At first take, Mason’s eleventh and twelfth principles seem a little obvious. We’ve been studying hard this season and we know some stuff! We know children need living ideas and to be allowed to make connections on their own, that they need natural relationships with a wide array of things.

But today, I want to ask: why. Why does it have to be done this way? Why these living ideas?

We’re not fully aware of how deep the children-have-bucket-minds educational philosophy runs in our world today, but Mason knew of its dangers way back at the turn of the 20th century. It’s an appealing philosophy at first take. Why shouldn’t we treat children’s minds like buckets and just toss in pre-packaged ideas to fill them up? Won’t we guarantee ourselves students who know exactly what we want for them? Does it matter how a child learns if they’re taught a lot?

Mason had much to say about this approach. And it appears I do too.

An education for persons should be life-giving. It should nurture and grow the mind, bringing life to it, but it should also form students wholly, leaving them fit for the flourishing life.

It’s time for our third and final instrument of education. What does Mason mean when she says, “Education is a life”?

If we habit train, is it even authentic?

Modern talk tells us authenticity is a great virtue, possibly even the highest virtue. We should only ever do that which feels most satisfying to us at the moment, and only if it comes to us spontaneously and organically!

#liveauthentic #youdoyou #mytruth

If we could only be our truest selves, free from internal and external constraints, we’d be happy. Maybe even have world peace.

This is obviously untrue. But it does lead to a good question: if we habit train our children, is anything they do authentic? Or, to put it another way, does habit training program a machine or form the affections of a person?

When we modern moms think about atmosphere in the homeschool, we usually think about the materials. We have a mental image of what the perfect home or homeschool looks like; what kind of stuff covers the walls, table, and floor. It can really feel like things must look a certain way to be done a certain way.

If you don’t believe me, just take a poll of any mom friends you have by asking: What comes to mind when you think of a Charlotte Mason homeschool?

This bonus minisode is brought to you by the wonderful patrons of The Commonplace. You’ll find more patron-only resources just like this over at patreon.com/thecommonplace. We’d love to have you.

Now, maybe you feel differently, but it can feel like everything you’ve ever known to ‘teach’ in motherhood is off the table after Mason’s fourth principle. It’s a bit jarring to feel stuck in a moment asking yourself, ‘Wait, is that going to manipulate them? Will this? What. Can. I. Do?’ But Mason encourages us to focus on what is possible once we cross the hurdle of the fourth principle. She says: 

‘Having cut out the direct use of fear or love, suggestion or influence, undue play upon any one natural desire, emulation, for example, we are no longer free to use all means in the education of children. There are but three left for our use and to each of these we must give careful study or we shall not realize how great a scope is left to us.’ 

Well, here we go, my friend. We are finally at the threshold of the mother-teacher’s tools. 

Consider today’s episode your very own primer on the atmosphere, discipline, and life of a Charlotte Mason education. We’re going to take a high-level look at all three as interdependent tools, and then in the next three episodes, we’ll focus on each one separately. 

Are you ready?

In the last episode, we learned how authority and docility are natural, necessary, and fundamental for our homes. But in her fourth principle, Mason introduces a limitation to these two things: the respect due to the child’s will.

(Okay, so technically she says ‘personality,’ but I’m here to translate that Victorian English for you, and she’s definitely not talking about your kid’s Enneagram type.)