Few aspects of a Charlotte Mason education are more hotly debated or deeply misunderstood than the question of lesson planning. On the one hand, some say that the teacher must provide elaborate “scaffolding,” pre-reading every book, highlighting words and phrases, and evaluating daily progress. On the other hand, Marian Ney in 1981 wrote that Mason …
What is scaffolding? Does it mean one thing in some educational circles and something else in Charlotte Mason educational circles? Is there anything wrong with scaffolding “the Charlotte Mason way”? Does the concept affect how we approach lessons in a living education? Join me as I weigh in on the scaffolding debate in a detailed discussion with Ashley Olander. …
“Teaching is not a technique exercised by the skilled on behalf of the unskilled. It is a sharing of the effort to know, using all that is best in the world of books, of music, of pictures, all that can be observed and cherished out of doors, all that hand and eye can make; all …
Editor’s note: On January 5, 1929, six years after Charlotte Mason’s death, Horace West Household spoke at the The North of England Education Conference in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Household was then the Director of Education for Gloucestershire, and he would later be referred to as Mason’s “ardent disciple.” The topic for his talk was “A Liberal Education in the Rural Elementary School.” …
June was a big month for me: it was my first time teaching a workshop about the Charlotte Mason method. I was the local hostess for the Charlotte Mason Soirée Summer Mountain Mini, and my topic was scaffolding. I worked out a session description with my co-presenter: With such a rich feast it’s easy to …