Parents and Children by Charlotte M. Mason
A number of times when I've stumbled across a neat homeschooling activity (like nature journals or a living books list) it turns out to be posted by someone who is a "Charlotte Mason homeschooler." I decided I ought to find out something about her, and I ran across several volumes from her Home Education Series in a used bookstore. They didn't have the first volume that's actually specifically about homeschooling, so I bought Parents and Children. I still don't know her practical method for home education, but the things she talks about in this book have really resonated with me (Interesting, a number of the things she says align exactly with the Growing Kids God's Way study I'm in at church. More about that in a different post.) Only 45 pages in and I've already underlined a number of things, which I'll quote here. More will come as I continue reading I'm sure.

[One] must regard education not as a shut-off compartment, but being as much a part of life as birth or growth, marriage or work; and it must leave the pupil attached to the world at many points of contact. (Preface)

By the saying, EDUCATION IS AN ATMOSPHERE, it is not meant that a child should be isolated in what may be called a 'child environment,' especially adapted and prepared; but that we should take into account the educational value of his natural home atmosphere, both as regards persons and things, and should let him live freely among his proper conditions. It stultifies a child to bring down his world to the 'child's' level. (Preface)

We should allow no separation to grow up between the intellectual and 'spiritual' life of children; but should teach them that the divine Spirit has constant access to their spirits, and is their continual helper in all the interests, duties and joys of life. (Preface)

The love of ease, the love of favor, the claims of other work, are only some of the causes which lead to a result disastrous to society--the abdication of parents. (13) 

Mason did not mean abdication of parents in the sense that she thought everyone should home school. On the contrary, taught for years and even opened her own school. However, she felt that parents were still the greatest influence on children and that they have the ultimate responsibility for their child's education. She saw parents sending their children to school as acting as if their work was done--that the child's upbringing and education from that point on was the teacher's responsibility. Can't help seeing that phenomenon in society today as well (Mason was writing in the late 1800 or early 1900s).

The authority of parents . . . is itself a provisional function, and is only successful as it encourages the autonomy, if we may call it so, of the child. (17)

As for the employment of authority, the highest art lies in ruling without seeming to do so. . . . Happy is the household that has few rules. (17-18)

Parents are very jealous over the individuality of their children; they mistrust the tendency to develop all on the same plan; and this instinctive jealousy is right; for, supposing that education really did consist in systematised efforts to draw out every power that is in us, why, we should all develop on the same lines, be as like as 'two peas,' and (should we not?) die of weariness of one another! (31) 

No Child Left Behind, anyone?

'Bringing-up'?--Our homely Saxon 'bringing-up' is nearer the truth, perhaps because of its very vagueness; any way 'up' implies an aim, and 'bringing' and effort. (32)

The happy phrase of Mr Matthew Arnold--'Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life'--is perhaps the most complete and adequate definition of education we possess. (32)

Now that life, which we call education, receives only one kind of sustenance; it grows upon ideas. You may go through years of so-called 'education' without getting a single vital idea; and that is why many a well-fed body carries about a feeble, starved intelligence. . . . It is possible to pass even the Universities Local Examinations with credit, without ever having experienced that vital stir which marks the inception of an idea; and, if we have succeeded in escaping this disturbing influence, why, we have 'finished our education' when we leave school; we shut up our books and our minds, and remain pigmies in the dark forest of our own dim world of thought and feeling. (33, 34) 

I'm struck by just how much she could be talking about our own public school systems. It seems our culture hasn't solved any real problems in education in a hundred years.

The duty of parents is to sustain a child's inner life with ideas as they sustain his body with food. (39) 

'I don't know' must take the place of the vague wise-sounding answer, the random shot which children's pertinacious questionings too often provoke. And 'I don't know' should be followed by the effort to know, the research necessary to find out. Even then, the possibility of error in a 'printed book' must occasionally be faced. The results of this kind of training in the way of mental balance and repose are invaluable. (43-44) 

She actually wrote this in reference to, not just academic education, but as a way to show your children that authorities are not infallible and that it is perfectly healthy to question them. I think the comment about errors in the "printed book" is even more apt today in that the "printed book" would now also include dubious postings on the Internet. I think teaching kids how to verify information is one of the most helpful skills today.