Anne E. White > Quotes

“So we read books just because they make us happy or because they’re fun, because they will make us sound smart, because they’ll get us into college or a good job ahead of the others? Or should we use them as a practical guide to recognizing dragons? No, they show us that we have a purpose; that we can be useful in the world, and that is our pleasure. Education gives us minds more awake, and a life that is more than just passing time.”
― Anne E. White, Minds More Awake: The Vision of Charlotte Mason

“I don’t say that it is true: but only that it is likely to be true. In science we must be cautious and modest, and ready to alter our minds whenever we learn fresh facts; only keeping sure of one thing, that the truth, when we find it out, will be far more wonderful than any notions of ours.”
― Anne E. White, Further Afield: Kingsley's Lessons in Earth Lore, Volume 2

“We see this as a danger in the Kindergarten classes as well. Kindergarten teachers are doing beautiful work; but many of them are hampered by that metaphor of the plant, which is exactly lacking in that element of personality, the cherishing and developing of which is a sacred and important part of education.”
― Anne E. White, Revitalized: A new rendering of Charlotte Mason's School Education

“What we must guard against in the training of children is the danger of their getting into the habit of being prodded to every duty and every effort. School marks, prizes, and exhibitions, are all prods; and a system of prodding is apt to obscure the meaning of must and ought for the boy or girl who gets into the habit of mental and moral slouching against his prods. It would be better for boys and girls to suffer the consequences of not doing their work, now and then, than to do it because they are so urged and prodded on all hands they have no volition in the matter. The more we are prodded the lazier we get, and the less capable of the effort of will which should carry us to, and nearly carry us through, our tasks.”
― Anne E. White, Revitalized: A new rendering of Charlotte Mason's School Education

“I’ve become convinced that the Way of the Will is, in fact, the Start Here point on Charlotte Mason’s map.”
― Anne E. White, Minds More Awake: The Vision of Charlotte Mason

“But there is, from our point of view at any rate, a further idea conveyed in masterly inactivity. The mastery is not over ourselves only; there is also a sense of authority, which our children should be as much aware of when it is inactive as when they are doing our bidding. I am not sure that without that our activities, or our inactivity, will produce any great results. This element of strength is the backbone of our position. The children understand that they are free under authority, which is liberty; but to be free without authority is license.”
― Anne E. White, Revitalized: A new rendering of Charlotte Mason's School Education

“Miss Mason: The value of self-managed clubs and committees, debating societies, etc., is becoming more and more fully recognized. Organizing capacity, business habits, and some power of public speaking, should be a part of our fitness as citizens. But to secure the power of speaking, I think it would be well if the habit of oral narration were more encouraged in schools, in place of written composition. On the whole, it is more useful to be able to speak than to write, and the man or woman who is able to do the former can generally do the latter.”
― Anne E. White, Revitalized: A new rendering of Charlotte Mason's School Education

“Charlotte Mason was a teacher of teachers, a writer, and a generous inspirer. She taught by principles, method, and natural laws, and hesitated to give too many specific directions in case her work turned into a “big fat cookbook.”3 She knew that people hoped for the promise of the latest foolproof parenting and teaching system, no matter what the cost; but she had no interest in marketing the educational equivalent of an overloaded sport vehicle. Nonetheless, she did produce six volumes on education—her links in the chain of the classical tradition.”
― Anne E. White, Minds More Awake: The Vision of Charlotte Mason

“Our business as teachers is to make full use of what is in that treasure cave, rather than ignoring it, or pretending it doesn’t matter, or thinking that the children won’t appreciate it enough to make the effort worthwhile. The real danger is that a generation raised on grey crayons may forget that other colours even exist.”
― Anne E. White, Minds More Awake (Revised Edition): The Vision of Charlotte Mason

“We can’t learn for a child. We are not to think for him. And we are not to rob him of any opportunity that he has to put his own real effort, personal power, into moral action,”
― Anne E. White, Minds More Awake: The Vision of Charlotte Mason

“We want to educate the soul; and we have found a path to doing so, through the physical nature, because there is unity between them.”
― Anne E. White, Revitalized: A new rendering of Charlotte Mason's School Education

“The failures in life are not the people who lack good intentions; they are those whose physical nature has not acquired the habit of prompt and involuntary obedience. The person who can make him/herself do what he wills has the world before him/her, and it rests with parents to give their children this self-compelling power as a mere matter of habit.”
― Anne E. White, Revitalized: A new rendering of Charlotte Mason's School Education

“In other words, education is for us. For our own selves, for the children, and any interested others. It is, in a way, citizenship. It shows us what it means to be people, and it teaches us how to live in the world. Charlotte listed virtues that could be mined in her Aladdin’s Cave: candour, fortitude, temperance, patience, meekness, courage, generosity. But we don’t stand in the doorway of the cave, handing those things out one moral at a time. The feast is inside: many living books. Many ideas. Many glimpses of the divine, of Eternity, of something beyond ourselves.”
― Anne E. White, Minds More Awake (Revised Edition): The Vision of Charlotte Mason

“Miss Breckenridge: We want the child to build relationships with the things in nature, which would include the earth itself, plant and animal life, oceanography, and astronomy. So, all things that eventually fall under science, and the more physical parts of geography. Miss Mason: And, as educators, what do we generally do with that? We consider the matter carefully; we say the boy will make a jumble of it if he is taught more than one or two sciences. We ask our friends “what sciences will tell best in examinations?” and “which are most easily learned?” We discover which are the best text-books in the smallest compass. The most economical, so to speak. The student learns up the text, listens to lectures, makes diagrams, watches demonstrations. Behold! he has “learned a science,” and is able to produce facts and figures, for a time anyway, in connection with some one class of natural phenomena; but of tender intimacy with Nature herself he has acquired none. I will now sketch what seems to me a better way.”
― Anne E. White, Revitalized: A new rendering of Charlotte Mason's School Education

“we can begin to build up noble principles and teach the importance of choosing, long before children are required to deal with serious decisions themselves.”
― Anne E. White, Minds More Awake: The Vision of Charlotte Mason

“Miss Mason: There are a thousand supplementary ways of giving such teaching; but these are apt to be casual and little binding if they do not rest upon the solid foundation of duty imposed upon us by God (so recognizing His authority), and due to each other, whether we will or no. This moral relation of person to person underlies all other relations. We owe it to the past to use its gains worthily and to advance from the point at which it left off. We owe it to the future to prepare a generation better than ourselves. We owe it to the present to live, to live with all expansion of heart and soul, all reaching out of our personality towards those relations appointed for us. We owe knowledge to the ignorant, comfort to the distressed, healing to the sick, reverence, courtesy and kindness to all men, especially to those with whom we are connected by ties of family or neighbourhood; and the sense of these dues does not come by nature.”
― Anne E. White, Revitalized: A new rendering of Charlotte Mason's School Education

“Authority is neither harsh nor indulgent. She is gentle and easy to be entreated in all matters immaterial, just because she is immovable in matters of real importance; for these, there is always a fixed principle. It does not, for example, rest with parents and teachers to dally with questions affecting either the health or the duty of their children. They have no authority to allow to children in indulgences––in too many sweets, for example––or in habits which are prejudicial to health; nor to let them off from any plain duty of obedience, courtesy, reverence, or work. Authority is alert; she knows all that is going on and is aware of tendencies. She fulfils the apostolic precept in Romans 12:8–– “He that ruleth, [let him do it] with diligence.”  But she is strong enough to fulfil that other precept from the same verse: “He that sheweth mercy, (let him do it) with cheerfulness.” Timely clemency, timely yielding, is a great secret of strong government.”
― Anne E. White, Revitalized: A new rendering of Charlotte Mason's School Education

“Miss Mason: We cannot, of course, overtake such a programme of work, but we can keep it in view; and, I suppose, every life is moulded upon its ideal. We talk of lost ideals, but perhaps they are not lost, only changed; when our ideal for ourselves and for our children becomes limited to prosperity and comfort, we get these, very likely, for ourselves and for them; but we get no more.”
― Anne E. White, Revitalized: A new rendering of Charlotte Mason's School Education

“If the ideas are there, the facts come along naturally; but denuded facts just curl up and die. We have a hard time learning them without context, or at least remembering them for longer than the term test.”
― Anne E. White, Minds More Awake (Revised Edition): The Vision of Charlotte Mason

“Charlotte had her own Gifted and Talented program: Exercise, Nourishment, Change, and Rest. She said not to discourage a gifted child from doing what comes naturally; if he wants to play the violin or learn Latin at three, he’ll let you know. Let him do just so much as he takes to of his own accord; but never urge, never applaud, never show him off. (p. 77)”
― Anne E. White, Minds More Awake (Revised Edition): The Vision of Charlotte Mason