For the Children's Sake

by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay

Every parent and teacher wants to give their children the best education possible. Everyone would like education to be a joyous adventure and celebration of life, as well as a solid preparation for living. Sadly, most education today falls far short of this goal.

But as Susan Schaeffer Macaulay shows it doesn't have to be this way. Education can be a wonderful, life-enriching, joyous experience.

For the Children's Sake is a book about what education can be--for your child, in your home, and in your school. It is based first on a Christian understanding of what it means to be human--to be a child, a parent, a teacher--and on the Christian meaning of life. At the same time it is deeply practical. Many of the central ideas have been tried and proven true over a century in almost every kind of educational situation. The ideas are in fact so true that they can be applied equally at home, in different schools, in Africa, in the inner city, and in your own community. But they are also ideas which Susan and her husband Ranald Macaulay have tried and proven in their own family and school experience.

For the Children's Sake is a book which can help every parent and teacher awaken the young minds of their children and give them a new richness, stability, and joy for living.

Genres: Education, Parenting, Nonfiction, Christian, Audiobook, Family, Teaching

166 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1984

About the author

Susan Schaeffer Macaulay grew up in Switzerland at L'Abri Fellowship, which was founded by her parents Francis and Edith Schaeffer. She and her husband Ranald Macaulay established and led the L'Abri branch in England for several years. She is also the author of For the Family's Sake and contributed to Books Children Love and When Children Love to Learn.

Reviews

[Cindy Rollins · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my third read of this book and the last time was pre-Goodreads. Interestingly, I did not enjoy this on my second read which is why it has been so long, but on this third read I marveled at Susan’s ability to present Charlotte Mason’s ideas about education concisely and beautifully.

Of course, the first read changed the trajectory of my whole life.

I think this is still well worth reading to hear CM’s principles explained so well.

[Haleigh DeRocher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think every parent should read this book, whether you're choosing homeschool, private school, public school, or another alternative for your children. I loved how the author (Francis Schaeffer's daughter!) brought Christian principles into philosophy on educating your children, not just in terms of their schooling but in their entire lives. Parents should be a part of what and how their children learn! I just loved the practical advice in this book, and can't wait to implement it in our home life. And I look forward to reading more about Charlotte Mason as well 👍🏻

[Leah Beecher · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an unbelievable treasure finding this book was for me. Feeling that the reasons I was going to start homeschooling my two oldest daughters being, I did not like their current public school and we could not afford private education, were both negative reasons, and would make for a negative experience of home education, I agonized over what philosophy of home education I wanted to embrace. It is very important to grab hold of a positive reason to teach at home, for a happy home and happy children. This little book published first in the UK by the daughter of the very scholarly theologian Francis Schaeffer in 1984 is the perfect balanced approach of natural "unschooled" method, and the high literary standards of the classical method. Balanced in that it lets children be individuals without a heavy emphasis on state derived testing and "benchmark" requirements, yet puts an emphasis on the importance of disciple, good habits, and a parent's natural authority. The education philosophy here in this book relies almost exclusively on the education method developed by Charlotte Mason in Britain in the late 19th Century. Talk about obscure! Not so much a book about what to teach and how, but a book about what value and intelligence children already possess and the best, most practical, most gentle, most natural way to bring that out in any child.{For the more nuts and bolts of how to teach "the Charlotte way" I am currently reading The Charlotte Mason Companion and would highly suggest purchasing this book along with For the Children's Sake}. Absorbing and underlining passage after passage in this book changed me from viewing home education as "a last resort alternative to a bad situation" to genuine enthusiasm to get the chance to better my daughters, my home, myself.

[Jamie Cain · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the best books on education I have ever read. WHile I am not a home-schooler (I am headmaster of a classical Christian school), Macaulay's introduction to Charlotte Mason will go on the "reread periodically" pile.

I appreciate Macaulay's style--free, casual, and engaging. Her writing is more than readable; it's a joy to read. I finish reading and feel refreshed. In this, she joins a select group of authors in my experience.

Her content is excellent too. She carefully parses Charlotte Mason's approach and philosophy, giving both theoretical framework and practical application.

In summary, I carefully marked this book, and I was ready to read again when I finished. I plan to have my teachers read the book this summer.

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this when my daughter was little (so probably in the mid- to late-90s) and absolutely loved it.
Reread 2/15/21 * Excellent! Still 5 stars.
*******
Re-read 8/8/2024

[Katie Ziegler (Life Between Words)]

“Come, child.
I respect you, you are a person.
Come with me.
You belong on this planet
You are to inherit,
You are to understand.
Look. Look, and you will see.
Enjoy this day: the sun, the grass, your friends.
Listen—we will read God’s word.
We are His sheep, He is our Shepherd.
Grow! Flourish! Be master!
Let us do what we ought.
Let us choose the right!
Let us be brothers and sisters, together.
The bored wake up,
The failures find a new spring,
The sinful start again.
Come, little child,
I will listen, I will learn, too—
Let us enjoy abundant LIFE!

[Josiah DeGraaf · Rating 3 out of 5]

In many ways, Macauley builds a powerful case for why, especially in education, but also just generally in life, we need to view children as persons created in the Imago Dei, and how this must absolutely transform our method of education. She made several valuable insights on how children are able to accomplish a lot more than we give them credit for, and how all of education is linked back to the Imago Dei within each one of us. This book was therefore very enlightening to me, and has changed the way I view education and the role of children in education.

That being said, I didn't feel like Macauley had a very strong grasp of the sin nature present within children, and how that has corrupted the image of God within each of us. As a result, I didn't feel like she was able to fully assess the human condition, and thus how education should properly work. There were a couple points where I felt like she was clearly crossing the line between properly respecting children, and accepting everything they thought without challenging their incorrect insights.

Given this, while the book had some good insights on parts of the human nature, it also critically missed some other areas. Overall, though, it's a fairly good book though, as long as one recognizes what it misses. While not as completely applicable to older children, for those interested in reading about education and how the Imago Dei within each of us should influence how we teach, this is a valuable, if flawed, look at this issue.

Rating: 3-3.5 Stars. (Fairly Good)

[Graeme Pitman · Rating 4 out of 5]

“How colorfully and scientifically our generation talks down to the little child! What insipid, stupid, dull stories are trotted out! And we don’t stop there. We don’t respect the children’s thinking or let them come to any conclusions themselves! We ply them with endless questions, the ones we’ve thought up, instead of being silent and letting the child’s questions bubble up with interest. We tire them with workbooks that would squeeze out the last drop of anybody’s patience. We remove interesting books and squander time on ‘reading skill testing,’ using idiotic isolated paragraphs which no one would dream of taking home to read.” 1st Read.

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an inspiring book! All parents should read this book regardless of if they home school, send their child to private or public school. There is much we can and should do for our children. This is one I will be rereading often.

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Required reading for those interested in Charlotte Mason education philosophy. It's a good jumping off point.

This is a book that deserves rereading often.

[Kirstie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much to love and apply. I aspire to even a fraction of Charlotte Mason’s excellence, wisdom, and intuition in her interactions with children.

Especially helpful ideas to me:

-thinking about children as persons with individual personalities to channel rather then change
-not pitting play against learning. This principle would be helpful for adults, too, since so many people treat recreation time as mindless rather than both restful/fun and fruitful.
-when possible, trying to redirect children from situations where their worst will come out rather than waiting to see whether they fail and then punishing them for it.

My quibbles:

-School mantras just give me cultic heebiejeebies. (“I am. I can. I ought. I will” has a little bit of a “Fear is the mind-killer” vibe to me.)
-I appreciate the emphasis on kids making progress at their own pace, but also deeply value my own mom’s extremely high expectations for us *coupled with* teaching that helped us eventually reach them. Mason was not advocating for low expectations, but I wonder whether parents following her method might often make inaccurate assumptions about their kids’ learning pace and what is possible for them to achieve.

[Stephen Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this in a college pedagogy class that I audited twelve years ago with little intent of ever becoming a teacher; I think more of it stuck with me than I realized, revisiting it now at the beginning of teaching year ten and in a specifically Charlotte Mason context (!). Happy to enthusiastically endorse so much of what Macaulay advocates here and hard not to say that that her (and Mason's) fundamental assumptions about children and how they learn seem like the only right places to begin.

[Jeannette · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can one say about this foundational book? The book responsible for introducing so many parents to the educational philosophy of Charlotte Mason? What started with a search for a good school for one's children while living in England ended up with a movement still growing today. Susan Schaeffer Macaulay offers up a charming and insightful description of a PNEU school in England and how the distinctives of this education fed the minds of her children with its 20 principles including respecting the child, asserting the power of the Holy Spirit, emphasizing time out of doors and the science of relationship (among others). Education truly is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life! This was a re-read for me, in fact I have read it several times at least, each time finding new insights into CM's philosophy of education.

[Jessin Stalnaker · Rating 5 out of 5]

As Christians, our worldview is different; therefore, our view of education should be different. So if you are a parent, an educator, or work with children in any capacity, this book is for you. It has filled me up with so many profound thoughts and practical ideas that I’m about to just read the book again.

“Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.”

[Esta Doutrich]

I get very squirrelly within the idea of only one type of parenting/education/child training method whatever it may be, even though we do homeschool very CM. But what I do love is reading books like this and seeing what overlaps with other wisdom from other sources. That always feels like a good place to stand. In that perspective I enjoyed what this book laid out.

[Amy Meyers · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a history of mixed feelings about this book. I’ve tried and wanted to read this for more than ten years. I got at least halfway in my at least three efforts to read it in the past. For some reason I could never bring myself to finish it, until now when I got the audio. So even now I’m a bit dissatisfied, wondering if I would have felt a 5-star feeling about this book if I’d put more effort in? I think one issue is that I’m no longer a newbie to CM philosophy, and this is no longer the best recommendation for newbies to CM. So I’m no longer the target audience, and secondly, I’m not sure anyone is because it’s a bit outdated now.

So to the first issue, I’d recommend Karen Glass’s offerings now to understand CM philosophy, if you don’t want to simply read CM herself, try the book In Vital Harmony or Consider This. I haven’t read Minds More Awake, but that might be good too. This one is decent, for sure, and it deserves honor for its place in helping revive the philosophy of CM especially for homeschoolers; but it’s no longer the best option for an introductory book.

One reason it’s no longer the best option is that other better books have been written, as I mentioned, in the last decade. But that’s just it, that one of the things that makes the newer ones better is that this book is a bit outdated. It’s a bit syrupy and idealistic in a 50s Swiss Mayberry sort of way. For example, I can’t imagine Schaeffer looking at the public schools today and saying it’s possible for Christian parents to put their kids in those high schools so long as the parents can talk with the kids at home. No, if she had to put warnings on public school teachings decades ago due to evolution, today it’s not an option. And many other little examples seem either outdated or unrealistic.

Sometimes it feels idealistic or unrealistic, but I can’t always tell if it’s CM or if CM herself would have said, No, that’s Macaulay talking about her issues there, not me; I wouldn’t have said it that way…. So sometimes Macaulay gets into apologetics almost, and you’re not sure when you left CM ed philosophy and got into Christian apologetics. But so far, I haven’t read a satisfactory explanation, not even in Glass’s Vital Harmony which did the best attempt this far of any I’ve read, of CM’s principle that children aren’t born bad or good. Even putting the best spin on that possible, it’s an unfortunate choice of words. Macaulay, I think, should have put some disclaimers on that, but instead goes right along with it, not making enough allowances for the fallen nature of mankind, while emphasizing constantly the image of God, the personhood of mankind.

Anyway, there’s still lots of good stuff here; if you’re going to read ten books on CM, this can be somewhere between numbers 6-10.

[Erin Hendrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The language was sometimes a little bit difficult to wade through in sections (it was one of those books where I had to stop and reread passages often), but it was a wonderful book overall. I didn’t have much more than a vague idea about Charlotte Mason’s ideas and methods before picking up this book - it was a good summary of her philosophy, and contained so much helpful advice and little tips for habits and routines when teaching children. I loved the idea of education being an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life, and the specific ideas of school being done in the morning while the afternoon hours could be left free for play and exploration and handicrafts (until age 13), of weekly nature walks, and of a weekly time to study art, music, and poetry (now I know what the “poetry tea time” is that I am always seeing referred to in Charlotte Mason groups 😄). She also put a great deal of thought into the importance of children needing to learn self-discipline in order to learn and apply themselves in life, and how to best go about helping them learn this skill. I enjoyed her idea of letting children first “tell back” to you what they remember or see or think about in art or books or music rather than being only told what they should see and think and notice. It was a really great introduction into a gentle way of leading children into the wonder and joy of learning about the world around them that God has made and placed them in.

[Two Hearts Homeschool · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally read this! I did it in the opposite order to many people who come to CM through this book, then read her volumes; I’ve read through all six volumes at least two times over the last five years but had never read “For the Children’s Sake”! Wonderful and comprehensive introduction to CM; there really is no other book better suited to put into the hands of a mother-educator who wants to know what a CM education encompasses!

[Elizabeth Santelmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

My mother in law read this book every year to prepare for her homeschool year and I have started doing the same thing.

The respect to the minds of children is inspiring. Listening to them as whole persons with their own thoughts and ideas is as much a beautiful gift to me as the parent as to the children!!

[Abigail Stacy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an excellent introduction to Charlotte Mason’s philosophy of education. I didn’t really know what to expect when I started the book but was pleasantly surprised to be learning about the principles and the framework of Charlotte Mason’s methodology. I’ve been pretty intimidated to try to start reading through Home Education books. However, it doesn’t seem quite as daunting anymore.
I really appreciate the concept of education being about forming a relationship with things and thoughts. The three main areas of relationships that all education falls under being: knowledge of God, knowledge of man, and knowledge of the universe.
After reading this, I would love to talk with moms/teachers who have followed this approach and learn how they got started, how it’s looked for them, and how they grew themselves during the process.
The inner turmoil for me as I read this book was comparing it to a classical Christian education approach. While they have similar emphases they are pretty different. It’s another conversation I’d love to have, with educators on both sides, talking about how to decide what’s right for specific families and the goals of each method.
Finally, praise the Lord that we, as parents, have both the responsibility and joy of providing a Christian education for our children. It is not a small or light matter to consider. This book deepened my desire to provide our children with an exceptional education—whether we decide to homeschool or send them to a classical Christian school.

[Laura Robinson (naptimereaders) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great and helpful book!

This is not a book that’s a “fun” book so it’s a little dry and times I felt a little bored. But it is packed full of lots wisdom and insight on what it looks like to take the charlotte mason approach when it comes to homeschooling.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book when my children were small. I loved it and it set me on the path to homeschooling.

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a gem this is! A special little nugget that I think every parent should read especially those who choose to homeschool. Its packed full of things that make you think and ask yourself questions about your childs education and the importance of letting a child lead and giving them the tools they need to thrive. Highly recommend.

[Hannah Steenhoven · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great overview of a Charlotte Mason education. Full of inspiration and a framework for the thoughts, ideas, and direction for a well rounded Christian schooling at home.

[Logan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed the trajectory of my motherhood journey and parenting choices. Every mom needs to read this book before their children become school age. It absolutely changed my perspective on education and challenged me to really think about what I’m offering my children. An abundant life is available to them, but not in the way the world offers. I am so grateful to a dear friend for introducing me to this book.

[Abby · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really helpful introduction to Charlotte Mason’s educational philosophy. A great book for any educators- at home, school, or church. I remember my mom reading this book when I was a small child and it was fun to think about the ways she applied the truths from this book to my education and how I can do the same now for my own daughters.

[Sydney · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book makes me lament the specificity of genres in today’s books. Parents will skip over this book because they would n e v e r homeschool their children, when the most beneficial aspect of the book is Edith’s Christian “worldview and philosophy” of children.

For the Children’s Sake will come off my bookshelf yearly!

[Sara Hollar · Rating 5 out of 5]

2024: The Gateway Drug.

2019: Amazing book on a philosophy of education. Totally changed the way I think about homeschooling my children.

[Emilie Rudd · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really can see why so many people love this book, its vision of nurturing a child’s imagination, delighting in God’s creation, spending time outdoors, and fostering a love for reading is inspiring. I want to be a mother who encourages that kind of wonder in my children.

That said, I felt the approach leaned a bit too heavily on self-directed learning, allowing children to simply follow their interests without enough emphasis on the discipline of doing hard things. While freedom to explore is valuable, children also need guidance to develop perseverance and diligence in subjects that may not come naturally.

I think I feel neutral about this book, thus the 3 stars 🥴

[Chloe (Always Booked) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such an inspiring homeschool read! This is definitely dated, conservative and biased toward the Charlotte Mason method of homeschooling, but for in general I found it very reassuring that we've made the best decision for our family. It emphasizes the positives of homeschooling and the negatives of public school, so again- very biased- but a good read for those who choose to homeschool.