Stevie Kinzer’s Reviews > In Vital Harmony: Charlotte Mason and the Natural Laws of Education > Status Update

“Education is a life — everywhere we go, any time of day, and throughout our whole lives, living persons should be learning persons.”

“Our task as educators is to encourage children to blossom in virtue and character.”

“The books children read are building their moral imagination so that they will be able to empathize with people in all kinds of circumstances. Their books should have the flavor of heroism, victory, sacrifice, and redemption…they will begin to comprehend that they too have a part to play in the great story that is life.”

“The things that you value and make time for in your everyday life will teach your children what is important. You are helping them to order their loves and form their affections.”

“The person who chooses to do right because it is right, not for any artificial reason, has a noble and virtuous character- the very thing we hope to see established in the lives of our young people. Being able to rule yourself is the mark of a mature person.”

“Rewards are very motivating, but if we excessively use rewards to motivate children to learn or to behave rightly, we are actually hindering their character development.”

“our knowledge of what is right, not our natural desires, should govern our choices. We can learn to rejoice in doing our duty because everything we do is in service of a great King.”

“The entire object of true education is to make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy the right things- not merely industrious, but to love industry- not merely learned, but to love knowledge-not merely pure, but to love purity- not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice.” Quote from The Crown of Wild Olive.

“Thou hast set my feet in a large room” …knowledge is not pictured as a house with different rooms, separated by walls and isolated by doors. We have one room - a room that is enlarged by every relationship with knowledge that we form.

“There’s a way of teaching that ‘leaves us cold.’ That would be the opposite of forming a relation. Knowledge can be utilitarian-useful-without creating any interest,wonder,or delight. Miss Mason made our guiding principal plain:‘Education should aim at giving knowledge touched with emotion’…our primary task as educators is to help children establish these warm relations with all kinds of knowledge.”