A Full Life: The Works of Charlotte Mason

CHAPTER XXV - THE GREAT RECOGNITION REQUIRED OF PARENTS

1. Show that education is not religious and secular.
2. Show that knowledge, like virtue, is from above.
3. Have we any authority for thinking that science, art and poetry are ‘by the Spirit’?
4. Have we any teaching as to the origin of the first ideas of common things?
5. Show that divine teaching waits upon our co-operation.
6. What manner of teaching invites and what repels divine co-operation?
7. Show that this ‘recognition’ resolves certain discords in our lives.
8. How does it safeguard us from intellectual sin?
9. How does it lead to harmony in our efforts?
10. Why must teaching be fresh and living?
11. Why must books be living?
12. Why can we not get rid of our responsibility by using some neat system?
13. Why must children read the best books?

CHAPTER XXIV - WHENCE AND WHITHER

A Question for Parents: Whither?

1. How are children great?
2. What is wisdom?
3. Show that children grow in wisdom rather than in intelligence.
4. Show that all possibilities are present in a child.
5. Show that we all live for the advancement of the race.
6. Show that we find our ‘whence’ in the potency of the child.
7. Our ‘whither’ in the thought of the day.
8. How should the thought of the day affect education with regard to science?
9. With regard to art?
10. With regard to books?

11. How should the idea of the solidarity of the race affect education?
12. How may we teach children that to serve is promotion?
13. How shall we guard them from considerations of expediency?

CHAPTER XXIII - WHENCE AND WHITHER

A Question for Parents: Whence?

1. What was the leading thought about children in the past generation?
2. What intellectual labour does a child go through in his first year?
3. Remark on the intelligence of children.
4. Show that they are highly endowed but ignorant.
5. Choose between ‘happy and good’ and ‘good and happy’ as an educational maxim.
6. By what test would you try various systems of education?
7. Show the duty of advancing with the tide.

CHAPTER XXII - A CATECHISM OF EDUCATIONAL THEORY

1. Show that character is an achievement.
2. What gives rise to conduct?
3. What means have we of modifying disposition?
4. Give the history of a habit.
5. How may a bad habit be corrected?
6. Show that our conduct is generally directed by unconscious, or sub-conscious cerebration.
7. How far do the habits of a ‘well-brought-up’ person make life easy for him?
8. Why does the forming of a habit demand time?
9. Trace the logical development of a notion.
10. Show that reason is not an infallible guide to conduct.
11. Show how confusion as to logical and moral right works in the history of the world.
12. Why, then, should a child know what he is as a human being?
13. Show how far such knowledge is a safeguard.
14. What is the part of the will in the reception of ideas?
15. How are ideas conveyed?
16. What may we believe is the part of the divine Educator in things natural and spiritual?
17. What part do lessons play in education?
18. What principle as regards a curriculum do we find in a child’s natural aptitude for knowledge?

CHAPTER XXI - A THEORY OF EDUCATION PROPOSED TO PARENTS

1. How far should the ideal of education be a class ideal?
2. What difference is there between the children of educated and those of ignorant parents as regards vocabulary, imagination, etc.?
3. When is the development of ‘faculties’ an important part of education, and when is it not so?
4. What are the chief things the educator has to do ?
5. Show that it is necessary to recognise the material and spiritual principles of human nature.
6. How does this lead us to recognise the supreme Educator?
7. By what test may the value of studies be judged?
8. Show that ‘Nature’ knowledge educates a child.
9. What is to be said for the use of good books in education?
10. Discuss the question of ‘child-nature.’
11. Why are we tenacious of the individuality of children?

12. Why must we consider proportion in our scheme of education?
13. Show that children have a right to knowledge.

CHAPTER XX - SHOW CAUSE WHY

Parents Responsible for Competive Examinations

1. Mention some points we have gained by asking ‘Why?’
2. Why does Tom go to school?
3. Show that the same impulse carries him through school and university.
4. What is the tendency of ‘grind’?
5. Show that the tyranny of competitive examinations is supported by parents.

6. Are examinations themselves an evil?
7. Under what conditions should they be held?
8. What are the primary desires?
9. Are they virtuous or vicious?
10. What end do they serve?
11. Show that throughout the schoolboy’s life one natural desire takes the place which properly belongs to another.
12. Why does he no longer want to know?
13. How is this a loss to the boy?
14. Show that emulation is an easier spring to work than curiosity.
15. Show that an examination-ridden empire would be a calamity.

CHAPTER XIX - WHAT IS TRUTH?

Moral Discrimination required by Parents

1. Show that, as a nation, we are both losing and gaining in truthfulness.
2. What two theories are held with regard to lying?
3. Is lying an elemental or a secondary symptom?
4. How would you treat ‘pseudophobia’?
5. ‘The lie heroic.’
6. ‘Truth for friends, lies for enemies.’
7. ‘Lies inspired by selfishness.’
8. ‘The deceptions of imagination and play.’
9. ‘Pseudomania.’
10. How must children be trained to truthfulness?

CHAPTER XVIII - SENSATIONS AND FEELINGS

Feelings Educable by Parents

1. What do you understand by reflected sensations?
2. Show that we have here a reason why open-air memories should be stored.
3. Show that delightful memories are a source of bodily well-being.
4. And of mental restoration.
5. Distinguish between sensations and feelings.
6. Show that feelings should be objective, not subjective.
7. Show what the feelings are and are not.
8. Show that every feeling has its positive and its negative mode.
9. Are the feelings moral or immoral?
10. Show the connection between unremembered feelings and acts.
11. Certain trifling acts may be ‘the best portion of a good man’s life.’ Why so?
12. Is perception of character a feeling?
13. Show its delicacy and importance.
14. Show how feelings influence conduct.
15. Discuss enthusiasm.
16. Give the genesis of our activities.
17. Show that in educating the feelings we modify the character.

18. What is to be said of the sixth sense of tact?
19. Why must we beware of words?
20. How is a feeling communicated?
21. What feelings especially differentiate persons?
22. Show that to deal with the feelings of the young is a delicate task.

CHAPTER XVII - SENSATIONS AND FEELINGS

Sensations Educable by Parents

1. Show that ‘common sense’ has usually scientific opinion for its basis.
2. What is the origin of sensations?
3. Show that sensations should be treated as interesting on account of the thing perceived, not of the person who perceives.
4. Why are object-lessons in disfavour?
5. Show that a baby works at object-lessons.
6. What is the effect of Nature’s early teaching?
7. What two points must we bear in mind in the education of the senses?
8. Show that object-lessons, to be of value, should be incidental.
9. What advantages has the home in this sort of teaching?
10. How should children be taught care in the use of positive and comparative terms?
11. How would you correct the indiscriminate use of epithets?

12. How would you teach children to form judgments as to weight?
13. As to size?
14. To discriminate sounds?
15. To discriminate odours?
16. To discriminate flavours?
17. Can you suggest some sensory gymnastics?
18. Some sensory games?

CHAPTER XVI - DISCIPLINE

A Consideration for Parents

1. What do people commonly mean by discipline?
2. Distinguish between a method and a system.

3. What is to be said for a ‘wise passiveness’?
4. Discuss the question of punishment by consequences.
5. Show that children may rather enjoy punishment.
6. Show that wrongdoing is necessarily followed by penalties.
7. Is punishment reformative?
8. What are the best disciplinarians?
9. Comment on the mother who is ‘always telling’ her children to do so and so.
10. Give nine practical counsels for a parent who wishes to deal seriously with a bad habit.
11. How would you treat an inquisitive child, for instance?