Home Education, Part 1

I am blogging from my phone today so I can't link things like you can on the full blogger website. Ceridwen, who is a Very Great Friend of mine, and I are reading through Charlotte Mason's first book entitled "Home Education". You can get a copy from your library or purchase one or go online to read it at www.amblesideonline.org .

Part I - Some Preliminary Considerations

"It is a great thing to be a parent: there is no promotion, no dignity, to compare with it."

From page one she wakes you up to the magnitude of the responsibility given to parents, to mothers. It may feel like a thankless poop patrol, vomit patrol, laundry patrol, spills and crumbs everywhere kind of a job. Oh, but it's more.

"And they will take it up as their profession - that is, with the diligence, regularity, and punctuality which men bestow on their professional labours."

Sideways glance here. What we don't have to do we tend not to do or put off for as long as possible. The thought of it is much worse than the actual doing it. What we are fighting here is our own sinful selfish nature. It's the part of growing up that's so hard - we think it will be great to not have someone telling us what to do all the time. And it is great. Until we realize how hard it is to make ourselves do what we ought.

"To give reasons to a child is usually out of place, and is a sacrifice of parental dignity;"

The above quote is under the heading, "They must perceive that their Governors are Law-compelled."

"Children's faults are serious.... To laugh at ugly tempers and let them pass because the child is small, is to sow to the wind."

What comes to mind is Proverbs 31, "she girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms."

"Do not let the children pass a day without distinct efforts, intellectual, moral, volitional; let them brace themselves to understand; let them compel themselves to do and to bear; and let them do right at the sacrifice of ease and pleasure:"

What more can you add that? I'll just say that it is apparent in our society and culture that not enough parents are doing this.